My friends and I are in an on-again/off-again writing club where the rules are simple. Every two weeks you have to submit three short stories that it took you 20 minutes or less to write. These are the results.

Monkeys destroyed a library, slapped college girls.  They were terrorizing the tourists.  Jumping in open jeep windows and stealing food, handbags, pets and children.  Sometimes they returned the kids, left them by the side of the road.  Fat grubby kids with crayon in their teeth, or the skinny screaming ones who shake violently when you get them 30 yards from the car.

“The monkeys have become spoiled by tourists feeding them, so they can take pictures of them, the people, of the monkeys, you know what it is I am saying,” the ambassador/park ranger said.

An American with an enormous backpack said, “Monkeys on a goddamn rampage.”  What was true was the girls were slapped.   They admitted as much, on television, wearing sorority sweaters, and described the monkey(s) well.

Everyone was the requisite shocked and horrified.  At least the library was still standing, contrary to report.  There was a hole in the southwest corner of the roof, created by what only one semi-viable witness saw as a chimp throwing a truck cab into the library from the top floor of a neighboring parking garage.  When pressured, his description of the monkey was nebulous at best.  But the cab was indeed in the library, crushing 4 rows of books which have yet to be identified.  Monkey screaming may still be heard throughout the city, but do not attempt pursuit.  They will always seem just around a corner, or right beyond reach, better men and women than you have gone down exactly this road, and ended up in places you’d rather not think about if you had the time and the inclination, like in prison, for example, or if you were dead.

“After a week’s feeding, they retreat to the trees.  The highways, though streaked with blood, have quit howling.” Gina McAllerney said that last night on the local news.  This morning she found out that 68% of Boston thinks Jaynie Superwhistle, the sports woman, is “50% More Attractive Or Better.”