We love the spookiness of this story. There’s a lot more to it than spookiness and horror, of course, but we wanted to know: do you write horror regularly, and do you have any favorite horror tropes? Or any favorite horror movies?

I’m absolutely obsessed with horror and write it quite often. I find it the best place for examining societal ills, the body, human nature, what have you. When a ragtag gang finds themselves at a creepy foreshadowing gas station, someone’s vomiting blood and/or hair, lack of cell signal- I can’t get enough of that. My favorite horror (or adjacent) films are Parasite, Jennifer’s Body, Annihilation, The Act of Killing, You’re Next, and Creep. I could truly go on forever. It’s such a fascinating genre.

This story has an excellent narrator. She’s funny, unreliable, and maybe too curious for her own good. How did you find and shape her voice?

First, thank you kindly! From the start I knew she had to be unreliable- I’m interested in unreliability as it relates to gender specifically, how unreliable men can make great heroes but an unreliable woman tends to be portrayed as a liability or a flat-out screeching liar. (Our culture in general doesn’t believe women when they’re telling the truth- so how do you approach a woman whose reality you can’t parse?) I framed her character around that sort of lonely desperation we can all feel and with that so often comes curiosity towards others, anything to get that “fix” of human connection. The kind of woman who would not only let this bloody man inside but then engage with him on a physical level, she’d have to be a bit reckless while staying sure of herself and her desires. Getting the plot rolling 100% shaped her voice- I needed a reason for her to open the door and let this man into her house. She even asks herself, what kind of person would do this? I went off of that question. Someone heartbroken, full of wonder, unafraid- that’s her.

It’s not every day a neckless man appears at the doorstop—it’s certainly not something that’s ever happened to me. Where did the idea for this story come from?

I came into this story with solely the image of a neckless man and a moral in my head. Not to go all Aesop’s Fables but I find a good “lesson” a fertile starting ground for exploring a scene or character. Here I wanted to explore consent and desire- however unreliable this woman is regarding the lies she tells herself, if you don’t want to have sex again with the macerated man outside your door you, you know, shouldn’t have to. Likewise I’ve been a lifelong gore fan to the dismay of my parents and most around me- the idea of an attractive guy with veins bobbing under his head was too fun to resist. I know I’d be curious . . . I might even open the door.