You Are Fatally Invited

by Ande Pliego

“Sometimes the art of fiction isn’t in how intellectual it is, but how well it makes you actually forget the world around you. Sometimes, binge reading to escape reality can save a person’s life.”

“Not to be weird, because writing might not be your thing, but if it is, if it’s something that feels like a part of you, like you come alive when you write—then just because you’re not writing now doesn’t mean you’re not a writer.”

My breaths came sharper. You stole that from me. You’d completely ripped away my ability to write, as if you’d sliced me open and scooped out the creative spark from beneath my rib cage and left me cold and dark. You’d stolen every word I could ever have put on the page, and that hurt most of all.

My plan had been perfect. In four days, everyone was supposed to believe guilt had driven you to commit suicide. And that was all anyone would ever remember of you.

For others, writing is a form of therapy, a way to rewrite regret, to share with others what you wish you had known. To change the ending of a story you’ve already lived.

I flicked it open to the first page. “Sometimes wounds become scars, not because they’ve healed, but because they’re hiding what’s underneath from ourselves.”

Funny how you can want something so badly, but it’s only when you get it that you realize it wasn’t what you wanted at all.

“I think in everyone’s life,” I started slowly, “you get an event that cuts everything in two. Like an axe splitting wood. And there becomes a before and an after.”

The purpose of art is to evoke emotion—and what are the horror and thriller genres for, if not to incite feeling? Fear is an art.

Sometimes we hide things from ourselves, telling ourselves they’re healed. When they’re not.

“Look, Ash. I’m sorry about—about all of it. I didn’t know he was planning on killing anyone. That’s true. But he knew Violet and I had history, and said he’d make her confess, so I agreed to help. And—”

My last advice is not to run from pain, nor the people who have caused it. In fact, I highly recommend you keep a little anti-acknowledgments list, as it were, of people you’d love to thank for making life difficult. For making you who you are, whether by spite, defamation, negligence, or indiscretion. What better way to give life to your words, than drawing on your experience?

We could spend our whole lives measuring how many ounces of blood we had in our ledgers, but the only way that path ended was in more blood. It was a vicious cycle, and there was only one way to break out of it. By letting go.

Vengeance is a poison you consume alongside your victim; the only antidote is reconciliation.