A Tasty Daemonic Job Fair

By Gail Fulkerson

Frank was bored. Half-heartedly looking for something to do to get him out of the house, he came across an ad in the paper. A national food delivery service was looking to hire delivery drivers. He dialed the number and listened to someone telling him to attend a group interview that was taking place the next day.

He arrived at the address, a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and entered a large banquet room. There were chairs arranged in a half-moon facing a desk and chair. Frank was the first one there and had the pick of any seat. The first to arrive, Frank chose the last chair on the end of the final row nearest the door in case he wanted to duck out early.

As people trickled in, slowly filling up the chairs, Frank wondered whether all of them were human. Some looked pretty sketchy, with their thinly cloaked red eyes peering out from under large hat brims, and unmanicured daemonic talons at the ends of freakishly long fingers.

Before long, a ‘person’ walked up to the desk and sat down in the chair. (As the ‘man’ made his way to the front of the room, Frank noticed that his feet were too big for the shoes he was wearing, his belt was cinched tightly around his waist rather than threaded through the belt loops, and his suit jacket was so undersized that it would have fitted nicely on a much smaller male frame.) From this vantage point, he stared out at the group of assembled job seekers. A grimace broke across his face. Frank couldn’t help suspecting the smile was an effort, the best smile he could muster, in an unfamiliar human form. Frank sat up to pay close attention as the ‘person’ began to speak.

“Hello everyone and thank you for coming. My name is Listerine, and I am your presenter. Please place your completed application forms on the desk, and once you are all seated, I will begin.” The sound of his voice, deep and sonorous, filled the room. Frank had heard that voice before but could not recall where more than a few humans in the room had also heard the voice before, in nightmares that invariably involved them either being severely brutalized or dismembered in a deeply shadowed dungeon, as discordant drums sounded in the distance. They remembered the torturer’s voice sounding exactly like tonight's presenter, but in the nightmares, he was chanting in the same deeply disturbing tones, exhorting death and eventual reaping of the victim’s soul. Horrified looks spread across their faces as they stood up, grabbed their belongings, and fled.

About half an hour into the presentation, Frank noticed that the room was becoming quite warm and somewhat smoky. Looking around for a heat source, he spied a daemon skulking around the periphery of the room, wielding a fiery torch. The skulker set the drapes, tablecloths, napkins, and other flammable items afire. A furtive glance seemed to confirm that Frank was the only job applicant who could see the daemon with the torch.

Perhaps the presenter could also see the arsonist, since he’d been tracking him with his glowing red eyes from the moment he’d entered the room. Frank was surprised that he hadn’t noticed the eyes earlier, but then reminded himself that there was a lot going on and he couldn’t be faulted for overlooking something.

People were coughing and choking, their eyes watered, yet no one got up to leave. (Daemons are adept at concealing truth and reality from humans, making them think they are seeing one thing, like a banquet room with tables covered in crisp linen tablecloths and chairs, but in reality, the room is burning down around them, and they are also catching fire.) It was too late for them, and they died where they sat.

Frank looked around the room again and noticed that the remaining people were all dead. He looked at the presenter, who was morphing into his true form, a hideous, leather-faced skin walker. The presenter locked his unblinking, yellow reptilian eyes with Frank and telepathically told him that as soon as the last human in the room was dead, it would be mealtime. He advised Frank to sharpen his teeth and talons in preparation, because it was ‘gonna be a bloody free-for-all feast’ and he was sure Frank didn’t want to miss out. As the conversation ended, Frank could see hungry, drooling daemons flooding into the banquet room. They had followed the intoxicating scent that emanated from the room — the aroma of dead and dying humans.

Mouthwatering ‘meals’ sat slumped in chairs and crumpled on the floor in tasty heaps.Frank had earlier spied an obese man in the crowd and headed towards him, a rumble of daemonic joy and hunger vibrating in his chest. He loved the silky, buttery-ness of human fat as it hit his tongue and melted. Liquid rivulets of it sneaked over his lips and down his bristly chin. This prize of his would not be shared with anyone and no one daemon would rob him of it. As he approached the man, Frank noticed that his ‘meal’ was still struggling to breathe. Although he liked it when his victuals put up a fight, Frank was too ravenous at this juncture to prolong his meal’s protracted suffering, so he dug in, tearing great slabs of fat and meat off the man’s bones as he gorged.

It was far and away the best ‘bloody free-for-all feast’ that Frank had attended in recent memory. His stomach was uncomfortably distended from all the flesh and fat he had eaten and the gallons of blood he’d drunk. He used a crisp linen tablecloth to wipe the meal’s remnants from his face, belching and farting as he did so.

He cast his eyes around the room, looking upon all the carnage that lay before him, searching for Listerine. He saw him hunched over an old woman, gorging himself on her innards. No daemon likes to be interrupted during a meal, so Frank politely waited until Listerine was finished.

“I was looking for a job and thought that meal delivery would be a good fit. There is no job on offer today, though, is there. This was a ruse to bring humans together in a large group so we could kill and eat them. Ingenious, my dear Listerine! Is there another ‘job fair’ being planned? I’d love to attend.” Frank practically drooled on the host in his excitement. “I’m Frank, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Frank. As a matter of fact, there’s another meeting planned next week for prospective ‘employees’ for a national pizza chain. I’d love to see you there. We’re having it here again. Same day, same time, same room. You in?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Frank responded, as he covered his mouth to stop the entrails he’d eaten from escaping. As it was, some of the blood from his meal was trickling down his chin and he didn’t have a tissue. Never mind, he told himself, I’ve gone out on the street looking worse. Frank’s long tongue snaked out of his mouth and licked his bloody chin clean. Very little remained from that evening’s attendees.

Daemons were sloppy when they ate, but they made sure to eat everything that was put in front of them. None of the guilt-inducing admonishments the parents of human children would recite, such as ‘there are starving children in India who would be happy to eat what’s on your plate.’ Daemons learned a hard lesson at their familial dinner tables: Eat what’s put in front of you or starve.
Frank’s family had an additional rule: Go for brains and organ meats before anything else; otherwise, you may end up malnourished and become fodder yourself. There isn’t much nutrition in intestines, and if you don’t clean them well, they taste crappy, no matter how much ketchup you use.

As he made his way home, Frank had been wracking his brain. Where had he heard the presenter’s distinctive voice? He was about to unlock his front door when it hit him:

Listerine reminded him of his Auntie Pearl. She smoked, drank, and swore like a daemonic sailor. She ate heartily, belching and farting with the best of them, and didn’t throw up or gain an ounce. Her face was about as attractive as a chewed boot. Many a daemon chased after her as though she were the rarest beauty in all of Daemondom. Frank couldn’t see the attraction.

One last sip of “Bloody Mary” before I turn in, Frank thought. (Bloody Mary was the latest corpse he’d ‘found’ at the local cemetery/daemonic grocery store.)

Frank turned out the lights and snuggled under the blankets on his bed, hoping to sleep like the damned. I wonder where Auntie Pearl is, he thought, as he rolled over and closed his eyes.

Gail Fulkerson is a writer who specializes in the supernatural. She lives with her family in Saskatchewan, where she is working on another story involving Frank the daemon.