DeAngelo stirred in bed, having trouble sleeping in an uncomfortably warm hotel room. The radiator was cranked up and the thermostat seemed to be broken. He turned over, the sweat-logged skin of his scrotum briefly clinging to his leg before falling away and delivering a loud slap to the opposite thigh. He groaned and tucked the sheets between his legs to try falling asleep again.

Dee scratched his head. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt properly clean. There was no shower in the room, only a bath, but it was extremely small for a man of his corpulence and he was unable to maneuver his head under the water. He had to settle for splashing his hair clean, which never really worked. By this point he’d pretty much given up on hygiene out of frustration.

Away from the oppressive heat of his room, Dee spent his evenings after work trying to air out at a nearby park. He sat quietly on a bench and watched a steady stream of people come through to play with their dogs, making the most of the day’s last light. He didn’t much care for dogs, but there was nowhere else he felt comfortable. Unfortunately, he was starting to get a sunburn, which he saw as a grand betrayal from the last good thing he had going.

When they found his body it was ruled an accidental death. Even masturbation had gotten boring for DeAngelo, so he had been thinking of ways that he might enhance the experience. They found him on the floor in what they decided was probably a yoga position—plough pose—his legs behind his head and his genitals hanging over his mouth, his neck twisted and broken under the weight of his bloated torso. The last thoughts to cross his mind were of mild discomforts and irritations, from an itchy scalp to a moderate sunburn, but his balls, at least, were finally dry, as they dangled in the draft from a cracked window and gently brushed against his lips.