The most frightening monster is the one inside us (by Patty Blount)

I'm a huge fan of the TV show, Supernatural. Main character Dean Winchester often says, "Demons, I get, but people? Not so much."

I recently started watching AMC's The Walking Dead, binge-watched all episodes to get caught up to the current season and have decided I'll be among the first to get killed. If you haven't seen the show, it's humans vs. zombies and civilization has pretty much died out...It's every man for himself.

Are you prepared for the zombie apocalypse?  This month's YA Outside the Lines theme is monsters. Though the show is about zombies, they are not the real monsters. The real monsters are the humans who are left. Every episode portrays a new ethical and moral conundrum that leaves me shaken to my soul, searching that soul for answers to the question, "What would you do in that situation?"

And my answer is always the same -- "The same thing they just did -- if I wanted to survive."

In the first season, we watched two best friends -- partners -- fight to the death.

Then we met The Governor, a natural born leader. Handsome and charismatic. Also seriously messed up. And just when you truly hate this guy's guts, the show clues you in to his origin story. You realize he was a regular guy once with a regular family who loved him -- a regular life.

Binge-watching a series lets you see insights and connections you might miss in real time. And the one thing I've connected is that the show's main character, Rick, has become exactly the person his best friend had been in the first season... and he killed him for being that person.

There's an old author adage.... every bad guy is the hero of his own story. Watch The Walking Dead to see this concept applied. There are no monsters more frightening than those of the human variety and the horrors we are quite capable of inflicting on one another when sufficiently pushed is the stuff of nightmares.