MONKEY BUSINESS — GREGORY LEE SULLIVAN

So here’s why you did it: Someone pointed out your vestigial tail.
             You shrieked when you heard it. You bit dirt or something. You rolled around the lot so much that a cloud formed.
             But all the apes on Gibraltar are missing a tail, you remembered thinking. You shrieked again and you flailed a paw at some air. And you pulled on a tuft of your brown fur. To hell with these haters, you thought, and you climbed up and perched on a rail near a winding highway, and you looked out at the sea and the Atlas Mountains. You thought about your damn childhood. Yes, you were born on this same gargantuan rock of limestone and shale. 
             But you’re still furious, so you hop through a window into a moving car zipping past. You rip into the upholstery. You stop for a second and you look at the people in the car, a man and a woman. And they begin making what might eventually be a YouTube video, if they even can escape. Now maybe you’ll maul them. Look how happy they are. Poor people. You crawl, slowly, over to the woman’s back. When you show your teeth it almost looks like a smile.

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Gregory Lee Sullivan's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, New Mexico Review, Barely South Review, and elsewhere. He recently completed an MFA from Rutgers-Camden, where he founded the journal Cooper Street.