The rules were supposed to protect you. Read closely enough, and you start to wonder who they were really written for.
In this second collection of ten stories, B. D. Sharp turns from the haunted houses and quiet dread of Volume 1 toward something colder: the systems we trust to keep us safe - committees, compliance procedures, neighborhood watches, the unspoken contracts of community life - and what happens when those systems start making decisions no one agreed to.
A homeowners' meeting takes a vote that can't be unmade. A man discovers the cost of "boundary enforcement" in a marriage gone wrong. A senior living facility's brochure promises aren't quite the whole story. Each story stands alone, but together they trace a single unsettling question: what do you do when the people enforcing the rules are no longer protecting you - and may never have been?
Psychological and speculative horror for readers who like their fear administrative, procedural, and uncomfortably plausible. Perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay, Carmen Maria Machado, and Shirley Jackson.
