≡ HR Menu

≡ HR Menu

▷ Numbers Lie
▷ Re: Potential Anomalous Activity
▶ The Transfer
▷ Journeys: The Tale of Dane
▷ Just Enough

"So that we're clear," the investigating officer said, the words structured and carefully spoken so as to remove all possible doubt, "You licked it."
The Foundation Agent across the table opened his mouth as if to say something but changed his mind and closed it back again.
The officer seemed to be piercing the agent's very skin with a glare. "You understand that what you did was a gross violation of containment procedures. The kind of violation that comes with a swift termination. You understand that there is not much in the way of excuse that you can even consider at this point."
The agent nodded, his face and hands trembling.
"Your record," the officer continued, opening a folder with a small stack of papers inside, "Is exemplary. You have been with the Foundation for over 15 years. Normally in that time people pick up small things here and there. Often unintentionally—you look at an SCP the wrong way, try to go in a door you're not supposed to, forget your Hardwick confirmation—"
"I am not Foundation Agent Edward Carter Hardwick," the agent said, instantly, the words coming out like a rote.
"Nor am I," the investigator replied, holding up an assuring hand and smiling, "But as you've just demonstrated your attention to detail with the objects under your care, and under the Foundation's care at-large is incredible. It is why you have been on as many research teams as you have in the last few years. It is why you are the HMCL Supervisor for seven anomalous items—"
"Six," the agent corrected, almost instantly.
"Seven," the officer said again, removing an earpiece microphone, turning it off and placing it on the table, "Because I am aware of the nature of SCP-7282. Dr. Helms," The officer gestured to the camera in the corner. "I think if you look closely, you will find that for the first time since being employed with the Foundation you are in a room with all of the cameras disabled."
The agent looked at the camera, whose telltale red LED was, shockingly, not blinking. Was it possible? The idea that every move, every breath was painstakingly monitored by mysterious Foundation higher-ups had been drilled into every agent's existence from day one. Then again…
"Six," he reiterated.
The officer chuckled and glanced over at the one-way glass on the side of the interrogation room, seemingly to alert someone on the other side. "In any case, this leads me to a question." After a moment, the file folder closed and the officer was staring, intently, at the agent's eyes. No, not at his eyes—at his hairline. A common thing, given the number of SCPs which could potentially transfer memetically via eye contact. "Why did you do it?"
The agent sighed, his eyes locked squarely on the table in front of him. The moments crawled by until, finally, Dr. Helms uttered a simple: "I don't know."
A long moment passed before the interrogation room's door slammed open. There stood a blonde woman in a lab coat, phone in hand. "We got it."
"Superb." The officer rose from the chair and picked up the personnel folder. "Your compliance today and previous reflects positively on your record and in my opinion absolves you of responsibility for your actions. Your record will be noted to show today you were issued a reprimand for a level 6 Containment Procedure Violation. As it is only level 6, you will be required to complete 5 hours of supplemental training before resuming your normal duties."
The agent sat, frozen, in his chair. "I'm not…uh…"
"You're not being terminated, no," The officer replied, placing a business card on the table. "Have a good day." In a moment, the door had snapped closed, and the red light on the camera turned back on. Dr. Helms continued to sit, frozen, in the uncomfortable chair, trying to take control of his heavy breathing. Trembling, he reached out and picked up the business card.

Elanor wondered whether it was possible for a waiting room chair to be anomalous. This one, to be sure, was not just uncomfortable—it was a whole new level of frustrating to sit in. Both cold, and hard, and squeaky at the slightest shift in weight, and ever-so-slightly tilted so as to give the occupant a nagging sensation that they were slowly slipping out of the chair. This would inevitably lead to additional shifts in weight, which were accompanied by more squeaks. Clearly, it had been designed for the sole purpose of driving people mad. Not just the occupant, but everyone within earshot.
"Miss Jones."
Slammed back into reality from her thoughts, Elanor looked up to see a young man in a tan leather duster with incredibly curly hair gesturing for her to follow. "Ready for your first day in the department?"
"Oh, of course!" Elanor leapt up from her seat (which elicited an audible screech of protest) and carried her notebook over with a smile. "I'm…not sure what to expect."
"Par for the course where the Foundation is concerned," the man replied, swiping a keycard to open a security door. "I'm Dane."
"Elanor," she replied, following.
Beyond the security door, a short hallway led to a large, unlabeled cylindrical full-body scanner installed between the narrow hall's walls. It was not unlike the kind one might find in an airport. Dane stepped onto the scanner, which hummed for a moment, and then stepped off the other side. He turned and gestured to the footprint markings on the scanner. "Go ahead." Elanor stepped onto the scanner which again hummed in response before again going silent. She stepped off, resisting the urge to ask what the scanner was for. Dane helpfully sated her curiosity: "It's tied to the office's reality anchor. Generally, it detects any change you might personally have in relation to baseline reality. Which," he added, opening the next security door on their journey deeper into the office, "Everyone has, to some extent. But a reality shift over a certain tolerable amount means you can't come into the office until whatever it is has been sorted out."
"Makes sense," Elanor replied sheepishly. The security door opened to reveal an elevator, and the two agents stepped on. The elevator had no visible controls but began to move as soon as the doors closed. "Did you say 'reality anchor'? Like Scranton reality anchors?"
"You're familiar," Dane replied, and it wasn't particularly formed as a question. "We have a pair of anchors here at our facility. Unusual, I'm sure you're aware, but incredibly important for maintaining accurate records in the face of unknowable changes in the fabric of the universe."
Elanor was struck by the careful construction of Dane's words, as if he was reciting a well-practiced verse. Before she could contemplate on this further, the elevator doors opened to reveal a circular, tidy office.
The office was round, with a door every 90 degrees including the elevator door she had just exited. About a dozen desks were arranged neatly, facing the walls of the circular room—some of which were occupied. A blonde with a perfectly pristine ponytail was poring over a photograph with a magnifying glass. At the next desk, an olive-skinned young man with incredibly dark makeup was furiously typing away at the computer. As the heavy door clicked closed behind them, both people looked up.
The man behind the computer practically leapt up from his chair. "Hey! We got a newbie!" He crossed the room in a short few steps and gave a slight nod of the head rather than offer his hand. A common thing, given the number of SCPs which could potentially transfer via hand-to-hand contact. "You're Elanor, right? From accounting?"
Elanor politely nodded in return. "Yes, and a few other departments."
"Elanor, this is Lee," Dane said, gesturing the introduction. "He's our data analyst. Used to be a member of Kappa 10. This," Dane continues, gesturing to the blonde who had risen from her chair and joined them, "is Kris, Deputy Director of the department."
"And psychic," she volunteered, giving the customary polite head nod in lieu of a handshake. "I generally feel it's polite to offer that upfront. It's a pleasure to meet you, Elanor."
Lee looked away for a moment and then back. "Carl says it's a pleasure as well."
Elanor looked around the room but didn't see anyone else in the oversized office. "Carl?"
"Carl is antimemetic," came a voice from behind Dane, and he stepped aside to reveal a foundation agent, in a dark suit jacket with an open-collar blouse and a mahogany hawkbill tobacco pipe which they were currently packing with a finger. "Carl shares his feelings and opinions secondhand. It takes getting used to."
Before Elanor could respond to the sudden influx of information, a phone next to the agent began to ring, and they picked up the receiver. "This is Scranton. Yes. Mhm. Sure. I'll buzz you in." Scranton gestured with her chin to the door Elanor and Dane had just entered through; Dane pressed a large green button to open it from the inside.
A scrawny, balding, and incredibly tall man entered through the door, a handful of papers grasped so tightly in his hand as to crumple them. He opened his mouth as if to snap at Scranton, but the Director was already up and walking toward the door. "Don't even start, Ryehouser. I'm stepping out for a smoke. If you want to talk to me about the decision, that's probably the best time to do it." Scranton swept past the others and muttered to Elanor as they went past: "We'll talk when I get back." Scranton and Ryehouser closed the security door as they left.
"Ryehouser," Dane explained. "Our Internal Affairs liaison. As you might imagine, we deal with them a lot."
Elanor nodded. "Do I need to wait for Scranton…?"
Kris shook her head. "No, we should probably get things rolling and show you what kind of work we do here." Enalor nodded again. "I have an agent interview scheduled for the afternoon. It might be a good thing to observe on your first day."

Elanor drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she and Dane drove down the dreary highway toward Bloomington, Indiana. Site-81 was not a far drive from the department headquarters and, as Dane explained, was where much of the team interacted with Foundation agents directly. "Our office," he was expolaining, "is considered incredibly need-to-know, both in terms of location and operation. It is not listed in any official site registries. The personnel aware of its existence at all simply called our office 'Scranton'…to a plethora of pop culture jokes."
She laughed. "Why is our department so…" she almost said secret but caught herself. "…reclusive?"
"We end up touching on a lot of important parts of the Foundation's work. What we do requires a high level of clearance and specialized knowledge. So that shroud is incredibly necessary."
A long silence passed between them as several highway exits rolled past. The rain, the cold, and Vivaldi's L'incoronazione di Dario playing on the car stereo (Dane had insisted on classical music) made Elanor feel like her mind was in a fog. Whatever she'd expected from her first day in this department, this wasn't it.
Dane took out a leatherbound notebook and fountain pen, and wrote a note in it. "So," he said, breaking some of the awkward silence, "Accounting. Must have been interesting—especially for an employer like ours."
"It was," she agreed. "There's a certain kind of comfort in numbers. They don't lie to you. You learn more about a person from their finances than any other kind of data. And—" She paused, suddenly aware that Dane was watching her with increasing interest as she spoke. "And I like data," she finished quietly.
"That's good," he replied after a moment. "Everyone is put in our department for a reason. I'm sure we seem like a bit of a mixed bag. But we're all very good at what we do."
"What about you?" Elanor replied. "What do you do?"
He smiled. "I'm the department historian. My role here is generally as a subject-matter expert on cultures & languages."
"Really? Where did you study?" she asked. "If you don't mind me asking."
"Eton College, in Berkshire," He replied with a bit of an awkward chuckle. "I was a King's Scholar." He looked up from the notebook. "What about you?"
Elanor supressed a grimace. "Nothing as prestigious as Eton," she replied. "Casper College in Wyoming for my undergrad. University of Connecticut for my Master's."
"Have you always wanted to do accounting?"
"I don't know if anyone ever grows up wanting to do accounting," she replied with a smile. "I took on an accounting Masters because I was following the money. But my undergrad was in Journalism." She shot Dane a wry smile. "I wanted to be a crackshot investigative reporter." She mimicked picking up a phone. "I need you on the record. We know about Cincinnati, we know about Boston." She feigned a gasp. "Did you say the White House?"
Dane laughed, and for a moment Elanor internally sunk in embarassment. But then he replied, looking out the passenger window, "In this department, that might be more of a reality than you think." He glanced over at her. "Besides, I was certain that after Eton I was going to be marchant sailor. And I ended up a pirate. Funny how that works out."
Elanor waited for him to expound. When it was clear we wasn't going to, she nudged him with her elbow. "Come on, you can't just leave me with that."
"A story for another time," he said quietly. "Besides, we're nearly there. Turn here." Elanor, who had taken the Bloomington exit, made a turn onto a bit of side road that twisted toward Lake Monroe.
"What kind of interview is this, by the way?" she asked. "is the Foundation hiring someone? Onboarding?"
All traces of Dane's good mood were wiped from his face. "No."

