It was a slow but typical day in the life of a dancing chimpanzee. The cool, spring breeze bringing white, puffy clouds across the great, open sky. People walked hurriedly around our street corner, but few ever stopped and even fewer spared some change. Nevertheless, the organ grinder kept turning the crank and I continued my routine. It used to be a simple two-step and some shenanigans, but with times being so hard we've had to pad up our shtick with more modern influences. "Bobo!" the organ grinder called, "Da customers. Dey ah like fox en ah pig farm, ahnd da rooster es esleep." Another one of his habitual, malformed, eastern European metaphors meaning that the people were being cheap bastards. The worse off we were the wackier his phrases became, and the nature of my work would become even more humiliating.

"Is time to make a more funny." Because more funny equals more money. The greasy, unshaven pimple of a man stood up from the large, antique trunk that served as my wardrobe and his stool. The lid had an obvious double concave from spending hours under his absurdly large ass. He pried it open along the bent hinges and pulled out a sparkly, red blouse, tight lowrider jeans, and a blond, straight haired wig. It was the the greatest disgrace, the mother of all bombs. It was the Hannah Montana routine. I shrieked in protest (the best any ape could do), but the grinder persisted. "Bobo! Git in de drrress, or you git a punch in da face agayn!" I resisted the best I could but the man forced me into the ungodly outfit, and I just stood there pouting. The crank slowly started to turn again and the music began to play, but I couldn't bring myself to perform in such ridiculous attire. "Bobo!" the man repeatedly called my name but I paid no attention. How could he do this to me after all the hard work and abuse I had taken? The house chores, the early morning dance recitals, the three by three cage, the non-constentual sex favors. It was all too much and the breaking point was when I was expected to whore myself out as an animal, pop-icon, impersonator. The notes expelled from the box rapidly, pounding in my brain. Each one more off-key than the last, like an old ice cream truck stopping in front of the fat kids' house.

I tore off the costume and hurled it into the oncoming traffic, causing a motorist to run up the curb and collide with a mailbox where an elderly woman was depositing her AARP registration forms, a letter to her congressman, and a birthday card for her cat. The organ grinder stood with his jaw hanging in disbelief. This was my opportunity. I leapt with all my might, fangs exposed to deliver austere vengeance. They sank through skin and into the skull of the man's forehead while my thumbs gouged into his squinty eyes. The flavor was sweeter than any banana I had tasted. If there was screaming I couldn't hear it over the notes playing like a broken record in my head, but if I were to guess it would be something along the lines of, "Bobo! You mutherfucker!". We toppled to the ground and I rolled off a few feet away. My leash had come undone. Not even taking a second to look back I began my sprint through the city. Darting through the alleys and swinging from telephone lines, the adrenaline pumped through my veins. Free from my captor but now on the run from the law; I was doomed to spend the rest of my days not just as an ape but an ape with a price on his head.