Best Friends

Yo, my name is Tommy, and my best friend is a literal demon. Well, more like an alien demon kind of thing, but it’s the same, I guess. My best friend and me, we hunt actual monsters.

My best friend, who for the sake of simplicity will be called Poozikin, belongs to a race of extra-dimensional beings that eerily resemble what we would picture as corporeal or ghosts or zombies. They heil from some cold and dark world where no light ever shines. These creatures are usually solitary, but sometimes they get lonely and venture into other dimensions hoping to find someone to bond with. Poozikin bonded with me years ago. At first, I thought he was my imaginary friend. Hell, his name is a mispronunciation of what he calls his species. And to be honest, even today, decades later, I couldn’t properly pronounce that word. So, I’m sticking to Poozikin.

Now he acts as both my companion and the so-called moral rock I am chained to. You see, I am a sadist. The official diagnosis is "an unidentified personality disorder with sadistic tendencies." It’s really irrelevant what I have, I don’t really go out hurting people for kicks and giggles nor do I get hard from that. It’s fun, it’s pleasant and all, but it’s counterproductive, and therapy helped me get my life in order. Now whenever I get out of line, Poozikin will pull out his little sketching book and have me look at one of his sketches.

His book is special because everything he sketches in it can be turned into a mental hologram for the viewer of said sketches. Usually, when I need a destructive fix, Poozikin would draw some gruesome torture and I’d watch that happen in my head to some faceless chap over and over in my head until I’ve had enough.

It’s a pretty good gig. I get someone to keep me in check, and the demon alien is no longer lonely. Plus, he usually remains invisible to most people, so nobody freaks out when I walk around with him.

The monster hunting part is a more recent development. It started as a joke really, I remember trolling on some forum thread, saying that I was fresh out of high school kid looking for a place to stay at because I didn’t like staying with my abusive mother and had no money to live on my own. It was meant to be just that, but someone took the bait pretty seriously. So, I kept leading him on, Barney123, some odd fellow who was really giddy about the idea of me staying with him. I’ve kept chatting with him for a couple of weeks, exchanging details. Obviously, mine were fake – but he never seemed to check. I did follow up on his private information. The guy was legit. A legit creep.

He lived an hour away from me. It turned out.

So, I toyed with the idea of just going there and blowing up his bubble. What’s the worst, that could happen, I reasoned. He’d get mad at me. I’d get my kicks out of his miserable ass and if he tried doing something I couldn’t quite deal with, well then, there’s Poozikin for that.

So, one pastoral Sunday, I decided to show up at Barney123’s place after texting him I’d make him my way to his place. At first, he was hesitant with my sudden decision to show up. I smelled the suspicion through my phone screen. Thinking on my feet I told him I’d use public transport, which meant I’d be there after sunset, which made him more welcoming to my idea.

That done, I got into my car and drove off to him. Once I got there, I knew exactly what I was going to deal with. He lived in a neglected part of town, his apartment complex looking older than the Pyramids in Egypt. It was this ugly gray broken down building you don’t expect anyone to live in. It smelled like piss and shit all over, and there was an old man in tattered clothes sitting on the stairs leading to the apartments. I asked him if Barney123 lived there, obviously gave him his actual name. Unsurprisingly, he did indeed live there. It surprised the old man I was visiting him. He said something about the guy never being seen with anyone older than their early twenties.

Jackpot, this was going to be a nice one. I thought about even fucking with him, telling him I was an undercover cop for a moment.

Then I went up there and knocked on the door.

“Who’s there?” a gruff voice came out.

Poozikin spoke for me in a higher voice than my own, “it’s Tommy Callahan.”

I heard something huge making his way towards the door, like a massive thing under whose legs the ground quite literally shook.

He opened the door, a mountain of a man, his hair and beard in abysmal shape, looking like a homeless colossus that just dragged himself out of his favorite dumpster. Seeing me, an adult man seems to have shocked the humanoid blob. He tried closing the door in my face, but I blocked the door with my foot.

