The end of the world looks like a girl, maybe seventeen, maybe nineteen, maybe he shouldn’t ask. Her lips make him think of Eartha Kitt.

“Is your name Eartha?” he asks.

“No,” she says.

He flips papers, a little confused. “Okay,” he says, “you came with a monologue prepared, right?”

“From Eliot,” she says, and puts her hands behind her:

“Verdigris, peyote dreams,

India and rhyme

Carry claret honey trees

Paralytic sighs;

Close your eyes and swallow sand–”

“That’s not Eliot,” he interrupts.

“It isn’t,” says the end of the world, “is it,” and now it’s her turn to look confused.


The end of the world stops and tilts her head, and a moment later he hears it too: soft white noise, rising, as loud as a jet. It’s gone.

“What was that?” he asks.

“Everyone breathing,” she says, “together.”

“Did you want to finish your monologue?” he asks.

“We should go look outside,” she says dreamily.

She descends the steps from the apron of the stage, then walks up the aisle. He looks down to find he’s been writing his notes in white ink. He shrugs and follows her. It’s not hard: the end of the world leaves footprints of dust.


It’s snowing in Mexico, each flake a crystal skull. The end of the world sticks out her tongue and tastes sugar.

He stumbles out behind her, onto the tired road and its oily freckles. “Is this nuclear winter?” he asks, shielding his eyes. “Why is the sun so bright?”

“Humanity,” she says, “toyed with forces beyond its control,” and traces in the air: a dot, the center of three ellipses.

“With the atom?” he asks.

“No. The symbol.”

He opens his hand to catch a snowskull. There’s a name on its forehead, but it melts before he can make it out.

They’ve come to a beach. The end of the world crouches on her heels.

“Draw a man,” she says.

“I can’t draw,” he says.

“All humans can draw.”

He shivers at her implication and limns a stick figure in the wet sand with his shoe. Sputtering aurorae trace it, green and purple; that startles him, despite everything, and he jumps back.

The end of the world spreads her hand and erases it. “What did that look like?”

“Another dimension,” he says sarcastically, trying to cover.

“Yes,” she murmurs. “Every abstract, every approach to the ideal, is a place where realities overlap.”

Waves soften the smeared-out traces of his figure.

“There’s only one place safe from it,” says the end of the world, stepping out onto a wave. “Where nothing can really be inscribed.”

“That’s absurd!” he snaps, trying to follow. He doesn’t have the trick of it: he splashes where she skates. “There are plenty of symbols in the sea. White whales, albatrosses–for heaven’s sake, look what you’re doing–”

“Not the water,” she says, “although it’s better than the sand.” The sea floor drops out beneath him; he treads.

“Then where?” he gasps.

Rising, the great beast swallows them both.


“I never understood this part,” he says, in darkness. “Shouldn’t we be suffocating in stomach acid now?”

“I told you,” she says, impatient for once, “realities overlap.” Lamplight flickers behind them and he sees that they’re not in a whale’s belly after all: the wall is stone.

He raises his hand. On the wall, it shadows a wolf.

“This place illustrates the trap of sapience: the inability to perceive reality by any other means than the senses.”

“But we’re not chained here,” he says.

“Like the best traps,” says the end of the world, “it lets you believe you are free.”