Daemonic Night Terrors

By Gail Fulkerson

Not much scares a daemon. However, after years of hearing bedtime stories told by his father, Satan, Frank the Daemon learned that lions are number one on their list of things that terrify. Anne Frank takes second place, followed by little girls wearing their Sunday best pinafores, white knee socks, white lace gloves, shiny black patent leather shoes, and a bonnet with colourful, wide, grosgrain ribbons streaming down their backs. Many a daemon-child awakes screaming because of nightmares involving these pure and innocent children. Their parents repeatedly warn them to stay away from these little rays of sunshine, fearing their blithe spirits will rub off on their precious little imps, and ruin a promising life of horrifying, kidnapping, and murdering humans of all stripes.

Here’s a quick rundown of what scares a daemon, curated by Frank The Daemon, one of Satan’s sons.

1.    Lions: With sharp teeth and claws that rival those of a daemon, lions always win battles between them. Their prowess and fighting spirit is legendary in the daemonic world.

2.    Anne Frank: Even though she’s dead, Little Miss Positivity can still bring a chill to a daemon’s heart, and that is no small feat. Watching her short life come to a close, many daemons find her tenacity and zest for life absolutely appalling.

3.    Little girls wearing pinafores: Many a daemon parent uses fear to control their little imps. Sometimes, little girls in pinafores do not have the desired scare factor, so daemonic parents have to improvise, coming up with even more terrifying alternatives, such as a visit to Santa Claus in a department store during the Xmas season. Sitting on that great big lap sends chills down a little imp’s spine. Most of them lash out in fear and bite the jolly old elf in the face. The wound bleeds profusely and Santa has to leave to stop the bleeding and get cleaned up. Many a human child is disappointed when this occurs. Their sadness is palpable. Negative human emotions are like candy to a daemon, and they slurp it up with great gusto every chance they get.  

4.    Puppies: With their needle-sharp little teeth and claws and a tongue that never stops licking faces, daemonic or human, puppies are the bane of a daemon’s existence. More importantly, they grow up to be dogs that can easily sniff out an invisible daemon and bite them in the face before any harm comes to their human family. 

5.    Watermelons: Satan tells the tale of daemons killed by a watermelon, his little imp’s favourite bedtime story. Up to six melons, hollowed out and filled with rocks and broken bones with sharp ends, are placed in a row on a trebuchet and launched into the air, striking daemons hundreds of meters away, killing them instantly. The best part is that they never know what hit them. 

6.    Witches: Capable and powerful, a witch can take out a daemon with the flick of a curse. One of the first cases of a daemon killed by a witch occurred in the Middle Ages, when a sea hag named Agatha dragged a daemon by his feet to the bottom of the ocean and tethered him to a shipwreck in the inky depths of the Mariana Trench with strips of cloth from a sweet little girl’s pinafore. Rumour has it that the daemon is still down there, struggling to free himself. 

7.    Little Richard: This singer’s rapid speech and bellowing style of music grates on a daemon’s nerves, making it next to impossible to think straight. Over the decades, Little Richard’s songs have unwittingly thwarted many a plot to kill and eat humans of all sizes and ages.

8.    Sunshine: Direct sunlight is bad for a daemon’s skin. It creates blisters that fill with blood and pus, then break open and run in rivulets down a daemon’s body and stink to holy hell. Some male daemons, who want to impress a date, will stand in the sunshine until their skin blisters and pops open. However, female daemons prefer the eye-watering stench of the unwashed suitor, with or without the pungent pustules. 

9.    Fresh air: Many daemons, cultivating a robust reek, find fresh air offensive, because it dilutes the godawful smell wafting from their malodorous pores.

10.    Chicken wings: These appendages look eerily similar to the wings of a gestating imp. Whenever a daemon sees them, their lips curl into a ghastly sneer, their eyes squint and water, and their noses wrinkle in disgust. There is much fang-gnashing, a daemonic expression of displeasure and loathing. Despite this obvious behaviour, not one daemon has ever admitted to being afraid of or put off by the wings, since that would weaken their reputation as the nastiest killers in the universe.

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No human has been able to learn why these items so terrify daemons; whenever anyone got close enough to one to ask, the potential interviewer disappeared down said daemon’s gullet. When one of the interviewer’s recording devices was discovered in a fetid, water-filled ditch, the playback of the tape yielded garbled voices, screaming, and a deep voice that kept repeating the same words over and over: “Kill them, kill them all…” No one knew to whom or to what the daemons were referring when they said it.
    

The Daemon Frank knew, but he wasn’t about to say anything. That would spoil the surprise coming at the end of humankind’s existence, and he knew what would happen if he blabbed. He wanted to keep all of his toes and fingers, thank you. Regrowing all of the digits at once was a real drain on his system, and kept him house-bound until the process was complete. He couldn’t afford another two months of idleness, not when the annual human hunt was so close at hand. The thought of missing out on the harvest was too much to bear.
    

In daemon years, the end of humanity was just around the corner, and Frank could hardly wait.

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.