Private Rites

by Julia Armfield

After all, a blanket over the head can amplify a person’s breathing, can make them think they hear things that aren’t there. A mouth spilling blood can be unpleasant to wake up to, but the baffle of the darkness can be kind—can allow a person to imagine that they’re still, in fact, asleep.

Jude is standing in the doorway looking the way Jude tends to look: kind of hot and kind of like they’ve been airlifted in from another genre of TV show. Agnes considers saying something to them about this—Hi, Jude, it’s really cool how you’re a casual afternoon cooking show and you’re functionally married to my sister who’s like one of those unethical TV documentaries about a woman who went mad and murdered her entire family—

Irene registered a gentle ripping down the middle: the half of her that recognized the urgency of surrender and the other half, the half she knew too well. Too stupid, always—the desire to avoid a fight drowned out by other, more immediate urges. The need to be right, the devotion to her own indignance.

Feeling personally attacked

the fullness of adulthood can never be realized until a parent is beyond one’s reach. One might, at any time, sever ties and release a mother or father, might maintain such a rift for the rest of their natural lives, but death is irrevocable. Death, after all, puts an end to the argument, but it also prolongs the silence for good.

Any horror story could be said to work in two pieces: the fear of being wholly alone and of realizing that one has company.

We love people before we notice we love them, but the act of naming the love makes it different, drags it out into different light.