Kris passed several forms across the desk to the agent on the other side: a young woman in a lab coat and untidy hair was frantically signing them and passing them back. "Dr. Winthrop," Kris was reciting as if reading directly from an employment contract, "You understand that this decision is irreversible, final, and there will be no appeal to the action."
Elanor and Dane sat behind one-way glass, peering into the comfortable-but-sparse office located in the administrative wing of Site-81.
Winthrop pushed one of many stray locks of hair from her face. "Yes, yes. Please, just get this over with."
Kris' face was stone. "This process is incredibly exact, as I am sure you would imagine."
The color had slowly drained from Elanor's face. "Is this a termination?" she breathed. Dane nodded. Elanor swallowed a lump in her throat; the ominous term "termination" was so prevalent in Foundation lexicon—while simultaneously not ever actually defining what the process entailed. "Dane," She said, measuring her words incredibly carefully as they formed in her throat, "When Foundation agents are terminated—"
"Sometimes," He replied stoically, answering the question that hadn't yet been spoken. "But nine times out of ten, it's Amnestics and paperwork." Elanor let out a deep breath. Nine times out of ten? That figure was both relieving and terrifying at the same time.
Kris continued. "The purpose of your termination is laid out in the form in front of you. I would like you to please acknowledge your receipt of this information."
Winthrop said nothing, her eyes looking away from the paperwork.
Kris was undeterred. "Dr. Winthrop, this letter informs you that you performed a level 3 protocol violation. As such the Foundation has no choice but to terminate your employment effective immediately."
"Protocol violations are rated from 0 to 7," Dane explained in a low voice. "7 is the most minor; severity increases with each step downward. Level 3 is a violation of protocol resulting in Foundation casualties." Elanor nodded.
"Please, just get it over with," Winthrop said again. "Please."
Kris opened the desk drawer and produced a single small vial with a green pill inside. "Please tell me what happened, Doctor. This is your last chance. Tell me what happened with SCP-3460." Winthrop said nothing. "Dr. Winthrop—" Winthrop reached for the pill on the table, but Kris swiped it away. "Doctor—"
Winthrop groaned. "Please, just give me the pill. Please." And then, in a whisper, "They'll kill me."
Kris seized the thread. "Who? Tell me. What do they have over you? Whose photograph did you put into the object? What did Agent Armstrong have to do with it?" Winthrop did not reply; she put her head in her hands and wept. "Did Agent Armstrong hurt you? Did he get you involved in something? Marissa, this is important. If you can give us any additional information before we amnesticize—"
"Amnesticize?" Winthrop screeched, looking up at Kris with red, puffy eyes. "No, I need to be terminated—"
"For what reason do you want to end your own life, doctor? Please give me insight into—"
"Please—"
"Doctor—"
It happened in a moment. Elanor didn't see where Winthrop pulled the scalpel from, but before the action had even registered fully, the researcher had leapt to her feet and was about to lunge across the desk.
Kris was faster. Her sidearm cleared its holster in an impossibly short moment, fired, and Winthrop was dead.
Elanor screamed, and either the window was soundproof or Kris was completely unfazed by it. She holstered her weapon, sat down, and made a note at the bottom of Winthrop's paperwork as two security officers burst into the office. Elanor dropped into a seat, breathing in short, sharp breaths. Dane gestured toward the door. Elanor looked at him helplessly before pushing past him and out the door, away from the blood-splattered glass.

Scranton put the paper down on the desk. The office was empty now except for Elanor and the Director. Scranton had been waiting inside when Elanor returned. Scranton had gestured to a seat as Dane and Elanor entered the office, and had dismissed Dane, leaving a still-shaken Elanor to take her seat at one of the empty desks.
Scranton lit the hawkbill pipe and took a long drag, the tobacco in the bowl glowing and casting the director's face in an ombre glow. "Agent Armstrong was a CI operative," Scranton said without looking at the sobbing accountant. "We'll have to find out more about the other Foundation Agents he interacted with." Scranton looked at her. "Are you alright?"
"This…" Elanor heaved a deep breath while trying to find the words. Her stomach burned. More tears were welling up in her eyes, ready to re-stain her cheeks with red. "This…you're not even…She just killed a woman. Right in front of me." She took several steadying breaths. "Is this normal?"
"No," Scranton replied pointedly. "This is not normal. This is something we try to prevent. This is the result of someone trying to use the Foundation—its objects, its resources, and its people—for power. It's someone's greed and disregard for human life while people like Dr. Winthrop become collateral damage. The Foundation's job is to serve as protector of the anomalous, Ms. Jones." Scranton reached over and took her hand. An unusual thing, given the number of SCPs which could potentially transfer via hand-to-hand contact. "This is Human Resources. Our job is to protect the protectors."


Takes place the day of Conflict Resolution, Hold the Conflict
Laura Ashbrooke rose from her bed and stretched, yawning hard enough to make her jaw pop. Her boyfriend was already up, no doubt somewhere else in the house that they had. That she couldn't believe that they had.
Laura had made enough money off of costuming to survive on. Then, two years ago, a bizarre entity walked into her life and handed her a check for over $800,000. The check had cleared, and now, she and Edward lived on Executive Drive, with several other houses that were perfectly suited to the nouveau riche, and not a McMansion in sight.
Sure enough, Ed was at the dining room table. The table was from his mother's side of the family, all apple wood, but it had a more modern embellishment on it— an image of the Yggdrasil, burned into it by a friend of Laura's who was a woodworker. He was reading the Sloth's Pit Fabulist— his favorite rag. Didn't have a single sentence of reputable news, but you sometimes got gossip about the Plastics People. "Mornin'. You stayin' in today?"
"Don't have a shift at the pizza place," Ed replied, knocking back a canned coffee. "You're going to have a boom in business today."
"Why's that?"
Ed showed her a section of the paper.

The Sloth's Pit Fabulist
Halloween Bash is Go!

After much hand-wringing about whether or not Sloth's Pit's Halloween celebrations will continue as planned, following difficulties due to an undisclosed scheduling complication, it has been announced that the festivities are continuing; in fact, Director King of the Plastics Facility has ordered that all citizens are to be wearing some form of costume, on pain of arrest by agents of the S & C Plastics facility. The reasoning for this is unknown.
"Huh." Laura frowned. "It's… crap, we only have three days until Halloween. There's going to be a crowd." She ran to the fridge and grabbed one of the more disgusting concoctions in there— caramel coffee with Coca-Cola flavoring mixed in. It had been on the shelves at Starlow, it had been cheap. She knocked it back, grimacing at the taste, before chucking the can in the recycling bin.
"Hon, you'll be fine. Might even make enough for us to finally fix up the car."
"Yeah." Laura rolled her shoulders. "I'm the only half-decent costume place between here and Duluth, I'm understaffed, and we're going to have a run on costumes because of some cockamamie order issued by—" She paused. "Did that say Director King? I thought their name was Weiss."
"Apparently the old director stepped down. Weird, I know." Ed put the paper on the table. "You'll be fine, hon. You got this."
"Yeah. I mean, it's not like shit doesn't go bananas every Halloween now." Laura rolled her eyes, and as she stepped out the door, a metaphorical sword appeared over her head as she said five words that should never be said in Sloth's Pit.
"What could possibly go wrong?"

A sense of anxiety hung over Laura her whole drive to her workplace. She owned the Witch's Hut Party Supply store (which had rebranded itself from a costume shop— there was a sudden dip in demand for costumes this year, and she couldn't account for why). Idiot! she thought. What the hell compelled you to say that? 'What could possibly go wrong', might as well be wearing a shirt with a giant target on it. God knows what's going to happen now. Best-case scenario you get a flat tire, worst case is—
She was driving by a vacant lot that the Terra Incognita tree farm allegedly occupied around Christmas when a set of red and blue flashing lights came on. She had only been going thirty in a twenty-five! It wasn't worth pulling her over for that, was it? "Shit, shit shit." She pulled over to the side of the road, getting out her wallet with one hand, the other reaching into her glovebox to get her registration and proof of insurance.
The officer who came up to the car was female, white, and looked more disappointed than anything. She asked for the pertinent documents from Laura, who handed them over. After some tense silence, Laura inquired, "Can I ask what the problem is?"
"You blew through a stop sign back there, at the corner of Johnson and Executive." The police officer frowned, looking Laura over. "Everything okay, ma'am? You look jittery."
"Just…." Laura rubbed her face. "I said the five words. You know, the ones you're not supposed to even think within city limits?"
"Ah." The cop frowned, looking between the documents, her, and the stop sign Laura had apparently blown through. "All right, given the circumstances… I'm willing to let you off with a warning. Be safe, ma'am, and don't forget to wear your mask."
Laura blinked. "You mean… for the Halloween thing this Saturday?"
The cop frowned at her, silently handing back Laura's documents, and heading back to her cruiser. As she drove past, Laura noticed a detail on the cop's car that probably wasn't allowed— a bumper sticker of the Punisher's logo on the back, just above the gas cap.
She drove off, sighing. What could possibly go wrong? Well, that's a start.

