Out There

by Kate Folk

When my LA boyfriend was in town, we made juice together. Then after we broke up, I used the juicer with subsequent partners. It made me a little sad, thinking of the different men I had juiced with, who had since exited the stage of my life. But now Sam and I were planning a trip together, a milestone that called for celebration.

The Last Woman on Earth appears on the cover of every issue of Us Weekly. Countless articles discuss her dating life, speculating on why she won’t settle down with one of the hundreds of millions of age-appropriate heterosexual men left in the world. In reality the only men who want to date the Last Woman on Earth are perverts and fame-seekers. It’s too much pressure, dating the only woman. Normal men would rather just date each other.

It is a golden era for men, those fifty-six years it takes for the human species to die out. The Last Man on Earth is ninety-four years old when he moves to Los Angeles. He broadcasts subversive, thought-provoking, and hilarious skits from the studio where the Last Woman on Earth had once taped her show. He wishes there was someone left to see his show, which is much better than hers was. He should have had his own talk show sixty years ago. Instead, the Last Woman on Earth had been handed a talk show, not because she deserved it, but simply because she was a woman. The Last Man on Earth dies with resentment in his heart.

She was running out of ways to describe a vagina as hungry. Her pussy is ravenous. Her pussy had a light lunch and now it’s dinnertime. Her pussy slavers for nourishment. Her pussy is about to faint from low blood sugar. Her pussy carries almonds in its purse to tide it over until the next meal.

He had often described the idyll of his youth, vignettes involving cruelties to lesser fauna: trapping lightning bugs in Mason jars, tying kite string to the necks of crawfish and leading them like tiny, brittle dogs along the banks of the creek that ran behind his parents’ house.

Dad’s a history professor at the state university in town. He teaches a popular class on WWII. He’s writing his third book about Stalingrad. No surprise he doesn’t care about murdered deer. His tolerance for death is uncommonly high.

The next morning, the sleep clinic doctor is nestled in bed between you and your boyfriend. The doctor is bound and gagged, his moist blue eyes blinking up at you. Your boyfriend must have sleepwalked to the car, sleep-driven to the doctor’s house, and sleep-kidnapped the doctor. Presumably he first had to sleep-look-up the doctor’s address.

You consider jumping into the wormhole and emerging in a universe where your boyfriend doesn’t bring terrifying things to bed in his sleep. But the parallel boyfriend might have some other, even more upsetting defect, such as snoring, so for now you stay where you are, in a sleeping bag on the floor, waiting for your boyfriend to sleep-ferry home another object that will make you shudder at the arcane puzzle of your own existence.

Two weeks later, Ruben proposes. I agree on the condition that we immediately elope. We are wed by Christmas, which we spend at my parents’ home in rural Iowa. There, Ruben is confronted by my family’s version of Secret Santa. But by the time he understands, it’s too late for him to escape us.

He observed two dogs playing, taking turns chasing a rubber stick. The dogs were of equivalent size, though one possessed a shaggy coat and the other a sleek one. The fight was playful at first, but then it seemed to turn serious, the dogs growling, teeth clenched upon opposite ends of the toy. Roger’s eyes brimmed with tears. He believed all dogs should be friends, and did not like to see them at odds with each other.