We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

I always thought about rot when I came toward the row of stores; I thought about burning black painful rot that ate away from inside, hurting dreadfully. I wished it on the village.

Absolutely fire quote

“It’s wrong to hate them,” Constance said, “it only weakens you,” but I hated them anyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.

I might spare Stella because she was the closest to kind that any of them could be, and the only one who managed to keep hold of any color at all.