The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay

Too many people have smiles that don’t mean what a smile is supposed to mean. Their smiles are often cruel and mocking, like how a bully’s grin is the same as a fist.

Wen remembers presurgeries and postsurgeries not needing a mirror to know her face wasn’t like everyone else’s yet because of the crumbly, you-poor-poor-thing smiles on faces in waiting rooms and lobbies and parking garages.

“Hey, can I ask how old you are, Wen?” “I’ll be eight in six days.” Leonard’s smile falters a little bit, like her answer to the question is a sad thing.

Wen was unexpectedly shaken by the photos and convinced she was, for the first time, looking at her real self and this real her was gone, forgotten, banished, or worse, that imperfect unwanted child was hidden, locked away inside of her somewhere. Wen was so upset her hands shook and the tremors spread throughout her body. After her dads consoled her, she calmed down and gave them an oddly formal thank you for letting her look at the photos. She requested they be put away because she would never look at them again.

Leonard turns back to Wen and says, “I don’t have any scars like you or your dad, but if you could see my heart, you’d see that it’s broken.” He doesn’t have a smile on his face anymore. His face looks sad, like the real kind of sad and he even might start crying.

She makes a deal with this killer-god of Leonard’s, a god she doesn’t believe is real but is very much frightened of. She has this image of his god as all the black empty space between stars when you look up at the night sky, and this god of collected blankness is big enough to swallow the moon, the earth, the sun, the Milky Way, and big enough it couldn’t possibly care about anyone or anything. Still, she asks this god if she and her parents can please leave the cabin, can they please go home and be safe, and if it lets them, she promises she won’t ever complain about sleeping in the dark with the lights off ever again.

He’d irrationally hoped he could somehow put off indefinitely the future day on which she would recognize cruelty, ignorance, and injustice were the struts and pillars of the social order, as unavoidable and inevitable as the weather.

What kind of god is making all this happen?” “The one we have.”

Trust the process. Dumbly believe things are how they’re supposed to be and that they will work out simply because of that belief, even if you know better.

I tell you, Andrew and Eric and Leonard, I don’t believe in this kind of god.

Eric was composed, confident, and according to all his teachers, mature beyond his years. Sunday school was different. It wasn’t the teacher that had him rattled and afraid. This was God’s class. God was watching, listening, keeping track of what Eric said and did, and what he thought. Mrs. Amstutz asked Eric three times how much he thought the cross weighed. He thinks of the question every time he goes to church and sees the cross hanging over the altar, and every time, he remembers his answer: the ten-year-old Eric squeaked out that he couldn’t imagine anything being that heavy.

Eric feels like he’s being made to answer his Sunday school teacher’s how heavy question all over again. He cannot explain how heavy this is. Andrew should know; he’s supposed to know.