5 Evil Ways To Make More Friends

5 The Only Way To Make Friends Is To Take Risks And Experiment

The first place I went to learn how to make new friends was Google. Google had never let me down before. Whenever I had the urge to buy anything weird, like an obscure video game, a stylish new scarf, or industrial-grade laboratory equipment, it always seemed to know the answer. I really felt like Google understood me. Sort of like a friend. But, sadly, this time it let me down.

Most of the Internet's friendship advice is stuff like "be persistent" and "be yourself" and "be open about your feelings." None of that stuff helps when you haven't made it past the first hurdle, which is "manage to start a conversation with a stranger." My impulse when interacting with a new human being is to hiss like a feral cat and menacingly snap at them with my flip phone. Is persistence really my friend in that situation? Can I honestly "be myself" when that self is a snippish goblin-man whose favorite conversation topics are David Fincher, StarCraft mythology, and the precise dimensions of his personal space?

That's why I retreated into my basement to seek the comforts of my books and my laboratory. It is ironic, perhaps, that the solution to my woes came from darkness and solitude. For days I tinkered in that musty darkness, mixing different chemicals in my various vials and beakers, filling fish tanks full of strange fluids -- artificial, organic, and otherwise. In the third month, I had to seal the windows with duct tape to keep the strange odors from alerting my neighbors to my experiments. They are small-minded fools.

On the ninth month, my solution was perfected, and I began testing it on animals. The cockroaches and cats I trapped in the street. The betta fish I purchased at the pet store. Children, from the preschool down the street.

On the morning of the first day of the 13th month, I approached my terrarium, coffee in hand, preparing to take the day's notes. The glass case was half full with a thick, greenish-black fluid.

When those first ripples spread across the water, the only betrayal of subtle movement beneath that dark liquid mirror, I convinced myself it was a trick of the dim morning light, the hallucinations of my own overworked and sleep-deprived mind. After months of straight failure, I swallowed my optimism not out of a sense of defeat but out of self-preservation. I feared that if I continued to thrill myself with hope only to euthanize those hopes along with yet another one of my experiment's grotesque stillbirths, my enthusiasm for my work would wane, and my progress would stall. In those first pregnant moments, I convinced myself the water was still.

But then a small black claw, less than an inch and a half wide and just four inches long, slid from the murky brine and pressed against the glass. Behind it emerged a head -- flat, black, and featureless except for small reptilian slits of eyes and twisted, scaly lips stretched thinly over a row of jagged yellow teeth. The lips parted, and in a wet voice it spoke to me.

"Friend," it rasped.

Perhaps I did know how to make them after all.

4 Friendship Is About Getting To Know Someone Else And Getting To Know Yourself

Friend grew quickly. At first I named him Alfonso Cuaron, because I was under the impression that Alfonso Cuaron had made Birdman, and I thought he sorta looked like a Birdman. But then I realized that it was actually Alejandro Inarritu who made Birdman, and Cuaron's filmography didn't really have any touchstones that made sense for this guy as a name. But rather than stick him with a new name, I figured "Friend" was fine. It was, after all, the only word he knew, and that approach seems to work fine for Pokemon.

As soon as Friend was able to leave his incubator, he began trying to escape. At first he was just slightly curious whenever the mailman would arrive, but eventually he was scampering toward the door whenever he heard footsteps tippy-tapping down my front yard's walkway. Sometimes he moved so fast that his claws would lose traction, and he would fall, skitter across the hardwood, and slam into the wall. For a while I was worried he would hurt himself, but I didn't have to be. Friend's DNA was made up of cockroach, Komodo dragon, emperor scorpion, human being, and several types of fungus (DNA is weird). He was a sturdy beast. The real concern was that someone else could see him. He was far uglier than Scraggy.

"You have to be more careful," I told him. "You can't let anyone from the outside world see you. They'll tell others, and they'll take you away."

"Friend," he said to me, pointing to the door. His eyes were wide and watery.

"No," I said. "You have no friends out there."

A moment passed. Then Friend scurried up to my leg and hugged it.

"Friend," he hissed.

I stroked his head. If Friend were discovered, there would be questions. Investigations. I was probably breaking some kind of international law. I bet there were people who thought what I had done was unethical. The ACLU probably wasn't too into this. And if they didn't have a problem with it, PETA would. At the very least, I would lose control of my work. I would need to go on the run. I would have to abandon my lab. And without my lab, how could I make more friends? Without my lab, I risked being alone again.

There was only one way to avoid catastrophe. Friend had to die.

