{"id":8558,"date":"2022-04-29T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T18:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8558"},"modified":"2022-04-29T17:26:38","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T23:26:38","slug":"directions-for-surviving-an-urban-legend","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8558","title":{"rendered":"Directions for Surviving an Urban Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Karen J. Weyant<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Learn early. At those fourth-grade slumber parties,<br>pretend to fall asleep when your friends start playing<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bloody Mary in the upstairs bathroom. Ignore<br>their chants of her name, their screams, their stories.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don\u2019t want to even imagine what they believed<br>they may have seen. Later, when you start driving,<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>check your backseat before you climb into the driver\u2019s seat.<br>It also wouldn\u2019t hurt to check under your car.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you end up parking (which you shouldn\u2019t do)&nbsp;<br>with your boyfriend and you both hear scratching,<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a raspy scrap across the roof or the side of the car,<br>don\u2019t open the door, even if you feel a tug on the handle.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Drive to safety. Turn on the radio. The news&nbsp;<br>about the escaped prisoner will be all you need to know.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And never, ever pick up a hitchhiker, even if it\u2019s raining<br>or it\u2019s cold. Even if she looks innocent and sad,<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and that dress she is wearing is way too thin.<br>Even if, she, in the headlights, looks a little like you.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n&nbsp;\n\n\n\n<hr\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>KAREN J. WEYANT<\/strong>&#8216;s speculative poems have appeared in\u00a0<em>Caesura, Cold Mountain Review, Devilfish Review, Eye to the Telescope, Gingerbred Lit,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Strange Horizons<\/em>. She lives and writes in northern Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karen J. Weyant Learn early. At those fourth-grade slumber parties,pretend to fall asleep when your friends start playing Bloody Mary in the upstairs bathroom. Ignoretheir chants of her name, their screams, their stories. You don\u2019t want to even imagine what &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=8558\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":8551,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8558","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-2e2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8568,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8558\/revisions\/8568"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}