"The Daily Grind" by Michael Tresca

Stop the testing, keep arresting
We won't leave 'til there's reprieve!
Better on our backs than in your labs!
Let the monkeys go!
Let the monkeys go!

Neil Wright waved his sign vigorously along with the rest of the members of People Against Simian Abuse.  Neil's adversary, a smug, middle-aged public relations person named Jack Tweed, waved him off.

"Look, Neil, we've been down this road before.  We don't test on monkeys anymore."

"Boo!" shouted the crowd.

Jack raked one hand through his thinning hair.  "If you step inside for a minute, I'll explain."

The crowd started to boo again, but this time Neil thought silenced them with a gesture.  Jack had always just told them to get the hell off the premises, usually by calling the police.  This was a new tactic.

"Okay, Jack.  But if this is some sort of trick, we'll be back in force next time."

Jack rolled his eyes.  "We can sit just inside the lobby.  It won't take long."

Intrigued, Neil followed Jack into the MegaCosmetics building, to the cheers of the other PASA members. 

Jack looked around. He had never seen the interior of the MegaCosmetics headquarters before. There was an antiseptic metal-and-glass look to everything.  The offices all had transparent walls and doors, lit by very harsh, bright lights.  Despite MegaCosmetics' reputation shady dealings, its employees had no privacy.

"Looks like you treat your monkeys better than you treat your employees," Neil muttered.

Jack looked back over his shoulder as they sat down at a glass table.  "Yeah, well that's going to change."

Neil leaned forward.  "How?"

"Jon Pyre, that's how.  He's our new CEO.  Adam's out."

Neil blinked in astonishment.  "Since when?"

"Since this weekend.  It's in the papers this morning," Jack's voice rose.  "Of course, you wouldn't know that since you've been picketing all God damned weekend long!"

Neil raised an eyebrow.  Jack composed himself.

"One of Jon's goals is a kinder, friendlier MegaCosmetics.  No more animal testing."

Neil shook his long mane of dirty blonde hair in disbelief.  "I don't believe it."

"See for yourself," Jack slid a newspaper across the table.  It read, "A New MegaCosmetics: Can Jon Do What Adam Couldn't?" Sure enough, there was his old adversary with horns and a forked tail whipping a poor monkey while Jon, with halo and wings, looked on disapprovingly.

"Mind if I take this?" Neil said as he tucked the paper under his arm.

Jack smirked. "Think of it as my farewell gift to you," he said, extending his hand.  "I hope I never see you again."

Neil shook his opponent's hand as a camera flashed behind them. 

* * *

"Oh, this is just great!"

Neil slammed the paper down on his desk in the messy bowels of PASA's headquarters.  The headline read, "Truce!" and showed Neil and Jack shaking hands on the front page.

The phone rang again.  Neil ignored it.  It had been ringing repeatedly since the morning paper was released.  The journalists wanted Neil's comments on Adam stepping down and the "war being over."

It wasn't over.  There was simian abuse at other companies, other institutions.  Some of them were even government funded. 

Neil and, by proxy, PASA, was portrayed in the papers as a has-been, trashed along with the old CEO as part of a bygone era.  Social responsibility was the new buzzword.  It was something that every corporation did to avoid ugly confrontations that made Neil and PASA legendary. 

The media was satisfied, but that didn't mean monkeys still weren't being vivisected in the dark corners of corporate buildings. 

A familiar feminine voice snapped him out of his brooding.

It was Jeannine.  She was saying something about the carnival and did he want to go?  Neil nodded. 

"When did you last sleep?" she said, shaking her head.  "You've got to let this go, Neil.  Maybe the headline isn't such a bad thing."

Neil looked up at her.  "What?"

"Maybe this is a way," she wrapped her arms tightly around herself as she talked, a gesture he was familiar with after two years, "of letting you know that it's time to move on."

She took both of his hands away from the paper and gazed into his eyes.  "There are more important things in life."

Neil nodded even though he wasn't sure what Jeannine was getting at. 

She sighed and released his hands.  Then she flipped the paper over. 

"The carnival's in town," she said, pointing at the title with one manicured nail.  "Let's go."

"Now?"

"Now," she said in a tone that brooked no argument.

