Monk E. Mann
by Neil Crabtree
Montgomery Edward Mann is known to me as Monk, though he’s been called many
nicknames in his long and adventurous life. A true 20th Century Man, a generation ahead of me
and my friends, his house in the middle of our neighborhood became where we would go when
our parents were fighting or working two jobs or getting so wasted on drugs and alcohol they
could not answer questions like when’s dinner or can I get twenty bucks. Somehow we’d end up
at Monk’s, where he always had the grill going in his backyard and loved having someone to
cook for. His wife Patricia would take care of us too, making sure we understood we were guests,
not lodgers, and that she did not want us to interrupt her novellas no matter what. “Ask Monk,”
she’d say, chasing me out of the TV room. Her smile cheered me up whenever I saw it.
Now, twenty years later, I still go to Monk. I’m a writer, and I’m determined to get my
name out there, and make a living writing books and selling them self-published on the Internet,
at Amazon and Ingram and Draft2Digital. Monk will read and line edit for me. He will
encourage me, without really saying anything. “Cut out twenty-two paragraphs” he might say.
“Clarify who is speaking.”
“This should entertain the masses,” was the one I came to visit him about. What did that
mean? Is it good or bad? And of course, I just wanted to talk about it. I’d heard Monk exorcised
a ghost for my cousin Kim. I thought her first husband Sander joked when he told me about it. A
month had passed by when Sander sent me a message to meet him at Monk’s.
Sander sat in the easy chair, Monk in a recliner. They passed a joint between them. From
where I stood it smelled like good dope. When I approached, Monk passed it to me as he exhaled
a huge cloud. Grey hair trimmed, beard needing work, comfortable shorts and T-shirt, flip-flops,
blue eyes getting red, Monk smiled and pointed to the sofa.
Sander got up and shook my free hand. ”Long time, cuz. Hit that, go ahead. I just brought
it in and fresh ain’t even the half of it.”
“Thanks.” I did as I was told, tasting resin and sweet peppery smoke and my brain taking
the elevator to the ninety-ninth floor.
“Does Kim live in a haunted house?” I asked Sander. He grinned.
“Dude, I saw Kimmy jump around when the air-conditioner would kick on. And her new
guy? Total pussy. Wanted them to move to a motel during the psychic events. With her paying, of
course. She’d been micro-dosing and, you know well as I do, she doesn’t have enough tread to
keep on the highway. This Oswald guy is playing her.” He took the reefer back. “Monk fixed it,”
Sander said.
“Sit down,” Monk said. “Good dope, right? I’m rewarding myself after dealing with the
supernatural. Turns out my Doors of Perception have become… louvered Florida-Room
windows, let’s say. As much goes out as comes in.”
I sat down on the sofa near him. “Why did she call you, Monk? If she has a ghost.”
“She called Patricia. Asked her if she’d like to attend a séance.”
My cousin has had an interest in the paranormal since her parents were killed in a head-
on crash with a loaded Freightliner. She has trouble equating God’s love with His unexplainable
cruelty. Fifteen years later a good portion of her inheritance has gone to finding the explanation.
“Did Patricia go?” I asked.
“No, she was getting ready for a trip to see her family in New Jersey. Her Colombian
aunt was visiting. So she volunteered me. Like I’m half-crazy anyway.”
“Did you see a ghost?”
“Depends. What do you mean by ghost?” he asked.
“A spirit, of someone passed away.”
“Like in the movies.”
“Monk. Did you see a ghost? What did you do?”
“Let’s see. What do we know about ghosts? Spirits of people who have passed away but
remain somehow in or around the place where they lived or even died.”
“Is that what you saw?”
“Ghost stories help people believe in God. If you believe in one spirit, you believe in all
spirits. It’s the same bullshit.”
“Are you saying there’s no God?” I asked.
“No. I’m saying it doesn’t matter.”
“What?”
Sander stood up, still holding onto the nub of the joint, excited. “Don’t be saying there’s
no God, Monk. I’m driving all the way home tonight and I’ll be praying the whole way. I’m
stoned as fuck.”
Monk got up and got the roach before it burned Sander’s fingers. “I’m not saying there’s
no God. Saints and devils, they’re just more ways to exploit the terrified. Ghosts, vampires,
werewolves, demons, we love our horror stories. That way the indifference to our fellow man
seems to come from infinitely far away and not from our own cold cold hearts.”
We considered Monk a wise man. He told us the key to his wisdom: Never share it on the
Internet. He told all of us this in an email from his website. Then posted it on Facebook. Made
total sense. The truth is beyond AI interceptions.
