Cereal Creep

I've always been a skeptic about the supernatural. Everyone is so quick to believe in spectres and vamps, but I never bought it for a second. Of course, that all changed last night. Every monster you've ever heard of is real.
It was the very first day of October, and I had been experiencing bowel problems. Don't smirk. Don't laugh and call me an idiot. You have no idea what I've been through.
I was out getting some groceries, and I had nearly everything on my list by the time I had reached the chip and salsa aisle. That's when I saw it. A little red biped. It was about the size of a seven-month-old fetus, and it was tearing bags of Lays into shreds and wallowing in the resultant pile of crisps. I couldn't believe my eyes. It seemed that I was, in fact, beholding my first daemon.
I walked toward where it was laying, delighted in the novelty of it... I thought it was just a sophisticated toy from the other side of the store. At first, it was oblivious to my presence, but when I reached down to pick it up, it let out a horrible shriek and had crawled up my arm before I could react. Upon reaching my neck, it sunk its teeth deep into the muscle, and I could feel fire snaking through my capillaries from the venom of it.
I cried out for help, but it was a strange time of day for shopping (I try to avoid people at all costs) and there was no one around to hear. I grabbed the wretched thing and somehow managed to toss it to the far end of the aisle. It landed on its feet, but stood absolutely still, regarding me with its sparkling black eyes before skittering out of sight.
At this point, groceries were of no concern to me, so I made my way to the front door with haste. Oddly enough, there was no one at the cash registers or anywhere else that I could see.
I fell through my front door, once I was home, and went straight to the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom, breathing so heavily that I could have passed out on the spot. The hydrogen peroxide didn't sting at all when I applied it, but the bite looked nasty. Pieces of flesh and tendon were draped from it so that it looked like skin curtains. Luckily, my jugular had remained unscathed.
You can understand how dazed I was, having just been bitten by a daemon, so it's not that strange to think that I could have forgotten the whole event immediately after bandaging myself up and sitting down on the couch to watch my favorite show, Desperate Housewives. Thirty minutes into this most decadent form of entertainment, the whole thing couldn't have been further from my mind.
Later, however, I began to feel strange. My skin had an odd pink tinge to it, and my eyelids felt heavy, as if they were made of lead. I had a splitting headache. A thunderstorm commenced inside of my skull. I went into the kitchen to get some aspirin, and as I entered, I caught the flicker of a shadow in the corner of my eye. I jerked my head toward the place it had been, but I saw nothing.
I took the pills and looked into the fridge for some yummy snacks. Maybe a bit of ice cream, I had been a little depressed. I was elbow-deep into getting it, when I heard the front door squeal open. Dropping the tub of rocky road on the floor, I rushed to the sound and there it was. The little daemonic nightmare was back, standing just inside the frame, glaring.
"Look here, you little prick. You've already bitten me, and caused a reasonable amount of trauma. What do you want?" I didn't expect something so infantile in nature to have a response to this, but the words came out all the same, sounding rather sophisticated no less. "Francis. Me and my friends-" I quickly observed my surrounding to find that there were all respects of monsterhood represented, obscured by the shadows of my antique sitting room. There were gheists, zommies, vamps, spectres, and maniac turtle people. They were smiling in a most queer way. "-We've come here to inform you of something. You are becoming a monster."
I didn't know what to say, stunned as I was, but at that moment, I thought they were pulling my chain. "Quit all of that voodoo talk you're speaking. There's no way I'm a mon-mon. You guys just don't exist. I'm losing my mind due to extreme isolation, that's all", I said. They let out a rampant wave of wicked laughter. The little daemon spoke again. "Please, Francis, don't get all bent out of shape. You're becoming a creep. We're here... well, um... I'm here to apologize for biting you. They're here because we have to help you into your transition.
"When you caught me back there at the mart, I was in a frenzy... I don't.. erm... know why. The doctors say that I may have a mental illness, but that's beside the point. You startled me, you know? And, um, I just didn't know how to handle it. We're rarely seen by humans, so it was kind of like Cringemas to me. The only thing I could think to do was bite you... Couldn't contain... myself.
"So, anyway. Now that you've been bitten, you're turning into a monster. Being a daemon, my bite is venomous, you see... The poisons are spreading through your system at an accelerated pace, re-arranging your molecules and DNA into a freaky sort of Spook-algorithm. That's how monsters are made after all..." I didn't know what to do. I kept telling myself that none of it was real, but the whole time the little bastard was explaining these things, I was getting an insatiable itch on both sides of my neck and skull and my eyes were becoming so heavy that I could feel the lids sagging. I was also getting more air through my nose as if my nostrils were widening.
