When I woke up the next morning, I did what I usually do, which is scratch my ass, throw on some clothes, put a little bit of food and water in Japurri’s bowls (he doesn’t shut up until I do that for him) and trundle to my computer to get started on the day’s activities (usually highlight videos). Part of my routine is checking the local and national news headlines. I don’t actually read the articles, I just glean enough information from the headlines to stay relatively informed. I might be a hermit who has no desire to interact with the thriving civilization around him, but I still want to be informed.
My heart sank when I saw the top headline on Google News: “Five Men Brutally Murdered in Zoo Parking Lot Rampage; Killer on the Run”. I double checked the location of the news story, just in case there had been multiple zoo killings overnight, but I had no such luck: the article was definitely about my ill-fated trip to the zoo with Buddy, my 12-foot-tall 3D-printed plastic naked sentient purple statue of Buddy Hield, and how Buddy had killed five men who had threatened to kill me.
I felt sick and didn’t want to read the rest of the article, but I forced myself to, just to see if there was any description of suspects. If there was any mention anywhere of an unusually tall, purple-colored humanoid, or his skinny, normal-height getaway driver, I had to be ready to abandon my comfortable highlight-making life and go on the run with Buddy.
Luckily, there was no mention of any suspects. The only lead the police had was a grainy still shot of our moving van driving down one of the residential streets we had used to get away from the zoo. However, our headlights had been off, and you couldn’t make out the insignia on the side of the van from the provided picture. All the police quotes were expressing confusion at how one person, or even a group of people, could have killed all those guys in such effortlessly sadistic ways. Their forensics team had accurately determined that one of the men had died after being thrown down from a great height; that was the guy Buddy had chokeslammed. Nobody could figure out how a man literally got ripped in half at the waist.
Buddy had gotten up from his resting position on the couch (I don’t know if he actually sleeps or if he just relaxes while I’m asleep) and was looking at the screen over my shoulder. He’s really smart for being a gigantic 3D-printed figurine, and I’m pretty sure he can read, so I scrolled back up to the top and let him read the article too. When he reached the end he didn’t even react that much, he just went back to the sofa so he could use my big TV to watch videos of animals on YouTube. I noticed that he wasn’t exclusively watching videos of goats like he had been before. Playing with the goats at the zoo must have quenched his desire for goat interaction.
I will still nervous; I would have to keep on eye on the news in case more security footage was discovered or there were more leads. But the trip was completely worth it so that Buddy could play with and feed all those cute goats. Even though he’s killed six humans now and might fit the criteria for a “serial killer”, he still deserves to have nice things. And he’s still my best friend.