Shelf Monkey (33 page)

“Shelf Monkeys,” I began again. “Some of you may have heeded my words. Some may have already made up your minds. But my client stands, sorry,
lies
before you now at your mercy. He is powerless. Will you not allow him the opportunity to speak in his own defence?”

Aubrey considered this, while Raoul Duke and Ford loudly derided me. “Very well, Yossarian,” he said.

“Aw, fuck this shit!” yelled Scout.

“It does seem only fair, brothers and sisters. After all, we’ve never before had a montag that could speak for itself. Remove the gag.”

I helped Munroe up to a sitting position, tenderly working the tape from his mouth and scooping the ball out, loosening another flood of saliva and bile. Munroe panted heavily and began to blubber. “Why are you doing this? Who are you people?” Munroe the ineffectual wimp was looking for leniency.

I flicked my finger against his forehead, getting a satisfying whimper out of him for my troubles. “Knock it off, you’re not fooling anyone.” I put my hands on the sides of his head. “I don’t know if you have any hope here, but you just might,” I said softly in his ear. “This is your only chance, Munroe, don’t blow it.”

“Please,” he begged, “please don’t hurt me, please. I’ll pay you whatever you want, I won’t go to the police, I swear I do whatever you want, please!”

“Munroe Purvis,” Aubrey proclaimed, pulling his hood tight over his head. The Monkeys were crouched together behind him, swaying. “You sit before us charged with crimes against the humanities. Do you have anything to say in your own defence before we pass sentence?”

“What?” His head whipped around blindly, snot running down his chin, freezing to his moustache. “I don’t understand, what do they mean?” His wandering hands found my pants leg and tugged me to him. “Please, don’t hurt me, I’ll do anything you want.”

I yanked my leg away, leaving Munroe to sob into the ground. I wish I could lie and say I had been merciful. Make myself more sympathetic for the movie version. But I had no pity to offer. Munroe’s dog and pony show was all a sham, and knowing it only made him more pathetic. I looked down at him, and all I felt was an itchy disgust. I wanted him buried in a pit of lime.

He stilled himself, slowly comprehending his position. “All right,” he said. Again, the transformation was instantaneous. The snivelling little coward was gone. He pulled himself up to his knees. “All right, you fuckers, that is it.” The Monkeys shrank back in confusion. Even blindfolded, Munroe stared directly at us. “I don’t know what’s going on, really, but you all need to understand a few things. You’re nothing but a pack of losers. You sit at home and read, and pretend you’re better than everyone else, you’re so . . .
special.”
He spat a wad of blood, spraying my boots with a Pollock print. “You can all kiss my ass. You’re no better than me. You fuckers better run, now, because when I’m done with you, you’ll wish your fathers had never gotten drunk and raped your mothers. I am Munroe Purvis! I am worth sixty-five million dollars this year alone! Net! You pussies are going to rot in Hell, and I am going to laugh from Heaven above as you fry. Do your worst, you pissant
little bookreading faggots. Assholes.”

I’ve got to hand it to him. Munroe has balls. Little sense, but big balls. Any hope he had for clemency, however, went swiftly down the toilet.

“Have you anything further to submit, Yossarian?” Aubrey asked.

“No, that should do it.”

“Shelf Monkeys, the montag has made its case.” Aubrey turned to face us each in turn. “We have heard the evidence. Have you reached a verdict?”

“Guilty!” Danae yelled. But it wasn’t Danae who spoke — it was Atwood’s Offred, taking her sweet revenge on the religious patriarchy that condemned her to a life of forced fertility.

“Guilty!” agreed Warren, now completely Kilgore Trout, unwashed and misunderstood, pissing out obscure near-genius science-fiction stories.

Guilty, guilty, guilty, spreading like a virus through the group.

“Guilty.” Lyra, saving the many worlds from the tyranny of an oppressive religious state.

“Guilty.” Valentine Michael Smith, frothing at the mouth, clearly finding nothing in Munroe worth grokking about.

“Guilty.” Scout Finch, all grown up and conveniently ignoring the lessons of Atticus.

“Guilty.” Hagar Shipley, old and crotchety and unapologetic.

Aubrey laid his gaze on me.“How say you, Yossarian?”

“Yossarian?” laughed Munroe. “That’s your name? What kind of stupid pansy pseudonym is that? One of the biggest wimps in post-war fiction, that’s who you choose? Might as well be Holden Caulfield, biggest pussy of the twentieth century.”

Well, that made it easier. “Guilty.”

