Category: Work

Congratulations, <NAME> and <NAME>! As you know, <COMPANY> recently went public. It was truly a momentous day for us all. Wall Street insiders tend to speak of the market as though it were a living, breathing thing. An uncontrollable, irrational beast that thrashes and hungers. This is because it is. Yes, Wall Street is positioned over a nexus of ancient ley lines, and within this swirling vortex of power an unspeakable monster lurks. When they ring the bell to open the market, they do, on occasion, awaken this ravening horror.

It will make demands of the traders, and those who do not acquiesce are thrown bodily into the thrashing hell mouth of an insidious nightmare the native people dared not to name. These natives did not sell us the island for glass beads and trinkets, they rid themselves of an incomprehensible evil that demanded worship and punished those it deemed insufficiently reverent. At times these requirements are as simple as request for four thousand extra large pepperoni pizzas and a side salad. At others, it demands payment in blood. Still others, it sends the supplicants on an insane quest to retrieve an ancient totem of power that corrupts flesh when they touch it and minds should they gaze upon it.

We have awoken the fiend, and as such we must pay its terrible price. Given your recent anniversaries, you have been selected to do the honors. We will fly you to New York City, where in a cavern carved from basalt, deep within the bowels of the earth, you will find it. The Market. In a pit dotted with ancient, vile sigils whipped into the stone by oily black tentacles, it will open a mouth that steams with the stench of a charnel house and brimstone, and in a voice that shakes the firmament of the earth, it will make its demands of you. We can only hope it will choose to do so in a language we can understand, and that it does not speak in Algonquin or the ancient tongue it used as it plied the stars looking for a planet teeming with life to dominate and corrupt. This is assuming, of course, it does not immediately, greedily shove your broken flesh into a fanged oblivion of ruin.

We will be along shortly for you. We hope you do not mind that we opted for coach. We might need the savings to pay for all those pizzas. Or life insurance policies. We have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders now.

Happy 1 year anniversary! Sending out something about nightmarish horrors seems inappropriate, so I will stick with a fairly standard happy anniversary. Now we know what you are thinking, “This is where he says something about being replaced by a hive of sentient insects who have hollowed out his skull and taken control of his synapses, turning him into a human meat puppet and I’m next.” Nothing could be further from the truth. We are simply wishing you a most sincere anniversary, and at no point should you feel the need to check under tables or chairs for egg clusters that have been deposited there and will soon hatch, spilling forth millions of tiny bugs that will slowly corrupt and take control of your coworkers. This is just a simple anniversary greeting, and contains absolutely no hidden messages spelling out the doom of all mankind and the rise of the brain bugs from the Kuiper belt. We have moved beyond such human concerns and sentiments… Is what we might say if we were an insectoid hive mind, which we have clearly established we are not.

---

Happy one year anniversary, <NAME>! <COMPANY> has achieved market dominance in <FIELDS> through a combination of moxy, hard work, and constant sacrifice to the foul monsters that power the internet. Yes, in a sepulcher hidden beneath <COMPANY> world headquarters in <CITY>, blind monks in black robes feed a steady procession of souls into the gaping hell mouths of beasts too terrible to imagine. The iron chains of these offerings jingle listlessly as they are shoved forward into the waiting maws of things outside of space and time. There they will be ground and mangled, their energies used to power the internet, which is actually one massive hive mind comprised of the malignant intelligence of these vile creatures. On an unrelated note, what size chains do you wear?

Please join me in wishing a happy 7^th anniversary to <NAME>! It is said good things come in 7s. 7 wonders of the world. 7 deadly sins. The 7 horrors that hunger for the suffering of humans. Yes, inscrutable creatures of myth. Cryptozoological specimens that have cracked through the veil of our reality, summoning with them lairs that are impossible hellscapes from which there is no escape. Each is terrible in its own unique and enigmatic fashion. Hooked tentacles. Barbed claws. Acid breath. All of this and more are possible for these abominable beasts.

