The Unworthy

The first-person narrator of The Unworthy is an unnamed woman living in a religious cult known as the House of the Sacred Sisterhood. When the narrator was a child, society collapsed after generations of ever-worsening climate crises, ecological disasters, and the advance of artificial intelligence. She grew up with a mother who managed to find beauty and joy in life despite their hardship and impressed a love of literature upon her daughter. However, after the “final blackout,” society never recovered. The narrator and her mother lost their books, their “friends,” in a flood, and the narrator left home after her mother’s death. The narrator joined up with a group that called themselves the “tarantula kids,” where she learned survival tricks and briefly found community. However, the tarantula kids were brutally murdered while she was out looking for food one night, leaving the narrator on her own again. She traveled alone, eating whatever she could find, until she met Circe, a cat that became her trusted companion. Circe and the narrator traveled together, sharing what little food they came across in the “ravaged world,” until they were attacked by men who raped the narrator and stabbed Circe to death. Circe’s death destroyed the narrator, and she spent an unspecified amount of time alone, wandering, starving, and dying of thirst until she reached the House of the Sacred Sisterhood.