I have told this story before, and I will tell it again, and each telling grows more teeth. Sometimes thirty-four, thirty-six. Sometimes they multiply faster than your science allows, like every word you made me swallow coming back to bite you.

The videos show people kissing. They press their mouths together and open their lips. Their tongues move, wet and intrusive, less like they are tasting each other than like they want to lay eggs in the protected throats of their lovers.

The dryer groans to life, then begins thumping ominously. Maddie, already halfway out of her building’s laundry room, swears under her breath. The machine grinds and shakes. She slams the stop button, trying not to think about what the landlord might charge.

Remember the first time you ever saw the Xenomorph’s mouth? Those silver, almost human-shaped teeth? The pooling saliva as the maw slowly opened, revealing not a tongue, but a projectile mouth-within-a-mouth? What kind of monster is so hungry it needs a mouth inside its mouth?

As I write from within the sidelined shadows where the horror genre lurks, I am reminded of the four hours I spent in that busted-ass, stinking shack. The people, the music. The communion. I think about the exploration we do as writers of horror.