Houses of Paper by Nathan Wunner

Trevor’s nose is bleeding and his eyes are rolling back in his head. He feels the blistering black edges of death gripping him tightly and pulling him down. In his mind he pictures the whole universe coming undone, the distance between stars becoming infinite as all of creation’s desire to expand and multiply is tearing it apart from inside.

His body growing cold, and knowing that he has very little time before the lights go out on everything, forever, Trevor frantically recalls a happy memory and grabs hold of it like a life preserver.

There’s soft jazz playing in the next room. Trevor feels a cozy fire at his back and a warmth in his abdomen which could only come from a whiskey bottle. He feels silk clothes on his skin, wool socks on his feet. His vision is only slightly blurred because of the alcohol; just enough to give everything a vibrant, warm halo.

Trevor taps his fingers upon a black oak desk and hums along with the music, not caring if he misses a beat. He takes another sip of whiskey and holds it in his mouth, sloshing it back and forth across his tongue and letting it burn.

Across from him is a window, and through it he sees that the ground outside is covered in snow. Fat snowflakes leisurely drift down to the earth to mingle with others of their kind. The horizon is a dark and radiant blue.

Julie enters the room, wearing a tight skirt that clings to her hips and a top that reveals an acceptable amount of cleavage without looking slutty. Her curly red hair spills around her shoulders like the froth at the bottom of a waterfall. She holds a bottle of champagne in her right hand and her left hand rests upon her hip. In a blur of motion Trevor finds himself on his feet and tasting her lips. He buries his head in her flowing hair and his senses are overwhelmed by the scent of that wretched conditioner she’s been using for the last six years.

No, no. Stop. That’s not right.

Julie bought a new conditioner. New makeup. Dyed her hair black.

It’s my fucking consciousness, Trevor thinks. I’ll make this moment work if it’s the last thing I do.

Trevor and Julie awkwardly shrug off their clothes as they make their way upstairs. Julie’s nipples are wide and perky and her skin is soft, like a pillow that’s been left out in the sunlight. Her polished fingernails fumble with Trevor’s belt buckle, then his zipper, and finally, with his flaccid cock.

Shit, Trevor thinks. I can’t get it up. Everything can’t be perfect for the last time if I can’t get it up. He tries to back out of this moment, to recall another memory in his mind’s eye, but it’s too late. Everything is falling apart faster than he’d thought it would. He has to make do with what he has.

Trevor imagines himself taking viagra. His memories become so entwined with his fantasies of how he wishes things were that he can’t tell the two apart.

Julie is wearing leather and fishnet stockings, a whip in hand, rivulets of blood seeping from the corners of her mouth. She sits on the stairs with her legs spread wide; pale white thighs with a creamy pink center out in full view. Trevor, engorged, strokes himself furiously.

Outside the sky is cracking in half. The snowflakes have all frozen in place in mid-air. Everything is frigid and iced over, even the interior of the house.

It's as though all of creation wants nothing more than to stifle Trevor’s erection.

Trevor’s hands find Julie’s throat as he thrusts inside of her. Julie squeezes her tits together with her biceps and licks her lips. Her vagina is the last light and heat left in the world.

Trevor squeezes her neck tighter and he thinks, “If it weren’t for you, I’d be perfect. I’d never feel inadequate. I’d be a God.”

In his death throes Trevor fails to realize that this is his own fantasy, a universe of his own creation; that he is Julie, fucking himself.

The walls of Trevor’s house are dripping with blood one second and on fire the next. Julie is lying dead face down on the floor, bleeding from the mouth, her feet still twitching as her brain tries to make sense of what’s happened. Then she’s on her feet, speaking in reverse, spreading her legs and crab-walking backwards up the stairs with a smile plastered to her face. The snow outside is falling upwards into the sky.

Trevor is trying to hold on just a little while longer.

Julie takes the first two fingers of her left hand and rubs her clit rapidly, reclining her neck, letting her hair fall backwards, feeling her spine tense. She speaks in that sultry voice she’d reserve for her most playfully flirtatious and private moments, and she says “This…” and as she speaks she looks down at her genitals and nods knowingly, “This is the whole of human history summed up into one moment. Cosmic amoeba with an uncontrollable desire to breed and multiply. This is the best you could do.” She reaches her fingers up into her vagina and pulls them out, and then thrusts them back up again.

Trevor feels a tug at the back of his skull pulling him away. He watches the orbits of a dozen planets decay, sending them plunging into their respective suns. He watches galaxies collide in reverse, while the stars that were born in the process collapse into themselves and disappear into the nothing that they originated from. He watches everything grow still and cold.

In the midst of all this, still desperately clutching his limp penis, he hears Julie’s voice. “Was it worth the suffering, and the pain, and the knowledge that you’ll never be alive again, just for this moment? Is this what you wanted?”

And Trevor answers like any true and knowing God would, by saying “I don’t know what I wanted.”