Slack your rope, Hangsaman, O slack it for a while, I think I see my true love coming, Coming many a mile - Shirley Jackson

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.

I am tired of writing dainty little biographical things that pretend that I am a trim little housewife ... I live in a dank old place with a ghost.

Imagine, always pretending to run a world. Always imitating the sort of people they think they might be if the world were the sort of world it isn't. Pretending to be words like 'normal' and 'wholesome' and 'honest' and 'decent' and 'self-respecting' and all the rest, when even the words aren't real. Imagine, being people.