Frankie’s Friends.
That’s what the commercial said, as I opened my bag of chips and comforted myself up on the pillows.
“Is your child lonely? Having problems with friends?” The man in the TV asks. I throw a glance at Ricky, who’s in the hallway, playing by himself with a toy truck.
“Then we have the perfect solution for you and your child!” The man exclaims, smiling widely. “Only for $12.99 per hour! Hire the best friend that your child needs!”
I roll my eyes. Hire a best friend? I’m supposed to be paying for Ricky to have friends? But then again…
“Yes, we have a variety of buddies! Number one, is Onnie!” I raise my eyebrow as a little kid wearing a bunny mask comes into view, holding a paper and crayons. “Onnie will help your child discover their inner talents, like drawing, painting, singing, dancing and everything else!”
Hm. This sounds great.
“Number two, we have right here, Tommy!” Another little kid with a bird mask totters into the view, holding dolls and toy cars. “Tommy is the perfect buddy for any child! He will play for hours and hours, anything your child wants to play.” Tommy waves his toys at the TV.
This keeps getting better. Ricky is still in the hallway, zooming his truck back and forth, alone. He’s definitely love a play buddy.
“And lastly, we have Leo!” This kid was a little… different. Instead of an animal mask, he had on a pitch white mask with two big, black dots for eyes and a large, curved smile. “Leo is the perfect best friend and older brother! Can you believe it? He will protect your child from bullies and help him become social. You could call him a bodyguard, haha!” The man does a laugh that sounds like a bullhorn. Leo stares blankly into the camera, as if not sure what he was doing.
Hm. This is funny. Leo is the smallest, skinniest and lankiest of them all. Protecting Ricky from bullies won’t be easy, especially when it’s a little kid wearing a mask.
But a memory flashes into my mind, that day when Ricky came home crying. He’d told me that this kid, Brandon, was teasing him for being a redhead. My jaw tightens. Small or big, any help from bullies would be better than nothing.
I grab my phone and dial the number that’s burned into the TV. A man picks up, his voice just as high-pitched and cartoon-like in the TV. Then, I realized it was the man in the TV.
“Uhm, hello,” I mutter into the phone, immediately having second thoughts.
“Hello, hello!” The man chirps, and I can practically hear him smiling through the phone. Music plays in the background. “Are we here to hire a buddy?”
“Yes,” I say quickly. “I need to hire a friend for my kid.”
“Great!” the voice exclaims. “Who would you like to hire? Everyone is available, all three of them.”
“I’d like to hire them all for a few days and see how it goes…” I say. “If it doesn’t work out, then…”
“Oh, don’t you worry, sir!” the man says. “It will work. It is guaranteed. There’s no need for you to doubt.”
“OK, thanks, so…” I tell him my phone number, my email, and my address. He says they’re going to be here in two hours.
And so I wait.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The doorbell rings, loud and clear. I get up from my seat groggily and check in the hallway quickly. Ricky is asleep, his head rested on his truck.
I look through the peephole and sure enough, it’s three kids wearing a bunny, bird and… emoji mask.
I unlock the door and smile wide at the children.
“Hello, kids,” I say. All of them wave at me. “Welcome.”
They all nod and I let them into my apartment, and lead them to the hallway to Ricky.
I gently shake him and he opens his eyes.
“Hey, Ricky,” I say quietly. “Look. These kids want to be friends with you.”
He follows my gaze and sees the three mask faces. He stares blankly at them and they stare back.
“Hello, Ricky!” the kid with the bird mask says loudly. His voice sounds like SpongeBob. “I’m here to play with you!”
Ricky looks at me and back at the bird guy. “Hi,” he says quietly. “Who are you?”
“I’m Tommy, of course!” the bird says, as if that should be obvious. “Let’s play.”
“Okay,” Ricky says, uncertainly. “What should we play?”
“Tag!” Tommy pokes Ricky on the shoulder and starts running away.
“Hey!” Ricky laughs and starts running after him.
I smile and make my way to my bedroom.
A few hours pass.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I wake up to see Ricky shaking me awake. All three kids stand behind him.
“Dad,” says Ricky. “Can I go play outside?”
“Outside?” I ask, shocked. Ricky always refused to play outside ‘because there were too many kids.’
“Yeah!” chirps Onnie. “We want to play outside.”
“Okay, go,” I grin. “Have fun. Be back in an hour, though.”
