The Krampus Invitation

🔴 THAT PHOTO WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE SENT TO MY WORK EMAIL

I screamed when I saw his face leering back at me; that grotesque mask can’t be real.

The party was supposed to be a harmless Halloween thing, but my boss’s voice, thick with whiskey, kept slurring about the “special guest.” The air in the conference room smelled like cheap fog machine smoke and desperation. He led HIM in.

“Aren’t you excited to meet Krampus?” he bellowed, sweat glistening on his forehead. Krampus bowed, the bells on his costume jingling a discordant tune that scraped at my teeth. I wanted to disappear.

Now, seeing that picture makes me think someone wants me to know something I don’t. My blood is ice.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…
The subject line just read “Guest Appearance”. No body text, just that terrifying image attached. I fumbled for my phone, my fingers clumsy on the screen. Was it from my boss? HR? An anonymous tip line? I checked the sender: *[email protected]*. Our shared folder email. Anyone in accounting could have sent it, or anyone with access. My stomach churned. Why the shared account? To hide the sender? Or was it genuinely meant to be shared?

I minimised the email, heart hammering against my ribs. What was I supposed to do? Reply All? Delete it and pretend I hadn’t seen it? My gaze drifted back to the photo thumbnail, the gleam of those yellowed fangs seeming to mock me. It wasn’t just the mask; it was the way *his* head was tilted, the posture – unsettlingly familiar, even beneath the grotesque costume.

Suddenly, a memory from the party snapped into focus. After the boss had introduced “Krampus,” the creature hadn’t just stood there. He’d been led to a corner of the room where the marketing team was huddled, looking increasingly uncomfortable. I’d heard snippets then, something about “performance review targets” and “consequences for missed quotas.” The boss had been laughing, clapping Krampus on the shoulder. It hadn’t made sense at the time, just seemed like part of the bizarre, drunken spectacle.

But now, with the image of that photo burned into my mind, it clicked. The “special guest,” the terrifying costume, the whispers about consequences – it wasn’t just a random, terrifying party gimmick. It was a message. A twisted, deeply unprofessional, and frankly horrifying intimidation tactic, aimed at a specific department. And that photo… that photo was likely documentation. Proof of the ‘message’ being delivered.

My blood wasn’t ice anymore; it was boiling with a mix of fear and righteous anger. The email wasn’t a threat *to me* specifically, not in the way I’d first thought. It was evidence. Evidence of our boss’s appalling judgement and potentially abusive tactics. The fact that it came from the shared accounting email meant it was either a colossal mistake, someone trying to subtly leak it, or sickeningly, documentation intended for internal records.

I took a deep, shaky breath, my eyes scanning the office around me as if expecting the creature to emerge from a cubicle. No. He wasn’t real. The Krampus was just a costume. But the man inside it, the boss who hired him, and the twisted message they represented? That was horrifyingly real. Deleting the email felt like complicity. Replying felt like suicide.

My fingers hovered over my keyboard, landing instead on my phone. I didn’t call the boss. I didn’t call HR. I scrolled through my contacts until I found the number for Sarah in the marketing team. Her face at the party had been etched with genuine fear. If anyone else knew what this was about, it would be her. The photo wasn’t meant for me, but seeing it had shown me the ugly truth lurking beneath the surface of our corporate facade. It was time to find out who else knew, and what we were going to do about it. The jingling bells echoed in my mind, a chilling reminder of the corporate nightmare we were living.