Mean People Incorporated is a satirical horror novel set entirely in Hampton, Pennsylvania, where cruelty festers quietly behind polite facades-and where the devil has found fertile ground for recruitment.
The novel opens with a prologue introducing Mean People Incorporated, a shadowy but impeccably professional firm that specializes in dealing with mean people. Bullies. Abusers. Corrupt tyrants who poison everyone around them. The company promises discretion, investigation, and-when warranted-permanent solutions. At its helm is the eloquent and unsettling Lou S. Ciffer, a man whose charm disarms suspicion and whose contracts are always signed too quickly.
Each of the next four chapters functions as a standalone case. In every case, a different client-each pushed to desperation by a cruel individual-seeks out Mean People Incorporated. Lou listens patiently, probes gently, and agrees that the target is irredeemable. His staff, a rotating cast of disturbingly efficient employees who are never quite human enough, carry out investigations that end in grotesque, graphic acts of punishment.
But the novel steadily reveals an uncomfortable truth: the clients are not innocent victims. Each one harbors a past marked by selfishness, moral compromise, or quiet brutality of their own. Their decision to hire someone to kill or permanently maim another person becomes the ultimate proof of their corruption. The devil doesn't trick them into damnation-they condemn themselves willingly.
The contracts they sign, buried in elegant legal language and subliminal references to fire, descent, and eternity, demand payment upon completion of services. None of the clients question it. Relief blinds them. Vengeance feels righteous.
In the fifth chapter, clients are summoned to Mean People Incorporated's headquarters on the same day to make their payments. The building, once mundane, becomes unmistakably infernal as Lou drops his mask. He reveals the company's true purpose: not punishment, but recruitment. The bullied and the bullies alike are simply raw material for hell. By choosing cruelty as justice, the clients have proven they belong.
As their eternal fate is sealed, the novel underscores its central theme: hell doesn't need to corrupt humanity-it just needs to offer them permission.
Blending graphic horror with biting satire, Mean People Incorporated is a darkly comic morality tale about vengeance culture, ethical shortcuts, and the seductive appeal of letting someone else do your evil for you.
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