Résumé With Monsters by William Browning Spencer

them perhaps twelve feet tall and some twice that.
     
    And then the black engine in the midst of the swarming horde turned, a sinuous, immense unwinding, a flowing of its intention, and Philip felt its baleful scrutiny, knew that he was regarded by something malevolent and ancient, a shifting viscous mass. And his reason, like a slippery city shoe coming down on a newly- mopped linoleum floor, skittered and he sought to give the creature a name, and his mind said, " Shoggoth " for those were the ghastly, golemlike creations of the Old Ones and surely that was what now turned a cold and palpable scrutiny upon him. These creatures had, for a time, broken free of their masters and waged a terrible war. Perhaps this was one of the renegades.
     
    Philip turned and ran toward the door. In an instant, the distant monster was racing toward him, accompanied by a horrid rending sound, as though its own protoplasmic flesh were tearing as it moved. Philip looked back and saw the sputtering green eyes burn on the crest of its motion. Like a black cloud of flies, its loathsome winged compatriots hovered over it.
     
    A strange, musical scream filled the air, " Tekeli-li ! Tekeli-li !" and Philip felt volition abandon him. The door in front of him shrunk to the size of a cigar box, and as he watched, it swung open toward him, and poor Amelia, attired primly in a brown suit, entered the room. A doll-sized version of Amelia, with long eyelashes and clownlike circles of rouge on her cheeks.
     
    "Philip," she began, and then her eyes widened, comically, the overblown acting of a silent film, and she said "Aw shit."
     
    And the raging Shoggoth overtook them both, tumbling them into the fetid dark of the waiting abyss.
     
    Philip awoke sweating and blinked at the clock on the end table. Glowing red numbers announced that it was three o'clock. It seemed that it was three in the morning more often than it was any other time. The explanation was no doubt sinister and had something to do with the control the System possessed over time itself.
     
    Having thought this, Philip groaned. Why fight cosmic forces?
     
    He got up, turned on his computer and sat before the green screen. The cursor pulsed like a drugged, rectangular heart.
     
    He wrote for awhile on his novel. He had been writing on this novel for so long, through so many incarnations, that he thought of it as a beast he fed. Why couldn't Amelia understand?
     
    Today he wrote, "They slept in the woods that night having fled the giant, ravening dogs. In the morning, they set their faces into the sun and marched, at a good clip, toward the cliffs of Leng . "
     
    Philip wrote for two hours and then saved what he had written. The blank screen remained, and on that he typed, in all caps, MONICA IS A ZOMBIE. THEY ARE HERE NOW! THEY HAVE SNIFFED ME OUT. THEY COME AT ME, AS ALWAYS, IN DREAMS. BUT I SENSE THAT THEY WON'T SETTLE FOR JUST RUINING MY SLEEP. THEY HAVE LOST PATIENCE, I THINK.
     
    Philip saved this too, under the file name "zombie" and turned his computer off. He went to bed then and did not wake until noon when Amelia called.
     
    She was excited. "I just got back from orientation," she said. “I think this job is going to be great."
     
    "I hope so," Philip said.
     
    Amelia heard the caution there. "Hey, come on. Be positive."
     
    Before brushing his teeth, before shaving, before taking a shower, Philip turned his computer on and added this to the zombie file: WHEN THEY COME, THEY COME IN A RUSH. THEY ATTACK ON ALL FRONTS .
     
    Once Philip understood Monica's altered state, he marveled that none of the other employees saw the obvious. Bingham, of course, had remarked on the change, but even he missed the darker truth.
     
    You could even see the stitched incision where they had gone in and tinkered with her brain. It was at the nape of her neck, a two-inch straight line, and while it was generally hidden by her hair, it was easily visible when she leaned forward to study her