I have a vivid memory of being in a home where they kept taxidermied hunting trophies in a room that was probably 20’x15.’ The walls were covered by at least two dozen deer heads. Having that many frozen eyes staring at you is pretty unsettling.

I was also thinking of how predatory nostalgia can be. It can be comforting to sink into remakes and sequels and old favourites and I’m as guilty of this as anyone. But that comfort can also be a trap. Christie’s replica bedroom is one example, as are the other guests feasting on their past. The Concierge is a manifestation of the temptation to live in eternal stasis.

I was one of the interpreters/co-navigators with a DeafBlind writer at a residency program, so we spent a lot of time together, and in between chatting about books and writing, we folded origami. I’d grown up folding paper cranes, but to fold with my DeafBlind friend required different techniques than making the folds by sight.

I obtained a degree in clinical psychology, which helps, but I’ve always been adept at imagining other people, the conversations they might have, their reasons and motivations. The degree helped me understand the underpinnings of disordered behavior, but I don’t think it would’ve had as much impact if I hadn’t already been very good at empathy.

As I wrote this story, I was mulling over legacy and inheritance, how the way I experience the world now is affected by the way Chinese Americans were treated then. The panic around the bubonic plague resonates with that of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent wave of Asian hate, for instance; questions of femininity and labor persist as well.

Many of the attacks aimed at trans people are aimed at removing us from public life. Banning us from restrooms (or forcing us into restrooms where we know we’ll be unsafe), taking away our drivers licenses, forcing us into the closet if we need passports . . .

It was absolutely intentional to not just critique the “traditional” three-act structure but to expose its inherent violence through the story’s very bones. For women like Mirlande, who is undocumented, Black, and Haitian, that very structure gaslights on a narrative level.

I read and watch a lot of horror. I’m really interested in the genre and how it provides a vehicle for grappling with experiences that can be difficult to name and contend with otherwise, including experiences of physical porousness, boundarylessness, and vulnerability.

Community is important—essential, even—but community is built on patience, tolerance, adaptability, generosity, understanding. Conformity shatters too easily. Don’t build community on conformity.

The big thing is that fish are gross. They are slimy and weird and I hate their creepy eyeballs. They scare me and I think they should scare you, too.