Rejection: Fiction

by Tony Tulathimutte

Her anger cremates away all her affection for him, but not the obsession, leaving her a scorched skeleton of wrath.

If something is going to knock her so far off-course, it should at least be entertaining or make her seem worldly, like a drug addiction or a stalker.

Or maybe it’s just cathartic to microdose trauma, without the protective salt circle of fiction.

Which is why I loved Twitter: an open, rhizomatic forum where you could aggravate existing mental illnesses, shop for new ones, violate your Miranda rights, and get fired. A place to be judged on the character of your content, driven by rubbernecking and spite, where fame is a millstone and names are bad op-sec. Twitter was the right word for it, birdsong being a Darwinian squall mistaken for idle chatter, screaming for territory and mates. An improv class, press conference, intervention, Klan rally, comics convention, and struggle session all booked in the same conference room. A crowded elevator where anyone who smelled a fart also had to fart. Each post was an arrow fired blind into the sky, and if it hit something, ten thousand arrows shrieked back down and called you a cunt.

they had attended the same high school in Eau Claire,

Eau Claire shout out!