The End Is Now

I let myself imagine you out there somewhere, and if you got one miracle, then why not two? Why not miracles enough to survive the skyfall and whatever came next? You could be leading a hardy band of survivors through the countryside, eating mushrooms and roasting goats, a Hollywood vision of man’s triumph over god and nature, ready for your close-up. You could be the tan one now, stronger than ever, muscles bulging through tattered clothes, hair lit blond the way it always got by the end of the summer, and if you are alive, if you are a miracle, then I know that’s how it would be. You wouldn’t be alone; you wouldn’t look for somewhere to hide, to lock yourself away and wait for the hard part to be over. You wouldn’t need a knife under your pillow, you wouldn’t be tempted to escape from the world. You would anchor yourself to it, raise a fist to the broken sky, shout this is mine and you can’t have it, and then you would go looking for survivors and make the world new. Maybe you would go looking for me. Maybe you are looking for me.

Maybe I should go looking for you. Maybe I meant it when I said, don’t die.

Don’t die, and maybe someday I’ll come back.

I could leave here. Slip away in the night. I could find you out there, huddled in the woods or in a cave or in the shelter of a decaying mall, mannequins watching over you while you forage for supplies in the camping store and gnaw at stale candy bars from a long dead CVS. That would be another miracle, but everything’s a miracle in this new world. A man saw the apocalypse on the horizon; a boy listened to the word of God and built an Ark; I came to them because I thought I deserved to die, and because of that, I lived. This new world is taped together with miracles. What’s one more?

I know you’re dead. It’s possible that if I leave this place, I’ll be dead soon, too. I’ll be the one chewed up by zoo animals in an overgrown forest or falling in a sinkhole and journeying to the center of the Earth, gang-raped by a merry band of anarchic survivors or shot in the back for my shoes and my canteen. But before it happens, I’ll get to see the clouds again, and stomp around in the rain. I’ll get to taste grass and sky, and I won’t have to imagine ruined cities and rotting corpses because I’ll see them for myself. I won’t have to imagine and dream and wonder and wake up tasting blood and ruin, and maybe, if I return to the world, I can stop dreaming about it. Maybe I’ll even find it’s not as bad out there as we think. Maybe the world hasn’t left us at all, not entirely, not yet, and there’s still time to say goodbye, or build another miracle.

Maybe I don’t have to be the girl who stays, because she’s afraid of facing what’s out there on her own. Maybe I don’t have to say yes, okay, whatever you want, just don’t leave me alone, just don’t leave. Maybe I can be the one to leave, or the one to return, the one to decide. Maybe forever together is worse than being alone. Maybe forever is beside the point.

Love,

Heather

* * *

Dear Isaac,

I’m sorry.

If I’m still alive when the world really ends, maybe I’ll come back. Sometimes people do.

Love,

Heather

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robin Wasserman is the author of The Waking Dark, The Book of Blood and Shadow, the Cold Awakening Trilogy, Hacking Harvard, and the Seven Deadly Sins series, which was adapted into a popular television miniseries. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in several anthologies as well as The Atlantic and The New York Times. A former children’s book editor, she is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University. She lives and writes (and frequently procrastinates) in Brooklyn, New York. Find out more about her at robinwasserman.com or follow her on Twitter @robinwasserman.

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