Sticky Situation
Sticky Situation
Fiction: The universe collapses on a college fling.
With textbooks shoved up into her right armpit, gasping for breath and cursing all the prior night’s cigarettes, Joy swung her legs like mad pendulums. Between huffs of air, she recited all the things she needed to remember for this stupid quiz.
Potential ways the universe ends:
Energy gets used up, gets real cold, then nothing happens.
Dark Energy tears everything up as it expands.
Instability builds up like tooth plaque and then everything just, like stops existing.
The universe expands as far as it can and then collapses back in on itself. Sqweesh.
There was probably another one lodged away in the cobwebbed corners of her inaccessible memory, flooded out by last week’s frat party jungle juice. Luckily, she was certain she’d recognize it when she saw it listed as one of the choices. Thank God, Buddha, Allah, and whoever else for multiple choice quizzes from lazy professors. Thank the universe. Still, she knew she should have done more studying last night and less having-a-boy-over-ing.
But he was so cute and sweet, and talked about music she liked, and really seemed authentic. Not just another American Spirits softboy who did everything ironically. Last-night-boy actually liked things, and liked her too.
They said a lot of things to each other last night. Sober things, as sober as nicotine and low blue dorm lighting would let them say. A lot of things that sounded like premature love.
Joy considered stopping to text him for coffee, but reminded herself through wheezes that she was already going to be late to class.
Cars blurred in her periphery as they ripped down the strangled Boston goat roads. She bobbed and weaved through the other students, telling herself she could have been a boxer, before darting around a clueless pedestrian shoveling down a croissant with his stubby fingers.
“Pay attention, dunce,” she didn’t yell.
Anyway, what else did she need to remember?
An AU is short for Astronomical Unit and is a measurement like the old school cubit frame of reference; how far from earth to sun. An AU was roughly how far she was from her classroom.
The sun is gonna turn red, swell up like a pregnant woman’s ankles, and then implode.
Andromeda is on a collision course with Earth, bound to smash together in a couple billion years.
A gloomy, foggy melancholy slowed time for a moment. Something about all the chaos she was destined to miss. A little bit of existential FOMO, as it were. While everything else would be falling apart, two galaxies would be coming together. There was something sweet about that.
Joy noticed the impact on her legs had lessened significantly. Either she had gone numb or. . . she was walking, not running.
Stupid!
She kicked up into a sprint again, but when she glanced up to get her bearings, she realized that her classroom was much closer than she’d anticipated.
That was only a problem, because, if her classroom was as close as it appeared now, then she was not actually running late, which was why she was running in the first place.
Actually, it meant she was early.
Huh?
She double checked her phone for the time.
No, yeah, by some miracle bestowed upon her by Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, she had outrun the clock.
All that track and field in high school paid off, apparently. Still something about this was like, “Cool, yeah. But huh?”
She reached for the door handle and flung the whole thing open.
Her eyes widened and chest went icy.
“. . .All right, that’s it today, remember the next quiz is in three weeks,” Professor announced.
“Wait. . .” Joy started. But. But what? She was early, right? Did she miss something? Daylight Savings? Spring? She checked her phone again.
What?
She peered back up at her professor and at first thought she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing; it was something else, her eyes maybe blurry, maybe sweat dripped down into them and was messing with her vision.
But even after she wiped her eyes, no. Professor was melded into the wall, spread out like a fleshbound book. His clothes rippled with each movement of his stretchy putty head, embedded in him such that she could see the stitching across his skin. She dropped her books.
“Oh, Joy,” he said, all normal as if he didn’t, y’know, look like that. “You’re late, but there will be a makeup quiz next week.”
“Okay,” was all Joy could mutter with a tremor of shock.
Professor gave her a sad, understanding look, but before he could console her, she felt her periphery itch. She glanced at the classroom of her peers to find the students standing up and packing their things like normal. . . but most of them had melted into their chairs, into their neighbors, into the floor. It was like “The Thing,” kinda, only not screaming or murdering.
