What The Monkeys Did When Men Left

Pictures on this page courtesy Carl at GotMedieval.com, and whoever let him use their pictures!

Not much was the same after man left. That much should be clear from the rabbits and dogs. It took the dust a little while to settle, but once they got right down to brass tacks, the monkeys were the ones who looked the most like men, and they were a little rambunctious and not very mature, but that didn’t mean much when they already had hands and faces and walking upright going for them. Monkeys, in their own way, can even be kind. They’ve been known to share food and drink with cats, and they make friends with cats easier than humans. Mutually beneficial relationships, instead of lord-liege relationships as with the humans and the dogs. Cats, the monkeys found, were simply better for hunting.

As long as there were monkeys around who remembered what it was like to see humans do things, that was how they mimicked. They had never been as smart as humans, and had never wanted the role of keeping the world spinning, or crashing around, as it were. Monkeys prefer being rowdy in the forest to building houses and being civilized. But monkeys have a man’s ambition, so when they saw the better spot, out of the trees and out of nature, they took it. Two stories without any real characters (save the angels, and the dog-king, and perhaps a couple of side characters) is a stretch, but three would be downright unacceptable. So, for God wished you, audience, to be entertained, he blessed your narrator with inspiration.

The monkey’s name was Trevor. It was a good, human name, and he hoped to keep it for quite some time. Trevor was born on a Monday, after his father stole an egg from the monkey egg-layer three weeks previous. Twas a dangerous mission, but Trevor’s father and mother desperately wanted a monkey child so that they could feel like a full monkey family.  He snuck up to the monkey egg-layer while it was speaking to a money-priest (the monkey vocabulary was simply not altogether inventive; monkeys add “monkey-” to everything and call it a functional word. God only knows why they didn't just use the old names. But then God likely doesn't care, or he would have taken the monkeys to monkey-heaven. Or real heaven. The monkeys were not clear about whether there was a difference. It was, after all, religion, monkey religion or otherwise.) The great egg-layer never noticed Trevor’s father, too distracted by the monkey-priest, and the monkey-priest knew than the great monkey egg-layer hated to be interrupted, especially in the middle of particularly interesting tangents, so he allowed Trevor’s father to escape, and did not worry about the loss of the egg. Trevor’s father returned home with the monkey-egg, and so they were two of the first monkeys with a family unit.

Trevor began to grow up, as any monkey grows up, and as any boy grows up. As he grew older, he started hearing more and more about the “great issues of the time”. The monkeys knew they were supposed to have philosophers and theologians, and the sole focus of those, in those times, was to properly understand A. How monkeys should be different from humans, B. How monkeys should be the same as humans, and C.  Why neither God nor Stan had wanted monkeys. Monkey-philosophers and monkey-priests, each fairly confused about the difference between their professions, picked up the robes and staffs from previous priests both of the kind who had gone with Christ and the kind who had not, and began thinking very hard about why the celestial conflict did not concern them. Eventually they came up with the idea that it just didn’t, and that was what the humans called “taking something on faith.” It was apparently very important.

Among other jobs that they took were seamstresses, farmers, and what was, as near as they could figure out from pictures (it seems no monkey had witnessed the event,) the trade of destroying statues with a mallet and a chisel, which was wildly successful until everyone realized that everyone else wanted to do it. Fortunately, once they realized that it was altogether easy to have 1/5 of the people watching the farms and the rest playing games, they were able to expand greatly on monkey-culture.

Trevor had been busy. Originally he had been interested in becoming a smasher, for his father held the job of smasher, and the humans seemed to think hereditary professions were a good idea. Shortly after, the philosophers decided that breaking was not an acceptable profession, and the priests decided that everyone only had to work one day a week (or perhaps I’ve gotten those backwards.) Trevor joined the monkey-baseball team. Everyone on the team was a monkey, so they hit the balls very far when they made contact, being physically superior to the humans, except in coordination and muscle movement theories.

