Monkey Shines

         The internet marveled at the viral video that swept the globe. “Monkey Shines”, the world's first monkey-operated car wash had just opened up in San Diego. The commercial that played on every smart phone from Russia to Tennessee featured the owner, Mr. Pookie, a rather smart monkey that speaking an unknown monkey-language as the camera panned around the car wash, showing a team of highly trained simians washing a car with squeegees and shammies. The final shot featured Pookie high-fiving a customer then giving a thumbs up to the camera. Luckily, they had a deaf graphic designer create captions reading, “Monkey Shines Car Wash” followed by the address, which they communicated to him via American Sign Language. The commercial went viral in less than a day as the world was eager to see this adorable team of Capuchins wash a car.

            The idea of the car wash came to Pookie when Cornish and Mary Lou Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Research Company had just shut down, putting many monkey test subjects out on the street. Work was hard at the company. They were treated like prisoners. The monkeys were paid mostly in bananas, but Pookie made the best of it and even meet his wife, Debra, there. When they were released, Pookie and Debra found that life in the outside world was a lot more harsh than they anticipated. It was mostly comprised of humans. They ran everything! Worse yet, they didn't accept bananas as a form of currency. Luckily, Bank of America jumped at the opportunity to help get the Pookie family into a nice home.

            With a mortgage and a high interest rate to worry about, (interest rate caps didn't apply to non humans), Pookie had to think of a way to make more money. He was working two jobs, one at Burger King, and the other testing air bags the hard way at a Ford production facility. Pookie figured he'd better become his own boss or wait until he developed encephalopathy from testing all those damn safety features. Then he'd have peace. Then he'd be dead and wouldn't have to worry about anything any more. Two years and three kids later, Pookie decided to open up a car wash.

            Things were going great at first, but Pookie noticed something peculiar. Most of the customers would try to buy their car washes with bananas. Of course, the worker monkeys would take the bananas, and after that Pookie couldn't turn down the offer of bananas as currency. He tried telling the workers to only take money, but they ignored him when the scrumptious, yellow fruit was dangled in front of their faces. More often than not, Pookie would take home a bag of bananas instead of a paycheck. After about a month, Debra had enough.

            “Bananas won't pay the bills.” Debra said as Pookie walked through the front door.

            “Jesus Christ, Debra. I just got home. I need time to decompress.”

            “We have a mortgage, and children that are malnourished because all they eat are God damned bananas!”

            “I know, and once the people at the car wash understand -”

            “They won't understand! Debra snapped. “You've tried everything. There are signs everywhere that tell them you only take cash or credit cards, and they still take advantage. Why won't you get it through your head that we are second class citizens in this world? The humans walk all over us and you just let them. I thought I married a fighter, but now I realize I married a loser.”

            Pookie was hurt. “Just get it all out. I still love you.”

            “I slept with Jeff.” Debra said with relative ease,  as if the pain of the revelation hit her softer than the burden of keeping the secret. Pookie was at a loss for words. He picked up his little briefcase, grabbed a banana from the night's haul, and left. Debra broke down to tears.

            Pookie went to a bar not far from the house. He sat down, placed his briefcase on the seat next to him, and flagged the Bartender. “What'll it be?” said the Bartender.

            “Surprise me.” Pookie sat in silence for the next few minutes as the Bartender mixed a drink. When the Bartender dropped off the special concoction, Pookie couldn't help but laugh. It was a banana daiquiri. “Life is funny.” Pookie thought, as he sipped the cool elixir of escapism.

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Unicorn Aphrodesiacs, Hobgoblin Meat, and Modernity

Magic is dead. There was no grand moment that signified the passing of the age of magic. No parade was held in memoriam of the magical forces which were once abundant, but now lost to the empty eons of progress. None of the Presidents, Kings, Dictators, or Ministers held tribute for the forgotten knowledge. There were no requiem bells, nor candle-lit vigils to honor the dead. Magic had suffered a slow, ungraceful defeat at the hands of human ingenuity.  

