We are the Monsters
Aaron Polson
Rated: 3.00 of 5 stars
3.00
· 6 ratings · Published: 10 Mar 2011
"Here’s the truth about growing up in a small town: you tell lies to survive.
I worked at a grocery store during high school, part time on the evenings and weekends. I saw plenty of strange things there: avocados stuffed in a barrel of fresh popcorn left to rot, a coworker who punched holes in the caps of beer bottles with an awl, pies marked “Verda’s own home-baked” which came frozen on pallets with the Sunday dairy truck. I found a body in the trash bin once, but nobody can prove who put it there. No one can prove it was there.
There were too many bodies for a town the size of Springdale. The name of the town is a lie, but the bodies aren’t. All of them. When you find a body lying with the outdated yogurt, wilted lettuce, and cardboard boxes, you make up stories to cope. You can’t process a body in the grocery store trash bin. A trick of the light, you say. The way the shadows fell across certain bits of debris like the coat hanger beast in a little boy’s bedroom. That head of lettuce, there, in the corner, looks like a human hand.
Bodies are bodies.
Dead is dead.
And lies are lies."
About the author: Aaron’s stories have been reprinted in The Best of Every Day Fiction 2009 and 2010, listed as a recommended read by Tangent Online, received honorable mention in the storySouth Million Writers Award and Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year.
Tagged as:
- horror 3
- paranormal 3
- suspense 3
- ghosts 2
- fantasy 2
- supernatural 2
- demons 2
- coming of age 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- book 1
- young adult 1