In every creepy movie ever made, the barn is the prime nesting ground for the things you don't know you're looking for and always regret finding.

But monsters, I now know, come in all shapes and sizes, and only their appetite for human flesh defines them.

It isn't that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It's that the truth is too hideous to face.

You are the nest. You are the hatchling. You are the chrysalis. You are the progeny. You are the rot that falls from stars. You may not understand what I mean. You will.

But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that's important.

A word of advice, Will Henry. When a person of the female gender says she wants to show you something, run the other way. The odds are it is not something you wish to see.

I'm one, too," he said. "What?" He spit a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. "A virgin." What a shock. "What makes you think I'm a virgin?" I asked. "You wouldn't have hit me if you weren't.