Bogleech.com's 2017 Horror Write-off:
Nodens Management Systems Contractor Review Form
Submitted by Nausicaa Harris
NODENS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS CONTRACTOR REVIEW FORM
HELPING YOU HELP US HELP YOU
What NODENS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS-managed business are you an employee of?
combination gas station/convenience store "the crab mart", 612 egelhofer road, morgansburg, md, "for all your convenience needs™"
How long have you been working at this NODENS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS-managed business?
since my parents made me get a job this august
What is your name?
rita ramires
What is your age?
dancing queen only seventeen
How would you describe your gender?
on the one hand as a stats nerd i get the impulse to collect data and im gladdened by what i perceive as a motivation to treat your trans business partners right but on the other hand this is a really fuckening weird way to ask that question and its also pretty invasive
anyways im a cis woman, as far as i know
What is your species?
human whos really scared that you need her to specify that
What is your position at your NODENS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS-managed business?
whipping girl night shift cashier
What about NODENS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS'management has led you to file an incident report? Please give accurate dates.
im just gonna give you a sampling because shit has been consistently wack to the degree that i honest to god cannot remember it all
8/5/17
my first night on the job and neil fucking armstrong comes through the door, like, "neil armstrong dressed in a space suit and looking as old as he did in 1969" sorta timewarp bullshit or whatever. dave, the resident gearhead who maintains the gas pumps, boiler room, and unreliable wiring, and smokes copious amounts of weed on the job, says "happy birthday mr armstrong" and pulls out one of the ice cream cakes. neil armstrong demands we share. dave congratulates him on his successful moon landing. i ask carl, our assistant manager, what the fuck is going on, and he says "COSPLAYERS" and ignores any further questions. i am a semi-experienced cosplayer and i will swear on my life this man was actual real neil armstrong.
8/11/17
two tenth-graders i know from the gsa show up with a cassette player and the emotional state of a scooby-doo episode. they say they wanna check something out on the roof. they distract carl long enough to find the roof access and disappear before i can stop them. i follow them up and find them messing with some sort of radio junk; carl says it was here before the crab mart bought the building and tells me to get back to work. amir, stock clerk and very cool dude, says they managed to summon a being of pure energy onto the roof with the radio stuff.
8/12/17
i learn that carl consistently ignores anything remotely weird in this store.
8/20/17
a man enters the building looking like the anthropomorphic personification of a decemberists song. he says hes glad he found us before the "governess" did. the windows show only a stormy sea outside. he goes into a spiel about the world weve apparently become trapped in and carl yells at him to make a purchase and stop wasting my time. decemberist nick tries to say were here forever but carl bodily manhandles him out the door after he buys a can of soup. downtown morgansburg returns. we are able to leave work normally.
8/23/17
translucent civil war soldiers file through the building, trudging stoically and moaning/sobbing/something of that nature. i try to punch one of the confederates but my fist passes through him. dave says "yeah its annoying" and contents himself by mocking their haircuts.
9/2/17
an impossible blizzard freezes us in and piles yards-high snowdrifts in the street outside. dave starts pretending hes genly ai which is cute at first but gets seriously annoying as the chill starts to invade the crab mart. amir accidentally disconnects the ice cream freezer, which somehow reverses the cold.
9/9/17
as i pull into work i am greeted with the sight of what i can only describe as 72 houri crowding the break room and filling the rest of the building. dave has apparently won them as some sort of reward for whatever magical bullshit he does in the boiler room; he attempts to fend them off by saying he is quote "the office homosexual" (not true; i am also gay, and carl is bi). the 72 houri file out the front door in a snit. one of them says they can fetch dude-houri but dave says "im pretty sure you have to be wholly dead for that and im only dead on the inside, but thanks". which is a mood but still. god.
9/12/17
cars with arizona plates keep pulling up to the pumps. the landscape outside switches from "small-town maryland" to "sand wastes". this is honestly very relaxing.
9/13/17
arizona persists, although now all the customers who come in are brains in jars. one of them talks my ear off about the public domain.
9/23/17
two big gay crab-things show up at our store. amir describes them as "goofus and gallants trollsonas" and i want to punch him for it but hes not wrong. its not nearly as infuriating as the fact that when they ask where the "mama finkelgrubers liver n lights tv dinners" are kept i know exactly where to answer. this has become my life now and i hate it.
9/28/17
a person-shaped collection of graffiti appears in the womens room. it appears in a different stall every time i check inside.
