Seize the Night

its brethren, not with another whine, but with a fierce growl that dispelled my cozy notion that all the monkeys were too spooked to linger here. The growler, at least, was not intimidated, and it sounded tough enough to ensure the discipline of the other two.
    The three proceeded deeper into the kitchen, past the broom closet, and out of my line of sight. They seemed to be full of trepidation, but they were no longer inhibited by the noisy flooring.
    A second squad, also composed of three members and also revealed only by their eye shine, entered the room. They paused to survey the unpierceable darkness, and one by one they looked in my direction without any indication that they detected me.
    From elsewhere in the kitchen arose the continuous crackle of the brittle linoleum. I heard a scrabbling and a thump, noises no doubt made by one of the first three monkeys as it climbed onto a counter.
    The button on my cap was pressed so firmly between the crown of my head and the shelf above me that I felt as though God's thumb was thrust against my scalp in a not so subtle announcement that my number was up, my ticket punched, my dime dropped, my license to live revoked.
    If I could have hunched down an inch or two, the pressure would have been relieved, but I was afraid that even with the monkeys making a racket, I would still be heard as my back and shoulders slid along the walls of the narrow closet. Besides, the twitching nerve in my leg had quickly evolved into a mild cramp, as I had feared that it would, even a minor change in my position might contract the calf muscle and cause the pain to flare into intolerable agony.
    A member of the second squad began to move slowly toward me, its bright eyes sliding nervously from side to side while it felt its way through the cloying murk. As the clever little beast approached, I could hear it rhythmically slapping its right hand against the wall to keep itself oriented.
    In another corner of the room, rusted hinges squeaked. One of the shiplap doors banged shut, its loose joints rattling.
    Evidently, they were opening the cabinets and fumbling blindly inside.
    I had hoped that they would not be intelligent enough to conduct a thorough search or, conversely, that they would be too intelligent to endanger themselves by poking blindly into places where an armed man might be waiting to blast them to monkey hell. They were smart enough to be thorough, all right, but too reckless to be as cautious as the situation required. From past encounters, I had already known all this about them, but having jammed myself into the broom coffin, having regretted doing so almost as soon as I was encased, I'd been in denial.
    The wall slapper was still coming toward me, no more than three feet away. Its eyes continued to blaze at the gloom on all sides of it, not just at me.
    More hinges squeaked. A warped cabinet door stuttered open with some resistance, and another door banged shut.
    The cramp in my calf abruptly became more severe. Hot. Sharp.
    I clenched my teeth to keep from groaning. I had a headache, too, The cap button felt as if it had been pressed all the way through my skull, into my brain, and had begun working its way out through my right eye.
    My neck ached. My scrunched shoulders didn't feel too good, either.
    I had a nagging pain in the small of my back, a spot of tenderness in the gum at an upper right molar, a queasy feeling that I was developing serious hemorrhoids at the tender age of twenty-eight, and was in general feeling pretty much, you know, blah.
    The wall slapper stopped slapping the wall when it reached the corner and discovered the cabinetry. It was directly in front of me now.
    I was almost four feet taller than this monkey, and a hundred twenty pounds heavier. Though it was unnervingly intelligent, I was a lot smarter than it. Nevertheless, I gazed down at it with dread and loathing, cringing inwardly, with no less repulsion and fear for my life than I would have felt if this had been a demon risen straight from Hell.
    It is easy to make jokes about the troop when you are at a comfortable distance from them. Yet a close encounter reduces you to primal fear, fills you with a heart-chilling sense of the alien , and infuses the waking world with that acutely real yet simultaneously surreal atmosphere of your most horrific nightmares.
    The sympathy I'd had for them earlier was still with me, markedly diminished, but I couldn't feel the pity at all. Good.
    Judging by