*** 

First, the Alchemists began to disappear. Really, it was the Environmental Protection Agency that put their practice out of favor. The EPA was lobbied heavily by Industrial Gold Mining Companies looking to put low level alchemists out of business. They argued that alchemy had little to no regulation when it came to gold wastewater disposal. The process of taking one metal and converting it into gold required millions of gallons of water to cool the metals and facilitate certain filtering techniques in order to sift out any remaining metals that were unable to fully convert into gold. The water would then become contaminated with radioactive materials and need to be disposed of properly. Most alchemists were making only modest profits and had the tendency to cut corners, such as negating the use of proper radioactive material disposal companies. Many alchemists took to dumping waste water wherever they felt like, often leading to the water seeping into ground water supplies and poisoning aquifers.  

Industrial Gold took local Alchemist Guilds to court, eventually convincing the courts and EPA that the guilds were dangerously unregulated. The EPA pushed forth new regulations that forced Alchemists to use expensive waste management techniques and safety precautions. These proved too costly for the average alchemist, and in a matter of years most were out of business. Since the Ancient Order of Alchemy relied on passing their knowledge verbally from generation to generation, (with the exception of a few incomplete and erroneous Wikipedia pages), the true knowledge of alchemy was lost to the ages. Industrial Gold remained immune to the harsh regulations imposed on the Alchemist Guild, due mostly to slipping a few gold bars in the robes of some high ranking magistrates in the EPA Department of Magicks and Environmental Responsibility. What seemed like a crusade by the state to punish environmental criminals was really a push by Industrial Gold to maintain the majority production of gold in the United States. 

*** 

After the alchemists disappeared, Industrial Gold was free to produce as much gold as it could without competition. They decided to amplify production ten-fold by utilizing cheaper labor forces. For thousands of years, dwarves were considered the standard worker for any form of mining operation: be it gold, silver, coal, palladium – dwarves knew how to produce the most precious metals in the fastest possible time. The dwarves’ proficiency with mining was impressive, and they knew it. Over the course of the Industrial Age, dwarves carved out a rock solid union that ensured proper wages in exchange for their talents. In fact, in the Technological Age it was widely thought that mining was one of the last industrial jobs that would be secure for magical creatures. Unfortunately, job security for the dwarves quickly proved to be more fleeting than originally thought.  

Modernity meant that big mining operations like Industrial Gold had to think globally. When Industrial Gold saw corporations like Walmart outsourcing manufacturing needs to third-world countries, they followed suit. Industrial Gold started employing trans-dimensional fairies to work in their gold mines. These fairies would work for considerably less than the wages demanded by the Dwarf Union workers. Less money payed to workers meant more could be hired which eventually worked out to Industrial Gold producing the same amount of gold as they were before, but at half the cost for labor. Since the fairies were technically citizens of the Enchanted Forest and not the United States, Industrial Gold was under no obligation to give full-time workers the same benefits that the dwarves received. The fairies were desperate to work for incredibly low wages as the Enchanted Forest was a land of extreme poverty. Feeling a strong need to catch up with the Western World, the fairies took their paychecks and never complained about the long hours, zero benefits, and rampant safety violations that now plagued the mines. 

The dwarves were stuck with nobody to help them, and no viable skills to translate into tech jobs. Many found low paying work in the service industry. Many others found drugs readily available to help them cope with the crushing agony of being a magical minority in lower-lower class American society. Soon, every mining operation in the country followed the example set by Industrial Gold and replaced their dwarves with cheap, fairy labor. The suicide and drug abuse rates skyrocketed throughout the dwarf community. The dwarf population was decimated in only a few short years.  

*** 

Religion played a major role in eliminating magic from schools. For many years, students were offered elective classes such as Alchemy, Herbology, Basic Spells, Ethical Treatment of Magical Creatures, etc. Religious parents were often offended by the subject material of such classes, even though the courses were entirely voluntary for students who wanted to further pursue such fields. As parents gathered more sway with the school board and lawsuits became more frequent, federal funding for middle and high schools that offered magicks programs was severely cut. The parents argued that classes based around the magical practices took the power to manipulate reality away from God. Pretending to be gods themselves would guarantee children a place in hell, or so the parents and pastors argued. By convincing the school boards and state politicians that magic was actually dangerous for children and their eternal souls, it was deemed a subject too controversial to teach before college.  

University level magic classes were not incredibly popular among students. Parents, role models, and peers often tried to dissuade students from studying the magical arts. To these detractors, magical courses were seen as a waste of money, especially for the cost of University tuition. The stigma surrounding a degree concentrating in magicks was severe. Magic students had significantly lower job prospects when applying for non-magical jobs after graduation. Hiring managers would take job candidates with magical backgrounds less seriously than candidates with other concentrations, even though they both had the same core education.  