"If I'm really turning into a monster", I said, "I guess there would be a definite way to tell. I'm going to check myself in the mirror." As I walked away to the bathroom, I could feel the daemon tugging on my pants. "No! I don't recommend that just yet, Francis! You won't be pleased with what you see!" he insisted. I had to see. Suddenly, none of this seemed nearly as impossible as I thought it was. My hands were looking a bit too pink, as I held them in front of my face.
In the mirror, I saw something horrible. So much so, that I turned around to see if it was behind me, using the logic that I might have turned into a vamp, and no longer had a reflection. However, there was no such luck. The thing was me. A thick-headed lummox with mongoloid features and a neon-pink hue. there were huge bolts coming out of my neck, and a steam whistle coming out of my right temple. From my left, jutted a steam gauge. My eyes were bordered by riveted steel circles. They looked like glasses for some kind of welder nerd.
I screamed so loud, that one of the boggermen in the hall beyond the bathroom curled into a crisp, as if he were a burnt piece of paper. "Francis! Please!" the daemon said, "Come to your senses! It will be alright, I assure you!" But it wouldn't be alright. This was not going to work out. I found myself in a rage so lively, that I blacked out, completely unaware of my actions until an hour later when I found myself in the studio apartment of a painter.
I had been screaming and smashing his supplies. There were easels in ruin, and paint slathered all over the walls. I saw a gangly man cowering in a corner, doubled over and gripping himself in the fetal position. I was able to calm myself down enough to speak. "What's going on?" The man looked up and sniffled a little bit, as if he'd been crying. "Are you joking right now?" he asked, "You mean.. You're not going to sodomize and murder me?" I was a tad bit taken aback. "What?! No, man... no way. I don't even remember being here."
He eased himself a little and stood up, but still appeared distrustful of me. "You were just on the fringe of destroying my studio. Well, now that you're speaking complete sentences, I guess you can be considered somewhat reasonable... but... What are you?" I paused for a moment. "I really don't know for sure. Am I still pink and abhorrent?" "Well, yeah dude. What's your name?" I stopped to consider it, and realized that I didn't exactly remember. "Well, what's your story?" he asked. "I got bit by a bloody daemon in the chip and salsa aisle of the mart. It turned me into this... thing." "You mean you're a human under there?" He seemed to have an incredulous tone. "Yes, actually. Or at least I was... I don't know so much about now, but..."
The guy had become cocky as much as comfortable with me and overstepped his bounds. I suppose he had always wanted to slap a monster, and he figured that since I was once human, I wouldn't do anything more than initiate a shove match. He was wrong.
I reeled backwards from the strike, and became enraged once more, slamming his head into the drywall until he lost consciousness. He fell limp to the ground, and just as I went to stomp his head into a puddle of brain-jelly, I heard an ethereal rumbling coming from my tummy. I had a menacing hunger, so I went into his kitchen to find nothing but blank cereal boxes. I looked inside and they had these wonderful berry-flavored puffs resting inside. One handful, and I was ravenous, literally tearing the entire kitchen to shreds in search of more.
Hours later, after consuming about six hundred boxes, I found (to my amazement) that I was full. No longer bloodthirsty, I moseyed home.
The monsters and daemon were in my living room, eating all of my food, but I was no longer in shock, so I simply sat down to join them. The daemon looked up at me and smiled. "So... Did you find your chi out there?", he asked. "Well, you could say that", I said, and we all laughed and finished the rest of the third season of my favorite show.
As for how I ended up... Where I went after that day, well, that's really none of your concern... What? Don't give me that malarkey!... Oh, alright. Well, I'm not going to tell you where I am these days, but if you're really curious, just go into your local Krogwe or Mart Mart and head on down to the cereal aisle. Look for the picture of a big, pink, goofy mon-star on the front of a box with the word "Frankenberry" over the top... Damn right I'm real! What did you think? The Count... Booberry.. Them too.
Okay, sure, it's not the most glamorous life, but I've got fans. I even kind of like being this thing now. But take some advice: If you ever see a little daemon fetus rustling around in the Original Lays, run. Run like a bat out of hell.