Astral Hoarder: Embrace of Malevolence

Any normal person would have reported that kind of conduct to a higher-up, but Zimo did not even want to think about the numerous times he had done so, only to have things blow up in his face.

There was one time when Zimo reported being overworked by his team leader only for him to have been "rewarded" with reduced pay for three months because of Team Leader Jacques' familial connection with the Manager.

There was that other time when one of his team members had taken his belongings and destroyed them as a joke and Zimo reported it, only to have the whole thing buried under the rug because the team member visited the manager right after him, giving the man the tickets to a game that was about to happen.

Zimo had even gone to the police only to find out that they needed evidence and somehow the company was having technical difficulties and all the footage had been wiped out.

Technical difficulties? Wiped out all evidence?? How impossible was that? How incredibly rare was it for the system to be working every day before then and then on that day, for it to experience difficulties?

Zimo had reported events eight times to his higher-ups and each time, nothing happened to those who did things against him, so he gave up on it. It was almost as if the whole office was cooperating in making his life a living hell. He could only rely on himself to gather evidence. That was what he had been focusing on from then on.

All he did was take pictures and recordings of himself, and his work, making sure to keep evidence of everything he did and what everyone else was not doing. He was already thinking of taking them all to court and suing them. But it would still take a few months before he collected enough money to find a good lawyer. After all, he was one man going against a company. He could not take this lightly.

Till then, he had to stay quiet and calm.

On his way to the employee restrooms, Zimo passed by a locker and opened it up, finding that there was dirt piled on everything. They must have spilt it in from the vent at the front. Sighing once again, Zimo took out his phone, took a picture and then cleaned everything up before taking his supplies and going for a shower.

After taking a shower, Zimo wore a clean set of clothes which he kept at the office for situations like these and then he walked out only to see the skies completely darkened as he looked out into the distance.

Why was it so dark? Was it going to rain? Well, that's not bad. Zimo liked the rain. It was peaceful, and cleansing, and it always smelled nice.

Walking towards his Team's Room, Zimo noticed something that he should not have noticed.

It was Maya, her fellow team member, and she was currently sitting in the lap of the Manager, Rob, who was a forty-year-old handsome man who had a reputation in the office as a handsome playboy.

He would prey on the recruits and date them, sampling the goods for a few months before moving on whenever a fresher piece of meat came by for him to chew up. It seemed Maya had landed in his arms… What a damn shame.

Zimo wanted to walk by, trying to not think about his past with Maya. But if he walked by, he would be spotted immediately. Zimo was conflicted for a moment, before finally deciding to stop. And when he did he saw exactly what he had not been looking forward to seeing.

There was Rob, his boss, with Maya straddling his lap, their bodies entwined in a passionate embrace. The dimly lit room was filled with the scent of expensive cologne and a hint of Maya's sweet perfume. To Zimo, this might have been the most disgusting thing. After all, one was a past crush, and the other was the architect of his suffering.

Maya's hair cascaded down her back as she leaned in, her crimson lips tracing a tantalizing path along Rob's neck. Her fingers danced over the fabric of his shirt, playing with the buttons while chuckling in a way that was tantalising to Rob.

Rob's eyes were closed, lost in the moment, his hands roaming over Maya's curves with a familiarity that suggested this wasn't their first time doing this kind of thing. He even squeezed her butt a few times, making her giggle softly, saying something about being caught and doing things together in secret.

Zimo sighed inwardly, but it was not something he was in full control of. It was the sudden sound of Maya's voice, calling out his name, that brought Zimo's reality crashing back. "Zimo!" she exclaimed, her eyes snapping open and meeting his. The look she gave him was complex - a blend of fear, annoyance, and a challenge.

The room seemed to freeze as the three of them stared at one another, the tension thick and palpable.

Rob's hands stilled on Maya's waist, and his eyes shot to Zimo, his expression a mix of guilt and embarrassment. He cleared his throat awkwardly and tried to sit up, but Maya's legs remained wrapped around him, keeping him in place.

