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The play button's source is Here, Public Domain, also edited by me

🗿galshoot 01/15/21 (Mon) 18:50:04 #83648190

The world's coming to an end, fellas.
If you haven't looked outside yet, there's a massive swarm of locusts sweeping across the world. LARPA failed. Everyone failed. We don't know much, but the radio's saying they eat almost anything. That includes humans.
I really didn't think it'd go down this way. Screw climate change, bugs are bringing us to extinction. Kind of funny. Feels like this is a dream, but it's real.
Try to get somewhere secure and spend your time well. Goodbye, Parawatch.

pygmallion07 01/15/21(Mon) 18:50:04 #83648190

screw that lmao, im gonna survive.

come on and watch me

come on and watch me

for old time's sake :)
.

END OF THE WORLD LIVESTREAM!!!

Phillips (Voiceover): Heyo, whoever's watching, you probably know me as pygmallion07, but you can call me Phillips. Doesn't matter if I doxx myself if we're all gonna die, heh. Noone in the chat yet?
prestooge: hi. whatre you doing
Phillips (VO): Ah, hey prestooge! Well, uh, I know I got a bit full of myself in my post. But I'm gonna try and— uh, one second, still getting set up…
Camera feed turns on, showing a shelf full of different pesticides.
Phillips (VO): I have these. So… I'm gonna go out with a bang. I'm not the most committed to living anyways.
prestooge: theyre immune
Phillips (VO): Yeah. To most of these, actually. But they must have some effect. And I can't just do nothing. I've got to entertain you guys too. Least until… well.
The camera is bought towards a window, showing a swarm of locusts in the sky.
prestooge: oh. well
prestooge: what if…
prestooge: https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Flamethrower
prestooge: :)
Phillips (VO): Haha, that's a great idea! Wikihow, comin' in clutch! (He pans the camera across his workshop.) I don't think I have anything for those fancy ones in here though, my mom just liked gardening. But I do have a lighter, could do that thing you always see in TV where they hold it up to the spray…
prestooge: thatd be easier yeah
soulcolor: Jesus, its the end of the world and you choose this garbage platform for your final livestream?
Phillips (VO): Hey soul! Damn, already getting more folks than I expected. Thought you'd all be dead. And, uh, I'm only using this 'garbage' because the other platforms are down. Bugs must've gotten to the servers or something.
soulcolor: Touché.
prestooge: we are making flamethrower
soulcolor: Heh, nice. I saw a bunch of military people mowing down the lo-shits with guns earlier. Pretty stupid.
prestooge: bullet too small
Phillips (VO): That doesn't seem smart, yeah. Also, lo-shits? Heh, I'm stealing that one.
soulcolor: Yep. The, uh, Ravaging of the Lo-shits.
prestooge: or god skipped to the eighth plague. and the world is egypt
Camera is bought towards a drawer, which Phillips begins to dig around in.
Phillips (VO): Y'know, you've gotten me thinking, what even caused this?
soulcolor: Ever heard of the Gaia theory?
prestooge: mother nature got mad?
soulcolor: In simple terms, yeah. It's basically that Earth itself is self-regulating, and I think, well, we got too shitty to fix.
Phillips (VO): So we need a reset.
prestooge: weird
Phillips removes a black zippo from the drawer and flicks it open, giving it a spark. The flame lights up.
Phillips (VO): Well, the hardest part is done!
Camera pans back to the shelf of pesticides.
Phillips (VO): One of these must work.
soulcolor: …I think hair spray would be your best bet, friend.
Phillips (VO): Too late for that. I'm not going outside, not until I'm ready.
prestooge: poisoning is better than getting eaten by locusts imo
soulcolor: I guess.
Phillips grabs a yellow can of pesticide and sets the camera down. Holding the flame up to the spray, he presses down on the nozzle, and the spray catching fire. He quickly stops.
Phillips (VO): Woohoo! We got it!
soulcolor: You wanna use this against the locusts, right? Sure it's gonna work?
Phillips (VO): Not sure at all. But I'm ready to die trying.
soulcolor: I'm afraid to die.
Phillips (VO): I… I kind of agree. But if everyone else is… what can I do? My life isn't that good anyways.
soulcolor: Hm. Hey, do you think there are rich people in fancy apocalypse bunkers? What if, in the future, some fuckin Fallout protagonist emerges after all the locusts die off? That'd be cool.
Phillips (VO): Yeah, yeah. It's kind of unfair, though.
soulcolor: How?
Phillips (VO): We're gonna die. For no reason. We didn't do anything. But nobody is gonna help us live. You know what I think? That LARPA is like, some secret organization. And they knew this was coming.
soulcolor: I think we talked about that on the Parawatch forums, yeah.
Phillips (VO): And we're completely in the blank. Ugh… Hey, uh, prestooge? You still around?
soulcolor: He's not on the userlist.
Phillips (VO): …screw this. (He sighs.) Goodbye, soul.
soulcolor: Goodbye…
Phillips walks over to a door, which he pulls open. Stepping outside, he looks up to see a swarm of locusts covering the sky. A part of the swarm begins to fly towards him as he drops the camera.
Phillips (VO): I'm ready for ya!
Phillips starts up his makeshift flamethrower, shooting it towards the swarm. Locusts burn up in the air before they quickly surround Phillips, who screams in agony. A few minutes later, his body is completely gone.
soulcolor: I can't go out like this.
Minutes pass. The camera is eventually covered by dust.
prestooge: im back sorry i had to go and help my mom get my grandparents into our bunker and
prestooge: oh
prestooge: f
soulcolor: Fuckin really, dude?
prestooge: sorry if f was disrespectful
soulcolor: I… I don't even know what to do at this point.
prestooge: :(
soulcolor: Hey, prestooge?
prestooge: yes?
soulcolor: If you ever come out of that bunker after all this and like, rebuild society, or whatever, please remember me.
prestooge: i will
soulcolor: Thank you. Goodbye.
prestooge: bye soul

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"You know, Ronnie, we should really get a real Christmas tree sometime," Catlin commented, watching her husband finish stringing red tinsel across their festive — yet fake — evergreen. "There's the scent, gosh, the whole experience of it all!"
"Having to throw it away and buy a new one each year doesn't sound like a good experience to me," he retorted, turning to see her disappointed frown. "Come on, you can't tell me it's not more convenient!"
"I know." Catlin crossed her arms, leaning further into their cushy leather couch. "But… I dunno. It's not about convenience, it's about feeling."
"Well I am feeling quite lovely. And whatever happened to the Catlin who'd always say 'family is more important than anything'?" Ronnie thought for a second before gasping. "What if you don't love me anymore!? That explains it!"
The two of them made eye contact for a moment before bursting into laughter. Catlin could barely react when Ronnie came diving onto the couch, hugging her. "Heyyy, lemme go!" She exclaimed playfully, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "I can't see my favorite decoration."
Robbie backed away, taking a seat next to her. "And what decoration is that?"
"Well, its- uh…" Catlin froze, finally actually thinking through what she was going to say before saying it, which rarely ever happened. "You know, I was going to say 'you,' but—"
"You really just like me for my looks?" Ronnie fell back onto the couch with a feigned sadness, lying the back of his hand on his forehead. "What a cruel woman you are!"
"Shut up!" Catlin giggled. "You know I love your dorkiness too."
Ronnie smiled and lurched up, grabbing Catlin's waist before pulling her down atop of him. They stared into each other's eyes for a moment. "I'm not the only dork in this room."
"You got me there."
Laughing, Ronnie kissed her on the cheek. "Mwah," he said, pulling away.
"Mwah," Catlin replied, adjusting her position. "You know, this is pretty comfy. You're very warm."
"Probably because I'm blushing so much, eh?"
"In that case, it might be just me."
The two Larsons cuddled closer together, slowly drifting into the clutch of a warm Sloth's Pit winter's slumber.

Waking up had always been a strange activity for Ronnie, and this day was no exception.
First, his sense of touch came back as he felt Catlin's warm body laid across him, her shallow breath against his neck.
Then taste. Nothing special there.
However, as his hearing slowly came back, he could hear sobbing, at which his senses all suddenly rushed back to him. He opened his eyes to see their Christmas tree hunched right over their couch, crying plastic pine needles.
As anyone would do if their Christmas tree suddenly gained sentience, Ronnie screamed in fear until Catlin suddenly woke up, slapping him across the face before noticing the tree. She proceeded to shriek as well, and Ronnie, despite a sore cheek being the least of his worries, was tempted to smack her back in retaliation.
After a good few seconds, the two Larsons finally managed to calm down, at which their tree spoke. "Do you guys… not love me?" It choked out.
"N-no!" Catlin blurted. "We, uh, love trees!"
"But I'm not a tree! I'm plastic! I'm a fake! A fraud!"
Catlin opened her mouth to say more, only for Ronnie to cover it. "You are… uh, perfect. And you're just as much of a Christmas tree as the other trees."
"But…" The plastic evergreen pointed over at Catlin. "She said real trees smell good!"
Finally free from Ronnie's hand, Catlin blurted out again, "but we have to throw away real trees, so clearly you're better!"
It stared at them for a moment before skulking over to their patio door, sliding it open, stepping outside, and wordlessly closing it. The Larsons watched as it suddenly fell over in the foot-high snow.
"Maybe we should have gotten a real Christmas tree after all."

"We could, uh, call the plastics guys? They'll know what to do! Right?"
Ronnie rolled his eyes. "Probably. But also… the blizzard? There's no way they'd be able to get here."
"Well…" Catlin's brain pounded as she scrambled for a solution. "We could just wait it out. We don't have to deal with it right now."
"And let out tree get buried under all that snow? You know how much I hate shoveling."
"Fucking— do you want to just go out there and give it a pep talk or something?"
"…yeah."
"I mean…" Sighing, Catlin looked outside at the tree, where she could see a stream of pine needle tears being blown around in the violent blizzard wind. "I guess it could work. We need something good, though…"
Ronnie grinned. "I think I have an idea."

After slipping on his heavy winter coat, ski mask, gloves, boots, snow pants, and God knows what else, Ronnie trudged outside and instantly realized why he was thinking of moving to somewhere on the south coast. "Hey, tree! You, uh, doing alright?" He shouted. "Wanna come back inside?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"You said it yourself, I'm not real."
"You're… you're just as real as me, buddy."
The tree raised a branch, pointing over to the evergreen forest surrounding the Larson's house. "They're real, I'm not."
"So you want to be like them, huh?"
"Yes. I do. I just want to know what it's like to… to live."
Ronnie went over to the plastic tree and picked it up, marching to the forest.
"W- what are you doing?" It stuttered, wriggling in his hands.
"You're gonna know what it's like to live," he said, kicking away the snow before thrusting the tree into the frozen ground.
"I…"
"Do you like it?" Ronnie asked, stripping it of all its tinsel and ornaments. "This is what being a tree is like."
"Simple. I… I do enjoy this." A single pine needle fell to the ground. "I love it."
"Good. So… want to come back in now that you've had your experience being a tree?"
It didn't respond.
"Uh… hello?"
Suddenly, wood began to crawl up from the snow-covered ground, engulfing the plastic tree in a coat of bark. "This is my new home," it said. "I'm finally here. I can be real…"
"But, uh, I kinda need a tree, it's a pretty important part of our c—"
"I will grant you a gift!" It shouted, dropping a newly grown branch atop Ronnie's head. "I give this to you for allowing me to truly live."
Then the tree creaked, shaking in the strong wind, and all was over.
Ronnie looked down at the branch on the ground, rubbing his head. It didn't go according to plan, but… well, nothing ever does in Sloth's Pit, eh?

Catlin took a sip of her hot chocolate, letting out a blissful sigh. "You know… I kind of like it."
"What? That Charlie Brown Christmas-lookin' thing?" Ronnie chuckled, pointing to the branch that had been gifted to him. Catlin had decorated it with a single red ornament, the most it could hold without collapsing. "It's tiny."
"It's charming. And it's not going to come to life. It's real, just what the tree wanted."
"Well, if it makes you happy…" Ronnie put an arm around her shoulder. "Then I am too."
"Hey, Ronnie?"
"Yes?"
Catlin pecked him on the lips. "Mwah."
He grinned. "Mwah."
"Mwah?"
The Larsons froze, turning their heads slowly to the little branch, which waved its body at them happily.
Robbie let out a groan of defeat. Maybe next year they'd forego the whole holiday…

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Andrew sat on the ledge of a high-rise, overlooking what was once New York.
A cold breeze passed over him. In the late hours of the day, he could make out the outlines of the buildings among the orange backdrop of the sky, watching clouds pass around the colossal towers. His feet swung from the ledge, occasionally brushing against the concrete beneath him. Once the One World Trade Center, the structure he sat upon now stood as a final testament to the achievements of humanity; though it was a small building before the attacks, it now towered above the rest, like it once had.
He glanced upwards. The gradient of night was more apparent at this angle, with lustrous copper fading to an undisturbed black. A satellite streaked overhead, departing as soon as it arrived to complete its journey around the Earth. They were common before the Patterns, according to his parents. Now, only the Information Defense Array remained.
He leaned backward and laid down, trying to imagine a humanity that was multi-planetary, that spanned the solar system, that had hundreds of billions of people. He tried to picture all those lives, all those men, women, and children whose thoughts were shattered and whose minds were broken. He tried to envision a time when the buildings around him weren't crumbling to dust. He was trying, but he couldn't — what was left to the measly billion survivors was all he'd ever known.
Despite everything, the Council remained powerful. Although humanity faced many setbacks, the Foundation's technology allowed them to continue to rebuild society. Bit by bit, the world would begin to heal, and humanity would once again flourish under their benevolent rule — supposedly. Andrew constantly thought about returning humanity to its former status, to a time before they had been erased. He didn't feel right about it; wasn't technology the cause of all this?
The future was terrifying. Every day, he wondered if the Patterns would finally break through the Defense Array. He lived with the lingering fear that there wasn't a future at all, that today could be the last. Even now, the Council reported that pressure on the system was mounting, and they would need more and more energy to keep it functional. The world could end in a single breach, and they wouldn't know until it was over.
He rolled onto his stomach, putting his face in his arms. What was the point of climbing a mountain when one slip could end you? Could end everyone? The chance of humanity's survival was so slim, he wondered how he was even born. It was like extending the life of a man who was bleeding to death for years on end. Humanity should have perished in the initial blow.
He laid in silence for a while.
Slowly, he lifted his eyes towards the inky depths of the sky. Another satellite flew by swiftly and silently, reminding him that despite everything, humanity was still alive. Against all odds, they still remained, determined as ever to return to their paradise lost. Perseverance to an unnatural degree had given the species its edge, and what compelled it to continue forward against the tides of despair. They had the hope to see the future. Why?
Maybe, just maybe, the future didn't matter all that much. Perhaps the past didn't, either. All that mattered was now — him, his friends, those he loved, they were all alive. Once upon a time, they weren't, and he wasn't, and eventually they won't be again. That day may be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but it isn't the present. The present is what mattered, alongside the hope that tomorrow will be like today, but better.
He stood up, staring at his bare feet, then at the buildings nearby. Humanity had once reached a point where the buildings were taller than this one. It was possible to get there again, but it was going to be more challenging. The fact that it was possible was reason enough to pick the world up by its bootstraps and fling it forward once again. A million to one, there was almost certain chance of failure.
Yet, they continued anyways. Just like him.
Andrew looked once more towards the swirling abyss of black, and faintly, just faintly, he could see Polaris shining down upon him.

« Ignorance Is Bliss | Present Tense | [COMING SOON] »


Just a little lolfoundation for that Christmas hangover. Originally posted to my youtube channel, but now available on the wiki.

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Something pulsed underneath Dr. Cimmerian. It was a methodical beat, the kind that, in his experience, signaled the end of the world. When he finally opened his eyes, he was face down on carpet in a dimly lit room. Broken and empty bottles covered the floor in front of him.
He felt warm, at least. He reached up to scratch at his chin and found it covered in thick hair. Before he had time to consider that, his head exploded in pain as the first rays of sunlight shined into his eyes. He rolled over to face the other direction and found himself face to face with a woman in most of an elf costume. She, mercifully, was still asleep. Consequences. That's what this morning was.
He could hear a radio in the next room, the source of the pulsing beat. He rolled himself over onto his stomach and raised himself off the ground. He finally looked at his own arms for a moment and realized he was wearing a Santa Claus suit, minus pants. His underwear were, thankfully, clean. He reached up and scratched his chin again, running his hand through the fake beard.
His first course of action was clear, he needed to find his pants. And turn off that damn radio. He surveyed the room and saw nothing but men and women in elf costumes, bottles, and a few sundry pieces of paraphernalia. He stumbled out into the open kitchen, trying to find the source of the music.
As he came into the kitchen, two things became a stark reality. One, the radio on the counter was playing California Gurls by Katy Perry and even with a pounding headache he was going to let that keep playing. Two: Another Santa Claus was making himself a sandwich next to the sink. This Santa Claus's pants were a deeper red than the rest of the man's costume and one or two sizes too big.
This son of a bitch was wearing his pants.
"Hey." Dr. Cimmerian whispered, trying to avoid worsening the headache he was experiencing. "Give me back my pants."
Dr. Clef turned around holding a peanut butter sandwich and answered with a mouth full.
"Bullshit. Finders keepers."
Dr. Cimmerian, still quite drunk and not thinking things through, walked over to Clef and tried to pull at the man's waistband. The two got into a sort of slap fight over it until Clef managed to disengage and back away.
"Hey, watch it, fucking handsy!"
"Shut the fuck up and give me my pants Clef."
"No. Go away."
Cimmerian jumped forward and threw a short punch to the Clef's abdomen. Clef tensed at the last moment to take the blow. He then countered with a wild haymaker that connected with Cimmerian's left upper arm. Cimmerian prepared to launch himself again as a gunshot cracked in both men's ears. They winced and grabbed at their heads, both feeling more than hearing the noise.
Shaw stood just inside a screen door that neither of them had noticed until now. He was also wearing a Santa Claus costume, but he had an extra pair of red pants slung over his shoulder. He waved his pistol at the ceiling.
"Fucking fuck." Shaw said from behind dark, sunken, and bloodshot eyes. "Just put his pants on."
Shaw threw the pants down between them. They were a different shade of red but also discolored in several places.
Cimmerian cocked an eyebrow. "Clef. Why are your pants covered in blood?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Well I'm not gonna wear bloodstained pants you fucking psycho."
Clef let out a sigh. "Fine! Fucking picky bitch. It's mostly my blood anyway."
Shaw raised his hand. "Mostly?"
Clef shook his head while removing his pants. "I don't want to talk about it."
Clef and Cimmerian exchanged pants. Shaw leaned into the garbage can and vomited for a solid 20 seconds while the two of them got dressed.
Shaw turned away from the garbage can for a few moments. "Also we have to go, I'm pretty sure I just shot a guy." He went back in for round two.
Clef and Cimmerian looked at the hole in the ceiling and saw a trickle of blood beginning to fall. They also heard a male voice groaning.
Cimmerian sobered up as best as he could. "Phones and guns."
They searched their persons and produced one phone and three guns.
Clef nodded. "Better than last time."
Cimmerian shook his head. "Shut the fuck up. I saw a landline in the living room. Clef: call 911. I'll go out and steal a car. Shaw, figure out why that donkey is here."
All three of them looked up to see a brown-gray donkey with fake antlers wandering into the kitchen.
Shaw nodded. "Got it."
They split up and got to work.
Cimmerian ran outside. There was one car on the abandoned street. He checked the door. Unlocked. He got inside and started messing with the wires underneath. Clef and Shaw came out of the house's front door. They looked at the car, at each other and then at the car again.
"Cim that's a two seater and there's three of us."
"Shaw can ride in the trunk." Shaw grimaced and nodded begrudgingly.
As they got closer to the car, Cimmerian popped the trunk. Then he got back under the dash. Shaw walked around to the back and stopped. "Guys there's a guy in an elf costume in here."
Cimmerian stopped and looked at Clef. Clef shook his head. "What. I don't want to talk about it."
Cimmerian shook his head and looked back at Shaw. "Wake him up and throw him in the yard."
Shaw clicked his tongue. "Yeah this guy's not waking up."
Cimmerian managed to get the car started, then got out to figure out how to handle the situation.

All available officers, we have a 10-71, shots fired in Lillian Oaks. Suspects were seen fleeing the scene in a blue smartcar. Please be advised that all three suspects are wearing Santa Claus costumes. At least one is strapped to the top of the vehicle. They are to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.

« She Still Can't Breathe | Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer | Three Deaths of Dr. Cimmerian »


by Kothardarastrix

He's gonna listen to the heart.

Dr. Conrad Scott rubbed his eyes and groaned. He wasn't supposed to be listening to SCP-058. He'd already gone over the thirty minute limit in the containment procedures and would probably start vomiting cicadas or something at any moment.
Conrad chuckled to himself, because after close to 20 years in the memetics division people inevitably develop a very odd sense of humor. 058's gibbering wouldn't make him vomit cicadas. It wasn't even memetic, at least not anomalously so. But he wasn't assigned to 058 because of his memetics experience. He'd earned that position with his other specialty: word salad. Although he'd never quite liked the subject's unscientific name, it held great interest to him, both personally and professionally. For one reason or another - be it reality distortion, failed mimicry, memetic mind-scrambling, or plain old brain damage - many anomalies, or the people they'd affected, seemed to have something like aphasia. They said words, sometimes sentences, but never anything with a clear meaning. At least, it would seem that way to most people. Not to a memeticist, though, at least not always. Memeticists knew all about meaning, the fundamental denotations and connotations of words, sounds, and syllables, and all the ways they could be chopped up and mixed together. Tossed, like a salad. From that kind of perspective, understanding word salad was a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle - difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes very frustrating, but terribly fascinating all the same. Rewarding, too, if you could finish.
That's why SCP-058 had become something of a "pet project" for Dr. Scott, insofar as a car-sized heart-monster could be considered a "pet" anything. Maybe "obsession" was a better word. Yes, "obsession". The so-called "Heart of Darkness" fascinated him, though not because of its incredible destructive capabilities. They had plenty of unkillable, inexplicable monsters at the Foundation, but only one of them had been spewing vaguely nihilistic word salad 24/7 for the last "██" years. And every apocalyptic non-sequitur, every doom-laden run-on sentence, had been recorded. Conrad had heard maybe a third of the recordings; the thirty-minute restriction made it impossible for him to listen to the whole thing, especially since he hadn't been assigned to 058 until many years after its containment. That moron Aimes Johnston had been working on it from the start, but he wouldn't have known what to do with a word salad if you gave him a fork and a typewriter.
Dr. Scott laughed again, flipping to the interview log in 058's file. Johnston had made a fool of himself, asking it its name and where it was from. Creatures like that, they didn't understand concepts like names and places, at least not the way we do. Johnston was of the opinion that 058 didn't understand anything; he thought the speech was just some bizarre byproduct of its “[REDACTED]” origin, and it was nothing more than a mindless beast, a faster 682 that occasionally shot fire from its ass. 682 wasn't a mindless beast either, but Scott could understand why Johnston liked to pretend otherwise. The kind of thoughts that ran through a mind like that were completely inimical to a human's. But they were thoughts nonetheless, and Conrad had proof. Proof that Johnston would've seen immediately if he hadn't been so worried about a disemboweled D-class.

The sensual violence of lust is all the assurance you will ever need to know the worth of life.

That was a coherent, grammatically correct, and meaningful sentence, one of maybe a dozen that 058 had uttered over the years. There might have been more, but Johnston and his new assistant (What was his name? Jason?) had those tapes. It frustrated Scott to no end that the key to cracking 058's language might have been languishing in that knucklehead's desk drawer. But Johnston had seniority, both on the 058 project and in general, so the best Conrad could do was hope his rival was nearby the next time SCP-5229 decided to go for a swim.
Dr. Johnston' seniority was especially annoying to Conrad because they were almost the same age. Really, if you'd seen them both, you might've thought Conrad was the older one. His curly hair was fading and falling out, and a combination of bad genetics and worse decisions had left him joints that felt ten years older than the rest of his body, which wasn't exactly young itself.
But, he supposed, it could be worse. Listening to SCP-058's recordings didn't require much moving around. And 058 had a nice voice, really. Like something you'd hear in an audiobook. Maybe they should train it to read poetry. Then it might help him sleep instead of giving him nightmares.
Maybe it'd put him to sleep anyway…
"I have crawled the trees with venom swings to the blind of drooling path…"
Dr. Scott sat bolt upright in his chair. Maybe he'd imagined it. He had been on the edge of sleep, and he had been listening a little too long. Just to make sure he'd heard right, he skipped back a few seconds and played it again. As he listened to another heart speak, his own was pounding.
“I have crawled the trees with venom swings to the blind of drooling path that flows electricity from eye to evening. There is no more than salvation in the bald mind of a husk that drinks his only kings.”
Dr. Scott pressed STOP. Slowly, he opened his laptop - the clunky, Foundation-issued one he'd been using since his dinosaur of a desktop bought the farm - and booted up the Foundation internal database. He remembered very well where he'd heard of a "drooling path" before, but in the memetics division they train you not to trust your own memories unless they can be verified as genuine. Lucky for Conrad Scott, this particular memory could. He found what he was looking for in an addendum to SCP-1981's file, a transcript from "█/█/96".

0:12:32 - Reagan: I've been to the steel mills of Alaska, and the cornfields of Nebraska. I've seen the derelict offices of Google burn with the window boarded up and the squatters inside them. I've seen the houses where they cut up the little babies. From coast to shining coast I have walked empty down drooling path <indecipherable> The decaying flesh of false morality poisoning our children. I have stood atop the mountain of this greedy earth, looking upon our beautiful pious pit, filled to bursting with the vast hands of helplessness. And did you know what I saw?

The transcript didn't describe the heavily degraded video, but it didn't need to. Scott still remembered the way Ronald Reagan's head and neck had looked, sliced nearly to bits by whatever entity inhabited that ancient Betamax tape. He'd pored over that image and others like it, and all the transcripts that went with them, searching for any hint of a correlation or pattern that might reveal something, anything about the alien consciousness driving the anomaly. How long had he combed through hours of video, hunting for clues to future events? How many times had he watched Ronald Reagan brutally mutilated, all for nothing? All those hours and days of research had never revealed a single clue to the anomaly's true nature. Eventually, he'd been reassigned to 058, and he'd given up on ever finding out the secrets of 1981.
But now, more than a decade later, he finally had something. The same strange phrase, spat out by a completely different anomaly, years before a bleeding Ronald Reagan ever gargled it: "drooling path".
Conrad Scott smiled.
They heard him in the cafeteria.

When the security guards kicked open Dr. Scott's door, he was still dancing.
“The drooling path!” Dr. Scott exclaimed as he leapt in place, arms above his head like Rocky. “The drooling path!” He turned to face the guard, smiling wide, eager to share this new breakthrough with anyone who'd listen. Then the guard tackled him. Even as he was cuffed and hauled away, Dr. Scott continued to cheer. “The drooling path!” he shouted. “I knew it! I knew it!”

Dr. Glass sighed. “Conrad needs a vacation.”
“He needs a reassignment,” Dr. Johnston grumbled.
“Well, that's what this assessment is going to determine,” Glass semi-agreed. He and Aimes Johnston were walking side-by-side down a hallway in Armed Bio-Containment Area 14, heading toward the cell where the overjoyed Dr. Scott had been detained. He wasn't trying to hurt anybody, but he'd been listening to 058 for almost an hour and security wasn't taking any chances.
“Doctor Johnston!” called an out-of-breath voice from behind.
The doctor scowled and did not turn to face his assistant as the much younger scientist drew up beside him.
“Yes, James?”
“I was walking past Dr. Scott's office just now, and I…”
“Great idea!” Johnston interrupted, just wanting rid of the bothersome research assistant. “Go seize all of his 058 stuff, and put it in my office.”
“Now, Aimes,” Glass cautioned. “Don't you think you should wait until after the evaluation to seize Conrad's possessions?”
James, who was already turning to go, paused briefly.
“Pfft,” Johnston scoffed. “Scott's cracked. They won't fire him, no, but he violated containment procedures. He's off 058 for good.” Then he grinned sardonically, exposing the hole where his right front tooth had once been.
“You seem entirely too happy about your coworker's misfortune.” Glass cast a sideways glance at Johnston, if only to frighten him. Johnston crossed his arms defensively.
“058 is my project. Always has been. Scott's just here for that weird gibberish…”
“Word salad, sir,” James corrected before he could stop himself.
“…obsession he has. You know they kicked him off 1981 for trying to communicate with it?”
“Yes, I am aware of Conrad's history. That's why they sent me instead of Yamada.”
There was a brief pause, during which Johnston's eyes glided over to James for the first time since he'd joined the conversation.
“Is there a reason you're still here?”
James startled, then shook his head. “No, sir, sorry, sir!” Then he sprinted off down the hall to loot Dr. Scott's office.
“You shouldn't treat him so poorly.” Glass watched as James hurried off, drawing derogatory looks from passing staff.
“He needs it. The kid's soft. Lets everybody step on him. I'm just trying to toughen him up, so he won't crack like Scott just did.”

Now that the initial excitement had passed, Dr. Scott was frustrated. When he'd begun his celebratory dance, he hadn't considered the way it would look to anybody who barged in. So now he was stuck in quarantine, waiting for a psych eval. He was still pretty happy, though. He'd made the first real breakthrough on the speech patterns of both 058 and 1981, at the same time nonetheless. Even better, he'd done it before that asshat Aimes Johnston. He couldn't wait to get back to his office. That's why he hopped to his feet as soon as the door slid open, only for the smile to melt from his face.
“Hello, Conrad.” Dr. Glass smiled warmly as Scott collapsed back onto the narrow bed, face in his hands.

“I'm not compromised!” Dr. Scott exclaimed once again.
“No one's saying that you are,” repeated Glass. “But you certainly seem distressed.”
“I'm distressed because I'm in a cell, instead of my office, where I need to be!”
“Doctor, you've worked plenty enough for today. I think you need a vacation.”
“Vacation?!” Conrad angrily rose to his feet once again. “I've just made the biggest breakthrough of my life!” In his peripheral vision, he saw the security guard still standing at the cell door raise his weapon. Glass didn't seem to notice, but Scott took the hint and sat down.
“And what exactly is this breakthrough?” Glass inquired.
Scott couldn't resist himself. He'd been aching to tell somebody about it. Unlike Johnston and the meatheads guarding the door, Glass was intelligent. He would understand how important this was. Scott leaned forward and smiled.
“The drooling path,” he said.
Glass's brow furrowed. “I'm sorry?”
“The drooling path!” Scott exclaimed. “I heard 058 say it!”
“So what?” Glass asked, writing something down. Scott had learned not to read upside-down (it was a survival skill in the memetics division), but he didn't need to in order to know that this interview wasn't going well. With a little more urgency than before, he tried to explain himself.
“I've heard that before.” Glass looked up from his clipboard. “1981 said it once.”
Glass returned to his writing. “Sounds like a coincidence to me.”
“Coincidence!” Scott shouted, surprising even himself. “There are more than 200,000 words in the English language! The chances of two unrelated anomalies coming up with the same phrase by pure coincidence are practically non-existent!”
“And you have another explanation, I assume?”
“Yes.” Scott leaned even closer to Glass, who looked up from his papers once again. “Because they aren't unrelated.”

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” James muttered, gathering up the CDs with 058's rantings on them. He hated it when Johnston treated him like shit, just because he was just a Research Assistant, not a proper Researcher. James knew he should stand up for himself, but he also knew that talking back to Johnston would be a one-way ticket to Keter duty (James's friendlier colleagues had assured him there was no such thing, but he wasn't so sure). He also hated rooting through Dr. Scott's office like this. It was an invasion of privacy, and he knew that he'd catch the blame when Dr. Scott wanted his 058 CDs back.
Also, Dr. Scott's office was creepy. His desk was a disorganized mess of SCP files, beat poetry, and nonsensical notes to self. There was also a printed photograph of Ronald Reagan in the pile. It looked like someone had taken a photo of a TV playing a badly degraded VHS tape; the former president was barely recognizable. He almost looked like he was bleeding. The desk was nothing compared to the walls, though. There was a corkboard behind the desk completely covered in handwritten transcriptions of 058 recordings, with words highlighted in different colors. Dr. Scott had even stuck pins in them and connected them with color-coded yarn like Fox Mulder. And right at the middle, written so big that it took up a whole page, was this:

The sensual violence of lust is all the assurance you will ever need to know the worth of life.

Maybe Dr. Scott really was crazy. James quickly finished putting the twenty-some 058 discs in his duffel bag, then made for the door. He was almost out before he remembered to check the CD player itself. Reluctantly, James doubled back to Dr. Scott's chaotic desk and popped open the lid on the little compact CD player that lay there. There was indeed another disc inside it. James was about to remove it, but something made him stop. He'd been working with Dr. Johnston for six months now, but he still hadn't actually heard any of 058's ramblings. As far as James knew, Dr. Johnston never listened to it at all. He looked up at the open door, then back at the creepy corkboard. Then he closed the CD player and sat down.
“Might as well,” he said to himself. “Could be my only chance to actually hear the damn thing.” It was only fair; he was assigned to 058 too, after all. Then he pressed play.

“That's…quite a theory.”
“And I can prove it, too. I just need to get back to my office…”
“No, Conrad. You need a break.”
“A break? But I'm so close! Why don't…”
“I do, Conrad, I do. You really may be on to something. But the fact of the matter is, you've been listening to 058 far too often lately, and it's straining your mental health.”
“Pfft. I'm fine.”
Instead of arguing, Dr. Glass produced his cellphone and showed Scott a photo of the corkboard behind his desk. Dr. Scott started to argue, then deflated.
“Okay, maybe I have been working a little too hard.”
“That's okay, Conrad. Most people don't work hard enough! But you've done a good job today, and you deserve some rest.”
“I suppose.” Glass knew damn well that Scott wouldn't be able to rest, not until he knew more about the “drooling path”. But he couldn't say that.
Dr. Glass stood up. “I'm going to recommend that you be given the week off. Go to the beach. See a movie. Stay at a hotel. Just get out of that Godforsaken office. Alright?"
Scott sighed, resigned to his fate. "Well, a little fresh air couldn't hurt." That, at least, was true. Area-14 was almost completely underground, which made both fresh air and sunlight difficult to come by.
"My point exactly. Is there anything you need from your office-"
"Well, there's-"
"-that isn't work-related?"
"Of course. Just my lunch."
"Okay. I'll have someone go get those for you."
Scott crossed his arms. "What, you don't trust me in my own office?"
Glass didn't answer, because he was already leaving. "Take him to the lobby, would you?" he whispered to the guard. "Don't let him out of your sight."
The guard nodded, then turned to Scott while Glass headed off down the hall. "Come on. Let's go to the lobby."

"You are welcome in the world of frozen sundowns, but only while the childish members of tomorrow's mind die quietly in sudden sequence."
James was horrified. No wonder Dr. Scott's office was such a madhouse, if he listened to this on a regular basis.
"Never have the mass and water chosen to live in margins. No one has forgiven the lands of mixed and chosen men, ground to cinders by the life of derangement."
Suddenly, James was seized with a sudden concern that these recordings might be memetic or something. Dr. Scott had been detained by an armed guard; maybe he'd gone nuts and tried to kill somebody. Hoping he hadn't been corrupted already, James reached forward to stop the CD player.
"I have craw-"
Almost exactly when James stopped the playback, the door to the office swung even further open than it had been already, striking the wall with a startling noise. James jumped, finding himself face to face with Dr. Johnston.
"James!"
"Yessir?" he replied, nervously.
"What's taking you so long?"
"Uh-" James began, but it turned out to have been a rhetorical question.
"Where are those disks?" Johnston demanded.
"Uh," James repeated, grabbing up the duffel containing them, "here they are."
Johnston thanklessly snatched it out of his hand. "Excellent. Now go get me a coffee, and come straight back to my office." With that, Dr. Johnston left the room as angrily as he'd entered it.
"Mean old bastard," he muttered. James started to leave again, but just like last time, he remembered the disc in the CD player when he was halfway out the door.
"Shit," he said, doubling back again to get it. Johnston would be seriously pissed, even though it was his own damn fault for being so impatient.
Of course, it wasn't like the mean old bastard was actually going to listen to it. He was just taking the CDs out of spite. He probably wouldn't even notice if one of them went missing.
James grinned. A little rebellion never hurt anybody.

It's gonna tell him what to do.


…
Oh hey, Rex.
…
Yeah, I'm just thinking again.
…
Well, back when I was just starting out there was a researcher I was friends with. Their name was Robin. Yeah. Like the bird. Anyways, we got to be pretty good friends back then. We were both brand new in the Foundation and our lunch hours just so happened to match. We spent a lot of time talking about our theses and what we wanted to accomplish, and a little about ourselves.
They said they wanted to be the best at their field, but they weren't sure what they wanted to do just yet. Just that they wanted to be the best. I always felt that was admirable, and Robin really had a passion for what they did. They always put their best foot forward on every project and stayed up way later than anyone else working. I remember I would join them sometimes, just shooting the shit while they poured over documents and historical accounts just to write a damn report. They weren't kidding about wanting to be the best.
Robin was always getting assigned to the weirdest anomalies. And when I say weird, I do mean weird. Not our usual 'Wondertainment' weird. I mean, for crying out loud, at some point they were assigned to a guy who had the ghost of a Japanese businessman living up his ass. No, I'm not kidding.
Years… yeah I guess it really has been years. It doesn't really feel like it's been that long, but years passed us by. We started getting more and more specialized. I became a group of interest researcher and they focused on the more esoteric kind of anomalies. Our paths crossed less and less often and eventually I got moved here and they stayed back at 81. Despite that, we still stayed in touch via emails and we tried to meet up once a year for tea or coffee. It was a fun little tradition. We haven't practiced it in the most recent years, but I digress.
…
Yeah, we kinda fell out of touch. Time just keeps speeding up and there's so many projects and so little time in the day… I regret it, I really do.
…
Well, I was going to write Robin an email for old time's sake, but I got on my computer this morning and I found out their email address was disabled. I reached out to the head of RAISA in 81, someone named Alexis Rose. Lovely girl. She jumped through a bunch of hoops just to answer my question, very dedicated. Anyway, it turned out Robin resigned last month and was amnesticized.
No, no, it's okay. They knew what they signed up for when they joined the Foundation, as did I, as did you. Hell, I could quit tomorrow and they'd wipe my memory clean of everything I've seen and done in here. But I can't help but wonder if Robin ever, you know, made it. Maybe they did and because they had nothing else to do, they quit. Or maybe they got stuck in the belief that no matter what they did, they wouldn't make it. Makes me kinda wonder if I'm doing in comparison. I'm Head Researcher, but am I only here because of seniority or because I am the best?
…
Ha ha, thank you. I'm sorry about trailing off like that. I guess I'm just feeling down because Robin was my friend, you know? And now they're gone. I've seen a lot of people come and go over the years, but none of their comings and goings have hit me so hard. I wonder if this is how Senior Staff feel. I wonder if it's all just a big blur of faces to them. I wonder if some of them ever felt how I feel now. They tell us not to make friends at orientation and I guess this is why, but I can't help but feel like no one listens to that. I mean, look at us. We're talking about non-work related stuff right now. Just like how I used to talk with Robin.
…
You're right, I shouldn't dwell on these thoughts, and I'm starting to ramble anyway. I'll join you in the lab in a little bit. I need to wrap up an email first.

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Ode To The Unknown Author •


...

“SCP-110-1,” the speaker crackled across the sterile silence of the cell.
One painfully bored anomalous person pulled a pair of prison-issue glasses off his face and rubbed his temples. The paperback novel in his hand found its way to the table beside his bed as he sat up. Wasn't much of an imposition. He had read it 10 times already this week.
“Yes, I'm here.”
“Please prepare for room inspection. Place both hands on the wall to your right, back to the door, feet shoulder width apart. Failure to comply may result in your termination. Is that understood?”
SCP-110-1 cringed at the whine of the ancient speaker, moreso even than at the threat to his life. He wasn't comfortable with that either. Summary execution was such a childish way to deal with prisoners. Scaring a person into compliance only taught them how to lie more effectively.
“I understand.”
He stood and moved to the far wall of the cell as instructed. The cell door hissed obnoxiously as it swung inward. Two pairs of footsteps entered the room. One of them pulled a pistol out of its holster and thumbed back the hammer.
“You forgot to rack it,” SCP-110-1 said over his shoulder as hands swept up and down his body. He heard the other guard rack their slide, curse, and then fumble around for the extra bullet that popped out and fell on the floor. SCP-110-1 snickered quietly. “This one new?”
His head was smacked and made white static in his eyes, knocking the glasses onto the floor.
“Can it, asshole,” the guard said, checking once more for weapons or other items concealed about the anomaly's person. “…He's clear. You good?”
“Yeah… yeah,” said the other. “Clear.”
The guard grabbed SCP-110-1 by the shoulder, spun him around, and put his back against the wall. “Any more bullshit like that, you're gonna need a new right kneecap, understand?”
“Ooga booga booga to you, too,” SCP-110-1 said, locking eyes (he hoped; could only see vague beige blob where a face should be) with the guard as he slid down the wall and grabbed his glasses. “Go ahead and toss it. I've got all the same stuff I've had the last ten times.”
A tall man in a smart navy pinstripe suit with a briefcase appeared in the doorway, clearing his throat. “I appreciate the effort, fellas,” the suit said, “but I can handle this interview from here, thanks.” The two guards backed away from the anomaly, weapons holstered, but hands still resting on the butts of their pistols, until they framed the doorway. “…That means leave,” the suit concluded, and the pair of guards scurried around the doorframe out of sight.
SCP-110-1 eyed the stranger suspiciously, folding his arms over his chest. “Well? What can I do for you?”
“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps quite a lot,” the suit replied, extending a hand. “I'm Field Agent Bertrand Tomlin. You can call me Burt.”
SCP-110-1 did not take his hand. “Bertrand… like Bertrand Russel?”
“You know him?”
“I'm a topological engineer, of course I know him,” he replied curtly. “What's in the case?”
The suit smiled and held it in front of him. “Your file says you claim to be one of ours from the future, is that right?”
“Does the black moon howl?” SCP-110-1 answered.
“Cute. What year was that?”
“What year is it?”
The Agent, whistled. “Never much cared for manners anyway.” He spun a combination into the case locks and popped it open, retrieving a file from inside and presenting it to the anomaly. “Admin thinks this is probably a waste of time, but… I'd like you to have a look at this for me.”
SCP-110-1 tried not to look desperate when he took it, but the twinkle in the Agent's eye told him he had failed. “What is it?”
“A little something we found recently. I'm no good with schematics, but the researchers tell me it's some kind of impossible machine. So far the only thing it's good for is making microwave ovens bigger on the inside. I looked at your file and said ‘Hey! Here's an expert on spatial anomalies from the future! He -'”
“Stop talking,” the anomaly said holding up a hand. The deathly silent room was suddenly abuzz with barely audible electronic noises that certainly weren't there before SCP-110-1 started looking at the file. “… That can't be right.”
“What can't be right?”
“The schematic,” SCP-110-1 said, closing the folder and handing it back. “It's a joke. Someone is having a laugh at your expense, Burt. Sorry.”
Agent Tomlin smirked. “Show me.”
SCP-110-1 rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He opened the file. “This device replicates two pseudo-riemannian manifolds here and here, using a primitive thaumaturgical antenna here to draw extra space out of nothing and bottle it, but then there's this symbol here,” he said, tapping the page. “This is written up as a ‘tachyon emitter'. A device that theoretically makes time. Except there's not supposed to be any such thing as a tachyon; it was disproven in the 1990's. Time travel is…”
Agent Tomlin chuckled, “I'm sorry, time travel is what? Were you about to say it's impossible?”
“Where did you find this?”
“You know I can't tell,” Agent Tomlin said, pulling the folder from SCP-110-1's hand and putting it away. “But… well, if you can prove that you know how it works, then maybe…”
SCP-110-1 closed his eyes for only a moment before opening them and looking into the Agent's eyes. His features softened. His face shifted uncomfortably between furious anger and unbearable pain. “If it gets me out of this room, I'll do it. I'll eat a bullet, donate a vital organ to science, anything. I'll do it. Please just… It's been almost 20 years, I can't do this anymore.”
Agent Tomlin smiled, and extended his hand again. “I feel like we maybe got off on the wrong foot. I'm Burt Tomlin. What's your name?”

Thaddeus Xyank, PhD.

Chairperson: Temporal Anomalies Department

Doctor Athena Anastasakos ran her fingers over the nameplate in her hand, and paced the doorway outside of her boss's office. Four hours late. Thad was never four minutes late, let alone four hours. She had met at least 4 different iterations of the man by now, and not a one of them would ever have been caught late for anything, even in death. Not because he was a time traveler and kept the best methods for himself, mind you. He was just that kind of obsessive prick.
It was time to admit that something had gone miserably wrong.
Athena pulled her flip phone from her purse and punched in an 18 digit number. Before hitting send, she inserted another small device into the phone's headphone jack and turned the numbered dial to a three digit PIN belonging to the only person in this whole forsaken reality she was sure she could trust.
“Burt Tomlin.”
“Burt! It's Athena. He's… He's late.”
“Fucking of course. How late?”
“Four hours, three minutes, thirty seven seconds at… mark.”
The voice on the other end of the line sighed painfully. She could practically see Tomlin pinching the bridge of his nose as his eyes pressed shut against the pain of the present. “Right, when are you?”
“1304 on 18 June, 2002 CE, at Site 17.” She held her wristwatch to the device plugged into her phone and tapped the hand-catch twice. “I don't know the number, but it's 5 down from yours.”
“Alright, I'm coming to you. He's about 84 minutes late for me, too. Can you get to Sub-level 2 low value storage?” She could hear Tomlin zipping bags and loading weapons into it.
“I'm on my way, be there by 1309,” She replied, flats patting down the hallway.
The line went dead as she rounded the corner and bumped into none other than one Dr. Thaddeus Xyank.
“Doctor Anastasakos!” he said merrily. “Good to see you, you're looking… wait, what happened to your lip?”
In a flash she looked at his badge and saw the issue date 1996, the number 4, and the letter Sigma. It might have been a Thaddeus Xyank, but it sure as hell wasn't the Thaddeus Xyank. Not the one who showed her the Naked Present. This one, she outranked. Athena slipped the name plate into her purse before he could see and shook her head. “Have you told me where you were recovered yet?”
The false Xyank in front of her turned chalk white.
“Right. Can't talk. Paradox risk. Call my office, you'll find the one you're looking for.” She did not wait for his response, nor look back when he called after her. Good, she thought. See how he likes it for a change.

Interrogation rooms are shitty places to be, on either side of the glass. Or in this case both.
Athena stood stock still and stared at herself on the far side of the glass. Very occasionally flicking her eyes in Xyank's direction. The Athena he knew had arrived with a set of dinner plates that were about to make a splash onto the London culinary landscape in obscene fashion. Calm, cool, collected… and with a small scar on the right side of her lower lip. One he knew for certain he had seen, the day he realised that this JR in particular wioll haven been gonen places.
“Look, Athena,” Agent Orefield said, adjusting her tie. “…We all want to believe you but… certain circumstances-”
“Circumstances?!” the Thing that looked like Athena and might have been we can't quite be sure said with a laugh, raising her head from the table. “I can tell you a thing or two about circumstances. Have you ever been tortured, Agent? I mean real torture, not your nephew playing a cartoon too often. I mean break your fingers, until you give names, torture. I mean rip you apart and put you back together just to prove they can, torture. “
“No. No, I haven't,” Agent Orefield replied. “How is the hand, by the way?”
This Thing, they had found in the Site 17 lobby, beaten and bloody and broken and raw, screaming out the name of a Foundation asset that no random anomaly should be caught knowing. And now it was being grilled.
“You're not LISTENING!” the Thing screeched and slammed the table with its good left hand. “Mashall, Carter & Dark benefit auction. Dinner plates that turn food into human flesh. Live demonstration. I was compromised by two… Goons I guess. They weren't quite human. I was detained. I had to abort. I need to talk to Thaddeus Xyank. Where is he?“
Athena looked sternly at Xyank and shook her head.
“See, that's the other thing,” Agent Orefield said, scratching her head. “We haven't got a Thaddeus Xyank. We have an Athena Anastasakos already, but not-”
“I don't believe you,” the Thing said, leaning forward. “He's there somewhere, keep digging. And if you aren't authorized to know about him, ask your boss to dig. I'm done talking until I talk to Xyank, you hear me? DONE.”
Orefield sighed and slumped back in her chair. With one hand she tossed her pen into her briefcase and slammed it shut. “Right. Sit here and rot out all you like. I'm gonna go write up your report.” Without another word or furtive glance, she rose and left the room, immediately coming in to the darker room next door. “Well?”
“Go get something to eat, Robin,” Xyank said. “I have to think.”
Orefield smirked and nodded. “Sure, sure,” she said, “but I wouldn't go in there if I were you,” and rolled around the doorframe out of sight.
Around 11.3 seconds later, Athena turned off the recorder. “Just a dinner party, Thad?”
Xyank swallowed a lump in his throat.
“A real quick in and out job, I think you said? All above board, little to no risk, you'll do fine; that all sound familiar to you?”
“Attie-”
“DOCTOR Anastasakos, if you please,” she said, eyes burning white hot. She pulled a small hidden camera - the one the thing had hours earlier sworn had been lost - from a pocket inside her lab coat and tossed it onto the desk beside her. “Go ahead and watch it. I dare you.” Without even looking, she punched the code for the emergency weapons locker, pulled out a pistol, and stormed out and around the corner.
The Thing jumped backward and pressed itself against the wall. “Whoa! What-?”
Athena put a finger to her lips, and set the pistol on the table. Slowly but surely the Thing peeled itself from the cinder blocks and moved back to its chair. Athena leaned in and whispered something Xyank couldn't make out, and put a pen on the loose paper in front of the Thing.
The Thing grabbed the pistol, mouthed a silent thank you, scribbled a Temporal Expression, and was gone.
Athena returned to the small dark room behind the glass, and stared stab-wounds into Xyank's self concept. From behind her back she produced a pistol very much like the one she had just given away. It had worn in a bit more near the muzzle, and had a new nick in the base of the magazine, but Xyank had looped himself enough objects to trust it implicitly. She placed the pistol back inside, closed the door, and locked it.
“…Thaddeus?”
“Yes, Athena?”
“Don't you ever. EVER. Lie to me like that again.”
“…Noted.”
Athena nodded gravely, and turned the recorder back on. The air conditioner suddenly turned back on, too. And even more strange, Xyank noticed that his watch was ticking again… which meant he hadn't noticed when it stopped.
None of what they had just done had ever happened.
Athena made a surprised noise and slammed on the breach alarm. Over the next hour she gave the most compelling testimony of an anomaly Just Plain Vanishing in the Foundation's living memory.
Xyank corroborated every word of it. He owed her at least that.

Sub-level 2 low value storage was little more than a glorified dumping ground of half-cocked anomalous items barely worth a designation apart from a paragraph summary on the general access intranet. A place of cobwebs and mildew and small trinkets patiently awaiting their turn in the incinerator. A compact disc containing the innermost thoughts of Paul McCartney, a blender that unblended smoothies into complete fruits and globs of yogurt, a black and white photograph of porch furniture that inspired viewers to take up amateur photography on the weekends for not less than six months; nothing mundane, but nothing worth puzzling over, and nothing worth anyone's time. It did, however, hold a special place in RCT-Δt's heart; an empty locker which once contained the lone instance of Thaddeus Xyank's personal Foundation issue wristwatch, model 442i. Perfect place for a meeting spot.
Or it would be, if the bastard had actually showed.
Athena waited on the musty floor, legs crossed, eyes closed, doing her best to count her breaths and hold back the rising tide of panic. Thad was gone. Burt was now 20 minutes behind schedule and not answering calls. She was officially out in the cold, holding a lifeboat that might lead nowhere, an isochronous communication device she could call no one on, and a cyanide capsule in a sealed glass vial. If she ate it now, the other her might just be interrogated, amnesticized, and reassigned to a less critically endangered project. Some part of her, some iteration might survive, live to retire, settle into a small cabin on the shore of Lesbos and drink her last days away in the arms of someone tanned and toned who tasted of saltwater and liberation. The thought was comforting for a time.
Twenty two minutes.
Why had she ever bothered to read the draft of that letter? Athena was supposed to be a research scientist. She wasn't a retrieval tech. She didn't work in a black-box site hidden somewhere outside time. She didn't have a lust for adventure or a fighter's disposition. Last time she had feigned any of those things it had very nearly been her ass. But noooo, she had the exotic accent and the breeding, she knew the etiquette, she had read the fucking letter already. It had to be her. She pulled her legs up to her chest and held them close, head down.
It wasn't until he was under her with a knee on his throat that Athena realized Burt Tomlin had arrived. He had… what had he done? Touched her arm? Well now he was turning purple and pounding her on the thigh. She lifted her knee and scooted back to let him breathe.
“FUCK, Attie!” he said, turning over and coughing his windpipe back into shape. “The hell was that?!”
She thought about saying what a hell of a drug post traumatic stress was, but decided the joke wouldn't land. “Don't ‘Attie' me, where were you?!”
“Yeah, next time don't hang up and you'll actually hear me say ‘I'll be about a half hour.' Christ…” Burt slowly pulled himself back to his feet and cracked his neck, pulling a holstered pistol out of a bag. “Here. Under your shirt, right side. Just in case.”
Begrudgingly she took it and slipped the slim leather holster where he suggested. “So, Mr. Field Agent, what now?”
Tomlin shrugged. “Well… Our boss, a high level Foundation employee who isn't even supposed to exist, is missing, right after planning some seriously shady shit. I'm thinking maybe they put him back in containment. My best idea is we leave Marcus and Kevin to pick up the notes and bring in the rest of Δt, while you and I go see what kind of benefits packages the GOC offers to Foundation ex-pats while O5 is still focused on damage control. Y'know, before they burn us.”
Athena's expression clearly stated that Burt Tomlin had grown an additional head some time in the last 30 seconds. “That's got to be the single dumbest thing I've ever heard you say.”
“Oh? You think they're not going to notice a B-Class Foundation asset suddenly turned up missing?”
“Yes, that's exactly what I think,” Athena said, rifling through her purse.
“What makes you so sure of that, Ms. Research Scientist? You got a paper on the subject somewhere?”
Athena smirked, “Of course. You know what they say in academia, don't you? Publish or perish?” She pulled out the name plate and turned for the nearest door. “But seriously, I just saw him. Well, not him him, but one of him. Maybe about two years too young, maybe from another string, I don't know. He spent so much time hopping around after we dropped our paper, I'd estimate we have another three to five years before Overwatch starts seeing any gaps in his schedule.”
Burt blinked for a moment, then shook his head. “That tells me nothing. ‘When' is the new ‘where'. If we can't look forward for him past ‘07, we're going to have a pretty hard ti- erm… fuck. I mean our search is going to be pretty difficult.”
Athena shook her head and held the name plate up to a bracket near the door to an old paper records office. It would not fit. “That doesn't matter at all,” she replied, surprising herself with how confident she sounded so soon after her bout of despair. Like she was suddenly banging on all cylinders again. “If we need to, we can wipe the slate clean of him and us ourselves and just disappear. I know how to do it.”
“Uh-huh,” Burt said, head still on a swivel in case some poor hapless intern happened around one of the stacks. “I dunno, I'd rather turn GOC defector than unperson myself on his behalf, personally, but I see the appeal.”
“Either way, that's for later,” Athena said, pulling a bracket out of her purse. “For now… have you got a screwdriver?”

