An acquaintance, a clerk at a government department, has been missing for a couple of weeks. While the clerk’s co-workers acknowledge that it is rather odd that he hasn’t turned up for work, nobody seems to have tried to contact him.
He is still being issued with a pay check, and everything appears normal at his office – except for his unexplained and barely acknowledged absence.
Possibilities
1 It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. In the eyes of his co-workers, the office is more efficient and life is a lot more pleasant without him. They don’t know where he has gone but no-one is asking too many questions because they don’t want him back. No-one has bothered to inform personnel.
So what really did happen?
After a hard night on the booze in an unfamiliar area, he was followed out onto the street and violently mugged. His wallet was stolen, so no identification was found when they picked his comatose body off the pavement. He is still in hospital, in a coma.
2 When asked directly about the clerk, the co-workers can answer simple questions, but appear unable to concentrate. He seems to slide from their consciousness. Although they complain about being understaffed, none of his co-workers really notice his absence, or think about him when jobs that would normally have been assigned to him come up.
One woman, however, shows signs of anxiety when questioned, despite not having any firm recollections. The clerk had become fixated on the woman, and she had eventually complained about his unwanted attentions to the section manager.
The clerk was a dabbler in the black arts. He had come across what he had thought was an invisibility spell, which he had cast to better observe the object of his desire. However, the spell was far more powerful than he’d realised, and he was removed from the perceptions of the world and the minds of his colleagues.
He is presently trapped in limbo, observing the world but unable to interact with it.
3 There’s something not quite right about the co-workers. Astute investigators will notice similarities in the features of the other clerks, and will begin to feel uneasy in their presence. Closer inspection shows that most of the workers in the department have the same unsettling disfigurements in the form of patches of blanched skin and slightly malformed ears.
The workers are, like the Innsmouth folk, the offspring of humans and an evil, non-human race. They have been slowly taken over this department through prejudicial hiring practices, in order to further the malevolent purposes of their dark sires.
The clerk was hired, ironically enough, as the result of a filing error, and was discreetly disposed of when he found out too much about the department’s personnel.
© Barbara Robson and Stuart Barrow
He is still being issued with a pay check, and everything appears normal at his office – except for his unexplained and barely acknowledged absence.
Possibilities
1 It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. In the eyes of his co-workers, the office is more efficient and life is a lot more pleasant without him. They don’t know where he has gone but no-one is asking too many questions because they don’t want him back. No-one has bothered to inform personnel.
So what really did happen?
After a hard night on the booze in an unfamiliar area, he was followed out onto the street and violently mugged. His wallet was stolen, so no identification was found when they picked his comatose body off the pavement. He is still in hospital, in a coma.
2 When asked directly about the clerk, the co-workers can answer simple questions, but appear unable to concentrate. He seems to slide from their consciousness. Although they complain about being understaffed, none of his co-workers really notice his absence, or think about him when jobs that would normally have been assigned to him come up.
One woman, however, shows signs of anxiety when questioned, despite not having any firm recollections. The clerk had become fixated on the woman, and she had eventually complained about his unwanted attentions to the section manager.
The clerk was a dabbler in the black arts. He had come across what he had thought was an invisibility spell, which he had cast to better observe the object of his desire. However, the spell was far more powerful than he’d realised, and he was removed from the perceptions of the world and the minds of his colleagues.
He is presently trapped in limbo, observing the world but unable to interact with it.
3 There’s something not quite right about the co-workers. Astute investigators will notice similarities in the features of the other clerks, and will begin to feel uneasy in their presence. Closer inspection shows that most of the workers in the department have the same unsettling disfigurements in the form of patches of blanched skin and slightly malformed ears.
The workers are, like the Innsmouth folk, the offspring of humans and an evil, non-human race. They have been slowly taken over this department through prejudicial hiring practices, in order to further the malevolent purposes of their dark sires.
The clerk was hired, ironically enough, as the result of a filing error, and was discreetly disposed of when he found out too much about the department’s personnel.
© Barbara Robson and Stuart Barrow
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