By Gail Fulkerson
It had been a taxing day for Frank; the hot water heater broke down, the paper boy lobbed his newspaper into the neighbor’s sprinkler again, and the eggs he fried up for his breakfast burned and stuck to the pan. To top it off, the satellite tv gave up the ghost, right in the middle of his favourite soap, “The Hellhounds of Saskabush.” Now Frank would never know who killed whom, when, or why. He gnashed his teeth and fangs in displeasure.
His demeanor was foul as he stepped out his front door on his way to work, driving a van to deliver meals to mostly- housebound seniors. Once the van started up and he was rolling down the road, the events of the morning faded from his memory.
Frank’s route was getting shorter the longer he delivered meals; he wondered whether it was due to his penchant for killing off his customers or if there was some other, more pedestrian explanation, like another daemon horning in on the action. He decided to stop in at the office to check out the duty roster, looking for the addition of new drivers. Finding none, he got back into his van and continued his day, deciding to reap the lastdelivery on his route, the very elderly widow, Mrs. Typewriter. She had to have been a hundred and ninety-nine if she were a day.
Frank rang the doorbell and watched her slowly toddle from her kitchen to the front door. No sooner had she unlocked the deadbolt than Frank kicked the door open the rest of the way, knocking Mrs. Typewriter onto her backside just beyond the doormat. He thought he heard a wee cracking sound, like brittle bones snapping, but he could have been mistaken. As he stood over her prone body, Mrs. Typewriter gasped at the sight of Frank the daemon in her foyer, or maybe it was because she had landed on her bad hip on the old oak wood floor.
“Well, Mrs. T., this is awkward. Here, let me help you up,” said Frank in his gravelly voice, offering her one of his dark, leathery hands. Mrs. T. began screaming and whimpering in turns as she tried to backpedal, without success. Oh, the dangers of slippers that have no grip on a polished oaken floor...
The daemon Frank was on her in a flash, tearing out her throat to end the screaming, and plucking out her eyeballs to stop them from staring into his soul. His prey’s terrified eyes boring into the darkest depths of his daemonic spirit set his fangs on edge.
That day, Mrs. Typewriter ended up daemon food, mere steps inside her front door. Frank ate the old woman’s head and shoulders before he put the rest of her in an expandable waste bag and carted it out to the van. He made sure to close and lock the deceased woman’s front door, making it look as if nothing untoward had occurred. The neighbours wouldn’t notice anything amiss, not for a while anyway, which suited him, the steely-haired and steely-jawed daemon very well.
During the slaughter, the old woman’s blood had soaked into the doormat; he made sure to put it in a separate bag for the trip to his apartment. There’s nothing more refreshing than a glass of chilled human blood wrung from a doormat to quench a daemon’s thirst. If the blood is strained first to capture all the dirt and hair that accumulates in the mat’s fibers before it’s drunk, the grit and loose hairs would become delightfully stuck between a daemon’s fangs. In Frank’s case, he enjoyed the extra bits and would spoon out the sludge at the bottom of his glass, savoring its gritty, hairy texture.
***************
The next morning, there were no issues with the hot water heater, his newspaper missed the neighbor’s sprinkler, and his eggs slid easily out of the pan and onto the hot, buttered toast on his plate. The satellite tv was working well, and his favourite soap, “The Hellhounds of Saskabush” was replaying yesterday’s episode. Bonus! Now Frank would learn who killed whom, when, and why.
When he arrived at the office, Frank was elated to learn that he’d been assigned a new route for the day. His elation was short-lived, however, when he discovered the reason: the authorities were investigating the deaths occurring at an alarming rate on his previous route.
Feeling a strong urge to make himself scarce, Frank jumped into the van loaded with meals and left to make his deliveries. Halfway through his day, Frank received a phone call from his boss, advising him to return to the office ASAP. Another driver would finish the deliveries as soon as Frank returned.
Frank knew nothing good would come of this meeting. He had been on tenterhooks for weeks, after he’d heard some of the rumors floating around that maybe he was responsible for the deaths on his route. He made a note to get rid of the human remains still in his freezer and fridge in case the cops or detectives showed up at his door. It was too late, however: the authorities had been at his apartment and taken all his ‘food’ as evidence.
Their next stop was the meal delivery office, where Frank was currently trying to decide whether to stay and face the music or flee. The matter was settled when the police arrived and took him into custody: he went quietly, biding his time until he was in the back of the police car and could tear out the metal screen between the front and back seats. Once that was accomplished, he could set about dispatching the two cops sitting mere inches in front of him. They would never know what hit them.