As Laura dreaded, the Witch's Hut was full almost the instant she opened the door. She had managed to hire a few people to help run the shop over the last year, all of them locals. Her assistant manager was one Adam Snerling, whose class at Jackson Sloth Memorial High had a graduation rate of less than 40%, due to town weirdness going berserk when the Class of 2015 was attending. "Morning, Ms. Ashbrooke."
"Don't call me that," Laura said, making her way behind a counter and through a curtain of plastic chains. "I have three different commissions I need to finish, unless the store's is literally on fire, don't disturb me." What could possibly go wrong?
"Roger."
Laura's workshop took up a good fifty square feet behind the curtain, and was filled with materials ranging from hot glue and linen to ethically-sourced animal bones and fur to amateur robotics kits and some Raspberry Pi microcomputers and even some scrap metal— the latter of which would be very useful for her current project.
The client had requested a specific type of costume; the actual body of it was simple, just a gorilla suit sans mask. But the head was a fairly complex helmet, one she had to cannibalize a pre-exiting astronaut helmet to make. They had thankfully provided reference images, some monster from a cheesy 50's film where they obviously couldn't afford a robotic body. She was putting the finishing touches on the helmet today.
It had taken her over three days of scouring the local scrap yard to find actual TV antennae, and they were remarkably unbent. She measured them to the specifications provided by the client, making sure they resembled the reference image, and after cutting them down to size began soldering them onto some contact points she had placed on yesterday. She was careful with the soldering iron, the five words hanging over her head the whole time. She had barely gotten the last solder done when Adam poked his head into the back. "The store isn't on fire—"
"Then go away!" Laura hissed.
"—but we have someone here to pick up a costume? A Damien Mosley?"
Laura set the helmet aside and looked through her notebook where she kept the orders. "Mosley, Mosley… ah. He's here for the 'Robot Monster' costume." She looked at the helmet. "The one I just got done with."
"Good timing." Adam raised his eyebrow.
"Not the first time it's happened. Town has a way of keeping things orderly like that." She looked over her head, expecting some kind of divine retribution. She made her way out of the back, helmet in one hand, the gorilla suit in a plastic bag. "Where is he?"
"Uh…" Adam looked around, before pointing him out. "See that guy that kinda looks like John Carpenter with a blue suit on?"
"Got it." Laura made her way to the counter. "Damien Mosley? Mr. Mosley?" she called to him, as loud as she could. "I have your costume ready."
Mr. Mosley limped over to the counter, letting out a rasping cough as he came close. "Don't worry," he said as he approached. "Just the flu."
"I have my shot," Laura said, stepping back from the counter. Grody guy who obviously has some kind of respiratory issue. What could possibly go wrong? "But… could you just leave the payment there?"
"Sure, sure." Mr. Mosley took out his checkbook and scrawled out the payment onto it. For just a moment, Laura swore that she saw the checkbook covered in some kind of bizarre rot— a fungus or mold she didn't recognize. Then she saw it was a trick of the light, some sunbeams coming in through a plastic display on the front window in a bizarre manner.
He tore off the check; it smelled musty. "Gave ya an extra fifteen percent," he rasped, taking the bag and helmet. "H-hey, would I be able to breathe in this with a mask on?"
"…I guess?" Laura wasn't sure what he meant, but didn't want to say anything because she was… this was wigging her out, to say the least. "Anything else?"
"No, no." The man shook his head. "H-have a good one, Ms. Ashbrooke."
"Right." Laura swallowed as he made his way out the door. She couldn't even describe why he wigged her out; she'd seen sick customers before. This was… something else.
She made her way to the back room to work on he next commission. This one was far easier; she just had to assemble a makeup palette for a vampire costume. What could possib—
She slapped the side of her head. Stop thinking it! At least… Laura hoped she was the one thinking it.

Laura was always the last one in the shop, and tonight was no different. She had what could possibly the song Closing Time by the Semisonics playing on the speakers as her last employees clocked out, while she sat in the back room. Laura was listening to a true crime podcast covering Amadeus Dunkel, the Smiley-Face Killer, so called for the fact that he sent a photograph of the mutilated corpse with a smiley emoji over the face to all of his victims' contacts. Listening to a podcast about a serial killer right before Halloween. Bad horror films love that kind of thing. What could possibly go wrong?
She tugged at her hair as the thought intruded once again. Was she even thinking it, at this point? She had one last project to finish up for the night, and then… all the commissions were done, she wouldn't take anymore. She'd have someone else run the shop, Adam was a good kid. What could possibly go wrong, leaving him in charge—
"Stop it!" Laura stood up, yelling at nothing. Her podcast seemed to pause awkwardly, before continuing talking about the Smiley-Face Killer's fifth victim. The project before her was almost done, even if it was a pain to do.
The person who had commissioned it was a massive Doctor Who fan, and ordered a costume based off of a creature from the older days of the series that was now only known to exist in set photos. Nobody would get the reference, and it was solely for their enjoyment. Laura could respect that, and all she had to do was paint on a few more scales, what could possibly go wr—
Laura turned off the podcast, put in earbuds, and started blaring the entire discography of Paramore into her ears loud enough to give her a headache. It drowned out the thoughts long enough for her to finish her project halfway through the bridge of Brick by Boring Brick, and had even added a few embellishments of her own. Her hands shaking, she shot a photograph of the costume and sent it to her client, who replied with a series of heart and thumbs-up emojis, before promising to pick it up in the morning.
"Nothing went wrong." Laura panted as she turned off the music. "You had… an okay day. No target on your back. You're fine. Just…" She rubbed her face, before writing a note down for Adam, giving him the name and description of the person picking up the costume. Nothing went wrong. She was fine.

She wasn't fine.
Less than half a mile from her house, Laura Ashebooke had pulled over to the side of the road, breath ragged, chest heaving. She got out of the car, thinking she was going to throw up, leaning on the fence outside of the Terra Incognita Tree Farm. When nothing came out and she realized she was having a panic attack, she texted Ed her location— he would come pick her up, take her home, and everything would be fine.
She'd spent all day thinking about those five bloody words— what could possibly go wrong?— like they were being injected into her head. Why did she say it? What the hell made her say it? It was one of the first things you were taught in school, before you were even taught how to count to ten. But once you started, you couldn't stop, and it snowballed until you were sitting down next to your car in the middle of October, shivering from both the sobbing and the chill. She what was could going possibly to go be wrong fine.
"STOP IT!" Laura yelled, loud enough that birds in the nearby trees scattered. "Stop… stop thinking about it! Stop it, stop it, stop it!"
Who says you're the one thinking about it?
Laura's heart stopped. Her eyes widened, and she looked around, feeling at her shoulders— there were no phantom claws there, so it wasn't the Pit Sloth. The Hum hadn't been heard from in years. So… "What is this? What are you?"
"Whatever you don't want me to be."
The voice was clearer now— the voice of a woman who never existed, who was created by a narrative contradiction, something that became more real the less you thought about it. "You're dead!" Laura yelled. "N-no, not even dead! You're in a zoo! In Duluth!"
"Mask maker, please, you make me frown." The voice sounded again, from closer. "Do you think you could keep the Pit Sloth down?"
The ground beneath Laura's feet began to give way. She knew what was beneath it— bottomless darkness, which she would fall into forever. "Mask-maker, the words ending in 'wrong', may as well have been a summoning song." A pair of beady black eyes and a white grin looked up at her from the pit. "I rise again, oh Laura raven-haired. And might I say— you look quite scared."
Headlights pulled up the road— Ed's car. She jumped across the opening pit, running towards his vehicle, but the pit was on her heels. He was fifty feet away, twenty, ten— he stopped his car so she could get in, but then the ground gave under Laura's feet, and she began to tumble into the bottomless darkness.

And then, she very abruptly wasn't.
A man wearing odd clothing was holding onto her wrist with both hands, pulling her onto solid ground. He was an older man, maybe sixty-five or seventy, and he was wearing what seemed to be a set of white cotton overalls and a denim and flannel labcoat. His other hand was holding onto what seemed to be a very sturdy-looking apple tree that had grown out of the middle of the road. "Do. Not. Let. Go."
Laura looked behind her— the pit was still there, but she could clearly see a bottom now. One that looked like it would kill her if she hit it. "What the hell's going on?"
"Long story short: phobic entity affecting the town, creating fear and then feeding on it. And we need your help to save the city."
"…you lost me at that second sente—" Laura's grip slipped. "Ohgodpleasedontletmefall!"
"You're going to be fine." There was a creaking sound in the pit below, like a door with very rusty hinges opening. "Your boyfriend's already somewhere safe. I'm going to drop you now—"
"What? No!"
"It's okay!" The man reassured her. "There's going to be a change in gravity when you go through the door, it'll mess with your sense of balance, but you'll be fine, and you'll have a new job." He called down into the pit, "Hey, Doorman! What did we decide her name should be?"
"Costumer!" A voice called back. Laura looked behind her and saw a very large doorway at the bottom; Ed's form was standing in a hallway through it, on what should have been the side of the pit.
"Right." The man nodded at Laura. "I'm Dr. King, by the way. For the time being, I'm the Orchardist."
Laura's eyes widened. "You're Union? Seriously?"
"Temporarily. I have a life to get back to, and so do you." Dr. King relaxed his grip. "Let go, kid. You'll stick the landing, trust me."
Laura looked between him and the door at the bottom of the pit. She let go of his wrist, and let herself fall backwards. Gravity suddenly shifted, and she landed with her legs spread, hand on the floor in front of her.
"Told you!" Dr. King fell in a few moments after her, sliding to a stop.
Edward Valentine looked between Dr. King, the Doorman, and his girlfriend. "What the hell's happening here?"
"A rescue mission." Dr. King nodded, looking at Edward. "Mr. Valentine, your services are going to be needed as well— not everyone is going to have a costume that we can pull them out with."
"Pull them out with?" Laura frowned. "Out of town? And to where?"
"And my services?" Edward scowled. "I'm a friggin' Pizza Guy! Is that some kind of joke?"
The Doorman closed the door to the Union House. "It's no joke, Mr. Valentine, but would you mind if we take this conversation upstairs?" The elevator opposite the door dinged and opened. "The Janitor has been waiting to meet you for about a week now."
Laura frowned at Dr. King. "Were you the one that put out the notice that everyone has to wear a costume on Halloween?"
King shrugged. "Maybe. But it's necessary— the costumes are how we're going to save this city." He threw Laura and Edward a pair of cloth facemasks. "Put these on— you'll remember why by the time you get to the Janitor's office."
Laura frowned as she glanced at the elevator. The Doorman and King looked at her expectantly. "C'mon, Ed. Let's get this shit done."
The two of them entered the elevators. Outside the doors of the Union House, an autumn wind blew, bringing a reminder that Halloween was imminent.