* * *

Neil didn't like carnivals. He considered them to be a throwback to the world of yesteryear, when people gawked at freaks and tormented animals for their own personal amusement.  Jeannine assured him things were different.  Neil wasn't so sure.

All around them, music, colors, and voices swirled and swayed, flashed and danced, in a riotous morass of sensory confusion.  To Neil's tired eyes, it all became a blur.

They were three rides and two cotton candies into the carnival when Jeannine suggested they take a ride on the "Tunnel of Love."  He let himself be dragged onto it.

They stepped onto the small pink and white boat with a seat that was entirely too small for two people.  Jeannine didn't seem to mind as she snuggled up to him.

"You know," she said as the boat took off through the tunnel, "we've been together for awhile now."

"Two years," Neil said, his eyes resting on a bug-eyed cherubic figure pointing a bow and arrow at them.

"We need to think about the future," she stroked one nail along his cheek.

"Yeah," Neil said.

"You've been working so hard, and with MegaCosmetics new leaf, maybe we can concentrate on more important things."

A fat red heart drifted over their heads.

"Like?"

Jeannine grabbed Neil's jaw and forced him to face her.  "Neil Jeffrey Wright, I'm giving you some pretty direct hints here!  Not every woman would tolerate your monkey business.  Tomorrow's our three year anniversary," tear welled up in her eyes, "and I'm hoping we can move forward in our relationship."

Neil blinked again.  It all made sense.  He had forgotten about their anniversary in the midst of the media frenzy. It explained why Jeannine suddenly took an interest in the carnival – it was all leading up to that reminder.

"Don't worry," he said, hugging her suddenly.  "I'll make it up to you."

She seemed satisfied with his reaction.  His tired mind tried to think of some way he could make their anniversary special.

They were wandering on their way out of the carnival when Jeannine's grip tightened on his arm.  "Let's go over here," she was saying, but Neil's gaze had already settled on the source of organ music that piped through the air.

It was a monkey.

Or rather, it was a man with an organ grinder and a monkey. Jeannine knew what would happen next and let go of his arm. 

Neil stomped over to the man.  The organ grinder looked like he had stepped out of the turn of the century.  He wore a brown derby, matching vest, and leaned on an antique organ on a pole.  The monkey, a Capuchin, was dressed in a similar outfit.  It held a tin cup in its hands.

"You!  Yeah I'm talking to you!" Neil pointed at the organ grinder from across the carnival.  The crowd parted with hushed whispers. 

"You got a license for that animal?  Look at me when I'm talking to you!"

The organ grinder continued to crank away, oblivious to Neil's gesticulations. 

Neil pulled out his wallet, "I'm the president of the People Against Simian Abuse.  Making a monkey perform in this fashion is an outrage!"

A crowd had gathered.  Good, thought Neil. 

Jeannine had disappeared.  He would worry about her later.

"I want to see your license!" Neil shouted. 

The organ grinder looked at him.  "Mi non capisco Englese!"

Neil stopped shouting and squinted at the man.  He looked familiar.  Minus the costume and handlebar moustache, he could have been…

"Adam Baum?" Neil whispered.  "Adam, is that you?"

The crowd whispered furiously around them.  "Adam?  What the hell kind of joke is this?  Did you set this up?"  Neil's head whipped around, scanning for hidden journalists with cameras.  "It's not funny Adam!"

"Comè?"

The monkey hopped onto Neil's shoulder.  Neil stroked its head, his mind working furiously.  What the hell was going on?

"For the love of God," someone whispered in his ear, "you have to help me."

Startled, Neil looked for the source of the whisper.  He turned and gazed into the eyes of the Capuchin.

It stared right back at him.  It didn't flinch, didn't look away, didn't blink or twitch in the typical manner of an animal.  It stared at him with utter human intent and concentration. 

And there was no doubt in Neil's mind that the monkey had spoken to him.

The world spun.  Neil stumbled backwards.  The monkey was back on the organ grinder's shoulder.

He started to ask if anyone had heard the monkey but the question died in his throat. If the press were watching, he'd be branded a lunatic.  He had to regroup.  Had to figure out what the hell was going on.

Neil straightened himself and strode purposefully out of the carnival.  He would not give the journalists the satisfaction of seeing him run screaming off into the distance.

