Monkey Story

This is group story as it left my hands, having first been to Art Thief, on January 15.

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"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Candi stared at the monitor for a few seconds and decided to try a different approach. She deleted most of the previous line.

"It was a dark time for the people of the village..."

It still felt wrong. She wanted a strong opening. Something declarative and definitive. Certainly she was no Dickens or Melville, but she still knew she had something more in her. Again, she deleted. This was the third day in a row that she'd attempted to start this story. She still hadn't really fleshed out the middle, and she certainly had no clue how it was going to end, but she felt that if she didn't at least start, the idea would just fester and die in her head. Sure, the fact that the beginning wasn't coming along so well gave her pause, but she was in no mood to quit yet. After all, if a thousand monkeys working on a thousand typewriters for a thousand days have just as much chance of creating a work of genius through sheer coincidence as one writer sitting at one keyboard, then this monkey would just keep pecking away until something clicked.

"The storms of a dark time had come to the village..."

Candi stood up from her chair. She looked for something to either inspire or distract her. Her eyes swept the room and she wandered over to the record player. She turned it on and put the needle down on the Nina Simone album that had already been sitting on the plate. As the lush strings swept out through her living room, she contemplated the smoking habit she had only recently and reluctantly agreed to stop. Pulling a beer from her refrigerator, she dragged a chair over to the front window took a spare pack of Camels from behind a bookend on the shelf nearest the front door. With the window now open, she could hear the drizzle like a steady hiss outside. It would probably come down harder as the night wore on, but right now it cooled the air blowing into her house. She took a drink from her beer and lit a cigarette. It would just be this one, then she would get back to the writing.

"A dark storm of smoke and fire engulfed the village of Simoen..."

She wondered what Jeff was doing tonight. He hadn't called all day and she was almost thinking of worrying about him, but she was still too angry at him. She would give him another day before she called out the FBI. For now, she just wanted to stew a little longer. She just wanted to know that whatever happened from this point out would be up to her. She tired easily of his moods and whims and had almost ended things with him twice before. Not that he knew that. It was just one of those things that floated formlessly in her thoughts, waiting for something to make it solid. but each time, he had taken his head out of the lion’s mouth without ever having realized it had ever been there in the first place. But now, she could feel the lion growing hungry. It would have to be placated one way or another, and a simple apology would probably not be enough this time. After all, she had even gone as far as to quit smoking so as to make him happy.

"As we drove our camels before us, the distant fires of the village of Simoen illuminated the cool, dark night..."

Candi lit another cigarette. This was getting futile. Recently, she'd begun to feel as if she had been getting nowhere with her writing and tonight just served to reinforce that. She regretted leaving school before she got her degree, but her logic was sound at the time and she also suspected that even if she had graduated, she would probably still be here in this very same spot, unable to even start, let alone finish a single thought. Jeff had tried to convince her to move in to his house. No rent meant that she could afford to go back to school, but the strings attached to his offer were too thick for her comfort. And, she was too attached to the house she was renting now. The wood floors and high ceiling reminded her of her grandmother's house in Shreveport.

"Nina thought back to her days in the village, before the storm, before the fires and she was filled with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia..."

Suddenly, Candi felt a bit more certain. This felt, well certainly not right, but at least more right than before. No longer caring about decorum, she lit another cigarette at her desk and opened another beer. The record had stopped playing a while back and all she could hear was the crackle of the needle as it hung on the last groove, endlessly looping around and around. The cool air that wafted in through the open window had turned colder as the rain started to come down in earnest.

There was a knock at the door.

With beer and cigarette in hand, she went towards the door, and paused to take a breath. If Jeff was going to just show up without calling now, especially now, that she felt she might actually be getting somewhere, he was just going to have to accept her and the situation as is.

Through the window on the way to the door, she could see he was folding up a black umbrella, and that it was really pouring now.

Facing Candi eye to eye when she finally opened the door was not Jeff. The individual standing there, strangely soaked in spite of the umbrella, was about her height. He had brown eyes and reddish brown hair, including a sort of wispy beard. He wore a long sleeved grey hooded sweatshirt, jeans, brown leather shoes.

“Yes?”

“Hi. Yes. I am looking for Candace?” His eyes looked at hers expectantly.

She searched her memory for where in the world she might know this slightly familiar seeming guy. “I’m Candace, what’s this in regards to?”

He smiled. “It’s about clearing up a small misunderstanding. By the way, your fag’s turned to ash. God, this rain! May I come in?”

Her cigarette had indeed burned down to the filter. She tossed it out on to the porch floor and stepped out a bit to stamp it with her shoe. She said, “Do I know you?”

He pushed his hair back from his face. “You should really stop smoking. No, Not exactly. We are sort of connected to the same group....My name is Simeon Skyes. Do you have another of those?”

Pushy. But there was definitely something cute about this guy too. “Another cigarette!? Didn’t you just tell me to quit?”

“No thanks,” he smiled. “I mean another beer. I think a brief conversation will clear everything up. I just want to give you some information and then if you like I am off on my way again in this.. hideous weather.”

She sized him up. She liked surprises, and he seemed like he could be one. But she felt cautious too. “What group are you talking about? I am sort of in the middle of something, and anyway.” She paused. It was dark with the storm but it was still pretty early. Her neighbor should be home in a short while. “Look, if you want to have a chat, that’s fine. Have a seat here on the porch couch, and I will in fact go check to see if I can spare a beer. Why not.”

He smiled and turned around to look at the ancient rattan and green sofa that was up against the long wall of her porch. He gingerly sat down, and looked up at her, eyebrows raised, saying nothing.

“Right. Be right back.” She stepped back and shut the door behind her, and locked it. Inside the room her monitor glowed. Sort of in the middle of something. That was a slight exaggeration. Nevertheless, her imagination felt awake. She took the needle off the Nina and flipped through some discs, finally settling on the Mingus. She grabbed two more beers and headed to the front porch. She would find out what this Simeon thing was all about, and then get right back to it.

“Nothing exciting had ever happened in the sleepy village of Jefferson, until that fateful night, when a stranger blew in with the storm.”

He was waiting, shaking rain out of his hair when she opened the door.

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Art Thief's last sentence in this part of the story is "There was a knock at the door."