«Losing the Plot | Hub | The Long Fall, Part 1…»


Prometheus stole fire from the gods to bestow upon mankind. It is a tale that I often find myself relating to when I remember it. Like the titan, I paid a price.
"Green! Are you alright? Fuck! Get him to the medical bay! Now!"
That machine at Prometheus Labs was a failure, but it did confirm that the human mind had power. I saw it myself. Numerous objects were bent by my will in an instant. I twisted the flesh of my co-workers in any way I chose, from a neanderthal to something far, far ahead before reverting back. Their thoughts were completely open to me for probing. I saw every memory they ever had. For a brief moment, I ascended into the next stage of human evolution, but I suffered for my glimpse into godhood. Regardless, I continued to perform my research with the aid of interested parties.
"Dr. Green?"
"Y-y-yes, Greg? Still N-no progress?"
"I am afraid so. Brain activity is the same in each subject. The equipment from Prometheus Labs still say there is no telekenetic energy. The subjects feel normal."
"I-increase the s-stimulation t-time to f-four h-hours. M-maybe add m-more c-compound 19 i-in the food. In a w-week t-there should b-be results."
"Yes, sir. Do you need anything before I leave?"
"T-that will b-be all. Bye."
There were fifteen research subjects, all of whom were children grown in a lab through a leftover Prometheus project. They had minor flaws as a result of their unnatural birth, but otherwise they were normal. My DNA was used with others to create them in the hopes it will increase their chances of unlocking their mind like I had. They were set to be the future, however, never to be my children.
"Mr. Green, do we have mommies and daddies, too?"
It was a hard question to answer but it was necessary.
"I am s-sorry, F-four."
They were only evolution's children, the subjects of a new tommorow. Nothing else. My job was to see them succeed. That was good enough for me.
"Subject Four has shown some progress, Dr. Green. She has demonstrated organic manipulation but it is very limited at its current state. She is only able to change hair color."
"T-the others?"
"Nothing yet, sir.""
"K-keep on g-going t-then. W-we are so c-close!"
Subject Four was a young girl. She seemed to enjoy her developing power as she made new beings with just her will. Each organism that she made was unique. It was like they came from an alien planet, but they were definitely something a child would imagine if they were allowed to play god. The creatures also acted like loyal pets, and they made her happy. It was always heartbreaking to take them away from her for dissection, but she always made more pets. Eventually she was allowed to keep some of them. I sometimes wish I could have told her that her power was a gift from Dad.
No, I was not her father. Not to anyone. I was just a genetic template. Such behavior would be unprofessional of me, but… I still felt proud.
"Subject Four made a symbiotic organism today that she wears like a jacket. She still struggles to manipulate plants, but that could change with further enhancements."
"G-good. H-have the o-others p-p-progressed?"
"No, sir. Although we should be close to seeing them developing into the next stage."
I really wanted the others to catch up with Four. It would've been interesting to see how their minds developed. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for me to see them flourish.
"Dr. Green, we are here to escort you! The facility is compromised!"
"The ch-children-"
"No time, sir! Gotta go!"
I thought the Coalition found me but someone else did. They were everywhere. I suspected escape was not possible, even if the security team fired the chemical weapons we had here in case of emergencies.
I turned out to be right. Bullets pierced through my old body, and left me in a pool of blood surrounded by corpses. My vision faded to black, and here I am now, slipping into the darkness while reminiscing.
It's peaceful. Be good, children. Especially you, Four. Our evolution is in your hands now.

MISSION REPORT
Objective: Capture of former Prometheus Labs employee Dr. Adam Green. The seizure of all equipment and research data.
Personnel in charge: Captain Jacob Barlowe, MTF Alpha-63 ("Party Crashers")
Result: Failure. MTF Alpha-63 were met with resistance from the security team of the facility. Various chemical agents were deployed during the firefight, harming local civilians as wind picked up. Dr. Green was killed during his attempt to flee from the site. Majority of laboratory equipment and research documents were destroyed. Fifteen subjects were found in separate rooms in the lower levels. Taken into custody for evaluation. Cover up of mission underway.
Casualties: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Notes: I understand we had to get to Dr. Green before the GOC, but next time we should wait until we get more info on the defenses of the enemy. This would have been less of a pain in the ass to clean up afterwards. - Capt. Barlowe


Cream cheese and bagels are in the brown paper bag on the table. Did someone bring them in? I can't recall.
I'm sure at least a few of you have had to treat a manic patient before. Most manic patients who state that they can bend reality to their will are delirious. In these walls though, chances are that they can. This makes treatment significantly more difficult, shots of Lorazepam aren't as effective when the patient can turn them into saline.
However, when you remove reality from the equation, they are at their most vulnerable. You occupy a reflection of the subjects psyche, the world in their image.
You have as much control in this reality as you do in the reality of a shaper, and with that minuscule amount of control you've managed to find yourself with a job at a paranormal research agency.
Too philosophical for you? How about a brief lesson on the Foundations favorite medicine?
The majority of amnestics are bimodal agents, one part selective GABA receptor agonist and one part brain-lesioning agent. The most common agents have to be cleaved by a liver enzyme to regulate the dosage of the active metabolite. We have many ways of delivering amnestics, sprayer trucks, aquifer release, pills, eye drops, injections, patches, gummy bears…
Why? Because there are many things we want to forget, and very few things we want to remember.
I'll set the scene, every electronic billboard in Time Square was remotely accessed and modified to display a Berryman-Langford kill agent, it's quite the sight for inoculated eyes, hundreds of bodies lying there with spiraling fractals hanging overhead. Every news ticker rapidly repeating the phrase "Are We Cool Yet?"
One of the Foundation's took the initiative; checking for a pulse. With a jolt the body he was examining pulled him in for a word. The operative was dead before he hit the ground, as the afflicted civilians got up and moved on with their day, disregarding the dead man in scramble goggles bleeding from his ears.
An auditory kill agent embedded into a visual cognitohazard, the perfect excuse to deploy an experimental amnestic agent en masse.
There's a neurological basis for PTSD, noradrenaline released in response to trauma changes memory formation, making things stick around in your head far better. You can imagine how this interacts with amnestic agents. People feel that something happened to them, they get flashbacks to nothingness, or to memories made just after they received the amnestic.
Don't worry, the symptoms fade without the trauma being present in memories, but these are some of the consequences of exposing such a large chunk of the population to amnestics.
How about a case study? Get a feel for what it's like to treat an anomalous patient.
The patient, JR was a child with anomalous properties; From what could be ascertained from the patient's screaming his right eye allowed him to see the future. After a few weeks of researchers asking probing questions, not once allowing the patient to receive any sort of psychological care, the patient attempted to end his misery.
His esophagus was damaged badly enough that a tracheotomy was necessary. The patient received the treatment in his room as the injury was deemed not traumatic enough to necessitate the movement of the patient through the facility to an infirmary.
An on-site psychiatrist was brought in for an emergency session with the patient, as soon as they were given privacy the patient spoke of what he saw through his bad eye and his fear of being trapped in containment forever. The patient choked what he needed to say out despite his freshly opened throat hole.
The psychiatrist informed the patient that he could be rid of his visions if he damaged his right optic nerve sufficiently, judging by what the research files on his condition indicated. How deep the scalpel had to pierce to ensure the destruction of the nerves, and how shallow to cut to ensure that there'd be minimal injury to the surrounding tissue. The location of the tracheotomy kit, and how much time he had to do the deed before The Foundations security staff would get the chance to wrestle the scalpel out of his hands.
I left the room.
The patient was sent back home to his parents after a healthy dose of amnestic gummy bears. Missing an eye and without any memories of the terrors that befell him in the weeks that he was gone, but his parents were presumably happy to have him back.
Every time you forget a piece of you disappears. Mistakes wiped away with a pill and paperwork. Enough time and you will even forget that you forgot. All that's left is debris.
I don't work for The Foundation anymore, that piece of me is gone.
You know what they say about us, that what we do is immoral, neutralizing parathreats -well, destroying the anomalous doesn't necessitate murder. You can destroy the anomalous aspects of them, convince them to lay down their powers, render themselves inert forever, and return them to baseline consensus reality.
On a fantastic day, you might be able to get a reality bender to cease to be a reality bender, on a bad day we'll have to kill them. It sucks but hell, it's better than them being locked inside and researched for the rest of their existence. Why not kill them all? Because every time we kill them there's a risk too, I'm sure you've heard the chair, right? Curing them is a more amicable solution.
Your first patients will be the parathreats detained in this facility. I'm not going to give you methods, it's dangerous work, that's why we have arrays of tuned Scranton Reality Anchors topside and dozens of Type Blues- er, occult specialists who are on our side ready to save your sorry ass if you fuck up.
Patients have been successfully treated by psychiatrists who allow them to sit in the fancy leather chair while the doctor lays on the sofa. They've also been treated successfully by psychiatrists who don't say a word, letting the patient come to their conclusions.
My preferred method? Don't rely on it, but a warm meal and the cold hard truth. If they escape, they're done for, either we get their hand on them and they'll get a reality anchored bullet through the back of the skull, or the Foundation does and they'll spend the rest of their life a dozen miles underground.
After that, I give them the way out. Once they're no longer parathreats, they're out of our hands, they'll be amnesticized and returned to their normal life. The rarely offered alternative is to give the Post-Greens a position at the GOC, the experience of having been a reality bender is quite useful in this field.
Oh no -I've never bent reality in such a literal sense, but one of the specialists you walked past was negotiated back to consensus reality with a stuffed blue shark and a brownie, believe it or not. The way her powers worked, she wasn't entirely in control, her fears could turn an innocent stuffed shark into a real one. She never would be able to appreciate simple things in life like that, without her fear becoming real.
Once I figured that out, I asked her if she feared losing her powers, and then it was inevitable. The fear became reality. Psychiatry is best used to expose flaws in people's thinking, breaking negative looping thoughts, helping people out of ruts while working in their system of beliefs and logic.
There are well over a dozen contained reality benders in this facility alone. The weight of their collective ego is a gravitational anomaly detectable from orbit. A ticking time bomb rests underneath the facility, threatening to wipe us out if we screw this up, the world can't take being this broken forever, can it?
Well? We have work to do.
I hope you enjoy a challenge.


