I know a guy who was trying to write a story about a couple he knew. He figured that it would be an interesting story because he found the couple to be very interesting, mainly because they scared the shit out of him. They’d been together longer than any couple his age that he knew, he knew they’d cheated on each other numerous times (they both probably knew), and that’s why they didn’t mind fucking other people or when the other fucked other people. That’s what the guy I know figured, but he’d never actually asked. They scared the shit out of him because he knew he’d never have anything like that, and he thought they had the most beautiful thing going that he’d ever seen.

Although he thought they were very interesting, he wasn’t sure the reader would. This guy I know didn’t like to write about real life, and the couple had done so many interesting and potentially symbolic things in real life that the guy I know didn’t quite feel comfortable bastardizing their reality by making them do things on paper. He couldn’t just make them fuck other people. They did that all the time; he’d given it to some college girls he’d delivered pizza to, and she’d given it up once in a Port-A-Potty at a concert and had tried to give it to a teacher (even though she was already set to get an A in the class), so the guy I know didn’t want to just make them fuck other people, even though he was jealous of them and he liked the irony involved in lifting this couple up on a pedestal because they didn’t mind fucking other people.

He had to make them do something.

So the guy I know called up the couple he knew and invited them out for some beer. He drank beer as he waited. He was very nervous and had the feeling he always had that the World was going to End very quickly (he felt even worse at the times when he thought that the World might last Forever).

When they finally arrived, they all sat around and drank the beer. All three of them talked about how they thought that the beer was the greatest thing, and that as long as those bastards didn’t bring back Prohibition everything would be allright. Nobody brought up whether or not the World was coming to an End or whether it might be worse if it would last Forever. It was all pretty good, but not terribly interesting. And the guy I knew wouldn’t stand for it. It made him nervous. It gave him the shakes.

“Listen guys, I don’t know quite how to put this so I’m just going to throw it out there; I have to make you guys do something. If I don’t, then the World is going to End. Or it won’t ever End at all, and both scare the shit out of me.”

“Well say it.”

“Just try to come together, okay?”

And with that, the guy I know laid back on his couch and drank the beer and watched them do it. They did it. Choking, slapping, fluids, cries; they did it. It was pretty good, but not all that interesting. But the guy watched and drank (the occasional bathroom or refrigerator break notwithstanding) until a hand grabbed him and he was pulled in. And as interesting as it was, pulling and sucking and humping and screwing, it was dark and alcohol-blunted and all he could feel was—

That he wasn’t anymore what he was before. He wasn’t anything. All three of them: the guy I knew, the couple he knew, came together. They were one. The guy I knew became part of something beautiful, impossible, and the World was Ending, but it would go on Forever. But the guy I knew wasn’t anything at all anymore, so he didn’t feel anything anymore and he wasn’t scared…and it didn’t matter.

The End.