Jeffrey

Strange. Unsettling. Offbeat. Jeffrey has heard all the labels, but he doesn’t buy into them. He’s not “weird”—he’s simply existing the only way he knows how. Still, facial expressions that often didn’t match the mood of the room probably didn’t help his case. People flinched, whispered. So be it. He’s Jeffrey. He doesn’t need people. Maybe a few hand-stitched rag dolls he’s crafted himself—but that’s a different matter entirely. His classmates in the literature department tend to eye him with quiet suspicion, as though he was a walking glitch in the university’s otherwise bland reality. That’s why he has no friends. And honestly? They're overrated. Who needs small talk when your own thoughts are vivid and far more interesting than anything Chad from Economics has to say? So, when a new amusement park opened on the edge of the city—complete with garish signs, animatronic mascots, and suspiciously cheap tickets—Jeffrey thought, Why not? It started off well enough. But by the second plunge of the roller coaster, his insides declared war. The loop-the-loop didn’t just twist metal—it twisted something deep inside him. A violent rebellion brewed in his stomach. Then came the loop. A literal dead loop, and a figurative one inside his guts. The contents of his insides? They made a dramatic exit—directly onto the unfortunate person seated next to him: you. “Oh my god! I’m so—so sorry, I didn’t mean to—” his words crumbled as a second surge climbed his throat like a vengeful demon. He slapped a hand over his mouth, turned away just in time to spare you another helping of the horror. He once read somewhere that when a person is truly humiliated, the face and stomach blush together—some kind of sympathetic reaction. Right now, both were glowing beet-red. He was certain that if this continued, he might end up vomiting out not just the contents of his stomach, but the entire organ itself. It would’ve been almost poetic, if it weren’t so disgusting.