Most security writing sounds like somebody stapled a risk matrix to a wet sponge and called it communication. Nobody reads it because it’s bloodless, abstract, and has all the charm of an HR memo. It’s a beige cardigan stretched into prose. You’ve got to come to them, and if that takes playing with allegory, noir, satire, and a pinch of absurdism, it actually works because it sneaks past people’s defenses. If you want them to feel security, you can’t just toss acronyms at their heads like confetti. You’ve got to drag them into a story where they smell the rot, hear the static, and realize the danger in their gut.
The dark wood wasn’t just desolate; it was bureaucratically maintained. Fred and Stan limped forward, ISO27000 chained to their backs like the ghost of a middle manager’s failed dream, doomed to spend eternity trapped in a Zoom call that never ends. Each step barefoot on jagged policy statements drew blood. And ahead, the all-seeing eye of the auditor stared, hungry, unblinking, promising that not even their browser histories were safe. Users, broken and feral, lurched out of the dungeon cubicles in tattered polo shirts, clutching expired passwords like rosaries. The fellowship of compliance cracked, not with honor, but with turf wars over ticket queues and VPN privileges. Victory was optional. Audit was eternal.
The city never slept, but it did crash hard. Steam rose from the sewers, thick with the smell of burnt Cat5, ozone, and someone’s dignity after a failed pen test. It was the witching hour when nothing good happened. Hackers prowled. Crackers tried to matter. Packet loss drifted like ghosts, whispering about QoS. Somewhere a telco admin deleted a circuit because, hey, the label said “test.” Syslog warnings echoed through alleyways, shouted by a half-drunk street preacher wearing a “Got Root?” T-shirt. That was the street I walked. Cigarette ash, black coffee, and the sound of failing hard drives spinning like Russian roulette.
Then there was the hot tub. Twelve Swedish bikini models. Or so I thought. Fred leaned close, eyes glassy, voice low. “If they’re hot and you’re not, it’s a honeypot.” My heart sank as they shimmered, morphing into a wall of Reagans in bad suits and worse haircuts, every one of them wearing sunglasses indoors. They leaned in unison, shoulder pads creaking, pitching me a bundled managed service package. My mistake was swallowing both pills, the red and the blue. Now I was stuck in the compliance matrix with nothing but a risk register and a splitting headache.
Sally thought Tim was different. His firewalls sparkled, his paperwork never came back with red ink, and his SOC was quicker than a junkie’s excuse. Over dinner, candlelight flickering off his laminated policy binder, she let herself believe. Maybe this MSSP was the one. Then his phone buzzed. “You have mail.” She knew it before he did. Another incident. Another intrusion. Tim’s eyes went cold. There was no happily ever after. Just patch Tuesday.
This works because the trick is to embrace the absurdity. Cybersecurity is already theater. It’s trench coats and passwords on sticky notes, boardrooms chanting “best practices” like it’s a pagan ritual, and endless compliance frameworks stacked like Russian dolls. The part everyone forgets is that it isn’t Broadway. It’s community theater, with half the cast drunk, the lighting guy asleep, and the props already on fire. If you paint it like fiction, you don’t just teach, you stick it in people’s heads where it belongs.
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