Résumé With Monsters

by William Browning Spencer

  She laughed softly, still full of sensual sleep. Her hand turned backward and brushed his cheek. "Love," she muttered. "Lovecraft."

  #

  When Philip came back from the bathroom, he found the piece of paper lying on the floor where it had fallen out of his shirt pocket the night before.

  He knew it instantly, intuitively, for the paper that the ghostly little man had left him the day before.

  He unfolded it and read a crude, photocopied flyer entitled HAPPY TEEMS NEWSLEDDER.

  It was hand-lettered, and began, DONT EATS YOUR PKRDNER. EVERBODY GETS PLENTY HaPY IF THEY WORK, TOGEDDER LIK TEEMS. DONT KIL PEOPLES. LIV TOGEDDER. BEST POLICY. KIS KND MAKEUP. DONT BITES WRONG PEOPLES BUT SAY SORY YOU KRE WRONGS AND DONT KIL THAM ANY. DONT STEEL NOTHIN BUT KSK PLEEEZ. ALWKYS DO WHUT YOR BOSSES SKY WITHOUT GROWLS OR SLOBBER. DONT-. A sinking sensation, as though he were being lowered into his grave, accosted Philip. He knew instantly what he was reading.

  *

  He showed it to Lily when he went to his session. She put her glasses on and studied it.

  She looked up at him over the tops of her reading glasses. "What did you say this was?"

  "It's a motivational tract," Philip explained. "Like the ones I got at Ralph’s One-Day Résumés. The author is urging his fellow office workers to live in harmony and be part of a team."

  "Doesn't make much sense to me," Lily said.

  "I think," Philip said, "that there is a degenerate subculture living within Pelidyne, an atrophied race of office workers. I think they have regressed through inbreeding and through their alliance with..." Philip hesitated. He didn't want to talk about this, but he saw no alternative. He had to warn Amelia, and Lily seemed his best hope. He paused, exhaled. "I distinctly heard the creature say 'Dagon.' I think we are talking ancient entities here. I think we are talking malign, distorting forces."

  Lily sighed. She lit a cigarette. "Are you taking your medication?" she asked.

  "I don't think I can afford to take any drug that might impair my reflexes. It would be different if I could just walk away from the whole thing. But I can't. I think that's clear."

  "What does your new girlfriend, this Sissy, think about all this?"

  "She says she isn't my therapist."

  "Well, she has a point there, but she must have some opinion on your monsters."

  "She says all artists have their demons."

  AL Bingham came into the house. He had been out back, painting the tool shed green. He wore shorts and a baseball cap, splattered with green paint. His face was sunburned and full of domesticated joy.

  "Hey Philip," he said. "How are you doing? That wife of mine shrinking you down to sane size?"

  "I guess so," Philip said.

  #

  But Philip knew Lily was worried. She even spoke of his returning to the hospital. She said she wanted him to talk to Dr. Beasley again. And

  Lily had made no firm commitment to warn Amelia of the dangers lurking within Pelidyne.

  Philip had driven back to his apartment, tormented by a sense of urgency, of conflicting emotions. He found, to his surprise, that Sissy had redefined Amelia. Amelia was his old love, strangely distant, her face and features now remembered with affection—and without yearning or any sense of loss. She was getting married; he wished her well.

  A strident, moral voice spoke: Does this mean you are just going to leave her to her fate?

  I'm not well, he told his conscience. There aren't any monsters. I'm mistaken about all that.

  Hah! his conscience snorted.

  Back at his apartment, Sissy wrapped him in her arms. "I got a job," she whispered in his ear. She had walked down to Dan's Texas Bar-B-Que and taken the owner up on his offer.

  #

  In the weeks that followed, a kind of moral lassitude came over Philip. Circumstances conspired to lull him into denial. He was in love; the world was benign. His temp agency did not return him to Pelidyne. His life altered. He was now part of a partnership, a dialogue of mind and body, and only occasionally would he be startled to discover how utterly he had adapted to the concept of twoness, the shared toothpaste and alien clutter and additional opinions to be sorted and considered.

  One day, when a temporary job placed him downtown near Pelidyne, he thought he might stop by and speak to Amelia. But the job was abruptly terminated two days before its scheduled end, and Philip found himself working on the other side of the city. There was something fateful in this near miss, so he called Amelia. He got her answering phone. Amelia and her now live-in boyfriend had created a joint message. Amelia would speak a line, then her boyfriend. The effect reminded Philip of something school children might present at a parent/teacher gathering.

  Amelia: Hello, this is Amelia Price.

  Boyfriend: And this is Mike Lawson.

  Both: We are not in right now, but we would love to hear from you.

  Amelia: Please leave a message at the tone.

  Boyfriend: We will get back to you as soon as we can.

  Both: Thank you for calling.

  The message was so unrelievedly cheerful that Philip winced when he heard his own worried, querulous voice pouring onto the tape. "Amelia, this is Philip," he said. "I was worried about you and thought I'd call and say hi. I worked over at Pelidyne for a couple of days some time ago, and it was a disturbing experience, and I just wanted to see how you were doing. Give me a call sometime."

