GAZE LONG INTO THE ABYSS

Musson’s debut blends apocalyptic fiction with biblical myth in a story about two unlikely heroes and their quest.

Set in an indeterminate time—and world—the story begins with a character known as the Old Man, who is struggling to simply survive in a wasteland where the majority of the population is mysteriously gone. Everything about the Old Man and his reality—from his ramshackle cabin to his half-dead pigs to the sky, which stays a shade of gray—has a hopelessness, a nihilistic heaviness that seems to weigh down everyone and everything. “He, like everyone, had little, and meant less, and ultimately all would return to dust, and the soil would turn over, and in a time none would remember any of the others, and that was just the same as never having existed in the first place.” But when a wanderer called the Kid finds the Old Man and enlists his help to kill a nameless evil who has returned to complete a prophecy concerning the opening of Seals—“It’s happening, just like they said it would….Just like they wrote in the Old Books”—the man reluctantly agrees, and the two set off across a nightmarish landscape in search of the mythical villain. Armed with only a few weapons (the Kid with his rifle and the Old Man with his pistols), the duo witnesses numerous atrocities during their quest of retribution. The prose, stark and simplistic, complements the dark, surreal quality of the narrative: “The Old Man sits up on the small, rickety bed. His legs hang over the side, barely scraping the floor. He’s not a tall man, and it’s not a tall bed.” Additionally, the infrequent New Testament references add a spiritual layer and thematic weight to the apocalyptic tale, particularly at its thought-provoking conclusion.

An intriguing, haunting fever dream at the world’s end.