Sometimes, when confronted with a serious conundrum, the ‘sleep it off’ strategy worked wonders. Problems that seemed insurmountable at first glance might turn out to be easier than they seemed with a fresh perspective, and along with healing all wounds, time lessened issues’ immediate severity. Daylight could illuminate a path forward that remained hopelessly hidden in the dark. And sometimes, to tackle the task at hand, one just needed more energy.

Unfortunately, Khalid awoke in the morning to find himself not one inch closer to solving the crisis that confronted him the prior evening, and a night of fitful sleep certainly didn’t help. He stirred, groaning, from his spot on the couch and levered himself upright. Once he planted his feet on the bare concrete floor, he placed his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, rubbing and creasing in an attempt to get some much-needed clarity. As always, his room was dingy, humid, and stiflingly warm. The doggedly perseverant supermarket desk fans, which he kept on and pointed at something or another twenty-four seven, helped to an extent, and his old but persistent dehumidifier fought to push back the cloying wetness, but even blanketless and stripped down to his boxers Khalid seldom found relief. It smelled in here, and not just of the variety of homegrown plants bathing beneath their ultraviolet lamps. Instead the musty air here carried a noxious foetor. Some described it as the smell of rotten eggs, but Khalid didn’t think so. To him, it smelled unlike anything else on earth, which was fitting given its origin. Unpleasant? Absolutely. Evil? Possibly. Unbearable? Hardly. This potent cocktail of herbal and antiquarian aromas  just took some getting used to, and since it tended to keep his neighbors away, it wasn’t all bad. Even if that odor’s tendency to cling to him as well abbreviated many of his interactions.

Ultimately, as stagnant as this room was, Khalid’s environment wasn’t the issue. Instead, that took the form of the letter sitting on the table in front of him. It came from The Crow, the modern, mixed-media equivalent of a pulp fiction magazine that just so happened to be the man’s place of employment. He’d been working there for almost a year now, long before his arrival in Umbra Rose Condos last month, concocting stories of wildly varying length, subject, manner, and quality, all within the purview of the Crow’s focus on the supernatural, sensational, weird, and wonderful. To most readers and writers, his writings were works of fiction at best, but Khalid knew better. That was his edge, as a scholar of very particular erudition: the well-researched nuggets of truth buried amidst all the absurdities to lend the tales a detailed, fascinatingly grounded air of plausibility that gave his stories some real bite. Unfortunately, The Crow didn’t make much money, so neither did Khalid, and perhaps thanks in part to those tensions, not everyone saw the virtues in his style of penmanship. That included Wesley Barnes, the chief editor, and this letter was from him.

[i]Mr. Alhazred. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, especially considering your situation and the amount of work you do for us, but your submissions to The Crow just aren’t cutting it. When anyone writes in about your stories, or reviews us online, the feedback is primarily negative. For one, you’re too wordy. I’m sure you put in a lot of effort to learn English, but nobody wants to read stuff that makes them feel stupid, or crack open a dictionary. Your writing is old-fashioned, and too technical. There’s too much time spent on trivial details and set-dressing. This isn’t Shakespeare, you know?

And while I know your talent is writing about monsters, the monsters you choose to use leave us all scratching our heads. Half of them nobody’s ever heard of, with gibberish or foreign names, and they’re so strange it’s impossible to imagine them. Whatever happened to good old ghosts, vampires, and werewolves? On that note, most of your stories are real downers, with the characters getting killed or going insane. People want characters they can relate with, even if they’re monsters! They want action. Romance. Triumph over adversity! You should look up this thing called the Hero’s Journey. Might learn a thing or two!

Anyway, the bottom line is, people aren’t tuning in for what you’re writing. They’re tuning out. You’ve got a week to write a winner before we see if an AI can’t do a better job. I don’t want to do it, it’s just business. Good luck.[/i]

With an ultimatum like that hanging over his head, Khalid languished on his couch for a few minutes longer. The letter left him terribly embittered, of course, but outrage wouldn’t get him anywhere, and he’d swallowed plenty of bitter pills before. Unfortunately, every attempt to push forward just left him spinning in place. Truth be told, he wasn’t the best writer, and his lack of worldly experience was always going to bite him sooner or later. His unusual studies afforded him a wealth of insight into abnormality, but purple prose, granular details, and cosmic horror weren’t what people wanted–at least, not from someone like him. Above all, he needed characters, situations, and [i]stories[/i] people could relate to. The monsters weren’t the problem; plenty of people could relate to monsters. In the creatures of the night they saw themselves, unwanted outcasts whose flaws and isolation could be romanticized. But try as he might, Khalid just couldn’t leverage his actual talents to write something the casual horror enthusiast would actually [i]enjoy[/i]. And now he’d be replaced by a computer program, regurgitating a thoroughly digested slurry of other writers’ work. Unbelievable.

