The whole ride back from the zoo, Buddy kept giggling happily to himself, thinking about the little goats he had seen there. Since he’s just a 3D-printed plastic figurine, albeit 12-feet-tall, it should have been disconcerting that he was making noise and moving on his own, but I’ve long ago accepted the fact that my Buddy Hield statue is alive just the same as you and I are alive. And it was nice to have his company on the hour-long drive down nearly-deserted nighttime highways, even though he was taking up most of the available space in the cabin of the van, making it impossible to see enough of the mirrors to execute safe lane changes. At points during the drive, it was even possible for me to forget that Buddy had just killed five guys all at once, one of them getting chokeslammed from fifteen feet in the air onto pavement, and one of them getting literally ripped in half like a doll that had fallen into a child’s disfavor.
When we finally rolled back into my apartment complex, the first hints of sunrise were making themselves apparent in the sky. With the increased light, I could more easily see the state of Buddy. There were still a lot of bullet holes from where the dudes shot him with their guns, but they weren’t really holes. They were more like really big dents.
I remembered back to the time when Buddy fell off the roof of my apartment while trying to play with some baby birds he found. That time, he had been all dented and broken, but his body healed itself really fast, just like a real human body but better because it’s made out of purple plastic.
Buddy was happy to get out of the van since he had been really scrunched up in there. When he could finally stand up straight he stretched out his arms above his head like he was loosening up. When he did that, a bunch of the bullet dents in his body sort of popped back in to place with little “bip” sounds. So that made me feel better than he didn’t suffer any permanent injuries even though a bunch of criminals had been shooting guns at him. He was still covered with blood though.
Since it was just starting to get light enough to see what was going on outside, I decided not to wash Buddy off with a hose. We went inside and I had him stick different parts of his body under the shower to clean off. He’s never taken a shower before and it seemed like the stream of water relaxed him after the exhilarating experience of petting a bunch of goats and then having to kill literally five people who had guns, bringing his total human kill total to six, not that I blame him for having to kill people, it wasn’t his fault.
While he finished up I filled up a bucket and started scrubbing out the inside of the van which also had dried blood all over the interior. It totally looked like the kind of van that would get me arrested if I tried to drive it in daylight. The front was a little bit banged up from where I had to crash through the fence to evade police cars, but I would just tell the moving van place that I had crashed it into my garage because I’m too dumb to drive a van. They probably have a lot of dumbasses trying to drive vans and sucking at it.
I’m just glad Buddy is safe. I don’t know what I would do if I lost him since he has completely negated my desire to interact with other human beings like myself. He’s my best friend.