The Lieblings

Sleep Is For Sheep

The Lieblings

By Thomas Zimmerman

Read by Ellium Roberts

It is December 1981, and a garbage worker strike has crippled New York City. The streets are a maze of festering heaps of trash.

Arthur Gull, a germaphobe undergoing treatment at the Reiniger Clinic, lives in an opulent penthouse in Greenwich Village, high above the chaos. When the trash strike hits, he invites Elfi Diederich, an enigmatic woman from his therapy group, to stay with him in his pristine apartment. Arthur is enamored with Elfi despite her delusional belief in Lieblings, a race of tiny goblins that dwell in the messes humans leave behind.

Each night after sundown, Elfi teaches Arthur to spot the Lieblings on the streets below through the apartment’s floor-to-ceiling windows. To his horror, he begins seeing the creatures as well, cavorting through mountains of black plastic trash bags on the sidewalks. Soon, the air thickens with a putrid stench, and the apartment walls seem to pulse with unseen life. Are The Lieblings real, or are they a product of Arthur's unraveling mind?