The Shards

by Bret Easton Ellis

movies acted like a drug for me. But they were also about control: you were a voyeur sitting in the dark staring at secret things, because that’s what movies were—scenes you shouldn’t be seeing and that no one on the screen knew you were watching.

I couldn’t deny it: the air felt charged, electrified even, and though it was warm out on that last night of summer I found myself shivering again, on the veranda staring into the darkness, with expectation, with dread, with the promise of fear fulfilled.

I remember this being one of my first moments nearing adulthood, when I realized how powerful memory was—or at least it was the first time it hurt the most.