He gained consciousness in the familiar confines of his apartment. He knew it was his because he could see the banister to his bedroom loft and the burgundy accent wall above him. But that was where the familiarity ended...He pulled himself to his feet.
"Ow." He played gingerly at the tender spot on top of his head: a spot covered by hair matted with dried blood - apparently his own. Because opening his eyes caused him pain, he squinted through narrowly separated eyelids at his surroundings. He groaned at the top of one of his home theater speakers poking out of the screen of his high def television. His green leather sofa, loveseat and lounger were in turn, toppled, ripped and...
"What the hell is that", he muttered, spitting out small strands of hair…or fur?
As he got closer he identified the smeared matter on the lounger as feces. Upon closer inspection, the overpowering smell which struck him like a blow confirmed the matter smeared on his walls as poop, up to about 4 feet from the carpet.
"Oh my God!"
"As he got closer he identified the smeared matter on the lounger as feces."
His carpet had been beige. The carpet he beheld now was a burnt umber-hued brown. Not only that; it was being jostled by the currents of the slowly spinning ceiling fan. It eddied languorously then settled…thousands of individual fibers.
He brought his scratched and soiled hand to his blood-stained lips and removed a like strand from under his tongue. It appeared to be fur. His back stiffened slowly. Dread washed upon him as he felt the blood drain from his ears and his neck flushed.
"Please no", he begged, though he already knew.
"Dread washed upon him as he felt the blood drain from his ears and his neck flushed. "
Slowly he turned. It was a laborious turn of the head, as he trained his diminished gaze upon the spot where his $10,000.00 drum kit had been. His dining room had become a drummer's shrine over the months he had lived there. Now the shrine was 4 feet of smeared feces and an impressionist sculpture of bristling drum sticks protruding from a wall made jagged and angry with broken cymbals, twisted boom stands, and deformed die-cast hoops. The fur blanketed floor welcomed the splintered spiny remains of cherry maple lacquered drum shells. In the center of the debris field was the bottom quarter circle and spiked legs of the 20 inch bass drum gently cradling a carefully deposited pile of poop.
He would have fallen to his knees had it not been for the liberally strewn mixture of feces and what had been the contents of his refrigerator at every available spot on his fur-bearing floor. As tears streamed down his cheeks, he made his way towards the front door. If only he could get outside into the fresh air; back to a semblance of the familiar; the sane! His bare feet…his shoes had been removed too…squished and sloshed as he staggered down the hall.
The door was ajar. Silhouetted in the grey light of the approaching sunrise was a squat wooden….Then it came back to him.
"Take me off your list you dick!"
His week had started like any other. Monday was always a drag. A weekend of heavy drinking and over-eating had endowed him with a sickly pallor and a reluctant wit. His main goal was coffee and feigned work behind the antiquated monitor at his place – a grey carpeted cubicle with a grey Formica desk over grey steel drawers housing the impersonal office supplies which bore testimony to the nomadic nature of his job and the listless vagrants who had made that cubicle a temporary home before he had stopped in.
'Downtime: please no calls now,' he thought.
The screen displayed a single line and his headset crackled with a 'hello.'
He summoned his best happy voice:
"Hi, does the idea of saving 50 to 75 percent on your utility bills interest you? (no pause) Of course it does. That's why I wanted to call you personally with an incredible offer…"
"Take me off your list you dick!"
This was his life? He had hoped the classroom training, last week, would never end. But it did. This was the hell for which he had prepared. There was no way he could last through Friday. No way!
But he did. Every day dawned with dread and dusked with despair. Was it too much to ask for a little fun? On Friday he did what anyone would do. He deposited his financial largess in his bank and went home to his sanctuary apartment and got on the phone. He needed some fun so, by god, he would have it! When fun was not readily available you ordered it in.
The fun arrived in the form of a wooden barrel, delivered by two overall clad, beefy men. Each sported scruffy van dykes, presumably to mark where their chins would have been had they been thinner.
"Sign here". One of them said.
He scrawled his name hurriedly and shut the door on the behemoths.
Once alone, he wanted to move the barrel where the light was better: to release the steel bindings. Although he strained mightily, he could not budge the container one inch. He studied the situation for no more than a minute and decided the barrel would be more gainly if the contents were emptied.
He went to the kitchen and found his household hammer in the drawer next to the sink above the cabinet door that concealed his plastic ware. You know the one: where he kept old drink cups and disposable lidded containers bearing fast food logos.
He hurried back to the ponderous container and worked at the steel strap. Slowly he was able to coax the steel band above the flat lid. Finally he wedged the claw of the hammer under the lid, secured by black headed nails. He worked the hammer around the lid until only two nails held the lid secure.
He grinned expectantly as he said:
"What could be more fun than a barrel of monkeys?"
The top exploded suddenly and he was thrown back, falling to the beige carpeted floor. With a cacophony of screams that made the welkin ring a flood of brown furry creatures boiled out of the barrel.
"The top exploded suddenly and he was thrown back, falling to the beige carpeted floor."
What he knew about a barrel of monkeys would be put to the test this night! The emerging primates seemed to have answers of their own to his many questions.
As the multitudes of fingered feet trampled him as they made good their escape he thought:
'Why would someone want to barrel monkeys? Further, who came up with the idea to do so? Did the fun meter tip depending upon the type of monkey? Were spider monkeys the optimum barrel occupant? Would a chimp be questionable or is the orangutan more agreeable with the confines of a barrel? Was a gorilla the revenge or practical joke method in the barreling community? It would seem that only one gorilla would fit.'
As the clamor heightened within his apartment he rose to join the riotous monkeys. He remembered no more than when he arrived at the point where the hallway entered the living room.
His last thought, as he slipped into the blackness of unconsciousness was that these particular monkeys didn't seem to be having much fun.
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