It was such a turn-on to have my subconscious hacked, being alluded to often but never directly addressed. You’d weave me in your fictive formula of taking bits from various people, flipping the POV like an atomized burger chef—or perhaps it was remiss unconsciousness steering—then I’d accuse you of witchcraft and here we are. I’m sorry about the knock at your door.
Knock knock knock!
“We know you’re in there! Come out with your pants up!”
But Jake, let’s call him Jake, had never done anything before with his pants up so that request fell on deaf ears, I guess. Jake did manage to get his pirate shirt on and one boot. He bounced and skirted across the floor on a single leg like a pogo stick while trying to put on the other boot. But he had that pogo shoe on backwards, you see—the wrong foot in the wrong shoe—, so with every hop on his left foot, he veered right. Until he bumped right into the windowsill amidst all of the confusion. The single fragile boot fell to the floor as Jake clawed desperately at the window frame. His hip had hit the sill, his weight thrown toward the open pane. She wanted to call out to him but that would suggest she’d been there.
Jake was a self-narrating fool, you see, so she couldn’t admit there was anything there or that would make her the objectified extra. She deliberated over whether this was fair. He hadn’t done anything but try to slip a bit of love to her. It’s just that the ending was clear. He’d ride off into a cardboard sunset, go be a hero somewhere new for a spell. Except he wasn’t a hero, was he? She’d have to write her own history. And while carefully deliberating, poor Jake had only the curtains to hold his hand. Out the window he fell with a final salute. Goodbye Jake, we’re proud of you. I just hope that everyone knew you were set on changing your ways.
