The chapter opens with a flashback to New York City, where the narrator is working as a detective on a case involving a man who took out a sixty-five thousand dollar loan to start a pastry shop. The man is now dead, and the narrator has no idea what happened to him. He asks the man if he's here to harass him, or worse, to take off his pants and his lounge on his couch. He tells the man to get some sleep, but the man doesn't seem to want to go to sleep. He's excited to see green monsters, and he tells the guy that they're messengers, and that they should honor him by dying for "the god of battle" . The narrator is bummed that he can't get to sleep, because he wants to meet some guys to deliver a message. He wants to know if the door to the underworld is locked, and if there's anyone there who's soft enough to get dragged away by a " leprechaun or whatever" , but he knows it's not even in the "ashenlands," so he asks the guy to tie him up. He also wants to find out if the sheriff is there. The sheriff tells him that they were attacked by a metal-mender, and they need to bring him the scuzz. He says he'll break both of his arms and give him his demands, on a scroll held up in his teeth. The goblins are stupid, ugly, and smell like "a dead swamp sow," and the darkness was rejected by the goblins. The chapter ends with a discussion of the "envy of the night," which refers to the fact that the dark and the light are not entirely separate entities.