Dec 18

Dec 18 Murderous Little Monsters

R.J.

I found the thumbnail pic HERE. Its a trash site. Don’t go there. But just in case you were wondering…

INTRO: THE LAST FEY POST FOR A WHILE

I know. I get it. I have a problem. But this is the last time, okay? I’ll be DONE after this. This is my final rip into all things fey, my final thrust to riddle them with parasites and taint their sterling image.

Its just…its just that its Christmas, you know? Christmas and elves go together like a Disney Firefly reboot and the knowledge that another cherished franchise is about to be violated in public, so I have to post.

Put yourself in my shoes. How foolish would I be if I skipped this opportunity to contaminate Christmas elves, to turn them into something that could potentially disturb my nieces and nephews? How could I possibly skip on taking a saccharine, Pinterest spawn, and mutating it into something dark, and horrible, and…interesting?

We’re on the same page here. I can feel it.

So here it is, my final fey post (for now).

As a sort of inversion of the trope, I am using fey creatures AS a parasite. Which I hope is fun to think about and to plug into your campaigns and/or Christmas one-off games.

After this, though, I’m done with the fey.

Maybe I’ll trash dwarves for a while. Or rogues.

Or magic users.

Don’t even get me started on magic…

A Holiday in Crimson

The following is an excerpt from a video of Agent Milton Dammers interrogating death-row inmate Frank Reedy, of Elkhart, Indiana, on August 17th, 2020.

Reedy: “Where…where do they come from?”

Dammers: “We don’t know. Caves? The Asteroid Belt? Honestly, we’re not even sure if they’re real or not. The physical evidence is…abstract. Anomalous. Maybe they’re just a figment of a child's imagination that has pressed into human consciousness. Like a dream. Like a…fever dream.”

Reedy: “Well what the fuck are they?”

Dammers: “We don’t have a good answer for that either. Yet. We know they’re old. Very old. Ancient. But they’ve really only been a problem since 2005, when that goddamned book came out. People just latched onto that fuckin’ thing, and, yeah…seems that with each passing year there’s more and more of them. People buy ‘em, bring ‘em home, get the kids excited. Most of them are just toys…they don’t seem to do much, really. Most of them. During the day they just sit there and stare with that crazy grin, eyes wide.”

Reedy: “ Well the one I had didn’t just sit there for me. It wasn’t a fucking toy. Our house was infested with them. During the day it was just the one. But at night, when I closed the bedroom door, I heard them all night long, countless little feet on the linoleum. I heard them working away at the vent covers…in the basement…in the hall…in our room.”

Dammers: “Ever call an exterminator?”

Reedy: “I did, and they didn’t find anything. Guy said we had rats, or maybe a squirrel. But he was in and out, as lazy as they come.”

Dammers: “Good enough for government work.”

Reedy: “Yeah, except it cost me 200 bucks and the house was still infested with the fuckers.”

Dammers: “Is that when you bought the gun? Taurus Judge, right? Very cool piece. ”

Reedy: “Damn right. Seemed like the best tool for the job if I was going to have to go looking for them. I didn’t know what they wanted. What they would do to us. If those little bastards hurt…Sarah and the kids… If I was going to go clear them out, I wasn’t just taking a bat like in some stupid horror movie. Get my face ripped off. No way, man.”

Dammers: “When did you go looking for them?”

Reedy: “I dunno…must’ve been…December 17th? No, the 18th.”

Dammers: “Sounds about right. So what happened?”

Reedy: “Well, first I put the elf in a pillowcase, wrapped him in duct tape, and put him in my car, out by the curb. And then I went looking. I searched the house and eventually tracked them into the basement.”

Dammers: “And?”

Reedy: “I found them. They had some sort of fucking nest down in the crawlspace. Under my…under Sarah and my room.”

Dammers: “Describe the nest for me.”

Reedy: “Sure, yeah. It was like someone had dumped a box of them down there, maybe a few dozen or more, wedged into the corner near a ripped-open vent pipe and scattered about. They were all <laughs> dead, I think. They were grey and dried out like little mummies. They had their stupid costumes on, but they were all torn, ripped, stained dark. And from the tears I could see they were all covered in bristles under their clothes. Like, I dunno, boar bristles? Really coarse.”

