This is a retelling of a story told by a friend’s grandfather in Oaxaca, though numerous versions of it exist in Spanish-speaking America. The one I was told had two men stumbling across an abandoned baby in the night and carrying it as it grew heavier and heavier. I added a few details—the brothers’ business, the missing eyes, the gasoline—but I can take no credit for the spine-tingling moment when the baby addresses them through a mouthful of teeth (ya tengo dientes).

Tropes are kinda my jam, especially when it comes to slasher movies. In this case, I had an inkling of an idea about a Final Girl whose virginity was wholly practical, not some indicator of virtue or moral standing, but something she could use to her advantage to survive. Then I thought, “What if she’s asexual, too, either sex-repulsed or just indifferent, and giving up sex to hunt monsters totally isn’t a big deal for her?” Once I had that and the first line, I just kept writing until I found the shape of the story.

I’ve always had a fascination with the fictional rules of possession: what laws govern this? What are the loopholes? Why is there so much vomit? There is usually (if a victim) no consent for the entity to possess a host, which is part of the horror. More broadly, I’m fascinated by the rules that constrain the monsters or people in horror. So like, choosing to watch a video you have been warned is haunted suggests consent. Forcing someone to watch that same video so they will be cursed entails no consent, and is violence.

The inspiration for this story: In the winter of 2006, I was living in Almaty, Kazakhstan, working for a company that specialized in educational exchange programs in the former Soviet Union. They had recently expanded their operations into Afghanistan, and they asked me to go down and help out there for the winter with recruiting participants for their programs. I jumped at the chance: I grew up in Fremont, California, which has a large community of refugees from Afghanistan.