The email has found me tending the Blood Roses, those delicate white flowers whose petals stain the most exquisite pink when caressed or smelled by an unsuspecting admirer. Their teeth are like the smallest needles, their appetite unquenchable. I shake my head fondly as I wrap my finger in a napkin.

The email has found me running through the reeking crypt, pursued by a gurgle of rotten laughter. I *must* reach the coffin before the sand runs out. I am the last of the team-building exercise still alive, Dom from HR has just been lost to the mechanical spider with eight black garnets for eyes.

The email has found me stumbling through the undergrowth, gasping, thorns catching my coat. The stories are true, Vanya! I crept to the glade where the women meet and saw their faces change in the firelight, from lovely maidens to the feathered round death-stare of owls.

The email has found me blending in seamlessly at the conference, vast hat covering my auxiliary eyes. I extend a friendly tendril to the facilitator. ‘Fortuitous time allocation, ape, commence bonding! I too enjoy the consumption of essential minerals.’ I’m nailing it.

The email has found me waking from drugged darkness, chained to a chair at the head of a long table laden with jewelled cups and a rich banquet. The smell of roasted meat is mouth-watering, dizzying, but mingles with unspeakable rot. Every other seat is occupied by things that were once men.

The email has found me frantically anointing the bones - worn smooth as ice by time - with oils of cypress and myrrh as the hollow shrieking behind the iron doors to the lower crypt intensifies. I am the last of the team-building exercise left alive, Dom from HR has just been lost to the scarabs.

The email has found me carefully dusting the haunted portrait gallery. The Drowned Duchess is still asleep, pillowed on a tangle of green weeds, and I don’t want to disturb her. More than one colleague has been found floating in the gilded frame, her hands around their ankles.

The email has found me laminating another strict No Entry sign for the canteen. The sinkholes are back, pouring forth the usual black fire and tortured screaming, and we all know what happened to Derek. Great news from the hospital though, they say he’s stopped shrieking in an unknown tongue!

The email has found me arguing with Liminal Jim of Threshold Construction Ltd. I don’t care how multiversal he wants the kitchen, that’s a load-bearing dimension and we’re not knocking through it.

The email has found me hanging green and scarlet baubles, bathed in the gentle glimmer of festive lights. Sweat gathers at the back of my neck as I stare resolutely ahead, trying to ignore the glint of garnet-red eyes, the rustle of clawed paper. I’ve always hated The Presence under the tree.

The email has found me learning to carve The Ice Runes. Halvard is the foreman at the Dwarven mines here, grey-skinned and dour, his missing eye replaced with a ball of quartz. If you have already completed your training in Ice Runes, please pick up your certificates from Martin.

The email has found me in the crowd gathered at the lake’s cracked lip. The summer’s been so hot it drained away to a bed of baked mud, revealing old walls and stubby gravestones like broken thumbnails. Perhaps that explains the hollow cries that echo over the water sometimes, even on bright days.

The email has found me waiting knee-deep in still water, cold to the bone, mist rising like a sentient shroud from the fen. Soon, if I’m patient, the Hall will appear. Vast and timbered, where a woman in gold sits by the light of bright torches, and weaves the clouds.

The email has found me swathed in midnight robes, a dark hymn on my lips for our profane Mass. We welcome a new brother with a prayer said backwards, a wafer dyed black upon his tongue. That reminds me, I forgot to tell Brian that two of the conference attendees are gluten free.

The email has found me dressing for the job I want: encased in a cold power suit of the new synthetic ice. I gaze implacably at the Teams meeting through my visor, hearing only the sound of my own breath and the click of biometric scanners. Mike from IT looks really freaked out.

The email has found me chiselling vast gold fangs from the mouth of the statue of Aion, each shining tooth as long as my forearm. I know it’s marked urgent Sue, but the winged god of Time will come alive when the sun sets so I’d better crack on, can you ask Graham to reschedule the coffee morning.

The email has found me staring into the microscope, hardly able to believe my luck, as I make a breakthrough translation of the symbols fossilised in ancient amber tablets the size of my thumb. They are - as I suspected! - the complex funerary rites for a long-extinct species of ant.

The email has found me welcoming all these lovely new followers! Please avoid conference room C for the time being until the clutch of man-sized amber eggs has been safely removed. Best regards.

The email has found me at the village fair, cautiously judging the vegetable competition. Mrs. Bartleby wins hands-down again this year, her HorseRadish has savagely bitten two volunteers and thrown a child from its back.

The email has found me following a trail of sherbet lemons to the crooked house, surrounded by rambling sugar roses. I slide the letter from the council under the shortbread door. Witch or no witch, at some point she’s going to have to face the music about planning permission.

The email has found me in a hidden glade, my lips pressed to the soft green foot of a forgotten patron saint of moss.

The email has found me dressing for the job I want: magician of the wilderness, intoxicated with gold and black Runes, made insane by the roaring language of trees, able to lift from my skin and go forth in the form of a hare. Mike from IT looks totally freaked out.

The email has found me halting the presentation as rotten stumps that were once hands thud rhythmically against the glass. So, they’ve breached the barricades. Are you sure you can’t move to another room, Tim? Alright, well would you mind popping yourself on mute for a minute.

