She gathers my half of the blankets around her and curls up against the wall. She will sleep for hours more, dreaming endless landscapes and novas of colour both gorgeous and frightening. If I stayed she would wake up and describe them to me. All the mad plot twists and surrealist imagery, so vivid to her while so meaningless to me. There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it.

Once you've arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took.

It’s not about keeping up the population, it’s about passing on who we are and what we've learned, so things keep going. So we don’t just end.

I can no longer believe in any voodoo spell or laboratory virus. This is something deeper, darker. This comes from the cosmos, from the stars, or the unknown blackness behind them. The shadows in God's boarded-up basement.

What's wrong with people?" she says, almost too quiet for me to hear. "Were they born with parts missing or did it fall out somewhere along the way?

What I'm saying is, when you have weight like that in your life, you have to start looking for the bigger picture or you are gonna sink.

I sigh inside, so exhausted by these ugly questions, but when did a monster ever deserve its privacy?