Eliza and Her Monsters

Eliza Mirk, an 18-year-old high school senior, introduces herself by describing how her name sounds like a creepy girl, low-level villain, or character in a comic book. She’s none of the above, though she draws and writes a famous webcomic under the pseudonym LadyConstellation. Through her online account, she posts weekly pages of her popular comic Monstrous Sea. Eliza feels most alive in her “true form” as LadyConstellation.

Eliza wakes up and goes to her computer, like usual. She doesn’t read the comments on her latest Monstrous Sea pages, because she knows they can affect her mental health, even when they’re mostly positive.

She has a family breakfast with her younger middle-school brothers, Sully and Church. Her father calls her “Eggs,” because she has hard-boiled eggs every morning. While she eats, Eliza reads a local newspaper article about Wellhouse Turn, a notoriously dangerous—and deadly—portion of a nearby road. She goes back to her room and resists turning on her computer because her online life is a “rabbit hole” and she knows that she doesn’t have time to get lost in it right now.