ABOUT THE BOOK
When junior manager Frank Dominio is suddenly demoted and then sacked it seems there was more than a grain of truth to his persecution fantasies. But as he prepares to even the score with those responsible for his demise, he unwittingly finds an ally in a dark and malevolent force that grants him supernatural powers. Frank takes his revenge in the most ghastly ways imaginable - but there will be a terrible price to pay once his work is done.
Destined to be a cult classic, this tale of corporate horror and demonic retribution will strike a chord with anyone who has ever been disgruntled at work.
PRAISE FOR THOMAS LIGOTTI
‘Thomas Ligotti is an absolute master of supernatural horror and weird fiction, and is a true original. He pursues his unique vision with admirable honesty and rigorousness and conveys it in prose as powerfully evocative as any writer in the field. I’d say he might just be a genius.’ Ramsey Campbell
‘Ligotti is wonderfully original; he has a dark vision of a new and special kind, a vision that no one had before him.’ Interzone
‘[Ligotti’s] is a unique voice, which speaks with a profound elegance – and a precious seriousness – of matters which few other literary voices have ever touched. Ligotti is old-fashioned in the very best sense of the term and there is nothing dated about his work, which is unmistakably contemporary.’ Brian Stableford in Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers
‘Ligotti gave me the first genuine frisson – in the literal sense of the term – that I had received in years. His work made me realize why I had become a student of weird fiction to begin with – it was to experience that indescribable sensation of being unnerved.’ S T Joshi, author of The Modern Weird Tale, in Horror: Another 100 Best Books
‘Ligotti is arguably the preeminent living writer of horror fiction.’ Matt Cardin (in The Thomas Ligotti Reader)
‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer is full of inexplicable and alarming delights . . . Put this volume on the shelf right between H P Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs.’ Michael Swanwick, The Washington Post
‘Grimscribe confirms [Ligotti] as an accomplished conjuror of nightmares in the tradition of H P Lovecraft.’ The Times
‘In Grimscribe Ligotti manages to write that secret book, presenting us with stories that are paradoxically beautiful and horrific.’ San Francisco Chronicle
‘The most disturbing terror comes from within, springs unexpectedly from bland or half-formed memories of the past. This is the terror that Ligotti cultivates in the richly evocative tales of Noctuary.’ Booklist
‘My Work Is Not Yet Done displays a Thomas Ligotti at the height of his form – in imaginative range, in verve of style and precision of language, and in cumulative power and intensity.’ S T Joshi, Necrofile
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Ligotti was born in Detroit in 1953 and grew up in the nearby suburb of Grosse Pointe Woods. He graduated from Wayne State University in 1978. From 1979 to 2001, Ligotti worked for a reference-book publisher in the Detroit area, serving as an editor on such titles as Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism and Contemporary Authors. His first collection of stories, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, was published in 1986, with an expanded version issued three years later. Other collections include Grimscribe (1991), Noctuary (1994), and Teatro Grottesco (2006).
Ligotti is the recipient of several awards, including the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker award for his omnibus collection The Nightmare Factory (1996) and short novel My Work Is Not Yet Done. He has also written a nonfiction book, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Short Life of Horror, which comprises an excursion through the darker byways of literature, philosophy and psychology. A short film of Ligotti’s story ‘The Frolic’ was completed in 2006 and is scheduled to appear as a DVD. In addition, through an agreement with Fox Studios’ subsidiary Fox Atomic, a graphic novel based on his works was released in 2007. For more information visit: http://www.ligotti.net
MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE
Three Tales of Corporate Horror
Thomas Ligotti
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9780753547182
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Virgin Books 2009
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
First published in hardback in the USA by Mythos Books 2002
Copyright © Thomas Ligotti 2002
Thomas Ligotti has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
‘I Have a Special Plan for This World’ and ‘The Nightmare Network’ previously appeared in Horror Garage and Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium, respectively.
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
Virgin Books
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
www.virginbooks.com
www.rbooks.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780753516881
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
Praise
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
I
The Wages of Life
MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE
II
The Second Coming of the Dead
I HAVE A SPECIAL PLAN FOR THIS WORLD
III
Going Out of Business
THE NIGHTMARE NETWORK
MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE
Part I
1
I HAD ALWAYS been afraid. However, as self-serving as this may sound, I never believed this to be a cause for shame or regret, even though an intolerable suffering may ensue from such a trait. It seemed to me that the finest people, as people go, cannot help but betray a fair portion of fear and insecurity, even full-blown panic. On the other hand, someone must have a considerable dose of the swine in their make-up to get through even a single day unafflicted by trepidations of one sort or another, not to mention those who go out of their way to court dangerous encounters, fearlessly calling attention to themselves, figuratively waving their arms and declaring to everyone within range, ‘Hey, look at me. I’m up here. See what I can do. I’m the one you have to knock down. I’m the one.’