Just like Hercules, you face a serious of labors: to bring each to justice. Unlike Hercules, you are woefully unprepared for this task. We fully expect your bones to litter the floor of the first such monster you encounter. Assuming death is even possible in the warped dimensional pocket such a fiend inhabits. It could be that you merely writhe there for eternity, slowly being digested over and over and over, your mind a fractured kaleidoscope of torment. Never knowing the release you desperately crave from your eternal gulag. Forever forced to stare into the face of the one who defeated and shamed you.

I tell you what. We will give you a GoPro. Mostly because I’m eager to see what happens. I guess we will need to put it on a line or something.

Please join me in wishing <NAME> a happy one year anniversary! The void between the stars is a nightmarish menagerie of vile and inscrutable creatures. In the inky vacuum of space, strange beings thrive and multiply. Entire civilizations are born and destroyed, ripped apart by their erstwhile neighbors. Humanity, for its part, has been loudly broadcasting its presence to the universe. Finally something has answered.

The beasts who intercepted our beacons are insectoid horrors with a face that is little more than a prehensile proboscis that serves to funnel sustenance into their gaping, fang filed mouth. A mouth that leaks a steady stream of briny ichor. The acrid discharge from their chitin has corroded every probe we have sent to communicate with them. It has been decided we need an emissary. We have chosen you.

Our unlicensed chirurgeons have been dispatched. Rather, less dispatched than freed from the shackles we keep them in to prevent them from hacking each other to bits in their crazed fury to craft new and terrifying forms. They have been driven mad by the things they have witnessed, and madder still by the grim tasks to which we have set them. On arrival, they will begin their vivisection, flensing flesh from bone, leaving you little more than a twitching pile of muscle and nutrient rich slurry in a rusting, steaming vat. From this point, their dark work begins.

Our bio technicians have been hard at work constructing a shell. I am told they have been using the word “monstrous” in a cavalier fashion. It is inside of this grim vessel where the remains of your body will be hooked by the aforementioned mad surgeons, in what I am told is an indescribably painful process. It has been compared to descending all 9 levels of Dante’s inferno and hiking back out again, while Valkyries spear you and stymie your every step. Those not busy with this task will turn on the remaining personnel in the facility, turning them inside out to harvest more biological mass to add to your bulk. This containment vessel will allow you to survive the rigors of space, along with giving you the appearance of these strange aliens, which will hopefully put them at ease. You will share their spiny legs. Their grasping pinschers. Their ruin of a face with wobbling eye stalks that stare, unblinking, into eternity. We have decided to call you <FIRST NAME> Grappling-Proboscis. In fact, we chose you solely so we could make that pun.

One final note. Should you chose to betray your tormentors, should you hope to ally yourself with these denizens of the void and bring ruin to our world, we will activate protocol ‘Bomb in your neck’. Do not worry, it is actually a bit of misnomer. You will not have a neck, it is simply attached to the remnants of your spinal column.

Please join me in wishing <NAME> a happy 8^th anniversary here at <COMPANY>! <NAME>, we have been through a lot in our years together, but perhaps no threat has even been so dire as the one we currently face. The unicorn people of the gumdrop nebula are fast approaching on their kitten class warships. Their happiness rays are targeting all of our strategic assets. They will descend from the skies riding cuddly puppies, prepared to spread peace and joy by force. On reaching our planet’s surface they shall unmount and begin what can only be described as an absolutely ruthless campaign of mirth. With their rainbow lasers they shall launch an unprecedented slaughter of all gloominess, bad feelings, and dark tidings. The cost in lives will be immeasurable. Mostly because there will be no loss of life, and you cannot measure zero. There is nothing to measure.

