Once we've latched the windows and deadbolted doors, we begin inventing our own monsters. Like most vile things, they’re scarier from afar but more believable as they get closer. Wielding machetes and hatchets, meat cleavers and baseball bats, but all the violence stops just short of the screen, even as we close our eyes and burrow deep into the false comfort of couch cushions. But now my friend says she hates horror, after her sister’s high school was splintered by gunfire one morning. Every murder onscreen feels like a gut punch in reality. Every sanctuary interrupted by a girl covered in blood, running and shrieking down a hallway. How she waited quietly, crouched in a bathroom stall, for death to arrive. But it didn't. And of course, it won’t, until it’s ready. Anxiety locked inside the cage of our bodies, incessantly banging, pleading to escape.

Adrian S. Potter writes poetry and prose in Minnesota. He’s the author of the fiction chapbook Survival Notes and is currently at work on a full-length poetry collection. Some publication credits include North American Review, Roads & Bridges, Jet Fuel Review, and Kansas City Voices.