Who Wants To Play The Lake House?
They played this game called The Lake House where every day she’d go to the mailbox and find a letter he’d written as if he was writing her from the future and she’d take it inside and he’d ask What ya got there? And she’d smile or shake her head a little bit or scratch her ass and then she’d sit down in the big chair on the other side of the room and read what his past self posing as his future self had to say.
Sometimes the letter would be something simple like You looked pretty that day we fucked in the tool shed 20 minutes from now or While you’re reading this I know we’re about to go sledding but where I am we’ve already sled.
And sometimes the letters would be hopefully prophetic like I portend that you can’t stay mad at me forever or You were correct in insisting that thing I told your mom about being able to buy pot roast at the weed store wasn’t funny. I say stupid shit when your mom makes me mad.
The early letters were filled with optimism and rambled on manifestoes concerning the immortal loyalty of love because that’s how things had been in the beginning. Things weren’t like that anymore. Lately his letters from the future appeared less frequently and when they did show up they seemed a bit more nihilistic or pissed off or sad. These days she found the whole thing exhausting. Some days she wouldn’t open them and other days she’d avoid the goddamn mailbox altogether but this day she’d been drinking a bottle of wine that’d been corked on her brand new secret boyfriend’s vineyard in Napa. Well. He didn’t own the vineyard but he did live next to it. Twenty miles down the road or so. Or however that goes. The point being: on this day, she opened the Lake House letter that he’d hand delivered to her mailbox from his make believe future. Because she was about to leave him, anyway. And also she was drunk.
As she stood beside the big chair reading he sat on the couch watching his reflection on the fish tank, him watching himself watching Shai LeBeouf watching himself watch himself on a live 72 hour fucked stream. It wasn’t important. This would not put a dent in things. Their loneliness stank like glue.
Today’s Lake House letter started out proper enough:
Dear Helen,
We’re doomed?
This was a question. I’m sorry. Let’s move on to something that isn’t. I live in the future and am supposed to have answers. So I’d like to make sure to set this straight. Charlie Sheen doesn’t have aids, America. Aids has Charlie Sheen. Not just the HIvCharlie virus. We’re talking full blown Charlie Sheen! Which is terrible. It almost makes you feel bad for aids.
Back in your time 7000 people died in America every day from various causes. Total. Out here in the future 7,000 people die every hour from improperly worded tweeting. (Yes, we have retained some sense of justice) Still, 95% of the population spends 30% of their time pissing around on the internet looking for things to outage them so they can spend another 55% of their time screaming on social media about how unfair the goddamn world is because something just pissed them off. Outside my window an old woman just stabbed a baby in the neck because it was already the middle of November and this baby had had the goddamn balls to wear a red onesy that said “I Heart Grandma” instead of “Merry Christmas” or whatever the hell the old woman had thought it should respectfully say.
It’s a madhouse everywhere. In our future Facts have been rounded up, forced to live out the rest of their feverishly shortened lives in mud puddle infected camps. Love has been forced out into the streets where it’s inevitably come down with a harsh case of the Charlie Sheen. For a time the disease was kept in check with daily doses of Denise Richards but last night the Denise Richards ran out so it’s only a matter of time now. The Westboro Baptist Church is busy misspelling picket signs in preparation for Love’s funeral as we speak. Or as I write this. Whichever comes first.
Are you still not talking to me for some goddamn reason where you are tonight? I can’t remember at this point in our everything, which days you weren’t talking to me and which days you just stopped being around. Ever since that case of wine mysteriously arrived you’ve been distant and mean.
But hell, every day in the future 7 billion people appear distant and the rest of the goddamn overpopulated population are just flat out mean. But you were doing both of those things simultaneously long before this Helen, so it’s almost like you invented it. Do you feel like a fucking trendsetter tonight? Everyone’s doing what you’ve been doing for a while now Helen. So, congratulations. You’re like the Jimi Hendrix of being distant and mean.
Helen, your eyes are like padlocks and your face is a sad locker and your combination isn’t mine to remember anymore. But I do it anyway, damn it Helen. I remember. There are still nights when I wish I could stash my gym bag in your forehead and run in circles until you smiled but we both know that’s not going to happen because your sadness is fucking stubborn and I’m no good at working out.
At this point she stopped reading his Lake House Letter and told him she was tired of being his Sandra Bullock so she was leaving. She didn’t mention anything about the fuckhead in Napa. When she left, she took the lake with her. And the mailbox. Leaving him alone in the internet connected silence of Shia LaBeouf watching himself like a fireplace in a lakeless house, alone and outgunned by an army of Youtube videos, a litter box full of cats, and gloom.
written for last night’s FBomb, Mercury Cafe, Denver CO
Multiverse Johnson 