Of course there is a measure of beast’s blood in anyone who aspires to maintain a place in the world, anyone who lacks that ultimate decency to remove themselves from the herd either by violence to themselves or total capitulation to their dread. It’s simply a matter of degree.
At the company where I had been a longtime employee, the purest breed of swine was represented by the seven persons with whom I met in a conference room according to a weekly schedule. I had risen, somewhat reluctantly but with a definite touch of swinishness, to the position of a supervisor in my division of a company in which there were countless other divisions. This made it necessary to attend these meetings along with six others of my kind and a seventh who was our superior by virtue of his having outswined the rest of us.
During a meeting of my own staff, someone whose mind was not fixated, as was mine, on the swine analogy, referred to these persons with whom I met, according to a weekly schedule, as The Seven Dwarfs.
‘So what does that make me, Dave – Snow White?’
‘No, Frank,’ interjected Lisa, ‘that would make you Prince, uh, what’s-his-name.’
‘Charming,’ said Lois.
‘Pardon me?’ replied Lisa.
‘Prince Charming. Didn’t you at least see the movie?’
This remark caused a hurt look to cross Lisa’s face. It was a good one, very realistic.
‘Hey, I was just kidding,’ said Lois, who wasn’t easily taken in by false or exaggerated phenomena.
Lisa perked up again on cue and continued. ‘That’s right, Prince Charming.’
‘Well, thanks for saying that, Lisa,’ I said. But I wasn’t quick enough to head off Christine.
‘We usually talk nice about Frank behind his back. But it’s okay, you’ve only been here a week.’
‘I’m sorry if it sounded like I was trying to score points or something,’ said Lisa, actually sounding quite sincere this time. ‘The department where I used to work –’
‘You’re not there any more,’ I said. ‘You’re here. And everyone here used to work somewhere else in the company.’
‘Except you, Frank,’ said Elias. ‘You’ve been in this department forever.’
‘True enough,’ I replied.
After the meeting with my staff ended I proceeded immediately to the other meeting, where I intended to play the swine in a way I had never tried before. I had a new idea to present to my colleagues, which of course would involve a considerable amount of arm-waving and look-at-me behavior. It had been some time since I had reaccredited myself with my peers, and I was beginning to suffer from an uncomfortable sense that my standing with these persons was in question.
This is the paradox of always being afraid: while the pangs of apprehension and self-consciousness may allow you to imagine yourself as a being created of finer materials than most, a certain level of such agony necessarily drives you to grovel for the reassurances and approval of swine, or dwarfs if you like, who function as conductors of a fear from which they themselves do not appear to suffer. And how well they’re able to control this fear, turning it in your direction at will and causing its dreadful current to flow just long enough to send you running to them so that you may be allowed to make a case for your own swinehood, hoping to prove that you are an even bigger swine, or a smaller dwarf, than they. This is the only thing that can bring some relief from that most pernicious form of being afraid – the anxiety provoked by other people and what they may do to you, either collectively or as individual agents.
Tragically, the same fear that allows you to believe yourself a better specimen of the human species than those around you can only be tolerated for so long. Anything beyond that point, any excess of anxiety, and you begin to imagine yourself closeted in a little room somewhere under heavy sedation or to consider an act of slaughter against yourself (or perhaps against others). Thus I was aching with hopes for my new idea, my special plan to increase the prosperity of the company – that institutional manifestation of the swine. I longed for it to receive the snuffling high-sign of my fellow wallowers in filth, the low-voiced sanction (or so I hoped) of the seven other dwarfs. Needless to say, I was terror-stricken.
2
AS USUAL I was the first to arrive in the conference room where I met with the six other supervisors in the division and with Richard, our manager. This room was located outside the modernized office space wherein most of the company carried out its activities and was a place that still exhibited, unharmed by refurbishing, the pre-Depression style of the building in which the company occupied several floors. I was never sure what purpose the room was originally intended to serve, but it was disproportionately large and lofty for the small talk of business that echoed within its realm. Furthermore, it was quite dimly lighted by the rows of ornately sconced fixtures that jutted out at intervals from faded and intricate wallpaper which had peeled away in spots. One could barely see the crumbled moldings interposed between the upper edges of the walls and the shadowy ceiling.
