Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

by Neil Gaiman

And what we learn about ourselves in those moments, where the trigger has been squeezed, is this: the past is not dead. There are things that wait for us, patiently, in the dark corridors of our lives. We think we have moved on, put them out of mind, left them to desiccate and shrivel and blow away; but we are wrong. They have been waiting there in the darkness, working out, practicing their most vicious blows, their sharp hard thoughtless punches into the gut, killing time until we came back that way.

What we read as adults should be read, I think, with no warnings or alerts beyond, perhaps: enter at your own risk.

We build the stories in our heads. We take words, and we give them power, and we look out through other eyes, and we see, and experience, what others see.

There are things in this book, as in life, that might upset you. There is death and pain in here, tears and discomfort, violence of all kinds, cruelty, even abuse. There is kindness, too, I hope, sometimes. Even a handful of happy endings.

We are all wearing masks. That is what makes us interesting. These are stories about those masks, and the people we are underneath them.

They find the last place you would look, and abide there, as long as they need to abide, until it becomes the last place that you look and you see them.

There. Consider yourself warned. There are so many little triggers out there, being squeezed in the darkness even as I write this. This book is correctly labeled. Now all we have to worry about is all the other books, and, of course, life, which is huge and complicated and will not warn you before it hurts you.

Stories are waiting like distant thunderstorms