Longtime readers (all three of them) will know Kate Arnold as half of Dead Anyway, a blog pal from way back (…in 2024).
“You’re Supposed to be a Big Girl, Virginia” is a classic creepy-house story. I think pretty much everyone had one of those on their walk to school, even I did in the tiny town I grew up in. Like Ginny, I’d look for other routes to take past it. This was it:
Kate wrote this story as part of the MA program she’s completing. She presents it like this:
‘You’re Supposed To Be A Big Girl, Virginia’ was written for a genre module and is my first attempt at writing anything even vaguely psychologically disturbing (although Marc may well argue that all my DA lyrics verge on the psychologically disturbed ha!)
It’s the tiny details in this story that make it feel so real. The pet names, Ginny calling her mother by her first name for a spell (and the echoes of it later in the story), the constant presence of Underbite the lion. Even on re-read, the ending gives me goosebumps.
Dig in here, and let me know what you think. And for more about Dead Anyway, we did a whole month worth of posts when their last record came out.