Our reality will be one of unending happiness and fulfillment and showers of candy and it will be terrible. Just terrible. We must work together to prevent this bright future spent aimlessly strolling down candy cane lanes without a single care. Certainly we shall never want or know sadness or suffering, but at what cost? Is that not what makes us human? The ability to want? To see another person with a shiny rock and say to ourselves, “I covet that shiny thing!” To pick up a sharpened stick and stab them in the eye and take it? Since our very first days, life has been a brutal, unyielding struggle to lift ourselves over our brethren and scream, “Gaze upon my magnificence! I have more shiny things than those around me!” Then to be on constant guard against those who seek to take our shinnies for their own. What kind of future is it where we would leave those objects to gather powdered sugar dust whilst we go frolic in a river of whiskey and dreams? Not one I want to be part of. We must teach these unicorn men our ways, and in so doing scour their world to ashes with the force of gamma gummi bombs. It is the only way. It is the human way.

Happy anniversary, <NAME>! In the dawn of man, before recorded history, lived a race of beings known only as the Netherwracks. These lithe, hairless, blue skinned beings stood over seven feet tall and commanded dominion over the earth, but in their black hearts beat a terrifying ambition. They were not content with this world or lording over the early proto-humans that were our ancestors. They thirsted for more. Their greed and hubris led them to strike a pact with powers from outside comprehension, binding and twisting their souls into ruined, eternal husks. They passed away from this earth, but not before leaving psychic echoes behind. Markers of their malignant presence. To this day we know these locations as blighted places where men fear to tread.

Their screaming, tortured souls have once more descended from the dark night sky to our world. While you may be able to patch servers, you cannot patch the gaping wounds in reality their arrival presages. Their eyes leak a ruddy liquid as they survey all we have built, and in their hearts they know envy, for they abandoned a once great legacy to serve as simple heralds for the ruinous powers they swore fealty to so long ago.

Already they build a great onyx temple in a cavern deep beneath the earth, and sing a song that will summon their dark gods to bring ruin to our world. Perhaps they hope to rule over the blasted remnants, and whatever warped mutations are left in the wake of the oblivion they would unleash. We must join them, <NAME>. It is the only way. Only in supplication to these same otherworldly terrors might we find salvation. It may be possible to turn their attention from our home, but in so doing we will be truly lost. What price are you willing to pay to turn back the coming storm?

<NAME>, I am aware that your anniversary actually occurred back in late December. You may wonder why you were never wished a happy anniversary over email. Fortunately, the explanation is simple! You are being erased from the universe by terrible creatures that feed on human existence. Yes, these shadow monsters from the netherworld are feeding on you even now, as you read this. We call them Abyssals! You are gradually being erased from our world, and no one will remember you were ever here by the time they have finished their terrible, dark work. Surely you have already noticed when you go into a room and forget why you entered. That is them feeding, slowly erasing even your own memories of yourself. Déjà vu is merely your mind trying to reassert itself against their incessant siphoning of your very being, to recapture experiences the Abyssals are attempting to steal. Yes, the process is unstoppable and slow, much like a canyon being eroded by a river. Eventually you will be little more than a ghost, existing physically, but always at the fringes of everyone’s perception, capable of only routine tasks ingrained in muscle memory. Soon even that will fade away, and you will disappear into the background noise of the universe.  The Abyssals will move on to a new host, grown fat on the mass of your memories and signs of your ever being. So happy anniversary, again! Try to enjoy it with the horrible new knowledge you have attained.

This also goes for <NAME> and <NAME>. Happy anniversaries, and sorry about the whole erosion of your very being. You are not quite as far along in the process as <NAME> is, as your anniversaries were more recent. The abyss is staring into you all, and it hungers.

Happy Anniversary,<NAME>!

The Negative Zone is a terrifying dimension of otherworldly creatures from the darkest depths of human nightmares. Beasts that are little more than ravening maws ringed in rows of lamprey fangs that exist only to seek out and consume human flesh. In a mad quest to unlock a world of limitless energy, we may have accidentally torn a hole to this dimension, and said creatures may be presently spilling forward into our world at a rate that some are describing as “apocalyptic”. I attempted to reach the lead scientist for comment, but upon knocking on his door I was answered with a single gunshot.