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Before Twilight
By: UnnaHuz
Which depicts survival.

Here
Each night, after Rhythm laid on open ground, the red blanket slowly came to his body and attempted to absorb nutrition from the novel covering of the creature. However, Rhythm's compound armor was unable to serve as a delicacy to tiny animals, nor did it let plants take root on the surface. Thus, the conscious red mire was not a severe threat to Rhythm.
This day was different. The "sunburnt", continually wandering the world, seemed to know he was there. They gathered together and mingled, forming a three-story-high meat sphere, rolling forward. Figures that used to be humans bore an untold hunger to encase those who had not yet succumbed to the sun at this moment. The communal hunger resonated and amplified inside the giant meatball, turning to the fuel of their motions. When they touched him, the meatball split apart. Countless hands and heads reached Rhythm. His body was elevated, rotated, and pulled roughly. Gapping maws snatched at the side of Rhythm's helmet, whispering, "Go back……", "Follow me……", "Greetings……". Their words pierced through Rhythm's ears, transformed their timbre, and changed to his sister's call in his dreams.

Knock-knock on the Site door. Lyrics opened it, wearing a protection suit. She saw something. A human. It must be.
"I'm back, Lyrics. " Rhythm's voice drilled through his sister's brain.
"……Rhythm, is that you? Rhythm? Are you kidding me? Oh gosh……" Her voice trembled.

Rewind.

Knock-knock on the Site door. Lyrics opened it.
"I'm back, Lyrics. " Rhythm's voice tunneled through his sister's brain.
"Y……Yeah……W……welcome back, Rhyth……them. With me…….Inter……"
His sister stuttered, trying to retain the shape of a human, but melted away into a puddle of red climbing up his armor.

Rewind.

Knock-knock on the Site door.
"I'm back, Lyrics. "
No response.

Rewind.

Knock-knock and he left.

Rhythm finally awoke, shaking the fragments of the nightmares from his head. He opened his eyes, pupils rolling in broken lines. The armor reacted and opened the electronic vision module and dissipation program, "dissipating" everything clinging to the armor using burning electric currents. After several minutes, the huge block of red mud lost its animation, removed itself from his armor, and drifted away in the rain.
Rhythm slept the entirety what was left of morning and into the midday. The brown sun, like a fierce wet eye, poured bloody tears down to the ground through the greyish vault of heaven. Rhythm proceeded carefully; the mud underfoot became slippery, so he lifted his legs with more caution. He configured the vision module settings to see through the gloomy mist.
Among countless semispheres of giant flesh, a grey cube stood out. Undoubtedly, it was a building.
Seeing it, a conversation months ago occurred to him of a sudden. He couldn't remember a thing about the voice and figure of whom he talked to.

"If you want to find your sister, go straight along this path. You'll have to trek through several steep mountains, but as you get to a slightly gentle hill, a greyish building will appear on another side. If it is a reclamation depot, congrats to you; you have found the right Foundation site. She works there. "
"Are you kidding me?"
"I'm serious."
"Really?"
"I said I'm serious."
"Then tell me how long I need to get there."
"I don't know either. Just go."
"Please, don't fool around. If you lie to me, I will burn you into coal with my thaumatic spells."
"You work for us, and we give you her location. This is a contract. I hate disobeying contracts."

An electronic probe rang in Rhythm's armor. Periodic information flows came out of the building in front of him.
Would anyone be inside? Or was he just dreaming?
Hope expanded in his heart, and flooded through his blood vessels.
There
Speaking of the past, Lyrics Linn - a Foundation level 2 researcher - could still remember the day when she saw sunburnt colleagues rush into the site.
At first, they seemed to be reddish. Maybe she was mistaken. It wasn't until the sunburnt came near her that she realized they were bleeding red liquid all over their bodies. Not long afterward, they melted into a puddle, wriggling towards her. Lyrics shivered as fear shot through her body. Heading to the test chamber, she looked back and noticed sunburnt figures were crawling fast behind her. When she got into the chamber, over 30 sunlit colleagues accumulated into a huge meatball, stuck in the entrance. Like squeezing toothpaste, the meatball pushed itself slowly inside, forming a cylinder. Lyrics fumbled in the corner, picked up a flamethrower, pulled out the safety, and fired against the door. For an instant, she heard howls. Heart-wrenching howls. Soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, together with the roar of flamethrower and the crackle of meat, formed an epic doomsday elegy. Minutes later, the meatball was pelt off by layers. Charcoal-black mud covered the entrance of the test chamber. At last, she put down the flamethrower and collapsed.
However, the bright light went off and the emergency light was lit. Alongside the jarring siren was the great broadcast, which was transmitted to all Foundation sites, informing everyone of SCP-001.
It was at that moment that Lyrics knew that the site generators were severely damaged. Knowing nothing about the site power supply, she was helpless.
A hand-crank flashlight, a map, and a notebook with a pen - those were all the useful objects she found before the site fell into darkness, with the tiny flashlight illuminating her face.
Days later, all available foods were consumed. Lyrics was starving. It was obvious that Lyrics had to turn to the last resort: eating SCP-001-A. She could never forget the very first experience of hunting:

I wore a black protection suit and installed the vision module from the communal Foundation site network. As I opened the door to the outside world…… oh my gosh, it was so horrifying! It was just like……the Earth was shifting into the room, swallowing the clean floor. I was so scared that I slammed the door almost immediately, and then I found a portion of the "soil" had crept inside and up to my suit. It was nearly impossible to get rid of. Luckily my suit was fireproof, so I turned on the flamethrower and walked into the flames. After the red thing crackled on my suit, it went silent. I took off my clothes and cut the "meat" down a bit. And I tasted it. The mixture of mice and flower petals, I have to say, was disgusting - but still edible. Thank god.

Another unforgettable memory was the moment when she heard thuds on the door.

……I mean, last morning, I heard some noise. That must be something patting the door. I wondered that this may be a human survivor knocking on it, so I quickly put on my suit and rushed to the door and opened it. A sense of disgust welled up in my mouth. It was my colleague, but naked and reddish. It was rainy outside, so water ran down his body and became colored, tainting the floor brown. I could feel my hands shaking, and the flamethrower also trembled badly. "Hello?" I said. And he answered, "oh, please, don't point THAT thing at me. I'm pretty scared. What happened?" I have to say I nearly dropped my weapon, but if I didn't fire it right away, "he" would have covered my body completely. After that, I found my only flamethrower available was nearly used up. Liquid nitrogen was then used to freeze my food. At least, nitrogen could hold up for weeks……

Things like this were recorded in Lyrics's notebook: past experiences, tips from the Foundation site network, and much more. Bored of the dumb lifestyle, she tried to keep the content concise, "Huh, do I really need to write this stuff? No one looks at it. Or shall I toss it to giant meatballs outside and let the sunburnt have a look?" she spoke to herself.
To start another normal day of survival, Lyrics opened the glass box in front of her. A piece of red meat lay inside, crawling slowly upon the edge. She then carried a pot of liquid nitrogen to the table, pouring it inside without hesitation. The flesh shook heavily, and white steam spilled all over the table to Lyrics's white coat. Minutes later, the meat cracked into pieces. She warmed it up slightly, picked a chunk, and chewed hard. A cool, mild, mixed taste of grass and rabbit spread in her body.
At that moment, she heard someone knocking on the door outside.
First, she thought it was another sunburnt trying to lure her out. But the pattern, the pattern of knocking, was novel. Strange.
"I can't put my finger on it now. " She put on her suit, ready to go out.
Knock-knock……
Knock-knock……

The Rhythm became Stranger.

And she began to utter.

"Hello?" Lyrics asked the noise tentatively.
No response.
"Hey there, is anyone outside? Hello?"
Her pitch raised higher, but no reply still.
Confirming her protective apparatus working smoothly, Lyrics opened the door.
However, only the sun, the sky, and the brown, bare lands were in her vision, except for a tiny plastic pack filled with red mud.
The mud was squirming weirdly, and minutes later, it finally morphed into a lily.
Her beloved flower.
At that exact moment, Lyrics figured out who came and left before.
Tears ran out of her eyes, and dropped down into the endless wasteland.

« The Wasteland | Before Twilight | The Moment of Burial »