Trevor met one of his best friends on the team. Once, when Trevor hit the ball very far, his friend Nyles picked it up and threw it further. Nyles was out, but Trevor scored a run, and none of the other monkeys knew a rule against it, so it became the new style of play, and baseball became much more rough than National League Baseball (to say nothing of our friends in the American League.) Nyles was always coming up with new rules for games like that, and thought usually he was fun, occasionally he got the two of them in trouble.

Trevor’s mother saw a picture in a book of a human mother forcing her child to learn music, so when he was 15 in monkey years, Trevor was forced to learn the organ. It proved a very mellow instrument for a monkey, but a few of the lady monkeys who were going through melodramatic phases  were attracted to organ music, and before long, Trevor was very pleased with his mother. He taught her how to play, for the two of them were very close. Society had evolved to the point where they thought smashing as a job was barbaric and backwards, so the family was not very proud of Trevor’s father. Smashing should be only for recreation, the monkeys had decided, and anyone who still did it as a job was merely being greedy.

Trevor’s first girlfriend Curnarf, had not had the blessing of parents who understood English Human names, but he didn’t care. For their first date they smashed one of the few remaining statues and ate bananas. It was a fairly typical first date, and they were both exceedingly pleased with one another. At the end of the night, after much figuring, they exchanged a kiss, which by their reckoning was crass by humans standards, but human standards were going out of fashion.

Before long they were spending all their time together, living a very happy life of monkey-baseball and bananas and smashing and each other.  One day, Trevor and Curnarf were playing monkey-baseball with Nyles and some other friends (Sally, Nyles’ girlfriend, was there, but did not like monkey-baseball. Usually they could get her to play if Curnarf would play though.) They played a very close game, won by a hand-double (what happens when the runner on second throws the ball over the fence,) and everyone was excited and happy to have played. That night, Trevor asked Curnarf to marry him, and she accepted. For some reason they had lost human marriage rituals, and the monkey rituals that had developed involved touching right feet while saying vows.

Curnarf and Trevor were great lovers for many years, and one day, he stole an egg for her, shot at butterflies for her while she fished (monkeys hate butterflies, especially fisher-monkeys like Curnarf,) and did various other things that were developing as distinct parts of monkey-culture. For the most part, the monkeys were happy. The monkey-priests had decided that Christ was coming a third time (he wasn’t.) and  the monkey-philosophers had decided that monkeys should be hedonists, which monkeys are meant to be.They had food, they had games, and they had love. The egg Trevor stole turned out to be an ostrich, but they loved it and raised it as their own. Unfortunately, Trevor never did shoot down a butterfly, but he was the kind of monkey that tried, and that was good enough for Curnarf.

"What Monkeys Did When Men Left" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The Souls Left to Earth and by Extension, to Satan

(The Latter of Whom is Called, in Heaven, Stan, so as to Avoid Saying ‘Satan’)

Pictures on this page courtesy Carl at GotMedieval.com, and whoever let him use their pictures!

When Christ came a second time, he took a good many people up to heaven. You and I are two of the lucky ones. Or blessed ones. Forgiven ones, good ones, deserving ones…it doesn’t much matter what words you use to describe us; the point is we’re up here and they were left down there, until Christ and God told Stan they were done, and Stan brought his demons and collected the rest of the souls from the planet. It took about four days, and the Others were collected by Stan, put aside for their sins, whatever they may be (among the worst I observed was a man who convinced two nuns to carry him into a nunnery, for what reason I would prefer not to say.) But, the Lord has given us all gifts, most of all I, and I have been watching the Others, out of a sort of morbid fascination, to see what happened to them, to better understand justice as the Lord sees it. I’ve been watching everyone, but a specific group caught my eye and I see them all the more specifically.

