It was like that feeling you got as a child after reading something scary after dark, when even the thought of turning off the lights put your whole body into fight or flight and only bed—feet off the ground, covers over the head—could possibly provide the slightest safety. She would have liked to feel that again, the thrill of being terrified by something that couldn’t hurt her, the ecstatic, shivering relief of escaping its imaginary clutches. The real monsters didn’t care about the rules.
