The Mary Shelley Club

And when you're truly scared, there's nowhere to hide - no private school, no popularity, no trust fund. It's just you and your most base emotion. Fear is where the truth lies.

If I was a monster, then so was everyone else in this club. And for once I didn't feel like such a freak. We could be monsters together.

Mary Shelley’s message was clear: Real monsters aren’t the ones created by man. The real monster is man himself.

Mary Shelley writes of two men. One, an intellectual capable of creating life from death. The other, a grotesque creature made of human body parts and covered in scars. But it isn’t the obvious monster that we have to be afraid of. It’s the one that looks like us and acts like us.

Fear is where the truth lies.

He's the Stu to my Billy Loomis

If you want this to be over, just make sure she screams.

I thought of the ways my own fear could take over sometimes and leave me paralyzed. How anxiety crawled out of my mind and became something physical, ruling my body and pulling all the strings.

I love that about horror: It’s the only genre that aims to please while daring you to look away.

I looked over my shoulder.

I invited her over to the apartment in an attempt to recreate the club's horror movie nights. I started off with a sure bet: Scream. A perennial fave. But to my horror Saundra showed up at my apartment with her tablet loaded with the MTV series based on the movies. When I told her, ver gently, that I would rather tear my skin off than watch that abomination, she laughed and hit play.

But there was something wrong with me. It clawed at my insides, desperate to get out.

Freddie and I were two sides of the same coin. Fear had created me, lured out the monster who reacted recklessly... For Freddie it was anger that made him this way. I could see it so clearly now. Freddie was a puppet to his anger. But I wasn't going to let my fear control me anymore. I wouldn't be reckless.

I was getting really tired of boys telling me which other boys I should or should not be hanging out with.

Mary Shelley's message was clear; real monsters aren't the ones created by man. The real Monsters are man himself.

This Masked Man saw her - watched her - and Saundra's first instinct was to point to the huddled, snively guys in the corner. "They're the ones you want!" But the Masked Man barely glanced in their direction. He still wanted her. It was just her luck that so many guys wanted her tonight and none of it was going her way.

We were staked out at the playground across the street, an optimal vantage for us to watch the house, and for me to watch Bram watch his girlfriend get scared.

found the horror soothing, almost cathartic. Maybe it was the knowledge that everything I was seeing was fake and would be wrapped up neatly in under two hours. If I could train myself to sit through scary movies, face all different kinds of horrors head-on, then maybe I could transform into a calmer, more serene version of myself.