Fiction allows us to...

I read a story earlier this week which featured an especially haunting and disturbing description of rape. It reminded me of this:

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through these other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. (Neil Gaiman, American Gods, pp. 411)

This post's theme word: minatory, "baleful; threatening or forshadowing evil/tragic developments."