Aubrey pushed Munroe over with his foot. “Munroe Purvis, you have been tried and found guilty by a jury of your betters. You are hereby designated
hostis humani generis
, an enemy of the human race.”

“Fuck you.”

“You will now bear the punishment for your evil deeds.”

“Fuck your mother.”

Aubrey slapped the tape back over Munroe’s protesting mouth.

“May God have mercy on your soul, Munroe Purvis.” He strode to the far side of the fire, bending down to retrieve an object from its coals. The point of the large awl glowed a scorching red as he removed it from the flames. “Hold him down, everyone.”

Kilgore grabbed Munroe’s shoulders and pushed down, crushing him into the frozen ground. Offred sat atop his legs, Queequeg and Scout pinned his arms. Munroe bucked and tossed his bulk about to no avail.

Wielding the smoking tool, Aubrey straddled Munroe’s torso and tore open the front of Munroe’s shirt. Spongy pallid skin was exposed to the elements. Aubrey raised his arms to the stars, aimed the awl’s point skyward, then dropped his gaze down to the sacrifice. “I do this for Shelf Monkeys everywhere.” Aubrey dropped to his knees, settled himself on Munroe’s mid-section, held the smoking awl like a pencil, and began to compose.

The aroma of seared pork arose from Munroe’s chest. A sound like nothing I’ve ever heard escaped from the sides of the gag. An abattoir squeal. I fell back and vomited into the snow. Aubrey focused his attention on the lettering, stopping twice to reheat the tip, coughing to free his lungs from the odour. When he had finished, he fell back, sweating from the effort.

We hunkered over the raised letters, slowly making out what he had inscribed.
La Mancha,
and the rough outline of a windmill, teased from Munroe’s skin in steaming welts.

Shakily, spastic tremors running up his arm, Don Quixote offered the awl to Queequeg. “You next.”

Ten minutes later:
Moby Dick,
along with an uneven Maori facial tattoo dotting Munroe’s cheeks and forehead.

The night went on, each monkey autographing Munroe in a butchered parody of English composition. Munroe had thankfully passed out halfway through Aubrey’s labours. We were crazed, we were wrath. Scout threw up twice engraving
Mockingbird
, each time wiping her mouth and determinedly soldiering on. Lyra Silvertongue completed
Golden Compass
with relish, adding swoops and curlicues to her cursives. Laughing, Ford Prefect impressed a charred
Don’t panic!
above Munroe’s right nipple.

The body slowly became artistic attestation of our mania, a living library card.

Middle Earth,
wrote Gandalf.

Breakfast of Champions,
wrote Kilgore Trout.

Lady Fuchsia Groan flipped the canvas over and inscribed
Gormenghast
on Munroe’s back, cackling like a madwoman.

Offred wrote
Handmaiden
across the chest.

Raoul Duke penned
Fear Loathing Las Vegas,
skipping the conjunctions.

Ignatius J. Reilly combined literature and personal feelings on Munroe’s stomach:
Dunce
.

Valentine Michael Smith:
Grok
, perverting Heinlein’s intentions. Hagar Shipley:
Stone Angel
.

And I?

There was no question I would brand him.

It was wrong; I knew it then, I know it now. I was no longer Thomas Friesen. I was a force of nature. I was Hell, and my forces were legion.

I became unspeakable in my fury.

I pressed steel to skin.
Catch-22.
Followed by
Joseph Heller
. Followed by
©1961
. I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t.

Our manuscript complete, we gathered around it for a final proofread. Blood stained the snow. Munroe’s harsh breaths were the only noise, save the occasional
pop!
of a pocket of air from the fire.

Danae took my hand. Her cheeks were red with excitement and frostbite. “Let’s go,” she whispered. “I need you. Now.”

“What do we do now?” I asked in the silence, provoking a squeak from Gandalf. “We can’t leave him here.”

“I’ll handle it,” Aubrey said. He had lurked in the background while we mutilated Munroe, a feral dingo waiting for scraps while the monkeys, now a family of enraged silverback gorillas, sated themselves. Now, he had taken charge again. “Kilgore and I. The rest of you leave now. Go on, it’s over.”

Lady Fuchsia started to sob. “What did we do?” She wasn’t Fuchsia Groan any longer, if she ever existed. There was no point in pretending. She was Muriel again, an assistant librarian in emotional distress.

Aubrey snapped at her. “We did what was necessary, Fuchsia. Go home. We have done a good thing tonight.” Ignatius, the rage
finally passed and fully Cameron again, put his arm about her shoulders, letting her cry into his chest.