Dammers: “Anything else?”

Reedy: “Yeah. The little bodies…they were all ripped up. Like they had been torn apart. Claws and teeth and shit. There were missing body parts, missing heads, torn open little bodies. It was like they had had some kind of battle.”

Dammers: “Anything else?”

Reedy: “Like what?”

Dammers: “Eggs.”

Reedy: “Eggs?”

Dammers: “Yes. Eggs. Small clumps of little round spheres, like…turtle eggs, but smaller. Stuck onto a vertical surface like a wall, or tucked away in a corner?”

Reedy: “No, I didn’t see any eggs. Then again, after I saw all of those little corpses, I figured they were all dead and the problem was solved, so I just put ‘em all in a bag with the fucker from the mantle and burned the whole lot.”

Dammers: “Hmmmm…what happened next?”

Reedy: “Well, I thought our problems were over. Had a normal evening with the family. They asked where the elf was and I told them with a wink that he was spending the night at Santa’ shop to help with a project, and that was that. That made the kids really excited. They loved that. I had really horrible dreams that night, just unbelievable horrible. Graphic. Carnage. I tried so hard to wake up, but I just couldn’t. It was like drowning under ice. And then when I woke up in the morning and went out to the kitchen, they were all laughing. The milk…the elf was in the milk jug. The kids were all eating their cereal, laughing. Sarah had milk in her coffee. They were all laughing, thinking it was the funniest thing. Thinking I was a goddamned comic genius.”

Dammers: “The elf was back?”

Reedy: “The elf was back. I had burnt that little bastard and all his dead friends to cinders. There wasn’t so much as a plastic head left. And yet there he was. Floating in the milk my family was all drinking. Staring at me. Mocking me. Smiling. Laughing with my family. What a scene. What a fucking scene. Things got worse after that.”

Dammers: “What happened Christmas Eve, Frank?”

Reedy: “God…nothing. I mean, it was really nice. It was a really nice Christmas Eve. The year had been tough, you know. The pandemic and unemployment and all. Me and Sarah had been fighting more. But Sarah… she was such a champ. We had agreed that things were going to be different for Christmas. Those goddamned things were knocking around the house all month, terrorizing me, watching me, us, sleep. They were worse after I burnt them all. They got meaner. Made life for us hard. But I told myself that no matter how hard they tried, those things weren’t going to get to me. Weren’t going to get to Sarah and the kids.”

Dammers: “Go on…”

Reedy: “Sarah and I cooked dinner that night for the first time in months. It was great. We ate as a family then went to the evening mass at St. Francis. We came home and put the kids to bed. Sarah and I had a couple of drinks while we put the presents under the tree, then ended up having some really intense…sex. Maybe the best sex we’ve ever had. I knew the elves were there, watching us, watching me, but…it was one of those nights where the connection is just…it was like lightning. Like a lightning storm between us. You know? Where the world just stops existing except for you and her...”

Dammers: “Of course. Its like magic.”

Reedy: “Yeah, like magic…”

Dammers: “What happened next?”

Reedy: “I remember having the dreams that night. Terrible dreams. Way worse than before. Drowning under the ice in a lake of frozen blood…Sarah and the kids…and then I woke up. I woke up at 3:33 sitting on the couch. Facing the…fireplace. I remember it was 3:33am because that fucking thing was up on the mantle, crouched next to the clock, staring at me with those huge white eyes. The elf wasn’t an elf anymore. It was more like…one of those little monkeys, I think. I couldn’t really tell because its fucking eyes, they were so bright…it just looked like a hunched little hairy shadow.”

Dammers: “Did it speak?”

Reedy: “Did it speak? Can they speak?!”

