Fable for the End of the World

by Ava Reid

It’s so much harder to kill in the light, when I have to see everything, with all the human parts of me that are still left.

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.

I can’t help feeling like I’m holding on to something that is slipping further and further out of my grasp with every passing day.

People and places we were never supposed to know, or at least were supposed to forget. I wish I had paid more attention to the things he told us, but that’s the way it always is: You never really understand what’s important until you lose it.

It’s more profitable to treat someone for a disease they think they have than to cure them of an illness that never existed.

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

I don’t want to feel it—any of it. I don’t want any reminders that she’s human or that I’m going to be the one to make her heartbeat stop.

The law that governs all nature. The law that can be used to justify anything, if you can twist and warp the words to fit.

And everything is even more tangled and dangerous than it should be, because now I’m convinced that she’s human, too.