STAGFLATION!

Sombre fat man smokes cigar, rumatively.
Speaks-
"There will be suffering ahead.
Mass starvation. Civil Unrest. Curtailing of freeedoms you have come to take for granted. War of course. Severe enviromental degradation. Increasing incidences of natural catastrophe."

a measured, almost mournful tone.
Fart bubbbles in bathwater.

"It is a question of priorities. In a universe in which time and energy are finite, it is always a question of priorites. For you, the people, it is a time of great challenges. An exciting time. The apron strings have been cut. Now, if a road falls into disrepair, you must mend it. If a child is to receive an education, you must provide it."

Mutinous seminarians, drunk with mirth and insurrection, compel their priests to dress up as pagan idols, as grain gods and rain gods and goddesses of fertility and participate in orgiastic revels that last into the early hours of the morning.
A chant is taken up, it is impossible to place where it started from. Are these things ever consciously begun? Or is it the will of the old gods manifesting itself among these callow students?
"Sacrifice the Sun King! Sacrifice the Sun King! Sacrifice the Sun King!"
Old Father O'Malley, Headmaster, is frogmarched towards the flames, naked save for a spectacular headdress of canary fathers and sunflower petals.
The sight of his pale, quivering paunch and genitals made tiny with fear and night chill, brought the youths back to themselves. Conscience and rationality reasserted themselves, they pause, look at one another, bewildered. What have we set in motion? What force has usurped our minds?
But only for an instant, the old gods are strong still and the ritual, once set in motion, must be concluded. Such things have a logic and a momentum of their own.
But that shrunken cock and hairy paunch will remain burned in the memory of all those who witnessed the events of that infamous night, forever.

Headdress of Flame.

"I don't miss it, do you?"

"Miss it? The Old Life you mean? No, I don't miss it."

"It all seems so inconsequential now and so slight. I remember so little of what it was like."

"A mirage. I never had much invested in it anyhow."

"it's funny but I feel as though I always knew this world and its way of doing things. Even before what happened I was familiar with it, I had visited it so often in my dreams."

"You too?"

"Yes, many times. It's all clear to me now."

A renegade zookeeper refuses to leave the monkey cage and lives out the rest of his life among that incarcerated troupe, eventualy working his way up to become top monkey with all female posteriors pointed invitingly in his direction. His display is genuinely ferocious.

His last communication was written in impeccable handwriting on a pad of post-it notes, and left lying on his desk.

-I hereby lay down the burden of self-awareness, of language, of pre-knowledge of death, of reason and arid logic. Manhood is bacome too bitter a taste for me to stomach. I renounce the human race and go to purge myself of their disease. Thier fruitless striving, their endless avarice and perversity, and above all, their self-destructiveness. Leave me in peace with my brethren behind bars. If they are to be imprisoned, then I also shall be imprisoned. It is my will.
Farewell.-

At first the authorties remonstrated with him. They tried to enlist the support of his wife, but she refused to come. She said she was perfectly happy with the arrangement. They warned him of grave dangers. They tried to remove him by force but the monkeys protected him. They even offered him promotions and rises and research grant. All of this fell on deaf ears. He swung on the tyre swing. He picked nits from the coats of his fellows.
Eventually however, he proved such a hit with visitors to the zoo and garnered such invaluable publicity, winning a celebrity status unheard of since the heady days of Zing the panda that they relented, He could stay. After all, he was worth hundreds of thousands in postcard sales alone.