My “friend” is dead to me. And so came the day when I faced the dead.

Soon after shape shifters started getting mischievous to the point where they began agitating people. Most of the shape shifters would instigate situations, few would just annoy, few would kill, but worst ones would destroy people’s hopes and dream and then laugh it off like no big deal. Some of the shape shifters would commit crimes in broad daylight, transform into rats and run into the sewers. They would resurface once everything settled down and repeat their actions. The people’s misery was their entertainment. Something had to be done.

Initially the police took notice and started looking for humans with similar habits as that of rats. Such habits would include chewing on pens, touching everywhere with messy hands, almost like babies, and creating a mess while eating, especially their hands. The police started laying human sized traps in the hopes that the shape shifter’s “inner rat” would react to it. Unfortunately the only thing they caught were hungry hobos and lunatics.

Under public pressure for action the mayor created a special administration of scientists in charge of researching a way to seek out shape shifters. The only problem, there was a shortage of qualified scientists. In response the administration started hiring high school grads into their lucrative program. Every admitted high school grad was promised full tuition and expenses for their degree and a guaranteed job at the administration when they graduate. Babu liked the idea of not having to pay an arm and leg for a degree so he applied and was lucky enough to get accepted into the program.

“Hi you must be Babu, welcome to the administration.”

“Yea, I am excited to start my 1st day at the administration. Today is the day I start helping cleanse my city.”

Babu started working with a fleet of scientist in trying to figuring out a way to detect shape shifters. A year passed with no luck. While working late one night Babu noticed something moving on the wall. It was a spider. Unlike other times the spider crawled onto his hand. Babu decided to keep the spider and put the spider in his empty water bottle and continued working.

At 11:00 PM Babu called it a day and left for home. The temperature outside was in the mid 20’s. Babu decided to take a shortcut, and as he was walking through one of alleyways he heard weird noises from the gutter that ran parallel to the alleyway. Babu was getting nervous and within seconds his worst fear came true. A rat crossed his path from the right and stopped in the middle, where it transformed itself into a human. The shape shifter was after Babu's money. Babu gave him whatever he had on him at the time, $4 and some change. The shape shifter became mad because he only scored $4 and some change and started approaching Babu. Babu could feel a fight coming, he didn’t have anything on him to defend himself with except his plastic water bottle with the spider in it. Babu held the water bottle by the cap, like a knight holding a sword. The shape shifter stopped and stared at the bottle for what seemed like an eternity. He then immediately turned around and ran in the opposite direction screaming like a little girl, while dropping the money as he turned into a rat.

At first Babu was relieved that he didn’t get hurt, but immediately after he realized that he found the solution to problem that over 100,000 scientists had been working on day and night for over 5 years. Babu could not sleep that night. The whole night Babu kept searching for an explanation. Babu’s theory by next morning was that shape shifters lose control of their brain, including the part that controls the form they want to take (rat or human), because the fear of spiders takes over. Babu informed everyone in the department of his findings and everybody thought Babu's theory was crazy, but at this point they were desperate, and the political pressure was so high that they were willing to snatch whatever came on the table.

Babu’s boss ordered him to test this theory in the presence of some higher ups. Babu was escorted by a couple of police officers in case things went sour. Babu went to the worst area of the city, which was known to be crawling with shape shifters. Before departing Babu had collected spiders and put them in clear bottles. Babu held one bottle in each hand by the cap and started walking around the area “scanning” for potential shape shifters. Babu would move the bottle like a handheld metal detector that you see at airports over the people he passed by. In the 15 minutes he did this, 23 "people" turned into rats and ran away.

The mayor was impressed, so impressed that he made Babu the commanding officer for operation cleanse, the objective, to exterminate shape shifters. To keep the cost low Babu gathered all the clear plastic bottles he could find and put one spider in each bottle. Each of the police officers took one bottle and every day they set out in teams to different areas of the city, breaking down doors if they had to, and scanning everyone. As soon as a shape shifter was detected, he/she was to be executed. Some of the officers got so paranoid that they started scanning random objects because they thought that the rats might have mutated again and taken the form of a fridge. TV. Wait. A dog. Babu even ordered the officers with their “scanners” to be posted at all public places such as metro stations, government buildings, and private buildings, if the owners agreed.

A month passed by and according to Babu’s latest report, approximately 3/4 of the city had been “sanitized”. One day Babu received an anonymous tip about a shape shifter gathering other shape shifters to plan a revolution. Babu put his best officers to confirm the accuracy of the tip and as it turns out the tip was true. No one knew a much about this shape shifter. The only thing they knew about him was that he went by the name of Snizle, and that he held his meetings in elementary schools at night with other shape shifters. Babu made it his priority to find Snizle and put an end to this.

After a couple of days Babu found out in the morning that the next meeting would be held that night at Seahurt elementary school. Babu started arranging a sting operation for that night. Normally Babu stayed in the van during a sting, but this time he decided to lead it. As it approached midnight Babu put on his bullet proof vest and went inside the briefing room. Babu briefed all the officers involved on what was happening and what the goal of the sting was. Since they were breaking into an elementary school Babu ordered to only use guns if necessary. Babu also ordered all officers to wear all weather boots even though it was summer because they were going to stomp out the shape shifters.

Babu along with the SWAT team waited outside the gymnasium door for the clock to hit midnight. As it got closer to midnight Babu started hearing high pitched noises which sounded like evil laughter that implied “I got away with it b****” and annoying babies whining about random s*** that no one can figure out. As soon as the clock hit 12:00 Babu lead the charge into the school. 2 loud thuds later the door was knocked down and Babu was the first to enter. The gymnasium was filled with shape shifters who looked like they had gathered there a support meeting. Within seconds after entering Babu opened the cage door which housed thousands of spiders. As soon as the spiders were released the shape shifters started transforming into rats and started running around aimlessly like a heard of goats do when you fire a gun in the air. The SWAT team knew their orders and began stomping around as if their legs were on fire. On any other day Babu would have loved to stomp every single rat he saw, but today was different. He was focused on only one person, Snizle. Babu charged towards the podium and started looking around for Snizle like a lost child looking for directions. After a minute or two he spotted a big fat rat trying to enter one of the air ducts. Babu was sure that the big fat rat was Snizle. It had to be, not only was that the biggest rat there, but there was an evil aura about him. Babu had no time to run over to the air duct so he took off his right shoe and threw it at the big rat just like Borat threw his shoe at the cockroaches. The shoe hit the rat right on the head, but it didn’t kill him because the rat was too big to be killed with one blow. After a while all the other shape shifters were exterminated and Snizle was in custody.

"Sir you are spilling your coffee. Sir. Sir! "

"Holy s***"

Babu placed the dripping coffee cup on the table and walked directly into the interrogation room. As soon as the door closed behind Babu Snizle had completed his transformation into his Human form.

"Taling. YOU are the Snizle, the infamous rat that everyone is talking about"

"Yes friend. I am."

"What the hell. You are the one that has been instigating, killing and crushing people’s hopes and dreams."

"Yes friend. You aren’t even going to say hi to your friend" said Tailing with a rat like smirk on his face.

"My friend is dead to me. You were not my friend, only a classmate, but now you are not even a classmate" said Babu as he walked out of the interrogation room.

“What should we do with him sir?”

“Go take him out in the desert and use him as target practice and then bury him.” said Babu he stumbled his way out of the police station.

The alarm bell rang at exactly 5 the next morning. Babu woke up and turned on the TV and there was breaking news, something about the police station on fire and Snizle killing a bunch of officers in the confusion. Babu picked up his axe and stormed out of his condo wearing nothing but his red silk robe.