"I don't think I can go in there today," Patricia said. It was two in the afternoon. She was due at the airport at four pm, to feed and water any animals that were in quarantine. She had already skipped their morning feeding.
"What do you mean?" Dr. Nelson asked. He sounded irritated. Patricia thought she could hear activity in the background, his family, probably. It was the Fourth of July; they might be having a barbecue. "Are you calling in sick?"

"No," Patricia replied doubtfully.

"So what is it, then?" Dr. Nelson was on call but didn't like being paged. She had been a little scared to page him, no matter how close they had become, or how bizarre things were in the warehouse.

"It's the monkeys," she said. She could picture the warehouse as she spoke: a long, narrow, cinder-block building with a corrugated steel roof. The walls and ceiling were painted white, with two rows of florescent lights hanging down from the steel rafters. There were three rows of cages: molded fiberglass crates with steel doors running along both walls, and a row of freestanding steel cages down the middle. The center row was where the monkeys were kept. "Every day I go in there, there are more monkeys."

"Huh." Dr. Nelson replied. The edge was gone from his voice. "Were we expecting additional intakes?"

"I don't know." Her voice was near whining. "There something wrong with them, though. Every day there's more of them, sometimes and they're all crammed into the cages. Yesterday there were five macaques in one cage." She remembered how that had looked: fur and fingers sticking out from the bars, one monkey pressed against the wire, mouth open, sharp canines jutting out like a rattlesnake being milked. "They were dead."

"Five dead monkeys?" he asked. The quarantine was a formality; nothing was expected to be wrong with these animals.

"There were more dead ones than that," she said. "I left you a message. On your service." She knew then that he hadn't checked it. He was with his family and didn't want to talk to her. She was someone he only thought of when his wife wasn't around.

"How many dead monkeys?" Dr. Nelson asked, choosing to overlook the issue of the voice mail he hadn't listened to. For a moment, Patricia could hear another voice, a woman speaking very close to the phone. Mrs. Nelson, perhaps? Patricia tried to imagine what the doctor's wife would look like.

"About twenty," Patricia said. She remembered taking their bodies from the cages, some warm and sickeningly limp, others rigid and cold.

"Patricia, we only had thirteen macaques altogether."

"I know!" she shouted. "That's what I'm saying. There are more and more monkeys every day!"

"Patricia," Dr. Nelson said, his voice searching for that authoritative tone that bosses must have. "That's impossible."

Impossible or not, that was what had been happening. The first few weeks of the job had been completely uneventful, if unpleasant. She disliked the long drive out to the airport, and how the warehouse smelled. There was a giant air conditioner on the roof that kept the animals comfortable even in the fierce July heat, but the re-circulating air was tainted with the odors of urine, feces, and fur.

On Wednesday, there had been a total of 13 of crab-eating macaques, each in their own cage, leaving most of the cages empty. The monkeys were the only animals in quarantine at the time, which she had been told was odd, as there were usually a few dogs and cats under rabies observation. Maybe it was the lack of work that had led to her and Dr. Nelson carrying on as they had.

Patricia had gone up and down the rows, feeding and watering the animals, observing their general condition, levels of alertness, all sorts of things. These monkeys had been bred on a farm and were used to being handled, but they still frightened her, a little. She was in her second year of a pre-veterinary program, and animals still frightened her sometimes, especially big ones, like horses, but especially human-looking ones, like macaques.

On Thursday morning, there had been 27 macaques, sometimes two in a cage, which was strictly against policy. It was possible that another shipment had come in during the night, but there were 60 cages. There was no reason to pack the monkeys together like that. She thought someone had made a mistake, and she separated the monkeys out. The monkeys called and hooted as she moved them. Some had struggled, but none had bitten her. Patricia was careful not to challenge them by looking into their eyes.

Then, on Friday morning, there were 64 monkeys in the room. A few of the cages were still empty, while others had two or even more monkeys in them. Some of the monkeys were dead, four or five crammed into a cage. This was not normal; this couldn't have been a mistake. She had bagged them and put them in the freezer. Then she paged Dr. Nelson and left a message.

She had thought about it all last night. She didn't know where the monkeys were coming from, but if things went as they had been going, there would be perhaps 200 monkeys in there today, and the cages couldn't hold that many. The cages would be split open, the animals loose. She saw it in her mind, the warehouse crowded with running, hooting, fighting macaques. She couldn't go back there.

Patricia had skipped the morning feeding, and had haunted her studio apartment, the air conditioner whirring, the radio on, waiting for Dr. Nelson to call. The bright Fourth of July sun leaked in through the blinds. Puerto Rican kids were running up and down the narrow street, lighting off firecrackers. When noontime came, and Dr. Nelson still hadn't called her, Patricia had texted him with her telephone number and added 911 at the end.