We dispersed into the night. Danae pulled me along, leading me to her apartment. I had no thoughts in my head. What we did might never have happened. A peace settled itself over my heart. I had never felt so alive. Free. Invincible. We never made it to the bedroom. Danae pushed me to the floor, I decided not to resist, what we were doing was by far the sanest act I had performed in months. We wrestled for hours, hands locked, our bodies sleek and delicious.

Afterward, somehow having reached the bedroom and collapsed in exhaustion, I began to dream.

The shelves stretch out to the horizon, each a kilometre high, crammed full to overflowing with books. There’s no rational order to the mess, no alphabetization, no connection as to size, no corresponding hues of book jackets. They’re squashed together, horizontally, vertically, diagonally, facing back, upside-down. Mashed against one another, spines bent and torn, pages ripped and dog-eared. I leap from one shelf to the next. I have an incredible sense of balance, my toes are longer, more flexible, fur covers my arms and legs, I have a prehensile tail. Springing from monolith to monolith, screaming “No order! No order at all!” as I grab books left and right, reshelving them, trying to manufacture a semblance of order, but the shelves are now conveyor belts and elevators, they move constantly, I no sooner find a place for
A Tale of Two Cities
next to
David Copperfield
than it has shifted down and I’ve inserted a Dickens next to a Mack Bolan. I curse, my teeth gnashing, saliva bolting from my mouth, coating a first edition
Cat’s Cradle
with salty glaze. I jump away, landing on Gutenberg’s Bible, horrified at the blasphemy as my ink-soaked fingertips soil the fragile parchment. On top of each shelf is a monkey, a million monkeys smashing a million typewriters, while Ray Bradbury sits next to me, vomiting onto his typewriter again and again. “Get down from there, fucker,” a voice snarls from below, it’s Ernest Hemingway, balancing an elephant gun on his shoulder, “you don’t deserve the privileges this life has afforded you,” and he fires, the Bible exploding underneath me, I’m falling, forever, imploring
him, “But I always thought Mariel was underrated as an actress!” Grasping at the works of Pete Dexter and Emily Brontë, latching onto a precariously balanced edition of
The Life of Pi
with my tail, until hitting the ground. I hit the ground! I didn’t wake up! Virginia Woolf plants her feet around me, “Why don’t you kill yourself, best thing I ever did, look at my career now!” but it’s not Virginia Woolf, it’s Nicole Kidman with a big nose, and she’s thrashing me with her Oscar, joined by Fred Ward as Henry Miller, and I run, scurrying back up the shelves, they can’t possibly reach me up here. Strong, warm arms embrace me, smother me, it’s Oprah Winfrey, squeezing my innards out through my nose in a bear hug, screeching “What do you mean, you’ve never read Maya Angelou?” and I slide out, down, vaulting and sprinting, swinging through trees, each leaf a page from a timeless novel, I’m tearing off
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang
with one hand while the other mangles passages from
Gunga Din
, they aren’t holding me, the pages are shredding under my nails, and I’m sliding down the vine, smacking the bottom, and it’s a grave, my grave, Aubrey looms above me, shovelling books, they rain down, their edges striking me, I’m bleeding, and Danae! Danae is there! “Help, please!” I shout, but she’s shaking her head, “The books are all that matters, Thomas, you know that,” and she’s shovelling too, I’m buried alive, my sepulchre lined with
Flowers in the Attic
, that’s the last thing I’ll ever see, it’s not fair, I didn’t want this, Warren drops a match, I ignite, flapping my hands uselessly against the flames, and Munroe’s giant head swoops down from its perch and blows on the fire, the flames leap and prance on my face, I hear bacon crisping in the pan, I wake up next to Danae, and I’m screaming, she’s holding me, I can’t stop crying, she holds me until I pass out from exhaustion.

I opened my eyes, fully alert. Danae was draped across me, snoring loudly. How she made even that sexy I’ll never understand. I wormed my body out of bed without waking her. My throat was grated raw from crying. Pulling on my pants, I wandered through the apartment, looking at her shelves, lightly stroking the books as I read their spines.
Red Earth and Pouring Rain. The Black Dahlia. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. American Gods. The Love of a
Good Woman. Tripmaster Monkey. The Grapes of Wrath. Crash. The Shipping News. In the Skin of a Lion. Junky. The Snapper. The Music of Chance. Eats, Shoots & Leaves.