The email has found me wandering the bronze forest on a once-desert planet. They say that before this, the Age of the Void, two starships fleeing Earth collided above this place & fell, fusing the landscape into glass. One thousand years later, the first metal trees were seen blooming from orbit.

The email has found me reaching for the rocky ledge above my head. How long we have been wandering these caves, beset by grinning monsters, I don’t know. Torchlight greedily licks the damp stone. Dom from HR has already been lost to the blades of the Iron River.

The email has found me being shown the new mining works at Shillingsalt, vaulted halls dancing with the gleam of bronze machines like the limbs of giants. The foreman seems…different somehow, distracted. A new, unsettling glow in his eyes the dull red of raw garnet.

The email has found me buying a coffee at Waterloo and discovering forgotten Plutonian change in my pocket. The pennies are rather large, as they are minted showing all three of the king’s heads.

Me, welcoming my newest follower

The email has found me tracking the thin, eerie singing to the back of the allotment, where gleaming red berries like the wink of demonic eyes are flourishing. As I suspected, a rogue crop of Dreadcurrants.

Oh @howtheemailfoundme.bsky.social

The email has found me aghast at the horrors of the secretive meat pie factory on the edge of town. I recoil at the smell of burned flesh, a charred shoe dangling uselessly from my hand. That reminds me, I forgot to tell Brian that two of the conference attendees are gluten free.

The email has found me picking tiny wild strawberries in a patch of land everyone else disdains. ‘They look too small and bitter,’ they say, they don’t know that under this faerie hill, the plants put forth rubies the size of my thumbnail.

The email has found me admiring a woman’s skyscraper heels, there are thirty families living in each.

The email has found me at the village fair, judging the vegetable competition. Mrs. Bartleby wins again this year, her Pickled Onions are so drunk and disorderly the police van had to call for back-up. Mr Wilson says he’ll sue the lot of them, he still has vinegar in his eye.

The email has found me reminding you that Dawn’s welcome back party will be in conference room 3 at 14:00. PLEASE refrain from phrases like ‘blue-sky thinking’ or ‘straight to the top’ during her phased return as we don’t wish to trigger memories of the Event. Welcome back, Dawn!

The email has found me struggling to be heard of over the solemn chanting of the long-dead monks, their fervent devotion echoing down the centuries in hollow voices. Are you sure you can’t move to another room, Tim? Alright, well would you mind popping yourself on mute for a minute.

The email has found me afraid to close my eyes, knowing what awaits me in the halls of sleep. A headless god whose gaping neck swallows the corpses of the early stars, whose speech is guttural void. He is trying to break into this world like an egg. I *must* remain alert, awake.

How your email finds me

The email has found me at the village fair, cautiously judging the vegetable competition. Mrs. Bartleby wins hands-down again this year, her HorseRadish has savagely bitten two volunteers and thrown a child from its back.

The email has found me entering the fairground haunted house, giggling as I brush fake cobwebs from my face. As I go further in, the empty rooms begin to grate. No sheeted jump-scares, no evil laughter, no fake blood. Is anyone here? I realise I can’t hear the fairground anymore.

The email has found me slipping the poison into the Admiral’s glass of sparkling Plutonian wine. It’s taken long months of deception to become his most trusted aide, now I will watch him die to save the Galilean Alliance from utter destruction. Long live the moons of Jupiter!

The email has found me trying to be heard over the roar of the abyssal leviathan - all tentacles and teeth - as it assaults the hull of the deep-sea laboratory. Are you sure you can’t move to another room, Tim? Alright, well would you mind popping yourself on mute for a minute.

How the email finds you

The email has found me sleepwalking in the fractured jewel of the old greenhouse again, ancient brown roots entwined on every surface, forgotten tools suffocated by rust. The last of the Queen Lillies is so hungry and so lonely, thank goodness I always wake up in time.

The email has found me dressing for the job I want: the malevolent sorceress of Bone Mountain. Draped in a cloak of midnight feathers, a Jupiter’s diamond in each ear…The ring on my finger gives my tongue the wicked gift of the speech of thorn trees. I am DBS checked.

The email has found me laminating another No Entry sign for the canteen, The Cubes are back, projecting their eerie sound waves from the edge of the known universe and we all know what happened to Derek. Great news from the hospital though, they say he blinked today!

The email has found me talking over the mournful sound of the old piano. No earthly fingers press its keys, but it plays the same childish tune over & over again. Are you sure you can’t move to another room, Tim? Alright, well would you mind popping yourself on mute for a minute.

The email has found me at the village fair, judging the scarecrow competition. Frazier Barnes is tipped to win this year, his creation -coal eyes & sickle hands - is so…Unsettling. Frazier never shows up at the tent. When we search the barn, we find only blood and straw.

The email has found me staring at the spiked swarm of the army as it advances, listening to the brass-throated howl of their horns. The day is clear and fine, as good a day to die as an-oh, is that Trisha’s card on the trebuchet? No, I haven’t signed it yet.

The email has found me learning to bring forth the dead from their graves, conjuring twisted spirits at midnight under the blind white eyes of a damned priest. If you have already finished beginner’s necromancy, please remember to pick up your certificates from Martin.