The house at the end of the block was skinny and blue and a little crooked like a bone knuckle. The house was old and the paint was peeling. Next to the house there was a large tree with leaves that became lemon yellow in the fall.
Now it was October and the house was watching the ground flutter with yellow. The house owned one man named James Moore and the man owned one dog named Frank. Frank was a chocolate lab. Chocolate cupcakes with berry frosting were his favorite but he also fancied chocolate souffle. Frank owned the blue house.
The blue house looked like chocolate to Frank. Whenever he felt sad he licked the paint on the front porch. Of course, the paint on the front porch was not tasty like cupcakes or soufflé, which was why Frank only licked it when he was sad.
James Moore came home one evening to find Frank licking one of the house’s wooden pillars.
“Frank,” James Moore said, “Frank, what’s wrong, Frank? Why are you licking the house again?”
Frank didn't stop licking. He didn't look at James Moore. His tongue was fat and oblong. It was pink splotched with a few dribbles of applesauce green. He licked the house long and hard. Chocolate blue paint flaked off into his mouth. About half of it Frank swallowed, the other half stuck in thin shards between his teeth.
“I know, I know” James Moore continued, squinting into the sun, “these leaves are all over the ground. I know.”
Frank stopped licking for a moment and looked at his owner. James Moore was very old. He had been born in the house, in the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom in the middle of the night. James Moore planted the tree next to the house when he was a little boy. When James he was a teenager he fell out of the tree, broke both arms and lost his right eye. His parents wanted to cut the tree down, but James Moore threatened to end the world if they cut down his tree, so they left it. When James was a young man, he got married underneath that tree. All three of his children also got married under the tree, and fell out of the tree before they were married. His youngest son broke his butt and the other two each broke fingers and toes. His wife said they ought to cut the tree down, but she didn't want the world to end any more than James Moore’s parents had, so the tree stayed where it was.
“Come on, Frank,” James Moore coaxed, “you get upset about these leaves every year. And every year it’s the same: the weather gets cold and the leaves die and they fall, but then they grow back again.”
It wasn't just that. The leaves indeed upset Frank quite a bit but he also despised yellow. One might say it drove him crazy and everyone would agree that it made him sad, very sad. To Frank, yellow was the saddest of all the colors and to have it blown all over the yard and the street like that, it was almost more than Frank could bare.
James Moore would have raked the leaves. That would have assuaged Frank’s sadness some, but James Moore was too old to rake the leaves and no one in the neighborhood would let their little boy go near the tree to clean up the leaves, because all the families on the block agreed that it had been cursed.
The paint was chunking off in long strips, crumbling all over the deck and all over the dog. James Moore remembered when the paint was new. He had painted it. It could have used a fresh coat, could have for decades, but James Moore was too old to paint. So the paint chipped and Frank licked away at it.
The year was 4048. Earlier this year, the house and the tree had been underwater for one month when the oceans spilled into the neighborhood. The townspeople had acted quickly to drain the water that submerged their home and when it was gone they built higher walls around the town that would keep the waters out. Still, the damage to the paint was irrevocable (lest someone should take a paintbrush to it) and the paint chipped even faster than it would have had it not been in the flood. The fish had sucked and chewed the wood before dying all over the lawn and on the floor inside the house and in the tree. Frank had eaten some of the fish inside and James Moore had thrown the rest on the lawn, where they rotted with the other fish already on the lawn. If the tree’s leaves had been yellow before the flood, they were really yellow after, since its massive roots had surely soaked up all the fish's guts. A few fish skeletons were still wedged between the highest tree branches. The fish had also been yellow.
“I’m sorry,” James Moore said again, “Frank, I’m sorry that I can’t rake up these yellow leaves.” Frank stopped licking and gave his owner a look so full of sympathy and care that it would make the oldest man in the neighborhood young again. (Could have, but did not, as James Moore was indeed the oldest man--oldest person--in the neighborhood and, although he felt completely at ease while the dog gazed at him, he was certainly not any younger. In fact, he was eight seconds older.
It didn’t matter to Frank that James Moore couldn’t rake up the leaves. It didn’t matter that there was yellow everywhere which made him feel heavy and sad. It didn’t matter because, just moments before, Frank’s fat, oblong tongue had grazed something other than wood and paint.
It was a morsel. It was a square with rounded edges, a round sort of square. The morsel was made of chocolate. So Frank bit. It was a delicious soft milk chocolate with one layer of semi-sweet.
He chewed and everything disappeared. The houses, the whole neighborhood, the river and the mountains, the clouds and the trees – everything was gone. Frank and James Moore were alone. They were alone with the house and their tree, the last tree on earth.
“Frank,” said James Moore, “Frank, you’ve ended the world.” James Moore had forgotten that the end of the world morsel was underneath the paint inside the center pillar.
Frank couldn’t believe his eyes. All that remained was the sky. The sky was the bluest blue and it was spilling everywhere. The sky was all over the ground and in the air. Frank blinked. The yellow leaves were gone. All the yellow everywhere was gone, except for the sun. The world that remained after the end of the world was completely blue. This made Frank happy. It was the happiest he had ever been. He stopped licking the paint and licked his owner, James Moore.
James Moore pet his dog and gazed at the new blue. It was beautiful indeed. Soon they had both drifted into sleep. In an hour they would wake up and go to the tree, settle into the branches and prepare for the business of cleaning up all the blue. It would be long but enjoyable work.
