He was on the ground. Cars were driving over him.

I assumed he was a scrap of tattered rope or rubber, perhaps some fallen piece of vehicular detritus, but then I noticed that he had a face. A monkey’s face.

The toy monkey had been bound up and strangled with his own arms and tail and reminded me of PT Barnum’s “mermaid” in miniature. If he had once been a child’s toy, that child had kept him tied up for a very long time, as his bindings had actually fused together and melted into each other. I couldn’t resist taking the monkey home.

I’m not sure if it’s possible to untie him without him falling to pieces (or possibly unleashing the trapped spirit of a dead serial killer or similar). Perhaps I should put him on eBay as he is and advertise him as a haunted doll. Regardless of where he came from or how innocuous his circumstances probably were, he’s still the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, so will celebrate him here.

Click the gif below for a larger still photo so that you can stare into his cold, hollow, terrifying eyes at your leisure.

(p.s. That isn’t his knob. It’s the end of his tail.)