We Had to Remove This Post

by Hanna Bervoets

People act like it’s a perfectly normal question, but how normal is a question when you’re expecting the answer to be gruesome? And it’s not like any of those people are asking out of concern for my well-being. Maybe that’s not so strange—maybe questions don’t stem from interest in the other person so much as curiosity about the lives we might have led (“Gosh, Mr. Stitic, civil law . . . what’s that like?”), but with Gregory and Aunt Meredith, and even with Dr. Ana, I can’t help but suspect a certain amount of lurid fascination, an urge that compels them to ask but that can never be fully satisfied.