Monk continued. “I got to Kimmy’s house, an old two-story place renovated instead of
torn down. The front yard , neatly kept. The walkway clean. The wooden steps up to the wooden
porch in good shape, recently painted. She did most of the work herself, she told me. Kimmy
came out smiling, her boyfriend not so much. His hand felt wet when I shook it, like something
he did not want to do. Kimmy led us inside after showing me her remodeling jobs.”
He leaned forward. “I could feel a weird vibe as soon as I crossed the threshold. Like
when you go to a Haunted House at the mall on Halloween. Expect to be scared and usually you
are. The house was cold. Dark. Candles flickering on the tables.”
“But there was a ghost?” I asked.
“There was an unhappy spirit there,” he answered.
“A dead guy, spooking them,” I said, trying to pin him down.
“A guy previously alive, now deceased, haunting that big old house?”
“Right.”
“Of course not.”
Sander stood again. “I’ve gotta eat something.”
“Patricia is out of town, but left me twenty-six different prepared meals,” Monk told him.
“Eat as many of them as you can.”
“Don’t tell me twice,” Sander said, moving to the kitchen.
“I don’t get it,” I said, wanting to get back on track. Stoned conversations tend to go all
over the place. “Did you see something…paranormal?”
“No. They couldn’t figure out where to sit, what lights to turn on, was the air-conditioner
working, should they make snacks. I could feel tension, mostly from Oswald.”
“What did they tell you?”
“They wanted to get out a Ouija board, to contact the spirit. That was a red flag.”
“Sander told me she’s been micro-dosing psilocybin mushrooms.”
“That seemed to be Oswald’s business. He asked if I’d like buy some.”
“Did you?”
“James, my psychedelic days are over. I told them no mushrooms, no Ouija board. I told
them I could feel a weird spirit without that.”
“And what did you do to make it go away?”
Monk leaned back, getting comfortable. “I told Kimmy and Oswald to go outside and
walk around the block. He didn’t want to. Aha, my brain said. ‘And why not?’ I asked. ‘I have a
fear of going outside,’ he said. ‘And a fear of being inside as well,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s a lot of
fear to carry round’, I told him. ‘You’re scared all the time.’ ‘Pretty much,’ he agreed.”
I could see Monk warming up to remembering the moment.
“So, I tell them this. If they want the spirit to go away, they had to do as I say. Oswald
resisted the idea. She told him to listen to me. She didn’t want to pay five-hundred dollars to a
fortune teller, no matter how well Oswald knew the gypsy. Listen to Monk, she told him.”
“Jeez,” I said. “She never invited me over one time since he moved in. What did you tell
them to do?”
“He had to walk with Kimmy around the entire block, looking at the sky, the trees, the
sunset, the flowers, and watch out not to step in any dog poo. He has to stretch after the first
street, move his neck and shoulders around. After the second street, he has to hold Kimmy’s
hand while they walk. After that, all he can do is shut up and listen. Just keep walking and get
safely back here within an hour. Kimmy loved the idea. She went to get her walking shoes.”
Monk laughs. “He says to me, ‘What will you do?’”
“I told him that the fear so strong inside him had broadcast itself all over the house.
Going out of the house weakens the received fear, to where I can remove it. It wants to be
removed, to be un-afraid, just like they did.”
Monk sits up straight, like a professor to a student. “’What if I won’t do it?’ he says.”
“Then I’ll tell Kimmy that the bad feeling comes from you. You go, it goes.”
“Damn, Monk,” I say. “Did Kimmy hear/”
“Nah. She was upstairs looking for her shoes. I needed him to understand I was on to his
game”
“And you think he was behind the psychic disturbance bullshit Kimmy ranted about?”
“He needed the ghost, more than the ghost needed him, see what I mean.”
There was more. “While they were gone, I went into their backyard, where Kimmy has a
garden. Her trowel and little shovel were there. A green and pink Super Soaker. Bags of Orthro
Topsoil. A wheelbarrow filled with compost. I knew then what to do. I went inside, and in the
refrigerator, I found an onion and a green pepper, fresh. I took them outside and dug a hole and
buried them, using lots of topsoil. I dug up a small marigold and planted it on top of the buried
vegetables. When they got back, I showed them where I had returned the spirit to the Earth,
where the spirit could be happy. Kimmy squealed. They laughed and I could tell the walk had
done them good. When we went back in, I told them a few things. Turn the A/C up to seventy-
five. Turn on some lights. Blow out all the candles. The bad spirit was gone.”
