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real love ought to be a full-contact sport, intense and dangerous, the kind of thing that happened on railroad tracks or forest floors,
“I think horror is the most important fiction in the world,” he said.
“Go in. You’ll see,” the woman said, her voice the sound of stones scraped together.
Human beings are small and insignificant in a big, scary universe, and in a horror story—be it a movie, a book, or a haunted house—we have to face that fact. But no matter how scary things get, no matter what the audience has to confront or endure, there’s always a happy ending. When the credits roll, or the reader closes the book, or when our guests walk out tonight, their lives will go on. Because they faced the dark, the sun will shine a little brighter tomorrow, and the real-life monsters won’t seem so bad.
Grown-ups are always lying to Sydney. They tell her Santa Claus is real and monsters are fake, that they still love each other when they don’t, that they’re doing their best when it’s clear they don’t care.
society has always put a taboo on suicide because when a person kills herself, the people around said person start to question the value of their own lives, and that makes them uncomfortable. Figure it out for yourself—what makes your life so great?
Dad told me once that every horror story has a happy ending, but he was wrong.
The songs, books, and movies with “happy endings” all stop at the moment of triumph. They don’t tell the whole story. Only the old tragedies tell the truth. Beowulf triumphs over Grendel and his mother, only to fall fighting a dragon. Gilgamesh loses his best friend. Achilles, too. Everyone dies in Hamlet. This is the whole truth. There are, however, good stopping places. I made the mistake of traveling past mine, is all. I’m like spoiled milk stuck in the jug. I need to pour myself out and move on.
I was supposed to meet Eunice for lunch at noon.
THANKS FOR WAITING TO TELL US SHE SURVIVED TIL N O W
“I’ve never even seen a picture of Dad,” I said. I would see one eventually, but not for another eleven years. “Look in the mirror and you’ll get the general idea.
Woof. Cold.
I were a lightning rod for tragedy, and no one wanted to get too close.
“There’s a man born to be a dad,” Kyle said. “Straight out of central casting,” I agreed.
Here was a man thinking about long-term plans. Compared to me, still living at home with a monster on booty call and a job that would disappear at the end of the month, he was a paragon of adult life.
“What really happened to Sydney?” I said. “Is she dead? Is she here?” I gestured back at the City, where I had just seen a man transformed. “Is that what happened to her? Did you do this to her?”
Fucking finally he asks the real questions
She needs to see him as a lovable victim finding the strength to speak up for the first time, not the kid who grew up to fuck the monster.
A hard ball of mingled dread and anticipation begins to gather in the pit of his stomach. He realizes that this feeling isn’t strange. It’s so familiar that it’s almost a warm blanket. It’s the feeling he gets when he’s finally getting to the good part in a horror story, or entering a new haunted house for the first time. It’s the way he felt the first time he entered the City.
He flails for balance, flapping his arms like a ridiculous bird as he tips and falls down the stairs, each one a bright horn blat of pain.
The play has pressed itself into his mind like a thumb pressed into a marshmallow, leaving him lumpy and slow to regain his original shape.
the food tastes like misery pressed onto a plate.
But years pass with increasing speed. Leaves drop from the trees only to jump back up overnight, green and renewed, while Noah and Megan march out of youth and toward the gray, murky country of middle age.
He knows it’s wrong to miss a monster. And so he tells himself he doesn’t.
He feels numb and unlike himself and doesn’t understand why. He was saved. Why wasn’t his salvation enough?
a man who could fall in love with one teenage girl seemed likely to have fallen in love with others.
in the haunting business, familiarity eventually breeds indifference,
It would be hard to leave behind the stability of his current job. Adulthood gets us all in the end.
Everything is fine here, the house seemed to say through gritted teeth. We are normal and happy, goddammit.
The house loomed larger than I remembered, seeming both wider and taller, as though it had been growing like any other living thing on a steady diet of whatever houses ate.
despite knowing what my monster is and what she does, I still miss her. Despite the fact that she’s hunted me and my family for apparently the last fifty-odd years—God help me—I still love her.”
The overhead lamp turned on, but the darkness remained a physical presence, one that ate light like fire eats oxygen.
“I understand. It was easier to let us slip away and pretend that there was nothing missing, nothing wrong. It was easier than fighting and hoping and hanging on. But you held us together through sickness and poverty and disappearances and suicide attempts. You made The Wandering Dark, a place in our world that taught me to navigate this world. It’s because of you that I get to bring everyone home. That means you, too, Mom.”
“But the bad dream is almost over and the lights are about to come back on. I can’t give you Dad back, but I can give you almost everyone else. I just need you to come out to the living room with me.”
“Who do I love most?”
I'm fucking crying THANKS
a part of me, so taken with the warmth and relief of the moment, is tempted to write “the end” and leave it. But I still have a little story left to tell. A little more happiness, a little more heartbreak, a few more questions to answer and loose ends to tie up. I’m not sure I have enough material to make a bow, but I’ll do my best.
“Do you think it will work?” I said. “Will what work?” “The marriage. My family. Will they still be happy after tonight?” “I don’t know,” she said. “But you’ve given them time, and a second chance. That’s more than most anyone else gets. It will have to be enough.”
I’ll remind you of the night I first saw Megan at Inferno. Picture the moment at the very end of that attraction, as the demons emerged from the walls and dragged all the howling, begging sinners to Hell.
Holy fucknuggets
I don’t reject the choices I’ve made, or the cost. It’s not so surprising, I guess. My monster suit always fit better than my regular skin. I was never a guardian, or a hero, but a creator and harvester of fear.
If anything could cement a five star review out of me, it's this
There’s always the chance that I won’t be able to come back to myself like Leannon did. That I will be stuck as an unthinking animal, thinking only orange thoughts. If that happens…well. I’ve always been comfortable in the dark. The desk is starting its work. Oh god. It hurts.
FUCK ME
life makes monsters of everyone, but it’s always possible to come back. Pain and death are real, but so are love, and family, and forgiveness.
I love you, Margaret. Until the end of time and whatever comes—
I'm fucking sobbing