The handcuffs applied to Frank’s wrists were easily pulled apart and removed; his sharp fangs made short work of them. Daemonic strength was legendary in the human and daemonic realms. He peeled open the car door and left the scene, a blood-soaked horror show, on the side of the road.
Frank kept to the shadows as he made his way. He’d put out a call to all daemons for assistance, a call that was silent to humans. Within moments, Frank was surrounded by his cronies, demanding to know the details, so he sent them to check out the cop car parked on the roadside. A second patrol car was just pulling up behind the first one; the daemons made short work of the second car’s driver and passenger, divvying up the meal.
***********
If only the cops had understood that they were up against a gang of marauding daemons and not your run-of-the-mill convict. That one piece of information would have guaranteed that the ‘manhunt’, a huge operation to recapture Frank, would have never been launched.
The cost to human lives was astronomical, as were the financial and materiel losses. The police department was decimated; the force was down to a handful of officers, and the motor pool was reduced to one dilapidated patrol car; the rest of the fleet was either left burning on the side of the highway or soaked in the blood of dead, decapitated cops.
Weapons — guns, rifles, stun guns, flash bangs — were useless against the horde of daemons causing mayhem in the city. Current thinking was that nothing short of a nuclear blast could rout them. Then, a little old lady who always worked the night shift, recalled hearing that daemons are afraid of cats, regardless the animals’ size or age.
Thus began the historic daemonic purge. Word spread. The townspeople deposited hundreds of cats and kittens in the town square and quickly sorted them according to size, weight, color, and stress level. The most anxious felines were reserved for the end of the onslaught, when the daemons, weakened by the attack, would be met with highly agitated kitties, with fangs and sharpened talons aimed at the daemons’ heads, especially their eyes. A blind daemon is a useless daemon, no better than a cat toy. Also, an eyeless daemon could no longer look into your soul, another plus.
Oh, it was glorious! Kitties by the dozens, with instincts honed to attack daemons, were unleashed in the town square. Hand-to-paw warfare ensued, as the kittys fanned out and engaged their enemies, biting and clawing daemonic faces, drawing blood that ran inrivulets down to the cobblestones under foot. The kittys would not disengage until the prey was either dead or close to death, then they’d move on to the next one.
Frank the Daemon was one of the last daemons the kittens attacked and slaughtered in the town square. His body was blood-soaked and almost unrecognizable as it lay steaming on the cobblestones. The kitties had clawed out his eyes and ripped out his throat, slashed his arms, and took out the tendons in his legs so he could no longer run. Then, the cats and kittens en masse jumped on him and sliced and diced his body until it lay in a bloody heap. Frank the Daemon was no more, and not one daemon would mourn his death; not his parents or his best buddy, Larry.
The daemonic death toll was horrifying. Daemons fell by the hundreds that day; the kitties fared far better. Only one kitty was lost because of a broken leg that severely restricted its movement and it couldn’t escape in time. The daemon who snatched him up and ate him in one bite, had the smirk wiped off his face by six of that kittens’ pals.
**********
The townspeople got to work cleaning up the carnage and returning to a semblance of normal life. The blood and guts were disposed of at the abattoir on the outskirts of town, the cobblestones hosed off, and the kitties were fed their choice of roasted, fried, poached, or raw, daemon chow. The felines were sated at the end of the evening’s celebrations and were looking for a place to bed down and let the night and their full bellies digest. Luckily for the cats, the townspeople had laid out pillow-lined boxes for them, so all they had to do
was to choose whichever box they liked.
The Great Daemonic Slaughter in Saskabush went down in history as the greatest showdown between cats and daemons. Not a shot was fired, but kitties were thrown withmalice in the faces of marauding daemons. As stated earlier, hundreds of daemons fell and only one kitty bit the dust that day.
Frank’s funeral was scheduled for a week after the carnage. The venue was the slaughterhouse he loved so well. He was cremated and his ashes placed in a cookie tin that Larry dug out of the garbage. Not one daemon in attendance shed a tear, since daemons don’t cry or wail at funerals, they gnash their fangs instead, and there was plenty of that, as the tin was opened, and Franks’ ashes were dumped off the Broadway bridge and into the North Saskatchewan River. As the ashes sank into the dark water, the daemons who bothered to show up quietly said their goodbyes and suantered away.
Good bye, Frank.
Gail Fulkerson is a writer who specializes in the supernatural. She
lives with her family in Saskatchewan, where she is working on another
story. This marks the last story about Frank the Daemon. Stay tuned to 'OZ' for future stories.
