Proof Positive

by Trent Walters

Sitting serenely under the shade of a banyan tree, the essayist wrote: “Sitting serenely under the shade of a banyan tree, the essayist wrote that a crazy, angry monkey squatted in the banyan tree, plucking and eating figs from the vines and getting fat. He read his beautiful, rice-paper composition aloud.

” ‘I am not a crazy, angry monkey and I’m not fat,’ said the crazy, angry monkey who was getting fat, which must be so because it was written on rice paper. The monkey paused to listen, then let out an angry monkey shriek, ripping out a banyan branch. The monkey hurled the branch at the cherubic essayist. The branch smacked him in the head and splattered blood all over the beautiful, rice-paper composition.

“Hopping gleefully up and down in the banyan tree, the monkey proved the essayist’s point. He lived long enough to scribble a few more lines.

” ‘That’s it. I want a divorce,’ the monkey said, climbing down. But it could not resist grooming the beatific essayist’s bloody scalp.”