The Story

– He heard the story from a friend. His friend had taken it from a girl he slept with once, though it had not been a one night stand. It had taken his friend months to get this girl to open up to him. And then she did and shortly after swore she never would again. They stopped calling and texting each other. But he kept the story. He placed it on a shelf and forgot about it for a good long while. It collected dust. Spiders used it as a foundation for their intricately spun designs. It wasn’t until his lease was up and he had to move out, this friend, that he found it. By this time it was a different story from the one he had taken from that girl who had opened up to him. He didn’t know what to make of it. He was tempted to throw the whole thing away. Moving is always a reason to lighten one’s baggage. But after picking it up and stripping away the webs, he recognized it, he was reminded of the girl and decided he’d keep it. He might be able to make something of it, he thought. In his new place, he didn’t shelve it, but he didn’t leave it out in the open; the way you keep your keys on the night stand, your glasses on the coffee table, or your high school graduation tassel hanging from your medicine cabinet hoping it might mean something. While he hoped he could do something with it, the story, he was well aware it had been a long time and stories change over time, and spider webs only exacerbate that change and, with that, endings become impossible. So he took it and placed it atop the toilet’s reservoir, but it grew moldy over time. He wiped it off and placed it just under his bed so that the exclamation points stuck out. There however, it gathered all the dust and lint and the stray strands of hair from one night stands he was now having. Having lost that one girl who opened up to him and being unable to do anything with the story, he had little recourse left. Then one night, after a particularly gratifying tryst with a brunette, with small but beautifully natural breasts, he found himself feeling emptier than on any other previous occasion. In the dark, in his bed, the bits of moonlight scattering upon the sheets and the brunette’s pale skin, he watched her breathe and wondered if it was as meaningless as the tassel still hanging off the medicine cabinet mirror. He got up and went to sit in the dark, in the same place he had first left the story, to see if he would grow mold. He didn’t. He simply wept silently until the sunlight swallowed the bits of moonlight. He then got up and walked back to the bed, where he watched the brunette continue her slumber. She had moved around in such a way as to make lying down next to her, as he had been, a near impossibility. He moved closer to the bed, for further examination, where upon his toe was stuck by an exclamation point, as if to punctuate what he already knew.
He threw on his pants, picked up what remained of the story, and woke him with it; hoping he would be able to perhaps, do something with it, and that he, this friend, might then be able to stop collecting the loose strands of one night stands. He, for his part, placed the story on a shelf.