Tunguska

#8 - Magical/unrealistic/extraordinary element + something desirable but unattainable

One hundred years back in time, Jasper stands in the middle of the cataclysmic Tunguska event that occurred in 1908. The hundred-thirty-foot ball of flames from the comet exploding above the earth’s surface could deafen his ears. It rages at over five-thousand degrees, producing a convenient night light for Little Timmy half a continent away. He steps towards it as trees at both sides of him collapse from the intense wind and heat. Like wedding flowers, their brown trunks make a ceremonial pathway. Jasper’s body writhes as flesh burns away from him, but his tightening skin stretches as he smiles. He inhales with what’s left of his lungs. As cells glow and catch on fire, his brain interprets a last scent of boiling skin before losing its ability to sense completely.

Jasper’s skeletal frame remains as he points his toe behind him, pivots his hips daintily, and swivels around on the burning dirt to smile at the blue monitor stuck to his time machine behind him. Every pixel on the screen is the face of every person he’s ever known, looking at him from the future.

“Now you will never know who I am!” he screeches. “You will forget me!” The ball of fire prevails behind him, where he stands as a morbid silhouette, and his blood vessels fry against his bones. The people on the screen begin to cry.

“Jasper!” screams a young girl, whom he tutored in fifth grade about adjectives and now ignores when she greets him.

“Jasper!” grieves his grandmother, who he said he would call before she died, but never did.

“Jasper!” sobs his basketball teammate, who he declined to spend time with on his birthday.

“Jasper!” wails the salesman on the side of the road he used to thank profusely, but stopped when he started asking about how school was going.

“Jasper…” cries his cousin’s wife, who he pretended not to see when they happened to be in the same grocery store. 

“Jasper!” yelps his doctor, who he stopped attending visits with because he was friends with his parents, and they see each other on the weekends.

“I can’t cry anymore!” Jasper falls to his knees, knocking his kneecaps out of place, and throws his arms up. “I am gone!” His phalanges scrape against his mandible as he touches his face. His eyes melt. He feels them drip down and evaporate. 

One pixel increases in size and takes up the whole frame. It is himself.

“Jasper… come back. Come back to 2008. Your mother just gave birth. You’re a big brother now.”

Jasper punches the screen, breaking all of his brittle bones. It goes black. 

But then it turns back on. He curses. Everyone’s there again.

“DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

“Jasper!” shouts his preschool teacher, who he was afraid of asking for help from.

“Jasper!” scolds a woman who revealed to him the profound importance of art, but he doesn't even include art in his life anymore.

“JASPER!” wails his baby brother, higher than the rest of them, who he distanced himself from in fear of being a bad influence. “Jasper, come back so we can play LEGO!”

“Jasper, look at what mommy made for me!” the same pixel from before enlarges, revealing himself holding a small wagon to carry his toys in. “It even has my name on it!”

In the dying heat of the Tunguska, Jasper lays collapsed in front of the screen, unable to move himself. Every remotely pleasant memory replays itself in front of his perpetual living soul. Every person he’s ever condemned tells him that they love him. He tries to thrash his body into the dirt. He prays for the remnants of the burnt up comet to fly over him until his body can no longer be exposed, but the people have made the land a natural monument for tourists so that it can be appreciated as the miracle of the century, and appreciated for its sublime beauty that lit up the night sky with its traumatizing, life deforming powers. For years, he stays there, listening to heartbreakingly-kind things.

Finally, his soul catches up to the present. The time travel machine transports him back into his real body where he left it, sitting in front of a paper, and a fountain pen on the right hand side—a gift from his uncle.

Dear Jasper, 

He had written.

I’m sorry for…

I’m sorry for what?

…

Everything?

…

I’m sorry for my lack of grace for you. I’m sorry for not forgiving you. 

He writes. 

And…

He cries, but with relief this time.

Remember that you’re allowed to change.

            - Love, Jasper