Anti-magic propaganda also began to spread across college campuses worldwide. This attack was orchestrated by militant on-campus religious groups that saw the study of magic in public universities to be offensive. Eventually, American government representatives became involved as well and demonized magical studies as being unpatriotic. Schools that didn’t cancel magic programs quickly found themselves without much needed government funding. In a matter of months, magical studies disappeared from even the most liberal public universities across the United States. 

*** 

One of the final nails in the coffin for the magical arts was the disappearance of wild, enchanted animals due to man-made environmental impact. In what was labeled as the 6th mass, magical extinction by some scientists, over 97% of enchanted creatures went extinct within a fifty-year period, with the exception of creatures labeled as necessary to the survival of the global economy, e.g. gold mining fairies, indentured house elves, and gladiatorial ogres. Most scientists were in agreement that the extinction event had man made causes, but poorly informed and/or malicious lawmakers prevented many environmental protection laws from being enacted as well.  

Poor regulation of magical energies production was perhaps the worst environmental offender. The cheapest and most profitable way of producing magical energies was the conversion of crystals and gems into liquids that were utilized by both solitary practitioners of magic and big industry alike. The process of producing these potions involved grinding magical stones into a fine powder then treating the powder with various chemicals to separate the rock from the magical essence. Acid was added to the mixture to further separate remaining metals from the product. Acidic wastewater was often mismanaged and leaked into aquifers and ground water supplies frequently. The resulting elixirs, potions, and other magical liquids that were created by this process were often burned off in spells, releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The pollution released by the production and use of these cheap, magical energies destroyed water sources for animals and greatly contributed to global warming, killing thousands of species worldwide.  

Another leading contributor to global warming was the overproduction of hobgoblins for human consumption. Americans and Chinese both developed an insatiable need for hobgoblin meat. McDonalds found Hobgoblins to be cheaper to produce than cows and they took up less room on farms. With less resources being put into production of meat coupled with the delicious taste, hobgoblins eventually overshadowed beef and poultry as the world’s favorite meat. Hobgoblins, however, were vegetarians. With corn being subsidized by most governments worldwide, overproduction of corn led to low prices and more farms started feeding their hobgoblin stock with an all corn diet. What seemed like a perfect way to feed cattle turned into a major environmental catastrophe. The all corn diets forced hobgoblins to produce immeasurable amounts of methane through flatulence. Billions of hobgoblins around the world were directly driving global warming through greenhouse gas production.  

Through these and various other human factors contributed to climate change and vastly increased global extinction rates for magical creatures and non-magical animals alike. Scientists warned of the effects, but policymakers across the world often refused to listen. Countries had become overly reliant on environmentally disastrous industries. These industries were upheld with little change or oversight both to line the pockets of the rich, and spare the poor from the further harm that solving these so-called, “maleficent problems” would undoubtedly bring. Ultimately, it was the magical creatures that suffered the most, as the extinction rate began to skyrocket after far too many years of environmental abuse. 

*** 

Poaching of exotic creatures was also a main contributor to increased extinction rates. Ultra-rare game such as skunk apes and chupacabras were the first to be declared extinct. Hunters developed creature-specific tech in order to get the maximum yield from their kills. Entire species were wiped out with the help of man’s terrifying inventions created out of the perceived necessity of dominance over nature. The Loch Ness Monster was captured with the help of robotic submarine mapping of the underwater caves that had sheltered the creature and its family for years. Loch Ness is now a prominent water skiing resort and the site for a popular “pray the gay away” camp for youths. Yetis were also hunted relentlessly after special drones were built utilizing equipment capable of detecting miniscule heat signature variations between the yeti and their environment. These leveled the playing field between hunters and the yeti’s masterful camouflage that had been built over thousands of years of climate adaptation. Colossal, fire resistant tanks were created to defeat the already endangered dragons. Water dragons were destroyed by more indirect means – usually getting caught in trawling nets or the occasional soda six pack ring. 

