Little Hope broke up the symposium and returned the toy skeletons to the lidless wooden box in her bedroom. She had fourteen in all, including two big ones and a rat, and most of them had names. Among the little ones were Nurse Janet, Brad the Surgeon, and their daughter, Missy; Police officer Birdygo, Butterscotch Chip, Amazing Grace, and one elaborately dressed skeleton with unbendable elbows and knees named Chica. The big ones propped up in a corner of the room were Mr. Funny Bones and his twin, Funnier. She used the two of them as hat stands. The rat skeleton with googly eyes perched on the dresser was Butterscotch Chip’s sidekick, Dale.
Little Hope couldn’t take credit for any of the skeletons or any of their names. They’d all come to her prenamed from her dad’s best friend and former Best Man, whom she had always known as Uncle Mack.
She loved hearing Uncle Mack retell the story about how he amassed his—to use her grandmother’s word—morbid collection of skeletons of different sizes in different costumes. It all started, he’d explain, at a local drugstore around Halloween, where he’d spied from the corner of his eye a full-sized, slack-jawed skeleton crouched on a bottom shelf with a tragicomical “Half Price” sticker on his frontal bone. The name, Mr. Funny Bones, came to mind instantly. “And just like that,” he’d say as he snapped his fingers, the idea of acquiring and naming skeletons was born.
Uncle Mack never could pinpoint what had inspired him to start posting photos of Mr. Funny Bones saying silly things or making puns about death on social media, but the response from some of his friends encouraged him to continue. One of his biggest fans was Little Hope’s mother, who saw something eerie yet appealing in his posts. She responded approvingly to every one of them with strings of emojis and likes to coax him into posting more.
Over time, one skeleton led to another. Some he’d picked up from the same drugstore. Others came from farther away. He eventually moved on from one-off posts to stories, some involving costume and scene changes, household props, and complex plot lines. Uncle Mack would always tell Little Hope and her parents that by expanding his collection he was able to keep his stories fresh. And every time, her father and mother would try to get him to admit that he was lonely. If that were truly the case, Little Hope thought to herself, then why doesn’t he just get a girlfriend or a pet?
For someone of Little Hope’s disposition, Uncle Mack’s toy skeletons were the perfect charge. They didn’t require any food or water and didn’t need to be walked or let outside to go to the bathroom. Apart from the one named Butterscotch, whose left leg was flimsily attached to his pelvis with an upholstery tack because of some earlier injury, they didn’t need regular maintenance.
Although Little Hope felt confident in her ability to care for Uncle Mack’s morbid collection, she felt less sure about animating them. Uncle Mack had a knack for dreaming up clever captions and outlandish scenarios that seemed to reach beyond the creative limits of someone her age and experience. Unwilling to go out on a limb with her own skeleton puns and dramas and expose herself to ridicule, she opted instead to create symposiums and other opportunities away from the camera for the skeletons to communicate freely and independently among themselves.
The size and scope of the symposiums varied widely. Sometimes Little Hope would assemble small groups of little skeletons to discuss the major issues of the day, such as climate change and immigration. Other times, she’d pick a topic of local interest, such as the inclusion of bicycle lanes in state-funded highway projects. Every so often, the symposium participants would offer critiques and render judgments. Her mother’s wardrobe was a recurring subject. Once, she convened a group of the smartest skeletons to complete a crossword puzzle her mother had left unfinished. They didn’t get very far, not because they didn’t know the answers, but because they couldn’t hold the pen in their little boney hands.
Whereas Uncle Mack had occasionally taken the skeletons outside for a photo shoot at a bus stop or in a canoe, Little Hope kept them indoors. She did so, she’d tell them, to keep them out of the crosshairs of Bruiser, the neighbor’s unfriendly and unpredictable dog.
The big ones, Funny and Funnier, never left her room. One evening shortly after their arrival, she had overheard her mother tell her grandmother that she wasn’t sure she could ever forgive Uncle Mack. Little Hope figured she could get away with setting up the little ones in the corner of the family room or the kitchen every now and then without feeding her mother’s anger towards him, but Funny and Funnier, and even Dale the rat, were simply too large to escape her mother’s view.
Mr. Funny Bones 