by Bill Olver
The lake seemed like a mirror to another, stranger world, and Clay found himself lost deep in thoughts as he gazed in the dark brown eyes of the ape that grinned at him from the other side of the surface. An eerie sensation traveled along his spine and Clay felt as if his spirit started to leave his body. He tried to move and shake it off, but his body would not obey his commands; deeper and deeper his mind sank into the two brown orbs that now seemed to merge into an endless abyss, drawing Clay’s very essence into it.
Grey mists obscured his vision, and through them Clay caught glimpses of dark shapes gliding like ghosts upon water. The sky was dark and menacing; tall, exotic trees loomed over him and cast deep shadows over the land. The ground was carpeted by a low, thick growth of vegetation. Clay’s vision slowly cleared and he started to make out the dim shapes scrambling around him. He recoiled in surprise when he recognized them to be apes—like himself, but gigantic and powerful were they; apes of another age, more ancient and more savage. These were apes of the Wild, untamed and full of life, unhindered by the confines of civilization that, Clay knew deep in his soul, had taken the apish vigor out of his brethren. He knew all this, not by rational thought, but some dim and ancient instinct.
Now the apes fought terrible grey monstrosities with fierce determination. These foes were—Clay understood it—an ancient breed of primates, lost and forgotten to ape-kind, now reemerged in a last attempt to stall the crumbling of their dying race by stealing the offspring of the younger races. They were terrible and brutal, smiting and gnawing their way through the ranks of the beleaguered apes which huddled in a circle around their young in a desperate last stand.
It was then that the red mists of fury descended on Clay’s mind. He knew not these apes, but he felt a strange kinship with them; mayhap they were his wild ancestors or his brethren from beyond the chasms of Space and Time. They were Life, and the grey monsters were Death. Inside his soul and heart he felt his wrath towards the foul attackers rising, and he leapt to the defender’s side, bellowing a challenge that reverberated with savage ferocity.
Clay sprang among the grey apes with such speed and ferocity that he resembled a tiger, but an ape. He tackled one foe and started to beat his head with his mighty fists closed. The grey ape roared furiously and locked his arms around Clay’s body, and Clay witnessed the brutal strength that lay in the monster’s sinews. Breath was instantly squeezed out of his lungs, and his head swam with pain. Bolts of agony spread through his chest like wildfire as he struggled to release himself from the iron grip. Here were not the rotting muscles of the civilized apes he was accustomed to dealing with; here was the raw and desperate strength of the Wild that sought to extinguish the flame of life that burned inside of him. Clay struggled in vain to free himself, and just as he was on verge of expiration, he heard the fearful cries of the younglings pierce the clamor of battle.
He felt red fury surge from his soul, and in a burst of apish rage he broke free from the death-grip, landing ferocious punches against his opponent. The flurry of strokes would have felled a weaker ape, but the grey beast shrugged them off and circled Clay in an attempt to come up from his behind. Clay snarled his defiance and once again sprang at his opponent, arms spread wide, heedless of his injuries. Blow after terrible blow struck the bulk of the grey ape, and each time a grunt of pain broke from his throat.
At last, the intensity of Clay’s hatred took its toll on his foe, and the grey ape bellowed awfully. He leapt away from the fray, hurt and bleeding, limping away in haste. This seemed to turn the tide of battle. Demoralized, the others soon followed, and in a few moments the glade was occupied only by the black apes who snarled after the retreating forms of their attackers. Clay faced the haggard defenders; their bodies, although larger and of shaggier fur, were very much like his, and their faces bore the familiar visages of warmth and friendliness, in stark contrast to the blind ruthlessness of the grey apes.
The apes regarded Clay curiously, but remained silent. Clay didn’t know if they could speak his language—or any language at all—since they seemed to belong to an ancient breed, probably one of the first Old Apes that inhabited the misty lands of A-fu-ri-ka, the birthplace of his ancestors. A large gorilla, bearing fresh wounds from the battle, separated himself from the huddled bunch and warily approached Clay.
