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From short story "Monster" by Kelly Link. James Lorbick shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the monster was standing over him. It had red eyes. It smelled like rotting fish and kerosene. It wasn't actually all that tall, the way you'd expect a monster to be tall. Except for that, it was even worse than Bungalow 4 had said. The monster stood and looked down and grinned. "You," it said. It had a voice loke a dead tree full of bees: sweet and dripping and buzzing. It poked James on the shoulder with a long black nail. "What are you?" I'm James Lorbick," James said. "From Chicago." The monster laughed. Its teeth were pointed and terrible. There was a smear on red on the dress where it had touched James. "You're the craziest thing I've ever seen. Look at that dress. Look at your hair. It's standing strait up. Is that mud? Why are you covered in mud?" "I was going to be a monster," James said. He swallowed. "no offense." "None taken," the monster said. "Wow, maybe I should go visit Chicago. I've never seen anything as funny as you. I could look at you for hours and hours. Whenever I needed a laugh. You've really made my day, James Lorbick." The snow was still falling. James shivered and shivered. His teeth were clicking together so loudly he thought they might break. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "Where's Terence? Did you do something to him?" "Was he the guy who was down at the bottom of the hill? Talking on a cell phone?" "Yeah," James said. "Is he okay?" "He was talking to some girl named Darlene," the monster said. "I tried to talk to her, but she started screaming and it hurt my ears so I hung up. Do you happen to know where she lives?" "Somewhere in Ohio," James said. "Thanks," the monster said. He took out a little black notebook and wrote something down. "What are you?" James said. "Who are you?" "I'm Angelina Jolie," the monster said. It blinked. Jame's heart almost stopped beating. "Really?" he said. "Like in Danny Anderson's dream?" "No," the monster said. "Just kidding." "Oh," James said. They sat in silence. The monster used one long fingernail to dig something out from between its teeth. It belched a foul, greasy belch. Jame thought of Bryan. Bryan probably would have belched right back, if he still had a head, "Are you the monster that Bungalow 4 saw?" James asked. "Were those the kids here a few days ago?" "Yeah," James said. "We hung out for a while," the monster said. "Were they friends of yours?" "No," James said. "Those kids are real jerks. Nobody likes them." That's a shame," the monster said. Even when it wasn't belching, it smelled worse then anything James had ever smelled before. Fish and kerosene and rotting maple syrup poured over him in waves. He tried not to breathe. The monster said, "I'm sorry about the rest of your bungalow. Your friends. Your friends who made you wear a dress." "Are you going to eat me?" James said. "I don't know," the monster said. "Probably not. There were a lot of you. I'm not actually that hungry anymore. Besides, I would feel silly eating a kid in a dress. And you're really filthy." "Why didn't you eat Bungalow 4?" James said. He felt sick to his stomach. If he looked at the monster he felt sick, and if he looked away, there was Danny Anderson, lying face down under a pine tree with snow on his back and if he looked somewhere else, there were Bryan Jone's legs poking out of the tent. There was Bryan Jone's head. One of Bryan's shoes had come off and that made James think of the hike, the way Terence lay down in the mud to fish for the Simpson twin's shoe. "Why didn't you eat them? They're mean. They do terrible things and nobody likes them." "Wow," the monster said. "I didn't know that. I would have eaten them if I'd known, maybe. Although most of the time I can't worry about things like that." "Maybe you should," James said. "I think you should." The monster scratched its head. "You think so? I saw you guys eating hot dogs earlier. So do you worry about whether those were good dogs or bad dogs when you're eating them? Do you only eat dogs that were mean? Do you only eat bad dogs?" "Hot dogs aren't really made from dogs," James said. "People don't eat dogs." "I never knew that," the monster said. "But, see, if I worried about that kin of thing, whether the person I was eating was a nice guy or a jerk, I'd never eat anyone. And I get hungry a lot. So to be honest, I don't worry. All I really notice is whether the person I'm chasing is big or small or fat or slow. Or if they have a sense of humor. That's important, you know. A sense of humor. You have to laugh about things. When I was hanging out with Bungalow 4, I was joking about how I was going to eat them and they said I should eat you guys instead. They said it would be really funny. I have a good dense of humor. I like a good joke." It reached out and touched James Lorbick's head. "Don't do that!" James said. "Sorry," said the monster. "I just wanted to see what the mud spikes felt like. Do you think it would be funny if I wore a dress and put a lot of mud on my head?"

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