Zimo felt his cheeks burn, his gaze darting between them. He had walked in on something he never should have seen. But instead of running away or pretending he hadn't noticed, Maya's terrifying glare held him in place. He felt like a deer caught in the headlights of a car, unable to move, unable to look away. And then when he looked in Maya's eyes seeing nothing of the friendship they had before, he soon realised he had the strength to walk away. And so he did. Zimo had only begun walking away when Maya called him back.

"Zimo! Come back here!" Maya said, shouting a bit too loudly as she cleaned herself up, smoothing the wrinkles on her clothing while standing up, going beside the department manager with a stern expression.

Meanwhile, the manager also took on a stern expression as he chose not to stand up due to obvious reasons. But what he could not hide was the red lipstick mark on his cheek was the artwork Maya had left on him. Zimo couldn't help but inwardly smirk. Maya was constantly flirting with Jacques. How would he feel if he knew she was grinding on this old man's lap?

Even Maya, someone who was once a person who was bright-eyed with a wonderful personality had been stained by this place. If he could turn back time and tell himself to never come to this place, he would have done that. But unfortunately, there was nothing like that in existence. He had to live with the consequences of his choices.

As Maya and Rob, the manager, started scolding Zimo, he, who was already used to this kind of behaviour from Rob, couldn't help but notice the rain outside the window. It landed on the window like something deep, dark and black, and then as it landed, it didn't even flow down the window. It just lay there like some sludge. It was a pure black-like oil.

What kind of rain was this? Was there some kind of eruption out there? Or maybe was it something like acid rain?

"Look at me, Zimo! Are you listening to me?!" said Maya, her cheeks reddened with embarrassment and anger. Her words were enough to snap Zimo out of his reverie as he turned back to her and nodded.

"I understand. I should stop peeping at you, is what you said, right?" Zimo said almost absent-mindedly. But he knew his words were pointed. This kind of workplace conduct would have been heavily punished anywhere else, but just because it was here they would never get repercussions. He would be the one who got punished for pointing it out though.

"What did you say?!" said Maya, pointing at Zimo in anger but she was stopped by Rob who stood up, finally having calmed his libido, and came towards Midas before pulling him by his shirt and staring down at him.

"Listen here, you little shit. You saw nothing, you hear me?" Rob said, looking at Zimo with an expression that was both disgusted and incredibly interested. 

Zimo took a moment to look into his eyes and nodded before he was pushed out of the door, falling on the floor outside. Instead of being helped up, everyone looked at him in disgust and even laughed in his face.

Zimo sighed. He just had to endure a bit more and then he would have enough money for the lawsuit.

Just three more months. 

Standing up and dusting himself off, he went to his Team room and found his team members there, staring out the window in surprise and talking about how weird the rain was.

"Did the government find oil somewhere close by?"

"You think this is oil? It looks way too thick, just look at it…"

"Why don't you touch it and test it out? If it's oil and we collect some, won't we become rich?"

"You want me to touch that thing? No way!"

"Why not, it's just oil!"

"Oh, Zimo's here. Why don't you get him to bring some oil in? All of you guys can share it amongst yourselves. Maya, it's a pleasure seeing you here today," said Jacques with an extra happy smile on his face as Maya entered the room after Zimo took a seat at his computer.

Zimo rolled his eyes and focused on his computer, checking the agenda for that day. There was no way he was going out there and getting wet and dirty after he had just showered. Oh shit, he already got dirty did he not? Well, whatever. It didn't matter. There was something about the darkness everywhere that was bringing something out of Zimo. He was just unwilling to do this shit ever again.

He would rather get extra work handed out to him as always. At least that way he wouldn't be bored. And he wouldn't have to pay attention to their bullshit.

At that moment, there were six people in the room. These people were Jacques, the Team Leader, and Phil, the lead developer. The rest were the four Junior Developers and Engineers Zimo, Maya, Alex, and Vinny.

