‘My mother told me monsters do not exist. Now I know they do.’

— Alien: Resurrection (1997)

After three years, I was coming to the end of an enormous piece of work, in which I was settling the score with everyone, the living, the dead, with sex, with writing. Reaching the end of this work meant marking time; rereading the pages far more slowly than I had written them, knowing that I would still need, interminably, another read-through before deciding that everything was ready, that every sentence, one after another, was ready to be published.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I turned off the light and rested my eyes. Only the glow from the streetlights filtered into the apartment. It was two in the morning. I lay on the rug and did some stretches, legs behind my head, feet to the roof. The muscles along my backbone moved, warming up under my skin like lizards.…