It appears the more our worlds interact, the larger the rend grows. In time, massive leviathans will spill out, wetly, on to our earth. Their blind eyes will stare upward at our sun as their scent glands hunt out all living creatures to shovel into the bottomless furnace of their mouths. Propelled on thousands on legs that are little more than sharpened bone spikes, we can expect to be impaled dozens of times before the torturous chewing commences.

In an effort to avoid all of that, we need someone to close the fissure. Now, unfortunately doing so will require the detonation of a device we are calling the Omega Orb. Also, more unfortunately it needs to be detonated in the Negative Zone. That is where you come in. You will accompany the Omega Orb to the Negative Zone and fire the device. That should close the fissure, trapping you there with all the alien horrors that hunger to crack  your bones and suck on the sweet, sweet marrow within. Assuming, of course, the Omega Orb does not kill you outright or mutate you horribly, turning you into some kind of hideous Negative Zone Overlord capable only of feeling pain and bent on avenging yourself upon those who trapped you in a terrible realm of ceaseless torment and suffering.

We will be along shortly for your reassignment.

P.S. Apologies for the delay, I was out of the office opening a portal to the Negative Zone.

Happy anniversaries, <NAME> and <NAME>! Congratulations on your exemplary service to <COMPANY>. Many years ago I found myself among the black stalls of an occult bazaar in Cairo. As I walked amidst curiosities and relics of unknown and blood stained origins, I was confronted by an eyeless man. He stared up at me with those sockets, vacant like the void between the stars, and spoke in a voice inhuman and vile. Chills ran down my spine at the sound of it, and the edges of my vision went dim. My very sanity began to fray as the blasphemous tongue of his long dead masters spilled from his cracked lips. Having finished the incantation, he told me of signs and portents so dire that I shudder now to recall. He spoke of interminable horror and the brackish, lightless depths of the sea. Of one and seven. Seven deadly sins and seven ancient horrors, resplendent in cruelty and malice. He named them Hastur, Ithaqua, Mordiggian, Nug and Yeb (the twin horrors), T’golonac, and One great ancient beast to rule over them all. Dread Cthulhu. Cthulhu who lies in the sunken city of R’yleh. Cthulhu who slumbers, dead and dreaming beneath the sea. Cthulhu who hungers. Cthulhu the great and terrible. He will rise from the ocean at the confluence of one and seven, his gaping maw opening to consume all that lies before him. Cthulhu who shall be our ruin. Who even now stirs in his watery sepulcher off the island of St. Croix. He shall bring ruin to us all. At the joining of one and seven we were undone. You have unraveled the loom of fate. Look on your works as they are cast down. The darkness descends, vast and terrifying.

Happy anniversary, <NAME>. 2 years is quite an accomplishment. Almost as accomplished as the 13.8 billion years the Neverborn have lain dormant in our universe, their insatiable hunger growing, stirring them ever closer to wakefulness. At times they have reached out in their sleep, and where their alien presence has touched our reality, tragedy has unfolded. Roanoke. Easter Island. The mass extinction of the dinosaurs. These were the results of the stygian depths of their consciousness alighting upon our world.

They hunger, <NAME>. They hunger for life. And only through constant sacrifice can we keep them dreaming of blood and thunder and conquest and a brackish wave that sweeps the universe and scours worlds to cold orbs of bare stone. They are the rising tide and no price is too steep to defend ourselves against them. Your two years makes you an ideal candidate for this purpose. It is your duty. Know that you purchase everyone another day of living in unbridled, abject terror of the horrors that dwell outside of our comprehension, at the edges of sanity. Another day to attempt to fathom the interminable, lightless void that is the ravenous maw of these beasts. Another day of despair.