Day 594

Ever notice how kids always seem to have an extraordinary amount of stuffed things? Their parents never really say who gave them what or if they were even gifted in the first place. It's just assumed and assumed wrongly. Well... partially wrongly.

See kids are given things from the strangest of places and haven't developed the sense to know when something is off or someone is dangerous. At this fragile age they just accept things as they are, taking any answer they are given to be the absolute truth.

As they grow older they forget where they acquired things, they find old possessions, old toys just at the right moment to give to their own offspring and the cycle continues until their child screams at night and they remember. They remember too late.

There has always been something in their closet, lurking in unseen doorways beyond the far wall and it speaks to them when their family is all asleep. It gives them a stuffed thing that looks just like it to show other creatures that it got there first. That the child in that room has already been claimed for prey.

They don't just pick any child, they follow families for hundreds of generations, giving their token to each child in the hopes of removing that bloodline from the world for good. The more successful ones lace their tokens with toxins that young bodies are utterly incapable of resisting. Others resort to cheaper tactics like poisoning their minds with little suggestions.

It's always little suggestions. A few words here and there at night and the parents do all the work for them. This is frowned upon in the creature's society of course, either do it yourself or find another line and let someone better take over for you.

Adults like to block the memories of these creatures, calling them teddy bears and stuffed bunnies and other harmless things. They make their own decoys, their own tokens and give them to children at birth, perhaps unconsciously hoping to trick the creatures into thinking the bloodline has been taken over and sparing their child the constant fear at night that if they make one wrong move the will die.

So far the creatures seem to fall for this, we flood the rooms of children with as many different creations as we can to confuse them, leaving them to search each and every token to see if they recognise a face among their own kind.

For the most part it works, they spend their nights questioning children about what things visit their rooms and who gave them what token. When the children answer with sense, spouting gibberish in place of actual names the monsters leave to investigate in their own community.When the children answer with truth, another small life is snuffed out and a family line is one step closer to extinction.