As long as he lived Clay would never forget that moment; each remaining day of his hard life he would be able to vividly recall the feeling of fierce pride swelling inside his breast as the gorilla laid his paw on his shoulder, and nodded his grim appreciation. No words were necessary; no words could even begin to describe the storm of emotions brewing inside of Clay that almost made him shed a tear at the fate of his mysterious brethren. He marveled at their courage and will to stand against insurmountable odds.
The gorilla backed off, and soon the pack started to disappear into the grey mists. With them, the whole world started to reel and shatter and Clay soon found himself pitched into a black abyss.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
A distant sound echoed through the gulfs of Time and Space, a sound both terrible and weird, yet somehow recognizable to Clay. He felt drawn to it, like a moth to the flame—but more like an ape to a banana—as he slowly regained possession of his own mind.
“Aie! The King is dead! Aie! Aie!” Reggie shrieked like a mad hill-ape, drawing the attention of a large number of other primates to the prostrate form of King Clay, who lay near the shimmering pool, eyes closed and his body unresponsive.
“Aie! Who will lead us now? Oh, great King! Woe to us all! Aie!”
“Cease your bellowing, you blundering fool,” the King’s voice rasped through half-parted lips. “You sound like an ox, not an ape.”
Clay slowly rose to his feet and stretched his mighty limbs. He felt pain in his joints and muscles; pain borne of great exertion that seemed elusive to his mind yet somehow known to his soul.
“Oh, great King! What happened to you?” shrieked Reggie. “I observed you from that tree yonder as you went to drink from the lake, and as I watched you stare into the lake I seemed to temporarily lose my sanity—as it has been known to happen on some occasions—for I saw your form slowly drained into a whirlpool that opened up to swallow you. As I rushed to your aid, I had lost the sight of you, and when I neared the lake, I found you lying on the grass—apparently dead!”
“I live!” roared Clay, and the primates shrank back in fear. A soft murmur passed between the slowly growing circle of spectators that had gathered around the King.
“Reggie, what you saw was not due to lapse of sanity, although such instances were indeed known to happen to you. My dream-like experience is best to remain untold, for it cannot be explained by words, nor understood by reason. But know this!”
Clay faced his subordinates who eyed him with alarm and suspicion, but were still transfixed with the resonance of his words. He regarded them grimly.
“I have seen the other side of the Veil that we apes call life; I have treaded on strange, misty shores and battled an ancient menace side by side with our long-lost kin. I, King Clay, have seen the face of the primordial apes, those your mothers used to scare you when you misbehaved. I felt the evil strength of their blood-stained hands upon my flesh. I know not how I came to be there, or how I made my way back, but my path is now clearly laid out in front of me.
“You walk like dumb brutes and waste away your days in spiritless passivity. You have food and water a-plenty and yet you quarrel over trivialities and fight among yourselves like base animals! Bah! But no more! You are dogs, and I must make you apes. By my hand will I mold you into proper apes, worthy of our ancestor’s legacy, so I swear.”
The apes gazed in complete silence and mouths agape, uncertain what to think or feel, although in their countenances was evident a deep and mysterious understanding of the King’s cryptic words.
“All hail King Clay, the ruler of all!” shouted Reggie.
A cheer went up from all the apes.
King Clay thumped mightily at his wide chest, letting out a long and powerful grunt from the depths of his lungs, and in that grunt was a note of power and hope, but also a subtler one, a hint of sadness and want of things that once were but may never be again.
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Viktor Kowalski (The Lost Apes) is a pen name for two young pulp loving authors hailing from Croatia, Europe. So far, Viktor’s fiction has appeared in Pulp Empire’s Pirates and Swashbucklers and Heroes & Heretics anthologies, with several other pulp titles slated for publication in 2012.
