Desperation is very relatable. We’ve all been in situations where we don’t feel good enough. We may have even been shamed for being ourselves or had our trust broken by someone we thought loved us. I think humanizing the supernatural comes easily when you’re being honest. I wrote this story in a blind animalistic frenzy, with no filters and no blueprints except the map of my own experiences. It was a delight to write this and finally crystallize on the page my thoughts about power, injustice, and ultimately, self-love.

Read more. Don’t just read your friends, or who your friends say you should read, or who you’re comfortable reading, or who your model of literature is. Push yourself. Take risks. Read small things, big things, translated things, things in your native language but from different countries. Understand language is fluid, that it’s forever changing, that there are no rules. There are writers of every kind out there doing interesting and fascinating things and you want to find them.

I begin to think most of my horror ideas are the product of dreams, haha. In this case (a little like “Sweet Dreams Are Made of You”), this was inspired by a dream, in which someone was telling me about the Flashlight Man game. My dreams have always trended towards vivid, WTF, and wildly inventive, so whenever I can mine those for (let’s hope coherent!) fiction, I love it.

You’ve seen the creature crawling on the ceiling before, out of focus, just over the shoulder of a character. You’ve heard the pitchfork dragged screeching across the concrete floor. You’re acquainted with the character who hears a noise and approaches a closet and reaches a hand for the knob . . . and finds nothing but a cat inside—only to turn around to face an attack from the monster. I could keep going. There are certain tricks to horror we grow overly familiar and bored with. I’m always trying to find a new way in.