Monkey Maids: or, the Roommate/Primate Experiment; Pt. 5

I woke up at 10:00, confused that I hadn’t been awakened by the morning calls of the monkeys. Maybe I’d been drunker than I thought last night. But still, the apartment seemed quiet. Even when they were sleeping there was usually some noise from the monkeys, snoring or scratching or just moving around in their sleep. Something was wrong. The feeling in my gut told my brain it was true.

I bolted upward and threw open the bedroom door. The tamarin squeaked from the pillow as harsh light poured in from the living room, where the bay window let in the morning light. I was blinded for a moment by the brightness, and surprised; the living room windows were usually curtained. When I lowered my arm, I realized that the curtains had been torn down during the night and one of the windows was smashed out, letting in a flood of light.

And there was blood. All over the walls and the floor and the windows. All over everything. And fur. And the capuchin, and the female spider monkey, sitting alone in the midst of it all, grinning at me and picking the meat off of what I knew from their size and shape had to be the finger bones of the male spider monkey. The capuchin, his face and hands covered in blood, had a firm hold on a very battered and bruised star fruit.

I stared at him for a moment. He was pleased with himself, cooing softly as he held the star fruit over his head to show me. The female spider monkey grinned dully, not so aware of what she had done as her counterpart.

I lost it. “You bastard! You fucking bastard!” The capuchin screeched and jumped to his feet, the star fruit held high. The spider monkey cooed and grinned at me as I launched myself forward, screaming. I caught the capuchin in the jaw, hard, and he flew into the air. The star fruit launched out of his hand, and as if in slow motion, I saw tiny droplets of blood shake loose from his fur.

His head hit the wall behind him, not very hard but hard enough to hurt. He slumped down onto the carpet and rubbed his head, looking confused. The female spider monkey whimpered and looked from him to me and back again. Then, very slowly, she reached out and picked up the star fruit from where it had fallen. When the capuchin didn’t pay any attention, too busy rubbing his head and deciding what to do, she quietly moved to the window sill and started to eat it.

The capuchin looked up at me with wide eyes, scratched its head again, and got to his feet. He looked around for a moment, then stumped over to me dizzily and wrapped his arms around my legs. The tamarin on my shoulder gibbered wildly and climbed onto my head, desperate to get away from the stink of murder. I looked down at the capuchin.

“Why would you do that, man? All of them? All of them? Even the little cute ones? I can’t believe you, man. The star fruit’s not worth it!” With that I gestured toward the star fruit, which was quickly disappearing into the spider monkey’s mouth. The capuchin followed my hand with his eyes, noticing the smell of the fruit between her teeth. Immediately, he lost his composure. With a terrible squeal he let go of my now blood-stained legs and tore across the room to the windowsill.

The spider monkey hooted wildly and stuffed the rest of the fruit into her mouth, then, in a motion far defter than I thought a concussed monkey could perform, she jumped through the hole in the window and was gone, no doubt in a mirror of how some of the others had escaped the blood-bath inside. The capuchin screamed and jumped out after her, into the mid-day sunshine.
I heard a noise from behind me and turned to see Liz and the squirrel monkey standing still in the doorway to the living room. Liz’s mouth and eyes were wide open and the monkey was shaking in terror on her shoulder, the carnage spread out on the floor between us like a furry red carpet.

I looked down at my blood-smeared legs, then back up at Liz. We stood, staring at each other and blinking in the sunlight, barefoot, with our last two monkeys on our shoulders.