Smudges and Circles

By Daniel R. Robichaud

This title contains two independently published novellas of terror, collecting "Oil Smudges" and "Circles Have Unsafe Dimensions" together for the first time.

Terror has many shapes and faces. In Smudges and Circles, Daniel R. Robichaud presents two aspects of terror, telling a ghostly story of corporate mis-management and a grueling tale of survival against monstrous odds and menaces.

"Oil Smudges" tells the tale of an oil and gas technology manager who is more interested in covering his own ass than in doing the best job he can. George Wishing has been tied to several high profile projects, but when some of those projects begin to have disastrous field results, George tries to move himself as far from those projects as possible. However, he soon learns that neither guilt nor ghosts are so easily escaped.

"Circles Have Unsafe Dimensions" tells the story of the Hash House Harriers, a drinking club (with a running problem) who play a modern day Hounds and Hares game. Groups can be found in every major city around the world. They gather for weekly events and this story joins one such group of hounds following their hare's trail into the storm drains of San Antonio. The trail is supposed to culminate in circle, a place to perform silly songs and share in camaraderie. However, circle is not the only thing awaiting them in the dark underground. A horror has been gathering its strength, breeding out of sight, and it is hungry. Oh, so hungry. Now, the Hash House Harriers must find a way to escape before all their avenues of escape are cut off and their lives are cut short.

Terror waits for those daring enough to delve into these worlds. Be thankful if you are gasping when you reach the end. At least you are still alive . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twice Told Tales II
• Release date: Dec 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463849279

Daniel R. Robichaud

Daniel R. Robichaud has lived in southeastern Michigan, central Massachusetts and southern Texas. He is a Rhysling Award nominated poet and the author of over one hundred stories, articles and poems, which have appeared in such markets as Shroud Magazine, Rogue Worlds, Goblin Fruit, Rage of the Behemoth, Green Prints, and WritersWeekly. Daniel holds degrees in both Physics and English, and his career path has reflected these passions. In addition to his numerous writing opportunities, he has been an Igor For Hire (aka a freelance research engineer), a substitute teacher, an automation engineer, and a neurophysiology lab manager. Daniel enjoys entertaining people with his words and stories. If you enjoy a good read, why not try one of his works? You might just love them.

Book preview

Smudges and Circles

Two Novellas of Terror

Daniel R. Robichaud

Dedication

These novellas are dedicated to

Larry Herskowitz, Brice Jackson,

Robert Drexl, Cynthia Houeiss, Richard Odusanya,

and Alex Stringer,

as well as all the coworkers

and Hash House Harriers I have known.

Didn't see these coming, didja?

Oil Smudges

The small smear on the transparent protective plastic cover atop George Wishing’s desk caused the middle manager no end of irritation. That mark was narrower than a dime, oval shaped, and yet it held a world of partial whorls and broken loops. A fingerprint that made no sense. The outer perimeter was perfect, unbroken. It could not have been made any cleaner by a grubby little cop rocking a suspect’s pinky left to right on one of those cards, and yet the interior was baffling in its incompleteness. Someone equipped with a three horsehair thread brush had eradicated whole pieces of the interior. Had the impression come from a burned finger? An acid scarred one? What bothered George was the question of origins. Open door policies only applied during daylight hours, but this had materialized overnight, when his sliding glass door was shut and locked. The position suggested someone sitting in his chair, maybe playing with his mouse or leafing through his documents.

The round-bellied evening janitor with the pleasant smile and trim hair had an armload of ink, glorifying the cartels or Christ or who could say. He seemed the sort to play with acids, toxic chemicals. Would an inspection of his fingers reveal this kind of damage? George had always suspected those people to be up to anything, especially when their actions weren’t scrutinized. Code of Business Conduct prevented his saying anything, but struck dumb did not also mean blind.

The round-bellied evening janitor had keys, but then again all those people did. The squinty eyed woman responsible for the break areas, a leathery skinned, sixty-year-old woman with dead, blank eyes whose lips spread and so did her jaws when she smiled and said "Hola, Good morning sir." Hungry sharks did not open their mouths that wide.

The smear had no gender tags associated, at least nothing George could see. They were all small, those people. Any one of them could have done it. So many had opportunity, but why?

He did not have long to investigate. The first of the morning’s meetings was coming up. A notification from Outlook, accompanied by that program’s tinny rendition of clarion trumpets told him he could fetch a coffee or drain the morning commute’s hydration, but not both.

Returning with a sloshing mug of brew born from the coffee dispenser's button labeled Strong-Caffeinated, flavored with two blue sweetener packets and a teaspoon dollop of powdered creamer, he dragged the sliding door shut behind him and found both the Meeting Starting notification as well as a second smear. This other impression rested four inches to the left of the first. Just far enough to bring George a momentary thought of having missed it the first time around. Could it have been there, unseen?

No. He was meticulous. His attention was meticulous. A storied career engineering for NASA and Big Red’s Sporty Downhole tools PSL before assuming the leadership of Big Red’s BNC Technology PSL had given him an appreciation for seemingly minor details. Minor details were like those people, they could stack and breed, becoming major infestations in less time than you'd expect. Minor details were the root causes of so many operations disasters. So. Many.

He dialed into the meeting, arriving second to last in a chain of thirty names from around the world. As usual, the new business was dire: A tool had flooded in Brazil, communication losses between a bottom hole assembly unit and its reel mounted DAQ in Saudi had resulted in ninety minutes of shut down and head scratching, and a pipe handling concern on a Mexican Hydraulic Workover Unit ejected 2,500-feet of jointed pipe from the well, resulting in three resources lost.

Chief for discussion was the communication loss, which necessitated a shared screen view of record sheets showing hundreds of thousands lost in NPT. The summed numbers were blurred by a smear on George’s screen, down in the lower left corner. Wiping with a tissue only made it worse, and licking the tissue was not an option once George had already begun wiping – who could say for certain what muck was in that smear? Nothing George wanted touching his tongue. Nothing George wanted to take into his body.

Second topic of discussion was the damned flooding concerns. This plague was afflicting too many Big Red Technology projects. If another incident resulted in non-productive time, then mitigation plans would yield to triage: a Reduction In Force and an influx of new blood. To no one’s surprise, the meeting’s host invoked the old adage of When in Doubt, RIF Trouble Out! as though it were gospel from the Book of Managerial Revelation.

Conversation then segued back into the communication losses, also an issue with recidivism concerns. Industry standards saw one data packet loss in a thousand as acceptable. For a twenty-six hour job, this amounted to approximately ninety minutes of lost data over the course of the entire job. In the reported issue, there was 110.256 minutes worth of data lost. Because the job was happening in Saudi Arabia, where a majority of the industry’s revenue and reputation crops were grown and reaped, the matter assumed a priority level higher than it perhaps needed. Results: more threats of RIFs and more affirmative grunting.

The workover rig losses were last mentioned and given all of three expository sentences and an action item: a tragic situation but the bottom line was not execrable; from what Root Cause Analysis could be performed, the rig issues hit during use of a new electric control system but they switched to hydraulic controls during the cleanup process and therefore restored productivity after only three hours of downtime; the lost resources were ultimately pickings from the meat market and therefore not the company’s valuable personnel. The negligibility status for local contractors went unmentioned and assumed. A more thorough RCA was even now being conducted by personnel on site; once completed, an explanatory document