Elisabeth R. Lewis

“ Everything was so normal. Listening to Bing Crosby, how could you believe in things like green monsters? In this sane, prosaic atmosphere, Ellen thought, I must be batty.
She said to herself, "I'm Ellen Tighe, bookkeeper, and I just saw the body of a green man with claws on his feet...." No, that didn't help a bit. Put it this way: "I'm Ellen Tighe and I'm 27 years old and I'm not married. Let's face it, any psychiatrist will tell you that's enough cause for neurosis. So I'm having delusions." ”

“ Maybe the cat had something to do with it. The bartender said the thing ate a mouse—maybe it had tried to eat the cat, too. A monster like that might eat anything. Her stomach started churning again at the thought.
But what was it doing in the incinerator chute? Someone in the building must have put it there, thinking it would slide all the way down and be burned up. Who? One of them, probably. But there couldn't be any more green monsters around. They can't live in an apartment house, walk the streets like anyone else, not even in this neighborhood. ”

“ Nevertheless, it was an ordeal to walk up the two blocks from Market Street, particularly at night when the noise of juke boxes dinned from the garish bars, when the sidewalks spilled over with soldiers and sailors, with peroxided, blowsy-looking women and the furtive gamblers who haunted the back rooms of the innocent-appearing cigar stores that lined the street. ”