The Staircase in the Woods

by Chuck Wendig

“Friendship is like a house,” she said to him, his head cradled in her lap. “You move into this place together. You find your own room there, and they find theirs, but there’s all this common space, all these shared places. And you each put into it all the things you love, all the things you are. Your air becomes their air. You put your hearts on the coffee table, next to the remote control, vulnerable and beautiful and bloody.

Because the bad was so bad, it made the good seem impossible, as if it had never been present in the first place. The good was a guttering candle against the cold wind of a deep dark moonless winter night. It never had a chance.

“Half of America put the hat on and took the mask off and that was that, and that’s where we’re at now.”