  He knew she would not return his call.

  I tried, he told his conscience.

  Hah! his conscience said. And Reagan and Bush tried to help the poor.

  Then On Time sent him to Pelidyne again.

  5.

  He was assigned a different office, but the same woman, whose sculpted hair might have represented a thick-bodied bird defending its nest, showed him to his new workspace.

  She was in an expansive mood and told him her name, Gladys Fenninger. She could not resist showing him her picture in Pelidyne's office newsletter, Personality Bytes. The photo showed Gladys, sporting a toothy grin that wreathed her face in wrinkles and holding a plaque, thrusting it forward for the camera's scrutiny. The caption under this photo read: EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH.

  "Well, congratulations," Philip said.

  Gladys giggled. "There's some don't think I should get it," she said with real glee, looking behind her quickly to see if anyone was in the corridor. "There's some think they worked harder, but I say"—here she wobbled her head from side to side while declaiming, harking back to some childhood recitation no doubt— "There's some must win, there's some must lose. Don't play the game if you can't stand the bruise. You don't get this award just for being a drone. You need brains to carry the day in this kind of competition. I suggested the sorted paper clip bins, didn't I? I suggested the double-stick recall slips, didn't I?"

  Philip smiled, sure that she had. Gladys, in the best of spirits, booted Philip's new computer and showed him how to log the X's and O's this time around.

  She patted the computer. She winked. "You might think of a career with Pelidyne," she said. "This place recognizes merit, Philip."

  He said he would think about it.

  Later that day, he thought about working full- time at Pelidyne. The thought made his bones feel like rusty pipes wrapped in tar paper.

  Day after day, On Time kept sending Philip to Pelidyne. The job lasted a week, then two, then three. It was inevitable that he should encounter Amelia. "Philip?"

  He turned and there she was, behind him in the cafeteria line. She wore purple lipstick and her eyelids were light blue. In other respects, she was a model of conservative style, wearing a light blue blouse and a gray suit.

  "It's okay," he said. "I've got a legitimate reason for being here. I'm a temp."

  "I know," Amelia said. "It's okay."

  They ate lunch together. Amelia said that after his phone message, she had called Lily.

  Amelia had been worried. "You didn't sound so hot.

  "Lily told me you did
some temp work here," Amelia said. "So when I saw you, I figured that was the case again."

  Philip nodded. "Yep. I'm in the glamorous world of data entry."

  They discussed their lives. Amelia was greatly relieved to learn that Philip had a new girlfriend, excessively so, actually.

  "That's very romantic," Amelia said. "I mean, her coming all the way from Florida because she read your book."

  "Where did you meet your fiancé?" Philip asked, to change the subject. He wasn't really interested, and Amelia's reply went by him. He was annoyed by Amelia's undisguised delight in discovering that his interest now lay elsewhere. True, he had been a difficult lover. There was the mail cart incident, his housebreaking, and even at the best of times he had his obsessions, quirks that would have tried anyone's patience. But she didn't have to be so unseemly in her relief. A light, slightly rueful pat on the hand accompanied by a quiet, "I'm so happy for you" would have sufficed.

  If he hadn't been miffed, he might have spoken with more care. Who knows? When Amelia began talking about her job at Pelidyne—she was a coordinator of publications—any fool could have seen that she was excited. Her immediate supervisor was leaving, and it looked like the position would go to Amelia. Anyone could tell that what was wanted here was a hearty congratulations ("terrific," "way to go," "good luck," et cetera).

  Instead, he listened to Amelia talk enthusiastically about Pelidyne, its benefits package, its prestige, it wealth, its employee incentives, and then—perhaps he even interrupted—he said, "I have reason to believe that not all employees are upwardly mobile. I have reason to believe that there is a subterranean network of decayed, atrophied workers living in the walls and in derelict parts of the building. I suspect they are cannibalistic and that they are in thrall to Dagon, which is, of course, just another name for the Old Ones."

  Almost anyone could have told him that this was not the politic thing to say. He needed her trust if he was going to help her. This confrontational approach was doomed.

  Amelia narrowed her eyes and stiffened, straightening her back. She glared at Philip. "Still seeing monsters," she said. "Still not in the pink of mental health, are we?"

  They argued. It was a longer argument than Amelia usually indulged in. Apparently she had thought more than a little about Philip since last seeing him. "Monsters!" she screamed. "I'll tell you about your monsters. Your monsters are cowardice and laziness and self-pity and arrogance and anything that gives you an excuse to run away. Look at you, Philip. You are forty- five years old and you are working as a temp, sitting in some stupid cubicle doing data entry. Why?" Amelia stood up. "Monsters. That's right. Because monsters are always sabotaging your chances. Hairy house-sized spiders from outer space. Yep. Old Philip could have amounted to something but a space octopus from Yuggoth stole his dreams."