Many species were wiped out in a matter of years, but the creatures that got the worst of the blitz were unicorns. These magnificent animals were killed off in mere months. Prized for the supposed aphrodisiac properties gained by a person ingesting their crushed horns, the unicorn population was virtually non-existent only three months after the start of the “unicorn horn rush” that drove up demand and price for black market horns. Despite the best efforts of animal rights groups across the world, the last unicorn was found dead in a remote stretch of the Appalachian Mountains. Its horn was cut off in order to be ground into a fine powder and feverishly devoured by a rich, white man hoping to maintain his erection long enough to get off with the young prostitute he met outside of a Washington D.C. Denny’s. He bought her a Grand Slam in hopes of rounding her bases himself. He would finish his Denver Omelet sprinkled with the powdered horn, then take her back to his cozy hotel room and pass some legislation of his own. At the same time, the unicorn lay dead; decomposing by a watering hole on some unnamed stretch of mountain – half its face missing from where the poachers sawed off its horn.  

*** 

There wasn’t a specific day that could be attributed to the last touch of magic leaving our world. Over many years, people started looking back on their lives and feeling as if something were different in the past. It was as if there was a fundamental force missing from our memories. Perhaps gravity was a bit stronger back then. Maybe there was more electricity in the air – humming deeply into our bones. Something was off. Magic is gone. Magic is dead. And our children will never know that there were more worlds than these. 

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The Glass and the Clearing

A boy lay quietly in his bed. Out of the window he spots the pathway to the forest. He can see the trail clear it's way through the entrance of the swarm of trees. Beyond that - who knows? There will be a trail, but what's past the entry way is shrouded in mystery to him. All that he can see is a window, then a clearing, then countless trees as far as the sky falls. In the forest there are mysteries yet to be solved. 

The boy sits up quietly in his bed. He gives his body a moment to conform to the vertigo. Sick - maybe not yet - but quite possibly soon. Nevermind. What could be the difference between being sick here or there? The boy shrugged off his nonsense. It's time to be human. The forest calls the boy, softly, but unyielding. There are wonders to be found out here.

The boy takes his pack and places it on the stiff bed. He fills it with books, snacks, two more gowns - the necessities. He puts a baseball cap over his hairless head. Catching himself in the mirror, he thinks. Why is this a shame? Why is this a mark of what I'm worth? A constant reminder of loss? A focal point of pity? Too many have died in this room before me. How many others has the forest called since the inception of this hospital? The draw is irresistable. Uncorruptable. Who am I not to hear it's song? He leaves the cap on the bed; his head bare as the song guiding him. 

The boy laces up his shoes tight. He stands before the entrance to the forest afraid. Behind him lay a clearing, then glass, and a warm bed. Behind him there was certainty. The kind of certainty doctors catagorize in stages. There was family, friends, pets, television programs, girls... No matter. The boy had a job to do. He had a duty not to die within confines. He wasn't quite at that stage yet. He could learn how to track animals. He could build a crude shelter, then a better one with time and care. The boy could truly live and die the way he wanted to. Behind him there was only ghosts. He stepped into the forest. 

What we feel in nature is naked. A stark, violent depiction of who we are - what we're made of. The boy knew this. He knew that adventure was ugly to the modern ideal of happiness. He knew that he would never be happy again had he chose to stay and die. But this - this was promise. At least, it was new. There were plants, trees, animals he had never seen in person before. These were the kinds of things poor people read about in books, and rich people went out and tasted. The boy did not know uncertainty anymore. He only knew that he would last as long as he could, and no longer. He would follow the trail for miles, then somewhere deep down, he would take a left. He would walk because he could. He would traverse the depths and never emerge again. The boy knew what freedom was. The forest called with miles to go. And the boy was enveloped back into the world which created him.

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La Llorona (The Ditch Witch)

My great-grandmother used to live in the South Valley of Albuquerque. As in most cities, the further south you go, the more likely you are to be shot by some punk kid in an old caddie. Needless to say, the South Valley in ABQ is already a pretty terrifying place. My Grandma Chelo was a tough woman, and she knew how to handle herself in most situations. As with many strong, Mexican women, Grandma Chelo had little room for nonsense. Hell, one time I said the word, “shit”, and she literally washed my mouth out with bar soap! When Grandma Chelo told us not to do something, you bet your ass we listened. If we didn't heed her advice then we'd learn a hard lesson. This is the story of a lesson learned.

