Harley sits alone on the couch except for evenings when Ann and her husband Chuck watch TV. It’s a gray couch with room for Ann and Chuck to spread out. They like it, and that’s all that matters. Every day, Harley gazes perpetually out at the Midwest prairie – he’s unable to close his eyes – and at the beige curtains at night. He doesn’t have anything to do with anything anymore.

Ann sits beside him in the morning with a bowl of Cheerios and kisses his head, “You are just too adorable.” She slurps the milk, “Just look at you in your Harley gear.” 

He still wears the black-leather Harley Davidson vest and hat given to him by his earlier owner, Old Bob, before he died. Old Bob took Harley on walks, brushed him, and fed him yumyums.  He’d rub his belly for hours on their comfy plaid couch. “There, fella, there, good dog, good dog, there.” 

Chuck isn’t anything like Old Bob. “There’s something strange about that…that…,” he points at Harley and declares, wrinkling his mustache, “I tell yah, it creeps me out.”

Old Bob used to take Harley to the Dog Park to run with his own kind, for dips in Crystal Lake, and on camping trips for forest prowls. Old Bob cried after Harley died but soon after fixed things so Harley could remain with him. 

Ann tells Chuck, “I don’t get you. He’s the most adorable stuffed animal ever, an’ look at him in his Harley gear. He’s perfect, honey, and he only cost a dollar at the Goodwill.”

After Old Bob died, his daughter squished Harley between a globe and a set of encyclopedias on a bookcase in a cobwebby storage place and left him there for years. 

During the awful time of darkness, Harley often recalled his time in the taxidermy shop, how they had sliced and peeled strips of his fur off and strained and stretched him around a schnauzer dog form. Yeah, Old Bob had fixed things with his taxidermist buddy so that Harley could remain beside him on their red couch forever.

And now, Harley sits transfixed on the gray couch until Ann and Chuck’s time comes around. He doesn’t have anything to do with anything anymore.