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THE TASTE OF GOLD
by Bernie Mojzes
Now, you know how people are. They come up with all these crazy stories, allegories for knowledge and wisdom and all that crap to pass on to future generations down the ages. Brahma dreams the universe into existence. Prometheus steals fire from the gods. Thor sneezes out a big glob of snot and names it Iceland. Yeah, so maybe I made up the last one. Who knows? Maybe a couple hundred years from now it’ll turn up in someone’s thesis. Just hope no one asks where the British Isles came from.
There’s a thousand of these stories, a million. All spinning tales of fantastic beings who embody the best and the worst and the most extreme of what constitutes being human. Every tribe has its own set—one god to embody each archetype. And only ever one god per archetype.
Or that’s what they’d like you to believe.
I know better.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
It all started one night, sitting in McShea’s with some friends from my writing group. I was nursing my third shot of Jameson’s while everyone else extolled the virtues of a particular local brew with the unlikely name of “Gold Monkey.” Except for Greg, who has a thing for Dead Guys. Don’t ask.
Anyway, I’d been reading up on trickster gods for a story I was working on and had stumbled upon a reference to Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of Chinese mythology. Not at all what I needed for my Coyote story, but by my fourth shot of Jameson’s, I’d come up with a brilliant idea: I was going to send a bottle of Gold Monkey addressed to Sun Wukong, People’s Republic of China, with no return address. Yeah, I know, right? But that’s not the brilliant part.
The brilliant part was I was going to send an empty bottle.
See, the Monkey King is a god of immeasurable appetites. Don’t believe me? Look him up. Sending a single bottle is a taunt. Sending a single empty bottle? Ha! I scribbled my idea on a napkin and promptly forgot all about it.
And the other thing I forgot? It hardly seems worth mentioning the raven that sat on the sill of the window next to our table, watching us through the glass with clever eyes that reflected the flickering neon Coors sign that hung above it.
“I think it wants my fries,” Barb said.
She was wrong.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
So here’s where it starts getting weird. And I totally don’t blame you if you don’t believe me, but this is the absolute God’s honest truth, so help me Bertrand Russell.
Two days later, I got an email from one of the people in the group.
“Is there a reason you stuck your Monkey King napkin in my purse?” she asked.
Monkey King napkin? It took me a minute, and then I remembered. No idea how it got in her purse, though. No idea either how an empty bottle of Gold Monkey Ale ended up in the back seat of my car, with a black feather, a couple tufts of grey fur, a condom wrapper, and an earring I didn’t recognize. I told my spousal unit it must have been some neighborhood kids. She said we’d talk about this again. Later. Making the best of things, I found a nice gift box, packed up the bottle, and shipped it to China.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
It was a few months before I next had any direct involvement in the events that followed, but I don’t see any value in making you wait that long. Long story short: Sun Wukong received my package and flew into a rage over his inability to extract even the tiniest drop of the succulent beverage whose mere scent drove him into a frenzy of desire. He immediately set off to find the source of this most inaccessible of delicacies. His first stop, both because it was closest and because it was the only visa in his passport that hadn’t expired, was Japan, where he had recently gone to feast on fugu liver sushi.
Now in China, everyone knows about the Monkey King and his capricious and enormous appetite. No one, not even the hardline Communist airport bureaucrat who processed his boarding pass and scanned his carry-on luggage, tried to prevent him from bringing his empty bottle of Golden Monkey onto the flight. And she didn’t even believe in him.
Arriving in Tokyo, Sun Wukong breezed through customs. They didn’t believe in him, either, and had little respect for the ancient superstitions of another land, but they still had yellowing posters of the Monkey King hanging in employee lounges and washrooms next to the labor regulations posters and the signs that read, “All Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Wok.” And while someone had gone so far as to draw a Fu Manchu mustache on the posters, everyone took the warnings seriously: “VERY DANGEROUS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND.” Over which someone had scribbled in red marker: “Give the monkey what he wants.”
