Issue 5, April 2010
{
}+previous || next story+The Story of 500,000 Monkeys
Kate Johnson
Back in those days, every drugstore had a cooler outside in which
was stashed a deluxe of chilled sodas. Root Beer, Orange Crush, Coke-
a-Cola. Inside, the shopkeeps were cautious and sort of mean. Mostly,
ten cents had to be placed shiny on the counter before we left. Otherwise,
as was made clear to us, the 500,000 monkeys would jump on our heads,
pick fleas from our hair and eat our faces off.
My mother called the drugstore, saying loudly into the black phone: my children
do not have fleas in their hair and you stop saying they do!
God, I loved leaning into that huge red cooler and pulling out a prize soda.
I kept all the tin caps in a wood box I'd made to give to my brother on his 11th
birthday. Somehow or other, the monkeys took them. Not asking, one night
they came in and took him away.
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