The Horrible Gross Thing That Eats Monkeys

By Richard Davidson

"Give me back my monkey."

The voice came floating through the vent near Pedro's ear, stirring up just enough dust to fill a thimble.

Pedro had never heard such desperation before, or had he?

The apartment was gray and delinquent, sending shards of broken dreams spiraling sunward into the afternoon sky, as viewed from a single window facing East, obscured by a grimy film of wasted time.

"Give me back my monkey," the voice came again, and Pedro was disturbed by the absolutely ludicrous phrase, uttered by a person in so much pain.

He was hungry, and had been planning to get off the couch and make an omellette, but this bizarre phrase had really thrown him, and he didn't dare move, or even breathe.

It would have been a good omellette too, because Pedro still had some of that excellent Colby cheese, and some mushrooms from his cousin Jack's garden, which Jack had been good enough to bring in person, after which they had watched Jeopardy, and Monday Night Football.

Somebody on the second floor turned on a TV, and Pedro was sure he wouldn't be able to hear whoever was talking again, and he just had to know what it was about. He could hear Oprah tell somebody she was a survivor, but he didn't know who it was.

"Give me back my monkey."

He could barely hear the voice over the audience's applause, and it sounded more desperate than ever. It was a woman's voice. Of this he was pretty sure, but she obviously smoked quite a bit, and had a deep, guttaral harshness like shoes on broken glass.

Oprah went to commercial, and it was even louder than the show. Pedro was growing frustrated; uneasy; morbidly obsessed.

Pedro padded slowly out the door of the obscene apartment, his stocking feet swishing lightly over the faded linoleum of the grim hallway. He went softly into the stairwell, past the third and second floors, and made his way to the first floor, where he took a left, and shuffled aimlessly along, listening.

He heard a key turn in a lock on the front door, and then creaking, footsteps, and the door slamming shut again. Somebody went up the first flight of stairs, and then was walking above Pedro's head. He heard more keys, and then all proof of the unidentified person's existance disappeared in the slam of the apartment door.

Pedro walked along the hallway for awhile, all the way down to where it joined up with the other building. Whoever he'd heard, they couldn't possibly be that far away.

He checked the second and third floors in the same ambling fashion, all the while wondering what possible insanity he'd been an unwilling witness to, when he looked out a small window in the third floor hallway, and saw a woman in a black dress carrying a stuffed monkey.

So that was all it was. Probably her and her boyfriend had broken up, and he wouldn't give her a stuffed animal he won for her at the fair.

Pedro was insanely disappointed by this development, and he trudged sullenly back to his apartment, to make that omellette, and see if any good movies were coming on.

He walked into the bathroom, and was about to relieve himself, when he heard it again!

"Give me back my monkey."

It was much louder and clearer from the bathroom, and since the vent was in the ceiling, and not the floor, Pedro began to wonder if it was coming from above.

He made his his way up to the fifth floor, and as he was walking past a big hole in the plaster of the stairwell, he got a good look at the ductwork coming out of his apartment. It was headed up to the roof.

Pedro wasn't sure if he was supposed to go up on the roof, but he'd often noticed the little ladder hanging from the hatch that said "roof," and since there was a place for a padlock, but no lock, he decided he would take a chance.

He had to use all of his might to force it open, and when he did, the wind whipped his hair into his face, momentarily blinding him. It was raging like a hurricane up there, which he hadn't expected.

He pulled his hair off to one side, and when he did, he couldn't believe what he saw.

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