Could the Weird, by teaching us how to live with a dysfunctional reality, shake us out of complacency and into action? Could the Weird provide lessons on how to live under the shadow of incessant dread? For over a decade, scientists, philosophers, and poets have told us we stand in the Anthropocene, a time when environmental damage has progressed so far that the chain-reaction to the end of the human race and the destruction of the planetary biosphere has passed the point of no return. In sum, we stand on the precipice of how to live after the end of the world.

When writing horror stories, fairies may not be the first thing that comes to mind. Fairies are perhaps more associated with the idea of fairy tales, with the strong connotation of a happy ending. But just as fairy tales have their elements of horror—even Cinderella has stepsisters who cut off parts of their own feet to fit them in the glass slipper, whose eyes are plucked out by doves at the wedding—fairies as a part of the supernatural have their own tradition of horror, too.

Audio horror adds another layer. When watching or reading horror, we have the opportunity to look away or skim when things get a little too intense. Audio forces you take a much more active role in escaping. We’re not allowed to cover our eyes when Button Boy is fastening those smiley faces to his victims in “Best New Horror” by Joe Hill. When our hapless editor is crashing through the woods at the end, our hearts are pounding with the same mix of exhilaration and fear. Audio horror stalks you relentlessly.

One of the most disturbing moments in any horror film I can think of is in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a movie everyone hates but me (the Cannes audience booed it at its premiere, but what do they know about anything). Taken by itself, it’s not just an overlooked gem about the final tragic days of a young woman, but one of the most terrifying films of the 1990s. Stripped of the series’ quirky fun, it’s a straight shot down nightmare alley, where every facet of Smalltown America wholesomeness is rotten and festering with darkness.

The horror fiction field most often reminds me of a particular comic strip from the long-running series Cathy. I was never a huge fan of the strip, but this one stuck with me: Cathy has an epiphany. She doesn’t actually have that many bad hair days; she has a perception problem. One time, a decade prior, she looked in the mirror and her hair was utterly perfect. That apex one-time-only great hair day became in her mind what she looked like on average, and thus she was constantly bedeviled by bad hair days.