Monkey Business

Prompt 2: Damned Monkey

2. You’ve put that stuffed monkey in the cabinet, in the closet, in the attic, but no matter where you tuck it, it always shows back up at the bar. On Halloween night, you come in to find it watching you . . .

         That damned monkey! No matter where I put it, it always shows back up! I put it in the closet and the next day it was back at the bar. I even checked the closet to make sure someone wasn't playing tricks on me, but the monkey wasn't in there anymore. I am pretty sure it is the same monkey every time because it had a little hole on its head near its left ear where the stuffing had begun to pop out of the felt of its fur. I put it in the attic, it was back in it's spot at the bar the following day. Put it in the basement with lots of other old toys, and by the time I climbed the stairs back up to the bar, it was sitting at the bar again. I finally decided to put the evil little thing in an old cedar chest and lock the chest. The monkey remained locked in that cedar chest for at least two months, I kept checking to make sure. But then last year, Halloween night came around. When I walked into the bar for my shift, there the monkey sat at the corner of the bar, mischievous grin stretched across its felted face and stuffing popping out of that little hole next to its left ear. One arm was circled around a bottle of 99 Bananas schnapps and the other uplifted like it was waving to me. I could have sworn I saw a nefarious twinkle in each of its black buttoned eyes too.

"What is going on here?" I wondered aloud to myself.

And the monkey chortled. I still have absolutely zero idea how a stuffed monkey can chortle, but I swear it did. And then it moved its raised arm and placed it in its lap! I'd love to tell you that it was a puppet on strings, but that would be too easy a way to write off the craziness. Besides, I looked - and there were no strings attached. I looked around to see if I could find another reason for the weirdness surrounding the monkey's appearance, movement, and sound. Maybe a speaker that would have been responsible for the laughter I had heard, maybe some other way of making the toy monkey move. But it wasn't robotic and there wasn't a speaker in it or anywhere around it.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "This little bugger must be a relative of Chucky or something!" I decided right then and there that the Banana Bar really was full of haunts. I backed out of the bar determined to only come back during the light of day or at least when someone else was there too. The idea of a crazy, possessed stuffed monkey was just too much insanity for my mind to process at that moment.


Word Count ▼

The word count for this installment is 474 words. Stay tuned for the next installment of "Monkey Business"