A Short Story

“It’s too bad it didn’t work out. I feel like a coworking space is just what this community needs.”

“Yeah well, we gave it a shot for couple years and we learned a lot along the way.”

“Well you never know, maybe the community will… Hey Joe,Happy Alumni Day!”

It was the day of the community alumni parade so naturally everybody was out on Main Street. It just so happened to be my last day on Main Street as we were moving the next day. 

The darkness came quickly. Suddenly afternoon turn into dusk. I looked at my neighbors and they were just as surprised as me. Then suddenly from the eastern woods of town I heard a scream, a collective scream, like a thousand people yelling at once. But not people.

Then we saw them, running toward us, on all fours. There were so many. We all turned to run, all in different directions. I ran toward the old coworking space that was is being renovated - into an ice cream shop if I remember correctly. My friend joined me.

”No not that way, into this crawl space,“ I said.

We crawled into a connection between rooms. I closed the door behind us. We needed to wait. From here we could see out, but just barely. We saw people running, others falling, and the creatures jumping on people no matter what they did. 

Curiously, people got back up with the creatures on their shoulders. They stood tall and walked confidently. After a while several people stood in a row outside our space, like they were at attention. The parade had turned into a military exercise.

To this day I can’t tell you what possessed us. But after a while we decided to walk outside and join the crowd at attention. It didn’t seem so bad. One of my old friends greeted us. Well, not him exactly, the monkey on his shoulder.

“I’m glad you could join us,” he said, while my friend smiled beside him. “It’s been a long time, but we’re back.”

“Oh?” I said, curious.

“Yes, well, we came several million years ago as I’m sure you may have gathered from relics and fossils. We inspired your great descendants to come out of the trees and till the plains, cultivate the earth, and apparently lose your tails and all your fur too!” he laughed. Coughed. Composing himself. 

“You’ve done quite well I see, go forth and multiple indeed! But we’ve been checking in on things and decided in the last fifty years or so that you’re stretching to the edge of what you can handle. So we’ll take it from here.”

“Oh?” I said again, feeling a bit stupid for saying the same thing again, but honestly what else could I say?

“Yes, well, we thought we should start here. You do have the largest military in the world. You know that right, five times bigger than every other military in the world combined? It’s really rather something. And this President of yours, well, let’s just say we felt the timing just couldn’t be better.”

A little monkey jumped up on my shoulder and I felt an immediate calm and peace come over me that I hadn’t felt at anytime in my entire life.

“I’m glad it worked out,” he said to me kindly, “I feel like a coworking space is just what this community needs.”