Dammers: “Every story is a little different…”

Reedy: “No, it didn’t fucking speak. It just sat there next to the clock, staring at me. Then there was this sound…it sounded like something huge and wet was sliding down the chimney. Something big. And there was this smell like…it was like shit and death inside of a burning tire. All I could do was stare…then a boot came down, and another, and…another. Black leather gloves, so many of them, gripping the stone surrounding the fireplace. Then there was an orb, an orb like a huge liquid eye. It stayed back in the shadows of the fireplace, watching me, catching only the faint lights of the Christmas tree. It wasn’t reflective like a dog’s eye. More like a goat, or an octopus. A huge volume of liquid, so big that light could sneak in through the edges of the lens and illuminate all the liquid inside. It just hid there, this huge fucking eye…staring at me…”

Dammers: “What happened next?”

Reedy: “I passed out. More dreams. The worst yet. They were so real…god…so real…they must’ve been...that must’ve been when…and then I woke up. Still on the couch, but just…wet. Soaked. I had pissed myself for sure. I felt drunk. Dizzy. The lights were out but I knew that the elf was gone. And the fireplace was empty. Nothing…”

Dammers: “Go on…”

Reedy: “I looked at the clock and I knew that the kids and Sarah would be waking up soon. I didn’t want to be covered in piss when they got up so I jumped in the hallway shower. I don’t know why but I didn’t turn the light on. The nightlight was so damn bright anyhow, and I remember still feeling drunk. Wasted. I had only had four or five drinks, whish isn’t enough to get me like that. When I got out of the shower, I dunno, something didn’t feel right. The house was still so fucking quiet. The kids are always up before the sun on Christmas…they would get so excited, you know? I’m sure you remember being a kid like that, how you can barely sleep, listening for the sounds of Santa and his reindeer….”

Dammers: “Of course, Frank. I remember.”

Reedy: “Well…I…I got out of the shower and I looked in the bedrooms…Sarah and the kids weren’t there. I called out. Maybe they were playing some sort of prank, you know, but there was only silence. And then…I think I knew then…”

Dammers: “What did you know, Frank?”

Reedy: “I knew what had happened. What I’d done. In my guts. In my heart. I knew. Everything got real cold and hot at once. And quiet. So fucking quiet. I…I went back out to the tree, heard the carpet squelching under my feet…I turned the tree lights on…I saw the…packages…lumps…must’ve been a hundred of them. All wrapped up neat in dark, wet newspaper, tied with ribbons and little bows…stuffed under the tree in so carefully…

The Broonie Domicile Parasite

Familia Comendenti Atrox, Atrox, Bratach Salach, Broonie Fuil, Elf on a Shelf

The “elf on a shelf” is not actually an elf, but is more closely related to the Scottish “broonie” also known as a “brownie”, which is described as a sort of diminutive, grumpy, household mischief-maker. Beneath their costumes and plasticine facial coverings they are squat, hairy, nasty little critters, with sharp teeth and sharp talons that are used almost exclusively on one another.

The organism itself is iterative, in that the first broonie to arrive in a home is never the final broonie in the house on Christmas Eve. On the first night the broonie lays a clutch of eggs and then dies. The eggs quickly hatch and the new immature broonies then tear each other apart competing to eat their mother and one another, each growing larger with each devoured gobbet of flesh, until only one remains. This sole survivor moves into the house and on the following evening the cycle repeats.

In effect, broonies invade and poison dreams, using them to twist the minds and actions of their victims. Rather than oppressing the entire household, they will oppress a single member and use them as the tool to destroy the family in the wee hours of Christmas Morning.

Beside horrific violence and tragedy, little is understood of the culmination of any broonie infestation aside from the disappearance of the broonie and the fleeting presence of its Yuletide patron, a sort of amorphous and blood-soaked devil of unknown origin.

IDEAS TO PLAY WITH

What would happen if the broonie infested someplace other than a house, such as an orphanage, inn, or apartment blocks?
What would happen if someone with an elf on a shelf lived alone?
Not all elves on shelves are broonie parasites. Are there visible/palpable differences that could be used to spare ones self a terrible fate?
Once a broonie has selected a victim, how far will it travel to oppress them? Will it travel? Does it parasitize the host, or the home? What happens if the host dies before Christmas Eve?
How does one rid themselves of the parasitic affliction?
If a fly on the wall were present on Christmas Eve, what would it see?