We named the murder statue Peanut

There is a statue in a locked room. It is rebar and concrete, and if you blink while you are in the room with it, it is already behind you, and it breaks your neck. That is the whole creature. That is all it does.

Fans of the fiction call it Peanut .

I think about that nickname more than the story it comes from. Somebody looked at an unkillable thing that kills you for blinking and gave it a name you'd give a dog. It is not affection, exactly. It is a smaller name laid over a bigger thing, and it works. In your mouth the monster is a snack. You can keep reading.

I don't think that urge is strange. It's one of the oldest things people do, and it isn't always kind. It's how a town names a river that floods, how a soldier names a rifle, how someone names a sickness after a person they want to blame. A name is a handle.…