Jolene’s Reviews > Private Rites > Status Update

She thinks, vaguely, about Jason asking her to follow him into the coffee shop storeroom and showing her a line of what appeared to be sea anemones growing rough along the grouting of a wall.

Disaster movies, after all, come complete with pending resolution: the dash up the hill to avoid the falling rubble, the turning tide, the core of the slowing earth ignited at the cost of six courageous lives. Heroic fights, Hail Mary passes, et cetera. The rescue is the point, or at least the idea that rehearsal is still imminent. There is little of the imagination can do with an ending that is already assured.

Any horror story could be said to work in two pieces: the fear of being wholly alone and of realizing that one has company.

When, people ask, was the last time that you remember thinking, Oh, it's raining again. When was your last real sunburn, your last flying ant day, yout last good look at the stars. It is easy to think about these things, recollections of things passing fast from your grip, and decide they're simply too much to acknowledge. Easy to imagine inevitability when in fact there might once have been any number of options.