***

In New Mexico we have a saying popularized by many different PSA’s over the years – “Ditches are deadly, stay away.” This saying came from the need to protect children from being swept away in either the Rio Grande River or the many arroyos designed to irrigate farms or defer water during sudden monsoons that plague our state every summer through fall. When these massive, unexpected rains come down, they have a tendency to cause flash floods in mere minutes. Anybody careless enough to be strolling through a ditch can be caught up in a flood and drown while fighting the current.

A kid getting caught in flash floods isn’t a modern day problem, however. When farming became popular with the Spanish along the Rio Grande in Mexico hundreds of years ago, children really liked to play in ditches. This became such a problem that the legend of “La Llorona”, (The Weeping Woman), was created to scare kids away from ditches.

The story involves a woman who is deeply in love with her husband in Old Mexico. Every day he showers her with affection, and she knows that she is the only one in his heart. They have two children, (usually boys), and they seem like a loving family. Gradually, the woman starts noticing that the man seems to show more love towards the kids than he does her. Her jealousy feeds as more and more of the man’s attention turns toward the boys. She feels unloved, and this feeling festers into madness.

One day the man went into town to shop for tools for their farm. The woman sees an opportunity to win back her husband’s affection. She takes her boys to the Rio Grande to give them a bath. In her ever-maddening mind she thinks that with the boys out of the picture the husband will have time to love her and only her. She makes the younger brother turn around while she quietly drowns the older one. After the devilish deed is done, she drowns the younger brother alongside his deceased sibling. Minutes later, the cloud of hysteria is clears, and the woman can finally see what she has done. Her sons’ bodies float lifelessly in the shallow waters of the Rio Grande. The woman is horrified as she realizes that she has killed her beloved children.

Now in some versions of the story she kills herself, but in others her husband comes home and kills her after seeing what she has done. Either way, the story ends on a supernatural note. Being a murderer, the woman is stuck in limbo while her innocent children ascend into heaven. The woman does not know that they are gone, and stricken with a strong desire to atone for her mistake and be with her boys once again, her spirit roams the banks of the Rio Grande crying out for them. To this day, if La Llorona sees children playing in a ditch she will catch them. When she realizes that they are not her children, she drowns them in the ditch out of anger.

All Mexican kids are told this story as a cautionary tale to make us stay away from ditches. For some reason the thought of a disgruntled spirit catching you in the middle of the night and drowning your ass in a river is more terrifying than the very real threat of a flash flood. Of course, no child really believes this myth as it is widely known that all our parents want to do is keep us safe from floods. This obvious push for safety was exactly why I never believed, until one stormy night in the South Valley.

***

I must have been ten years old when I saw her. I can pinpoint my age because Men In Blackhad just come out, and I remember my cousin Crystal and I listening to Will Smith’s MIB rap song over and over again trying to memorize the lyrics. I know what you must be asking yourself, and the answer is yes – I do still remember all the words to that (and “Wild Wild West”). But the lure of Will Smith “pumping out some dope ass rhymes” wasn't enough to keep us in the house for long, and eventually we went to play outside with my brother, Matt.

My grandmother's backyard was a decent size. Mostly dirt with heaps of random junk strewn about, the yard was a fun playground for imaginative kids. There was an old clothes line suspended by metal poles that served as monkey bars, and an old shed we used as cover during heated matches of dodge ball. We weren’t allowed near the chain link fence that lined the boundary of Grandma’s yard. Just past the fence was a small dirt arroyo cutting through the neighborhood. I had never been past the fence, and the possibility of adventure beyond this border seemed undeniably appealing.

Matt, Crystal, and I played outside until the weather turned. The clouds quickly gathered in the New Mexico sky and grew dark with the promise of a sudden storm. The wind started to whip around us, causing Matt and Crystal to choose the comfort of a living room TV, and the safety of my unshakable grandmother. I, however, opted to stay outside and ride the storm out. I'm not sure what causes me to be so damn curious, but I've always had a nasty habit of sticking around until the end.

I marveled at the sky as the clouds sat so still above. Rain had started to sprinkle down, just to give me a taste of the deluge to follow. Thunder struck mercilessly in my ears, but the vision of lightning was nowhere to be found. There was an eerie calm between thunderclaps. Wind whistled low as the only other sound was the rattle of the chain link fence. It was this fence that was my gateway to adventure. I was determined to experience something, feel something, and what better to feel than the sensory overload of a raging New Mexico storm?

