**Title: “The Child and the Monkey”**

Mr. **Jimmy Howard** is a Stanford University biobehavioralist known for a strange passion: he believes that emotional intelligence can be taught to animals, and that they – if properly nurtured – can reflect human nature. His wife, **Jezt**, is a gentle, housewife in a small wooden house in a quiet suburb of California.

They have a son – **Eli** – who just turned four this year. But the boy is different. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t smile, doesn’t play with anyone. He just sits by the window, looking out at the garden, where the sunlight filters through the trees, and whispers to something no one can see.

“Is our child autistic?” – Jezt once asked, tears welling up.

Jimmy didn’t answer. He believed his son just needed “an emotional bridge.” A friend who didn’t judge.

—

And then, one autumn day, he brought home a metal cage. Inside was a small Capuchin monkey, with light brown fur and bright black eyes.

“Call him Milo,” Jimmy said. “I’ll train him under the Mimic-Project. If Eli doesn’t want to socialize with humans, maybe he’ll be able to socialize with other animals.”

Jezt protested. “Are you going to make him a toy?”
Jimmy simply said, “No. I’m going to make him family.”

—

The first week, everything seemed to be going well. Milo was incredibly smart – he learned to open doors, wave, even hold a spoon for breakfast.
Eli laughed for the first time when he saw Milo wearing his woolen cap. He sat with the monkey for hours, sharing cookies with him, teaching him to do puzzles.
“See?” Jimmy exclaimed. “He’s socializing. Our son is changing!”

Jezt smiled slightly, but there was still fear in his eyes. She had a strange feeling – whenever Eli and Milo were together, they *understand each other with their eyes*. No words, no gestures. A bond… too deep.

—

After three months, Jimmy began recording the process. He put cameras all over the house: in the living room, the backyard, even Eli’s room. Everything was for his research paper “Emotional Synchronization Between Children and Primates”.
Every night, he reviewed the tapes. Milo learned to imitate Eli – from holding toys to sitting in the corner of the room with his knees up. But then, he realized **the opposite** was happening: *Eli was imitating Milo.*

The boy started eating with his hands, making strange noises, even climbing up the window frame with his bare feet.

Jezt panicked: “You’re turning your son into an animal, Jimmy!”
Jimmy snapped, “No, it’s a temporary assimilation phase. He’ll get over it. Trust me.”

—

Then came Eli’s fifth birthday. He didn’t say a word, just sat next to Milo. When everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” Milo suddenly stood up, raised his hands in a human-like gesture. Eli responded with a series of wheezing sounds… exactly like monkey noises.

The room fell silent.
Jezt covered his face and burst into tears. “What have you done to our son?”
Jimmy stammered, “He… he was just experimenting with sounds. It’s a basic language…”
But inside him, a vague fear was growing.

—

A few weeks later, Jimmy decided to put the project on hold. He locked the research room and locked Milo in a cage to “distance” him from Eli.
That night, Eli banged on the door, crying:
“**Open the door! Milo is scared! Milo is crying!**”

It was the **first time** the boy had spoken. But what stunned Jimmy was not the voice, but the **way Eli pronounced it** – each nasal, hoarse sound, **exactly like a primate’s intonation.**

—

The following nights, strange noises began to appear in the house. Footsteps on the roof, a soft hissing sound. Jimmy assumed Milo had escaped, but every time he checked, the monkey was still lying quietly in his cage, looking at him with dark eyes.
One night, the security camera recorded Eli **getting up in the middle of the night**, unlocking the cage, letting Milo climb onto his shoulder. The boy whispered: “It’s time.”

—

The next morning, the lab was destroyed. All the documents were torn to shreds, the iron cage was open, and no one could see Milo. Eli sat in the corner, laughing, holding a bloody piece of cloth in his hand.
“What did you do to Milo?” Jezt shouted.

Eli simply said, “Milo is inside me.”

Jimmy thought it was childish nonsense. But when Eli was taken to the hospital, the MRI scans stunned the doctors: **a mass of tissue in the emotional brain**, with a genetic makeup that was… *not quite human.*

—

Jimmy was suspended. The Federal Biosecurity Agency came to investigate. In their report, they found **animal DNA sequences in the lab had been tainted** – it seemed someone had secretly experimented with genetic engineering.
Only one person had access to the system: **Jimmy himself.**

He denied it. “I didn’t do it!”

But when they went through the backup hard drive, they found a video he never remembered filming:

In it, **Jimmy is injecting a sample of the solution into the neck of the monkey Milo**, then says:

> “If the human brain refuses to communicate, we will make it *force* to learn.”

—

Jezt panicked and asked to take his son away from home. Jimmy screamed: “You don’t understand! I just want to save my son!”

She shouted back:

“You turned him into a monster!”

That night, as Jezt packed up, she heard giggling from downstairs. She ran downstairs – and froze.

Eli was sitting by the window, opposite Milo – **perfectly healthy**, without any wounds, but his eyes were different: calm, cold, and deep like a human’s.

Eli turned slightly, smiled: “Mom, Milo wants to talk to you.”

Jezt trembled and backed away. She shouted for Jimmy, but he was passed out in the lab. He still held an empty syringe in his hand.

—

The police arrived, the house in ruins. They found Jezt holding his son, sitting dazed in the living room. The monkey was found dead next to the lab – **but its DNA and Eli’s… matched 98.9%**, higher than the normal level between humans and monkeys.

No one could explain what had happened.
Blood samples showed that **Eli carried a strange protein in his body – capable of mimicking animal nerves and memory.** That is, *Milo’s consciousness might have merged with Eli.*

—

Two years later, Jezt took his son to live in seclusion in the countryside. Eli was now seven years old. He still didn’t talk much, only occasionally looking up at the trees, whistling, and laughing. Sometimes, at night, Jezt heard small footsteps running on the roof, then laughter – *both childish and wild.*

One morning, Jezt discovered a line scrawled in black ink on his son’s desk:

> “**Mommy, Milo misses Daddy.**”

She looked out the window, trembling. In the middle of the misty forest, there was a small shadow – ape-shaped, but upright, holding an old toy that only Jimmy had ever owned.

—

**A year later**, the police found a body in the woods – headless, but with animal-like scratch marks on the skin. DNA confirmed it was **Jimmy Howard**.
The case was classified as an “accidental animal attack.” But Jezt knew – no animal in the area could unlock the door, or place the family photo back on the table like that.

In the photo, Eli smiled, looking straight into the camera. And on the wooden frame, someone had carved a small line with a fingernail:

> **“Family – always together.”**