Fairy tales and folk tales seem to embody primal story templates—the Cinderella plotline has almost become a cliché—but they also lend themselves to constant reinterpretation. Children still love Little Red Riding Hood although few will ever encounter a truly wild and dangerous wolf. That was true even when Perrault retold the story, and so he included a final clarification, warning that there are various kinds of wolves and that “well-bred young ladies” should never talk to strangers.

Yes, I do. I very much see the story as a reflection of our societal relationship with death. Much has already been written about the harmful side effects of Americans’ squeamish attitudes toward death—my personal favorite is Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, which likewise concludes with the great truth, “Sometimes, death is better.” I wanted to explore what it would be like to have those harmful, constricting assumptions broken. Amanda eventually comes to see that death is necessary for life to have meaning.

This story drew inspiration from a number of different places. I’d read an article about children cast into the streets for being witches in Congo, and realized being a witch there meant something entirely different from stories I’d read and heard growing up. I wondered what that was like not just for the witch child, but for the family that expelled them. My sister also told me a story about the suspicious death of a set of Nigerian twins around that time. Being half-Congolese but raised primarily American, my point of view is different from someone who spent childhood in Congo.

I find myself not wanting to go to the cinema to see a movie, for example, because I’m convinced there will be someone near me in the theatre who will play on their phone or talk or eat their popcorn too loud, and the thing that frightens me most is that I won’t focus upon the movie at all but on how cross they’re making me feel. I don’t go out to do things I might enjoy for fear that someone will be there who’ll prevent it. I itch for confrontation—but I hate confrontation. I think that’s what “Alice” is born out of.

I think horror is a very personal experience. At least, the best horror is. Relationships and emotions make an excellent backdrop for the horrific. Even an epic story needs to narrow its focus in order to stay interesting. Concentrating on how something like an apocalypse affects a smaller community or an individual makes it all a little more “real,” for lack of a better term.

One of my conscious intentions, and there were few, was to concoct a legend. Quite a few people have asked me where I heard about the Word Dolls. Sometimes I tell them I made it all up, and sometimes I make something up, and tell them I got it from a local farmer or a town historian or something.