In fairness I had not been expecting much. A fog of formaldehyde was the first of my memories.

The preservative fluid was not so much for me but for my steel eyed observers. Oh those, those were the days. I was no curiosity but a medical study for Doctor Rose, the only female doctor interested in me. She undertook her duties with an air of sadness.

A slight woman, cloaked in white and bespectacled, a long black mane tied back severely. When she had finished with the probing needles and the scraping samples I saw her wipe away a tear for my fate, so cruelly ripped from a life that was not the existence of a jar bound genius. And genius I am. I’ve perhaps a dozen off hand ideas that would galvanise society and science itself.

But I am cursed to remain here in this foul fluid tap-tapping against a glass wall I can never breach.

Once, just once, she removed me from my transparent cage. Brushed back my hair and whispered a small apology as she scraped a sample from my eye. Delicately I was returned to my jar and then to the shelf as the laboratory lights were extinguished one by one.

I began to scheme. Perhaps, despite my jar-bound existence I could possibly exert my force of will. I could concentrate my intelligence to a preternatural extent, my vast psyche might pull in some foolish humans and bend them to my simian will.

The problem, of course, is bending the right human to my will. As a monkey foetus I had no practised wiles or focused psychic dominance methodology. However this did not deter me from the cause I had discovered, no, embraced. I knew that worship was my due and I set about securing it.

Soon enough my usefulness as a biological sample was outworn. My raven-haired benefactor saw me to the furnace with that same sad air she always carried but despite the inevitability of my fate I had hope. My vast will exerted by desperate circumstance made mincemeat of mere human understanding, they decided to sell me as a curiosity. Or so they thought. I had managed a coup of sorts, and those white coated philistines would needle me no more.

I am not privy to the mechanism of human currency nor do I care to think upon such irrelevance but I am sure a vast sum of money made possible the transference of ownership. In my glassy prison I rejoiced! No more needles, no more white coated fools who await a harsh judgement come the day of my ascendancy!

Oh such an idiot was I. The bending of my mind unto the laboratory assistants did not have complete success.. I was sold, yes sold,(and what insult can rival that) to a travelling showman. A purveyor of tricks and fairground nonsense. To be exhibited before inbred fools who thought a man stuffing a ferret down his trousers worthy of laughter. I was not even the star attraction. Just a sad monkey in a jar to amuse the gap-toothed country fair bastards.

I shared my horrors with a fine gentleman tiger, they took his claws but never his spirit. Not one to speak often he told me ‘fuck them, they’ll get what they deserve someday’

One of natures stoics, but his earthy wisdom saw me through those dark, dark times.

And then, one day, people stopped coming to look at me. Times had changed and this new thing called the internet meant one could view all the disgusting oddities one wanted without leaving your chair. I was consigned to a dusty shelf and forgotten. But I still schemed. When the time came some humans dug me from obscurity and I managed to inveigle them in my world domination scheme. I have myself a shrine and a plan. Do not fear my plans. Just anticipate them.