"Hey who are you? Leave me alone!" he barked, trying forcefully to me out.

"I am Tommy Callahan. Your friend from the forum!" I called out, laughing in his face.

"Get lost freak!" he barked tried with all of his might to push me away from the door, but I resisted him. Despite his massive frame he was rather weak. Then Poozikin materialized behind me, I managed to spot a glint of terror in the humanoid blob’s face before he went down crashing onto his ass. I shoved the door open and let myself in.

"Hey, what’s the matter, buddy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?"

I stepped over his form as he crawled away from me, attempting to stand up, and the stench of death hit me right in the face. His apartment smelled something awful. It looked like a dumpster too. "So what, do you lure young people here and turn them into pudding?" I questioned.

"Who are you? Get out, I’m calling the cops," the fat bastard crawled up to his phone trying to dial something up.

"Hey look, Gluteus Maximus, if you call the cops, I’m going to expose you… I know exactly what you are, and I know very well about all the ugly little things you hide in your fridge," I told him, I was bluffing, I had no fucking clue what that fat piece of shit was up to.

"The-there’s no way you know anything about me?" the blob cried out, visibly shaking. This mountain of a man was far bigger than me, but his bubbling diabetes had probably turned him into an impotent lump of fat.

"Oh yeah?" I follow the stench to his kitchen, and he followed me, albeit cautiously. I flung open his freezer, instinctively. "Then what’s this?" I yelled out at him. In all honestly, I didn’t expect to find a head there. I was hoping to find endless stacks of burgers there, make fun of him for being a fat fuck and call it a day.

But a head it was. A real human head stared at me from this blob’s freezer.

"What’s this?" I questioned, pointing to the head.

He started mumbling something, probably choking on his own fat or something. I couldn’t understand a word.

As I was confronting this bastard about the decapitated head in his freezer, Poozikin materialized again next to me, wearing some kind of bloodied pelt. He whispered into my ear that he found the remains of a child in another room, inside the bowl of a dog.

I think you can understand what happened to the dog.

Poozikin really hates it when children get hurt. Really hates it, there was this one time where I was crossing the road as a kid and a driven didn’t notice me walking, three feet away from me the car came to a dead-end, the front dented and the back of it rose in the air. The driver lost his shit and then the car engine died. Before I could process anything, I saw Poozikin seated next to the driven, making the ugliest face I’ve ever seen. Imagine a piranha’s head mixed with a human corpse. The driven scrambled out of his car, screaming and cursing. Poozikin then told me just how much he loathes seeing kids get hurt.

So anyway, that fat blob saw Poozikin and fell down on his ass. My demon friend looked at him, and I could see the wrath boiling in the iris less eyes of my demonic partner. He slowly walked towards the fat bastard, towering over him like a black cloud.

Poozikin wasn’t this angry in a long time, and I was honestly enjoying every moment of it. He stood over the humanoid blob and grimaced at him before letting out his ear-piercing distinctive laughter which made the fat fuck piss himself. I found it quite amusing, pardon me, but a person who feeds children to their dog deserves the worst kind of treatment. So I didn’t say a word when Poozikin grabbed the blob by his beard and threw him so hard he flew into the other room. The fat creep landed with a loud thud and Poozikin slowly followed him into the room.

Once there, he closed the door behind him.

I heard a bunch of screaming for the next ten minutes, then Poozikin came out. The fat fuck was laid out on the floor covered in his own drool and vomit, barely moving, but still alive. When I asked Poozikin what he did, he told me he showed him everything he has done to others through their eyes. He used the Book of Torment on the monstrous blob.

It was published in the local news that he was found dead, apparently died from a heart attack. It was also said a lot of human remains were found throughout his apartment. Ed Gein copycat, I guess.

I’m glad I could unleash my demonic friend onto the world productively, so yeah, that’s basically it. The story of how my demonic friend and I started hunting down the monsters of this world.