Author: Adam S

Scorpion Chronicles 5

Last night’s kill count: 0. Where are your multitudes? Where are your ravening hordes? You came to these lands and declared yourselves lords. With a sweep of your tail you sought to lay me low. Now all you claim is a kingdom of ashes. Your fields lay fallow, yielding a bitter harvest. Did I not warn you? Did I not speak in grim prophecy of what was to come? Your dead rot in the fields, and you lack the simple decency to take them away. Their bodies are mileposts in my quest for vengeance. I have scarcely begun. Come, you fools. Simpletons. Come lest the word scorpion be synonymous with cowardice. With false bravado. Come and test your might. You will be found wanting.

Anniversary Email 7

Congratulations on celebrating your recent anniversary at <company>! Unfortunately, I am tasked with revealing to you a terrible truth. This is not real. None of this is real. You are, in fact, not <name>, but rather Prisoner 15673563. The current year is 2237, and you have been placed into a simulation in response to your heinous crimes to render you docile. Everything you know of your life before coming to work at <company> is an implanted memory. We erased your mind and replaced it with one of 5673 approved early life memory stacks. All of your friends, family, and coworkers are either fellow prisoners scheduled to be released alongside you or whole cloth fabrications. Ghosts in the machine. You were placed into your current work position to acclimate you for return as a productive member of society. To that end, you have been more than successful and are a candidate for release. While I am not at liberty to divulge your crimes, you are prohibited from partaking of narcotics, alcohol, and public nudity. You are further prohibited from owning a weed whacker or coming within 500 yards of a school. In the coming days we will begin the gradual shutdown of your simulation and pulling any prisoners back into reality in what I am told is a terrifying, disorienting, and excruciatingly painful process that plunges you headlong into the grim dystopia in which we live. I am also required to inform you that the solar system is ruled over by jaundice skinned super mutants and their supreme leader, the glorious and majestic hyper brain. You are a permanent member of the human underclass. You have been assigned to work in the toxic waste reclamation facility in the Kupier Belt on 1992 QB1.

Congratulations on the successful completion of you incarceration and avoidance of being ejected from an airlock. I look forward to meeting you in person. And when I say “in person” I should warn you that I’m actually a sentient hive of mechanized insects.

Scorpion Chronicles 3

Tonight’s kill count: 3. I found the lot of you low to the ground, skulking along the base of the fence. Crawling like worms. Did you learn from your brethren that the high ground only brought you closer to my sight?  Or perhaps the slightly cooler temperatures upset your delicate sensibilities. Was the upset equal to that caused by the descent of my foot on your brittle carapaces? You do not seem to understand. These are my lands. There is no safe place for you here. No refuge. All you will find here is death. If you come looking for shelter, the only shelter afforded is the shade beneath my boot as it descends upon you. If you come looking for food, your feast shall be one of sorrow. If you come looking for vengeance, your attempts are laughable and weak. Perhaps in time you expect I will grow tired of killing you. Continue your advances, then. I bid you welcome to the fields of Gehenna.

Scorpion Chronicles 2

Last night’s kill count: 1. Did you imagine yourself safe, ensconced within a gap betwixt cinder blocks? A king in your fortress of stone? Fool. Weakling. I wield the power of poison and flame. Your attempts at concealment were laughable. Your castle might as well have been constructed of the wind. Let your corpse serve as mockery of your efforts. Your remains the punchline of your pathetic attempt to escape me. Do you not laugh, other scorpions? Or perhaps you prefer to tremble?

Fridge Cleaning Email

Comrades,

For too long, we have allowed the forces of rot and corruption germinate within the confines of our very fortress.  Indeed, within the very heart of the structure designed to hold these forces at bay, a foul contagion grows.

Even now it strains the walls of it’s confine, threatening to spill forth and engulf us in a fetid plague.  The time has come for action.  I shall marshal my forces and attempt a purge of these putrescent fiends this coming Wednesday evening at 6PM.  I shall armor myself in righteousness and arm myself with virtue.  I shall give no quarter to my foes.  All shall be destroyed in the purify flame of my zeal.  Should you wish to spare any of your belongings a trip to a cold, unforgiving grave, I would suggest you spirit them away prior to the execution of my plans.  The streets shall run green with mold and spoiled food stuffs.  Should I fail in my efforts, should these diabolical former edibles overcome my senses and deliver me unto the Elysian Fields, I ask only that you tell my beloved of my fate, and deliver unto her my seal as a reminder that I fell in performance of my duty.  I can only hope it will provide her some comfort.  Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!

Carrion crows gather, heralds of the coming conflagration and dire portents of the waiting carnage.  Their sheer numbers blot the sun and cast a long shadow o’er the land.  I once again send word of the imminent purge.  The glorious cleansing will fall tonight at 6PM.

Remove any belongings you want saved from the pyre with swiftness, lest calamity befall them.  Of those that remain, none will be spared, no brethren saved.  Many Ziplock containers will die, but we stand firm in our resolve.  We shall fight them on the shelves.  We shall fight them in the lunch meat drawer.  We shall fight them in the vegetable crisper, and we shall not rest until the last of them has been driven into the refuse bin.  We shall scourge them mightily and salt their fields so their wickedness might never take root again.  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

Welcome Email

Periodically I get mass emails asking me to welcome someone to the company. On occasion, I reply. This was one such occurrence.

