Allegory of Ghosting aka The Tragic Ballad of Monkey B

Monkey A adored Monkey B.

At least, Monkey A was quite certain of it.

"Monkey B!" he shouted one glorious sunrise. "Tomorrow we gather bananas and beautiful shells on Crab Island!"

Monkey B smiled the smile perfected by generations of conflict-avoiding primates.

"Sounds great."

It did not sound great.

Monkey B hated Crab Island.

Monkey B feared tarantulas.

Monkey B feared horseshoe crabs.

Monkey B suspected shells were wildly overrated.

But Monkey A looked so excited.

So Monkey B felt the familiar pressure...

and said yes.

The next morning they crossed to the island.

Monkey A skipped ahead.

"Look at this shell!"

Monkey B stepped on something crunchy.

"AUGH!"

A small wound.

A fever.

A very unfortunate series of biological events.

Three days later, Monkey B died.

His final thought drifted peacefully into eternity.

"Well... at least I got out of going back to Crab Island."

...and, ghosting the scene entirely, he departed.

Monkey A was devastated.

He carved a monument.

He composed songs.

He wrote:

Never had there been a friendship so loyal.

The village cried.

Children memorized the poem.

Generations repeated it.

"Our greatest example of friendship," they said.

"Loyalty and best friends are real."

The bar was set.

Meanwhile...

Monkey B, now a literal ghost, hovered beside the monument.

"That's... not exactly what happened."

No one heard him.

Years passed.

The legend grew.

Monkey A's ballad became scripture.

Artists painted two inseparable friends smiling among shells.

Poets praised Monkey B's unwavering devotion.

Ghost Monkey B sighed.

"I wasn't devoted."

"...Okay, I was politely avoiding conflict."

Another century passed.

Scholars debated the symbolism of the shells.

Philosophers praised Monkey B's courage.

Ghost Monkey B floated through a horseshoe crab.

"I was terrified of those."

Another thousand years.

The story spread across kingdoms.

Friendship itself was measured against Monkey B.

"If only we all loved as faithfully as Monkey B."

Ghost Monkey B rubbed his transparent forehead.

"I literally died trying not to hurt his feelings."

Silence.

Then, somewhere in the distance, another monkey called,

"Want to come collect shells tomorrow?"

Another monkey answered,

"Sure..."

...afraid of hurting Monkey A's feelings.

Ghost Monkey B looked down.

Then up toward the heavens.

"Oh no," he growled.

History repeated itself.

And every generation of monkeys wondered why they had never found a friendship as loyal as Monkey A and Monkey B's...

...never realizing that Monkey B had been trying to get out of the first one all along.

Nor did they realize that monkeys didn't actually love bananas all that much.

Bananas were simply what happened to be around.

Yet poets wrote of bananas.

Philosophers debated bananas.

Religions sanctified bananas.

Scholars classified bananas.

Children dreamed of bananas.

Ghost Monkey B just shook his transparent head.

"You people really do tell yourselves some stories."

Footnote

Many thousands of years later, monkeys invented miraculous glowing rectangles that allowed one monkey to ignore another monkey without requiring sepsis, plague, or an unfortunate horseshoe crab.

Civilization called this progress.

Postscript

Modern monkeys eventually coined the word ghosting to describe abruptly disappearing from another monkey's life without explanation.

Ghost Monkey B found this amusing.

"We finally named it," he sighed.

"We've been doing it forever."

It just no longer requires actual death.