Dear Mr. Kellogg

Dear Mr. Kellogg

I am writing you today with some grave concerns about a product you have recently released. In the week since I acquired this product, things in my home have… changed. And not for the better.

It was recently brought to my attention that you had, in an unexpected move for a purveyor of fine products with such a strict moral backbone and unflinching moral turpitude as yourself, decided to bow to the demands of crass consumerism and create not only one but two different versions of Elf on the Shelf Breakfast Cereal. Being familiar with your upright moral stance, I knew I had to try this certainly-not-too-sweet, parent-approved, fortified with only Good Things part of my complete breakfast.

I assumed I would just be able to go to one of my local grocery stores to find this fine product, but in a strange twist of irony, I was required to visit many of my local greengrocers’ establishments, striking out at Mr. Seasons’, Mr. Safeway’s, Mr. Outlet’s, and Mr. Meyer’s, before finally finding a box of your fine provisions at one of Mr. Target’s fine outposts, on the wind-swept, desolate island on the mighty Columbia River known as Jantzen Beach, a harsh and unforgiving sand bar lit only by the light of the burning caravans of your compatriot Mr. Haul’s outside the supply depository owned by Mr. Depot.

I brought home that fine box of cereal and looked forward to a bowl of its crunchy goodness the next morning… but, alas, it was not to be. Although I put that box of Elf on the Shelf cereal in the kitchen cupboard where it belonged, the next morning when I went to remove it from it’s home and shake a serving of barely-sweeted kibble with it’s lightly-applied garnish of the fruit of the mallow into a bowl filled with the wholesome goodness of the milk of the humble cow… the box was mysteriously gone.

I’ll admit, Mr. Kellogg, that at that point, I was disappointed, but not terribly concerned. I assumed I’d put it somewhere else, and I just ate something else for breakfast. However, later in the day, I went to make myself a lunch… and there was the box of cereal, with the beady eyes of the elfs on its box, staring at me from atop my ceiling fan. Did I sleepwalk? Do I have a carbon monoxide leak in my house? How might this have happened, I wondered, then turned around and opened my cupboard so I could put the cereal away… and when I looked back, the box was gone

Shaken, I continued making myself lunch. What could be happening, I wondered? This single event kicked me out of my dreary Monday mood at my work-from-home job, and I entered a state of hypervigilance. Soon, I found that box of cereal in any number of places it did not belong… at first, it started out innocent; I went to make an honest-to-god pot of chicken stock, and the box of cereal was somehow in my stockpot. I pulled back the covers of my bed to go to sleep, only to be greeted by a cheery, maniacal elf. I opened the medicine cabinet to get an aspirin, only to have my increasingly haggard face replaced by the piercing stare of the elf as I swung aside the mirror. I opened my closet to find a shirt to wear, and BAM there’s the freaking elf.

And this was only in the first two days. On the third day, the cameras started showing up.

I am, of course, terminally online, much like most people of my generation who work in technology, so I have of course seen what I thought were the mad ravings of those who say that the Elf on the Shelf books exist to accustom small children to the concept of the panopticon watching everything that we do. I dismissed these increasingly oblique criticisms, like one does, as the desperate pleas for attention and clicks of other terminally online folks; never in my wildest dreams or nightmares would I have expected to be pulled into such a nightmare simply by purchasing a box of cereal! What, dear sir, have I invited into my house?

As any sane man would, I ripped down every camera I found. And then I received the notice the next morning that spyware had been installed on my computer. Suddenly, I found that Siri, who I have never turned on, was talking to me through my phone. More security cameras appeared. The elf became omnipresent, appearing on shelves in the oven in drawers behind the curtains inside my pillows. Every time I found the Elf I would quickly snap a picture with my cellphone, only to have it disappear the second I blinked. Helicopters began flying over my house at all hours of the day and night, helicopters I could hear, but barely see, as their paint jobs were either sky blue during the day, or pitch black, with no running lights, during the night, helicopters that were only shadows briefly blotting the sun or moon, helicopters that would vanish like a thief in the night.

In the course of only a few days, the Elf on the Shelf cereal went from being a simple thing I wished to try, to becoming an overwhelming obsession.

It was then, on the fourth day, that I forgot my cat’s name. One moment, I was petting my cat Kudzu, who has been my constant companion for many years, when he was suddenly replaced by a box of cereal, and instead of petting the soft fur of an animal I love, I was suddenly running my hand down cold cardboard. I shook my head, and suddenly, my sweet orange cat who formerly had been replaced by a rectangular box of cardboard, was suddenly re-replaced by a 3D approximation of a cat rendered in sharp polygons, entirely made of Elf on the Shelf cereal boxes. In that moment, I forgot that I had a cat, I forgot that I had five cats and three chickens, and all I could think of was The Elf. The Elf entirely consumed my mind. The Elf became all. I no longer had an orange cat, I had a Scout, beautiful and terrible as the snow! Treacherous as the North Pole! And then I blinked, and Kudzu was a fluffy orange cat again.

And so I write you, Mr. Kellogg, with my concern. Through all of this, as I become one with the Elf on the Shelf, as I come to love my new helicopter overlords, as I ignore the box of cereal that is slowly trying to hunt down every cat in my home and replace them all with strange, twisted approximations of felines made of cardboard covered with weird Elfs and nutrition facts, I have still not gotten to taste your fine cereal.

Please, Mr. Kellogg, help me here. What must I do to experience the certainly not too sweet, certainly deliciously healthful, cereal which I have purchased? I have eaten the rest of the complete breakfast, but the flavor of the Elf on the Shelf has eluded me all this time. Though I fear the cereal may drive me mad, I must taste it before I either become entirely consumed by The Elf, or, as happens in every horror movie about a House infected by some strange evil, commit arson against my own home.

Obi-Wan Kellogg, you’re my only hope. Please don’t let me down.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise