What My Son's Toys Say After the Batteries Die

I don't know what I was thinking when I bought the plush monkey that could talk and gave it to my six-year-old son, other than I wanted him to cause a ruckus in my house. He had pushed the button on the back so many times that I memorized the four factory phrases: "ooh ahh ahh! Gimme a banana!", a Wilhelm-esque scream, and a Tarzan yell. I thanked God when the batteries finally died on that goddamn thing. The most amazing thing was that my son didn't come crying to me to replace the batteries. He seemed happy to just drop it and walk away.
When I stooped down to pick up the plush monkey and put it in the toy bucket, the tiny speaker in the hard plastic box warbled: "Do you remember when I used to be your son?" I immediately dropped the monkey on the floor. I poked it with my foot once before picking it back up. I pushed the button on the back. Nothing. Still, I was sure that I heard it say those words.
I called my son over to me and asked him if he had ever heard the monkey say anything weird. That's when the boy's face brightened with potential fear and surprise, almost like I had uncovered something he had been wanting to tell me.
My son took the monkey into our laundry room, turned on the dryer, and put the monkey on top "so he can't hear us". He wouldn't say a word until he led me outside. I'd never seen him like this before.
When we were standing out in the backyard, he said "Sometimes it says very bad things to me. It wants to hurt us, daddy. I was too scared to talk to you, not when it could hear us. You got to break it. You got to go in there and smash it."
I wanted my son to learn patience and logic at a young age, and that meant not destroying an inanimate object because of fear. I explained that the voice was probably just someone at the factory playing a prank on us and we might need it for evidence. But the fear in my son's eyes and in his words made it clear that this wasn't for the courts.
When we opened the door to the laundry room, the monkey had moved from the top of the dryer to the bottom of the door. My son shrieked, even as I tried to explain that it just fell off the dryer because it was shaking.
That's when the monkey let out a long, drawn-out moaning cry like nothing we had ever heard before. My son shouted for me to stop it and the lower part of my brain kicked in. I brought my foot down on the plastic box inside the monkey, crushing it against the laundry room's concrete floor.
Something reddish-black, not blood, not oil, but something pungently organic and toxic leaked out from the plush monkey.
"You should have listened to your son. Now, you are alone." the voice said behind me.
I turned to see something large and old, like the last orange ember of a great fire sparking behind my son's innocent eyes. The boy turned and bolted towards the door, running faster than I ever could. The thing that hid inside the monkey piloted my son like a champion, rocketing him into the darkness where the streetlamps couldn't reach, cackling that laugh that only comes from the novel joy of having fresh lungs and new limbs once again.
I haven't seen my son to this very day. But some nights, I can still hear that laugh.
Category:Death
Category:Disappearances