The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay

“What if it’s all real?” “But it’s not, I—” “Andrew!” Eric yells and Andrew jerks his head in surprise. Eric wants to pull the gun away from Andrew’s chest and nestle it back under his own chin. But the gun stays where it is, and Eric implores, repeating his question. “What if it’s all real?” Andrew inhales, and his defiant answer is in the exhale. “If it is. Then it is. We’re still not going to hurt each other.” “What will we do? We can’t go on.” “We’ll go on.” We stare, and we watch the rain and we watch our faces, and we don’t say anything, and we say everything. Eric pulls the gun off Andrew’s chest, lowers his arm, and drops the gun to the forest floor. He leans into Andrew. Andrew leans into Eric. We lean into each other and our heads are side by side, cheek to cheek. Our arms hang at our sides like lowered flags, but our fingers find each other’s fingers, and we hold on. The sky is a depthless black, impossible to not attribute malignancy and malice to it as strobing flashes of lightning split it open. Wind and thunder rattle through the forest, sounding like the earth dying screaming. The storm swirls directly over us. But we’ve been through countless other storms. Maybe this one is different. Maybe it isn’t. We will pick the truck keys out of the mud. We will lift Wen into our arms and we will carry her and we will remember her and we will love her as we will love ourselves. We will walk down the road even if it is flooded by raging waters or blocked by fallen tre...