"So they didn't get fed or watered this morning?" Dr. Nelson asked, growing angry, now. She knew he was regretting what their other relationship had done to their boss/employee dynamic.

"No," she confessed quietly. "I couldn't go in." She sounded very small to her own ears.

"God damn it," Dr. Nelson said, not really to her, but about her, she knew. "I'll call you later." He hung up the phone.

"Thirteen macaques." Dr. Nelson said. She could hear that he was on a cell phone, and he was driving. He hadn't given her his cell phone number, just the pager. "A little hungry, but fine."

"But that's impossible!" Patricia said. "Did you check the freezer?"

"Of course I did." Dr. Nelson replied. He was angry; she could hear it in his voice. The cell phone crackled. "There were no dead monkeys in there, and there were 13 monkeys in the cages, just like there should be," he said.

He had to be lying. But why would he?

"Listen, Patricia, the job was to for you to take care of these animals over weekends and on my days off," he said. "I'm not certain what you thought was happening there, but I think this might be the wrong job for you. I'll send you your last check." There was a long pause. She could hear the car rolling, the burnt summer air flowing in through the open window. "Sorry that this didn't work out." Dr. Nelson disconnected.

Patricia felt simultaneous stabs of fear and relief. She wouldn't have to see him anymore. She had wanted something to happen between them, but a relationship with a married man was a bad idea. And there was no job, now, either. She had gotten out of that as well.

But what about the monkeys? She hadn't imagined them, she was certain. Dr. Nelson must have been lying, to cover up gross negligence on someone's part. But who could be so cruel as to cram those monkeys down into the cage as she had found them? She pictured it, a large man wearing a brown denim jacket and heavy black gloves shoving one more monkey down into an already crowded cage. It was worse than inhuman.

There was a crash from the bathroom. Patricia spun her head around. She knew from the sound that it was the glass she used when brushing her teeth, falling from the sink and shattering on the tile floor. She rose from the bed and crossed the bedroom, slowly. The bathroom door was nearly closed and allowed just a sliver of sunlight to fall into the dark hall. Shadows crossed the light, perhaps curtains blowing in the breeze of an open window.

There was another crash, followed by the stuttered growl of the shower curtain being ripped down. There was a noise behind her. Patricia spun and saw two crab-eating macaques sitting atop her computer monitor, staring at her with their small black animal eyes. Soundlessly, one monkey opened its mouth, revealing two sets of long canines in what seemed to be a yawn but Patricia knew was a challenge. She looked away reflexively, not wanting to confront the animal, and saw that here were two more monkeys on her bed, in the posture of grooming. They stopped and looked at her, dark eyes glittering.

She heard the cabinet doors in the kitchen creak open, then glassware tumbling out and shattering. This was followed by an excited, animal scream. The monkeys in the room with her screamed in answer, she spun again, there were more monkeys in the room now, hanging from the blinds, on the computer chair, under the desk. They set up a din of screeching and wailing, each calling out a warning of some threat they all had simultaneously spotted, such as a snake or a jaguar. Patricia ran for the front door, only a handful of steps in her studio apartment. She glanced into the kitchenette. Monkeys lined the horizontal surfaces, packed together like commuters on a rush-hour train. Three more monkeys hung precariously from the overhead light. As she watched, the oven door fell open and dead monkeys spilled out, their fur singed, their faces bloated from gas.

Patricia retched, and pulled open the front door.

The doorway was filled with monkeys, pressed together as they had been in the cages, some already asphyxiated, other struggling against the weight of the monkeys above. Patricia threw her hands up and screamed. The monkeys spilled into the apartment, cresting over her like a wave. She struggled against them, her hands pushing out against fur, fingers and teeth. The sheer weight of numbers bore her down, and she collapsed. The monkeys kept pouring in. More and more were being piled on, it was as if the entire apartment building had been stuffed with monkeys and her open door was a drain in at the bottom. When she tried to scream again, her mouth was instantly filled with soft, furry flesh.

Patricia struggled and kicked as the monkeys struggled and kicked. Fingers clutched and pulled at her, and the weight of their countless small bodies began to press down upon her. The air was getting harder to pull in; it tasted of cages and pellets and wet fur. The monkeys against her were mostly dead, now, and the cries of the living were growing fainter and fainter.

She opened one eye. A small glimmer of light bled down from above, the beam broken by the monkeys being piled on top. Patricia could see that a monkey close to her was still alive. Its mouth was open just a little and its nostrils flared with each excited breath. She watched its dark eye dart as the weight of the monkeys above it pressed down.

Then the light was gone.

THE END