70's-80's SciFi book (possibly short story) about tiny creatures connected to humans. When the creature dies, the human dies.

[Francis Beausoleil]

The story was possibly from a collection of Science Fiction stories...

In the story, everyone had a small creature connected to them and if the creature died, they died as well.

Sorry it's not much :/

[Kris]

Francis, please post a new comment if you're still looking for this book - or if you found it.

Francis (OP) was last active on the site in November 2019. Moving to Abandoned folder.

[Francis Beausoleil]

Hi Kris - sadly never found out what it was.

[Kris]

Thanks for the update, Francis. I moved your request back to the "Unsolved" folder.

Is this short story for adults, teens or kids?

What do the tiny creatures look like? How are they connected to humans (physically or psychically) ?

Can you describe any of the main characters?

[Johanna.]

Hi Francis,
This might be Animorphs, in which slug-like aliens live in the hosts head and control them. If the host dies, they die to.
The covers have teenagers “morphing“ into animals with really bad photoshop.
(The aliens are called Yirks, by the way)

[Ky]

Yeerks, not Yirks.

[Francis Beausoleil]

Thank you both for your suggestions!

I think it's older than the Animorph books. I'll need to ask my father for more information, but from memory:

It was in an old sci-fi book (in the vibe of 'Astonishing tales from the future', these generic collections of sci-fi short stories). It was probably aimed at young adults, not really sure.

Felt like a Pratchett story when he explained it, but I'll call him to get more info (he told me about this in 2019 and the details are fuzzy now)