Welcome to <company name>, <employee>.

As you have no doubt heard, <company name> is an up and coming company on the fast track to internet dominance!  Our “go get them” attitude has been responsible for rapid growth, allowing us to claim the position of top <identifying information removed>!  In fact, our portfolio is larger than the next three competitors… COMBINED!

You may have heard rumors about the ancient leviathans that dwell beneath the earth and issue inscrutable orders to our leaders through psychic links… and while all of this is true, who are we to argue with success?  Our soul pact with horrors from beyond time has given us the edge we need, while only costing us our very sanity, and a monthly tithe in interns that we must toss, screaming, into the yawning chasm beneath our world headquarters in <city>.  These eldritch beasts will surely arise one day, cracking the soil of our planet, their ravening hunger driving them to consume all that lays before them.  In the meantime, we will leverage our position to grow even further, that we might prove a suitable repast for our fiendish overlords.

Scorpion Chronicles

Wednesday, April 30th:
Just got stung by a scorpion in the middle of the bottom of my foot. This is so much more painful than I imagined. Like… Way way worse.

Thursday, May 1st:
Tonight’s kill count: 2. Remember, scorpions, as you look on the shattered corpses of your dead, you started this. You attacked me in my home, and now I shall bring you suffering and death. You worshiped at the altar of war, and now you shall have it.

Get on board the scorpion slaughter or get out of my way. I shall become synonymous with death among the arachnids, until they quake at the mention of my name. They shall rue the day they set their legs on my property.

Good has nothing to do with this. This is war. Were I granted the power, I would purge them from this earth with fire. They would die wreathed in flames, watching their children turn to cinders. I would destroy them utterly, leaving them a ruin, until the other insects spoke of them only in whispers, a cautionary tale. I shall scribe my hatred for them into the black books of wrath, that my anger by known for countless eons. Future generations will speak of the horrors I have unleashed on the scorpions. They shall know no peace. Only death.

I speak in the terms of rage and death and ceaseless war. Would that I could bring them suffering for a thousand years, I would. Their is an empire of blood, and I shall see them drowned in their own coin.

Friday, May 2nd:
Tonight’s kill count: 3. Look on my works from your place in hell, scorpion. You drove me to this madness, and your people pay in the coin of death. Is this what you wanted? Do you feel pride? My vengeance has not even the first tinglings of being sated. Your people’s ruin has but the first futile stitches woven in the tapestry of fate. In the morrow I shall turn the very earth against your brethren. The ground shall be as poison. Like Carthage of old, I shall sow doom and ruin into your fields.

 I have two blacklights and poison enough to fell a horse. These chitinous horrors stand no chance against my ceaseless purges. Theirs is a kingdom of death and terror.

Saturday, May 3rd:
Tonight’s kill count: 1. Your numbers dwindle. I wonder if cowardice or attrition is the cause. Is there a difference? You wanted to meet on the field of battle and here I am. Where are your multitudes? Where are your ceaseless numbers to throw themselves against the wall of my resolve? Do you give up so easily? Are you resigned to defeat? Come, you weaklings, and try yourselves against my might. Bring your armor against my resolve and see which walks away crushed. I await you. I shall slake my thirst with your tears.

Sunday, May 4th:
Tonight’s kill count: 1. Imagine my surprise, scorpion, when I stepped outside of my door to see you sitting right there. Did you hope to sue for peace between us, or is it that were acting as an assassin, hoping to creep unbidden into my home under cover of darkness? In either case, yours was a fool’s errand, as you learned to deadly consequence. You should have followed the lead of your brother in arms, who earlier fled over the fence on my arrival. I assume my reputation preceded me and he ran like a coward. I poisoned the wall where he once stood, a symbolic gesture, but one that demonstrates my absolute dominance in this endeavor. All around the perimeter of my house lie the crushed and broken corpses of the fallen. Shall I mount them on pikes in a grotesque display to educate your comrades on the folly of coming here? Or shall I heap them into a charnel pile and add ever more to the tally? The sight of them brings me joy, for it represents my wrath made manifest. My rage embodied. Do you feel its heat? You shall dance in the flames of my righteous indignation.

Anniversary Email 6

Gentlemen,

Congratulations on your recent anniversaries! Here at <company>, we strive to make sure our employees are recognized in unique and interesting ways. In exchange for your years of noble service, please select three of the following mandatory body upgrades to make you an even more valuable employee:

Glass jaw

Nuclear Arms – Not like missiles or anything, we just make your arms radioactive

Replace your pancreas with a live badger

Replace your pancreas with TWO live badgers

Sledgehammer hands

Gills – Note, these are in place of, not in addition to, your lungs

Ridiculously brittle cyanide capsule teeth

Gummy spine

A gland that will make your face smell like a rich, beefy stew (not to be combined with the badger modifications)

Poison Blood (please note that at this time we are unable to make you immune to the poison.)

Landmine feet

While I can’t promise any of these non-elective operations will be performed by certified surgeons, I can assure you that our personnel have passed the finest training available in North Korea. We look forward to collecting your feedback on these new and innovative employee rewards. It is forward thinking like this that keeps <company> on the cutting edge. In the most literal sense possible. What I mean to say is you are going to get cut during this process. Like… a lot.