The monstrous act by definition demands a monster.

Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky.

The minute we decide that one person doesn´t matter anymore, they´ve won.

Some things you don't have to promise. You just do.

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.

But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

But monsters, I now know, come in all shapes and sizes, and only their appetite for human flesh defines them.