My friend John Weagley asked me if I had any radioactive monkey stories for his collection Requiem For A Radioactive Monkey. Naturally, I did.

At first, they were all kind of excited when JoJo got into the Uranium.

“He’s gonna mutate, I bet,” said Gramps. “Maybe grow another monkey head. Or teats.”

“Could easily quadruple in size,” said Pops. “Go on a rampage, killin’ folks and rapin’ women.”

Uncle Clem disagreed. “I’m bettin’ invisibility. A seeable monkey causes enough trouble, running around, bitin’ and chitterin’, throwin’ feces. An invisible money would be a hunnerd times worse.”

“Would the feces be invisible?” Aunt Lula asked.

“Likely so. Wouldn’t know it was there ‘till you sat in it.”

Gramps packed his lower lip with a wad of Skoal and spat brown juice into Aunt Lula’s coffee mug.

“Shoulda kept that uranium locked up. Leavin’ it on the counter like that, monkey was gonna mess with it sooner or later.”

Uncle Clem disagreed. “JoJo ain’t never fooled with it before.”

“Them glowin’ isotopes, they’re like a magnet to the lower primates. Shoulda kept it locked up.”

Pops scratched his head. “Where’d we get the uranium anyway?”

They all sat around and had a think about that. No one said nothin’ for a while, the only sound being the slurp-slurp of Aunt Lula and her coffee.

“Well,” Gramps finally said, “whatever strange mutation happens to JoJo, I’m guessin’ we all agree it’ll be speck-tack-ler.”

Somethin’ did happen to JoJo, and it happened fast. An hour after messin’ with the Uranium, JoJo’s hair all fell out, and then he died.

“Didn’t see that comin’,” Uncle Clem said.

Pops scratched his head. “Where’d we get a monkey anyway?”

No one could answer that. Only one who could have was JoJo, and he didn’t say much on account of his deceasedness. Plus, JoJo was a monkey, and monkeys don’t talk.

The next day, Gramps lost all of his hair, even the hair growin’ from his ears, and got sick something fierce.

“Gramps?” Pops asked him, side-steppin’ the chunk-streams gushing from Gramps’s dip-hole. “You been messin’ with that Uranium?”

Gramps answered between expulsions. “Wanted…another…head.”

Later that night, after Gramps hemorrhaged, they buried him in the garden, next to JoJo. The family grieved and grieved, and Aunt Lula made some Uranium cookies to cheer everyone up, but Uncle Clem hoarded them all for himself.

“Thad a dab thine thookie,” Uncle Clem said, not speakin’ clearly because most of his teeth had worked themselves free of his bleedin’ gums.

When Uncle Clem coughed up his pancreas, they buried him in the garden, next to Gramps and JoJo.

Not long after, Aunt Lula’s hands turned black and plum fell off, on account she didn’t wear no lead gloves when she made the uranium cookies. “Because lead is poisonous,” she had said, smartly.

When Aunt Lula died, Pops buried her in another part of the garden, not too close to Uncle Clem and Gramps and JoJo, because that part was all took up.

When he was done, Pops scratched his head. “Where’d we get a garden anyway?”

Convinced the Curse of the Radioactive Uranium would claim him next, which would have been a very bad thing because there was nobody left to bury him in the garden, Pops played it smart.

He buried himself in the garden with the uranium.

When the milkman came by later that week, with the milk and eight ounces of farmer’s cheese, he noticed the five new mounds in the garden. Being a curious milkman, he dug them all up.

“Well, will you lookit that,” said the mailman. “Where’d they get that uranium?”

He found some tin foil in the kitchen, and wrapped up the Uranium and took it home, for his pet monkey to play with.