The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay

Leonard stands at the border of the driveway and grass, only a few steps away from Wen. His hair is wheat colored and moppy, swirling in layers, swoops of icing on a cake. His eyes are round and brown like a teddy bear’s eyes. He is younger than her dads.

“Your family must choose to willingly sacrifice one of your three in order to prevent the apocalypse. After you make what I know is an impossible choice, you must then kill whoever it is you choose. If you fail to make the choice or fail to follow through with the sacrifice, the world will end. The three of you will live but the rest of humanity, seven billion plus, will perish.” Leonard’s mannerless, reading-the-high-school-morning-announcements tone becomes the breathless impassioned entreaty of a zealot. “And you will only live long enough to witness the horror of the end of everything and be left to wander the devastated planet alone, permanently and cosmically alone.”

Andrew is not good at mollifying, at saying what people want to hear. He excels at saying what he wants people to hear. That is not the same as telling-it-like-it-is, a folksy descriptor that is spin for being an entitled asshole.

No matter how bleak or dire, end-of-the-world scenarios appeal to us because we take meaning from the end. Aside from the obvious and well-discussed idea that our narcissism is served when imagining we, out of all the billions who perish, might survive, Andrew has argued there’s also undeniable allure to witnessing the beginning of the end and perishing along with everyone and everything else. He has impishly said to a classroom, to the scowl of more than a few students, “Within the kernel of end-times awe and ecstasy is the seed of all organized religions.”

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.