My Hungry Little Friends
by Robert E. Baker

    I didn't really intend on killing that woman working at the mall. I originally had planned to leave the shopping center after getting what I wanted to buy from her bookstore. But I just couldn't help myself. Not in the end.
   
    Not after the problem she gave me when she rang me up. I just got mad. I didn't have any use for some discount card. I told her so, but she kept right on pressing me, smiling the whole time like I'm some kind of freaking idiot that isn't smart enough to understand what's going on. So by the time I left the counter with my comics, I really was burning up inside to see her die.
   
    So I called on my little friends. Like I always did whenever I needed help. They're good at what they do. You see, my little friends are hungry all the damn time.
   
    I was smart and waited for her to go to her car. I asked my little friends which one was hers, and they whispered in my ear about the little black Japanese import on the right side of the parking lot. It was out away from all the other vehicles all by itself.
   
    Why is it that all the stupid people park in the places darkest at night? They must think they are untouchable when comes to people like me.
   
    While she was busy opening her car door, my little friends and I jumped out from behind some bushes that we had hidden behind thirty minutes before the mall closed for the night.
   
    I sprinted across the dark parking lot quick as a rabbit, looking in every direction to make sure no one was around to see what was about to happen. I stood right beside the woman before she even saw me.
   
    Boy, it sure was funny to see her start whimpering when she saw my big, sharp shiny knife.
   
    But I think my little friends scared her more than I did when they showed themselves. Only I can see them all the time. That's why they are my friends. And nobody else's.

    In fact, book lady was still looking at them with her big wide eyes as I drove my knife straight into her chest. I must have hit an artery because all this blood started squirting all over her white clean sweater and the gray pavement underneath us. It covered the whole front of the rest of her dress all the way down to the bottom of her skirt. She didn't make it long after that. By the look on her face I think she was relieved when she finally died.
   
     When they could stop laughing at her fear, my friends licked up all the blood and then ate the woman. Like I said, they're always hungry. They move fast when it comes to chow time, and that has always been an advantage.
   
    It would have been fun for me, but I was kind of feeling guilty about what I'd just done.
   
    Oh well, I'm sure it will pass.

    Besides, if she is like the others, they'll list her as only missing, and who am I to argue with that determination?

    My daddy was the first to tell me about my little friends. He and my mama didn't get along too well, so I never saw much of him when I was growing up. Mama died when I was ten years old and daddy showed up at the funeral.  It was the first and the last time I ever did see him.
   
    After the funeral he took me aside.
   
    "There is something special about you boy," he said after everyone had left the gravesite. "My family has a power. Goes back further than any of us can remember. Maybe one of our ancestors did something special to deserve this. Don't really know, but all that matters is, you got this power too. Your mama knew this. That is why she was afraid to let me near you.  But you were bound to learn of it someday. So today might as well be the day."

   
    While my daddy was telling me all this, I started to see the creatures come out of the thin air. Green and scaly they were, like some kind of snake or lizard. Their heads looked pointed like the nose tip on a shark. But these things had thin legs and arms attached to their scrawny bodies. They moved fast over the tombstones and grass, using their front
arms to partially drag themselves the same way monkeys at the zoo did when they walked around. I couldn't keep up with these things. I don't think anything ever moved so fast. All I saw was a blur. Almost like they weren't even really there at all.
   
    They scared me to death with the way their sharp teeth glistened in the daylight. They were hungry. I wanted to run.
   
    "Don't worry," my daddy said to me, seeing my fear. I think it disgusted him. "This is what I'm talking about. These are your friends.  The only friends you are ever going to have in this world. But that's o.k. They do whatever you ask them to. It's a gift boy, and those don't come easy to people like us."
   
    When I got to my new home after talking to my daddy, I called for my new friends. They came just like daddy had said they would, hissing and whispering words I didn't understand. Still don't to this day. Their scaly bodies came right out of the walls and the floorboards in that old house.  They surrounded me in a circle, waiting for my instructions. I was still a bit afraid, but not as much as before. Their oval, beady purple eyes watched me like they were real anxious for me to ask them for something.
   
    I asked them to go downstairs and get me some money out of the pocket book of the old woman I was staying with. The one who thought she was being a fine upstanding citizen by taking in an orphan like me.
   
    My little friends brought me back about three hundred dollars. One held the money out to me in his slimy little skeletal hand.
   
    When the old lady found her money missing the next morning she come down on me hollering loud and crazy like. She threatened to send me away to some home for kids like me. The ones nobody really wanted. She called me a
criminal and said I belonged in jail. I got dressed and walked out of the house, the old lady yelling at me the entire time as I walked away from her home and into the early morning.
   
