Part One
ON A HOT DAY IN JULY you’d think people would have better things to do than sit in a hot bar with a single listless fan. But the patrons lingered, bent to the purpose of their beers and little else. Sybil the bartender wiped the bar and stopped for a moment to look at her hands. She thought them unfeminine, and ungainly, and she thought everyone stared at them. So when the thing with the jug ears galumphed in, no one bothered to look up.

He flung himself onto a stool.

Sybil was perplexed. Could she serve nonhumans? With the new laws as they were, she figured no. She said, "Sorry, sir, we don’t serve monkeys.”

“No problem,” said the small, hairy figure. "I'm not a monkey. I'm a monkeyfish."

* * *

"OH, OK, THEN," Sybil said, too hot to ask what a monkeyfish was, but glad to be distracted from the heat. He wore a small red hat with a golden tassel and a green felt vest decorated with naked female cowgirls. Human enough, she thought. "What can I get you?"

"I'm looking for my paw," the monkeyfish said.

"How old are you?" Sybil asked.

"125."

"Oh, why you don't look a day over a hundred." She wiped the sticky counter down for the hundredth time, thought of her hands again. "Your daddy ain't here. Nothing that looked like you has ever walked through those doors before."

“Not my pa. My paw,” the monkeyfish said — with a strange accent, so the bartender’s confusion was understandable. With that, he placed his left arm on the counter with a thud. It was then that Sybil saw instead of a left hand — or paw — he had a silver prosthetic fin."

* * *

THE MONKEYFISH said his name was Koko.

“I’m Sybil. A pleasure.”

"I have traced my paw to this area. It would be shriveled by now."

"You should talk to The Poet," Sybil said, "He’s here all the time. Not a big tipper.”

Just then, out of a dark booth, emerged a broom-thin man with hair that grew like a sponge upon his head.

"Sybil, another merlot," The Poet said.

"Cheapskate,” she muttered.

“And the wine is rotgut," said The Poet. He turned to the monkeyfish. "So – Monsieur Koko. Perhaps I can help you."

"Have you seen It?"

"I may have. But first, tell me: How did you come to lose your paw in the first place?"

* * *

"I WAS BORN in the waters off Madagascar. Alone," the monkeyfish began. "The first thing my eyes saw was the Moon on the water. I had a long, happy life, swimming in the deep, dark water, on and off the shore, eating crayfish, eating persimmon, with the Moon as my friend. A long, happy life. But one night 80 years ago a fisherman caught me in his net. I was dragged and dumped on board. I was unable to speak the fisherman's language and frightened. But he did not slaughter and roast me with almonds, as I expected. Although that might have been a better fate. He knew I was different. So he sold me to a doctor."

* * *

THE DOCTOR took me back to a lab. He kept me in a tank of stinking, dirty water. He experimented on me, took my blood again and again, starved me, shocked me. Every day was darkness. Except for one bright light: the doctor's wife: Lala. It was she who brought me oranges, sardines, and really good turkey bacon, which is not easy to find. Day by day, Lala taught me to read. Day by day, in those brief times her husband was away, we read through Chaucer, Yeats, Neruda. We found salvation in each other. We fell in love."

* * *

SYBIL WATCHED the monkeyfish as it — as he — continued.

"She wanted to free me, free us both. But the doctor almost never left the lab. In the brief moments alone Lala and I had together, we held each other. She smelled like the ocean. She smelled like home. And a little bit like booze. We planned a future together. But how were we to be free of the doctor?! Then — tell me, Sybil, have you ever heard the story of the monkey's paw?"

At this Sybil and The Poet drew closer.

To be continued!