The End of The World

The little girl ran excitedly back home, clutching her prize tightly to her chest. She couldn’t believe her luck in finding the most popular, wanted toy at the side of the road. Someone had just left it there, and now it was hers. Her own Labubu.

It smelt a bit funny, but she didnt mind. She was used to hand-me-downs. She rarely had anything new. Especially not toys.

“Nana, Nana, look what I found,” she yelled excitedly as she crashed through the front door of her grandmother’s little house.

It wasn’t much. In truth, her grandmother could barely afford to feed herself, let alone a hungry eight-year-old. But what could she do? She certainly wasn’t going to let her only granddaughter go into the care system. The disappearance of her daughter and husband had been a shock to everyone. One minute, they had been living the perfect life, and the next, they had disappeared, leaving their child behind. The old woman loved that little girl and would certainly not desert her like her parents had.

Not while she had a breath left in her body.

The old woman wiped her hands on the tea towel, turning to see what had excited her granddaughter so much.

She stared at the fluffy toy her granddaughter clutched to her chest.

The little girl quickly held it out in front of her.

“Look, Nana, look what I found.”

The old woman frowned at the ugly toy staring back at her

The furry thing had long, pointy ears and sharp teeth. It stared back at her with soulless eyes, which sent a shiver down her spine..

She tried to ignore the feeling. It was just an ugly little toy, but the sensation of trepidation remained.

Instead of dwelling on the feeling, she focused on her granddaughter’s beaming face.

It wasn’t only the ugly little toy she was concerned about. She knew full well how expensive they were, so she wondered how a toy like that came to be in her granddaughter’s possession.

Her little granddaughter was a good kid. She doubted that she had stolen it, but you couldn’t be too careful. The last thing she wanted was the authorities coming around and taking her away because she was making trouble.

“A Labubu? Where did you get that?”

She tried to keep her tone as light as she could.

“It was sitting on the side of the road. Do you think someone dropped it?”

The old woman held her hand out, and the child handed it over.

She scrutinised it closely, turning it this way and that.

She’d heard that there were a lot of cheap fakes around. She pulled at its plastic hands and eyes, but it was well-made and none of the parts seemed ready to disintegrate or fall apart.

If it wasn’t a fake, then it was likely to be worth a fair bit. If she sold it, even to a local charity shop, she could probably afford to buy her granddaughter a fake knock-off and have some money left over for groceries.

Her granddaughter would probably be a little upset, but better that than be hungry.

“Yes,” her grandmother replied to the almost forgotten question.

“I expect someone has dropped it. I’ll just put it here, and tomorrow I’ll see if I can find out who it belongs to.”

The old woman was about to place it on a shelf in the kitchen.

“Please, Nana, can I keep it with me, just for tonight?”

She looked at her granddaughter, who was giving her puppy dog eyes, and she sighed. When she gave her that look, it was hard to deny her anything.

“Very well, but just for tonight, though.”

The child squealed with delight and clutched the ugly toy to her chest before running off to her room.

Labubu glanced down at the sleeping child, licking his lips. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and he yearned for the taste of more sweet human flesh.

The child was too small to satisfy him, but the old woman; that was another matter entirely.

Anger took hold of him at the memory of the older woman. How dare she touch him like that? How dare she try to blind him by pulling at his eyes?

He hopped from the bed, leaving the child to her dreams. Sniffing the air, he scented the old woman. It was easy to open the firmly closed door.

Labubian’s had many gifts. One of them being the gift of telekinesis.

The doorknob slowly turned as Labubu stared at it, and the door swung open with a small creak.

He glanced back at the child, still sleeping.

He hated pretending to be an inanimate object, but it was the best form of disguise.

All of the Labubians who currently dwelled on this planet used the humans’ love of fluffy toys to enable them to hide in plain sight.

The planet was like a paradise for the Labubus. There was barely any food left on their home planet, and this one was heaving with walking feasts of delicious flesh.

He was part of a group that had been sent here to see if this was a viable alternative to their home planet. It was more than viable. It was a veritable paradise for his kind, with more than enough food to go around.

He ran his tongue over his sharp little teeth.

By the time he had finished with the old woman, there would be barely anything left of her. Only her bleached bones would remain.

The detective stared down at the human remains.

This was the third time this week that he had been called to investigate a pile of bones that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

He frowned and shook his head. Was someone digging up buried remains? That could be the only explanation, but why?

If someone had killed the poor soul, there would be some trace of the rest of his body.

These bones looked like they had been picked clean by piranhas, but as far as he was aware, there were no piranhas in this neck of the woods. Besides, there was no water within miles.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. Looking at it, he saw it was the crime lab.

He sighed. Hopefully, they had something to tell him this time.

“Yes,” he huffed.

“You’re not going to like this, detective.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Just spit it out.”

“We just completed the analysis of the last lot of bones you brought in…”

“And?” he questioned.

“They aren’t old. In fact, I would say that the victim was killed not more than a week ago.”

The detective swallowed nervously, staring at the new pile of bones in front of him.

“Where the hell is the rest of the body then?”

The man on the other end of the call chuckled.

“You’re the detective. You figure it out.”

The Labubu licked the remaining blood from his teeth. Bones picked clean littered the floor of the old woman’s room.

He stared at them, and as if by some unseen force, they slid across the floor and under the bed.

He rubbed his now full stomach. Time to leave this place and head to the next town.

All he had to do was wait by the path, or on the edge of the grass in some park and wait for a stupid human to pick up the expensive toy that someone had discarded there.

He’d been a little careless in this town and hadn’t been able to find a good hiding place for some of the bones, but he had been hungry and hiding the remains hadn’t been high on his list of priorities.

Even the old woman would only keep him sated for a few hours.

It took a lot of energy to stay in his inanimate form.

Soon, though, this disguise would no longer be necessary.

The Labubu mothership was already on its way; then the full invasion force would land, and this little world would be nothing more than a large feast.

The beauty of it is that no one would suspect a thing. Thousands of cute little toys were being sold around the world to the unsuspecting humans.

By the time the full force was in place, it would be too late for the humans.

One Labubu could strip the flesh of a human in less than thirty seconds.

Imagine the carnage that ten thousand could wreak, or twenty, or fifty thousand.

When the earthlings looked to the stars, they had expected any alien invaders to be humanoid in appearance. Perhaps even to come in peace or have discussions with their world leaders. They were even prepared to fight.

They never expected the aliens to be little carnivorous beasts who could look like cute little toys.

Now it was too late. The world was doomed to be come a feast for all the Labubians.

The End