I had from earliest childhood a sense that there was no skin between me and the world. I saw things other people didn't see. Hands that slipped throu… - Elizabeth Hand

Self-assured?
"I guess. Self-assured and smug, you know? Why is it teenagers are always so fucking smug?"
"Because they share a great secret," Martin said mildly, and took another bite of sprouts.
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"Their parents are all assholes."

I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.

I liked being alone. Once when I was fourteen, walking in the woods, I stepped from the trees into a field where the long grasses had been flattened by sleeping deer. I looked up into the sky and saw a mirror image of the grass, black and yellow-gray whorls making a slow clockwise rotation like a hurricane. As I stared the whorl began to move more quickly, drawing a darkness into its center until it resembled a vast striated eye that was all pupil, contracting upon itself yet never disappearing. I stared at it until a low buzzing began to sound in my ears. Then I ran. I didn't stop until I reached my driveway. When I finally halted and looked back, the eye was still there, turning. I never mentioned it to anyone. No one else ever spoke of seeing it.