Metaphorical Monkey

Doug looked ahead through his car windscreen at the house that was coming into view around a bend in the road. He sighed, he doubted whether this was the location of the client who had called him about the problem with a complex dual processor. The house looked old and decrepit but it shared the same house number as the client, he had probably just not got the right road. He was sure this couldn’t be a hub of groundbreaking technological research. Perhaps someone was in he could ask for directions he thought.

He approached the wooden gate leading into the garden then left his foot on the clutch as he rolled the car down the slope in front of the house, parking where the driven track ended halfway along the garden. He turned off the engine and stepped out of the car. He was a smartly dressed middle-aged man in a plain grey suit with a matching grey hat and smart black shoes. He locked the door, out of habit from living in London not for fear of burglary in this backwater part of the countryside, and then strode up the overgrown garden. It was clear from his heavy graceless walk that he was tired of something as if the weight of the world was physically bearing down on him and in many ways it was. He was a bored and joyless man who was just existing and no more. He lurched along and looked down at his shoes which had quickly become caked in mud, he wasn’t upset, he just thought he should be, but it was just another thing in life he just observed like a fish looking out of bowl. As he reached the large oak door he rang the bell and a cacophony arose within the house sounding like an orchestra was on hand to introduce each guest to this odd place. He did smile though, as it was the ride of the Valkyries, and the absurdity of the bell brought a flicker of interest into his life that he had not felt for months.

The last time was when he had seen a monkey break onto the football pitch at Highbury, near to where he lived, during play. He was sitting in the front row near the corner of the pitch by a sign advertising a new football boot called wings. Suddenly a Monkey had appeared behind the goal nearest him surrounded by a pile of clothes and had then darted up onto the crossbar to grab a hat and watch the spectacle on the pitch. No one knew where he’d come from and the security personnel at Arsenal were powerless to get him as they waited for play to end before they could apprehend the unusual intruder. All but one of the players failed to notice the creature except the Arsenal goalie who was trying to shoo it away while play was at the other end. It squawked at him knowingly. Then during a rapid counter attack the away team, Tottenham, broke free and the striker who had passed the last defended flashed a look at the goal from 30 foot out and seeing a real opportunity shot as the goalie was distracted by something. He then realised as the ball sailed toward the goal that there was some object on the crossbar. The ball by some strange twist of fate struck the monkey and killed him instantly. The surprised goalie picked up the ball that had landed by his feet and then heard the referee’s whistle to stop play. As he looked from the ball up to the still monkey hanging limp on the crossbar it was clear to him it had died. Strange as all this was what really woke Doug up from the numbness of his life was what the monkey had done just before it had died. It had struggled with it’s arm’s like they were stuck to the crossbar and then looked straight at him with an expression of understanding and sympathy as if it knew it’s fate and could see someone who shared it before he was smacked in the face by the leather ball. This had awoken Doug to a higher purpose to his life but he wasn’t sure what it was yet, either way he admired the monkey for living more fully in such a brief moment than he had in a lifetime. The creature then disappeared, which caused people to think it was some kind of Arsenal conspiracy to stop Tottenham scoring but he wasn’t fooled. He felt there was some kind of philosophical conundrum and answer behind this lesson but he had no clue what this could be.

The door opened and a small old man with dishevelled white hair looked up at him.

“Ah, you’ve come at last, the computer is in the cellar, follow me if you would be so kind.” Doug looked at the little fellow shuffle down the hall and then started walking after him. The figure disappeared into a dark door under the stairs and then a voice trailed up.

“I can’t figure out what’s the matter with it. It’s been working fine since it was installed last week but I can’t seem to get it to work now.”

Doug followed the voice into the cellar and saw a large cylindrical chamber like a shower unit but without any of the implements, just an encased chamber.

“It’s a machine designed to manipulate the atoms of a man so that they retain their abilities but become almost as light as air, I’ve already designed some lightweight human wing attachments and so far it has worked successfully on all the animals I’ve tried so far.”

Doug looked around and saw that the only caged animals that seemed to be in various stages of testing were all birds. The old man had made birds fly. Doug’s eye twitched.

“I’ve always been interested in flying and I managed to get the procedure to work wonderfully but it has had some side-effects which are most strange”

Doug looked at the back of the frazzled white-haired head and then decided it was best to look for the problem so he could go home and have a cup of tea. As he looked at the implements the old man was playing with he could see that they weren’t responding so he decided to follow procedure and look for a root cause to the problem first. He looked around the back of the instruments and they were plugged in. He then changed the fuse but still nothing. Then he decided to see if the circuit was complete and he followed the leads out of the unit into the chamber. Then after a short while of looking around the chamber he looked inside and noticed a partially disconnected cable inside. He stepped inside crouched down toward the cable and then pushed it in. The door suddenly slammed shut with a loud clanking thud and then he heard a whirring noise. He pulled the cable back out but nothing happened, he then got up and started banging on the window but the old man either couldn’t hear him or was ignoring him. He was writing something down on a desk by the instruments. Then he stood up and walked over to the window and held up a piece of paper.

