What my son's toy says 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 other than I wanted the boy to cause a ruckus in my house. He pushed the button on the back so many times that I memorized the 4 factory phrases: “Ooh ahh ahh!”, “Gimmie a Banana!”, a Wilhelm-esq scream and a Tarzan yell. I thanked god when the batteries finally died on the goddamned thing. The most amazing thing was that my son did not come crying to me to replace the batteries, seeming content to just drop it and walk away.

When I stooped to pick the plush animal to put back into the toy bucket, the tinny 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 I heard it say those words. I called my son over to me and asked him if he ever heard the monkey say anything weird. That's when the boy's face lit up with fear and excitement, as if I had uncovered something he had been wanting to tell me.

My son took the monkey into the laundry room and turned on the dryer, putting the monkey on top “so he can't hear us”. He wouldn't say a word until he lead me outside. I had never seen him like this before.

When we were standing out in the backyard, the boy said “sometimes it says very bad things to me. It says 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 gotta go in there and smash it.”

I wanted my son to learn patience and logic at young age, and that meant not destroying an inanimate object because of fear. I explain that we both heard a voice that was someone at the factory playing a prank, and we might need it for evidence...but the fear in the kid's eyes and words made it clear this wasn't a matter 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 explained that it just fell off the dryer because it was shaking.

That's when the monkey eeked out a long, drawn out moaning cry like nothing we heard before. My son shouted for me to stop it, and the lower part of my brain kicked in. I brought my booted 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 seams of the plush monkey.

“You should have listened to your son. Now you are alone.” said the boy behind me.

I swear, I turned to see something large and old, like the last orange ember of a once great fire sparking just behind my son's innocent eyes. The boy turned and bolted towards the front 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 the kind of laugh that only comes from the novel joy of having fresh lungs and new legs again.

I never saw my son again. But on some nights, I can still hear that laugh.