Résumé With Monsters by William Browning Spencer Page B

very, very quiet and clever. But still they come. They smell the dream in you. They smell it and they, little tiny crappers at first—make you laugh to see them—they come."
     
    Mr. Grodinov left early that day, and Mrs.Walston , scowling after his departure, said, "Well, the old fool's drunk."
     
    Mr. Grodinov's wife called the next day. This in itself was extraordinary. "The way he talked," Mrs. Walston said, "I thought he was a widower."
     
    Mrs. Grodinov had less English than her husband. "No come," she said. "Dead." She had broken into sobs then, and Mrs. Walston had had to wait until the old woman collected herself again. "Stuck," the woman said. "Stuck dead."
     
    Mrs. Walston got the hospital's name and was able to confirm that the old man was dead of a stroke.
     
    "Mark my words," Mrs. Walston told Philip, "they'll close this office."
     
    And she had been right.
     
    "And you think that, somehow, the Old Ones killed your boss," Lily said.
     
    Philip nodded. "Yes."
     
    After Philip lost his job, he did not seek another one. And when the rent came due and they could not pay it, Elaine said, "I am moving in with Susan." Susan was an old college roommate, and she had never approved of Philip.
     
    Philip nodded. "Fine." He moved back to his mother's house, and he slept in the bed he had slept in as a child, waking with a start when he thought he heard his father's footstep on the stairs.
     
    One day Susan called. "Elaine's in the hospital," she screamed. "You son of a bitch." She had hung up then, and it was only when Philip arrived at the hospital that he learned his wife was dead, that she had died of an overdose several hours before her arrival at the emergency room.
     
    "How awful," Lily said.
     
    Philip looked up, was surprised to see tears in his counselor's eyes, and said, "Too many tranquilizers. She was drinking too. Booze and downers don't mix. Elaine wasn't suicidal, just a kind of negligent, don't-give-a-damn person."
     
    "I'm sorry," Lily said, leaning forward and clutching Philip's hand.
     
    Philip nodded. "After she died, I felt... it was anger. I remember standing in the emergency room lobby thinking, 'This is such a lot of shit.'"
     
    Philip stopped.
     
    Lily waited, nodded her head, waited some more. "Yes. Yes, Philip. It must have been terrible."
     
    Philip exhaled slowly. "This is exhausting, you know. I mean, I don't think it is doing any good. She was dead then. She's dead now."
     
    "Yes," Lily said, with a compassion that Philip found terrifying, "but you aren't, Philip. You aren't dead."
     

     

9.
     

     
    A routine was established. Lily would arrive in the morning, letting herself in with a duplicate key. Sometimes Philip wouldn't even be up yet, would be sleeping soundly, and the smell of frying bacon would wake him.
     
    Philip told Lily about the jobs.
     
    "We are looking," Lily said, "for patterns."
     
    "Are you sure that's a good idea?" Philip asked. "I mean, H. P. Lovecraft would say that the unexamined life is probably the best bet for humans."
     
    The hideous machinations of Cthulhu and his monstrous overlord, Yog-Sothoth were not suited for the daylight of reason.
     
    "I've taken the time to read about your Lovecraft ," Lily said. "Face it, the man wasn't in the pink of mental health."
     
    "Exactly," Philip said. " Lovecraft stared too long at the abyss."
     
    "Be that as it may," Lily said, folding her hands in her lap, "examining is my trade. You don't want an old lady to wind up out of work, do you?"
     
    Philip didn't. He talked about the jobs. He talked about the boredom, the boredom that he came to see as the sign of the beast, its sour, suffocating reek.
     
    There was boredom at the community newspaper where Philip pasted down advertisements for pizza parlors and car dealerships (WE WILL BEAT ANY DEAL OR GIVE YOU THE CAR!). There was boredom working at the state agency where Philip corrected addresses on a computer that logged his every keystroke. There