    I didn't care what she said about me.
   
    I didn't need her.
   
    Later that night I had my friends burn her house to the ground while she was asleep inside. She woke up because I heard her screaming for help inside. Of course, nobody but my little friends and I heard. We just shared a good laugh over it. She was so worried about that money, and now it didn't matter. She wasn't going to live long enough to ever spend it.
   
    I never missed her.
   
    I had found some new friends.
   
    And we've been together ever since.

   
    The next person I had to kill that night after I left the mall was some big, stupid, hairy redneck. I was walking down the street a few minutes after midnight when he came out of some seedy all-night bar. The kind of place I would never go into. He looked me up and down, and evidently after deciding I'm not much of a threat, he starts cussing at me.
   
    Now there are a lot of things I don't like, and foul language is one of them. I think a lot of this country's problems would be solved if everybody spoke polite to one another. Lord knows I might have turned out different if I hadn't heard such talk my whole life.
   
    He died on his knees in front of me, begging for me to call my little friends off of him as their razor sharp teeth dug into his flannel shirt and skin. Nobody inside the bar heard his screams. My friends ate everything but his head, so I kicked it down the street a little way to see how long the dumb looking ball cap would stay on.
   
    When it fell off, I kicked the head into the path on an oncoming eighteen-wheeler. The driver didn't even notice when he hit it, bone and blood splattering all over the road. I giggled. A man's head didn't look any different from any other kind of road kill.

    My next encounter was the best so far. It was after four a.m. and I was going down the street minding my own business when this cop car stopped behind me and a policewoman stepped out and demanded to know what I was doing. I couldn't help but notice she looked like a smart-ass. Her voice was rough and full of authority. I think it had a lot more to do with her trying to impress me than anything else. So I told her to mind her own business and she decides to get hostile. She came towards me, a mad look in her eye. I saw that her body was squat and wide, like the pictures of trolls I used to see in kid's storybooks.
   
    Getting away from her car was the worse thing she could have done. Right before she got to where I was waiting, one of my friends shoved her hard on the back, causing her to fall face first on the street.
   
    You should have seen the look on her face when see then saw all my friends surround her, growling and slobbering all over themselves. She started whining like a sick cat, her face filled with pleading as she called out to me.
   
    Ha! I think she knew then who was in charge!
   
    The woman turned to try to escape when she saw her gun come out of her holster and drift over to my hand. She rolled over; attempting to crawl away but I shot her twice in the legs. My friends watched and cheered hysterically. She screamed when my friends lifted her up, throwing her repeatedly high into the night sky the same way a parent playing with a child might do. They enjoyed hearing her squalling and crying. Again and again they tossed her high into the air.
   
    Like me, they love a good joke.
   
    One of them came over at that point and whispered a suggestion in my ear. And then I'm the one who was laughing.

    When I get home and after I sleep for a few hours, the first thing I do is turn on the TV. I couldn't wait to see if I'd made the news. Sure enough, I was there.
   
    A cop assigned to the Westside of town had been found murdered. Her skin was riddled with bullet holes from her own gun. The uniformed body had been hung with barbwire to a chain length fence enclosing a junkyard. Parts of the remains were missing, like some kind of animal had taken out deep bites of her flesh.
   
    A horrible mutilation the woman reading the news calls it and I can see the disgust she's trying not to show. And the fear was clearly there too. From the reports I get the impression the cops are really hot and bothered about catching the culprits. And in addition to this horrendous murder, two more people in the city went missing in the same area. One was a mall worker and a man from the downtown area. Could be related to the cop's murder the authorities think.
   
    The reporter then says a husband and two kids survive the cop.
   
    It makes me feel sad. A nice family is without a mother now. So I decide right then and there to go find the dead cop's husband and kids. The only decent thing to do is go by and pay my respects. I'll find the funeral home in the paper in a day or so. I'll do my absolute best to cheer them all up in their time of loss.
   
    I'm sure we'll all end up having a great time together. Once I introduce them to my hungry little friends. They might just see their mommy and wife quicker than they ever thought possible.
   
    Wouldn't that be nice?       

Robert E. Baker has been into horror, science fiction, and fantasy since he was very young. All the way through high school and college he wrote my own little weird tales. He been has published or accepted in such places as CRIMSON, THE REAPER,  OF UNICORNS AND SPACE STATIONS, GATHERING DARKNESS, OUTER DARKNESS, PENNY DREADFULS, MAUSOLUEM, NOCTULAMME, and GLYPH.

©2000-2001 Robert E. Baker