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As a kid I constantly played with little, green, plastic, army men. They were my favorite toys. I'd make forts for them, go into my backyard and pretend they were in a mighty jungle, or just get a few boxes and make two bases. I remembered me and my dad playing with them. He'd find one, aim it, and flick it at me. We played very differently. I would sometimes bring them with me to school in my backpack and play with them at recess or lunch on the tables. This went on and people would play with me in elementary school. When I got to Middle School kids would make fun of me, but I didn't care. I loved the little guys and they were my friends. How could anyone make fun of me for playing with my friends? They were just bullies, everyone thought these things were cool in elementary school, why would that change now? Little by little, as time went on, I would stop bringing them to school sometimes. Kids would still bully me, but less painfully, and I just stopped bringing them altogether. I would still play with them at home though. I loved the little green guys.

After managing to talk my parents into getting me a game console, I would play the video games instead of with the army men. I would sometimes feel bad about it, and make a day just to play with them. I got a girlfriend and then, the army men were just... There. I didn't play with them, they just waited in their plastic boxes waiting to be taken out. And when she dumped me for some a*****e, I took them out. And played.

I'm 23 now, an adult and in an apartment by myself. I'm tall and kind of lanky. Throughout my childhood, I'd kept the army men. I'm an adult now, and no longer played with them. I still had all of them though, some were broken and battered, others were missing their plastic rifles or minesweepers. I kept them though, they reminded me of my childhood. I kept them in a big green box on a shelf. It was listed as: MEMORIES. And that's where they stayed. Things were normal, about as normal as possible with a 23 year old in an apartment. I had no fancy dinners and my diet consisted of ramen noodles and a soda. (I didn't drink.)

Sometimes I'd be surfing the web or looking for music, when I'd cast my eye at the box on the shelf. The army men were in there and I'd have an urge to play. But each time, I cast it away. I was an adult, too old for that s**t. What if someone walked in anyway? My mind was filled with these thoughts, with my age came my need to fulfill societies rules and regulations. And one of those was to never play with the army guys.

On a late Monday, I came home from my job at a shitty fast food restaurant. I walked into the apartment and looked at the shelf holding the box labeled MEMORIES. Strangely, the lid was opened. I don't remember playing with them or even... taking them out but still it was opened. Did someone come through my apartment looking for money? Was it someone who wanted to steal from me? I was least concerned with the rest of the house as I tore the box down from the shelf and checked inside. The army men were gone. Someone took my childhood friends from me and for no reason! I felt like crying.

The rest of the house was clean, nothing was stolen except the army men. I couldn't figure out why someone took them, maybe a parent who was looking for money to hold the family up and found toys instead? Yeah, that was the only reasonable explanation my mind could come up with and the most bearable.

Two weeks passed since the soldiers kidnapping and I was still thinking about it. It's hard losing a toy like that. Any adult would know because at some point, we all had a favorite teddy bear or a favorite action figure. For me, it was about a hundred of those. It burned my heart to think someone stole something like that from me though. What sick ******** would steal someone else' toys? I thought about buying another pack at a dollar store, but knew it wouldn't be the same. They weren't memories or friends like the soldiers had been. They were like a batch of replacements compared to the real soldiers. Each time I went to the store and saw a bag of them, I thought about my toys.

A few year passed, and the soldiers had become a faint memory. They were still there, still in the back of my head, but somehow... less important to me. I had a real job now. I was a manager at a local grocery store. I could pass the toy aisle and not think about my toys, but every now and then when a kid was about to leave with a plastic bag of troops I would stop them.
"You keep your eye on them," I'd say kindly. "Those are memories you got there." The kid never understood, but they'd smile and nod their head as if they did. Their mothers (or fathers) would thank me and leave the store. They wouldn't understand, never would.

I sat alone in my chair watching TV, the quiet apartment echoed back the voices of the television. I heard faint mumbling sounds and thought it was the new neighbors across from me. All they did was argue since they'd gotten here. It was pretty annoying. The mumbling didn't stop and I finally got up and walked to my front door. I was about to turn the handle when... it was gone. The mumbling had stopped. I walked back to my chair and sat down. It started again, this time I could make out orders in a kind of gritty, yet tiny, voice. I ignored it and turned the TV up louder when I felt a sting at the back of my neck. I slapped at it, hoping to kill a mosquito or something, and found blood. My blood.
"******** musta gotten away." I mumbled and went back to TV. Another stingy sensation hit my forehead and this time, I hit it. Hard. All I did was give myself a headache and stain my palm with my own blood. I was pretty pissed at this point and I looked around the room. I heard tiny footsteps and looked down at my feet.

Ten army men ran in a line, the little green things at the bottom of their feet were gone. Each held a weapon in their arms, and each had a grenade on their hips. I stared at them, blinking. Was this really happening? Were these the soldiers from so long ago? I felt another sting and this time I turned around and saw a sniper, prone and cocking his rifles bolt. He saw me notice him and stood up, about to sprint away, when I grabbed him. He wasted no time and took a pistol out. He shot me once in my cheek and once in my chin. I wiped the blood from both of these attack and was about to ask him why he was shooting me when he brought his tiny gun up to his neck and pulled the trigger. The little guy committed suicide!

The bullet he'd used made a big hole in his head, a realistic one. Plastic splayed onto the couch like blood and I noticed the other toy soldiers stop for a moment. I heard tiny voices scream before they sprinted out of the room. I would have followed them if I hadn't been too shocked from the snipers suicide. These were the toys from my childhood. They were leaf green and were very detailed, each of them with a tiny circle on their back. I knew they were mine just from the smell of the plastic, the smell of years of dirt and grime and child's spit. When I focused my attention on the convoy of troops they were gone.

"What in the ******** world...?" Was all I could say. I asked myself a hundred questions in that second alone. Why were the trying to kill me? Where had they gone? Why did he kill himself? Were the questions that were at the top of my head. If these really were my toys, wouldn't they want to play with instead of murder me? I spent the rest of the night searching for the army men before I fell asleep.

This morning, I found weird plastic bits over my oven. Right where the burners are. I scooped them up, turns out, the army men had been melting their own to make ammunition. Sharp too. Just touching the tip of it cut my finger. Are they possessed or something? I even found some grenades. My fingers were too large to pull them but I knew that if they could make bullets and working guns out of plastic, chances are grenades weren't out of the question either. What bothered me the most, and nagged at me from inside my head was: What if they made tanks?