Diversity Horror

“Also, the problem is, when you think you’ve been without monsters for so long, sometimes you forget what they look like, what they sound like, no matter how much remembering your education urges you to do. It’s not the same when the monsters are gone. You’re only remembering shadows of them, stories that seem to be limited to the pages or screens you read them from. Flat and dull things. So, yes, people forget. But forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting is how the monsters come back.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“I was twelve when I told my parents that I would much rather find a princess than a prince. They had gone into a state of panic, from which they emerged with a renewed sense of determination. They told me that in order to survive I would have to hide how I felt. I was never very good at it, and the weight of that mask grows heavier with each passing year. I want nothing more than to cast it aside.”
― Kalynn Bayron, Cinderella Is Dead

“The revolution had been slow and ponderous, but it had weight, and that weight built up a momentum, and when that momentum finally broke forth, it was with a great and accumulated force. This force washed out the monsters who worked in public spaces, allegedly for the public, but it carried farther, into the homes and schools. It touched everyone; it made change. People started by believing the victims, and once this was apparent that it was safe to report monsters now, more and more people did so. The monsters always tried to apologize when they were caught, using the same slippery words that had worked for them before. They thought it would be enough, that some time would pass and they would be welcomed back as if nothing had happened. They were wrong. There was no twisting away from the repercussions that the angels brought, justice rising like a sun over the hill in a loud morning.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet

“The first step to seeing is seeing that there are things you do not see, it said. Jam paused and frowned. I don’t understand. The creature sighed and rustled its fur a little. If you do not know there are things you do not see, it said, then you will not see them because you do not expect them to be there. You think you see everything, so you think everything you see is all there is to be seen.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Pet