There was a big arroyo by my house on the other side of the city, and I always enjoyed seeing it filled with surging water. I had never seen the arroyo by my grandmother's house up close, but for all I knew it could've been a canyon! The thought was tantalizing, and if this storm was going to be raging then I wanted a front row seat. There was no fear in my heart, but a giddy beat raced on in my chest. I stood at the forbidden fence, took a deep breath, and pushed forward.

The arroyo was a bit small. It was perhaps four feet deep with water sitting from a previous rainfall. It stretched beyond what I could see in either direction. Lights from other houses fought the encroaching darkness. Through dark gray clouds and the haze of rain I could see that the storm was picking up, and there were only minutes before water would pour down, flooding the area. I had always loved the moments before a storm. They heighten your senses, and make you feel so small in a chaotic world.

The rain hit me in an instant. What was once a slight drizzle of rain had become an onslaught of heavy pellets striking my skin. I loved every minute of it as I basked in the feeling of complete immersion in this power of nature. Time seems to flow according to perspective, and in those few minutes of torrential downpour I felt as if an hour had gone by. Rarely do I feel so alive than in the moments when I surrender myself to nature.

After a few minutes had gone by I decided that my family might start worrying about me if I stayed out much longer. As I walked back into the yard and shut the gate, the rain slowed drastically. My back was toward the arroyo, which I was positive was devoid of people merely thirty seconds earlier. Suddenly, I felt a strange chill throughout my body beyond the icy blast of the wind. This chill seemed to originate from inside my body and crawl up my spine. I was still close to the fence when I turned around one more time to face the ditch.

There she was: the woman in white, her dress flowing gently in the breeze. She was walking slowly along the side of the arroyo. The light was dim, but her impossibly pale skin seemed to radiate through the darkness. Her hair was long and black, swaying softly along her sides. Her dress was slightly tattered, but did not seem to be wet for the amount of rain that had just come down. She was maybe twenty feet away from me, and her features struck me far more than the haze of the storm should have allowed.

I stood there watching her as she walked alongside the arroyo to the left of me. I could feel my heart slow as my breathing became shallow. When she was directly in front of me, she stopped. The woman slowly turned toward me but stared past me – over my shoulder toward nothing. In those few seconds, as I studied her face, time seemed to stand still. Her lips stayed shut, but as I looked into her eyes a sudden, deafening sound hit my right ear. It was somewhere between a scream and a harsh breath, but whatever it was buckled my knees, sending me crashing to the ground. I caught myself as my fist hit the dirt. Shaking off the fall, I quickly peered up toward the woman, but she had already started walking down the side of the arroyo, almost out of sight.

Inside the house, I changed out of my wet clothes and went into the living room where my brother sat with my grandma on the couch. They were watching Spanish TV like my grandma preferred, even though we never understood anything happening on Sabado Gigante. I had enough of Mexican stories for one night so I tuned it out. I lay down on the furry, dark brown carpet – as I always enjoyed doing for some reason – and I fell into a deep sleep.

***

Over the years, I told two girlfriends the story of that night, but I never told anybody else. It wasn't until the summer after I turned twenty-six that I told my family. My sister was in town, and we were all visiting at my Grandma Pat's (Grandma Chelo's daughter). We were sitting down, reminiscing about Grandma Chelo, who had passed away a few years earlier. We started talking about her old house in the South Valley when my mom made a comment about seeing La Llorona in the arroyo as a child. I was pretty shocked, because I had always written off that night as the product of my imagination. After that it was revealed that my sister had a similar experience.

I was absolutely intrigued that the three of us could have all had experiences with this woman years apart from one another. It was an interesting connection that we had to this house and to each other that none of us had ever known existed until that moment. And just as my heart had slowed during the storm and the brief sight of the Ditch Witch, I felt my body surge with the possibility of adventure once again. All I wanted to do was find my great grandmother's house once again during a dark, stormy night. I'd swing around back and walk the edge of the arroyo, hoping to glimpse this mysterious woman again. I'm not sure if flash floods or murderous ghosts are the bigger threat, but I wouldn't mind finding out. I mean, ditches are deadly, but the allure of the unknown is irresistible.

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