10/3/17
the person-shaped collection of graffiti reappears, but is now just the words "how do i meet girls" in a wide variety of styles. i am just tired and just desperate enough to tell amir that she "looks hot".
10/10/17
dave somehow replaces the air conditioning unit with a malevolent ai. she isnt good at trying to destroy humanity - the perfect robot doppelgangers she invents die when you splash energy drinks on them - but shes very mean to us.
10/19/17
a wirrwulf? this is a fairly comprehensible event all things considered, and the wirrwulf is very apologetic, but they did kill amir in their murderous rampage. he comes back to life when the sun comes back up, and apparently had done that before, but it was still fucked up to witness. hes okay but he died.
10/25/17
all the horoscope sections in the newspapers/magazines/etc. just say "BUTTS". amir reports seeing a minotaur "with a nice ass" hounding his steps. hes not a taurus though so i dont actually know if the two were related.
10/27/17
i have had a really shitty day at school before coming into work tonight, and matters are not improved when the person-shaped collection of graffiti shows up while my period decides its time to sacrifice to make the blood god. i go into the self-loathing muttering to myself and the person-shaped graffiti starts wiggling around to write back a response. its intelligent and comforting and i end up spilling my guts to her. we have a deep and meaningful conversation and its surprisingly comforting. we agree to talk more. her name is jules.
11/1/17
la muerte shows up at our fucking store and orders rotisserie chicken. most of the shit that goes on here is weird and inexplicable, but this? this is a straight-up Holiday Magic Event. she says my grandparents are doing just fine. carl is normally a hardass but he takes over the register while i go have a good cry.
11/7/17
the stores aesthetic, both architecturally and in the products carried, becomes inexplicably soviet. writing on the packaging is not actual russian, just whatever cyrillic characters look closest to the roman alphabet. all speech inside the store occurs with ludicrous russian accents. pierogi surprisingly good.
11/10/17
we repeat this night about sixteen fucking times and i hate it. apparently amir is the center of the loop and gets important character development out of it? that said i do finally learn what happens if you stick your hand right in the rotisserie cooker, which ive always wanted to try. (surprise! its painful!)
11/16/17
a bunch of rowdy community college bros show up and declare themselves the thanes of crab-heorot. this would be laughable if community college grendel also doesnt show up. dave takes a hit from the community college bros bong and then rips its fucking arm off. i have never been more terrified of the community college riverhawk than i am tonight.
11/19/17
dave gets something that calls itself satan to sell him its soul. in return he teaches satan some cool blues licks.
11/23/17
i am now dating jules. this isnt a complaint by any means but it is still bizarre. im very thankful. also, a 50-foot turkey carcass attacks the crab mart and amir defeats it by finding a harpoon gun in the broom closet.
11/29/17
something im going to describe as a shantak-bird comes in with a water bottle identical to mine. the shantak-bird buys a lot of snacks and leaves, but accidentally switches our water bottles. my skin starts to develop weird blisters. unlike the collateral damage from most horrible disasters, these do not reset when the sun goes up.
12/1/17
theyre eggs.
12/5/17
my eggs are hatching! into tiny horses! this is very upsetting. we agree to never speak of it again.
12/12/17
a giant friendly ad&d-monster-looking thing drinks nearly ninety percent of the gas in our reserve and our next delivery wont come for over a week. carl swears at the monster in yiddish for eight solid minutes and when dave checks the tanks again theyre back to full. carl says its the quote "magic of hannukah" and tries to smile in an avuncular fashion. this is the only time he has ever acknowledged the possibility of the supernatural and it scares me, although not as much as the sight of carl trying to be avuncular.
12/13/17
carl brings homemade latkes in for us. this isnt overtly supernatural but still very scary.
12/16/17
i observe a second moon in the sky. amir goes out to look at it and reports that its actually a very small moon floating outside the window, moving so that it looks like a natural satellite from my perspective. callout post for amir: tried to put the tiny moon in his mouth.
12/21/17
carls hannukah cheer is gone and we are all very relieved to have regular carl back. also, i catch three mole-people fucking in the womens bathroom. jules and i try to make a dirty joke about it but it was really just kinda sad and disappointing.
12/28/17
during a slow period i get into a wikipedia binge and the page for "ringo is dead" somehow redirects to a page entitled "paul is dead", which is essentially the "ringo is dead" theory but about paul mccartney; i messaged a friend to try to show it to them and they just saw the regular "ringo is dead" page so im pretty sure the effect was localized to the crab mart, so what the fuck.
What course of action do you require from NODENS MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS?
explaining why the fuck this is going on por favor y gracias