So back in 2003 The New Yinzer asked me to contribute to a series of promotional postcards, each of which was supposed to have a complete story by a Pittsburgh writer. Due to budget constraints or a bad clam or something, it turned out that all 500 postcards were printed with my story. They were then distributed at various events and pretty much without exception thrown into the sewer and forgotten forever, especially by me. Until now! I present, for the first time in non-postcard form, that story:

The Monkey Planet

 

The monkeys have their own planet now.On the monkey planet, tiny pygmy marmoset guards try to ward off strangers by displaying their white genitals.Spider monkeys, perplexed and tripping over their prehensile tails, struggle to dig an underground transportation system.Black and white colobus workers operate the ancient machinery that the monkeys found abandoned.Their long fur gets caught in the gears, and the casualty rate is high.

It’s not a very good system on the monkey planet, really. But they’re just monkeys, after all, and most of the smart ones stayed back on Earth, where, unlike the monkey planet,the ground is not composed of burning hot diamond shards, and there are no acid-spewing volcanoes, nor any monkey-eating beasts with twelve mouths, twenty grabbing tentacles and the ability to teleport.

Kindly keep the monkey planet a secret.But if you see any lemurs, please tell them: it’s paradise.