Don’t lose your head over office politics…The horrors of the modern workplace meet actual horror in a fiendishly entertaining short story from New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.
When the lights go out and the slideshow begins, middle manager Jennifer has a disturbing vision: a headless colleague right across the boardroom table. Is it a trick of the light, or a vision of the future? She tries to brush it off and salvage the afternoon—but when her ex unexpectedly drops off her son at the office after school, suddenly her whole world takes an alarming turn.
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Indigo Room is part of The Shivers, a collection of haunting stories that reveal the otherworldly terrors all around us. Once you know, there’s no going back. Read or listen to each story in one unsettling sitting.
The Indigo Room is a chilling short story by acclaimed horror writer Stephen Graham Jones and part of The Shivers Collection. The story begins in a conference room named The Indigo Room. Here, protagonist Jennifer, through an apparent “trick of the light,” sees one of her colleagues missing their head and another missing a hand. Soon after the meeting, her ex calls, insisting on dropping off their son at her office, and her boss unexpectedly returns to the office. Dealing with multiple stresses at once, Jennifer is then faced with another high-stress situation that makes her question if her visions in the conference room were a foretelling of real-life horror.
The story is extremely short at only 36 pages and just under an hour on audio. The narrative begins with great intrigue and suspense, having Jennifer seemingly experience a horrifying hallucination to see her colleagues missing a head and a hand. From there, the story doesn’t really seem to find its footing—there’s a bit of office drama, marital drama between Jennifer and her ex, a bribing situation between Jennifer and a subordinate about babysitting her son, and a horror scene that comes out of nowhere. Perhaps all these interesting subplots could have been better fleshed out in a longer novella or full-length novel and created a more cohesive, memorable story.
Protagonist Jennifer comes across as defensive, self-centered, and manipulative, making her quite unlikable. When her son is brought to the office, she is suddenly concerned for his safety, but readers may be wondering why—is it her paranoia, or is something sinister really at work? Readers are not given enough information to piece it together. Just when she convinces herself that the visions she had in the conference room were her overactive imagination, something happens to make her think otherwise. There’s also some comedic subtext embedded in the horror—Jennifer’s boss showing up on a day when she’s not supposed to be in the office is a real-life horror in itself!
If you analyze the story from a multidimensional lens, it’s apparent that the author was ambitiously trying to create a multilayered, thought-provoking tale with a good punch of horror in very few pages—unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work. On the positive, the writing is excellent, and the dialogue is dramatically engaging (if not a bit over the top) to keep readers fully entertained—but it’s not a story that will linger past the final page. Once readers reach the climax, it’s difficult to decipher what’s really happening and what isn’t, which feels perplexing and somewhat unsatisfying.
If you’re considering reading this story, the audiobook is definitely the way to go. Narrator Kyla Garcia expertly narrates the story, using a tone infused with high tension and atmospheric suspense. She vividly brings Jennifer to life and makes her inner monologues and dialogue dramatic and compelling. The narration is perfectly paced, and the horror scenes at the end are well executed.
Overall, The Indigo Room is a unique short story that offers a quick punch of horror and office drama. It’s probably not the author’s best short story written to date, nor the best offering from “The Shivers Collection,” but it does stand out for originality and its entertaining dialogue. If all this intrigues you, consider giving this one a read or listen!