The table at which I and the others met seemed to have been imported from the banquet hall of an earlier century, while the enormous leather chairs in which our bodies truly appeared of dwarfish size had become brittle over the years and creaked like old floorboards whenever we shifted within them. There was a row of tall paned windows along one of the walls, each of them still valanced but without curtains. I liked to look out of these windows because they offered a view of the river as well as a fine panorama of several other old office buildings.
However, on that particular morning a heavy spring fog had lingered long enough to obstruct any view of the river and had turned the other buildings in the downtown area into specters of themselves, only the nearest of which could be seen to cast their illumination through the fog like strange lighthouses. And I was grateful to the aging monuments of the city for providing me, by no means for the first time, with a calming perspective that only a vision of degeneration and decline can bestow.
Soon enough, though, the others arrived and took their places, setting down upon the already scarred finish of the table their outsized mugs of coffee or towering containers of bottled water. I never failed to wonder how they were able to consume such incredible quantities of coffee, water, fruit juice, and what have you during these meetings, which always went on for at least an hour. I myself made a point of not taking in unaccustomed amounts of liquid prior to these weekly convocations, just so that I might avoid the necessity of disrupting the proceedings by bursting out of the room in search of the nearest lavatory.
But none of the others appeared to have the least problem in this area, however closely I scrutinized them for tell-tale signs of stress. Least of all did Richard seem bothered by such bodily strain, since he always showed up with not only the largest container of coffee but also a huge thermos from which he would at least twice refill his great barrel of a cup on which was emblazoned the company logo. Just watching them gulp mouthful after mouthful of their various liquids sometimes brought fantasies of a gleaming row of urinals to my mind. Perhaps they all wore special undergarments, I once considered, and freely relieved themselves as we spoke about budgets and headcounts, speed to market and outsourcing.
All of which is simply to say that my co-functionaries within the division, along with Richard, were a complete mystery to me on every level. They seemed to me as fantastic beings who well deserved the fairy-tale designation of The Seven Dwarfs, even though there was a more mundane and obvious reason for calling them such. This reason, I should point out, did not derive from any shared qualities between Dopey, Grumpy, Sleepy, and the rest of that cute and hard-working crew, and the seven persons, not including myself, now seated at that nicely decrepit table.
My fellow supervisors, plus Richard, were neither conspicuously cute (with one exception) nor hard-working. But their names were, no kidding, Barry, Harry, Perry, Mary, Kerrie, Sherry, and, of course, Richard, whom I had heard referred to as ‘The Doctor’, although the origin of this nickname, which was a matter of both credible anecdote and curious imaginings, in no way linked him with the dwarfish Doc of the fairy tale.
Richard finally cleared his throat with a forced, rattling sound that was his way of bringing the meeting to order. Everyone stopped chatting and turned toward the head of the table, where sat the only one of us whose chair didn’t appear too big for his body. But Richard’s stature was more than that of someone who purchased his suits at clothes stores catering to large-bodied men. His physical conformation, straight and solid from head to toe, was imposingly athletic, the anatomy of an erstwhile ball-player of some kind who had kept his shape into middle age. In all probability Richard had garnered his share of shining trophies for the glory of Self and School. He wouldn’t be the first member of middle-to
upper-level corporate management with a background in the world of sport, with all the playing-field metaphors they borrowed from that milieu, chief among them being all that puke-inducing nonsense about teams (the characterization of someone as a ‘team player’ was at the top of my line-up of emetic expressions of this sort).
‘All right, then, let’s get started,’ barked Richard as he stared down at a page on the table that listed the agenda items for that week’s meeting. ‘Looks like you’re first up, Domino. Something to do with New Product.’
For the record: my last name is not Domino; it’s Dominio, with two ‘i’s.
For the record: I had attempted to correct Richard both publicly and privately regarding the accurate form of my surname.
For the record: I could never be absolutely sure that it wasn’t pure indifference rather than a taste for malicious mockery that accounted for his persistently calling me Domino, although this sly mangling of my name never failed to draw a few muted snickers from the others, and Richard could not have been oblivious to that.
Like a dealer at a poker game, I quickly passed around to my colleagues the two-page proposal I had distilled from a much longer document. This hand-out was composed with wide margins and a large font for speedy absorption into the systems of busy middle-management types. I tried not to look around the table as they all glanced it over, turning from page one to page two almost simultaneously. When Richard was finished he laid the document on the table before him and gazed upon it as if he were looking at a bowl of cereal in which he thought he might have spotted something unsavory . . . or possibly peering into a riverbed in which he glimpsed a shiny nugget in the shallows of clear water.
‘Forgive me, Frank,’ said Richard, ‘but I’m not sure I understand what this is supposed to be?’