Joy stumbled back, unable to blink or breathe at the nightmare tapestry of people and objects all gooey and gluey together like a handful of drying hair gel between her fingers.
“Oh!” Professor interjected. “And on the end of the universe questions, there’s one more to add that we didn’t discuss.”
“Okay,” Joy said, her breath trembling from her lips as she spoke.
“The shrinking of space,” he said, coolly. “Like the big crunch, but more about the inflation of the Higgs Boson and the deterioration of the Pauli Exclusion principle. Could arguably happen at any moment considering this would be a byproduct of instability.
“What does that mean?” Joy’s heart hammered. “What about. . . time?” Or something.
“It shrinks too,” said Professor with a grin that now, was simply one with the wall. “It gets stickier. But with this hypothesis, you’d notice it with space first.”
“Okay,” said Joy as the room shrunk with creaks and groans.
Overhead the sun and moon traded places. Light and day mushed together in an eerie radioactive green.
“I’m dreaming, right?” she asked.
“Unfortunately not,” Professor said with a sigh. “Anyway, we will see you next week! Which should be any minute now.”
She stepped back again, just wanting the comfort of her room, but found herself thinking of Lastnightboy. Where was he? What was he doing? What was he melting into? Or who was he melting into?
They had said a lot of things last night, a lot of things that sounded like premature love.
She tapped something behind her and spun around, paranoid that she would stick to whatever it was.
But it wasn’t an it. It was Lastnighboy.
Her heart fluttered.
“Oh, hey,” she said, struggling to keep her cool, to keep her words all nice and tidy for presentation’s sake.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” he asked with a pleasant smile.
“I just am going to. . . erm. I’m just leaving class,” she said.
“Oh I didn’t know we had class at the same time,” he said. “I’d never seen you here before.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s probably because space is shrinking.”
“Huh?” he said.
“Nothing,” she cleared her throat. “Well, where is your class? I'm happy to walk you there.”
He laughed. She liked that he only had one dimple, and an eyebrow that was just the slightest micrometer thicker than the other, and that the thicker one quivered a little when he laughed. They did a lot of laughing last night. They said a lot things that sounded like. . .
“Isn’t it my job to walk you places?” he asked.
Joy gave him a look. Playful, kinda. She hoped it was playful.
“You know I know neither of us believe in that chauvinistic crap.”
“So then the converse is fine?”
“What then? You don’t want me to walk you to class?”
“I didn’t say that,” he grinned. “I’m liable to get in an accident without a little guidance.”
“Then as your carer, I will walk you to class.”
He glanced over her shoulder and frowned.
“Well,” he said glumly. “I think my class is in your class.”
Joy turned to see what he was seeing and surely enough, the classroom was a box within a box within people within people within objects within objects. And they were in the doorway now.
Her stomach churned with dizziness and nausea. She spun back around.
“Should we. . .”
But now when she looked all she saw was meat.
Her face was in his face.
She tried to scream but realized it was only out of startle. This wasn’t so bad. After all it was kind of warm, kind of nice. It smelled a little like kitty litter and Reds, a good brand of cigarettes.
There was something calming about being in his meat. She wondered if this was what it was like for him last night. She wondered if it was that weird sense of home, being in a womb of sorts (were a face a womb) that made men so. . . Insertive?
And she realized how much responsibility it was to be a meat jacket for another person. She hadn’t realized until then that all the tension she’d been holding in her shoulders kind of just melted away inside of his face.
“Joy?” Lastnightboy said.
“Yes?” she asked.
“This is weird isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
And then she felt self-conscious. Was it not good? Did her face not feel so good inside of his? Did he have different expectations? Was her face too big? Too small? The wrong shape? The wrong motion?
“Is it okay?” he asked.
“It’s great,” she said before she could filter out some of her school-girlish ecstasy.
“I think so too.”
She swallowed hard as he swallowed harder and she watched his tongue and larynx convulse.
“What’s happening out there?” her voice cracked as she asked.