  Amelia was on a roll. She listed Philip's monsters, getting most of the names right, and described the specific ways in which they had interfered with his life. Philip was impressed. He had not realized that she had been so attentive to the details.

  The irony, of course, was that her litany about MicroMeg and its horrors was ransacked from her own subconscious—Philip had never even tried to tell her the grisly specifics—and what she spoke of mockingly was dreadful fact, buried deep in her memory beneath layers of denial.

  Oblivious to this truth, she railed on. "You don't have to be a shrink to see what you're up to. It's a responsibility dodge, that's all. You want to be the eternal child. Wait till your new girlfriend figures that out. And unless she is a moron, she will figure it out. She may like your book, but I don't think she is going to be delighted when she learns it is also your life."

  Amelia stalked off before he could respond, and Philip was left to finish his ham sandwich (chilly, leatherlike fare) with only his thoughts (equally indigestible) for company.

  As he chewed, his resolve solidified. The easy course now would be to wash his hands of her, to shrug and get on with his life. He would not do that. He would rescue her in spite of herself.

  And to do that, of course, he had to learn the exact nature and extent of the threat. He shivered. The thought of hunting down the lair of that little, misshapen and degenerate man sent a cold, bleak wind blowing through him.

  He could not afford to contemplate what lay ahead. His nerve would fail if he stood too long at the gate. And so, after lunch, he dialed Dan's Texas Bar-B-Que and asked to speak to Sissy.

  "I've got to work late tonight," he told her. "Don't wait up." He was tempted to add, "If I don't come back at all, don't come looking for me. Don't alert the authorities. Forget you ever heard of Pelidyne. Go back to Florida. Marry. Raise children. Live a good life. The Old Ones don't know you. We are of no interest to them unless we directly interfere with their purposes. You are safe in their shadow." Instead, he said, simply, "I love you."

  "Hey, are you okay?" Sissy asked.

  Philip could hear the lunch crowd din behind her. Someone shouting from the restaurant's kitchen, a cash register ringing, a door banging open.

  "Sure," Philip said. "I've just got a deadline here, and I've got to put in some extra hours. I didn't want you to worry." He hung up.

  He knew the drill. He waited until the evening rush was at its height, the lobby filled with milling office workers frantic to get home. He signed out, turned, uttered a theatrical "Damn it!" and imitated, for anyone watching, a man who has just remembered something left behind in the office. He turned and darted back to the elevators, got in one that was just dispelling its clot of workers, and punched the button for the basement.

  He got a turkey sandwich from a vending machine, found an office full of broken chairs and dusty filing cabinets, and crawled behind a desk to wait.

  6.

  He leaned his back against a wall and closed his eyes, waiting for the building to clear. He had no plan.

  He woke suddenly when something yanked his feet, jerking him forward. The back of his head thumped the carpet.

  Ooph!

  He tried to rise, but the speed with which he was dragged forward kept him off balance. His legs were numb, wrapped in steel bands. He tried to lift his head, to see his attacker, but he could not. He was being dragged rapidly across the darkened room. He thought he heard a voice, or voices, but he could distinguish no single word.

  The ceiling rolled by overhead, panels of darkened fluorescent lights passing like black, rectangular clouds. He was in the hall then, speeding along the carpet on his back.

  Wham! A door was sprung open. Stairs. Great. The back of his head counted stairs. Thump, thump, thump, thump. He lost count.

  He regained consciousness in a dank, chill room where the reek of oil and burnt rubber mingled with the familiar, frightening stench of long-dead fish. Paralyzed! he thought—and scrambled to his feet in wild, arm-flapping panic. No. He was all right. He was—

  He was staring at row upon row of cylindrical, glass containers, each one perhaps eight feet tall, each containing an upright human body. The naked bodies floated in a bright green liquid and large, viscous air bubbles crawled over white flesh like sentient, translucent slugs.

  Philip sensed that he was far from Pelidyne, that he had not merely descended steps into some subterranean chamber but that he had crossed a boundary of rational, physical law and now inhabited another dimension.

  "Drone," a voice said. It was a hollow, mechanical voice that had no specific location but seemed to come from above.

  "Identify yourself," the voice boomed.

  Philip shouted his name at the ceiling.

  "I will consult my data. I have consulted my data. You are a transient contract drone on a time-limited assignment. Time log would indicate that you have left the premises. Either you are lying about your identity or, rightly identified, have practiced deceit in declaring your exit."

  "Well, actually—" Philip began.

  The voice interrupted. "I am proceeding with physical identification."

  Blinding lights burs
t on overhead. From between dark pillars, crablike robots scuttled forth. They were the size of large dogs and moved with unnerving speed. One came from behind Philip. It announced its presence with a high whine, and Philip turned as it enfolded him in bands of steel. Something whirred near his ear, and his shirtsleeve fell away, cut by a thin beam of red light. Spidery fingers encircled his elbow. Something stung his arm, and Philip stared at a translucent bubble that floated in front of his eyes. The bubble turned red, filling—he was certain—with his blood.