Roy "Griff" Griffis calls himself a "Storyteller" for a lot of reasons.

He decided to be a writer when he was ten and never looked back. Along the way, he's done all the usual starving artist jobs (janitor, waiter, bookstore clerk) and a few unusual ones (he was the 62nd Aviation Rescue Swimmer in US Coast Guard––he doesn't just write action-adventure, he lived a little of it himself).

He's written poetry, plays, and screenplays. He's also the author of twelve novels, including the epic historical fiction saga By the Hands of Men and the alternative history series The Lonesome George Chronicles, as well as the comic fantasy Cthulhu, Amalgamated cycle.

The Thing from HR by Roy M. Griffis

What's a nice Shoggoth like him doing in a dump like this?

Narg was content working as a Damnation Services-10 in HR. Sure, he was related to one of the Elder Gods, but a little nepotism never hurt any Thing. His life was just wailing and gibbering, right up until his Uncle needed a small favor from his nephew. All Narg had to do was go down among the humans...and pretend to be one of them.

These are not your Grandfather's tales of Eldritch Horror: this is the untold story of the ghastly, unappreciated (and entirely expendable) minor monstrosities that support the Inscrutable Plans Of Dark Gods And Elder Things Beyond The Knowledge Of Men.

The Cthulhu, Amalgamated series is a comic romp full of action and mystery, including, of course, Sanity-Shattering Horror––and that's just the paperwork. Even H.P. could not conceive of the Corporate Terrors that await The Thing from HR.

 

REVIEWS

  • "I laughed far too much as this crossover of office politics and eldritch horrors."

    – Reader review

  • "A wild and funny romp with horror and humor."

    – Reader review

  • "Imagine a Cthulhian romp that's equal parts Terry Pratchett and Mel Brooks: a masterfully written homage to HPL's mythos in both linguistics and humor. This had me laughing for pages on end, and I can say it was without reservation the funniest book I've read in decades."

    – Reader review
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Hot Blood

I was just settling down at my desk with a nice hot cup of the blood of a thrice-cursed dead man when I heard the squawker outside my office rumble.

"HR, may I help you?" my secretary, Bugg ,answered in her most professional hideous shriek.

I'd lowered my proboscis into the steaming brew, waiting for that lovely first jolt of hell-bound hemoglobin to land upon the parched, empty place where there should have been a soul, when I perceived that most dreaded event just beyond the entrance to my foul lair.

A moist, tearing noise thundered at my ear hole.

"Oh, bother." Bugg was flapping a fluid limb at me frantically. From the squishiness of the sound, I deduced she was using her fourth tentacle, that fluid writhing thing of power and horror.

Another wet snap. The first cup of blood was so satisfying (or "damned good" as we liked to call it) that initially I refused to leave the place where I hunkered and gibbered. Instead, one of my eye stalks slithered along the lair-wall and protruded outside.

She buried the squawker under her other 14 tentacles and hissed "It's Beefbits!"

Oh, bother indeed. It was Himself (Itself, really), His Nibs, The Big Kahuna. (I'm assigned to the HR if my esoteric vocabulary were not enough to hip you in, old bean).

I slid the beaker of blood to one side and cringed before the squawker. "Human Restraint Office, how may I be of service?"

"Do take me off speaker, nephew."

It was then that the terror washed over me. A call from the head of our Division was bad enough, but now our family connection was mentioned?

For long aeons, I withered before the karma-rending power of He Who Must Not Be Named In Casual Conversation, only occasionally able to blubber helpless replies. "Yes, I'm new to the division, Your Abominableness." "Four hundred years." "No, oh Most Loathsome of the Shadows, I am certified. However, I've never actually—"

But it was my final piercing shriek of despair that brought Bugg scuttling into the lair, where she found me upon the corpse-strewn floor, my thousand-eye stalks alternatively flagellating me and quivering loosely.

"That must have been a fun chat," she observed helpfully. "What did the Bits want?"

Unable to speak coherently for a moment, I rocked and wailed at the horror of my fate. She politely rewarmed the blood while I composed myself. Unable to bear the weight of my destiny while prone, I climbed to my hooves and I composed myself. Brushing my eyes back into order, I crept into the comfort of my tatty bones-of-hanged men chair.

After a restorative slobber of the hot hemo, I looked at her terrifying primary face, where sat her usual expression of tolerant compassion for my lot. "It's worse than you can imagine."

A smile of hideous knowledge rested upon her ancient face. "I can imagine a lot."

I buried my head in my hand, eye stalks drooping to cover what would have been a face. "The boss is sending me to Earth."

And then Bugg screamed.