There is one; his name was Angus, who Stan asked for specifically. He’s who drew me to the group. Angus killed himself at fourteen, gave in to temptation and jumped [note: this is actually going to get like ten times more dark than I expected. It’s not going to let up] from a tower, when he realized that Christ had not taken his soul. When he merely broke several bones, and the jump was attributed to a fall, Angus stole pills from the doctor’s bag and took all of them. He suffered for several days and then passed. Angus’ jump was the first day of the purge, and his death the third. He, along with the rest, are to be thrown into the soul furnace.

There are three witches. They all denied it in life, but they hoped for bad things to happen, had a tendency to mumble under their breath, and good Christians accused them, so it was clear that they were practitioners. It had only been a matter of time before they were found out. They are dragged, naked, to the furnace. Margaret is one of their names, and she is quite the complainer. Her demon intentionally drags her over rocks, and she whines and moans as if she is undeserving. Those without God cannot accept their punishments, for they do not think they deserve them. If they were with God, they would know that they deserve every scrape, but they would not be scraped. It is miraculous, truly, that we have escaped that fate.

The demons sent to retrieve this group travel together on their long trek down into hell. They are immaterial, so they are able to pass through many layers of lava, rock, and mud without great difficulty, but that does not change the fact that hell is a long journey, and even demons may not venture straight down. The journey took a month and a half, and Margaret whined the whole way, on her back pulled by the rope. A couple of the men were perverts, but mostly they were sympathetic. There were two Jews, one of whom was called Dan, and had lent money but not forgiven it after seven years. The Jews were simply told to follow, and walked towards eternal torment, understanding that they had no other choice and that it was no sense to argue with a demon. They were not wholly terrible men, but they forsook Christ’s salvation and failed to follow God’s laws for them, so Stan took them.  Another, named Levi, did not circumcise his son. The two of them were greatly sympathetic to Margaret. Since without stops to rest at night, pain would blur in and out of consciousness and the days would stream together, the demons stopped each night, and each night, the second Jew, a doctor, tended the woman’s wounds (our souls have been made immune to wounds by our Lord’s righteousness, but damned souls do not gain such luxury. They are intended to suffer.)

Two pagans from far off lands joined them, and though they did not share a language, the chains they put the men in were hot to the touch, and great red welts appeared on their skin under the chains. None of the other prisoners paid them any mind, for they were neither men of god nor men of sin nor men of virtue. They were simply men, and their apparent crimes were failing to accept salvation or follow God’s laws. They were in chains because they had no theological understanding, and could not be trusted not to run, which would inconvenience the demons. The demons thought the heat was a nice thought, but it had no actual reason.

A lesser, but physically stronger demon had to push a cart with all of the most mangled souls in it. Souls so mangled that they could no longer walk towards hell, but who had not been condemned to be dragged. There were those who were street trash, drug and sex addled murderers thieves and prostitutes. There were many in the basket of another type, those who were riding towards hell because of the sins of others. Unbaptized babes, whom even demons fail to see the pleasure in tormenting were among these.

Two were actually carried by demons, their plight being worse than the others. One had been involved in experiments on human flesh, active participation in mutilation and attempts at resurrection with demons. The resurrection had not been successful, but many of the experiments had lived, and horrible, twisted beings emerged. The others kept far away, having felt the difference.

They all of them were thrown into the furnace. I could not bear to continue looking on. Such anguish is not fit for heavenly eyes. That is why the demons are necessary: a God of justice must have demons, must cause pain and suffering. Breaking God’s law carries consequences. God was merciful and still, those souls were not able to avoid damnation. They deserve the pain, every ounce. Though they can be separated into three camps (those who were horrid, those who were bad, and those who mistook Christ for a myth,) we among souls can be separated into the only two camps that are important: those who are in heaven and those who are not. So do not think about those below. They deserve what they are given, and we are not called to look upon it.

"Souls Left to Earth" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Rabbits and Dogs

Pictures on this page courtesy Carl at GotMedieval.com, and whoever let him use their pictures!