But nobody could. He stopped passengers, airline attendants, baggage handlers and one somewhat bemused teenaged schoolgirl who slapped halfheartedly at a wandering tentacle that kept slipping out of her purse to fondle strangers, asking—no, demanding—that they tell him where to find the Gold Monkey.
“Gold Monkey?” said the girl. “I…” She stopped a moment to snatch the tentacle away from a passerby and shove it forcefully back into her purse. “Stop that right this instant,” she said, speaking into her purse. She turned back to the Monkey King. “I can’t take him anywhere! Anyway, I don’t know anything about this monkey of yours. Have you checked the zoo?”
That, Sun Wukong realized, was probably the best advice he was going to get from the people here. He bowed to the girl and her tentacled friend and headed off in the direction of the information booth to hail a taxi.
Imagine his surprise when he saw, standing in front of the information booth, a sleekly beautiful woman. She was tall and thin, with an unusually long face and a pointed nose—certainly not the sublimely beautiful moon-shaped face of classic literature, but stunning nonetheless. She wore a form-fitting white dress, with a fur draped over her shoulders. She held a placard with his name written in an impeccably calligraphied hand.
This in itself was something of a surprise, but the true surprise was something that no one else in the airport could see: she was a fox. He approached her cautiously, for foxes are tricky creatures, and many a man has lost himself in their enchanting eyes, and bowed.
She smiled, and returned the bow.
“Welcome to Tokyo,” she said. “Your presence here brings me great joy. I am honored to finally meet you.”
Sun Wukong returned the compliment, though he remained suspicious. He was always suspicious of tricksters. “Please, do not take offense, but I wonder what it is that brings you here?”
“Oh, I am here to meet you. I heard that you had come here seeking the perfect beverage. I am, if I may say most humbly, quite an expert on such things, and put myself in your service.”
The Monkey King’s eyes lit. That is what had once filled the empty bottle which he carried: the perfect beverage. It was these three words that sealed his fate, that caused him to change the nature of his quest. Before, he had been motivated by a mild curiosity which, had he been distracted away from the object of his desire by something like an excellent noodle shop, or a beautiful fox, would have been forgotten as quickly and as thoroughly as if it had never existed. But the perfect beverage? For that, he would travel to the ends of the earth.
“Lead on,” he said.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Throughout that day, and the night, and the following day, the fox woman led the Monkey King from bar to bar, from restaurant to nightclub, from brewery to sushi bar.
None carried the elusive and distinctive label of the Gold Monkey, and the Monkey King left all of them disappointed, if a bit more drunk than the last. For what was the point of being in a bar with a beautiful woman on one’s arm, if not to drink?
It was growing dark as the fox woman led Sun Wukong from the last of the purveyors of spirits, fine or otherwise, to be found in Tokyo. She steered him around cars, both parked and moving, and into Kiyosumi Gardens, where she helped him into a park bench. He sagged, flowing into his seat, and his eyes drooped.
“Where next?” he slurred.
“That’s it,” said the fox woman. “We have exhausted Tokyo.”
“Impossible.” The Monkey King waved an arm at an uncaring Tokyo skyline.
“Perhaps,” she said, her voice soft beside him, “I might be of more assistance if I were to see this precious bottle of yours.” She sat on his lap and nuzzled his ear.
Sun Wukong reached into his robe and produced the empty bottle. The fox woman took it from his resisting fingers.
“I think this monkey looks like it might come from Africa,” she said. “I think it is an African monkey. Have you looked there?”
“What?” The Monkey King leaped to his feet, dumping the fox woman on the ground. She landed on all four feet, and her tongue shone pink behind sharp, white teeth and long, red fur. “Africa? Yes, yes, it does! I must go there at once!”
With a great leap that shook the ground and set off car alarms throughout Tokyo, the Monkey King set out on his way to Africa, somersaulting through the night sky.
The fox woman lay on her back in the soft grass and flipped through Sun Wukong’s passport, marveling at the places his appetite had taken him, and laughed.