Monkey No Legs

Damn thing could have sat on the man’s front porch since afternoon the day before, there was no way of knowing for sure. When the days got dark early, the drinking started early and Lou didn’t see sun or sense until the next morning. So that’s when he found it.

Laying on his front porch like it had been shit out of the sky. Dried saliva crusted on the face.

A stuffed animal monkey.

But not like for little kiddies. It was one of those dog toys, this one with its legs torn clean off. Trouble was, Lou didn’t own no dog. Lou hated dogs. And his plot of land there in old Caryville, Florida spanned near two-hundred acres, so no dumb animal--man or beast– was stumbling up to his house plum square in the middle on accident. Sure, the porch was newly refinished with smooth, non-splintered wood, but Lou had done the whole job himself. No other living soul had entered the property in weeks.

Lou twirled the hair on his skinny belly and stared down at the little stuffed beast. Didn’t touch the thing at first. Instead, he went back inside, took down his Browning Superposed shotgun—beautiful thing, two barrels one on top of the other like the hourglass shape of a busty lady—and scoured the perimeter. But there was no tracks, no stone askew. Didn’t really sense nothing fishy either, like you do when something ain’t right. The day was calm and pretty, short as it was. Lou always felt his world was like a painting, and him wet paint, slowly drying day after day until he too became still, stuck forever on his family’s homestead.

The property, the gun, Lou’s name—all his grandfather’s. Lou Smit. Dumbass drunk man spelled his own name wrong at Ellis Island on the registrar. But Lou the third was too superstitious to change it back to Smith, being the same brand of dumbass drunk himself.

Back to the monkey—he had no clue who’s that was or how it ended up smack in the middle of his front porch. Eventually he took the thing, threw it by its good arm into the burn pit out back, and sent a lit match in after it. The pit ate it up good, and by the first drink in that afternoon Lou forgot all about the strange happening.

‘Til the next morning.

When Lou opened the front door to get his day started, another day of drying up little bit more from the blazing sun, instead he found a stuffed animal monkey on his front porch, no legs on the fella.

“Bitch! Fuck!” Lou screamed. Somedays so quiet he never even heard the sound of his own voice, so the scream came out all hoarse and strange. Lou whipped his head around the grounds. Still, nothing out of sorts. He stumbled around back to the pit, but there was no evidence there of remains. Lou started to suspect it was some smart-mouthed local teens pulling a prank. He wasn’t too popular in town, not that he went often enough to get much of a reputation either way. If there was a group of snot-breathed hooligans hiding out on his property looking to get a rise out of him, he was happy to entertain. Lou got the Browning back out, then stood on his shiny new porch and tried to throw the monkey in the sky and trap shoot it. Took a few tries, Lou couldn’t swing the thing high enough in the air to then get his hand back on the trigger fast enough to pull, so he then just shot the thing dead where it lay, destroyed in a puff of dust and white stuffing on the ground.

Second night in, Lou tried to drink a little less. Kept his eyes peeled on the window overlooking the dirt trail leading from his porch out aways to the main road at the end of his property. But that didn’t last too long and by the sixth song on his record player, the man was already at the bottom of his first Jim Beam.

By sunup, guess what had made its way back on the porch but that damn monkey toy, restitched and brand-looking-new. Except for the still having no legs part. This time Lou ran out first thing in the morning onto the porch. When he saw it, he didn’t scream or go for his gun. Scooping the thing into his callused hands, Lou slid into his rusty chestnut pick up truck, kicked the whining geezer into gear, and drove it out onto the main road.

There, he turned left and drove close to thirty miles down Old Spanish Trail with the thing slumped in the passenger seat. After enough time he turned down a side road, then another side road, then another side road off that side road. The truck rolled to a stop by a wire fence and sign that read KEEP OUT.

Lou took the monkey, stretched wide over the barbed fence so as to not catch his junk, and walked about a minute deep into the field until there stopped being ground to walk on. About eight months back a sinkhole opened in an unused municipal lot. The town simply added the sign and the wire and considered the matter settled, leaving its residents to freely dump their garbage as they saw fit. Lou stared down at the crater, bigger and more alive-seeming than the last time he was there, then swung that monkey toy in.

“Back to hell wit’ ya.”

Lou wasn’t stupid, or so he figured. If something supernatural was happening with that monkey, then so be it, but you can’t haunt something that ain’t there. A poltergeist couldn’t possess the monkey if the monkey wasn’t there to possess, right? The monkey landed sitting up, like its missing legs were just under the surface of the sinkhole, arm flopped up waving back to Lou. There was a gurgle of mud and the fella started to sink to its armpits…then its head…then was all gone.

Lou turned to leave, just as another truck rumbled up the drive. This was why he didn’t come here much. Too crowded.

Sheriff got out and Lou cursed to himself. Chattiest, snoopiest motherfucking Sheriff below the Mason Dixon.

“Hey there Lou,” Sheriff was lugging two flat tires from the bed of his truck as Lou hopped the fence back over. “Ain’t seen you ‘round much.”

Lou shrugged, reaching for his door handle.

“You heard about Isaac?”

Lou paused.