As he tried to think of a solution, the thin man’s eyes landed on his companion. He performed such checks compulsively, since the price of negligence was disproportionately steep, but luckily his roommate was right where Khalid left it: a half-melted heap of oozy, mercurial organic matter the size of a corgi, bathing like a lizard beneath its heat lamps. He stood from his couch and walked over for a more thorough checkup, grateful for the momentary distraction. As he watched, the thing distended itself, its gelatinous mass manifesting a number of limbs and wide-open mouths, stretching and yawning like some kind of eldritch cat. A half-dozen eyes blinked open before the mass began to move the man’s way, rolling and slithering and dragging itself through the pen.

Khalid pursed his lips, reached down for the spray bottle of alchemical tranquilizer serum, and spritzed the thing just to be sure. It stopped, stiffened for a moment, then lazily sank back into place. This Shoggoth -which Khalid liked to call Horace- was the only reason he could be here to begin with, living and studying in this place of providence that allowed him to subsist off his meager and insulting salary. A combination of clever legalese and magical resistance had gained him entry, but as far as any of the actual monsters in this bizarre apartment complex knew, there was no distinction between ‘Horace’ and ‘Khalid’. There was only the Shoggoth, a reclusive but intellectual and flawless shapeshifter, of whom any independent entity was merely a temporarily separated portion. It was an illusion that Khalid was careful -desperate, in fact- to maintain.

Unfortunately, that posed issues for his current predicament. So far, he’d managed to drum up exactly one idea of how to solve his problem, and it did not inspire much confidence. Still, he didn’t have the luxury of time when it came to deliberation. So far, he’d walked a fine line when it came to dealing with the complex’s other residents, simultaneously keeping his distance and taking refuge in audacity. The place had plenty of monsters who looked -or could look- human, after all, and none commanded his irrefutable, nigh-encyclopedic knowledge. Thanks to both prior study and recent discrete observation, he might know more about these supernatural beings than they knew about themselves.

But now, he would have to take a more hands-on approach and actually talk to them, in order to learn about these monsters as people and get the relatable storytelling he so desperately needed, sourced from a reality stranger than fiction.

After deciding on his course of action, Khalid got ready quickly. He showered, shaved, and dressed himself, all with his characteristic sharpness. If he aspired to be professional, after all, might as well look the part. Then he loaded up his satchel with his various study materials, texts, and laptop, and finally coaxed Horace into its heated compartment with the aid of a trowel. After that, he slipped out of his apartment and made his way through the quiet halls of the complex’s sparsely-populated third building, headed for its dedicated restaurant. Soon after arrival, he’d worked out an arrangement with the staff there in order to satisfy the Shoggoth’s needs. Though its appetite demanded great quantities of food, its lack of pickiness meant that yesterday’s stale leftovers were more than enough to satiate a living garbage disposal like that. While his little friend got to work enveloping and absorbing a bin full of leftovers, Khalid sat himself down at one of the many empty tables with a more palatable breakfast of his own, where he opened his laptop and began to design business cards for his new enterprise.

[center][i]AL-AZIF SHOGGOTH THERAPY
Are you anxious or depressed?
Struggle with the outside world or inner turmoil?
Feel lost, confused, or worthless?
Or just want to talk to an ultra-rare monster?
Consider Al-Azif Shoggoth Therapy. You’ll be greeted with a welcoming, considerate, patient, and impartial counselor who will gladly listen to all your problems, doubts, fears, whatever you feel like sharing. All in an effort to spark self-reflection and encourage self-love. If a Shoggoth can become anything, I hope I can become your friend.
Shoggoth Therapy - Not morphous, less fuss![/i][/center]

Eh…that tagline might need some work. But once settled on a design for his card, Khalid could drop by the front desk later to ask that a number be printed out, so that he could begin to distribute them among the monsters of Umbra Rose Condos and get the ball rolling on his grand plan. First, though, the cards would need to be perfect.