Free Sheep and Wolves by Jeremy C. Shipp

funneling into the little man.
    I want to kill him, the way I’d kill the boy if he were a monster. Not so monstrous that I wouldn’t recognize the human in him.
    Just monstrous enough.
    The chinchilla kicks and startles me. I drop him.
    “He’s still alive,” I say.
    “Kill him then,” the tiny man says. “I’m not wasting any more bullets.”
    I scoot the chinchilla under my bed. On the way, I name him Franklin.
    “Bring out the photographs,” the little man says.
    “What photographs?”
    “Family photographs! What do you think?” He paces back and forth on the dresser. For the first time, or maybe the second time and I forgot, I notice the man’s lack of reflection in the mirror behind him.
    I almost ask him if he’s a vampire. However, I’m too busy pissing myself and saying, “I don’t think I have any photographs.”
    “Everyone has photographs!” he says, and scratches at his mustache.
    My Aunt Laura waddles in. She says, “Would you be a dear and feed me my stuffing?”
    The little man points his gun at her. “What the hell is that?”
    “She’s my aunt,” I say. What I don’t say is that she’s also a teddy bear. Or at least as close to a teddy bear a person could possible be, with hair transplants, amputations, and a mad swarm of cosmetic surgeries. Not to mention two dead parents and a substantial inheritance.
    “Please let her go,” I say. “She’s harmless.”
    “She’s not going anywhere,” the man says. “She could call the police.”
    “She doesn’t have hands.”
    “How do I know she doesn’t have a specially made phone she can use?”
    “She doesn’t.”
    “So says the guy with the gun pointed at his family. Where are those photographs?” He aims the gun at my face. “Get on it! Now!”
    “Who’s your little friend?” my aunt says. She fiddles with the perky ears of living flesh attached to the top of her head and steps closer to him. “You look just like a little doll.”
    “Stay back,” the man says.
    “Why don’t you sit on my bed for a while?” I say. “I need to do something, then we can go eat dinner.”
    Or maybe I’m not saying this. Maybe I’m not brave enough to say a few damn words, and I watch as my aunt holds out her hands to pick up the little man and press him against her hairy chest.
    Before she can lay a hand on him, he shoots her. The miniscule pellet whizzes past the layer of brown fur which cost her more than a bullet proof vest.
    She wanted to be lovable. Cuddly. She wanted to light up the faces of children when she entered a room.
    Maybe three weeks before he died, Jordon told me over a couple bowls of steaming chili that he was thinking about quitting the caretaking job. He told me that he cried for Aunt Laura almost every night. He said people hugged her less than they used to, before the transformation. We finished the chili.
    After this conversation, Jordon didn’t make an effort to hug her more often.
    Neither did I.
    I think about rolling Aunt Laura under my bed with the teddy bear I outgrew but never threw away.
    When she opens her mouth, I think she’s going to tell me the meaning of life. Blood gushes out instead.
    I open another drawer and toss out the innards.
    “For god’s sake,” the man says. “They’re in the chest!”
    So I open the chest, and find the photographs.
    “Here,” I say, and hold out the cluster of memories.
    “I don’t want them,” the man says, and I think I detect a hint of sorrow in his voice. A sour sort of sorrow.
    “I want you to eat them,” he says.
    “Eat them or die,” he says with the gun.
    I eat them. At first they taste sweet, then bitter, then they’re gone.
    “Now the birthday cards,” the man says.
    “I don’t know where—”
    “They’re in a tin box under your bed.”
    I find them. I also find Franklin snuggled up against my old teddy bear.
    I start with a birthday card from my grandma with flowers on the cover. Flowers that look nothing like the flowers at