"What a great idea, Team Leader! Zimo, go out there and get us a bucket of that stuff!" said Alex, making sure to suck up to Jacques with a smile on his face before turning to Zimo and ordering him around with a deep frown. What an idiot.

"Yeah, Zimo, what are you waiting for? Didn't you hear the Team Leader?" Vinny chimed in, the smile on his face lopsided as he chewed gum without care for annoying the people around him.

Zimo merely looked at all of them, and then looked at Jacques and said, "What's the agenda for today, sir?"

"The agenda is for you to get that shit from out there so that we can start doing our work. Didn't you hear what they said? This workplace disrespect is not something you can do willy-nilly," said Phil with a devious smile on his face.

Maya also chimed in. "You want to get fired? Do what you're told, now!" Zimo turned to her. Here she was, a person who had come into the company at the same time as him, now ordering him around like some manager or something.

Just because she was grinding on the manager's cock didn't make her the manager. Relax.

Zimo, took a moment to gaze at all of them, and sighed, glad that he always carried a listening device that recorded things. The evidence he was storing up would be complete soon. And then he would make them all pay. 

That was when Vinny, who was super focused on the happenings outside, seemed to see something and called everyone to attention, saying, "What the hell is that?"

Phil, who was the closest to the window, also turned. "Holy shit!" he shouted, before whipping out his phone camera and taking a video. That one act seemed to make everyone turn to the windows, and when they saw what happened they all gasped and shouted obscenities.

Zimo, feeling something weird about this situation, stood up and went to the window, and that was when he saw it...

The oily black rain had turned the ground below into a blackened chasm, a void that seemed to swallow everything in Midas' vision. And yet, even as the black rain slammed down leaving a sickly miasma at the scene, there were movements on the ground.

Weird movements...

From the third-floor vantage point he was at, Zimo could see that there were people down there who were walking around, and they looked weird... funny... hm... maybe those were the wrong words to describe it with. It was more like they had turned into monsters.

They had black veins tracing their skin, giving them a repulsive appearance, and the skin that once seemed alive now hung in tattered shreds, blackened and vile, exposing areas of bone and weeping sores.

Their eyes were even more horrifying, appearing milky white and empty. Yet, it was that empty gaze that Zimo found most chilling. There was a predatory iciness in those eyes as if they were craving something...

They shuffled along the blackened pavement, their movements jerky and disjointed. Every time the rain fell on them, was another time some flesh seemed to dissolve from them, falling off and hanging to the side eerily.

At that moment when he saw the effect of the rain, he was glad he hadn't gone out there. But he still had a million questions in his mind, the most important of them all being: What the hell was happening… Was someone filming another season of "Fear the Walking Dead"?

Before Zimo could get the answer to that, he saw something that he could never believe. The "person" he was analysing seemed to come alive, speedily rushing at a storefront and then bashing the door open before pulling someone out to the open and sending them crashing on the floor.

What the hell? Was that not the coffee shop lady? Luckily, she had landed under the shade of a large umbrella so she was not exposed to the rain. Other "People" were rushing in though... He hoped the other barista was safe. Turning his attention to the lady who had been dragged out by the "person", Zimo's eyes turned wide.

The lady seemed to be screaming right then, her legs having sustained injuries after having scraped the exposed glass and getting cut. But the "person" did not care.

Every "person" that was out there did not care.

All they did was turn their bodies to the woman and pounce at her, getting down and kneeling on the floor before finally approaching her and greedily taking large bites of that person's flesh. 

"AAAHHHH!!! Please No!! Stop!! Please!!~~" she screamed, but nobody helped. Or rather. Everyone who could help was turned into one of those things... those "People".

As Zimo watched this lady get eaten alive, his heart raced with dread at the nightmare that was becoming his life… 

He already was working with a bunch of monsters. Could he not catch a break for once?