Saturday, April 08, 2006

A movable monkey

This tag is a rich vein - I'm gonna have to mine it again and again. Starting off with an easy one:
A Genesee Street business employee requested a
premise check after she reported she placed a stuffed
bear on the bar and now it was on a shelf. She thought
someone might have been in the building.

It's almost poetry, all by itself.


It wasn't where she put it. The monkey, the monkey, she'd put the monkey on the bar, right? It was like this, what do they call it, tableau, thing. You know, the monkey with the bottles, like it'd been drinking, right? It was supposed to be funny. So she hadn't just forgotten, like the cop was implying.

Grace didn't "forget" things like that, anyway. She'd put it on the bar. Now it was on the shelf. Someone was there, someone had been there, this cop didn't know what he was talking about, raising his eyebrows at his partner when he thought Grace wasn't looking. Like she was another nutcase.

The lights from the car moved across the wall, lighting up the monkey's face, blue, red, blue, red.

Grace rubbed her hands together and asked the cops if they needed anything else. They'd checked everything: windows closed and locked, back door locked. Nobody had been in here, they said. She watched them down the driveway, talking to each other, laughing, doors swinging shut on the patrol car. They pulled away, headlights scraping over the room.

Nobody had been here, they'd said, but someone had moved the monkey. Stupid, creepy thing to do anyway. Nothing taken, nothing trashed, nothing else touched. But the monkey was moved.

And now the cops were gone, Grace was alone with it.

6 comments:

anne said...

Very skillfully done.
And it would be easy to give it a sequel, too... wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

monkey 0 said...

John-John is on the move...

good to see you so coherent so fast, c.b. you write good even doped up.

Andam said...

MOnkeys are very sneak things. You have to keep a close eye on them at all times, lest they play tricks on you.

You should know that by now, Billy.

Anonymous said...

Poor grace! The repetition is very effective. Shows her distress well.

Chemical Billy said...

Ack! A challenge from Anne. I'll have to mull that one for a bit.

Thanks, monkey 0, but I'm ready to be un-doped now. Feeling entirely too...insulated.

Silly me, bluemonkey.

Thanks, Caryn!

Geo said...

Glad I didn't read this last night before I went to sleep--my dreams were rough enough! Maybe Grace's monkey moved itself. That happened to me once at a sleepover--I was the sole frightened witness to one of those nasty-tempered molded-face dolls tottering down the hallway toward me, where my friends and I slept in bedrolls on the floor. Next morning, she was in a little rocking chair by the fireplace.

I don't suppose that possibility would've comforted Grace, though.