Dream of Pepper

            Pepper the monkey dreamed that she was flying. She dreamed about the clouds and flying through them in her big airplane. Her airplane would be all kinds of tricked out, with a rainbow on the side and a gatling gun in the front. Nobody would get in her way. Not the Red Baron, not Snoopy. Nobody.

            And she would be free.

            Pepper would fly over oceans of water and oceans of sand. She’d touch down in the desert and fill up her tank at the gas station.

            “That’s a beautiful plane you got there,” the attendant would say.

            And Pepper would say, “Myeeeeeh!” and slide her goggles down over her eyes. The attendant would salute her and say, “God bless you, Pepper the monkey” as she flew off into the clouds.

            Pepper would visit all the places she never got to before. With her airplane, she would have the fastest legs of any monkey, and sleeker wings than the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. She would go to Paris and nom on croissants. She would go to Italy and slurp up pasta. She would go to Vietnam and shed a single tear for a senseless war.

            Pepper the monkey would go all of these places in her airplane and more. And when she was done, she’d touch her airplane back down and go back home to the school where she lives with the students who are repulsed by her. But she had flown farther than any of those students and she would wear that like a badge on her little monkey heart.