3 It's Hard To Stand Up For Yourself Without Coming Off Like An Asshole

"I need to explain something about friendship to you," I told my creation one night as I lay him in his crib. "As a friend, I want what's best for you, and I'll happily lend a hand whenever you need it, or keep a secret, or have your back. Remember that scene in The Two Towers when Aragorn picks up Gimli, tosses him from the wall of Helm's Deep to the bridge, and promises to never tell Legolas? He kept his word and that secret until his dying day.Even though it was fucking hilarious to see that little dude flying through the air like that. Because Aragorn's a good guy, and he has Gimli's back. That's the kind of friend I am to you."

I pulled the blanket up to Friend's chin with my right hand and slipped my left into the back pocket of my jeans. The industrial syringe's steel was cold against my finger tips.

"But there's another movie I want you to think about now. Remember Devil, the M. Night Shyamalan movie about a haunted elevator or whatever? Remember the part where Logan Marshall-Green is trying to make the elevator and he asks the wormy little nerd guy to hold it for him, but the wormy little nerd guy is like, 'Sorry, I ...,' and makes a helpless gesture? But then just as the elevator doors are about to close Logan shoves his hand in the elevator anyway, like a total Logan. Then he steps inside and sarcastically quips, 'Thanks for the help.'

"Then the wormy little twat replies, 'Don't mention it,' because he has no idea how comebacks work.

"I always admired Logan in that scene. Do you know why? Because he was able to take charge. He was able to put himself first, right there. I've always aspired to that kind of confidence. The ability to put myself first. If Logan's friends had been in that elevator, he would've done exactly the same thing. Just stuck his hand right in that elevator door, not giving a shit how it inconvenienced his friends, because at the end of the day, Logan's No. 1 priority has to be Logan.

"That's also the kind of friend I want to be to you, Friend," I said. "I have to put myself first."

I wrapped my right hand around his throat and jammed my syringe into his beady little reptile eye. But before I had the chance to push the plunger, Friend grabbed my left arm above the elbow and snapped my humerus like a toothpick.

And that's when things went fucking crazy.

2 Really, It's All About Trust

I fell back against the wall, just dimly aware of the sound of the heavy steel syringe skittering across the floor. Somehow I managed to suppress my screams. Even in the face of blinding pain, some small part of me remembered the importance of silence. If anyone heard this commotion and investigated, I'd have to go on the run, and I'd be doomed to a life without 100 percent artificial lab-grown friends. I'd be starved for companionship. That couldn't happen. Stealth had to be maintained at all costs.

I slumped to the ground like a thawing bag of frozen vegetables. I cradled my arm. It looked like a Butterfinger that had broken inside its wrapper. As I struggled against unconsciousness, my vision narrowed and it was as though I was looking at the world through the hole of a black olive. For some reason the trauma was making it really hard to think of a frame of reference that wasn't groceries.

Finally managing to clear my head, I turned my gaze to Friend's crib. It was emptier than an unguarded candy bowl on Halloween. I struggled to my feet and trudged into the hallway, cradling my arm all the way, to try to get a glimpse at my front door. It was locked up tighter than an Indiana liquor store on a Sunday.

That meant Friend could be anywhere. Anywhere in the house. And he was angry at me. It was like ... like what? Shit. How could I compare this to food? My mind went blank. I felt like lasagna was the key, but I couldn't quite-

Friend lunged from the darkness and struck my chest like a meat tenderizer. My knees collapsed like an overdone souffle. Stunned, I realized that Friend was holding my throat with one claw and the steel syringe with the other. He raised it high above his head and then thrust it down, into my chest, like he was using a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature of a Carne Asada Autentica from Trader Joe's.

A hideous burning spread through my chest as he depressed the plunger. I struggled helplessly as the feeling left my arms, and my creation stared down at me, his gaze blank and expressionless.

"Friend," he whispered to me. Then the world went as black as licorice.

1 Opening Up And Trusting Someone Can Really Change Your Outlook

When I woke up, Friend was gone. The first thing I realized was that he'd figured out how to unlock the door while I was unconscious, meaning he could now explore the world at his leisure. The second thing I realized was that I was inside the terrarium, bound and gagged with an IV feeding my arm a strange, yellowish fluid. I may be wrong about the order in which I noticed those things; the memories are all a bit fuzzy.

I've been here for three months. Friend comes every night, mixing up strange concoctions with my laboratory equipment and feeding them to me. Sometimes he conducts experiments on my pain tolerance. Other times he just stares at me silently, his one good eye as expressionless as ever.

I'm probably gonna die here. I don't think Friend is particularly meticulous with his chemistry, and even if he was, he's been reading my notes, and I'm pretty sure he knows how to grow another thing to experiment on by now. But, in a way, it's soothing. Now that I'm tied up in a glass jar being force-fed mysterious chemicals to satisfy the asympathetic curiosities of a mute abomination, this is pretty much the least stressful friendship I've ever had.

Happy Halloween! JF Sargent is an editor and columnist at Cracked. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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