“I’m sorry to trick you into going in there but I had to try it on a human to test something, don’t worry though, you should enjoy it!”

Doug’s eye twitched again then he slowly sat down on the floor. Suddenly there was a flash of brilliant white then the whirring noise started to fade like a car engine powering down after a long drive. Doug stood up and was a bit confused when he bounced off the roof of the chamber. He then floated down and regained his footing. The chamber opened and the old man was smiling at him in a chirpy way. Doug went straight for his throat and as the old man gasped in shock he pushed up and away at Doug and Doug helplessly floated up to the rafters of the cellar and got tangled in the beams. The old man coughed and then catching his breath went into a cupboard and brought out a massive fishing net on a long poll and started trying to catch Doug. Doug evaded him by pushing off the rafters towards the door but couldn’t open it as it had been locked. He then felt the net clasp over him and then he was being pulled along over the old man’s shoulder helpless to get away.

The old man took him up another set of stairs leading out through another door in the ceiling. Doug who had now got used to the dark after the flash of white was then squinting again as he was dragged out of the cellar and into the light of the garden. He was pulled along and then put in a green house.

“You see the problem was that I could always get the birds weightless but then they always disappeared and then they’d turn up hidden somewhere nearby a minute later as some strange kind of dead lizard which looked like it had been degrading for months. But I’d never noticed it in that spot before but they had definitely been there and degrading for months. It was like they had been swapped for some sort of biological ancestor who had been long dead. Weird eh? But you haven’t gone anywhere so it must work with humans. Anyway you should have no problem flying now you just need to put on the wings. Doug was then emptied out of the net and found he was inside a small greenhouse. He rattled on the windows and glass door but he couldn’t escape.

“Put on the wings and then I’ll let you go”.

Doug saw no escape so he put on the wings, which were a device that felt like putting on swimming arm-bands with kite’s on them painted to look like they had white feathers on them.

“Do you like them” the frazzled old man said, “I made them by sticking some kite’s onto a pair of swimming arm-bands.”

Suddenly the roof opened and Doug was shot out by a springing platform below him. He soared out into the sky and was amazed to find himself flying. He was laughing at this before he started to think and then he felt sick at what a freakish thing had happened to him. He decided to get home so he could call for help to punish this devilish little man. He flapped his wings and was amazed at how fast he could propel himself. The old man shouted good-luck to him just before Doug was out of earshot and then Doug was away. He looked down at the ground and then recognising the highway in the distance headed straight for it, it led straight to North London and he could be home in hour at this speed.

After about 40 minutes he realised he was nearly home. He started to descend and then there was another flash as he popped out of existence briefly and then returned exactly where he was, weir he thought. As he landed he noticed something strange. The news on the TV was running a story that had been big news months ago, he then walked over to a newspaper stand to ask the man standing behind the stall for help but Doug realised he couldn’t see him. Neither could anyone else on the street he went up to shake a man walking by on his phone but his arm went straight through him. Doug looked down at the newspaper and he had somehow gone back in time, either that or this was an elaborate trick. He started to breathe hard and then rose into the air to try to calm down away from the busy street. Then he thought he noticed that his arms were smaller, they were and they were getting hairy too. He sped up to get home. He was almost there perhaps he could find some way to help himself. Then he looked below and realised he was above Highbury and there was a match on. He also saw that the wings no longer fitted on his arms and they fell off floating away like kite’s on a breeze as he drifted down to pitch inside the large stadium heading to a spot behind one of the goals. When he landed and looked at his chest. He was completely covered in dark black hair now. He scrambled out of his clothes which had become a pile around him, being too big for him now and realised his mind was rapidly slipping away and changing like his body had and he was becoming more ape-like every second, the people could also see him now. Then he saw his hat hanging on the roof of the goal net by the crossbar and with some remaining semblance of human memory he darted up after what seemed a very important object. Then hanging on the crossbar wondering why some man with gloves was flapping in front of him making lots of noise he squawked a reproach at the clearly unreasonable figure. Then with a hat in one hand and the crossbar in the other he looked across the pitch and saw a man in a white shirt look up and kick a ball in his direction. Then a vague memory crossed his mind and he looked across to the corner of the pitch. He saw a man looking at him who stirred a memory of recognition in him and he felt a compassionate understanding for the sorry figure. Then he turned to look back and confront his fate.