It was my friend, Renard, who really got into it. The whole magic thing, I mean.
It was the summer between high school and college when I really noticed that we were going our separate ways. I was going into a four year to study computer science, and he was staying in our home town. Taking a gap year. That last summer before I left, I asked him where he was expecting to go from there, and he just sorta shrugged at me.
“Nowhere, yet,” he said.
He wasn't really willing to elaborate, so I left it alone. Our communication was pretty sparse during my freshman year in college, but not nonexistent. It was the third trimester I was catching on that something might have been weird.
He'd asked that when I came back home for the summer, I'd hit him up and we'd hang out. Said he had some crazy shit to show me. So when I came back, I unpacked, had a nice dinner with my folks, and after one sleep and a groggy breakfast, my first activity was to head over to Renard's house.
He lived pretty near the downtown of Paris, Maine. His family had a big house on Chipman street, right behind the McLaughlin Garden, though it was just he and his mom living there after his dad died and his siblings all moved out.
When I arrived, he looked… weird.
“Hey Orson, stoked to see you again,” he said as he pulled me into a hug.
“Yeah, been a while,” I replied.
“Seriously.” He broke the contact, and waved me in. “How have you been?”
“Oh, good. Stressed. Coursework has been killing me, slowly but surely.” I chuckled.
“Yeah,” he said back, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“Other than that, not much,” I continued. “I've been too busy to make any meaningful connections, you know. Mostly just studying and then my part time job. Plus, nearly half the classes are online. Who knew that you could teach computer science so effectively through a computer?” I chuckled again, just to add to the non-humor of boring college life.
“Uh-huh,” he said, giving a shy smile.
I sat down at a stool by the kitchen counter. “So, how about you?”
He shrugged. “Uhh, same old, same old. Been kinda. Mooching off Mom for a while now. She's got hella empty nest syndrome though so she's really hesitant to complain about me hanging around.”
“Alright, sure, but like. What do you do? With all your time I mean?”
He shifted his weight and looked a ways off. I could hear birds twittering outside in the morning light, and it looked like he was listening to them too.
“Well,” he said, but he paused slightly before continuing. “Hey, why don't you just come up to my room? I can show you what I've been up to, actually.”
I shrugged. “Sure! Show me how the boys' room has evolved since I left.”
Ren chuckled. “It's… yeah, it's different.”
He led me upstairs, and we walked around the indoor balcony to the door to his room. When he opened the door, well… I wasn't sure what I expected, but, you have to understand that for as long as I knew Ren, he wasn't, like, religious or anything.
“Woah, you've been getting into metal?” I asked.
But he said: “Mmm, no, not… really.”
The room was covered head to toe in all this occult imagery that I'd never seen before. I just knew it was occult because it's such an aesthetic in shows. Pentagrams, bird's feet, but also a lot more computer parts than I'd seen before. It looked like he had the component parts of, like, five different computer towers strewn across his room. There was a whole stack of fans on his desk, topped with some twigs. He had what looks like a trellis that he'd weaved some herbs into.
It was so different from the pile of clothes, glow-in-the-dark stars, and boxy TV with a Gamecube hooked up that I remembered from only one year ago. Where the TV was, he'd built his own desktop, complete with the glowing keyboard, double monitors, and beefy headset.
“Hey,” I sauntered over to it, “I thought you were console for life.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said. His hands were still stuffed deep into the pockets of his sweatpants, and there was a hunch to his back I'd never seen before. It really looked like in the year I'd left him alone, he'd completely reverted into being a cavedweller. It was kind of funny, and I would have ribbed him for it if he didn't look so nervous.
“So,” I filled the silence. “Was this the crazy thing you wanted to show me? The redesign?”
“Uhh, hah, not quite, umm,” he gracefully showed me that he was trying to get to a drawer in his desk I was blocking, so I moved out of the way. “So, I got a new pet,” he announced.
I raised my eyebrows a bit as he opened the drawer and it smelled… kinda like hay. Moreover, I heard oinks. No doubt about it. He turned around, and he was holding a little teacup pig.
“Wow!” I said, extending my hands to hold the fuzzy little thing. “This is… well it's adorable. What's its name?”
Ren shrugged. “Oinkers, I guess, haha.”
“You guess?”
He shrugged. He was making it a habit of shrugging.
Then it dawned on me. “You keep it in a drawer?”
“Yeah, so, there's more to it than that, uh,” he grabbed Oinkers out of my hand, but I resisted slightly. I wasn't so sure if I trusted him with the little thing.
“This is, like, a big change,” I prodded. “Occult stuff, those computer bits, and a pet? Like, I mean I don't wanna sound upset at change happening in your life, but I'm genuinely confused. What's going on?”
“Uhh, okay, well, I'm gonna show you something, and you have to promise me not to freak out, especially ‘cause…” He shifted his weight again, leaning heavily on his left foot and avoiding eye contact. “Mom is downstairs, and I don't want her to freak out or anything, ‘kay?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Okay, but like, are you gonna explain this stuff afterwards?”
“It is an explanation, but, like, it's more like a demonstration. Just watch, okay?”
He put the pig on the floor, and it started trotting about aimlessly, just sniffing at things. Ren made his way over to one of the messes of wires and plugs and parts, and dug through. He eventually found a little harddrive — a solid state drive, I think — and placed it in front of Oinkers. The pig started sniffing at it, but turned and trotted away.
“No,” Ren said, picking the thing up with one hand and turning it around so it was faced with the drive again. It started sniffing, and after it looked up at him with some confusion, he just pushed the drive towards it.
I cracked a smile. “What, are you trying to feed it code?”
Ren let out a strained chuckle. “Um, sort of?”
Before I could respond, he said: “Th-there it goes.”
It was a bit disorienting at first. No, that's not it. It was very disorienting at first. But Oinkers was snorting really loudly — louder than I expected a pig of its size to be able to snort, and as funny as that sounds it was like, right in my ears, that was how loud it was. Then, the pig started to, like… glow. I know it sounds crazy but I swear I saw it, it just started snorting and glowing pink. It sounds funny when I say it but it wasn't. It was like, I had to shield my eyes from it, and when the glow was gone, and I felt like I had regained my senses I put down my arm and I didn't see a pig anywhere. I guess it was because I was so dizzy that I didn't immediately notice that the harddrive had, well this sounds crazy but it had little legs, I swear!
It had little legs, and on the front of it was like, this snout, right? It looked like it was just part of the device, like the harddrive was the same but it had a snout, not just a pig snout but like a harddrive snout, the same color of the, the metal and the, everything about it just made sense in a way that I can't define or describe and just thinking about it now nearly makes me want to vomit.
I know it sounds silly but that's how it feels when utter nonsense happens right before your eyes.
So my first instinct was to shout: “What the fuck dude!?”
“Shhh!” He tried to silence me immediately, making head motions to the floor to remind me of his mom's presence.
“What the fuck,” I said in a more hushed tone of voice.
“I know, I know,” he said, trying to calm me down, “it's just, if I said it did that you wouldn't have believed me, would you?”
My eyes couldn't stop staring at the thing on the floor, walking around and snorting every once in a while. It was like a big hairy spider that you can't allow out of your sight in case it's disappeared when you look back, able to appear from under any paper, out from any crevice. It was hard to keep up a conversation with Renard when I was so distracted by the intruder to my reality.
“I guess I wouldn't have,” I conceded.
“Well, th-there, yeah. That's what I'm talking about.”
“So, the…” I waved a hand in the direction of all the stuff on the walls. “It's all… magic stuff?”
“That's sort of the idea, yeah. Can I show you one more thing? It's less crazy, I swear.”
I looked at him and tried to silently communicate that less crazy was a really very low bar. He didn't seem to notice.
He picked up the… I guess it was Oinkers. He picked it up and I was able to see that its tail — or, its cord — was all curled up, and then he uh, he plugged it in, the USB end I mean, he plugged it into his computer tower. The thing just sort of scampered on the floor, but I guess it wasn't strong enough to pull free of the connection, so it just ran in place sometimes, and otherwise stood still and snorted.
He booted up his PC and waved me over. I was still trying to keep a healthy distance between myself and Oinkers, but he really insisted. I decided to stand to the side of Ren that kept him between me and the pig. Harddrive. Oinkers.
I noticed that he was running Windows Vista Home Premium, which was at least some point of familiarity. It looked like despite all the parts he'd accumulated, he'd made a computer with an outdated OS. That was so typically Renard that it almost lifted some weight off of my heart… as long as I didn't look at the thing on the floor.
I watched him navigate the file explorer to get to, uh, the files on the harddrive. The files in Oinkers. I watched him open it up, and I heard the pig start to snort a little more when he opened the files, which made me have some strange thoughts about what exactly accessing code inside a living being must feel like.
But as I shook that train of thought out of my head like the files coming out of Oinkers, Ren patted me with the back of his hand, trying to get me to come back to reality.
“Look, this is uh, this is the stuff I need help with,” he pointed to the files.
“Sorry, help?” I responded.
“Yeah uh, so see, I don't wanna…” He trailed off. “I don't want to be disrespectful or anything but your reaction should be, like, reason enough, like you can see where I'm coming from — but I don't want people to know about this. You're, uh, I'm letting you in on it because you're a computer science major and I don't know what I'm doing.”
“I don't know what you're doing,” I reminded him.
He turned around in his seat, and looked at the ground.
“Right,” he said.
There was a pause where the only noises were a whirring computer fan and the oinks of Oinkers.
Renard sighed. “Um, so Oinkers here is uh, he's like, he's supposed to help me ascend or something.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “This is not less crazy, which is what you promised me.”
“No, come on,” he sounded flustered. “Just. Listen, for a second. Look.
There's this guy. Uh, Felix. We met while you were still around, y'know, uh, senior year of high school. I didn't really know what I was going to be doing with my life. Well, I still don't know what I'm going to be doing with my life. But I wasn't having, like, any luck with uh… meeting people, here in Paris, you know. It's a pretty small town and so like I know the dating pool and there just aren't a lot of guys I'm really on the lookout for, know what I mean? So uh, Senior year I started looking at online options, and I guess I never told you because I was embarrassed.
But I found a site that really looked like it was my thing, you know like, it was catered towards my interests. Old tech and old games and just stuff that was really up my alley. I got into the community and I uh, I guess I stumbled across something.”
I cut in: “What do you mean something?”
“Well, I mean that I found… that it wasn't just old tech, it was like.”
He paused. I decided to take my guess at it.
“Magic tech?”
“I think they call it transcendent tech,” he supplied. “I started talking to Felix and I found out pretty quick that, um, Felix isn't real. No, sorry I don't mean it like that, I mean, Felix isn't… tangible.”
I didn't know what I was hearing.
“You mean, like,” I thought for a second, “he's… a computer?”
“More like he's not here, and computers are an information medium he can communicate through. And um,” Ren pointed to Oinkers. “This is what he sent me. So that we can be together. You know, for real.”
“For real,” I repeated.
He nodded.
“What does ‘for real' mean?”
He paused, and then: “D-do I have to go into details?”
I was confused for a moment, and then it clicked. “Oh, right, oh God sorry, no. Like, that makes sense, and everything.”
He nodded.
“And… you need my help because…?”
“I can't figure out these files. I mean I know what to do once these files… run. But I can't get them to run. I figured you might know something.”
The file extensions were dot oinc. I'd never seen them before, but… “So… what do you want me to do?”
He unplugged Oinkers, picked it up, and presented it to me, at which I took a startled step backwards. I had nearly been able to forget that it existed.
“Take her home,” he said. “Fiddle with it. And if you can get the files to run, bring her back to me. That's all.”
“Are you serious!?” I asked.
He nodded energetically. “Dead serious,” he said. “It would mean the world to me, Orson.”
So, that's uh, that catches us up to the present, more or less. I did what he asked, really. I snuck Oinkers home, and I plugged him into my computer. I guess there was a kind of shock to it all that let me forget about the insanity. Or maybe, I haven't given up on the idea that Oinkers was doing something to my head. Because I definitely wasn't thinking clearly. It took me about a week, but I cracked open the files, got them to run on my computer. I sent it back to him.
I swear to you, that's all I did.
I guess when he asked me if he needed to go into details, I should have said yes. I don't know what I was expecting. I just… you know, it dawned on me, right? That it was all my fault. That I literally handed Oinkers back to him, when I could have not. I could have gotten rid of the thing. Sure, Ren would have hated me, but…
I wouldn't have had to watch his Mom cry, or… walk upstairs and… find… him.
I know it sounds crazy but, um, he still… He still texts me sometimes. I haven't responded yet.
I don't think I will, either. I don't think I will.