Two of the animals most important in men’s lives are rabbits and dogs. Man has bred hounds to catch rabbits, hares, and anything of the sort, and hounds, loyal and kind, have done what man asked. Man bred hound to have great speed with which to catch, and great teeth with which to hold. Hound, of such kind temperament that he has been known to starve after losing a friend, so loyal that he may return to a spot for years on the chance that a man will return, has been asked to become a killer, and has obeyed because he was put on Earth to be the most loyal one of Adam’s three great sources of company (the other two being, of course, horse and woman. Cats tend to be more coincidental acquaintances than great sources of company.) Hares, on the other hand, man’s source of meat, put on Earth to keep man from subsiding on grain, vegetables, fish, and a very rare stag or boar, has put his energy into being quick, and so even though rabbits eat their young and are skittish and filled with hate and fear and resentment of man and dog alike, they have not had energy to make fighting teeth or intelligence, or tool creation or use, or even the implements to use tools, hands being primary, but crow’s feet working nearly as well. 

All this held true until Christ came back, and the good men were taken from the Earth. Shortly after, Satan took the souls Christ did not want, and the animals were left to themselves. For a time, perhaps three full generations, hounds continued to hunt rabbits, it being what they were made for, but there was no one telling them to continue (the monkeys tried for a time, but decided dogs were not suited in temperament to hunting, having a fresh look at the situation and no word from God on what each animal was for.) Soon enough, dogs ceased hunting hares altogether, grew teeth for eating grass and fruit, and weren’t bothered by anyone, being too friendly for even the rudest of animals to bother them. Rabbits grew their teeth, made hands for themselves, and bode their time. Man’s bows and arrows were left, as were his law books, his rope, and his capacity for hate and revenge. Rabbits practiced use of the bow and the law, the rope and their hands, meaning to put all doghood on trial for the crimes of dogs against rabbitity. 

After very little argument (for some reason adult rabbits are much less self-important and argumentative than man, though they are filled with hate for dogs,) rabbitkind decided as a whole to put doghood on trial, explain to dogs what they had done wrong, and sentence them to death. A heated trial occurred, with dogs asking what had been wrong with obeying humans, who were better than anything else, with some of the smartest dogs, those who had taken up reading as a hobby and were, perhaps, marginally more aggressive, asserting that the dogs of today were not even of the same species as the dogs of times gone by, but the rabbits showed pictures and told stories, and read from man’s books descriptions of dogs that still fit. The twelve rabbit jurors were quite convinced, in their hearts of hearts, and most of the dogs, by the end of it, were just about ready to give in and say “yes, alright, we should step forward, that we might be exterminated and better the world.” Several of the dogs did so, and they were taken in carts by the rabbits to the middle of the plains (for the woods were their sacred place,) and hanged from lone trees.

One dog, most like humans, aggressive and strong, a warrior, became a hero, an Arthur of sorts for dogdom. He called dogs, and they listened, happy to have a leader, a master, again. He told them of how wrong the rabbits were, how unlike man, and how the rabbits had hated man. He berated them for their impressionability, but forgave them, and assured them that, following him, they would bring back man, or at least would survive long enough to eat more fruit and teach more pups to be kind to other animals. As he gathered dogs together, gave speeches and earned credence among the dogs, rabbits continued to carry out their death sentence, capturing and executing and hunting dogs whenever they saw them. 

Finally, even the best, kindest dogs that were left began to fear for their own lives, and under the leadership of the Dog King, attacked each of the rabbit’s strongholds, which the rabbits had built in forests they held so dear. The Dog King ordered trees cut down and tents pitched, for by this point dogs too had grown hands and made tools, and learned to be like men, for it was the only way to defend themselves. They marched on the castles.