“It’s messy,” he said.
Yeah. That was enough. She really didn’t want a description.
“How long do you think it’s gonna be like this?” she asked.
“I hope for a while,” he said.
She felt the heat from her face radiate into his. Now they were both sweaty.
Their chests were mingling too. Two heartbeats was a little nerve wracking, especially since they were kind of out of time. Ba-dum–badum–Badum badum badum–Badum. And on like that.
Her face went deeper into his until her face wasn’t just her face but his head, and his head was hers.
She thought back to the time she dated a girl in middle school. She called her ‘first love,’ and they used to skateboard together, but when ‘first love’ skinned her knees on a long downhill run, she quit for good because her dad said it wasn’t ladylike.
Joy’s stomach, Lastnightboy’s stomach churned.
No, this didn’t happen to Joy.
The boy was Joy’s first love but. . .
But the boy already had a first love first.
The boy didn’t do to the first love girl what he had done to Joy the night before, but there was something almost more sickening about whatever they had experienced.
Well. . . Well Joy had a first love too.
Right?
Yeah. He was a cute boy. Smart. Really smart. Like genius smart. He grew up to be Elon Musk or something.
“Joy?” said Lastnightboy.
“Yeah,” she groaned.
“I’m glad this is with you.”
Yeah,” she said.
But ick, that smell. Short Red cigarettes were kind of gross weren’t they? She didn’t even like cigarettes. If anything, she wanted to smoke Marlboro Smooths. Still, that was a girly cig, not a cool-girl cig. And she was the cool girl. Everyone told her that. Everyone she’d slept with anyway. They didn’t know the knots constantly binding up her guts.
She hated the smell of his Reds and his kitty litter larynx.
“You have a cavity,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Then that made her his chest crunch up like their hearts were gonna implode.
“I don’t like this,” she said.
And a memory stirred like a rat swarm in her brain.
The girl laughed, with her acne ridden, swollen, pockmarked face. The first love girl, however-many years later with her new friends and her new outlook. He just meant to take her to the movies. He just meant to take her to dinner. They’d been friends for like an eternity, right?
First love girl said no, though. Her friends laughed.
Then suddenly there Joy was, staring herself in the eyes, heart throbbing not just from effort to keep the load in her sack, but with adoration, affection, endearment. Her own skin, glowing back at her. Love at first sight, that’s what Lastnightboy felt. The thing he was sure, she was sure, did not actually exist. But he-and-she felt it, hovering over her own– their hearts, intermingling.
“You love me?”
She felt his hot blush, even from the inside.
“I mean,” he choked. “If that’s okay.”
What about the first love girl? God, Joy hated being a girl. So easy to accept affirmation from any man who showed interest. What a sick fucking ploy that was. He couldn’t love little ol’ Joy. Whatever he felt for the first love girl felt more. . . real.
Then she was looking down the pit of his esophagus. Endless black rimmed with moist red and purple of meat and veins.
“Did you really fall in love with a genius?” Lastnightboy asked, a tightness in his voice.
“Yeah,” she said, knowing it would hurt. “Well endowed in every capacity.”
He said nothing for a long time, leaving her alone with the black hole.
“No,” she said with a sigh.
“I’m sorry about her, sorry about . . .”
“Don’t say her name,” Joy snapped. “Whatever it is.”
Ick, the smell of Reds.
“I can maybe see if I can pick up a pack of Smooths. . .” he started.
“Smooths are for pussies,” she snapped. Besides, just how was he planning on doing that?
“Okay,” he said.
Stupid boy, stupid Joy. He was just another one, looking for a quick fuck, another fucking fuckboy hipster-fuck, synthwave-listening-ass chauvinist fucking. . . something. She ran out of words, but she knew he’d know what she was thinking, what she meant. But she returned again to that memory of him looming over her and his heart exploding in ways he’d never felt before. Ways that she didn’t think she’d even felt before. Something about that made her feel inadequate. Like . . . like she wasn’t enough of a person.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” she said bitterly. “You didn’t do anything.”
