I should have run. I should have called the police, a priest, the guy from the Discovery Channel who debunks myths. But Megan leaned in and pressed her cold forehead to mine. For one second, she smelled like the girl who let me copy her algebra homework. Then she smelled like the inside of a slaughterhouse.

“You brought scissors to a demon fight?” she laughed.

I’m still hungry too.

JENNIFER CHECK — 1991–2009 SHE WAS A MONSTER. BUT SHE WAS MY MONSTER.

I picked up her hairbrush. It was crusted with something dark at the bristles. “The thing inside you. Can you feel it?”

She touched it, looked at the red on her fingertip, and licked it clean. “Am I?” That night, she showed up at my window. I didn’t hear the glass slide open. I just felt the cold.

“Go to the kitchen,” I said, pulling my comforter to my chin.

The cops ruled it a gas leak. The town buried her on a Tuesday. I stood at the grave until everyone left, then I carved into her headstone with the same scissors:

And underneath that, smaller: