The doors of the Bio-Research Area-12 meeting room opened slowly. Senior researchers and project directors walked numbly back to their offices. Kain Pathos Crow emerged from the meeting room with his paw on the controls of his electric wheelchair. The corridors remained silent; they had spent the last half hour adrift in a sea of bizarre and terrifying words.
Death was no more.
Never one to have his priorities out of order, Professor Crow turned his attention first to practical, immediate matters. The emotional ramifications, he decided, could wait their turn. When he moved towards his office, it wasn't a sense of dread that pushed him along, but a newfound sense of purpose.
Well, actually, it was a modified piece of hospital equipment that pushed him along, and that fact irked him tremendously. He passed a few people he recognized, and far more that he didn't. Young people. Most of the junior staff were around 30. He'd met a 21-year-old guard just yesterday.
His entire leg ached just keeping the chair moving him in the right direction. If he were being honest with himself, he'd admit it was nothing short of a miracle he'd lived this long.
Crow's office was like his mind: carefully constructed to appear less remarkable than it was. Unread books sat open on his desk merely because they smelled the nicest. A comfortable circle of cushions resting on his couch beckoned him tantalizingly. Occasionally, as he lay there, he had pondered what it would be like to go to sleep, and not to wake up.
But that ship had sailed. He wheeled himself to his desk and began dictating to his computer.

Project Codename: Lazarus
Project#: PRJOLM-14310193
Clearance and File#: NPF-00051473
Head Researcher: Professor K. P. Crow
Project Aims: To recommission, further upgrade, and utilize SCP-244-ARC for the purpose of allowing Professor K. P. Crow to remain beneficial to the Foundation indefinitely.
SCP Utilised:

SCP-244-ARC - as the base construct
SCP-447 - as a raw material
SCP-500 - as a raw material
SCP-914 - for the altering of raw materials
SCP-890 - for altering of materials and the finished product

Raw Materials:

One pill of SCP-500.
Five hundred liters of slime produced by SCP-447 as a biological preservative, disinfectant, and lubricant.
One heart-lung machine.
One dialysis machine.
250 kg of bulletproof glass.
One Anderson Robotics Neural Adapter

Refining and Altering Procedures:

Heart-lung machine, dialysis machine, and bulletproof glass to be refined using SCP-914.

SCP-890 to assist with further shaping the resultant machine to integrate with SCP-244-ARC chassis. This will be necessary in order to contain the slime produced by SCP-477.

Two weeks passed with shockingly little incident. Crow had rarely left his office, devoting nearly all his waking time to study at his computer. He read and reread every word of relevant information he could get his paws on. He was building his case, ensuring he had an answer for any rebuttal the council had.
He was expecting a lot of pushback. He figured he would need to cash in some favors. Hell, the possibility that the O5s would outright veto it loomed very real in his mind.
He was nervous when, starting from a nap, he saw a new message. He took a breath, then told his computer to open it.

NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION RECORDS AND INFORMATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
PRJOLM-14310193 has been approved. Requested materials will be made available at Site-19 within the next 24 hours.
— Alexander Hovis, Assistant Director, RAISA

Crow could hardly believe what he was seeing. He didn't even notice the tip of his tail twitching in its arthritic approximation of a wag. Wasting no time, he arranged to be on the next flight out to Site-19.

It was 6 in the morning, raining, and Crow hadn't had any coffee.
The flight to Site-19 had been a long and bumpy one, further intensifying the aches ailing Crow's joints. By the time they landed, he was so stiff he had to be carried off the jet and onto his wheelchair. Crow's tail slowly tucked itself between his legs as he pawed the lever on his chair, moving forward.
The handful of researchers and off-duty MTF personnel he had shared the flight with were already inside Site-19's loading bay, sheltered from the warm summer rains. A single figure stood out in the drizzle, one which his failing eyesight couldn't quite make out. As the distance between them closed, Crow caught a glimpse of the bright red gem set in the amulet hanging from their neck.
Oh no.
"Kain! You son of a bitch. What's up, dog?" Elias Shaw's smile was recognizable even when the face giving it belonged to a fifty-year-old woman, with black hair beginning to grey at the roots. In no time, he was walking behind Crow, pushing the wheelchair along.
"Just dealing with this monkey on my back." Crow let his paw slip from the controls and tried to get a little more comfortable. "I didn't expect to see you here, Elias. Don't you have a site to run?"
"Indeed I do, and part of that includes being aware what anomalies are and aren't actively contained here. You didn't think I was gonna let someone check out your old legs without making sure it was really you? What kind of friend would I be?"
"The kind that has an executive staff to delegate the task to. I know you, Elias. If you wanted to make a big show of it, you'd have met me at the containment chamber. Meeting me here, as soon as I'm off the plane, that means you're trying to meddle."
"What, meddle? Me? No." Shaw pshaw'd to the best of his ability. Even with eyes beginning to go milky, he could tell Crow saw right through him. "Ok, not meddle exactly. I'm just, 'ya know, curious about what's going through your head, old buddy." Shaw tried smiling disarmingly. He was terrible at it.
"It should be pretty obvious what's going on in my head. Old dogs tend to get even less spry as time goes on."
"To anyone else, yeah, maybe it would seem like a pretty straightforward case of you not wanting to get trapped in a useless body." Crow looked up at him with a furrowed brow. "But you and I both know there are easier ways of working around that particular problem than this."
Crow remained silent and went back to looking out in front of him, at nothing in particular.
"Do you remember what the very next project you started on after finishing the walker was?" Shaw continued after a moment.
"You know I do. What are you getting at?"
"When you think, you think big."
"Perhaps I do." Crow admitted, with a wry glance. They lapsed into the comfortable silence of those who knew one another very well. Shaw's rhythmic steps finally brought them to an unmarked containment chamber door. Crow watched as his friend entered the door's code.
The machine stood, slumped in the middle of the small containment chamber. Dust covered it, thick enough to obscure the shine of its polished metal. Its arms hung, touching the ground. Even in its state of disrepair, the machine was glorious. How fondly he remembered a time before it had been decommissioned, when he could jump, carefree, into its comfortable control seat.
Shaw couldn't contain his smile. "Kain. Your tail's wagging."

The Mess Hall had nearly cleared out by the time Crow and Shaw made it in.
Only a few late arrivals remained, picking at leftover muffins and scrambled eggs long dried from the heat lamp above. Crow had never much cared for the provided food; it all tasted synthetic, and it truly wouldn't surprise him if it turned out to be so. His snout wrinkled as the warm scent of nutmeg and grease from sausage patties infiltrated his nostrils. Maybe he did care for the sausages, at the very least they smelled the best out of everything. Or maybe that was the bacon? He was hungry.
Shaw wheeled him to one of the many empty steel tables, making sure to align the mobility chair with the edges as evenly as possible.
"I'll be right back."
Crow nodded, shifting about on his wheelchair. He felt uneasy knowing that his walker, his pride and joy, was just a few floors below. Of course, the cushiony satin delight of the old machine wouldn't mean much in a few days anyway. The entire machine was going to be refurbished and improved to better support his current state. In the meantime, he would ask someone to replace the seat of his mobility chair with that of the walker. Just because it would soon be useless didn't mean it already was.
He sat in silence, shutting his tired, paling eyes for a moment to enjoy the ambient sounds. Silverware clattering in the distant kitchen. Coffee pots bubbling. A fridge door opening, then shutting with a gentle thud. Footsteps. Footsteps. Clicking, almost. Heeled footsteps.
"Hey, buddy."
Crow's eyes shot open and his head turned to the source of the sound. His confusion quickly faded once he remembered the middle-aged woman standing before him was his friend. He sighed slightly, lowering his gaze. Shaw was wearing heels. Of course he was.
"Here you go."
A tray piled with sausages, bacon, and a smattering of hash browns was placed before him. Crow's tongue instinctively shot out of his mouth, drooling all over his chair. Shaw chuckled, taking a seat beside him and setting down his own tray. Before he could dig in, a hand stopped him.
"No, no. Bad boy. You forgot the special treat."
A double chocolate chip muffin. Shaw placed it atop a pile of sausage discs.
"Very funny, Elias." Crow rolled his eyes and nudged the pastry off his tray with his snout, digging into the meats before him.
"Oh come on. It's not like it will kill you." Shaw commented, introducing his fork to his scrambled eggs. Crow stopped and swallowed, then licked his lips. Worst it could do now was give his bowels a run for their money.
"No, it won't. And speaking of… that. How are you feeling about it all?"
"What do you mean 'how do I feel'? I feel like shit's good and fucked. But shit's been good and fucked for me for the past fifteen years. Why should this feel any different?"
Shaw idly picked at the remainder of his meal.
"Elias, I…"
"Yeah, you're sorry. Don't bother. It's a bit hard to care about new bars on the prison cell when you're collared to the wall." He idly tugged the amulet around his neck. "I know the world went to shit for you and literally everyone and everything else last month, but for me, it was just Thursday."
The two shared a long silence. Neither of them found the right words to say.
Shaw got up, leaving the remainder of his food behind as he vacated the mess hall. Crow looked down solemnly, pondering what to do next. Though Shaw's situation was arguably more unfortunate than this, he could not stop to dwell on the matter. Soon enough both he and Shaw would be free. That is, of course, if his brainchild worked. It had to.
The canine leaned up slightly in his chair, reaching for the chocolate chip muffin and taking a bite.
He had missed the taste of chocolate.

/

End of Death- Project Persephone

Who Wants To Live Forever?


Beneath her feet, cicada shells lay resplendent, numerous, myriad. A crunch like autumn leaves. The sky was pinkish, autumnal. Her
(hers?)
trees were all dying. But the good kind of death. A slow death. But the kind of death you come back from. The clean death of—
There was so much wood. It filled her nose in great gusts, and it was so much she'd be sure that the flakes from the bark and the cicada shells would needlenose deep down into her brain in the sockets of her body like an attack, like a cancer from the outside and
(wait)
How did she get here? These woods were unfamiliar. Woods were unfamiliar.
Veronica Fitzroy did not understand why she would have been walking out in the damp, in the cool. In the inhospitable breadth of nature's arms.
Viscera. Nature's viscera. There was red. Pouring from the trees like sap. She set her palm on the tree, and it pulsed. Hand retracted in revulsion. The bark came away like wet paper, sticking on her hand. Deer blood?
(what do you know about deer)
The shells were alive. Chittering, clattering, cracking over each other. Pinning to her legs, to her tights, climbing upward. Screams. They felt like they came from the trees.
She focused all of her attention to her head, to her brain, to her eyes. A practiced blink.
Still in the woods. But the trees didn't bleed. The cicada shells were leaves. Again? Or maybe for the first time. Brown, beneath her. Three points to each. Three speared. Blades.
A man was in the trees, but he could have been the trees or been within the trees since before she even came. He was supposed to be there, and it was okay that he was there.
It was a man. A normal man. Like someone's dad. Like Izzy's dad. But a bit more pudge. And glasses. And different hair. Maybe not Izzy's dad. But the wind of Izzy's dad. That dadly force.
(wake up and don't talk wake up and don't talk wake up and don't talk)
“Hi,” she said, in this her woods. “Do you live here, too?”
The man nodded. But the sound was a TOK-TOK-TOK. A hyoshigi. Like a kabuki play. And for a moment, the white facepaint accented in red fled across his face.
Bearded, glasses. Wings. A regular dad in a comfortable sweater. Red and dark green striped. Chittering, chittering. The sound of wings touching wings. The buzz of a bug caught between screen and
(carnival?)
glass.
“You make music, don't you?” it asked finally. The lenses of its glasses were green and red and purple and blue, and it took her too long to notice they were stained glass. Spelling out the names of saints. Scenes of fantastic mastery over Pagan excesses. Deep darkness, colored bright and shining and infinite.
“Yeah.”
“With a special touch, too, don't you?” It knew the answer. Slinked close to her. Fingers brushed with chitinous hairs touched hers, and she flinched. Too close. In too short a time. But she still could barely see the outline of his wings. The darkness, so colorful, so bright, followed him like a halo. Glitch on a VHS tape. A blur with lines of color, all hooded and cut out of reality into something else, blinking stupidly and blankly and unknowingly in the vastness of the all there was.
“Yes.” A voice that wasn't hers. An answer not verbalized, but spoken through wood and leaf and glass? Where was the glass if not his eyes? Locked into hers. Joining within her body. Probing, but leaving so much behind. Notes. Numbers. Signs. Phonemes. Jumbled, and so many. Countless. All at once. Crammed down, shouted like every parenthesis was a dagger in her gut.
(you've never felt in a dream before have you)
She would have screamed.
How does a bug smile?
“Do you take commissions then?”

Cousin Johnny relished the way muscles felt when they stretched. Smile. Frown. There was a kind of music in them. A subtlety that would have been so easy to miss. A frown was so close to a smile. Nearly identical, really. A minuscule difference. But he thought that he had truly mastered it.
The priest, the father, the skinny little man with the white collar and the whiter hair, combed up and toward the side like it hid the fact that he was balding. Johnny wished, quite dearly, that he could reach out and touch it. Rip them out from the core. Tear them out as he screams. Make him say thank you. Make him love him and force the hair down his throat, have the old piece of shit fooling no one devour the remnants of what was never close to a lustrous mane.
But no. That was not the business at hand.
This was serious. Salvation was for later.
“I'm sorry. What did you say?”
“It's quite alright to be distracted. I understand the loss of both parents can be a lot for one man to go through. Do you have any siblings, Johnny?”
“No. Mom and dad, well, they never were able to get into it all again after I came. A little bit too much trouble to get the bedroom goin'. Sorry about that, father. Couldn't resist.”
The priest blinked and blushed. How sweet his blood would dazzle and razzle against the floor, against his cheeks suddenly flush white, and fuck, was that a tremor of excitement? How sweet his teeth would feel, crunching and breaking. The sign of his adulthood, of his entrance into the world of God and Man. Confirmation by blood. Blood mouth.
Johnny's stomach gurgled. He didn't enjoy that. The body he had borrowed, a child he had long ago touched, put the bit of spirit into the little bastard, and kept the holy holies going until there was a perfect Johnny shaped hole to step into. It still had needs. Needs that Johnny resented. To be God and Man was weakness. Perfect strength in weakness. Happened once, and so again.
Oh god, and the collar. The priest's collar would be wonderful. All white. Red and black, if Johnny slit his throat. Like a little cardinal, and—
“J-Johnny, are you okay?” Pale. Trembling.
What did the priest know of fear? What did the priest know of eons? But, Johnny took gauge of himself. Was he, was he being strange? Maybe. He was a little excited. It was so close, after all. So very fucking close. So one could excuse him for being a little loose.
Perhaps the sweating did it in. Johnny looked at his hands. Trembling.
“I'm sorry. It's just, you don't know my mom and dad, Father. I just, I just don't think they'd want a big how to, you know? Something. Gosh, if we could, my dad'd want Eucharist replaced with beer and pretzels, but I supposed I'd have to petition the Holy Father for that one, huh?” And Johnny slapped his stomach hard enough for the slap to ring throughout the empty house.
The priest winced.
The rectory smelled like the elderly, even though the father was certainly not a year older than fifty-two. Johnny was struck by how easy it would have been to take the man's life. To turn the smells into something else. Putrid but sweet and high in the air, almost alluring in the way it evaded. Tantalus.
“What would you think they'd like?”
For a few seconds, Johnny was silent. As though deep in thought.
“All they'd want is a song. During Sunday's mass, Father, could you just, well, have the, uh, pianoman? Up there? Could you have him play this song my mom used to sing? I can bring the sheet down on, uh, Friday.”
“Not much time to practice.”
“It's a simple song. And, well, I'd like to sing. If that's alright.”
For a moment, the priest faltered. Did he see through the glammer for a moment? Doubtfully. Maybe he was just afraid his singing voice was shit.
“It's, just, it's not something we usually do.” A cough. “But I understand. We can work it in after Eucharist, if that's acceptable.”
Johnny smiled, and he said, “Why, that'll be just perfect. Thank you. Thank you so fuckin' much. Pardon my language, Father. Pardon. I'm just so excited.” And he had taken the man's hands, pumping them up and down.
The priest flinched at the touch and the roughness. Johnny's grip was tight enough that his knuckles were white. His eyes flashed.
“Your hands are so hot. Are you, are you okay?”
Johnny threw back his head and laughed. A long, drawn out buzzing drone. Louder and louder, bordering on the obscene. Until it cut. Almost like a plug had been pulled. And then he said, “Oh, you know fat guys like me. We run hot, Father. We run fuckin' hot as balls.”
“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

Salt water hung in the air. Mostly the salt. The smell of fish, absolutely disgusting. Like an open wound? Gangrene. Except that was almonds. This was a nutty kind of fish, maybe? Or a bug. A cut open bug.
The ship did not sail smoothly. The sea roiled. She stepped to a rail. Down into the depths. The water flowed stained glass. The pieces jutting against each other and outward, flowing inward and outward, but never mixing. Like oil on the surface of a bubble. Oil in a bubble?
“Trouble, trouble.” A voice at the prow. “Did you write my song?”
The sails were green and brown. Emblazoned with a golden bug. She didn't recognize it. No one was at the wheel, but she knew the ship was going a route. Left and right. Swaying, almost. The wood was wet. It was slick. So slick. Stifling scent. Like rot, but heavy sweet. She could barely smell it.
Tantalus sits in the old gum tree.
“Yes.”
“I knew you would, Veronica. Dreams are persuasive. And you always like a challenge, don't you?”
The air was stifling. Hot. No breeze from the sea, even though the waves pelted the ship's sides as though something were slapping them. Sea foam sprayed into the air. Into her mouth. The taste of salt. Salt and bitter herbs. Long walks. Long, empty stretches of desert. Was he the desert or the salt? Was he the giver of the bread or the golden calf?
(a thing older than time as old as god or maybe it is god and you need to wake up we need to wake up and we need to not be party to this you stupid bitch i love us but come on come on come on)
“Or the thing that breathed the name of the calf in their ears? What does it matter? Besides, I don't think I do Jewish things yet. Give me time, Veronica. I'm a boy who's good at learning. An eager boy.”
“What?”
The thing at the prow was at the ship's wheel then. A captain's hat. A hint of something. Tri-cornered. A jacket like the armored wings of a beetle.
“Sing for me. Sing me the song I gave you. Give me the words and the notes.”
“What is this for? You never told me. What is this for? I just, I just woke up and wrote it. I don't, I don't know why I wrote it.”
The thing in her dreams, the thing that was her dad and everyone's dad, a bug that lived in the earth for a billion trillion eons, ages beyond Gods and beyond time, before it crept up beneath the foundation of the house and broke through more than topsoil, broke into your basement and got right in the washing machine. The thing smiled. She knew all this, because she was the first mate.
“First mates write the songs,” it said.
“Where will we play?”
“You won't be there.”
The waves continued unabated.
The thing shaped like a man shaped like a bug shaped like a man had a violin on his shoulder. The strings were wrong. Locks of hair pulled taut. Black and blonde and red and one platinum streaked with a greenblue like a parrot, startling in its beauty before he took his fingers to them and plucked a note that sounded more like meat thudding against stone than anything close to a string.
“Needs tuning,” it sang.
What was that noise? Behind its voice. It sounded like the summer. Like those things in the trees. What were those?
“Sing with me.”
“But you don't know the words,” she said. And
(don't please don't)
above them, there was a noise like a buzzing. Droning. It reminded her of an old friend's noise music. Of GameBoy Colors pressed against exposed wire. A harsh noise wall with a kind of a warble, an organic agency that echoed through what was that wood like a flute maybe. A great squawking buzz, and it was a kind of heat, a magnet that pulled her upward. The sea bubbled, and the glass on the surface, that was the surface and the bottom and the middle, cracked, and she didn't see it, but she could hear it cut through the monotone.
“Don't look up,” it said. “Sing for me. I know the words, even when I don't.”
Veronica did not tremble. A void above them. A living thing. A wide, open nothing like a percussive behind the all there was and ever would.
The words meant nothing. But each one was important. Syllables, sounds, all put together in the perfect order. The math, in the waking hours, had eluded her. And here, it was hardly more understandable. But she had sang it in the flesh. And nothing had happened to her.
So, to this thing in her dreams, Veronica performed the song it had requested. To its exacting stipulations.

“Are you the, uh, pianist?” Cocking his head, but no TOK-TOK-TOK, just a small crack of bone. But loud enough that the organist winced. “Organist, right? Funny how both sound so dirty, right?” In the choir, there was a kind of reverence. So high above the pews, all laid out in beautiful rows.
The organist was another small man. He was as large as Johnny was, physically, but there was a smallness to most men that Johnny found pitiable. Cousin Johnny cracked both thumbs, and the organist said, “What do you mean?”
“Male organ. Penis. Come on, buddy. You never heard this before?” Johnny clutched the paper in his fingers, tight on the paper like sausage that didn't leave a grease stain. “But yeah, I hope Father Tim told you about the special request?”
The sheet music, pressed into the man's chest. “Of course, of course.” And he scanned it, brow furrowing. Oh, a man who could read music so quickly? What a phenom! Truthfully, Johnny was impressed when the man said, “It's an odd song, sir. It, it doesn't really seem like it would sound all too nice, to be honest. Sir.”
“My mother wrote it.”
“Oh.”
“Well, dictated it. It was something, something she always hummed, when she made me.” Only half a lie, maybe. Didn't the humans enjoy more of a story? Johnny's skin, red hot, sweat. He could feel the glands, each releasing their putrid waters to cool him. But Johnny ran hot. Especially when he was so close.
“And you're, uh, going to sing, Johnny? Do you, do you have any singing training? If you'd like, we can practice together. I think it might be for the best. The song is very odd.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh,” said the organist. “To which?”
“I've never been properly trained, of course. But my parents always said I had a fine set of pipes, you know. I always thought I had more than one good set of pipes, if you catch my drift.” The guffaw echoed throughout the empty church in a way that Johnny relished. To command attention in the house of salvation, of purity. Of change and growth and love. So much love.
“That's fine. That's fine. So, are you available to, uh, practice before the mass?”
“Sorry, sorry. I got a lot to attend to. What with the cremation. And the, uh, you know. Monetary stuff. I never had a mind for that, you know. Feels wrong to even talk about it in, you know, my father's house, but this is just a lot for me to do. Only child, you know. One begotten and not made, you know what I'm saying jingles man?”
“I understand, Johnny. I really do. But if you could just stop once before it'd be a really big help.” Mewling. God, his lips were so thin. Johnny wanted to tear them from his face. Why even have them? “Could you come by tomorrow?”
“No,” said Johnny. “I believe I said no, pianoman. I don't like to repeat myself. You been asking me to repeat myself quite a bit. That usually what you do to a mourning man, pianoman?”
Electricity. Johnny relished this as much of the minute machinations of the human body as it ran through all of its vital resources in an attempt to keep up with what Johnny demanded of it. This was electricity of a different kind. Social electricity? One man won, and one man lost. This was a dance, but Johnny preferred to bludgeon. To cajole. To come in low and then promise the stars. Tear out their testicles. Make them wear it. Hello, dolly! Eat it, you bastard. Eat it and choke on it until you see my Father and tell him that Johnny's coming.
“No, no. I'm sorry.” A blush, high on his cheeks.
All of the flesh were the same, but at least now he understood what made him different from them. Their imprisonment within was permanent. But his could be alleviated. And would.
“I'll see you at the mass, pianoman. I promise, once you play it, the tune'll grow on you. And trust me, I got the words down to heart. And it really makes a big difference when you hear it. You'll love it. One of those things you'll never get out of your head.”

The spice and dust of old books was romantic, sure, but the particulates in the air were like old spices that lodged into your lungs, Veronica, and the flesh would go over and over and over like a bump like a pearl, except this pearl was a tumor all for you, beautiful and made of knowledge and ink and—
“Quiet in the library,” it said. Voice a slur, coming from her elbow. She took the book, one in the countless rows. It was dry to the touch, but her fingers touched a grease and came onto her fingers like burnt. Did someone put it in the oven? Why was the book so hot? She opened it, and the book said, in words and in voice and in picture and in particulate, each one, hand in hand, coming to her lungs and to her brains to get down into the flesh and get things working in a bad way, “I'm not going to be here for long this time, you know.”
“Oh, okay,” she said.
The book's carapace chittered, and she screamed, dropping it. Legs came from the paper, and it situated itself, capering back and forth before remembering how to walk. And then it was a man. There was no transformation. The man was a book and a bug and a wood and a glass and a sand, but it was also a man who was fat and had glasses shaped like her
(your dad didn't look like that)
dad's. Her dad. The bug.
She took its hand.
It led her down endless rows. Its hand was hot. Something made a noise like the summer from the trees and
(cicada song you looked it up it's cicada song)
the books were all clamoring for her. Staying in the bookshelves, but the pull was undeniable. They wanted her in the stacks. Forever touching and reading and perusing and browsing and—
“I want to thank you for giving form to the thing that was inside of me. I'm going to join with something greater. I'm going to meet my parents. My parent. The two in one. And then we will be the three in one. All great things become greater, you understand.”
“Uh, okay.” And then, “What does a song have to do with it?”
The bookshelves twisted further and further, almost intersecting at points, but still he pulled her through them. Throughout and throughin. Throbbing. This was wrong, and the wood in the paper was everywhere in the shelves and in the walls and the floors.
And the thing that was her dad and the cicada all in one turned to her with a TOK-TOK-TOK, and it said, “I'm going to put so much of me and mine into so many, that I don't think my parents can stay dead.”
Except, Veronica knew dead also meant asleep. It also meant cocooned. It meant hibernation, and it meant—

The song that Johnny had gotten from the dreams of the magical girl was ready. The mass had been boring, sadly. Johnny had not touched it. He had not brought back anything into it. No vitality. No salvation. Just emptiness. Nothing to touch the thing greater that had made him. Nothing for his daddy or his mommy. Nothing for anyone, really.
But then, the priest said, “Now, my children, a new member of our flock, John…” and he trailed. Johnny smiled. “Is going to perform a song in honor of his mother and father. This mass has been offered up to them. Johnny has informed me it's a song his mother had written. It, uh, doesn't, doesn't have a name, I think.”
The priest was sweating. Johnny could smell it from the choir. The pianoman had been tense the whole mass. Probably nervous about the moment of truth. Perhaps nervous about the bloodstain that rippled from Johnny's collar down his shirt.
The body wasn't going to last much longer. He ran too hot for these things to last long. And he was not ready for the cross. But for an awakening.
Johnny coughed and took the microphone. The pianoman began to play, and Johnny prodded him, putting up a finger and shaking his head. The pianoman stopped. Johnny smiled.
“I just wanna apologize if this isn't the best thing you heard all morning. I can't touch the beautiful ladies I got up here,” and he gestured at the choir within the choir. All in red robes. Most old. Barely singing, so much as croaking. “But I hope you all enjoy it.”
And as the discordance began, so did Johnny begin to sing.
The words were as nonsensical as the song. The priest coughed from his chair, having moved from the pulpit. He stared at the choir. So, too, did those in pews turn to catch the man who was singing nonsense.
This did not last long.
The screams began in earnest once the first verse was finished.
The altar was black. There was no priest. No altar boys. There was a space of darkness, sparkling, bright darkness that had taken over. One man ran to the oblivion. Possibly the father of an altar boy. He fell into the darkness. As soon as his form hit it, it was blown upward then downward, plunged forward into nothingness.
The screams died out as the mouths of those in the very full pews hung open.
The pianoman kept playing, but his mouth, too, hung open, tongue out stupidly. Like a dog. Reaching over, Johnny pulled it from him like taffy, dropping it off to the floor below with a plop.
From their mouths, there was something like a glowing ball of light. It wasn't formful so much as formless, but it gave the impression of a ball. It tore from their bodies in gouts of blood, pulling out intestines and leaving them cut and charred as they turned up the heat. They flowed into the center of the room and then came together.
It was something like a hand, really. A probe. An eye. A touching finger, so rough and scratchy.
The song was over, because the pianoman's fingers no longer worked.
The church was quiet as Johnny walked down the steps from the choir into the silence. Light, morning light, spilled in from the stained glass. Johnny had always loved stained glass best. The energy, their energy, the ones who had listened to his song so well, shone in facets like a gem but flowed over itself like a living microbe. Johnny raised his hand, and the flowing orb crept to the darkness that had overtaken the altar.
Johnny followed it.
“Mommy?” he said.
“Daddy?” he said.
The souls of all the dearly departed, under the mercy of Johnny the Son, may they rest in the bowels of the Cicada, touched the darkness and fell forward.
The light it provided was little, but it illuminated what was not a void but the home of something great and large. Sparkling lights, colors in the darkness. Feelers. Chitin.
Johnny smiled, and he stepped in.
The darkness fell away from the altar.
The priest and the altar boys were nowhere to be seen. The blood of the congregation pooled in brown sticky, drying puddles around their feet.
Ten o'clock mass would be soon.

Hi! My competitor, in this no-holds barred killathon, has also written a great piece.
Check out UraniumEmpire's story here.

Tyrone Joins The Family → Sometimes Manna Is Just a Cicada Shell → This Tale


Welcome to the International SCP Foundation Network's public forums.

The following statement is available for public viewing and commentary. Opinions expressed in this statement reflect those of the original author alone. For details and disclaimers, see postscript.

Insisting Containment is Unethical Hurts Anomalies, Not the Foundation
Posted: Friday, October 25th, 2024 09:09 | Category: Opinion/Discussion | Topic(s): North Carolina State Law, Human(oid) Containment
On Tuesday, House Representative Moria Lucas (I-NC) proposed a bill which, if made into law, would require the Foundation to release human anomalies from custody if a given anomaly had not experienced in the past six months a flareup of any effects which would violate NC law if taking place in public1. Understandably, this attracted the attention of several anomalous peoples' rights organizations and reporting agencies — including but not limited to the Serpent's Hand and anti-Foundation legal firm Leeward & Warner Legal Solutions, as well as Information Breach Publications — who were quick to voice their support for the Representative's bill.
I am a Type E Class II Scranton-Type Human Anomaly; put simply, that means reality doesn't function correctly around me, and the 'Type E' part indicates that I have no control over when or how the effects occur. With November just around the corner and every candidate for any party factoring their stance on the Foundation into their campaigns, I find it a pressing matter to explain why forcing the Foundation to follow an external government's delegations for containment is a dangerous idea.
89% of my effects can be countered with a specific type of technology — a Scranton Reality Anchor — and empirically tracked using a unit called a Hume. (The other 11% of my effects aren't understood by the Foundation nor I — and nor were they by my second cousin on my mom's side, who was the only other person in my family to ever experience said effects.)
It is only by result of this equipment that I am not in danger on any given day; I did not always have these effects, and if Foundation personnel had not been present the day they first manifested, I and several (more) other people would be dead. If the equipment in question were not fixed in an array that completely surrounds me when I am in my chamber (one device is connected to a grid which is inlaid in the walls, floor, and ceiling), there's a good chance I could fall straight through the solid material of the ground for a few hundred meters and rematerialize in the same physical space as the bedrock, or create a localized spatial anomaly "less real" than the surrounding room and get trapped inside of it long enough to starve because time progresses 400 times slower inside of it, or experience any number of other dangerous issues. (Both of those examples are true and happened to anomalous civilians in 2022 and 2023 respectively; Type E reality benders are the second-most-common type of human anomaly, so none of this should be news to the politicians that claim to be knowledgeable about such issues.)
Despite all this, I have not experienced a flareup of my effects in more than six months. Thus, Representative Moria Lucas would want me living on a residential street, because she does not comprehend what containment actually is or what purpose it serves for someone like me. I haven't had a flareup because Foundation personnel are doing their jobs — and they need to keep doing them in order to continue my safety. Containment is not a temporary procedure that fixes all of someone's problems. It is not a treatment, it is an ongoing scientific challenge; the personnel designing the procedures are not doctors, but something closer to engineers; Site-42 is not a hospital nor a prison, it is just a facility designed to accommodate me and people and things like me as safely as possible, because the world outside can't accommodate me. To the Foundation, I am someone affected by forces out of my control, and their goal is to help me live as normally as I can in the environment demanded by my circumstances.
If made into law, this legislature would override both the Foundation's wishes and mine; as the anomalous person, the government would not allow me to stay, even if that were what I wanted. According to Rep. Lucas, the reasoning behind this is the notion that a contained human anomaly's environment and heavily regulated lifestyle prevent them from being able to discern what is best for them. While even the Ethics Committee recognizes this line of reasoning and shares those concerns (albeit applied to different issues), I question how Lucas could encourage government intervention in good faith. What reason has American government given me to trust them over the Foundation? Who is objectively more knowledgeable about how to help me?
And lastly: I find disturbing the lack of attention given by media or politicians to nearly any anomalous intervention organizations other than the Foundation. If I were forced to live offsite, I would immediately be at risk of kidnapping, assassination, violence or assault, and all of the above or more at the hands of groups like the Chaos Insurgency, Global Occult Coalition, etc. The fact that the suits and cameras only want to focus on the people whose goal is to protect me from the former groups and from my own effects continues to baffle me. And before you call me delusional or whatever, the past five years have not been 100% smooth sailing; I remember myself falling for the "they're brainwashing you" shit only a couple years ago and putting up a fight with them about every single thing. Looking back, there wasn't one time they weren't willing to put up with my shit, and hindsight is 20/20.
—Jasper ███████ (SCP-████)
Initial Containment Date May ██ 2019

This statement is available on the International SCP Foundation Network's public forums under the 2024 Open Communications Program, a Region I Southern US Sites initiative, following review by the Ethics Subcommittee for Sentient and Sapient Anomalies. This post has not been edited, with the exception of removing the original author's identifying information. The opinions expressed in this post reflect the original author's alone and do not necessitate a consensus of opinion among SCP Foundation personnel and/or contained entities.

58 comments
Thread locked by IntSCPFN administration 10/25/24 11:38
This thread cannot accept new civilian posts.

10/25/24 09:19 Anonymous in Beaufort NC USA wrote:
oh honey

10/25/24 09:21 Anonymous in Wilmington NC USA wrote:
Can OP read our comments or…?

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10/25/24 09:23 Anonymous in Durham NC USA wrote:
Good point. I'd guess not?
10/25/24 09:28 Blanchard01 in Site-42 NC USA wrote:
OP does not have an IntSCPFN account (their post was made by the interviewer) but will be shown the answers when or if they ask.

10/25/24 09:32 Anonymous in Columbia SC USA wrote:
*slaps a disclaimer on it* now it will sound real

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10/25/24 09:36 ElaineStarckEC in Site-42 NC USA wrote:
We recognize that we cannot prove they said any of that, but they wished it to be said nonetheless, and allowing public statements from sapient anomalies in a safe and moderated context is part of the 2024 Open Communications Program.
10/25/24 09:39 Anonymous in New York City NY USA wrote:
^ b u r e a u c r a t s p o t t e d ^

10/25/24 09:40 Rogers404 in Site-81 IN USA wrote:
I can't say I understand the necessity of this…

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10/25/24 09:44 Trauss51174 in Site-42 NC USA wrote:
It may not be necessary. It's a glance at their perspective regardless.

10/25/24 09:42 KellyWess (Verified) in Washington DC USA wrote:
The viewpoint of people like OP is more important than ever in this day and age. While I disagree with a majority of the Foundation's actions, I appreciate them openly allowing flow of information like this. Containment should be optional.

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10/25/24 09:43 Anonymous in Los Angeles CA USA wrote:
Optional? So if someone, say, sets shit on fire with their mind all the time and can't control when it happens, they should just get to choose to live out in public wreaking havoc?
10/25/24 09:45 Anonymous in San Francisco CA USA wrote:
If this really is Kelly Wesson the Congresswoman, why haven't you proposed a bill for it yet, if that's what you believe in? Could it be because you're just saying shit to get voted in for another term…? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 gee I wonder
10/25/24 09:46 Anonymous in Wilmington NC USA wrote:
@anon its not as simple as "just make a bill" lmao

10/25/24 09:50 Anon938912 in Seabreeze NC USA wrote:
so this person lives in 42, less than a mile from my house. Weird to think about

10/25/24 09:57 JamieCornings in Bloomington IN USA wrote:
The media doesn't pay attention to anyone other than the SCP Foundation because the SCP Foundation fucked up the most shit in the past ten years, that's why.

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10/25/24 09:59 M45 in Winston-Salem NC USA wrote:
u know the employees never take bait like that on these forums right
10/25/24 10:01 eyeofthestorm in Charlottesville VA USA wrote:
@M45 i doubt that was bait, just a (accurate) statement he was makng
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10/25/24 10:08 northwest2 in Wilmington NC USA wrote:
This is so fucking sad to me because this is one of the ones they treated well who is never even going to be aware of shit like 231, who is never even going to know about all the nasty shit they do to other skips and who is just going to get old and die in a concrete box and think they were given a good life (and this type of comment is why they're not letting OP look at said comments, I'd bet)

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10/25/24 10:10 MarkLark in Chicago IL USA wrote:
Don't they have mind erasing chemicals? they could just show him and then wipe it out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
10/25/24 10:14 Trauss51174 in Site-42 NC USA wrote:
@MarkLark It's biologically unsafe to amnesticize a reality bender in almost all cases. And it would especially be out of the question for a reason like this.
10/25/24 10:16 MarkLark in Chicago IL USA wrote:
In ~almost all~ cases?
10/25/24 10:17 Anonymous in Wilmington NC USA wrote:
pour one out for bootlickers like Trauss who think they're the good guys
10/25/24 10:24 Anonymous in Atlanta GA USA wrote:
This is facts right here. Jasper's received ethical treatment by the Foundation — good for them, but politicians like Lucas aren't thinking about lapdogs like them when they draft these laws, they're thinking about all the people who have been held against their will, experimented on, etc. There do exist anomalous people that want and can control their effects, and the Foundation has taken them too on many occasions; we can't erase those experiences in favor of oh-so-heartwarming perspectives like OP's. This is probably a real anomaly talking in this post, but it's one who's never seen the pre-public-judgement Foundation. (You know, the real Foundation.)
10/25/24 10:26 northwest2 in Wilmington NC USA wrote:
^ THIS

10/25/24 10:20 MorningGlories in Wilmington NC USA wrote:
How many human SCPs are in Site-42? This isn't the same one from that Information Breach story about the scandal, is it…?

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10/25/24 10:29 MarkLark in Chicago IL USA wrote:
OOF, now that would really be the icing on the cake…
10/25/24 10:37 LouAA in Bethesda MD USA wrote:
?? Does anybody know what MG is talking about?
10/25/24 10:39 KappaKC in Washington DC USA wrote:
@LouAA yep pretty sure I know what situation theyre referring to. Information Breach did a piece on it here (warning for nsfw topics in that article)
10/25/24 10:45 LouAA in Bethesda MD USA wrote:
Oh. OH. Oh, what a can of worms.
10/25/24 10:50 KappaKC in Washington DC USA wrote:
Yyyyyep.
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10/25/24 11:00 KappaKC in Washington DC USA wrote:
@anon they have every right to have an opinion on this shit, and all of that happened two years ago. That is, if it's even them, I mean they did say they're one of the most common types of human SCP, so it may not even be them

10/25/24 10:40 Anonymous in Nashville TN USA wrote:
u pay rent bro ?

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10/25/24 10:41 Anonymous in New York City NY USA wrote:
he pays no rent and in return he gets no life
i mean for real, unless i'm missing something here, the scp is saying that he can't even leave his room without experiencing anomalous shit that could hurt him. so do i gather that this guy hasn't even breathed fresh air in 5 year??
10/25/24 10:47 Trauss51174 in Site-42 NC USA wrote:
@NYC anon, I've been assigned to *them a few times before. Their effects are exacerbated by panic and stress symptoms — particularly the 11% we don't understand that they talked about in that post — but are otherwise manageable so long as the ambient Hume level immediately around their person is stabilized to close to baseline, which is within the capabilities of a portable SRA. Thus, it's entirely possible to walk outside with them for a short period of time, and we do this whenever they ask for it. They're opposed to permanently leaving because using a portable anchor is not foolproof and definitely needs one of us close by in case something goes wrong.
10/25/24 10:50 Anonymous in Nashville TN USA wrote:
@Trauss51174 pls use english for my stupid civilian brain
10/25/24 10:55 Anonymous in New York City NY USA wrote:
@Trauss51174 If the containment equipment is embedded in the walls, why can't you embed it in the walls of a normal house on the street?
10/25/24 11:00 ElaineStarckEC in Site-42 NC USA wrote:
Anonymous from New York, this is something we hope to make possible in the near future, both for this anomaly and others like them. Currently, the 11% unpredictability is a barrier to safely containing them offsite; were there to be an accident, neither Jasper nor we would want it to occur around civilians rather than within a facility that is designed to withstand anomalous events.

10/25/24 11:16 Anonymous in San Francisco CA USA wrote:
comments are becoming a trainwreck

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10/25/24 11:21 LouAA in Bethesda MD USA wrote:
I've seen worse on here
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10/25/24 11:20 Anonymous in Raleigh NC USA wrote:
bad post OP

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10/25/24 11:20 Anonym5 in Portland OR USA wrote:
It's not fake. They would have literally no reason to fake it.
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10/25/24 11:21 Anonymous in Denver CO USA wrote:
"voting time is coming up so here's my platform"
"they would have no reason to fake it"
10/25/24 11:28 Anonymous in Wilmington NC USA wrote:
Yeah, the timing is definitely suspicious.
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10/25/24 11:35 KappaKC in Washington DC USA wrote:
@Kentucky anon no, there's no reason to argue that… Jasper is clearly sapient and capable of self-awareness. To indicate otherwise is an insult to their intelligence. They've had five years of experiences and they want to share what they've concluded from those experiences, they are not in the wrong for "getting political" when the politics in question affect them personally. that said I can see how the whole post sounds fake/too good to be true — and if we even have to question if it's real, well, that proves a point in and of itself…
10/25/24 11:37 Anonymous in Leland NC USA wrote:
The number of people suggesting that Jasper somehow isn't allowed to have a pro-Foundation opinion speaks volumes louder than any censorship of anomalous people the Foundation may be perpetuating. This is their life. Listen to them about it.
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10/25/24 11:38 Crowns433 (Moderator) in Site-42 NC USA wrote:
Okay, this is getting off-topic. While the driving influence behind the 2024 Open Communications Program is accessible information, personal identifying information was left out of that post for the anomaly's safety, and insistence that said details should be disclosed in order to prove the individual's legitimacy is not acceptable. Furthermore, the Foundation does not and cannot publicly endorse nor speak ill of election candidates; the opinions in this thread's opening post are the anomaly's alone. The anomaly's assigned personnel will log this and show them a relevant and appropriate selection of responses, as was intended; thank you for your engagement and interest, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

10/25/24 11:38 Crowns433 (Moderator) locked this thread

Footnotes
1. “effects which are both uncontrollable and unpredictable and have the potential to affect physical objects, physical laws, and/or living organisms within a reasonably close range of the effect's source” (NC APP 4-C6-NC ¶A)


October 26th
12:00 PM

To: jobs@s-c..cplastic
From: LauraAshrbooke@Witchshut..com
Subject: I'm Sorry
I'm sorry.
I made the Pit Sloth. Or it made me make it. It took my boyfriend, and thought I wouldn't notice. If you find him, please, help him.
If you're reading this, it's probably caught me already. I wrote in a weakness for it, into one of my stories— it's not much, but the Pit Sloth, and anything made by it, can't hurt people reciting prayers. Ed suggested it.
If you find Ed, tell him I'm sorry.
Laura Ashbrooke

Those assembled in the auction barn in Zone-SCP-097 looked at the message that was on their tablets. Montgomery Reynolds scratched his head as Sinclair leaned against him. "So, now what?"
"Well, Mr. Reynolds, we have an avenue of attack." Tofflemire was at the stage in the front, next to Alison. "…it is Mr., right? Like, you're just a consultant?"
"They don't give out doctorates in alchemy." Montgomery wrapped his arm around Sinclair.
"We have a way to protect ourselves." Agent Carol stood next to Robert. "The Pit Sloth's being kept alive by its works. In one of them entitled 'The Demon in the Pit'… well, the weakness is spelled out there. It can't hurt anyone reciting prayers."
"And we figure that, if we take down every work but 'Demon in the Pit', it's going to get a lot weaker. The story has to exist for it to get powerful." Robert gestured in the air. "Imagine if someone destroyed your social security number, you ceased to exist."
"Of course, we've still got a few secondary objectives." Alison nodded at Melbourne as he came up onto the stage. "For one, there might be Contradictions hiding out in the town population."
Ryan came up onto the stage, and blasted Project MacReady over the speakers. Everyone assembled covered their ears and winced, someone shouting "A little warning next time?!"
"Sorry." Melbourne composed himself as the sound stopped. "We're planning on broadcasting this throughout the town once every two or three hours. Individuals who don't react to it are to be rounded up by Sigma-10 agents, and the… original individuals located."
"They weren't at the bottom of the Pit." Christopher Hastings spoke up. "Where do you think they might be held?"
"Best case scenario?" Alice chewed her lip. "Somewhere in their homes. But if they weren't in the pit, then… we don't know."
"Which is why we have Squads 25 and 10 combing the city." Robert was slightly saddened that Alice had shot down his idea of them carrying around actual combs.
In the back, Dr. Keith Partridge raised his hand. "And what if this plan d—"
"Don't say it!" Was the reply from every individual present. Partridge shrank in his seat.
"To answer the unspoken question, we do have a plan B." Alice put her hands together. "But we're not going to say what it is. Robert came up with it, and it's insane."
"Insane enough to work." Tofflemire pointed out. "But yes, we're keeping it a secret in case—" He stopped himself from uttering the words "in case it doesn't work". "At any rate, Director Weiss has allowed us to give you your marching orders."
"So, yeah." Carol opened her hands. "Dismissed. Get to it, we got a town to save!"
As the staff of S & C Plastics dispersed, Alison looked at Robert. "Not one quip out of you. Impressive."
"There's a time for snark, and there's a time for action." Robert huffed. "I'm still a bit miffed you didn't let me name it 'Operation Lampshade'."
"You lost the coin toss fair and square." Alison hopped off the stage. "Come on, we're mission control. Let's see what's happening."

At exactly 1:00, the Mayor of Sloth's Pit opened the door to his office. Outside was his trusted friend, Nina Weiss, director of the S & C Plastics building. "Nina!" He beamed. "You don't come by very often anymore."
"Yes, well, things have been busy, Glenn." Weiss entered the room. "We've been trying to work out how to deal with the spatial loop."
"Any luck?" Glenn Foster sat down behind his desk. "Can I get you anything to drink?"
"No, thank you." Weiss put up her hand. "And… we actually have had some luck."
"Really?" Glenn's eyebrow raised, and he put is hands together. "What's happened?"
"Arbor Street. There's a patch of it that doesn't loop around. It's big enough for a person to get through, a motorcycle at a pinch, but anything bigger intercepts the loop."
"I see." Glenn squeezed his hands. "Well, it'd take a while, but if you can contact people outside of the loop, I'm sure we could start an evacuation."
"Hmm." Weiss nodded. "We've already got a transport in place, just outside of the loop. We've started evacuating several citizens that—"
"What?" Glenn stood up. "Director, I've been briefed on the… crisis. These citizens could have those… dimensional wedgie monkeys on their back. Do you think it's wise to evacuate them?"
"We have a method of checking whether or not people are human." Nina Weiss rummaged in her handbag. "A method which has been piping through the speaker systems in the building since I entered the room."
Glenn stared, and tilted his head. A pair of furred, clawed hands emerged from his back, and his voice turned guttural. "How did you know?"
"I didn't." Nina Weiss drew a revolver from her purse. "And I was lying about the sound. Thank you for playing."
Four minutes later, Nina Weiss exited the building, rubbing her shoulder and replacing the spent bullet. She nodded to a containment team waiting outside to enter and secure the cadaver.
On the way in, Agent Alexander Carracos said to his superior, "Weiss is a bit of a badass."
Commander March nodded and made his way up the stairs to the mayor's office. "Someone tried throwing Weiss down the Pit once. A few days later, Director Westphalen mysteriously died drinking his coffee. Weiss was trained as a parapharmacologist."
The commander opened the doors to the mayor's office. The mayor's brains were sprayed on the window behind him, and a pair of furred limbs hung from his back, limp.
"I'll let you connect the dots."

At exactly 2:30, as the class at Jackson Sloth Memorial High was starting to empty their lockers, a two-second piercing note rang out in the halls. It sent most of the students to the floor— except for Maisie Carlyle. Maisie had been replaced a week ago, and not even her parents noticed; acting oddly was in the nature of a teenaged girl, they thought.
The Contradiction that was Maisie Carlyle realized what was happening as the other students recovered. She dropped her backpack, and sprinted for the window in the second floor chemistry lab. A pair of clawed, furred hands with truncated fingers burst from her back, eviscerating the American Eagle shirt she was wearing. The hands shielded her head as she bashed through the window. The hands caught the grass as she landed, and rolled her to a stop. She rose, and started to sprint towards the school bus, the hands retracting into the hole in her back.
She ran onto the school bus, and the doors shut behind her. It was at this point that she realized the bus was unoccupied, except for her, a goat-headed being, and a woman wearing a long veil, with one bleeding eye socket.
"So, this is how it's going to work." Singing Jessie stood, taking off her veil. "You're going to tell us where you've been taking the townies, or we're going to take off your fingers one by one."
The Contradiction looked towards the front of the bus— she saw the the driver was a man with one hand ending in a hook. There was an impressive collection of knives upon his person.
"I can't feel pain." The Contradiction shrugged.
"Really now?" The Goatman stood, and grabbed the Contradiction's hand, biting off one of her fingers. It let out an inhuman scream that made the bus swerve as the driver winced in pain.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire." The Goatman smirked. "Where are the townies?"

At exactly 4:00, Raymond February posed a question to Joseph Grey: "So, why here?"
"Probably because it didn't think we'd look here." Agent Grey adjusted his goggles and brought up a sledgehammer against a wall. Behind this wall was where Room 13 on the 3rd floor of the Pyramid Inn should be. The Pyramid had no Room 13s. "After what happened here last year, between Pike's leg getting shattered and Squad 9 disappearing, I guess it thought we'd be too afraid to look?"
A door began to show itself behind the drywall, with a large "13" on it. The paint was fresh, in contrast to the faded doors around it. Beside them, Seren Pryce adjusted her grip on her revolver. "Okay, we ready to breach?"
"Ready," Blake Williams confirmed, turning off his rifle's safety.
"Okay. Ruby, breach when ready."
Once the door was exposed, Ruby Williams readied her shotgun, and shot at the door's lock. The solid round destroyed the mechanism, leaving the door to swing inwards.
She pushed on the door, her flashlight illuminating the interior of Room 13. It was a double room, and on the ground between the beds, there was a large, brown stain that looked distinctly like blood. But there was also a distinct lack of any bodies within.
She turned on the light on her helmet and scanned the ceiling, and the walls. She realized that she could only see three of the walls. The far wall, where the window should have been, bled over into darkness that her flashlight could barely penetrate. "Move in."
The rest of Squad 25 poured into the room, turning on their own lights. As they approached the far wall, the shff-shff of carpet gave way to the tff-tff of dirt beneath their feet. Ruby bent to inspect the dirt. She rubbed it between her fingers, and it fell away, sideways, as if she was standing on the side of a bottomless pit.
"No way." February stared at this phenomenon, and walked further on, following the trail of dirt. It was then that he stumbled over something.
"Woah!" Grey helped him to his feet. "You okay?"
"I'm fine." The Agent stood, and aimed his light down at the stumbling block. "Sweet Christmas."
All lights were trained on the obstruction; Raymond had tripped over the body of a young woman, bound in roots, like the majority of Site-87 had been just days ago. "Can we cut them out?" Blake asked.
"If gravity works different for them too, then I'm not sure that'd be a good idea." Ruby took out her knife and cut loose one of their arms. It sank against the floor, as opposed to sagging towards where the wall should be. "Okay. Get a line around them. If need be, we'll drag them out."
Grey nodded, placing his pack on the floor to retrieve rope. As he did, he looked upwards, and around. His light illuminated at least two dozen bodies.
"Well then." Grey swallowed. "We have our work cut out for us."

At exactly 7:00, The Monster Mash came on over the speakers at the Black Garden pub.
The musical selection went unnoticed by many. A good part of the regulars were busy in the so-called "pit", a section down a small flight of stairs where the majority of the seating was, eating and drinking to their heart's content. At the bar sat two people and an empty seat between them.
Alison Carol looked at the empty seat as she waited for Cecil to mix her drink. "This is where I met her."
"Laura?" Robert asked, looking up from the list of beers.
"Yeah. She's a good kid— just didn't have her head on all the way. Got in a fight with her boyfriend, and… I guess she just came here to get away?" She shook her head. "The girl didn'— doesn't even like booze."
"What was the fight about?"
"Something to do with college— mainly Ed being unable to go to it." She looked down at the bar top. "I thought about her, in the pit. That's why the Sloth went after her."
Tofflemire sighed. "Were you two close?"
"I mean, we basically drank together every Friday. I…" She looked at Robert. "I may have told her that you were one of the most annoying people I've ever met. Complete jackass."
Robert stayed silent. After a moment, he put down the beer list and addressed Cecil. "Can I have some of your mead? People at work can't stop raving about it."
"Bottle of mead comin' up." Cecil poured out the drink from the cocktail mixer into a hurricane glass, and garnished it with a chunk of pineapple and a cherry on a toothpick, before handing it over. "Here you go, Alice."
"Alison." The two agents corrected Cecil simultaneously.
Robert looked at the drink. "I didn't know you liked pina coladas."
Before taking a sip, Alison threatened, "If you start singing Rupert Holmes, you're dressing up as Lady Gaga for Halloween."
"That's fair." Robert rested his elbow on the bar top. "Alison?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you really think I'm a jackass?"
She paused in her drinking and sighed. "After what you told me… I don't know. Like, I get why you act like you do, but you do it so much. Feels a bit… I dunno."
"Like I'm trying too hard?"
"Exactly." Alison stirred her drink. "Are you trying to impress someone?"
Robert didn't answer, instead taking the bottle of mead handed to him, and taking a long, long drink of it. "My friend."
Alison looked to make sure Cecil wasn't paying attention. "The one taken by the Old Man?"
"Yeah." Robert rubbed his face. "I read an account by someone who got stuck in his dimension. Apparently one of his favorite forms of torture is… showing you how the people in the real world are doing. Friends, family. How they're grieving, and how they're moving on. I figure, if that's what's happening to him, then… maybe I can make him laugh once in a while." He sighed.
"What was his name?"
"Kirk. Kirk Wright."
Alison raised her glass. "To Kirk."
"To Kirk." Robert clinked glass with Alison, and then turned to the window, eyes wide. "What the hell?"
"What?" Alison turned to see snow falling. It wasn't unheard of, nowadays, but the sky had been completely clear when they had entered the bar. "How in the hell…"

At exactly 9:00, Laura Ashbrooke woke up. She felt snow falling on her face, and as she looked upwards, she found starlight pouring down on her face. Below, only empty darkness. And next to her was Edward.
"Ed?" She pleaded. "Ed, c'mon, wake up."
Edward Valentine was breathing, but he wasn't awake.
"Ed?" She whimpered. She looked at what was keeping her bound to the wall— a set of vines. She was no more than twenty feet from the surface. She could climb out, but one missed step…
"Ed, c'mon, we gotta get out of here." Laura brushed snow from her hair and started to tug at the roots holding her to the side of the pit. One came loose, sending her tumbling five feet before she regained her grip. "Oh god…"
She dug her feet into the dirt wall, and looked at Ed. He wasn't waking up, and she was losing her grip.
On her other side, there was a slight cough. She looked over to see a man in a tattered suit, holding a shovel, standing on the side of the pit casually. "Hello, you."
"H-Hi." Laura swallowed. "C-can you help me? H-he's not waking up. I… is he going to die?"
"The Pit Sloth got to him harder than it got to you." The man paced over to Edward. "But if you cut him down, he should be fine."
"Cut him down?" Laura's eyes widened. "We could fall to our deaths! This is a bottomless pit!"
"And making your way out of it is going to be one hell of a tale." The man with the shovel beamed down at her. "But tell me, how are you going to get out?"
"I—" Laura frowned. Something was forming in her head. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?"
"The name seems familiar."
"Well…" Laura started clawing at the wall. "At one point, during the early days, there was a campaign called Tomb of Horrors. There was at least one group who managed to dig their way into the tomb with mining equipment, bypassing all the traps and looting the treasure." She made a hole in the dirt big enough to stick her arms through. "It got errata later so that the walls of the tomb were indestructible or something. But before then…"
The wall fell away to a point where she could crawl into it. "You could dig your way into and out of one of the most dangerous places in the game."
"Excellent." The man nodded. From somewhere, he offered Laura a shovel. "This should make things a little easier."
Laura nodded in thanks, and crawled into the hole, starting to dig it larger. The man threw in a second shovel after her. "For Edward." He explained.
Laura Ashbrooke set to digging her way out of a bottomless pit.

At exactly 11:00, Laura Ashbrooke and Edward Valentine limped back into town. They were dirty, shivering, and Edward was walking with a limp. They were both carrying shovels, and grunting as they made their way through the foot of snow that had fallen in the last four hours.
"Hello?" Laura called as she made her way down Main Street. "Anyone? We're injured!"
From out of several buildings, people in black uniforms emerged, guns raised at them. Laura put up her hands. "Holy shit."
One of them spoke into their wrist. Above her, a tornado siren blared the most painful noise Laura and Edward had ever heard. They collapsed into the snow, covering their ears. "Fuck!" Edward yelled.
"They're real." Someone confirmed, coming forward to collect them. Laura recognized the man— it was the person who had shot someone in her store.
"You?" Laura asked.
"Long story." Robert Tofflemire hefted her to her feet. "C'mon. Rudy's is open late tonight, and you both look like you could use some hot chocolate."
Alison Carol helped Edward Valentine to his feet, looking him up and down. "Did you… dig your way out of the Bottomless Pit?"
"Y-yeah." Edward groaned. "It was Laura's idea."
"It… there was a guy. He was walking on the wall, gave me a shovel…"
"Sloth." Alice and Bob spoke in unison.
Robert carried Laura into the light of Rudy's cafe, and sat her at a table. Caitlin Dyer came out from behind the counter and put a warm blanket around her.
"The snow woke me up." Laura swallowed.
"It's a freak storm." Alison frowned. "Could just be normal stuff, but given this is Sloth's Pit…"
"You think the town made it to wake us up?" Edward had to raise his voice slightly over the sound of Caitlin spraying whipped cream over a pair of hot chocolates.
"Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Sloth himself somehow made it." Robert looked outside. "Snow on Halloween. It… honestly kind of looks pretty, with all of the decorations."
"Like Christmas in October. Except better." Alison leaned against him.
The room was soon filled with the scent of hot chocolate, and the sound of conversations. Comforting words were exchanged, people were brought up to speed, and shoulders were cried on. A street away, a man brushed snow off of his Jack-o-Lantern and brought it on his porch.

At exactly 12:00 AM on October 27th, a shadow loomed over Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin.
Imogen was dead. Jackson had resisted their influence, and had even given the Plastics People aid— calling them an abomination. Jasper hated it. And it… it hated the fact that it couldn't talk in anything but rhymes. It was tired of having others do its work and failing.
It needed something. It couldn't create anything original, so it had to steal. For that purpose, the Pit Sloth's shadow fell over the Grave Bog, where the corpses of hundreds of Wisconsinites rested, struck dead by a hundred-year-old flu.
The shadow loomed over the grave marker for Caroline Sloth and her son Quinn. A grin formed on its face, wider than any grin should be.
The shadow faded, and all the lights in town came back on at once. The Grave Bog contained one less corpse, and footsteps of what had left were covered by the fresh snow.

«Chapter 12 | Hub | Chapter 14»


Larry ran to the break room door with the grace of a sack of potatoes. Sucking in air between coughs and sputters, he checked his watch; breaktime. Barging through, he saw his new acquaintance sitting at a table, eating a Vegemite sandwich. Finally, someone who's at the very least sane in this bloody complex!
"Carl! Carl! There's a breach!"
Carl looked up from his half finished sandwich with glazed eyes and a hung jaw.
"Pardon?"
"Breach Carl, there's been a breach! There's a crocodile wandering the building!"
That seemed to spark Carl's attention for a brief second. But to Larry's surprise, he only continued to eat his sandwich, savoring the flavor of leftover brewer's yeast and Vitamin B.
Please don't tell me you've gone insane.
"Carl, I don't think you heard me right. THERE'S A CROCODILE WANDERING THE HALLS!"
With an uninterested gaze, Larry stood up from the table and walked over to a terrified Larry. With his casual Australian accent, he looked Larry up and down.
"Can you describe to me this 'crocodile'?"
Larry was caught off guard. What else is there to know, it's a fucking crocodile!
"Well, what else is there? It's an 8 foot, scaly, green reptile roaming the halls with a suit on!"
As soon as Larry mentioned the suit, Carl's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. Larry was getting more nervous by the second. He heard of the weird shit that went down in the land down under, especially at site B-RANG. Larry hoped that whatever this breach was, it would turn to be all just a practical joke.
"Oh! You mean Greg! I love that guy!"
Once again, the Australian made Larry question his own sanity.
"I'm sorry, what? Greg?"
"Yeah, Greg! He's the new kid here, just like you. I was gonna introduce you two after lunch, but sounds like you beat me to it."
The sounds of claws on tile scraped the outside hallway. In a state of pure panic, Larry grabbed his friend's shoulders, desperate to shake some sense out of this delusional man.
"Carl! This is a crocodile! It's not like the movies, they don't walk around doing human things! Come on, snap out it!"
The door creaked open. A long, black claw reached out to the floor and scratched it, pulling the hunk of pure muscle into the break room. Larry stiffened, now the croc was actively hunting him down! In minutes both of them would be nothing but paste, and all because Carl had the brains of a walnut!
The croc crawled its way onto a fold out chair and laid it flat like a table. Reaching into its shirt pocket, the reptilian pulled out a packet of meat patties, each no bigger than Larry's hand. With splendid accuracy and finesse, the crocodile threw one in the air and caught it with its mouth. Carl shook free of Larry's grasp and went over to 'Greg'.
"Hey Greg! How's it been? You coping with the new place now?"
The crocodile turned to Carl, its jaw wide open. Larry was going to faint, he was going to witness his first crocodile murder. In truth, he had never seen a crocodile kill a human before, but nonetheless he was scared shitless.
"I've managed to fit in quite well, thank you for asking. Though, I feel my presence here has decreased staff morale a bit. I hope I don't end up making anyone too uncomfortable."
It talks!? It fucking talks!?
"Hey, don't worry about it, mate. I'm sure once everyone gets to know you, they'll see who you are on the inside, not the outside."
Carl shot a glare at Larry, and then motioned him to come over. Larry stayed put. With a flair of frustration and a forced smile, Carl grabbed Larry's arm and dragged him over to Greg.
"Greg, you've heard of the new guy right?"
The croc shook his head.
"No, as a matter of fact. I've been a bit too busy to notice all the staff that work here. Are you going to introduce them?"
Carl chuckled. "As a matter of fact, I am. Greg, meet Larry, he's just transferred from one of the American sites."
Greg twisted his head to get a good look at Larry, who was trying his hardest to not piss himself.
"Pleasure to be your acquaintance, Larry. I hope we can get along very well, I look forward to our future interactions!"
He opened his claws to Larry. Not wanting to seem rude to the 1 ton sack of pure muscle and bone, Larry bent over and took his hand into Greg's. The scales made the scientist tremble; it was a feeling he wasn't used to, hard skin mixed with a subtle rise and fall whenever Greg breathed.
"I, uh, hope we get to work together more often."
You massive idiot, Larry!
"Splendid, I hope so too! You seem like a good person, Larry."
Greg beamed a smile, which Larry returned, albeit with an underlying fear of being mauled. Carl seemed to look much happier with this turn of events, and began to pack up his belongings for the next shift. Greg went back to eating his meat patties, throwing each one in the air with the precision of an apex predator.
Larry fished his phone out from his pants and went to his notes application. It was a handy way to keep track of the mundane things that happen day to day, whether it be big or small. This note, however, will be a special note, a note that will always appear at the top of his priorities list.

Note to self (remember to keep this at the top of the list).

A crocodile has just become a staff member at Site B-RANG. I'm not sure what to feel just yet, apart from pure fear. Who knows, I could just be hallucinating again, they did that to me when I tried to find the main entrance, pricks.

I need to know more about these Australians too, no matter how hard I try to make sense of it, I get another bloody curve ball thrown at me. Maybe it's just because I'm new, or American.
Nevertheless, I'll see what else comes up, hopefully I can make sense of all this by the end of the month.
Larry

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