Fly Off

Sometimes emoting is hard. Burnout sags my bones like leaded weights worn while on the surface of planet Jupiter. I could fall asleep under a blanket of innui and kids' crying reminds me of the buzzer to an air raid siren. Isn't working retail wonderful? Worst part is? When someone told me go with the flow. You might as well tell someone suffering from clinical depression to smile.

I go to take care of someone important on the other side of the business. They yell at me or where the dotted line of me used to be. I don't know exactly what the entitled woman said. She yelled so badly spit splattered the cashier's face. I didn't want to deal with the skittle haired punk.

"HEY YOU!" yelled the manager of Human Resources.

That particular anti-capitalist, skittle-haired bleeding heart who yelled at flying monkeys for stealing jobs from . . . What type of minority again? I can't tell. I didn't have the heart to tell Skittles, the Anti-capitalist that the reason people started hiring flying monkeys was because no one could tell the truth without insulting everybody at the same time. Monkey was a slur used against the Irish, Asians, blacks, and various other races ever since Twitter pointed out what our ancient ancestor Lucy looked like and activists got freaked out about dungeons and dragons taking out simian fantasy races. I don't know.

The entitled customer at the cashier's stand started to climb the desk.

Today, I was too sleep deprived to give a darn. Yet, I didn't

want to leave the cashier hanging. Where was that dude again? Well, our resident flying monkey, Simon Simian looked similar to the practical effects found on The Wizard of Oz and Planet of the Apes except his features were sharper due to having lighter, almost elvish bones. His wings were dappled like wood bark on the back and looked like a cloudy sky in the front. His face ended in a hairless cat muzzle. Tousled brown hair pulled into a manbun. Digitigrade bird feet ended in simian toes around retractable talons poking out of rolled up Chinos. They couldn't fit into any shoes so I had to listen for his talons tapping across the floor.

I flagged him down. His polyester vest had slits cut out for the wings.

"Hey Simon!" I called out.

Slit pupiled, green and blue eyes rounded in pupils then shrunk as his prehensile tail twitched at the tip.

"We have a customer at the cashier stand to see ya." I said.

Simon's pointy ear twitched.

"I heard," he rumbled, "Why aren't you going to help out."

"Skittles is defending the customer against our cashier again for being white," I said, "If I tried to help, I couldn't shut them up like you can."

Simon nodded.

"Would you set up the Dee's Nuts display in the healthcare section of the store?" He asked.

"Sure," I said and felt a chill down my spine as he walked past me with a grin. Two inch long fangs snaked across his jaw.

I could always work on the display later but Simon had me curious because he never smiles. I think some videos on YouTube told that some apes used smiles as a threat display instead of a greeting like humans do. Simon also stocked shelves instead of cashiered because he sucked at emoting feelings. Then he started jumping from rafter to rafter like a Great Tit in the gardening section of the store.

What was he up to?

The cashier looked ready to melt into her own tears like a squonk melting away under its own warts by the time I got there.

"I have a coupon! I deserve this! I am a hard working-EEK!"

The ladies rant got cut off by a blur. The revolving doors spun the ladies goods were left at the checkout stand as Simon Simian kidnapped the entitled customer off into the sunset.

Skittles screamed bloody murder. The whole thing happened in five seconds but felt like five minutes.

"HELP!" cried Skittles, "That monkey kidnapped Karen."

People put their hands up in surrender and backed away slowly. I was worried but went back to set up the Dee's Nuts display in the Healthcare section next to the condoms. We didn't have to worry for long. Simon and Karen came back.

Karen wrung her hands as she came back and apologized to everyone like a completely different person? Who was this woman and what the hell did Simon do?

Simon told me later, as was custom of him.

"It turns out Karen was having a bad day," he shrugged, his face was monotone but his pupils dialated. "She got treated like shit and ignored at her other job and I guess the bad mood carried over there."

He pointed outside. Part of me screamed in horror on the inside. He took a customer high into the sky. He literally kidnapped a woman. Dear gosh the lawsuit coming. I played it cool.

"Did you have a nice talk?" I asked.

I thought he was going to be pissed. Instead he confirmed my fears.

"Nah I was going to drop her, from ten stories high," Simon said without joking.

. . . Oh dear . . .

"I didn't expect her to spill her life's story after . . . You know," Simon said. His hands made like bird's wings. He flapped them and whistled like a dropped bomb.

Force of habit got me grabbing a couple drinks to pay at the self-checkout. Self-conciousness held me up as I ran up one root beer and one banana milk. Bananas are associated with monkeys. I feared insulting the flying monkey.

"Hey!" He cheered, "Can I have the banana milk?"

I tossed him the bottle. He bit into the bottom of it and slurped the contents. Then I remembered this was Simon we were talking about. I don't know much about a race different from me. I at least know a little about my co-workers.

Simon ate the bottle after sucking out the milk.

Well I found out a little more about Simon than I thought.