Free Scowler by Daniel Kraus Page B

of looks like you.”
    He turned to her in alarm. “What do you mean?”
    Smiling, she pointed at her son’s expression. “Right there, see? You and Scowler are like two peas in a pod.”
    Ry looked back down at the thing. The eyeholes offered nothing.
    “Okay,” he said. He set Scowler on the floor and later placed him facedown at the bottom of his cardboard toy box. He assumed it would go missing along with the turquoise teddy bear and bendy religious icon. Through brisk shuffling of the box’s contents, it would even dismember and disintegrate. Death—that’s what boxes were for. Only it didn’t die. Scowler showed up repeatedly throughout the years, its hollow eyes and voracious mouth poking their ways into the topmost space of the toy box, the knives of its exposed skeleton spearing gun belts and jet packs. Ry would extricate these entanglements and assure himself that they were accidental.
    The fat one, the tall one, and the small one: Ry fanned out the trio beneath the moonlight. How odd that he would spend his final moments with these companions. He gathered them to his chest and struggled for the icy breath that would be one of his last.
    You can do it
.
    Ry smiled. This encouragement was pleasant, even if it came too late.
    I believe in you, old boy
.
    It was a jolly falsetto with a punctilious British accent. Ry was warmed by it, even tickled.
    There’s no telling what you could do if you just moved your bloody bum!
    Ry laughed. He raised an arm and regarded Furrington. The brown marble eyes winked in the dawn. That couldn’tbe right; Ry pressed the heel of his other hand to his forehead in consternation. This agitated the mushroom swelling of his wound, and his vision splintered into rays of color. He fought to hang on to his last thought. What was going on? Oh, yes, this stuffed animal was speaking to him—of course it was; it was his old friend Mr. Furrington.
    I’ll never give up on you
, Furrington said.
    “Thank you,” Ry whispered.
    Give it a go, old chum
.
    “Should I?”
    Why not? You might be surprised
.
    For Furrington, he’d try. He ignored the advancing
hmmmm hm hm hmmmm
and tightened the muscles in the small of his back. He found himself sitting straight up, his extremities tingling with—could it be?—a kind of warmth. He smiled down at the turquoise bear. Furrington tipped his bowler, or maybe Ry did it for him. Either way, he was moved by the chubby little guy’s modesty and decided to repay him with effort. Ry took to his feet—a miracle, a miracle. There was no feeling in his toes but there remained some compliance in his ankles, and he chanced a couple shaky steps down the bank. Another miracle. His teeth ached in the evening air and that’s what told him he was—miracle of miracles!—smiling.
    I love you
, said Furrington,
dear friend
.
    “I love you, too,” Ry gasped. Tears crystallized at the corners of his eyes. His foot landed wrong and he went scrambling sideways.
    Balance, chap, balance!
    “Sorry,” Ry said. A black oak bounced off his face, but then he was righted.
    Crackers! Watch the old bean
.
    “The old bean,” Ry said. “You got it.”
    Ry gazed down at the three figures in his hands and was overwhelmed with the thrill of camaraderie. Yes, he would cavort through the timber with friends of his own choosing, and no, he didn’t care what his parents thought of his playmates or the places they chose to play. He wedged the three beneath his belt. Ry and Furrington and Jesus Christ and Scowler: best friends. He skipped and the bad landing vibrated all the way up into his jaw. In these conditions careless tomfoolery could lead to death—he recognized this—but why not die by splitting himself in half with the force of his play rather than suffer a tedious and predictable murder?
    The euphoria fueled him for five more astonishing hours. Then his feet became rocks. Then, worse, they became trees, planted so that each step was an uprooting. A cold ripped at