“No,” Tomlin said, standing up from the table. “I refuse. And furthermore, it is a bad idea.”
“Sit down, Burt,” Xyank said coolly, swirling the liquor around in his glass. “We've been off of the Foundation leash for a long while, now, without even realizing it. One more step isn't going to damn you worse.”
“Sure, but not taking this one might save me,” Tomlin replied still heading for the door.
“I'm in,” Athena said without hesitation.
Tomlin stopped dead, hand on the knob.
“You're aware,” Xyank began, filling her glass with a far off look in his eyes, “that this is like nothing you've ever encountered before. If my guess is right, this…sort of being won't even be on Foundation radar until 2018 at the very earliest. Frankly, it's above my paygrade. I fully suspect math will be useless against something like this…”
Tomlin let go of the knob and sighed. “Why are you doing this?”
“What we're dealing with,” Xyank continued, “is called an Essophysical Entity. A physiological embodiment of the concept of Time.”
Athena's breath caught in her throat and she spat her whiskey back into the glass. “That's impos- … How does that even work?”
“It doesn't work, Dr. Anastasakos,” came Xyank's cool reply. “That's what makes it anomalous.”
Burt spun on his heels and bored new holes into his boss's head with his eyes. “SCP-110 is a goddamn casket. By 2083 we were just cracking it open, and as soon as the seal broke, I'm explaining what a phased pulse rifle is to a bunch of egg heads in 1983.”
“And who sent you down there, Mr. Tomlin?” Xyank asked, staring straight back.
Burt's jaw hit the floor. “…You're kidding.” Xyank's gaze didn't falter. “Fuck me, you've just done it, haven't you?”
“About seventy two hours ago,” Xyank replied, taking a long swallow. “I'm… I'm sorry, Burt. I wanted to at least try to get in with approval first. I saw your name on the roster and-”
“Bullshit! What you needed was someone to spring you out that O5-12 already knew about you selfish-”
“Bertrand, will you sit the fuck down,” Athena demanded, suddenly on her feet. She wasn't supposed to curse. Cursing was for other sorts of people from other sorts of families with other sorts of priorities. Without further convincing, Burt let his shoulders drop, took his seat, and picked up his glass. “You were saying, Dr. Xyank?”
Xyank nodded, and set his whiskey down, pulling a hand drawn map from the desk drawer as time roiled behind him. “SCP-110 wasn't just a city, but also a containment facility. I designed pseudo riemannian units and researched extra-spatial topological anomalies there… When we get in, if we get in, we can't expect anything to look like it should.”
Burt Tomlin raked a hand down his face. “I want to be clear about this; we're planning to break into a Foundation site to gain access to an active anomalous zone, under our own recognisance, without asking permission, or even notifying anyone else at all. Do I have that right?” The other two time travelers stared blankly in Burt's direction. Athena raised a single eyebrow. Burt sat back in his chair, downed his entire glass of whiskey, and sighed. “Fine. I wasn't planning on collecting my pension anyway…”

The air of the office tasted stale. Ancient. Like a sealed tomb or an untended attic. There were a few old cobwebs and a thin layer of film floating on the surface of the water in the cooler, but precious little dust, and no sign of contamination apart from the faintest smell of mildew. No one had been in there for a very long while. That was a distinctly bad sign.
All the same, it was safer within than hanging half in/half out of low value storage. Athena pulled the nameplate from the bracket and let the door close them inside.
“So…this is it?” Tomlin asked, setting the Newton's cradle on the desk into motion absently. “The office at the end of time? I expected more, somehow. A few cans of food… toilet, maybe… something more substantive than a four by four meter mausoleum.” Tomlin ran his fingers along a set of Time/Life history books on the shelves of the left wall and perched on the small side table. “He could have done this to any room he wanted. An armory. A vehicle bay. The dressing room backstage at the Bellagio in Vegas. I'm just saying… Why this one?”
“Maybe this was all he needed,” Athena said, reaching behind the water cooler and pulling out a worn 12 gauge shotgun, covered in rust spots from trigger to frontsight. The action was so stiff she couldn't even rack it. It would take an absolute miracle for the weapon to fire, it was so hopelessly jammed. For air alone to have worn the finish and corroded the metal so badly… “Burt, we're the first people here in over a hundred years.”
Tomlin was already leafing through the papers left in the “IN” box on the corner of the desk, yellow and brittle with age, ink beginning to fade, but in all other senses completely immaculate. “Lots of folks still out in the cold,” Tomlin said, taking a seat behind the desk. “Lorainne Mickelson. Regina Watts. Arthur Blanchard. Fuck me, these are the best of the best. There's not a name in this pile I wouldn't trust with my life. When the hell are they all?”
But Athena was only half listening by this point. She was too busy staring at a senseless projection screen hanging limply in front of the whiteboard behind the desk. So while Burt yammered on about dates and names that didn't matter a wooden nickel to her sense of the universe, she reached behind him, and tugged on the string. Whining on springs long past their expiration, the screen slowly climbed back into its case, and the chaos of the board came into full view. Diagrams, equations, fragments of thought, esoteric symbols and written language Athena had never seen before was strewn so wildly across the whiteboard that it looked to be quivering in fear of its own implications. In the center under a diagram of a hallway with evenly spaced doors with chaos temporal expressions written under each one, was a line in English, in bright red capital letters

THERE HAS TO BE A WAY!!!

“Well, clearly he was working on something,” Athena said, squinting. “But I can't make sense of what.” That was when she noticed the envelope taped cleanly to the board, so thin you could barely see it. She pulled it off and turned it over in her hands, fiddling with one corner nervously.
“…Attie for fuck's sake, just open it. You're giving me the willies.”

Burt and Attie,

After much consideration and planning, I have decided to attempt to breach SCP-110
alone. I would have told you beforehand, but I knew you both would try to stop me,
or join me, or otherwise prevent me from going. I understand this is a bit of a shock.
We promised no more secrets and, surprise, I kept one.

Burt; it'll do you good to hear you were right. It was a bad idea. Not because you both
would have slowed me down - which is also true. But because this mess isn't your
responsibility. I can't risk both of you over my own mistakes. It's my mess.
I'll clean it...or... Well...

If you found this letter, I am probably dead. I didn't intend to die, but here you are,
and there's clearly nothing I can do about that now. I had planned to find you when it
was done and call an abort, but... well, here you are.

There is, however, an outside chance that I'm still out there somewhere, somewhen,
tracking this bastard down. That you found me before I found you. Since I can't
stop you from following, I won't try. There is a Damn Good Chance that Time is too
big for me. Too broken for me to find all the pieces and fix it. No matter how
many “me”s I throw at it. So here's a bit of advice.

If you're going to follow me, consider yourselves to be SCP objects until proven
otherwise, and act accordingly. The narrow vision of the Foundation you know isn't
going to help us through this. They're still mad at Eve for biting the apple. But what
Eve did wrong wasn't the biting. It was her failure to chew it, swallow it, and finish
it.

Don't make the same mistake, or this story won't just end poorly. It will have never
happened at all.

Best of luck,

-Tx
Athena slid down the wall and pulled her legs in tight, closed her eyes, and began to calculate. Burt muttered quietly to himself and loaded magazines.
“We are doing this,” he said over his shoulder. “Right?”
“Oh yes,” Athena said, smirking. “If he thinks he's getting all the credit for the paper that'll come out of this, he's got another thing coming.”
…

Part 8: The Kitchen Sink | Hub | Part 10: Perseveration


Did this for my youtubes just for fun, thought I'd throw it on here too for additional mockery.

▸ More by this Author ◂

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F.A.Q.

{$doesthisfixthebug}

Locked up in containment, no trouble around
SCP-999 makes a sweet, soft, sound.
The doctors were listening and left wondering why,
He was singing a Christmas lullaby.
682 is growling, he won't go away,
But little 999, can keep him at bay.
One little orange blob can help us to stay safe,
Can make all the keters sit down and behave.
To all the Foundation's hardworking crew
To all the anomalies and dead gods too,
To all of the world in this joyous time,
Please have a Merry Christmas, from 999.


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Explicit depiction of sexual acts.
Features non-consensual sexual acts.
Depiction of severe mistreatment of children
Depiction of self-harm
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There's something incredible about performing in front of people. Once the jitters fade away, the most amazing rush of energy fills you. This feeling of… limitlessness. Like you could reach up and pluck the stars from the sky. Some people like screaming crowds in sold-out stadiums, but there's an intimacy to playing smaller venues; almost like you're sharing something special with the audience.
I want to say I can feel it now, but it's just not… there. It's the last night of our tour of Three Portlands' dive bars and rundown concert halls, and I've never felt so detached from an audience. I'd pretend it's just because it's our debut, but I know the truth. Spades knows, Elix knows, Amber knows. Despite all the weirdness and magic that permeates this micro-dimension, we're in a class of our own. They look up here and see some people in costumes, but the leaves that swirl around Elix's feet are always there. Spade's ashen complexion, jagged teeth, and horns aren't makeup and props. Neither are Amber's midnight skin or pointed ears, and they probably think her arms are by Anderson Robotics. But this is really us.
The show's over. Usually, I would get wrapped in the energy of the crowd, but here, I am alone with my thoughts. I don't think they noticed. I flick my pick into the crowd and raise my guitar above my head.
"We are The Chained Wanderers, and you've been fucking fantastic, Portlands!"
Spades beats out a rimshot and shouts above the clamor of the crowd.
"If you liked our sound, buy our shit in the back," he points to Amber, who's standing behind a heavily modified keyboard, "Amber here made all of it." He pauses.
"And get fucking drunk! There are thirsty people in Hell who'd love a beer! Do your part!"
The crowd breaks out laughing. Spades has always been a people pleaser. He just wants to be loved by everyone he meets. At the last show, we had to lock him in the rental van to stop him from spending all his cash buying rounds for the whole bar. I shoot a glance at Amber, who winks and shows me Spades' wallet, tucked into the pocket of her vest.
I look out across the crowd as the stagehands start to break down the equipment. Sitting by the bar, in a jacket too clean and white for the scene she's found herself in, is the reporter The Tribune sent to watch our show. Ms. Eleanor Bells. We talked a little before the show, but I should probably follow up and make the best impression possible. I mean, it's our very first tour of Midgard after all.

