Reactor, February 2026
Francis is an estate agent in financial freefall, scraping together his salary to service debt while showing rental properties across the United Kingdom. What his colleagues Misha and Rafe — products of old money and private schools — treat as a prestigious career, Francis has stumbled into out of desperation. But the agency he works for serves a far darker clientele than young professional couples: the landlords are ancient, inhuman entities, eldritch parasites that have embedded themselves into the country’s housing stock for centuries, feeding on the emotional and spiritual essence of their tenants.
Francis acts as a procurer, screening prospective tenants not just for creditworthiness but for the quality of their suffering. The entity that occupies the Victorian terrace he manages communicates with Francis by possessing him — a violating, agonizing intrusion that leaves him bruised, starving, and bleeding. It demands “nourishment”: tenants rich in hope, ambition, and despair it can slowly consume. The fungal spores in the mould, the whispers in the brickwork, the creatures in the pipes — all are extensions of this being’s appetite.
The story moves through a series of viewings. Mr. Three, a fastidious, contained bachelor, is rejected as too “indigestible.” A young professional couple, referred to throughout as the Four-Thirties, are deemed far more promising — their clashing ambitions, suppressed resentments, and unexamined privilege make them ideal prey. Francis dutifully processes them, hating himself for it.
The moral fulcrum arrives unannounced on a Saturday evening: Maisie, a battered woman with finger-mark bruises on her throat, and her young daughter Alba appear at the door. Maisie is desperate — fleeing domestic violence, needing a place that very night. Alba, perceptive in the way children can be, immediately senses something wrong, whispering about a “bathroom troll.” The landlord stirs hungrily at their arrival.
In the story’s emotional climax, Francis physically forces himself out of the property, fighting the entity’s possession through sheer bodily pain — clawing at doorframes, reclaiming himself nerve by nerve. He takes Maisie and Alba to the agency, then finds them a listing nobody else cares about: a modest terrace owned by a warm, elderly woman named Mrs. Whetherell, who simply wants decent neighbors. Through practiced, well-intentioned manipulation, Francis engineers their introduction and tenancy, giving Maisie and Alba a door they can lock, a garden with strawberries, and a surrogate grandmother.
As penance for defying it, Francis signs the Four-Thirties into their tenancy anyway, offering them willingly to the landlord. The story closes with the couple moving in — happy, oblivious — as fungal spores settle into their skin in the shower. Michael coughs softly in the dark.
“Agency” is a bleak, sharply satirical horror story that uses the grinding cruelties of the British rental market as a literal supernatural conspiracy, drawing a direct line between economic exploitation and something ancient and monstrous. Francis’s small, costly act of mercy — all he can manage — is the only grace in a system designed to consume everyone.
George Sandison is an editor, independent publisher and writer. He spends his days heading up the fiction team at Titan Books, a found family of nerds deeply committed to the infinite wonders of genre fiction. Before that he ran the multiple-award-winning indie press, Unsung Stories, which closed in 2023. When not using his professional guises to smuggle unexpectedly weird stories onto unsuspecting bookshelves, he likes to write unexpectedly weird stories. His short collection, Hinterlands, is published by Black Shuck Books. He lives in London, a few minutes’ walk from ancient forests and 24-hour trains.