The Last

by Hanna Jameson

‘A lot of people confuse movement with progress,’

That’s what the mind does with trauma; it erases it, making you relive it occasionally in flashbacks and dreams, sensations of vertigo, hyperventilation and panic. But the memory itself becomes a work of fiction.

‘Well, if people have been reduced to eating each other within a couple of months, we don’t deserve to flourish as a species,’

‘It never occurred to me before that in America we’re all taught this idea that we’re descended from rugged self-reliant cowboys.’ ‘Cowboys did not build anything,’ she said.

I considered making a point about utilitarianism; that any vote that came out in favor of imprisonment was too flawed to be taken seriously, because the interests of the group dictated that to waste resources on a criminal would be an act of collective self-harm. But I argued myself down before I said anything. If we discounted any alternative, then we became a society – albeit a small one – that punished people for any kind of wrongdoing with death. Even if it was necessary, I wasn’t sure I wanted us to become that.