Ivan de Monbrison

Short Fiction

The Monkey-Scholars

How could he have understood it all and yet reality is not so difficult to apprehend but he is too young he was still always too young and defenseless today the weather is gray you don’t know what you are going to do you don’t even really know who you are little by little you’ve been parting from all the others a long time ago it was in the desert they were all talking together at the same time we couldn’t get anything that they said they were hairless and ridiculous simian bodies and their sexes were clearly visible to all then time had covered them with dust or maybe even that all this had been a simple delirium maybe be that these men had been buried simply in white shrouds in the ground it was a thousand years ago it was yesterday you never existed he tends to forget everything the fool he never remembers nothing here there is a tree a little by the side it is quite large and around it in a circle the lunatics keep on talking together and if everything seemed to be logical it is now too late to comprehend any of it all actually sometimes you listen to the animals howling and wandering in the streets of the city devouring on their way everything they can find they eat the madmen and they eat the children alike here after the end and the beginning after all has been said and gone  after the disease the famine and all the shit after fear or after anger there is nothing left to observe but a tiny pebble placed on the edge of a roof off- balance which could fall which will fall certainly at the first gust of wind and which may take the diameter of the earth the very diameter of a universe to carry you away along but this man or yourself it’s equal is in his bed now keeping both eyes closed like two shells he is delirious in his sleep and in his delirium life is very different he can see a garden in front of his house he loves his neighbors his apartment is more beautiful but it’s a dream you open your eyes everything is silent now and if the monkeys-scholars have vanished from the sad and empty streets suddenly and it is only because, they have eaten all the children.

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Vacation

Silence has raised its hammer and banged on the head the head fell it fell on the ground and it rolled slowly on it and you woke up you were in broad daylight in the center of the city there was on the river that is called the Seine white seagulls flying and a few black cormorants there were people walking in pairs or families along the banks because it is winter vacation it was not cold that day the sky was between gray and blue of this indefinable color specific to the sky of Paris you were walking and you would have rather be more alone there or at least that there were fewer people you kept walking a bit where as you had been doing so every day for almost 30 years for more 30 years in fact then you quickly climbed the steps of the old stone stairs which goes from the banks of the Seine to the road which overlooks them built just above and often too noisy because of the cars and then you entered the old district taking the rue de Bièvre it is indeed a very old quarter of the city built several centuries ago then you went up to the familiar apartment you sat on a sofa you looked at your phone for no reason stupidly as you do it too often and then finally you leaned over and picked up your head which had fallen off and rolled on the ground a while ago in some sort of a refusal to keep on thinking as if to forget everything about the end of your life and its beginning it had stayed this way askance bloody on the ground for several hours during all the duration of your walk now it’s time to pick it up holding it with both your hands you look at yourself straight in the eyes you slowly put it back where it should be on this gaping and red open neck which looks a bit like a mouth, but teethless.

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Ivan de Monbrison is a schizoid writer from France. Born in 1969, he has published some poems in the past. He’s mostly an autodidact.