Agent Teal had somehow forgotten that bees were attracted to flowers, and was facing the buzzing consequences as she ran by the break room with the Hummingbird's Cottage bouquet she bought for her desk. Some people don't know that hummingbirds and bees share taste in flowers. She had a way with people, not with bees.
She bounded down the hall, turning like a racecar past Dr. Joseph Edmunsen, Junior Researcher Mint El-Waylly and Dr. Johannes Ashby, as the bees following her buzzed just out of earshot.
"Listen, I'm absolutely certain today is gonna be the day that we find those damn bees in 5765." Edmunsen said, the obsessive tone in his voice a familiar sound to Ashby. Dr. Ashby resisted the urge to chuckle to himself. He knew there was nothing in 5765 but thin air; the fact that there were no bees in the chamber was part of the testing. The fact that Edmunsen was so vehement that there very much were bees in there was a result of the chamber's effects; you could tell someone — for example, Dr. Edmunsen — that there was something — for example, bees — in 5765, and they would believe you no matter what, no matter how impossible it proves to be.
"You've covered a D-Class covered in pollen and sugar in there twice, and there was STILL no evidence of bees? That's a puzzle," Mint said, stroking their chin.
"Hey, you know what they say, forty-third time's the charm," Ashby replied.
"It's a borderline miracle they've stayed in there for so long! What could attract bees to such an absolutely barren chamber?"
Agent Teal opened the door, threw the flowers in the chamber with a grace trained from years of field work, lured the swarm in, and slammed the door. She didn't know if she would come to regret this later, and didn't care. Maybe they wouldn't even notice. Wishful thinking, right?

D-14417 didn't expect to be drenched in honey, pollen, and sugar in a skin-tight technicolor suit to attract bees when the court first assigned him to this weird-ass jail, but if there was one thing he'd come to expect during his… however many… weeks? there, it'd be that you will never know what to expect from… wherever this was.
At the very least, he'd put on a suit with sticky goop on it for stupid tests like this before, and knew that it went sticky-side out, so that taking it off wouldn't result in a third-rate full-body wax. He felt blessed that his hair was still in decent shape.
"Good morning, Vince!" El-Waylly said. Vince was surprised by their earnest chipperness. From what the staff talked about, he'd have expected their job to be absolutely harrowing. Must be new.
"Call him 14417. Don't get too attached." Johannes said. Vince couldn't help but agree. With all the bizarre rituals they put inmates like him through, he was bound to either die, suffer a fate worse than death, or get transferred. And then die. He just assumed this was cruel and unusual punishment masquerading as science.
But still, with many a grumble, he put on the hood, and went with the rest of the group to 5765.

5765 looked the same as it always did. Yellow door with a red warning sign about the possibly nonexistent bees within, faint buzzing which may just have been the fan. Though Edmunsen could swear it was louder than usual, Ashby just attributed it to tinnitus.
"You can get me out of this, right?" the D-class said, masking his fear as he usually did.
"C'mon, it's just some bees. What's the wor-" Mint said.
"I know exactly what you're gonna say. Don't. Say it." 14417 interrupted, fire in his eyes borne from fear of those six cruel words, forged directly from his personal hell.
"O-oh. Okay, sorry," Mint said, timidly.
"Alright, June 14, 2022, 6:31 AM. Let's open up that chamber."
There's something you, the reader, should realize before the scientists open up the chamber. If you've convinced yourself over the years that the cognitoaffective chamber you've been studying will contain nothing but thin air no matter when you look into it, you may unknowingly fall prey to its effects. So if one day, someone just happens to lure a swarm of bees into there with a five dollar bouquet right before you start testing, you don't consider that in the moment. The much logical conclusion is that there is an exception to something as simple as object permanence. In other words, there is a goddamn miracle.
"BEES!" said Edmunsen, with the glee of successful mad science.
"WHAT THE FUCK?" said Ashby, his reality shattered.
"OH GOD!" said Vince, seeing a swarm of bees being attracted to his bee-attracting garb. Vince had never had a fear of bees, but he was damn close to developing one at this point. Who knows what supernatural bees coming out of thin air would do?
He went into the unisex bathroom, undressed, threw the bait suit outside, and slammed the door. If anyone asked why he was down to his underwear, he'd give them a signature death glare.
Meanwhile, Mint and Edmunsen observed the bees with a childlike wonder, as if bees were fabled things that materialized for them and only for them to experience. Ashby was still trying to piece together the broken pieces of his mind.
He ran to the first person he could think of when it came to forest anomalies, an anomalous fox-human.
"Cassius! Cassius!" Ashby shouted.
"What is it?! What is it?!" Dr. Cassius Zerda replied, looking up from his crossword and dropping his pencil.
"Bees in 5765!" Ashby yelled. Cassius paused, and his massive fox ears fell to their sides as a sneer spread across his face. He took a sip of his earl grey, sweetened with honey from the site's own apiary, and collected himself before responding.
"You found bees… in a place where, as I recall, bees are kept? Catastrophic, I say." He said, going back to his crossword. Ashby processed the statement as Cassius processed his, then turned red as a stove burner set to high.
"Thirteen down," Cassius mumbled to himself, "Live broadcast no-no…"
"…FUCK!" said Johannes.
"No, it's eight letters!… Oh, 'THE F WORD,' however…"
"THEY'VE FUCKING… ESCAPED?"
"Lead off with that next time!" Cassius said, running out pencil and crossword in hand, to see… two very professional doctors fawning over some very regular looking bees. He cautiously creeped up, wondering what exactly was so wrong with those bees. He got closer. Nothing wrong. He turned to Ashby. He gestured in the bees' general direction. So Cassius got closer, and glanced at Ashby. Still nothing. Wonderful demonstration of Zeno's Paradox, Cassius though to himself.
The bees didn't seem to be doing anything unusual. In fact, they didn't really look unusual at all. They just looked like… well… bees. His worry quickly turned to appreciation as he looked over them. Bees weren't anomalous by any means, but they did indeed have a certain magic to them, according to Zerda.
"Are they… anomalous?" Cassius asked, squinting.
"Maybe not, these bees seem pretty standard," Mint said, letting one crawl across her fingers.
"Well, I know anomalies, and not every anomaly looks anomalous at first glance," said Edmunsen, holding up his hand to try and look at a bee's underbelly.
"And I know bees. Didn't get an entomology degree for nothing," said Mint.
"I have to agree with… uh…" said Cassius.
"Mint," said El-Waylly.
"I have to agree with Mint here. If there was an anomalous energy coming off of these things, I surely would have felt it by now," Cassius said.
"You can… feel… humes?" Edmunsen said.
"N-No, just instincts and experience, nothing more!" Cassius said. Edmunsen nodded. "However, even if these were to be anomalous, they surely belong outside."
Edmunsen's face fell. "I guess you're right, bees belong outside… I just…" He sniffled a bit. "Two damn years. I'm seeing two damn years of research right before my very eyes!… They're… beautiful. I never noticed how pretty they were until now…"
"Why else do you think someone would get a degree in entomology?" Mint said, smiling.
"Heh, that makes a lot of sense." Edmunsen stared wistfully at the bees. Cassius looked to Mint, then back to Edmunsen.
"Are we going to take them outside?" El-Waylly said.
"I guess so," replied Edmunsen, "Just let me mark all these bees with some albumen powder."

After the rest of the doctors had released the bees, Ashby cautiously went back to 5765, now closed from the experiment, He opened the chamber, and saw… nothing. But he knew in his heart that there were bees in 5765.


