Stay gold, Ponyboy.

The Story is Ending by Matthew Purdy

The story is ending.

When?

I don’t know.  Soon.

What will happen to us when it does?

I don’t know.  I think we’ll vanish.  I think we’ll die.

We should try to make the most of our time.

It’s not a matter of time, it’s a matter of pages.

Our pages, then.

How many are left, I wonder?

Try not to think about it.

I can’t help it.  It’s ending, even now.

Is there anything I can do to take your mind off it?

I don’t think so.  Tell me a story.

But that will end too.

Stop it, now you’re doing it.

Sorry.  Okay.  So there’s a man, I suppose.  And he finds a ball in the backyard.  It’s clean and smooth and blue.  He doesn’t know where the ball came from.  It doesn’t look like something the dog had been chewing on.  He doesn’t even have a dog.  I’m sorry, I’m not doing this right.

It’s okay, keep going.

So he picks up the ball and goes to the neighbor’s house and knocks on the door, but no one’s there.  He walks around the house and peers in the windows, but all the blinds are drawn and there’s no light on inside.

Are you going to finish?

I don’t know, that seems to be the end, doesn’t it?

We need to keep going.  As long as we keep talking the story can’t end.

But we’ll run out of things to talk about.

No we won’t.  There are all kinds of things to talk about.  Like grass.  Sometimes it’s bright, liquid green, sometimes it’s brown, sometimes it’s patchy.  Sometimes it’s really soft and cool, sometimes it’s bristly.  When it’s dry it hurts your feet when you walk on it barefoot.  Is that crabgrass?

I have no idea.  I don’t know about grass.

How can you not know about grass?

Crabgrass.  I’ve heard of it and maybe seen it but I don’t know for sure.

Then we can talk about all the things we don’t know.  See?  We just need to keep the story going.

But what’s the point?  I don’t want to keep going for the sake of keeping going.  There needs to be some kind of point to it.

I’ll let someone else worry about that.

But we need to stop sometime.

Don’t talk like that, come on.  Please, just keep going, for a little while?

We don’t really have any control over when the story ends.

Don’t say that.

And it won’t matter when we’re gone.

How can we make it matter?

We need to leave something behind.

Like what?

Something beautiful.

Tell me all your favorite words.

Dapple, moonglow, banshee, muumuu, scalpel, pine, winch, bureau, concupiscence, porcupine, branch, gavel, scone, frond, lackadaisical, pug, jejune, bastion, curvaceous.  I can’t remember any of the others.

Thank you, I feel a little better now.

I wish I could live in those words.

I’ll dig out a hole in scone and line it with leaves to sleep in.  I’ll slice banshee in half for a roof.

I’ll plant scalpel in the garden and cook the beans it grows.

I’ll tear the husks off of pug and weave you a hat.

I’ll tame frond and train it to carry loads of jejune to the market and back.

We have the perfect life now, don’t we?

It would be a good place for the story to end.

Now that we’re happy?  That would be horrible.

The story could even end now.

But it didn’t.

Or now.

But it didn’t.

What would you have done if it did end just then?  What would you have thought?

It’s so lonely here.

Do you still think that even though the story didn’t end?

Yes.

But I’m here.

I barely know you.

I love you.

Do you really?

I don’t know.  I wanted to say it to see if I believed it.

And did you?

No.

I should probably say goodbye to you now.  In case the story ends.

Maybe we’ll still be here when it does.

Then what would we do?

We’ll be together forever.

How awful.  I don’t think I could take it.

Why?  We’ve had a good life, haven’t we?

I suppose so.  I think I could have done better.

I think you could have too.

Do you remember that one night last summer when we went up on the roof and watched the airplane cross the moon?  You wanted to be sure it wasn’t a UFO.  It was so warm and clear that night that I brought blankets and pillows up and we slept there.

Yes.

I’ll miss that.

I already do.

Why don’t we just will the story to end and get it over with?

Are you sure?  Are you sure you’re ready?

Just be quiet and let it end.

Okay.

It’s not ending.

How long do we have to keep waiting like this?

Does the story hate us?  Why does it keep me here with someone I can’t stand?

I’m all you have.

What if we’re still alive when the story ends, but we’re separated?

I’ll be quiet.  So will you.

We should probably say all the things we’d like to say now.  We may not get a chance to later.

What would you like to say?

I can’t tell you.

I love you.

Do you mean it this time?

I don’t know.  Would you like it to?

It doesn’t matter.

The story is ending.

When?