We Used to Live Here

by Marcus Kliewer

“That’s what happens in Minnesota,” she added. “Old women freeze to death in their station wagons.”

Still, she deserved some kind of medal, or maybe a story in the local paper: “Heroic Pagans Shelter Religious Fanatics from Winter Storm.”

Though it was more like an overstuffed bunker these days—an underground safe with a steel-bolted hatch, bulging at the seams with cartoonish exaggeration. Sometimes the rivets would burst and every single one of her deepest, darkest fears would spew out and rain down all over her psyche. Then Eve would have to go around and clean up the shrapnel bit by bit, stuff it all back inside, screw down the hatch and pray to God she didn’t leave anything behind.

When things felt right, it only meant there was so much more that could go wrong.

Notably, the intensity of pareidolia has been directly linked to a subject’s level of anxiety, e.g., in Rorschach tests, the more distressed a subject is, the more likely they are to perceive faces in the inkblots (threatening faces in particular).2