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. And this friendship, this house, it’s a place of laughter and fun and togetherness too. But there’s frustration sometimes. Agitation. Sometimes that gets big, too big, all the awful feelings, all that resentment, building up like carbon monoxide. Friendship, like a house, can go bad, too. That air you share? Goes sour. Dry rot here, black mold there, and if you don’t remediate, it just grows and grows. Gets bad enough, one or all of you have to move out. And then the place just fucking sits there, abandoned. Empty and gutted. Another ruin left to that force in the world that wants everything to fall apart. You can move back into a place like that, sometimes. But only if you tear it all down and start again.”

The air was still and filled with the tragedy of reality.

Trying not to think about how there was something worse than a father who hated you—one who didn’t care about you at all.

Owen started with the beer—Coors Light, which made him sad to drink because Coors Light was sadness in a can.

And Lauren gave Owen a look. She hung that look on him like a heavy coat, and he didn’t know what it was or what to do with it. Was it guilt? Shame? Sadness? Condescension? Was it a silent apology? Was she judging him or judging herself?

You’re like one of those extremophiles; you thrive in the worst possible conditions.

Just because it was a show didn’t mean it was fiction.