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.

“What about?” Isaac was Lou’s neighbor to the west, brains thicker than oatmeal. The two had been in a property line dispute for some three years now and as Lou saw it, Isaac just didn’t know when to quit. In their latest scuffle about a week back, Isacc had been more deranged than ever.

Sheriff plopped the tires down, letting them roll. No doubt pleased to have baited Lou into conversation.

“Up and left his wife. Went to Reno. Or so the wife thinks. He just vanished about a week ago, no note.”

Lou spit a glob of phlegm. “Good riddance. So long as that wife leaves my property fence alone too.”

Before Sheriff could say more, Lou had the driver’s side popped open and slipped inside. He pulled the truck back and drove away, giving no nod back to Sheriff.

Sun went down that night, sun came up. Monkey went down the pit, monkey must of come back up. Because the next morning, there it was. Still that same dried-up saliva across its face, otherwise no mud, no dirt, nothing like that.

“Bitch! Fuck! FUCKING BITCH FUCK WHAT THE BITCH FUCK IS GOING ON??? WHAT IN THE SAM FUCK HILL DO YOU WANT??? YOU WANNA FUCKING DIE???” Lou screamed that morning upon seeing its return, stamping barefoot on his porch floorboards.

Then, he saw him.

A scrawny thing, about a week unfed, standing in the middle of the driveway leading to the main road. It was a dog. A mutt, tan hide, mashed potato kind of face, milk dud eyes. Saliva drooling out of the left droopier side of its mutt face.

Lou stumbled back, pupils getting smaller, the whites getting wider, grabbing onto the sides of his boxers—something he used to do as a little kid when he was scared. It wasn’t that he was afraid of dogs—Lou wasn’t afraid of nothing, not death he’d say, or would say if anyone asked—but the sight of the beast sucked all the blood from his face for the reason he knew precisely whose dog that was.

Moving slow, Lou traveled with ginger step to his parked truck in the front yard. The dog’s gaze followed Lou into the truck and behind the wheel, an unrushed, blank expression on its saggy face. Keys in the ignition, Lou awoke the old coot and yanked the gear shift into drive.

Car’s fat tires started rolling. Lou tried kicking it to next gear too quick, battling the machine. It resisted but eventually gained steam. Headed right toward the dog.

At first, the dog didn’t move. Stared straight through the windshield looking cow-faced at Lou, who was growing bigger and bigger by the moment. As the dust kicking up from the truck was close enough to swoop past the dog’s paws, it stumbled back a few paces…then turned and ran.

“There you go,” Lou grinned to himself. At the current speed, he’d only maim the animal. But if it ran, he could have the runway needed for a clean hit and kill.

Lou shifted gears again; this time it worked, same time the dog moved into a canter. It dodged side to side along the trail, swinging its head and floppy ears around to bark at the truck, and then broke back into a sprint.

Too late to run—before the dog could make it back to the main road—

BOOM.

The thick metal bumper made contact with the dog’s hips, swinging its stick legs out from beneath it. Lou heard all the right sounds and bumps under the truck he was looking to hear, then grinded it to a stop. The man looked in the rearview mirror at the tan lump laying along the path, like a desert mirage in the dust, and exhaled deep. The dog was roadkill.

Poor thing’s folly was its own stupid loyalty. Dumbass like us all.

Lou looked out at the empty main road ahead of him as he hopped out, yanked up his tattered boxers, then strutted over to his prized roadkill and threw it in the truck bed. The deed was not yet done.

Jeans on and grandpa’s toolkit in hand, Lou later made his way onto the porch. He bent down with a hammer, running his fingers along the new wood, then flipped the hammer around and began wrenching out the first nail.

Pluckpluckpluckpluck, out came all the nails. Lou ripped up the first floorboard, then grabbed a handkerchief from his back pocket and covered his nose with it—its old car oil smell much gentler to inhale than what was underneath. One handed, Lou ripped up two more planks.

With enough space for a dog to pass through, Lou wiped his hands and went back to the truck. Dropping the tailgate and letting it bounce with a THUD, he pulled that dog out and hauled it over his shoulder, little bit of its blood dripping on his bare back.

Man laid the dog onto the porch, then pushed it down and let it fall into the darkness, landing on something colder than dirt.

Before he could reach for the hammer to close it back up, Lou was hit with a mean temptation he couldn’t deny to peek into the substructure below. Just to make sure. Lou lowered his head, craning at the neck, and stared eyeball-to-eyeball at the darkness.

In that black, Lou started to see the figure of the dead dog, its back arched over a body bag made of tarp and twine. Part of the twine had loosened up to reveal a split at the top of the bag.

A vacant eyeball stared back.

Lou expelled a sigh of relief. Not that he was expecting the body to have somehow walked off, still, it was good to see. He sat back up onto his knees and saw Monkey No Legs, sitting on the porch. Standing to a rise, the monkey got kicked in behind the dog and owner.

After that, Lou fixed up the porch real nice. Sanded around the nails and ripped up splinters. Picked a few out of his feet. Then he went back inside, took off his trousers, and went for a hot beer. At last, the deed was done.

That night, a hair too drunk, Lou still managed to make it back to his bed and pass out. But as it got dark-dark much later, something woke him back up. Not a sound or sensation like you feel sometimes. Just one moment he was asleep, next moment he was awake looking at his nightstand.

On it, looking back down at Lou, was the monkey. Grinning. Before Lou could calculate this came the sound.

A crackly growl, like popcorn on the stove.

Lou looked from the monkey…to his doorway. There was the mutt. Legs akimbo ready to leap, tail out stick straight. Eyes were wide, all milky-white, no milk dud pupils like before. And out of its mouth came oil-black saliva dripping and sopping on the floor.

Lou bolted up to a sit in bed, fingers around his boxers gripped tight. He began stammering, looking around the room for his gun.

The mutt took a step forward, growl getting sharper, teeth-licking.

One of the last things Lou ever saw was something like the shape of a shadow man standing in the hall just beyond the doorway.

“Isaac...?” Lou quivered with a hoarse, weepy whisper. The monkey wasn’t the only thing Lou failed to make disappear, and now the deranged, undead chicken was coming home to roost.

Smelling the sweet scent of fear through its dried-up snout, the living corpse of the mutt snapped its teeth.

The shadow man did not react. It had no features, no mouth. Yet from it came a whispery-

“Fetch.”

The next morning, there was no monkey on the porch. No man came out the front door either to curse about it. Lou was dead in his bed, throat ripped into, gummy-pink esophagus torn clean out. All dried up, stuck like paint in time forever.

Good boy.

About the Author

Hyten Davidson is a writer, actor, and producer based in NYC. Publication: The Maine Review, New Reader Magazine, Landlocked Magazine, Rock Salt Journal, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine. Audio drama: \"Come to Mama\", NoSleep Podcast. Her psychological thriller feature film \"Something of a Monster\", which she co-wrote, is set for a 2025 release. Mary W. Shelley Scholarship recipient from the Horror Writers Association. For more, visit www.hyten-davidson.com.