Eleanor twirls her olive around in her martini a few times before looking up at me. "So, Mr. Bersi Hákon. How do you think it went tonight?"
"Well. I think it went well. I could really feel the crowd's energy." I lied. She has an audio recorder sitting on the bar and I can't stop glancing at it. "Do you mind if I smoke?"
She pulls a packet of America Spirits out of her pocket. "Not if you share a light."
I smiled. Maybe she wasn't a stranger to this world after all. I pull a silver tin and a black lighter carved with runes from my breast pocket and pick a maroon cigarette out of the tin. Eleanor lifts her cigarette to her lips and leans in close. I can smell her perfume, almost strong enough to taste. I light hers and then mine.
"So where are you guys from? I tried to find your hometown, you know, get a little background, but it was all dead ends. Care to shed a little light on that?" She bats her eyelashes at me and I feel the enchanted perfume try to take hold. I give a little laugh. An allure like that would have worked when I was still human.
"We're from Neon City."
She cracks a grin. Probably because she thinks it's working. "And where is that? Is it a place like here?"
"Nah." She blinks. I wink. Leaning in close, I whisper in her ear. "Your succubus magic was a nice try, and I didn't even see it coming, but you'll have to try a little harder."
The look on her face goes from confused to sly and she powers off her recorder. My challenge has been accepted.
"Well then, there has to be a better way to loosen your lips. Are you inclined to the same vices as your friends?" She gestures behind me and I turn. Spades is by the dartboard, pouring shots and lighting them on fire for his new "friends." Elix is in a booth, surrounded by stoners nursing beers under a thick cloud of smoke. I don't see Amber immediately, but then I see her in a corner booth, sharing a drink with a redhead with what looks like tentacles emerging from her back. Amber's arm is around her shoulders and they're both laughing.
"Some, but not all." I wrap my knuckles on the bar. "Hey, bartend, can you refill me?"
Eleanor finishes her martini and puts out her cigarette.
"Huh. Figured you'd be the type to put that out on me."
"Would you like that?"
"No comment, Ms. Journalist."
She purses her lips.
"What? Too mouthy?"
"Are you gonna give me a decent interview, or will you fight me every step of the way?"
I lean back. "Depends on whether or not you play to fight me in the bar."
"We don't have to fight here, if that's what you're looking for."
"What do you have in mind? The park across the street is-"
"I was thinking warmer. My apartment's three subway stops away."

"Still okay with this?"
"Of course."
We barely make it through the door before her lips find mine and her hand grabs at my belt buckle. I figure she's going straight for the kill, so I try to shrug off my jacket. I feel her nails dig into my stomach, then I'm lifted off the ground. Eleanor pulls back and winks at me.
"Surprised?"
"Not-" I'm tossed onto the bed, "Really."
She slides off her coat and tosses her glasses on to a chair. I can feel my eyelids grow heavy.
"Did you… lipstick or nails?" I manage to slur.
Eleanor wraps her hair into a bun, before looking back at me. "Both. Just to be sure. And don't worry. You'll be…"
I don't hear what comes next. Unconsciousness hits me like a wave and when the black surf breaks, I open my eyes to see her standing in front of me, holding a riding crop.
"I think… I made a mistake."
Eleanor laughs. "You're just thinking that now? Don't bother with the manacles. They'll only unlock when I say the magic word, just so you know."
I look around to find I'm bound by my wrists to the wall.
"I mean, I probably should have walked away after I smelled the perfume. Was pretty clear you were a succubus… Wait, is this… a BDSM… Murphy bed?" I lean forward slightly and feel the wall move with me.
Eleanor draws a sharp inhale. "First, I'm not a succubus, I'm an incubus. Second, rent is insane."
"Wait, aren't incubi men?"
"Gender is irrelevant. Succubus means 'to lie under' in Latin. Incubus means 'to lie upon.' It's an important distinction for my race."
"So you replaced gender with 'top' and 'bottom?' What about- OUCH!" The crop cracked against my stomach.
Eleanor grinned. "Got any more witty and racist things to say?"
I squint at her. "Not really, but um… are you gonna try to sexually torture answers out of me? Is this your plan for every interview?"
She shrugs. "Not really, but I already kinda figured we were gonna hook up."
"Really?"
"You kept looking at me during the show. A frontman who's playing in sold-out venues probably's gonna screw the hottest person in the room if they can. I guessed that was me."
"I was actually thinking about my dad most of the time. To be honest."
"Wait, really?"
"Yeah," I rattle the manacles. "More so now, cuz the… you know."
She takes a step back. "Should… should I be concerned?"
"Nah. It's not like that. But you have questions, and I have a confused and frightened erection. Let's see what we can do."
Eleanor grabs a chair from the small table, as well as a clipboard and a pencil. Sitting cross-legged, she puts a cigarette to her lips and lets it dangle there.
"First question. Why did you come home with me, despite all the red flags."
"Easy, I had nothing else to do tonight."
"So you're cocky, stupid, or a fool?"
"Functionally immortal."
She laughs. "I'll put down cocky. Next, where does the name 'Bersi Hákon' come from?"
"Early Norse history. Like really early."
"So your father or mother was a professor?"
I chuckle. "Nope. I was born before the birth of Christ. And I died as a sacrifice to prevent the Aesir and Vanir from entering our reality. Really crazy stuff. I think your readers are gonna love hearing about it."
Eleanor sighs. "So are you gonna keep lying? Because I have a car battery in the hall closet."
"Car? But we took the subway to… Wait. Don't do that. Let me tell you a story."
"Okay. I'll humor you. How can you be immortal and dead?"
"Bah. That's easy. When you get to Helheim, just meet your drummer, and come back as a Draugr. Pretty simple."
Eleanor pulls something out of the TV stand and tosses it at me. "Oh! Like from this? Do you really expect me to believe that?"
I look down at the open case for The Elder Scrolls V and groan. "Come on, that's… Look, no. Why do people keep asking me that?"
"Because it's a stupid thing to present as fact?"
"Well, I'm a Skald, too. Are you gonna go boil some water to make a point?"
She bites her thumb. "Would you like that?"
"Decidedly not."
Eleanor shifts positions and pushes her hair out of her face. "I know we covered the basics of this on the way over here. Are you still okay with this? Just a little consent check."
"Of course. I still remember our safeword."
"Good. Then I'm going to make some tea." Eleanor shoots me a sly glance. "But first."
She walks over and places a ball gag in my mouth. "So you don't spill any secrets while I'm making tea."
As she rounds the corner into her kitchen, humming an unfamiliar tune, I hear a soft click and the door swings open. Out of the shadowy hallway, two men in black combat fatigues walk into the apartment. A radio blares to life in the kitchen and the men recoil at the sudden noise. I've gotta do something. The first man touches his headset and whispers into it.
"Mission Command. This is Scout Team Upsilon. Target found… And already restrained."
His partner stifles a laugh. I motion for them to come closer and the second man towards me. I can smell his cheap aftershave and tobacco on his breath. I point to the ball gag with my finger and try moving my jaw to get him to remove it. I'm doing my best to point fear in my eyes, so that he buys my "Unwilling Captive" bit. He gives me a gruff look and whispers.
"Make a sound and we're taking her in, too. Got it?"
I nod in agreement and he pops it out.
"Oh thank God you're here. She was gonna. Gonna. Kill me. Can you get my hands free?"
As he moves towards me, I drop like a rock and bring the heavy Murphy bedframe crashing down on his unprotected head. He goes down and I find myself with my cheek pressed against his. I feel a bump, and then the first man lifts the bedframe back to its original position. Based on his facial expression, and the tiny pool of blood by his partner's head, he's not very happy.
"You're gonna pay for that," he whispered, which was frankly more threatening. He lunges for me but stops in midswing.
"Bersi? Did you make the bed fall? I thought I heard a-"
I wrap my legs around the man's torso, using him to stop the bed from tilting and falling again.
"Nope! I leaned forward a little and… You know when you lean back in a chair and you think you're gonna die? Yeah, that happened."
"Okay. This water is taking awhile to boil. Are you still in the mood? I was thinking of getting a little more physically aggressive."
The man lands a punch on my jaw.
"Oof Yeah, sounds" I squeeze his ribs with my thighs and hear a slight crack. "great."
He redoubles the blows after a pang of pain passes over his face. I'm not gonna win this fight with my legs.
"Mistress Eleanor? Could I get a cup of tea with cinnamon?"
"But cinnamon doesn't dissolve in wa-" The manacles unlatch and I slide down the Murphy bed. "Clever. Tricking me into saying the safe word. I'll deal with you in a moment."
I roll the man off to the side and run to the archway into the kitchen. Eleanor stands picturesque over the stove, staring out the window into the cityscape.
"Sorry, gotta borrow this." I reach out my hand and pull the kettle towards me. Eleanor whirls around and stares open-mouthed as it reachs me.
"How did you-"
I throw the contents of the kettle into the face of the man before she can complete her sentence. Turning back, I drop the kettle on the floor and let out a deep exhale.
"I'd love to cuddle, and you know, not 'come and go.' But they came, so we gotta go."