Eventually, after much siege, the rabbits decided it was time. They could not continue to live like this, for they had run out of most of their food. Someone suggested eating one another, but that idea would simply not do for sustaining a long-term defense. The rabbits asked the dogs for terms, but dogs, even those most like men, are basically kind, and the only term the Dog King wanted was the end of fighting. He told the rabbit leader so, and the first leader, Rabbitlord Stern, declined.  He wished to speak about terms concerning a portion of dogdom being executed and extraordinary restrictions being placed on the happiness of all hounds in the future. Rabbitlord Stern’s First Mate, standing near behind him, knew the state of affairs, and that, if the Dog King walked from their negotiations, sieges would continue over all forests. He drew his sword, killed Rabbitlord Stern, without intervention from anyone in the room, dog or rabbit, and introduced himself. “I am Rabbitlord Vernor, and I would be pleased to end our conflict.”

Shortly thereafter, the news went out, and conflict ceased between rabbits and dogs. Rabbits were still mean, still ate their young, and had few friends, but dogs were their friends, because it is in a dog’s nature to be friendly to everyone, even when he is hurt by a person he is kind to them. Some dogs and rabbits stayed what came to be called dogs and rabbits of the hand, but for the most part dogs returned to tool-less, handless, fruit and grass eating. Rabbits returned to toothy predatory lives, but every rabbit knew that dogs were off-limits. Occasionally reenactments of the great wars of years past are held by Dogs and Rabbits of the Hand, and, for sport, Rabbits and Dogs of the Hand joust with one another, but never again would they actually fight, for the fear of the rabbits and the love of the dogs.

"Rabbits and Dogs" Short Story © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Intro to Marginalia Illumination Short Stories

To my blog readers: The next three posts are a bit different! The below details why and how and when and what-naught, but basically this was a school project that I had a lot of fun with. I got my pictures from Carl, over at GotMedieval, so thanks to him for his funny and clever posts!

My goal here is to write several short stories of above average quality using marginalia as illustrations. Marginalia/Illuminations for our purposes are illustrations in the margins or text of pre-medieval to late renaissance work, largely unrelated to the subject at hand, commissioned by someone who owned the book, but not necessarily included in the original book. Often the characters portrayed in the marginalia are seen making fun of or reflecting poorly on those in the text or illustrations. While most often the margins are decorated with flowers or fruits or other trivialities, monkeys, dogs, bears, people, demons, dragons, foxes, birds, horses, stags, and rabbits frequent the margins I was able to find.

Hopefully the stories will exemplify some themes of the period, but I will mostly be trying to work with the marginalia illuminations I was able to find and tell stories marginally less trashy than those I associate with the period (Chaucer, Sir Gawain, George R.R. Martin, etc.) The stories will largely concern the animals involved in the marginalia and any humans present. All three stories take place after the return of Christ and the altogether less prophesied culling of unworthy souls from the earth by Satan. I parody two ideas, one from modern Christianity (Christ has taken all of his own to heaven, leaving the Earth behind and disregarding scriptural bodily resurrection) and one from medieval Christianity (Christ has left behind a good deal of people for reasons of widely varying validity, to be taken to hell by Satan for punishment.) Earth, Christ and Satan leave to the animals as a neutral realm.

I’ll be writing one story about demons that should be slightly more intense than the others, about what happens to souls left behind by Christ. I’ll leave the demons fully demonized and resist playing with the idea of whether a being can actually be motivated by evil without thinking it is good. There will be one story about dogs and rabbits that will be a bit funny but not hilarious, asserting that lovable, kind creatures such as dogs are not meant to hunt mean baby-eaters such as rabbits, but that man’s existence made it so. A third story will deal with monkeys and people, and be utterly ridiculous, with both Christ and Satan leaving monkeys behind even though they are all but human, and a few individual monkeys looking for their place in the world while they wonder why neither side of the eternal conflict wanted them. None of this reflects very serious religious views (or other views – at times I work to include ideals or stereotypes long dead, and either no longer or never relevant,) and most everything reflects my hope that you will be amused and never dismayed. After much ado, I’ll move into the stories! Happy reading. 

"Intro to Marginalia Illumination Short Stories" Introduction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.