Shadow Boxing

At an early age, K. J. Aiello began to feel like a monster. They questioned their level of rage and the intensity of their reactions, believing a darkness lurked at the periphery of their life, waiting to take control. “When I felt threatened, something in me would break and all reason would evaporate,” they write. After a particularly violent interaction with a playground bully, the adults in Aiello’s life contributed to this narrative: that they were not like other children and needed to be fixed. “This new something inside me is evil and corrupt,” they remember feeling. “It’s shadowy, and I can’t quite see it. But I feel it there, curling around me, pressing against my mind. And I know I’m different and shameful and all wrong.”

Aiello became fascinated with magic and monsters. They retreated into tales of other outcasts, revelling in the misunderstood and often reviled figures of myth, science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Unpacking the complexity of fictional...