Friday Fun: So what Lovecraftian horror came down your chimney last night?

Now here's a question: What do you leave by the fireplace on Christmas Eve for a great old one to snack on? Probably your neighbours' kids.

Anyways, Tor.com has posted an amusingly creepy Christmas story by Charles Stross, Overtime.

It's certainly not every treacly Christmas story that has a passage like this one, describing the aftermath of an office party:

Whoever sat on the copier lid that time didn't have buttocks, hairy or otherwise--or any other mammalian features for that matter. What I'm holding looks to be a photocopy of the business end of a giant cockroach.

Maybe I'm not alone after all. . .

Or this one:

The incinerator is a big electric furnace, with a hopper feeding into it beside a hanging rack of sacks that normally hold the confidential document shreddings. I park the pie tray on top of the furnace (which is already cold enough that I risk frostbite if I touch it with bare skin) and hang the empty stocking from one of the hooks on the rack.

Ghastly hunger beyond human comprehension is the besetting vice of extradimensional horrors--if they prioritized better they might actually be more successful. In my experience you can pretty much bet that if J. Random Horror has just emerged after being imprisoned in an icy void for uncountable millennia, it'll be feeling snackish. Hence the tempting tray of comestibles.

Well worth a read. Enjoy your holidays!