You Is the Monkey!

By Hank Fredo

Are you the monkey in the zoo? Or are you the person watching the monkey?

Darren isn't where he thought he would be in his forties; writing fear mongering clickbait articles for a local newspaper, stuck in traffic every day, and living alone after never finding the right person and settling down. His only relief is writing a story about a monkey in a zoo, but even that isn't giving him the creative fulfilment he needs.

As he goes about his life dealing with entitled social media influencers, aggressive motivational gurus, and rude kids, he ignores a far worse problem in his life. The only person he can reach out to won't get back to him.

Can Darren finally make sense of the world and finally get himself noticed in an oversaturated market before the world claims him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223364306

Book preview

Chapter One

As I reach for leaves to eat, I can see people through the gaps in the foliage. I know they are people and I am a monkey. We are different, but we are still looking at each other. They stand and look at me for a while then move on and more come to look at me. I don’t need to look at them. I can do what I want and they keep on looking.

Everyday I stare down at them and think, I am looking at you, you are looking at me, but who is looking at us? In this enclosure, I am safe from you and you are kept safe from me. I look through you. I am watching you as if you is the one trapped in a cage, put on display. Maybe you is the monkey.

That metaphor doesn’t work at all, I realise as I stare out the window at the people passing by; delivery drivers, maintenance men, and nosy neighbours looking for something to complain about. I can look out at them, but they can’t look in here at me. My window is too high up. I guess they could look in technically, but there’s nothing to see, just a man sitting next to his laptop with nothing to write. If this was an old movie about a struggling writer, I’d be sitting in front of a typewriter with a pile of balled up papers in a wastepaper basket next to me and an overflowing ashtray of discarded cigarette butts.

Instead all I have is an old laptop with an open document I keep on typing then deleting over and over again. I don’t smoke because... well, it would make certain things worse.

I tear my eyes away from the window and stare at what I just typed. A monkey in a zoo? That’s something a first year creative writing student would scribble out and call brilliant. Or perhaps book clubs would call it deep and philosophical just because it seems like it means something. My hand hovers over the keys, unsure whether to delete it or not. I can’t tell whether it’s good or not. I don’t know if it’s the type of thing I want to write. Even if it is, what would I even do with it? Will it be enough to get noticed? Is this what I want to be remembered for? Is this the contribution I want to make to the world? Who is it even for? Is it just for me or for someone else? Or nobody at all? Does it even need to be written for anybody? That’s the whole point of art, after all; to exist just for the sake of it, because it doesn’t need to exist but somebody made it anyway.

But art is supposed to be an expression of your craft and skill, too. I don’t know if a few words I bashed out on a keyboard is an example of my best work. I don’t know if this is what I’ve been building up to for twenty years now.

I’m broken out of my thoughts by an incoming phone call, which makes me jolt. I’m so used to e-mails and text messages that sometimes I forget that smart phones can be used as phones. I pick up the phone and see the name ‘Sid’ lit up on the screen. I groan for a second. He’s an editor at a local paper I freelance for frequently. A failing local paper clinging to its last remaining shred of relevancy. I want to say it’s all because everybody is going digital, but I think Sid has something to do with it. He’s an awful editor to work for. Always changes his mind, always too harsh with his critiques, and never pays on time.

But a part of me lights up to see his name, because as difficult as he is to work for, I need the money. The cost of everything is going up and I need it now more than ever. I’ll put up with an annoying editor if it means I can afford groceries this week. And freelance clients are getting harder and harder to find as more places close down. I need to hold onto this one for as long as it’s still around. I don’t know what I’m going to do when it finally does fold, but I can’t worry about that now. I have to deal with what is right in front of me first.

Hey, Sid, I answer as cheerfully as I can manage. Which isn’t much. As hard as I try, I don’t have a lot to feel cheerful about lately. Have I ever?

Darren, hello, Sid says in his usual overly-polite phone voice.

That further proves just why the newspaper is failing; they’re still stuck in the past. He’s one of the few people left who still makes phone calls, yet alone still has a phone voice.

I’m calling to ask if you can have a two thousand word piece on the broken parking meters issuing false tickets by Friday.

A tight deadline, but it’s not as if I have anything else going on. I glance at the story still open on my laptop, the cursor still blinking, inviting and almost begging me to type more. To let the story continue and make the characters live. But I can’t. I have to put it aside for now if I want to live another week. I know I can always come back to it later, but by then I’ll probably have even more jobs pile up on after the other and before you know it, I’ll forget about this story completely. It will be just another of the dozens of other stories I started, forgot about, and abandoned. They are still sitting on my hard drive or in my drawer where I put them fifteen years ago then never got around to again.

But it hardly matters anyway, I tell myself. It’s not as if this story had any legs to begin with. It wouldn’t exactly go anywhere and nobody would have bought it. I’m saving myself from wasting time on something terrible. At least a few people will read this parking meter story. It will make them angry, which is more of an emotional reaction anybody will get from any of my other stories. Nobody cares about existential stories about monkeys, but they do care about anything which will give them an excuse to be angry.

Sure. I didn’t even know the parking meters were a problem, I say.

They are now. Bring it by my office Friday at eleven, Sid says before hanging up.

That’s another reason his paper is failing; Sid just doesn’t know how to adapt to the modern world. He doesn’t realise that I can just e-mail him the article and he can e-mail or call me back with any feedback instead of me having to go all the way down to this office, and him having to take an hour out of his schedule to meet and talk with me. I think he does it because he thinks that doing things in the way he did when the paper was successful, it will fix all of their money issues. He doesn’t realise that doing the opposite is what will help him. But he’s the client so I can’t exactly tell him that. Besides, it will give me an excuse to get out of the house. I don’t have many of those lately. It seems like nobody does anymore.

I sigh as I save and close the monkey story, what little of it there is, and open up a new document for the parking meter story. I can already feel myself sinking into despair.

I guess I’m lucky that unlike most so-called writers I have a job which is actually about writing. That’s more than