When his car pulled up, I was practically vibrating. All the little metal bits of equipment on my backpack were clinking and jingling. The carabiner tinking against my water bottle, and the flashlight patting against the polyester. In an attempt to look a little cooler than I was, I took a couple deep breaths to curb the jitters. Thankfully, it was dark out, and he probably hadn't seen anything.
As soon as he'd come to a full stop, I braved stepping out into the headlights, barely able to make my way down the path from the porch to the driveway, shielding my eyes with my arm and giving a weak wave to someone I couldn't yet see.
When I reached the passenger side, the door opened in front of me, and I saw him sitting in the driver's seat, leaning over the console to let me in.
“Welcome aboard,” he said, a polite smile spreading across his sharp, pointed face.
“Hey! Glad to meet you,” I extended my hand, “er, Prima!”
He extended his, and we shook. “Richter,” he corrected me.
“Richter,” I repeated back. We'd met on the forums. The Parawatch forums, to be specific. He'd started a thread offering up his hometown to see if there was anybody nearby. I know you're not supposed to give out that information to strangers, but the opportunity was simply too good to pass up. “My name's Harold. Get it? Owled, Harold, haha. Came up with that when I was 12.”
He chuckled, but I think it was more sympathy than genuine amusement.
“Alright, go sling that backpack in the truck bed and we'll be off.”
I followed his instruction, and practically had to climb into his big rusty truck. As soon as I was situated, we took off without another word.
The truck smelled like dirt and old newspaper. Reeked of being inherited instead of bought. Still, anything was better than nothing, and I had nothing, which was why he was driving. After some awkward minutes of silence, he spoke:
“I should've told you,” he warned, “but that backpack's probably not gonna fit where we're going. You're gonna have to choose what to take and leave behind.”
“What?” I gave him a look, but it was lost in the darkness. “Well, dang. Uhh, the EMF reader can fit in my pocket, flashlight is a must. Walkee-talkees are portable, and we can keep the channel open without saying anything to catch it speaking —”
“It doesn't communicate that way,” he interrupted me.
“Huh?”
For a moment, the only sound was the truck's tires on asphalt, crackling over the unkept road.
“Plus, we're not going to be splitting up,” he continued. “Don't need the radio.”
“Well, alright then. I guess we can take some of the bars and put them in our pockets, but the fruit will stay behind. The notebook is a bit bulky.”
“It'll be fine.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hey, I thought you were supposed to be the expert here. I did my homework and you should appreciate that.”
“Yeah, well, I do. Thanks. But I am the expert. I've done this before, and I can tell you, none of that stuff does anything. So go get your flashlight and some power bars, and we'll go in. We're here.”
Richter parked in a small turnout. The pitch black night was crowded with trees that blotted out the stars, the only possible source of illumination. We were essentially in the middle of nowhere. A slight breeze pushed leaves and pine needles up against one another, and I thought I might have heard the sounds of some critters scurrying away when we first parked, but it was otherwise still.
I hopped out of the car as Richter did the same, begrudgingly snagging only the bare necessities from my carefully assembled pack and leaving the rest in the truck bed.
“So, where is it?”
“Down here,” Richter waved me over.
I followed him down the hill, over dead leaves and underbrush, waving a flashlight around to find my way. “This is more secluded than I expected,” I observed.
“If ghosts were okay with publicity they'd come out in the day, too.”
“Can't argue with that,” I mumbled.
“Look. There.”
He pointed with his flashlight to a concrete pipe, jutting out of the steep incline. It was nested in a small dip, and there was brown discoloration at its rim and along its bottom. Richter gracefully skid down the hill and landed on his feet just in front of it.
“The storm drain you were talking about,” I proposed.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “It's haunted.”
“Wow.”
He flashed me a quick smile. “You want to lead the way? You seem excited.”
“Nervous, more like.”
That stillness returned again. I found myself standing at the top of the incline, not yet brave enough to join him in the mini-canyon that preceded the pipe. Just looking down at him, him and the dead leaves, the fallen pine needles, the dust and dirt, and that cramped opening, the storm drain that dug itself into the earth.
“Guess that means I'll take the lead. Come down here, it's a storm drain so there's only one way to go. If something scary happens, you just turn the other way and run.”
I wasn't quick to comply, but I did. I steadily lowered myself down the way, and ended up standing right next to him. The entrance was even more foreboding from this angle. A claustrophobic maw. I had a pit form in my stomach, and a knot form in my chest. I had to remind myself that ghosts were scary but nonlethal. Not usually, anyways.
Richter wasted no time. He crouched down and stepped into the tunnel with confidence and just kept going. I made sure to follow a couple steps behind. The sound of wind quickly became nonexistent. I shivered as the temperature dropped some degrees, and I found my single jacket uncomfortable.
“Run you say,” I muttered, “looks more like ‘crawl really fast.'”
“Sure, but that doesn't inspire confidence.”
“It really doesn't.” There was a pause as I tried to discover the most comfortable way to crawl through the tunnel. “So… will talking keep it from appearing?”
“Not in my experience.”
For a moment, the only sound was the friction our shoes made with the damp concrete.
“Have you seen it?”
He stopped walking for just a second. He turned back to look at me. “Yes.”
Then he turned around and kept moving.
“Wow. How often?”
“I hear it more than I see it.”
“Well… how often do you hear it?”
“Every time.”
I stopped moving. It was getting really cold. He only stopped when he noticed I wasn't following.
“Getting cold feet?”
“Sorry, I thought ghosts were hard to find. That's why, y'know, we're all trying to prove their existence or something.”
“Not if you know where to look.”
He let me have my moment for a second, but waved me forward, and I slowly but steadily got back up to pace, crouching low to keep my back from scraping the rough ceiling.
…
“How often do you come down here?”
“Once a week.”
“To do what?”
“Just to make sure it's still here.”
“And you've never gotten a picture?”
…
“Well, that's why you're here, right?” I was about to respond, but: “Look.”
Richter moved his flashlight to show an opening in the concrete wall. It looked like something had burst through the pipe, and there was a tiny earthen cubby, just big enough that when Richter waved me in, we could both sit down as long as we kept our heads low.
I paused for him to explain himself, but there was only silence instead. So I asked him:
“What do we do now?”
“Wait.”
“W-wait for what?”
“For what else? It. The ghost.”
I hadn't realized just how still the tunnel was, but as soon as we had sat down, all sound had ceased. Without our footsteps to echo, the loudest sound was the ringing in my heart and the blood pumping through my body. I desperately wanted to fill the silence.
“What do we do when it gets here?”
He didn't respond.
“How… how'd you find it?”
Richter sighed. “I've always sort of known it was here. A friend and I were playing, when we were really little. We were playing pretend, and we were pretending that one of us was this monster, right? We called it the tunnel monster. Well, the tunnel monster would hang out in these tunnels.” He motioned to the storm drain. “One of us would try to escape, and the other would try to drag us in.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. That sound — there was a sound coming from the storm drain. Something pained and loud. A wailing.
“I-is that it!?”
Richter held a finger up to his lips to shush me, and then powered on with his story as that far-away wailing continued to echo through the pipe. “We had gotten into a kind of argument, though. About who won the game. It was so stupid, because there wasn't ever supposed to be a winner. It was just supposed to go on forever. Except that kid's games can't go on forever.”
The wailing grew louder. It was torturous, overwhelming. I'd never heard anything like it in my life.
“And that's when we found it.”
“Here?”
“Well. Not here, not exactly.”
The specter shrieked.
“Wh-what do we do? What do we do when it gets close? We're stuck in a hole, should we run? Should we—?”
“Shhh,” he held his finger to his lips again, and then looked to his right as if listening only for the proximity of the thing. “It doesn't usually get this close.”
I spoke at a lower volume: “I-if you've already seen it, and you've known it was here, then, then why, why am I here?”
“Can't I just want to show someone?”
I didn't lower the intensity of my gaze as another screech came from the tunnel.
He relented. “It doesn't like me.”
“Doesn't like you?”
He shook his head. “It won't get close to me anymore.”
“Anymore?”
“What's a ghost?”
“What?”
“What's a ghost to you?”
I was struggling to think straight. The only things keeping me in place were how difficult it was to move and the thought that I might actually prove the existence of the supernatural, but my resolve was waning fast.
“Uh, umm it's someone who has died, it's their spirit.”
“Mmm, close. Not quite. It's the spirit of someone who doesn't exist anymore.”
“What's the d-difference?”
“Well, are you the same Harold from four years ago? Haven't a lot of things happened between now and then? So, if you're a different Harold, then where'd the last one go? What remains of it?”
“I-I…” I could hear footsteps, I could hear the heavy wet footsteps of something coming down the tunnel, something coming towards he and I, something lumbering and screaming and awful.
“This spirit? It's my ghost. And we're here to exorcise it. You want to run, right?”
I barely even processed the insanity of his last statement, instead frantically nodding my head.
“Okay, good.”
He forcefully grabbed me by the shoulders and wrestled me, kicking and yelling, out into the tunnel. Then he gave me one command: “Run.”
I moved my flashlight to the right and —
And then I was scrambling down the tunnel in the other direction, out the way I came, going as fast as I could on my hands and feet, the adrenaline sometimes interfering with coordination, hitting my head into the ceiling, scraping my arms along the concrete, doing everything I possibly could to put as much distance between me and the thing.
The thing that was screaming, wailing, closing the distance faster than anything of its size should be able to in a tunnel this cramped. A stench of mold and wet paper was slowly suffocating me as it got closer, so strong as to make me cough and gag. But I couldn't look back. I couldn't do anything that wasn't scampering towards the exit, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other, sweat barreling down my forehead, my breaths quick and shallow and loud.
And I screamed as I felt it. It grabbed my calf and dragged me backwards, my knees scraping on the pipe floor. I tried to kick it to get it off, but it redoubled its grip, grabbing my left leg with its other hand. And it wailed and yelled, and I wailed and yelled with it. As it pulled me closer to it, its head making it up to my stomach, I began to bash it with my flashlight.
It didn't resist. In fact, its head nearly came apart. Mold and soiled paper crumpled out of one corner of its cardboard box head, spilling foul-smelling water onto the ground. But that didn't stop it. It kept pulling and groping and yelling until it was completely on top of me, my light sometimes illuminating the vague impression of a face drawn in sharpie that had been warped by time, water, mold, and rot.
It screamed.
I screamed.
And then it got pulled off of me. I skittered backwards, my flashlight catching as Richter plunged a boxcutter into the thing's chest over and over and over again. Flailing limbs, sprays of water from the soaked cardboard, and there I was, frozen in place, watching as Richter “exorcised” the ghost.
I nearly regained my senses and went to his aid when it thrust a hand through his chest.
And I screamed again, and halfway through that scream the reason changed. At first, I was merely watching someone die. But then, I noticed the texture of it. Richter's chest separated into sheafs, blood-soaked stacks of paper, of newspaper. His chest cavity opened, and out spilled print instead of organs.
I twisted my body around and retreated. I had no cohesive thoughts. I just knew I needed to escape. The tunnel, the ghost, the — Richter, all of it. I had to leave. I had to get out of here. I had to go.
I made it to the exit of the tunnel, launched myself from the storm drain, and rolled into the dead leaves and pine needles. I shot to a standing position, and froze while my horrified psyche tried to remember how to get back to the car through the layers of stress and fear. And in that moment of stillness, the blood rushing in my ears somehow didn't block me from noticing that it was silent.
Other than the wind in the leaves, there was nothing. No wailing, no yelling, no screaming. Nothing. Just me, the wind, my heartbeat, and my heavy breathing.
…
I moved my flashlight to the tunnel. It didn't extend far, and it revealed nothing. I thought for a moment whether I should get a closer look. I took one cautious step towards the storm drain, then another, and then —
No. No, no. I climbed up the hill. No. I didn't care. There was nothing that could make me go back. No. I made it up, into the turnout on the road, and saw the truck. I grabbed my backpack, and started down the road. My adrenaline would keep me awake for the hours it took to walk back.
That week, I didn't sleep. I barely ate. I almost went back to the forums, almost. A couple times. But I didn't.
What happened that night? Was that really a ghost? What was it, if not? Was Richter human? Was Richter a ghost? What was he, if not? What was the thing about to do to me? What was Richter about to do to it?
I don't know. I don't know any of these things. And now, I don't want to know. I haven't ever gone back to the forums. I haven't ever looked him up. I haven't ever gone back, and I never will. I used to ghost hunt in pursuit of knowledge. But if that's what there is to know, then I can say with confidence that life is better in the dark.