“Monk the Ghostbuster,” I said. “I talked to Kimmy yesterday. She sounded happy. She
quit microdosing last week and went back to the gym.”
“A happy ending,” Monk said. “I suppose you want to talk about your new manuscript.
Ask me anything. My psychic doors are now opened.”
“Monk, what does your comment mean: ‘This should please the masses.’ Does that mean
it could be a bestseller, or does it mean it’s written for morons?”
“It can be both.”
“Literary fiction or commercial fiction.”
“You simply need to address your audience and their prurient interest. Use these three
phrases: heated loins, rock-hard, and swollen tips. Add them to the romantic scenes between
characters. Your Amazon rating will go up two hundred per cent. Change Categories. Include
Erotic. Porn on eBooks is the trend.”
“I don’t want to write pornography. I’m a serious writer.” As soon as I said it, I started to
laugh. Monk too. “Loins,” I said, “That what Joyce did in Portrait of the Artist. Stephen would
be tremendously excited by the word loins.”
“Being banned as Obscene was the only way Ulysses sold any copies,” Monk said.
“Joyce sold books to people who did not read them except to look for the naughty bits. I’d call
Joyce a serious writer.”
“Artist, he called himself. Am I an artist?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“I don’t know either,” I said.
“Joyce studied aesthetics. Philosophy. Languages. But he never knew how to market a
book, even when professional advice was given to him. The first editions of Dubliners were all
bought up and burned in the streets of Dublin. Now they have statues of him everywhere.”
Sander came in, with a big platter of prepared meals he warmed up. The smell hit us
stoners like a magnetic wave, lifting us up by our noses. The platter held three prepared meals,
each in its Pyrex container, nuked somehow and smelling of warm home cooking.
“Monk, your wife sure can cook,” Sander said. “I was scarfing down a meatloaf and
mashed potato plate when Kimmy called. Oswald has moved out. She wants to know if I’ll come
over and watch a movie with her.”
“I thought burying the ghost got them together,” I said. I picked a chicken and rice meal
with sweet green peas on top. There were sliced pimientos in the yellow rice, my favorite. Monk
picked a pork chop meal, with Stove Top stuffing and sliced carrots. Sander had a chicken
parmigiana with red sauce and melted cheese over spaghetti, and we saw he had sprinkled red
pepper flakes over the top, his personal fetish.
“That was three weeks ago. He won’t pay his share of the bills. Hey. She’s been with that
dweeb for months,” Sander said. “She needs a Manly Man.”
“You always were the romantic,” Monk said smiling. “And look at this platter. Now I
won’t be ordering UberEATS for a change. Patricia will be delighted to see her food got eaten.”
“Monk’s trying to convince me to write pornography,” I told Sander.
“Great fucking idea. Mommy Porn is all the rage. Kimmy has Fifty Shades of everything
on her Kindle, loves the stuff. Wanted me to tie her up one time. I offered to just gag her. She got
mad.”
“Did she mention the spirit?” Monk asked.
“She says sprouts are coming out of the ground. Is that a good thing, she wants to know.”
“Tell her the spirit has returned to its roots,” Monk said.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” I asked.
“To us, it’s funny. To Kimmy, it fits in with her world vision.”
Sander chewed and swallowed a chunk of chicken. We all ate with the enthusiasm of
High Times devotees.
“This is great. Dinner with a pornographer and a ghostbuster. Then let Kimmy get her
revenge sex out of her system. Life is good,” Sander said.
“Count your blessings,” Monk said.
* * *
Life goes on. Weeks later. I’m adding more heated loins and rock-hards to all my
Amazon manuscripts. Turns out Monk had researched red-hot buzzwords and come up with the
top three for Search Engine Optimization. SEO searched my new title descriptions, my added
categories Sexy Thrillers and Erotica, and I sold more in a week than I had all year. I thought
Monk was joking that day. Nope. He’d done his homework. My homework. Amazon lets you
change your online books for free, change the descriptions and categories and even the cover, if
you do the work yourself. I was about to call him with the good news when I saw he’d called me
three times since I turned off my ringer. Kim twice in five minutes. Uh-oh.
I called Kimmy first.
“James, come over here please. Something awful has happened,” she said right off.
“What’s the matter, Kim?”
“Oswald. He’s dead. They shot him right in the backyard.”
“Who shot him?”
