Veteran DCU character Jason Blood takes a bus to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, terrifying loft insulation salesman Harry Price by revealing that he knows all his dirty secrets and foretelling his upcoming death by swordfish impalement. Before checking into his hotel, he purchases a print of the 1799 etching, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Francisco de Goya, whom he claims to have known personally. He asks the proprietor whether he's recently sold any ouija boards, and learns that the store sold one six months ago. Blood finds that very item at an auction of goods from the home of a married couple who died, leaving their son institutionalized. He predicts that Bobby Corelli, the bidder who told him this, will soon be convicted of manslaughter.
Meanwhile, the Swamp Thing and Abby hang out in the bog. When he notes that Matt has stopped visiting, she hints at marital troubles but feels her new job, at the Elysium Lawns Center for Autistic Children, may improve things. There follows a Flashback to her interview the previous day, when her supervisor-to-be, Deanna, introduced her to some of the children. One of them, Paul, a six-year-old orphan, made a particular impression on Abby by demanding she spell her name. Deanna showed her his drawings and captions, in which he stresses that it's important to spell everything correctly or the "Monkey King" will kill you.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the intensity of kids like Paul, Abby accepts the job offer. This displeases Matt, whose drinking has gotten worse, rendering him lazy and bad-tempered. When she brushes off his claim that she's been neglecting him sexually, and steps out to go shopping in Baton Rouge, he uses his power to make her just-discarded clothes take on her shape. Then he orders "Abby" to kneel and apologize.
There follows another flashback to three months ago, showing Paul's parents playing around with a ouija board and unintentionally summoning a monster which literally frightened them to death, then headed upstairs to Paul's bedroom and—nuzzled and kissed him. Given the monster's resemblance in Paul's later drawings, it's clear he's the Monkey King.
Meanwhile, as the Swamp Thing has a nightmare about Alec Holland's accident and wakes with a premonition of imminent horror, Blood uses the ouija board. The planchette spells out the very same magic words that it did for Paul's parents. Although the Monkey King doesn't appear then and there, Blood realizes that's how it had entered the "world of sanity and reason" in the first place.
Abby, on a main street in Baton Rouge, watches in horror as Bobby and Selena Corelli, on their way home from the auction, accidentally kill Harry Price when the giant swordfish Selena purchased comes loose from their car roof and impales him—at exactly the time Blood had foretold. In tears, Abby makes her way through the crowd, only for Blood to call her by name, introduce himself and tell her they have "much to discuss."
That night, at Elysium Lawns, the resummoned Monkey King manifests in Paul's room and affectionately but silently implores him to tell him what to do. Receiving no answer, the monster visits the other children's rooms one by one and, though without killing them, feeds on their individual fears.
Tropes:
- The Ageless: Jason Blood met the late-eighteenth-century artist Goya personally and saw his preliminary sketches for The Sleep of Reason. (He is in fact, as longtime DC readers know, far older than that, going back to Arthurian times.)
- The Alcoholic: Matt now does nothing but sit around all day drinking, pestering Abby for sex, and using his Reality Warper power as a private outlet for his frustration.
- Asshole Victim: Harry Price. As Blood reveals, he's a Drunk Driver who permanently disabled his wife in an accident while walking away unscathed, and now openly fools around with five different women, heedless of her feelings. He even tries, moments before his death, to pick up Abby.
- Cassandra Truth: Neither the police nor the hospital staff nor the Elysium Lawns staff believe Paul when he tells them about the Monkey King.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Although Breakout Character John Constantine's first official appearance isn't until Issue 37, here in Issue 25, as Abby makes her way through the crowd, there's a background character, who strongly resembles Constantine, glancing sidelong at her. Penciller Stephen Bissette, in his introduction to a later collected edition, explained that he and inker John Totleben inserted him there simply because they're fans of Sting. So Moore subsequently created for them a character who also resembled Sting.
- Contrived Coincidence: Harry's death is the outcome of a highly improbable (if deliberately so, given Moore's fondness for Black Comedy) chain of events. Bobby and Selena Corelli attend an auction to buy lawn chairs. Selena, who doesn't like the chairs, instead decides to buy, of all things, a giant decorative swordfish. Bobby, caught up in bickering with his wife as they drive off, doesn't pay attention to the road, and when Selena screams at him to look out, he happens to screech to a halt right in the path of Harry, who's just come to a stop on the sidewalk. At that very moment, the rope securing the swordfish gives way, and bye-bye Harry. All so that Blood's prediction at the story's beginning can come true.
- Emotion Eater: The Monkey King feeds on fear.
- Evil Laugh: Blood lets out one of these, even though he isn't actually evil, more Good Is Not Nice.Abby: Who the hell are you?
Blood: Who the Hell indeed! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA- Earlier, Blood gives thirteen dollars to a priest collecting for charity, and "laugh[s] for a full minute."
- Hollywood Law: Blood foretells that Bobby Corelli will end up in jail for manslaughter. In fact, in Louisiana (and generally in American criminal law) his offence would more likely be negligent homicide. The difference? Manslaughter, within this legal context, is homicide committed in the heat of sudden passion and loss of self-control and reflection. Negligent homicide, within this legal context, is the killing of a person without criminal intent, but resulting from the failure to meet reasonable standards of care under the circumstances. Such as, let's say, transporting a giant swordfish, with its bill unsheathed, on top of your car, without securing it adequately.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Corellis' negligence results in Price meeting the business end of a swordfish.
- Kneel Before Zod: Played with. Matt, unable to get his way with Abby, instead makes her clothes kneel before him and "apologize." He also generates a monster on either side of his chair, as though he were an enthroned Evil Overlord able to intimidate his wife into subservience.
- Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: The first of Paul's drawings is innocuous enough: a self-portrait with a caption about the importance of spelling. The second drawing, however, graphically depicts the Monkey King tearing him apart for spelling incorrectly. The third shows him painfully biting a boy in his spelling group, in order to stop him from accidentally summoning the monster.
- Ouija Board: The tool through which Paul's parents summon the Monkey King, even though they think of it at the outset as a fun pastime and Jenny in particular doesn't take it seriously. Blood later uses the same board to summon the monster, however, being a skilled mage, he does so with due solemnity and ritual. This presumably explains why the Monkey King doesn't appear before him, let alone terrorize or kill him.
- Seers: Blood can effortlessly read the past and future of people he's just met.
- Serious Business: Correct spelling is this, for Paul. "It is very important to spell the right way," he writes. "If you do not spell well, nobody has a job for you. Also, the Monkey King will come and that's it!! And you are dead forever!" He goes on to write that he bit a boy in his spelling group to stop him from spelling a word wrong. (Paul had eavesdropped on the Ouija game that summoned the Monkey King. The participants had speculated that the mystical words were misspelled English words just before the creature manifested, so the boy assumed the Monkey King appeared because it was angered by bad spelling.)
- Shout-Out:
- The occult shop displays a record single by the Sinister Ducks, a real band with which Moore recorded the 1983 novelty number, "March of the Sinister Ducks
." - Jason's arrival in Baton Rouge and foretelling the bizarre death of the first person he meets is phrased almost identically to Woland's introductory scene in The Master and Margarita.
- The occult shop displays a record single by the Sinister Ducks, a real band with which Moore recorded the 1983 novelty number, "March of the Sinister Ducks
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Now that he realizes he doesn't need to breathe, the Swamp Thing can stay underwater indefinitely. This comes in handy when he plays Creature from the Black Lagoon with Abby.
- You Can't Fight Fate: In the issue's opening scene, Blood refuses Price's business card, saying it'll be of no use to him as Price will die that evening. "There is nothing to be done. It is written."
