How to Survive a Horror Story

by Mallory Arnold

It’s always the most beautiful people who go around telling everyone else that life doesn’t have to be so hard.

Her skin is thin and pale, like mist hovering over a bog.

It makes him uneasy, how easily she blends into the surroundings here. She fits. She belongs, somehow, like a ghoul hovering in the haunted house.

A woman who is brazen with secrets, like Winnie, is intimidating, but one who harbors them quietly, that’s far more terrifying.

Winnie reaches into her purse and removes a folded newspaper, slapping it onto the table between them. “Page six,” she tells Betty, who flips the paper open and scans

Okay page six mention!!

There are so many monsters in the world. Not the ghouls and ghosts we authors often create, but true forms of evil masked beneath soft flesh, friendly eyes, and steady hands. I am giving you mine.

“You can’t write if you have nothing to write about. Your stories are lifeless,