“Was that just a monkey?” James whispered to himself.
He put his hands up in disbelief and carried a confused shock on his face. Cautiously he looked around his office looking for somebody to explain the monkey. He was a bit worried, since his office wasn’t crowded as usual. Wait he stopped himself. His office wasn’t just “not crowded”. It was empty. He put down his briefcase and ran his fingers through his sloppy hair trying to figure out what was happening. Suddenly he felt a slight pressure on his back. He was being poked, one of his pet peeves. He gave a sudden exhale and turned around.
It was the monkey again.
“Hello Mr. Jacobson. Your regular assistant, Shirley, has decided to retire last night and moved to the Caribbean. She actually won the lottery. Now where are my manners?”
But James had enough of this.
He threw up his hands.
“You do not have any manners! You are a monkey for heavens sake! Wait. You are a monkey. You can’t talk. What is happening? I’m going crazy, I’m going crazy.”
He was hyperventilating a felt an episode coming on.
“Mr. Jacobson here sit down.” The monkey sat him down on a chair. He left the room for a second and returned with a glass of water and gave it to James.
“Now as I was saying my name is Donald Ferryburg and I am here to replace your old assistant. I would like to tell you about myself a bit if you wouldn’t mind.”

James couldn’t regain his senses to speak so just motioned the monkey, excuse me Donald, to keep speaking.
“First I would like to ask for a request. You may think it not too important but it does matter to me.”
James was extremely annoyed and snapped, “What is it monkey?”
“Well sir that was basically it the problem. I would sort of um prefer if you didn’t the term “monkey”. It just makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Also my species likes the term, “Prime Mates”.”
“Well Jacob you are definitely off of your rockers. Can’t wait for what Ellen will make of this. Well since nobody is here you better go to her now. Get this catastrophe fixed.”
He was about to leave as Donald cleared his throat and looked attentively at Jacob.
“Ugh oh yes you, the monkey! Oh I mean I’m sorry what was it again? Primal Mats? Yes that was it well you Primal Mat just do some stuff. I don’t know. Well see you later Danny umm well it doesn’t matter anyways.”
James hurried to his car and drove straight to Ellen’s. On the way he began to think, out loud of course.
“Okay James you are fine. Normal I would say. You are just going to drive right the Ellen’s. Say it is an emergency because this is an emergency. I mean coming to work and finding a talking monkey is not so typical. But what if she does not believe me? She has to doesn’t she? I mean it could happen right? And of course I have told her crazier things and she did believe them 100%. I mean the incident with the Johnston’s was less believable. I tell Ellen that I think my neighbor is an axe murder who killed his wife. Don’t know how I can to this assumption and she went along with it by informing the police, even though it happened to be that Mr. Johnston never had a wife. But that was fine. I had a little confusion in my memory caused from my aspirin and added stress. She will believe me. She will.”
As James’ monologue came to an end he pulled into his psychiatrist’s office and went up the elevator like so many times before. Her receptionist, Denise, greeted him.
“Hello Mr. Johnston. You don’t have an appointment right?”
He shook his head.
“Yes well Ellen’s 10:30 cancelled so you can go right in.”
He barged through the doors and came in to find Ellen working diligently at her computer. She gave him a simple smile and then her eyes darted from his face to her watch and then to her schedule.
James announced, “I have an emergency!”
“Well okay just lie down.”
He did and she followed him. However after a few moments James started to hyperventilate again but this time his head was shaking violently. This must have looked weird since he was lying down but it would still have been odd if he were standing up.
“James take some deep breaths.” He clamed down
Ellen began to talk to him but he couldn’t pay attention. Its not that he didn’t want to but this soothing ness in her voice just made him very peaceful. His mind began to wander and he started to think about how Ellen would react to a robber in her house. She would probably catch him as he was going out of the doors and tell him to stop. He would since Ellen has that magical force around her to do so. She would make the thief put back everything in its exact spot and then tidy up her house. As he imagined this happening he began to chuckle to himself. Ellen them realized what was happening and lightly tapped him on the shoulder to bring him to his senses.
“I met a talking monkey today. He was my assistant.”
Ellen replied, “Oh you did well how interesting. How was this monkey like? Polite?”
However before James could reply his phone went off. He was too startled and didn’t look at the caller id.
“Hello, James Jacobson speaking. How may I help you?”
“Mr. Jacobson come quick! The building is on fire!”
James knew instantly who it was. The Monkey.
“Oh no! Okay I will get some help.”
He shut his phone.
“Ellen I have to go apparently my office is in flames.”
This time James didn’t bother with the elevator and just ran down the stairs. Luckily there was a fire station right across the street. He ran to it and found the head firefighter who had the name, Scott, stitched onto his uniform.
“Help! Help! Please my office building! It’s on fire!”
Scoot took him extremely seriously, “Okay buddy listen I’ll get my guys over there.” He motioned for his crew to get ready, “just tell me where its located.”
“145th Madison Avenue.”
This was passed onto the driver of the truck. Now the firemen were assembled and ready to go. They started to advance the truck out of the station but Scott stopped them.
“Wait, I was wondering how do you know that your building is on fire? Did you drive here to tell us because there is a thing called 911.”
“I know that. My monkey told me.”
The driver started to reverse the truck.
“Um your monkey told you?’ Scott said while scratching his neck.
“I know it’s strange but I swear its true. I come into work today with nobody there and a monkey.”
Scott thought about it and told the driver to proceed to 145th Madison Avenue to check it out. Scott told James to get in his car and they would drive over. When they arrived at the building it was unfortunately not in flames. James got out of the car in disbelief.
“But my monkey! Dave. He told me. Oh man that monkey is in trouble. Hey wait wouldn’t he really get in trouble? I mean with the law since he provided this information.”
Scott shook his head and decided to head up the building; maybe the guy was right. Besides he never met a talking monkey before. As they headed up the stairs Scott had a funny feeling about it so he decided to call for back up just in case. James never noticed this because he was too occupied with Donald’s lie. When they reached the correct floor noise of many people talking was heard from outside the door.
“Wait I thought you said that nobody was here.”
James confused opened the door to his employees busy at their work. This really set him off. He began going crazy; running around and screaming. He even started to have a seizure. The back up that Scott called for arrived and took James away to an insane asylum. The employees stopped their work when James entered the room and now it was dead silent. Shirley jumped onto a desk and screamed, “Finally, our plan worked! He’s gone!” They partied for the rest of the day.


Scott’s crew waited for him to come back out. The driver named Carlos came up to talk to him.
“A crazy one.” Carlos laughed.
“Yeah well at least I have an interesting story to tell the kids tonight. For some reason I think they will prefer the “I met a crazy guy who thought he saw a talking monkey” better then the “A building caught on fire and I put it out” one. They got bored of that one after the first 20 times.”
“Well I’m going to drive back to the station. I’ll see you there.”
“Bye.”
Scott walked back to his car. On his way he encountered a strange monkey on the road with a hat on. As they approached each other the monkey took off his hat and bowed. Then he said, “Good day sir.”
Scott stopped in his tracks, “Was that a monkey?”