“The police. Monk is on his way. Sander is here, thank God. There’s cops and medics
everywhere. I need your help.”
“I’m on my way. Stay with the guys.”
“Bye. Hurry.”
I don’t know why I try to write fiction. Real life is stranger than anything I ever
imagined. Loins don’t even enter into the equation. I got my shit and headed out the door.
The scene was as she described. Cops and medics everywhere. I parked down the street
outside the police barriers. As I walked toward Kimmy’s house, I saw a gurney being wheeled
out near the open back end of the EMC vehicle. The patient was covered head-to-toe in a sheet
that had straps across the chest area and legs. Kimmy cried standing there, watching the body
being loaded for transport. Sander had an arm around her shoulders, and Monk stood next to
them, talking to a uniformed officer. He pointed to me and the officer gave a sign for the cop
guarding the perimeter to let me in.
Kim saw me and waited for me to approach before coming to give me an embrace. I felt
her sobbing. Kimmy was still a beautiful woman, and I remembered what a powerful crush I had
on her early in my high school years. Our parents forbade any concept of kissin’ cousins I
entertained and sent me away for a year until I got over it. Holding her and trying to convey
warm love now seemed so strange, a flashback of something I had flashed forward in a dream
twenty years ago.
“Oh James, it’s so horrid,” she said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Sander and Monk joined us. “It’s kinda an accident,” Sander said.
Monk shook his head. “Accident? Try police over-reaction,” he said. “Oswald had come
to get some things he’d left. Kimmy had changed the locks. He tried the doors and then went
round to the windows looking for one to open. The nosey neighbor over there saw a man trying
to break and enter and called the police.”
“He was in the back garden,” Sander said. “He was using Kimmy’s Super Soaker to
water the plants. Cops arrive and he turned toward them holding the big Super Soaker and they
opened fire. Eight times. They shot him eight times.”
Kim sniffed. “I use the Super Soaker because the hose doesn’t reach, and with the Soaker
I can do all the hanging plants without dragging my little ladder around.”
“He was watering your garden?” I asked.
“He was shot watering the sprouts where Monk buried the spirit,” she said. “He was still
laying there next to them when we got here. He hadn’t even been covered yet. It looked so
awful.”
“Man, don’t ever turn to the cops holding anything,” Sander said. “They shot a guy
holding his cellphone last week. Ain’t no Dirty Harry in these parts.”
The cops eventually wrapped up their procedures and came over. Kim signed several
report forms Monk looked over first, and gave them back. Gradually the cop cars and EMC
vehicles all took off. Police tape barriers still hung from tree limbs.
“You can’t stay here,” I said to Kim.
“She’s coming to my place,” Sander said. “Her stuff’s there. Her comforter. She can’t
sleep without her comforter.”
She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be all right. But Monk. Please get that spirit plant
out of here. I don’t know how but I have a feeling the spirit made this happen.”
Monk nodded. “Of course I will, Kimmy. We’ll cleanse the area. James will help.”
She came to tell me goodbye. In her eyes, I thought I saw the teenage girl I’d loved once
come and go. “You really need to start answering your phone,” she scolded me. “You told me
you’d always be there but I called and called.”
“I’m a doofus,” I said. That made her smile. Her father had always called me Doofus.
“Monk, thank you for coming. Get Doofus to help. And…” she looked around. “Damn,”
she said. “The cops took my Super Soaker.”
“Come on, girl,” Sander said. “I’ll get you a real hose you can use everywhere.”
They left and Monk and I stood there. “Let’s head around back,” he said. “There’s a
digging tool I can use.”
“To remove the spirit,” I said. “Look, I’m going to go get some beer. We can put the spirit
in the bag and throw it away down the street.”
“You’re not leaving me alone here,” he said.
I could see he was serious. “Are you scared?”
“Fuck you,” he said, and turned and walked away to the back.
I knew Sander and Monk would be calling me Doofus from now on. I could picture
Oswald in the backyard, walking around, not sure what to do. Something inspired him to pick up
the Super Soaker, not knowing the cops were on the way. He watered the spirit plant, for
whatever reason. He heard someone behind him and turned to see if Kimmy was back and ended
up face-to-face with Doctor Doom. He saw the cops standing with weapons drawn pointing at
him, saw the muzzle flash, heard the noise about the same time he felt the impact. Eight shots hit
him, knocked him to the ground. What was that like, I wondered.
What did he think at the very end? Did he feel the victim of cruel fate? Or lying there, did
he welcome the end, to all pain, all fear, all love lost and never regained?
