To set the scene: it’s my graduation party. My best friends are sitting beside me. I’m reading cards packed full with encouragement and well-wishes. There’s optimism and the smell of the cookies I baked in the air.

Aunt: So, what are you majoring in?
Me: English!
Aunt: Don’t do it. I went that kind of route, and I’ve never once used my degree. What good did that do me?

I suppose you’re right, Aunt Karen. You don’t use your degree!

You don’t think critically when you read the news. You don’t think about what the author’s goal is. You don’t think about your own bias. Do you even think about what you’re reading?

You don’t, do you? You don’t consider what each term conjures in your mind. Every single word, all of it, building a tower of hate for you to sit up in and look out at everyone else and say, I’m not biased, I gave you a fair chance. You’re just wrong.

Those English classes. What a waste of time, eh? All they do is sit there and talk about why the curtains are blue, why the author chose this word over that. Symbolism, or whatever. What’s the use? Do something practical with your life, something you’ll actually use every day.

You don’t wonder how your news station chooses which stories to cover. You don’t spend a wink of time wondering why a story might be very convenient for someone to write about, while another isn’t. You don’t trust any other news sources.

Liberal arts schools are an indoctrination scheme. They don’t teach you both sides.

You don’t believe people should read different viewpoints. You don’t object to banning books about queer identities, or colonialism, or the literal history of this country. You don’t think children should learn these things about the world. You don’t see the parallels, you don’t think about what tends to happen when governments start banning books.

All you do is sit and read books all day. When are you going to learn something about the real world?

You’re completely right, Aunt Karen. You absolutely don’t use your degree.

But I will.

She could hear the gentle tinkle of the wind chimes, dancing in a dying breeze. But besides that and her raspy breaths, her house stood still around her in the fading light. A trickle of snot and blood ran down to her chapped lips. A light cold, that’s all the doctor said it was, but deep in her bones there was something aching, a chill she couldn’t quite shake. In the glow of her dying fireplace, she reached a veiny arm towards her night stand, where upon it lay her soaked crimson handkerchief. And with the groan of her body and her bed she almost missed the low creak of her front door opening. 

The grandmother paused, shaky frail hand in mid air, and listened. Silence, you see, is curiously sinister when you’re all alone, just you and your thoughts and what you think was your front door opening. But she wasn’t expecting anyone, and yet she could swear someone was there. 

It was there in the footsteps! So quiet, but the dark house must have hid the broken glass of her failed attempt to get water. There was a light crackling, like her joints on a rough day, that was just outside her open bedroom door. Her fire cast shivering shadows upon the wall, and she watched with panic as one of those shadows grew bigger. 

She shouldn’t move. Maybe whoever it was would take what they want and leave none the wiser to her presence. But her outstretched body was tiring, shaking alongside her fear. And the shadow continued to move closer, footsteps now like ghosts. But that sound, breath other than her own. Deeper, grainier, more animalistic. 

He entered her room, hunched over on two legs and entirely naked. He was startlingly thin, starvation shown in his ribs. His body was covered in patches of dark skin and thick coarse hair. And he seemed to be sniffing the air as he moved around the room. At the fireplace he stopped, sniffed, then turned, with the creak of a floor board, so that his dark hungry eyes now looked right into hers. And he ginned, a large maw opening to show off an array of yellow human teeth.

And he moved closer. Blood now poured freely from her nose, dripping off of her chin, and he eyed the fluid with great thirst. He was now close enough to touch her, and touch her he did. A Lumpy pink tongue darted out and began lapping at the blood. Terrified, she lost her balance and fell right into his fingered paws. They wrapped around her thin arms, bruising her bones. He was so cold, his tongue and fingers and breath. But she was too, now fully shaking. She closed her eyes when she felt him remove her clothes. And she kept them closed when she felt his teeth at her throat. 

It was hours later, now fully into the night, when a young girl in crimson red entered the house.