Cut My Life Into Pieces (This Is My Monkey Backpack)

It is a well-established fact that dreams operate on their own logic, which is to say, no logic at all, but with absolute conviction.

In this particular dream, there was a high school teacher. There was also a student. And the student had a monkey.

Now, it wasn't technically a monkey. It was a backpack. That did not improve matters. It hung from the girl's shoulder by what appeared to be its own tail, pulled into a single strap while the rest of the creature dangled beneath it in a prone position. What made it truly upsetting was the rigidity. It looked less like a schoolbag than an animal holding itself perfectly still in mortal terror. Whatever it had once been, it had clearly passed through the hands of people with no fear of God and worse taste.

The monkey-bag did not wish to be set down. This much became clear when it attempted to flee across the classroom floor with the desperate urgency of something that had places to be and no legs adequate for the journey.

And then, because dreams abhor a vacuum of normalcy, it began to play Papa Roach.

From its mouth.

With lights.

RGB lights, the kind favored by people who believe their computer needs to look like a small rave is occurring inside it at all times. The lights also emanated from the monkey's other end, because apparently someone in the design department had thought the hoes gonna love this!

The student, mortified in the way only teenagers can be mortified—which is to say, as though the universe itself had conspired specifically against them and also everyone was watching—found herself unable to silence the beast.

She turned to her teacher with the kind of desperate, pleading expression usually reserved for extensions on essays and bathroom emergencies.

“Please,” she said. Or perhaps she didn't say it. Dreams are unclear on dialogue. But the meaning was unmistakable.

The silence button, it transpired, was the glowing rectal disco.

The teacher—a grown adult, an educator, a person with a degree—reached out and pressed it.

The monkey's eyes met his.

They were pleading. They were horrified. They contained depths of emotion that no animatronic novelty bag should possess. What the hell was the student carrying in this thing anyway?

He woke in a cold sweat.

It should be noted that the dreamer is neither a high school teacher nor, prior to this night, a person with any particular feelings about monkeys. He has also never cared for RGB lighting.

He cares about it now. Viscerally. In the way one cares about a wasp in the car.