Ankou's Unsharpened Scythe

Elliot is tired of living a life of leftovers. He was supposed to be the next Jack Lambert, the next T.J. Watt, but fate (in the form of ligaments that don't hold up against extreme lateral forces), it seems, had other ideas. Now he's stuck in a could-have-been purgatory. Thanks to some errant wisdom teeth, he has a sufficient quantity of pain killers to treat both a physical pain and an existential one. It was Troy Polamalu or bust, and he settles in for the bust. As he tilts the prescription bottle over his life's gaping resignation, his demise is preempted by news of another's-a grandfather he called Patch-who makes it a habit of cushioning Elliot's plummeting descents. There is promise of inheritance-wealth and riches and a return to elite linebacker stature-but there's a catch. Good or bad, it must all be earned! Patch would say. In order to claim his full inheritance, Elliot must accept a re-wiring of the universe, develop a prodigious mreg, find a vent, then smash his body into an apical frame at seventy miles per hour. Time travel is simply not possible without a punctuated death.

But then there's this girl, and girls always get in the way...