“Okay, Dad!” Ricky jumps off the bed and starts running to the front door, the kids following him. But before closing the door, Leo stands in the doorway, staring at me with his blank eyes. He shakes his head and closes the door.
I grab my phone and scroll through Instagram. One post catches my attention.
It reads ‘Do not trust Frankie’s Friends! *Must Read*‘
I roll my eyes and press on it. Let’s see what kind of bullshit this is gonna give me.
First, there’s a picture of an elderly woman with a kid next to her. To be brutally honest, the kid looks awful. He has dark eyebags and eyes that look through your soul.
Under the picture, there’s a long text:
“I am Valerie Noman. I’m 57 years old. I hired a friend for my 7 year old grandson, Jaden, from Frankie’s Friends, which is a popular company that makes profit by promoting three little kids wearing masks. Apparently they’re supposed to accompany your child, help him find his “inner” talents, and make new friends. I was charmed the first time I saw it. It looked like an easy deal to make friends for a lonely kid. But it wasn’t that.
Fast forward a few days, I finally decided to hire one friend for Jaden. I hired Onnie, who’s said to help children to find what they’re good at and their talents. I hired him, and he did a wonderful job. After a day, we found out that Jaden’s actually good at soccer and water-color painting. Onnie helped him ‘discover’ these talents. However, Jaden got attached to this kid wearing a bunny mask. I didn’t think anything of it until Jaden begged me to hire another friend from Frankie’s Friends. And so I did, what else could I do about it? I hired Tommy, who’s an 8 year old boy who wears a bird mask and plays with children.
Jaden and Tommy played together for a long time, and before I knew it, Jaden was begging me to hire the last kid available, who was Leo. He was the freaky one. He had a mask, but it wasn’t like the other two. The mask was simple, just with a smiley face. He arrived at my home and Jaden and his new friends went outside to play with some other kids. After a while they came back, but not alone. There was another woman and another child with them. The child looked badly beaten. His nose was bloody, and a bruise was on his eye. His arms were scratched.
The woman screamed at me for what seemed like hours. It was a miracle she didn’t call the police. I didn’t understand what I have done. After she left, I asked my grandson what happened. He said that the other boy, the beaten one, was being mean to him, so Leo did his job. His ‘job’ was to beat up the little child, which was justified by him saying that it was what he does. I fired them all immediately, and I will never hire from them again.”
What the fuck?
I check the comments, and they’re filled with other parents saying the same thing. All complaining about Leo.
I scramble to get up from the bed, pull the curtains aside and checked the playground through the window. My eyes darted left and right, searching for the 4 kids.
I didn’t find them. Any of them.
I began feeling queasy. I threw my coat over my clothes and slipped my feet into crocs. I ran outside and searched for them thoroughly. Still no sign of them.
The sky was getting dark. Where have they gone?
I ask a few people if they’ve seen Ricky or the other 3, but nobody seemed to have any idea who they were. Panic settled itself into my gut as an idea popped in my mind - I should call the guy from the TV.
I run upstairs to my apartment, unlock the door quickly, and-
There they are. All of them.
At first I think something is wrong. Then I realize it is.
All 4 of them stand in the doorway, staring at me, hands by the sides as if they’ve been waiting. Ricky looks particularly bad - his skin is pale, his eyes are dark and he looks way more tired than usual.
Clearing my throat, I look at them. “Hey, uh, kids… Where did you go?”
The first one to speak is Tommy. “We went to Brandon’s house, sir!”
I frown. “Brandon?”
Ricky speaks, and his voice is just as dark and deep as he looks. “The one who used to make my cry, Dad. You know him.”
He won’t look at me. He’s staring at the floor.
“Yeah? Why did you go there?” The panic’s still there, in my gut, and I hope and pray that Leo wouldn’t say…
“I did my job.”
Time seemed to freeze as we stood staring at each other. The room seemed to get darker.
“You did… what?”
“My job,” he repeats, and this time his tone is like a threat.
I look back at my son. “Ricky,” I urge, my voice high pitched. “What did you do to Brandon?”
“Dad,” Ricky says in not-such-a-friendly tone, “We turned him into a redhead.”
Confusion took over the overflowing fear and panic in me. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t do it,” Ricky claims. “It was Leo.”
Leo nods, the creepy smiley face still staring at me.
“We turned him into a redhead because he bullied my friend!” Leo chirps. “We used this.”
With that, he produced a bloody hammer from behind him.