That was how he felt. Lastnightboy wasn’t going to say it, but she felt him feeling it.
Okay if that’s how he felt then why was he apologizing? If the mind of a boy is so simple and pure, what’s all this posturing?
It was for her. It was for her and she knew it.
Well, fuck that.
That’s lying.
“Don’t apologize for something you don’t think you should apologize for.”
“Okay,” he held his breath. “Then I take it back.”
Something like rage seared inside him that made her lose her mind.
“What are you, a lizard brain?” she snapped.
Then they were both silent.
She watched his esophagus expand with breaths, then contract again like he was going to say something biting back to her. And he wanted to, he really did. She hated him for wanting to.
Say it. Liar.
“Would you rather. . .” The boy choked. “Separate?”
She felt all his insecurity all at once, all his terror of being rejected. Her heart squeezed but she steeled herself against it. That was his own problem. She wasn’t his therapist after all.
But then a sense of dread throttled her.
“Can we?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Then there was a sense that he had to separate too. That he hated this too.
“Well if you hate me then leave!”
But he didn’t want to leave.
And she wanted to love him too.
But how could she?
He wasn’t.
She wasn’t.
They weren’t.
He was remembering being her now, the same way that she had remembered being him.
He remembered the performances her parents made, the display of perfect admiration. The pastiche having no problems, the tableau of no disagreements, no fights, no nothing. On her little cul-de-sac, nothing bad happened. But everyone knew the perfect togetherness was all just theatrics, even if no one wanted to say it. Everyone wanted to be their own lead in the play of life.
She writhed and squirmed like she could yank herself out.
“Get out of my head,” she barked.
“You’re in my head,” he said.
“Stop trying to. . . psychoanalyze me!”
“I’m not!” he cried back.
But he knew something about her; something she didn’t want him to know, something she didn’t even want to know; that she grew up in a fantasy, and as much as she wanted to act like she had escaped it, she was just continuing to put on her own little play.
He knew not to say it, because she was thinking what she was thinking and he knew all of that now, too. There was no way forward.
Stalemate. Mexican Standoff. Zugzwang.
Silence for a while and then Joy couldn’t see a goddamn thing. Not blackness or darkness, but nothing. She could only feel. Only feel Lastnightboy’s thoughts, only feel herself. There was nothing to see.
Had they gotten so close together that they were smashed or dead now?
“How long do you think this will last?” a hopeless lilt in Lastnightboy’s tone crushed her.
“I hope a little longer,” she said softly.
The boy’s, their chest warmed a tad in that silence. He was happy she said that and she hated that she had not said it sooner.
Silence.
More silence.
Silence and nothing.
All because the universe forgot how to work. Because space decided to, you know, melt. Damn that Higgs and his bosons. Damn Pauli and his exclusion principle.
More silence.
“Not much longer then,” she said, hoping he would tell her that he wished it would last forever.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe not.”
That wasn’t the response she wanted.
Her heart ached like the tenderness flesh takes on before the flu.
“Do you think last night was a mistake?” she asked, finally.
He knew the right answer, at least the one vetted and approved by her, but didn’t care. That lack of care seared like a firebrand in Joy. Worse than what he was about to say.
“Yes,” he said.
She knew it too.
No she didn’t.
Last night wasn’t the mistake. At least, she couldn’t bring herself to feel that way. She felt what he felt as their eyes peered into each’s others. She felt what she always wanted to feel. He felt what he always wanted to feel. Something real happened.
Something else was the mistake.
There was another squeeze, then she stopped feeling her own body, stopped feeling his body.
“Hello?” she cried as a sudden loneliness soaked her.
No answer.
No memories out of place.
Only herself.
“Hello?” she asked again. “Are you there?”
But Lastnightboy was gone.
And then so was she.
Slater Ross is an author of weird fiction from Los Angeles, California. For more work like this, consider subscribing to Futurist Letters.
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