Devil House

by John Darnielle

There’s unexplored terrain lurking in known shapes, unmapped quadrants waiting to be located by means of simple shifts in perspective. “Unknown” and “unseen” aren’t synonyms, but they’re linked by more than their prefixes.

In your life, the rhythm of these little routines is like the gentle path of a ditch creek: predictable movement through unremarkable straits most days, but with enough small surprises in it to make it feel worthy of the space it takes up.

In the absence of any information to work with, the onlookers begin asking themselves what they know about you, and using what answers they find to tell themselves stories about what they’ve just seen. People are awful, even when they’re not trying to be. None of the stories they tell themselves are good.

sometimes you get just enough of whatever it is that you need in order to go on to the next thing, no matter how bad it is.