Common Courtesy

Mary has errands to do. The grocery, the bank. Dinner. While she shops, she thinks of her mother, dead in her sleep three years ago. At the checkout, Mary glances through the latest ladies' monthly, idly noting new recipes.

Home. Mary is cooking dinner when her husband walks in the front door, already engrossed in a horror novel.
"Why do you read that trash?" she asks. After all, it's only the twisted imaginings of a peculiar mind. It has no bearing on reality.
Her husband ignores her, too intrigued by the newest ghosts and goblins to answer.

Mary has no truck with the supernatural. Why should she? Nothing like the stories her husband reads could ever happen to her.
At night, before she sleeps, she prays that this is so. She begs God that all the evil creatures ignore her, the same way she supresses her fear of them.

It's only common courtesy, isn't it?