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Math has never been my strong suit. Still, I’ve always rather enjoyed logic puzzles (particularly ones like Einstein’s Riddle), and after falling in love with Return of the Obra Dinn last year, I got really into the idea of using puzzles like these to build a narrative—especially a mystery.
In early 2022, there was a comedian on TikTok, or at least I thought they were a comedian, who said, and I’m paraphrasing here: My biggest fear living in the city today is not crime or something scary happening—it’s actually some person with a camera and a mic running up to me, asking me to do something for a dollar.
Before we left camp, we were informed about the dos and donts for living in our respective communities, considering we were strangers. Happenings that we newcomers saw as strange should not be enough reason to contravene the laws of the land.
I wouldn’t survive a slasher film. When the killer comes to town and starts popping off fresh-faced coeds, I’d eat it before we hit Act II. I have a great affection for those initial victims who seem to linger hauntingly over the narrative.
This is one of those stories that just about wrote itself. Each princess had something to say, grief and rage straining through the veneer painted over their original tales. The end result is part obituary, part manifesto.
I had two things in mind while writing this story: anti-trans legislature targeting trans, nonbinary, gender queer, and two-spirited people and all the moments I was bullied in the bathroom as a child for not looking girl enough. If this story can do anything beyond entertain, I hope it makes you speak up and act out against bigotry in all forms.
I get up before dawn. Those pale-gray hours hold signs of unseen life: a trace of pungent spray, a flutter of wings, distant car doors slamming shut. Of course I attribute these to animals and early morning commuters. Sometimes I wonder if I’m wrong.
“Student Living” is something of a love letter to the makeshift nature of living on a budget as a student. It’s bleary-eyed mornings and caffeine fueled nights with our faces slammed against readings and lecture notes. I wanted to write something that encompassed my love of that experience.
ONE: I told them it was stupid to rent the same cabin in the woods where that other slaughter took place, twenty years ago. I said I knew of a perfectly good bed and breakfast where nobody had ever been slaughtered, not even once.
This story came from a writing prompt about how “kitchen spirits are the friendliest ghosts,” which of course made me think about the other, nastier spirits lurking within the household. I love writing about haunted places, and have always been interested in the parasitic nature of hungry spirits and their victims. After all, what’s the point of a haunted house if there’s no one within to be haunted?
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