Fable for the End of the World

by Ava Reid

To the young queer girls—your love is going to save the world.

I have to lift my hand to close the lid over my prosthetic, because it’s programmed to stay open always, even when I sleep.

Survival is the most natural thing in the world, as natural as breathing. Stripped down to its essence, any creature will choose to save itself. Even if it means stealing the breath from another.

It’s always like looking in a mirror, but now, our expressions are perfectly twinned: watery, haunted stares, lips pressed together, cheeks bloodless.

“Don’t you try to make me feel guilty.” Mom’s pitch rises, and color comes into her cheeks. “It’s my right, as your mother. Neither of you would be here without me.”

She’ll always have this as her trump card. The debt that every child owes their parent, a levee that never breaks, no matter how hard the water rushes against it.

And I hate myself as much as I hate Mom in this moment, because I can’t stop my eyes from welling, can’t stop myself from being the weepy, weak, pathetic daughter she thinks I am. Because I can’t stop myself from crying over something I should’ve seen coming.

Because I’m mourning a corpse that’s long dead. It feels like all I’ve ever done is cared for things that everyone else has left to rot.

“You’ve always wanted me to be the worst mother ever,” Mom goes on. “Are you happy now th...

but I remember the sting of her palm against my cheek. The way she gripped my face so tightly that her nails left half-moon gouges in my skin.

The feeling that gathers in my chest is mostly pity. It thickens over my own hurt like a scab.

I can’t hear anything except the eerie, unrelenting buzz of the tracker, counting down the seconds until I die.

Sometimes I think that’s what love is, really—giving each other matching scars.

I wonder how many people will tune in to watch the live stream of my death. Thousands. Millions. The tracker whirs in my throat.

When I was little, I always wanted to call him Father. The same childish impulse rises again, along with an equally childish question. Why are you doing this to me?

No one has ever given me a gift before. Offered me something without the expectation of repayment.

“It’s a shame we’ve started believing that credits are worth more than a life.”