"What do you want for it?" inquired Thompson craftily.
"Nothing," responded the vision.
"Oh yes," said Thompson. "Nothing. Certainly. Well," he withdrew a stack of typewriter paper from his cluttered desk, "I certainly thank you fellows. Goodbye." He inserted a sheet in the typewriter.
"Oh, we're not leaving," said the off-color gnome.
"You will," said Thompson imperturbably. "In the morning. I'll have a headache but you'll be gone."
"Suit yourself," said the green man. He and his companions rose a foot in the air and sat suspended again. Thompson began to type. Now and then he looked at the green men and smiled, and turned back to his click-clacking on the typewriter.
Twenty double-spaced pages later he was done. He made a neat stack of the sheets and shoved them into an envelope, handily pre-addressed to the editorial offices of one of the more prominent magazines. He sealed the envelope and slapped postage on it. Then he walked three flights down from his apartment to the street, slipped the envelope into a mailbox, and staggered back up to bed.
He awoke, true to his prediction, with a raging headache. He sat up in bed and looked around the room for the little green men. They were nowhere to be seen. His doubts assuaged, he rose stiffly from his bed and careened off the chest-of-drawers into the bathroom, where he swallowed three aspirins in a glass of water. He turned on the water to see if it was hot, letting it run over his fingers. It was. He took a steaming shower and followed it with an icy one. Then he rubbed himself down with a Turkish towel and, the towel precariously wrapped around his middle, went back into the bedroom. His eyes bugged out and he tripped on the edge of the rug and fell heavily to the floor. When he got up four green men were still sitting complacently on a shaft of sunlight that poured in through the Venetian blind.
Thompson's mouth opened and closed but nothing came out.