Model Homes

by Amy Cipolla Barnes

See this scar? I’m going to be honest. It’s from a tract house staple, one of our most sold models, built on the almost-right-side of the tracks, where crows sweep in with end-of-the-world, end-of-the-cul-de-sac doom papers with saviors on holy paper. I staple the inside of houses with my bare hands, with a bare stapler, missing the wall, stabbing my finger one time. I’m actually an expert builder. Leaving drops of blood on dining room walls was a mistake. These houses are easy to create from newspapers and ironic construction paper and printer paper and cardstock, for good stock families. People love my architecture when they tour the paper houses, all hand-in-hand fluttering, folding to explore the premiere lots so they can move into modern kitchens ready for the scramble of an egg, a bowl of green tissue salad, the bubble of a pot of boiling water. See this board? it’s a game for me to build these soldier rows of houses for soldiers and salesmen, mothers and mechanics. High quality materials, I tell them and they believe me and plop down piles of paper money to hold the prime lots, at prime interest rates. Everything was fine until I built with recalled, recycled cardboard. It only took a moment to burn the no-nails neighborhood down with one tiny staple sparking, eating into the paper houses, paper furniture and paper people, all cut out of the same pages from the paperyard. I have no excuse for letting the houses burn down. My attorney says I shouldn’t say that out loud. I should announce I am a titan of industry, industrious, standing strong against big bad wolf breath, wielding big scissors and a big stapler and big plans. It haunts me still; the one-dimensional wailing of trucks and firemen in stationary hats, cops in cardboard cars, men in suits suited for thick houses with no fires, mothers flipping paper pancakes for their flat offspring and pets. All a milimeter thick. All gone in an instant when the community went up in flames. I can hear their flat cries, see their paper heads and paper arms and legs curl against their bodies, watching helplessly until the avenues and boulevards and courts were quiet. Afterwards, I swept up the ash piles into neat little anthill hills, paper pulp that I sent away to be recycled, rebuilt. You want to invest? You want to buy? Sign here.