3.
He decides not to take the shower after all.
Instead, he goes back into the living room and opens the curtains. He can't think why he hasn't yet checked what time of day it is.
As it turns out, it's that strange state of twilight that it was in the ball pool. He closes the curtains again against the pink-orange glow. Though it's still vaguely threatening, knowing it's out there. It reminds him of the light from a fire, in the distance, with the accompanying quiet worry that it's your loved one's house that's burning.
He sits on the couch.
The thing that galls him the most about all this, is that he was wrong.
There is Something More. Some continued consciousness. Something after The End. Wilson was right. The bastard. It's funny, but it hasn't even occurred to House that this might be a hallucination. A drug-addled fantasy. A dream before dying. Because he knows, as surely as he knew the answer to every puzzle presented him in life, that this is none of these things.
He knows with a resounding certainty that he is dead.
He takes some small comfort from the fact that he isn't in Heaven. Wherever he is, he's sure it's not what Wilson envisioned when he thought of the Afterlife.
Wilson.
The thought of him makes his stomach tighten. The thought of that makes him aware that he still has feeling, physicality – a body. Pain. There's pain in his leg, as gnawing and white-hot as it was in life. He stands up and drops his trousers. The scar's still there, twisting its way through his flesh in the same sardonic smile. His hands are the same. Down to the guitar string calluses on the first three fingertips of his left hand. Seized by curiosity, he snatches a letter opener from the pen pot on the dresser to his left, and drags its point in a firm line, three inches long, along the underside of his forearm. For a moment or two, the line is a neat white scratch. Then it wells up with fat beads of blood along its length, like rubies on a bracelet string.
His trousers still around his knees, he sits back on the couch, and acknowledges something else.
He's hard.
Rock hard. Harder than he can ever remember. He feels himself throbbing, hot and insistent, ready and desperate. He wants to take off his boxers. He daren't.
He doesn't know why. Somehow this doesn't seem like an appropriate circumstance to jerk off.
Still. He can't help but feel it. Heavy there, between his legs, screaming at him for the tight warmth of his palm.
The television looks inviting, though he can't find the remote. He thrusts his hand down the back of the couch cushions in search of it, and feels a surge of triumph when his fingers impact something solid and rectangular.
When he pulls it out, he sees that it isn't the remote.
It's a walkie talkie.
There's a small 'On/Off' switch on its underside. He turns it to 'On.'
It begins to give out a low, threatening snake-hiss of static. He listens carefully. There's nothing else. So he presses the 'Speak' button and says into the receiver,
'Testing.' Nothing. 'Testing. Is anyone there?'
Still, nothing.
'Hello,' he says, more insistently. 'Can anyone hear me?'
When still there comes no reply, he ponders for a minute, and then tries,
'Wilson?'
Several more seconds of static. And then, small, but unmistakable.
A voice.
'...Hear me?' it says. At first, House thinks it's an echo of his own message. But he's sure that the voice isn't his. Though it's familiar.
'Wilson!' he tries again. 'Wilson, is that you?'
'...Are you?' says the voice. Though it's faint, and wandering lost in a cloud of crackles, House can hear that it's excited. Hard-edged with the nervous energy of triumph. 'Looking for... thought you'd... something!'
'It is you!' shouts House, unable to disguise his thrill and relief. 'Wilson – it's you, right? Wilson. It's awful here. Where are you?'
'...Need you to tell me...'
'What? Wilson. Wilson. I can't hear you.' Suddenly at a loss for what to say, House blurts, 'The microwave doesn't work!' Then he falls silent, feeling rather foolish.
'Give me your... find you. Listen.'
'I am listening!' he shouts back. 'I just can't hear everything you're saying. You listen – listen. Wilson. I'm in my apartment. Come and get me.'
'...Think...'
'Wilson.' He's panting now, cold and trembling with the thrill of the connection, the fear of losing it. 'Come and get me.'
There's no answer.
House shouts into the walkie talkie for another half an hour. Entreaties, demands and, finally, obscenities.
Then he gives up, and places the walkie talkie on the coffee table, leaving it on, hissing away to itself.
