Seize the Night

monkey manhole.
    When I returned to the front yard, Bobby lit the fuse.
    As the blue-orange flame raced up the walkway and climbed the front steps, Bobby said, “When I died …”
    “Yeah?”
    “Did I scream like a stuck pig, blubber, and lose my dignity?”
    “You were cool. Aside from wetting your pants, of course.”
    “They're not wet now.”
    The fuse flame reached the gasoline-soaked living room, and a firestorm blew through the bungalow.
    Basking recklessly in the orange light, I said, “When you were dying …”
    “Yeah?”
    “You said, I love you, bro.”
    He grimaced. “Lame.”
    “And I said it was mutual.”
    “Why did we have to do that?”
    “You were dying.”
    “But now here I am.”
    “It's awkward,” I agreed.
    “What we need here is a custom paradox.”
    “Like?”
    “Where we remember everything else but forget my dying words.”
    “Too late. I've already made arrangements with the church, the reception hall, and the florist.”
    “I'll wear white,” Bobby said.
    “That would be a travesty.”
    We turned away from the burning bungalow and walked out to the street. Harried by the witchy firelight, twisted tree shadows capered across the pavement.
    As we drew near the Hummer, a familiar angry squeal tortured the night, followed by a score of other shrill voices, and I looked left to see the troop of Wyvern monkeys, half a block away, loping toward us.
    The Mystery Train and all its associated terrors might be gone as if they had never been, but the life's work of Wisteria Jane Snow still had its consequences.
    We piled into the Hummer, and Doogie locked all the doors with a master switch on the console, just as the rhesuses swarmed over the vehicle.
    “Go, move, woof, meow, get outta here!” everyone was shouting, though Doogie needed no encouragement.
    He floored the accelerator, leaving part of the troop screaming in frustration as the rear bumper slipped from under their grasping hands.
    We weren't in the clear yet. Monkeys were clinging tenaciously to the luggage rack on the roof.
    One nasty specimen was hanging by its hind legs, upside down at the tailgate, shrieking what must have been simian obscenities and furiously slapping its hands against the window. Orson snarled to warn it away, face-to-face at the glass, while struggling to stay on his feet as Doogie resorted to slalom maneuvers to try to shake the primates loose.
    Another monkey slid down from the roof, directly in front of the wind shield, glaring in at Doogie, blocking his view. With one hand it gripped the armature of one windshield wiper, to keep from tumbling off the Hummer, and in its other hand was a small stone. It hammered the stone against the windshield, but the glass didn't break, so it swung again, and this time the stone left a starburst scratch.
    “Hell with this,” Doogie said, switching on the wipers.
    The moving armature pinched the monkey's hand, and the whisking blade startled it. The beast squealed, let go, tumbled across the hood, and fell off the side of the Hummer.
    The Stuart twins cheered.
    In the front seat, forward of Sasha, Roosevelt rode shotgun, sans shot gun but with cat.
    Something cracked against the window beside him, loud enough to make Mungojerrie yelp with surprise.
    A monkey was hanging there, too, also upside down, but this one had a combination wrench in its right hand, gripping it by the box end, using the open end as a hammer. It was the wrong tool for the job, but it was a lot better than the stone, and when the precocious primate swung it again, the tempered glass crazed.
    As thousands of tiny fissures laid an instant crackle glaze across the side window, Mungojerrie sprang out of Roosevelt's lap, onto the backrest of the front seat, onto the seat between Bobby and me, up and over and into the third row, taking refuge with the kids.
    The cat moved so fast that it was landing among the children even as the sparking, gummy sheet of tempered glass collapsed onto Roosevelt's lap.
    Doogie needed both hands for the wheel, and none of the rest of us could take a shot at the invader without blowing off our animal communicator's head, which seemed counterproductive. Then the monkey was inside, swarming across Roosevelt, snapping its teeth at him and swinging the wrench when he tried to seize it, so fast that it might have been a cat, out of the front seat and into the middle seat, where I was sitting between Sasha and Bobby.
    Surprisingly, it went for Bobby, perhaps