Two could play that game.

* * *

"Hello?"

"Hello, is this Brian from the Daily Star?"

"Yes.  Jesus man, it's one in the morning, what do you want?"

"This is Neil Wright. I want to talk to you about Adam Baum."

There was the sound of frantic rustling on the other side of the phone.  Neil smirked to himself.

"Hello Mr. Wright.  So you're ready to tell your side?"

"Yes…"

"But?" The reporter's instincts were sound.

"But you need to give me some information first."

"Of course.  What would you like to know about Mr. Baum?"

"What the hell happened to him, for one thing."

The reporter chuckled.  "We're all asking ourselves the same thing.  In fact, I was hoping you could shed some light on his sudden decision to step down."

"Go on."

"Well, it seems Mr. Baum's managers finally had enough of him.  I have it from several good sources that one of his subordinates finally snapped and gave that megalomaniac workaholic a piece of his mind."

Neil bit his lip.  "So he quit?"

"Not quite. When the other managers didn't support Baum's decision to fire the dissenting SVP, he was abruptly asked to step down."

"And?"

"And that's where the story ends.  The new CEO they've been secretly grooming behind his back took up the mantle. That's when MegaCosmetics did an about face on all their evil policies." There was a pause. "Do you believe the act, Mr. Wright?"

"No, no I don't.  But that's a conversation for another time.  Baum didn't have any twin brothers, did he?"

The reporter chuckled.  "Him? No way.  He's the world's worst only child."

"Good point. So you're saying good old Up-and-Adam just left?  Where'd he go?"

"Up-and-Adam, that's a good one!  I'll have to use that. To answer your question, nobody knows.  My guess is he went back to his home in Florida, but no one there answers any phone calls."

"What would you say," Neil said after a moment, "if I told you that I thought I saw Adam Baum dressed up in a organ grinder's costume with a monkey on his shoulder?"

There was a long pause.  "I'd say one of you is crazy."

"That's what I thought," Neil said.  "Call me back this evening and I'll tell you which one of us is crazy." And with that, Neil hung up.

He hesitated for only a moment before the desk calendar that Jeannine had flipped to the 13 of October. "Our Anniversary!" was scribbled on it in a big heart.

Neil grabbed his digital camera and shrugged his coat on as he walked out of his office.  She'd just have to understand.

* * *

Neil had staked out the carnival entrance from his car.  As the sun rose, the sounds of the various carnival acts slowly stirring to life echoed out of the grounds. 

Neil's past acts of anti-corporate terrorism served him well.  He knew how to sneak past people, hide in the shadows, and pick locks.  He used all three skills to find and enter the monkey grinder's trailer.

But Baum wasn't there.  The messy trailer was filled with clothing, half-eaten meals on dirty plates, and papers, all in Italian.  A small, dog-eared book titled, "La Divina Commedia" was open face down on the bed. 

The Capuchin was in its cage, watching him. 

Neil took a picture of the trailer, then of the monkey.  The monkey stared at him, strangely silent, its eyes pleading with him.

He looked down at the digital camera's panel.  It would make an excellent front-page picture: the pathetic Capuchin trapped in its cage, abused by the former CEO of a company that experimented on monkeys.

But what he saw instead on the view screen was Adam Baum, trapped in the monkey's cage, his hands wrapped around the bars. 

Then the view screen on the digital camera went blank, as it always did.

"My God!" Neil shouted as he backed away from the cage.  He slammed into the wall, rattling a picture of the Virgin Mary loose from its nail.  "What the hell is going on?"

"Purgatory," the monkey said in a tiny voice.  "The Sin of Covetousness.  This is my punishment. But the imp that punished me has found a replacement."

"W-what?" Neil said. Tears streamed down his face as he looked down at the infernal little creature he had fought for years to save.

"The Sin of Pride.  You couldn't let the whole monkey thing go.  Now you will never let it go."

Neil snarled and took a step forward, "I'll wring your neck you little…"

There was a banging at the door.  It swung open and the manager of the carnival stuck his head in.

"Hey, Antonio, get your ass out there!  We don't pay you for nothing you know!" Then he slammed the door shut.

"Comè?" Neil said in a voice that was distant and unfamiliar.

Then he screamed a long, hoarse scream.