Weekly Short Story: The Malted Milk Monster by William Tenn

The Malted Milk Monster is a short story written by William Tenn and which appeared in the retrospective anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 21 (1959), published by DAW Books in 1990.  Although listed as science fiction, it really belongs to Stephen King's brand of horror fiction...I could easily see this tale being in one of his short story collections.  The author's real name was Philip Klass and he wrote quite of lot of science fiction before he "retired" from the craft into a cushy English professor job at Penn State University.  This particular story of his is one of my favorites and delves into the mind of a typically irrational and emotion-driven child...but one with a frightening secret power...

Dorothy, an unpopular little girl, has a very vivid and all-encompassing imaginary fantasy world in which she spends a great amount of her time.  She also has a crush on Carter Broun, a young man who is her teacher's husband.  After sitting in a soda shop watching, with his wife, the girl in the corner going through malted milkshake after malted milkshake, he wonders what's in her mind as the two walk on back home.  The next thing he knows, he is in a strange world...deep in Dorothy's mind and trapped.  Whatever happened to Carter's body, he doesn't know...all he does know is that his consciousness, along with others whom she ensnared into her mind, cannot escape.  Or can he?  Carter embarks on a strategy...but what it is and how well it works is something that you, the prospective reader of this remarkable tale, will need to discover for yourself...

Like many good stories, The Malted Milk Monster carries analogies for our real world.  There are people like Dorothy, not necessarily endowed with supernatural powers, but with an unhealthy combination of narcissism and the desire to dominate others...and they aren't just children.  A lot of us have tendencies to be narcissistic or domineering...but together within one person, this can be extremely toxic...