«Previously»

An impossibility floated in the center of the decrepit room. Agent Danyal's eyes were fixed on it, ignoring the rusted paratech and concept-modifying devices around him. The sphere was colorless, if it could even be considered a sphere. Not white, not black, not transparent. It was the silhouette of a nonexistent color. His eyes turned to a wooden sign propped against a tangle of circuitry.

WARNING: DO NOT TOUCH!
DESCENDED

Drips of water from the pipes above had stained it, creating a stream of red paint that pooled on the floor. Luckily for the investigation it was still legible, though the many identical carvings and placards on the walls would've been good substitutes.
He scratched a small itch next to his right eye, his finger passing through a translucent doctor's eyepiece that rested on it.
"So Danyal, any idea on what this is?" Agent Chester strolled into the room, eyeing the enigma. His brown hair was tinged with gray and his face wrinkled.
"Working on it."
The eyepiece focused on the silhouette and Danyal waited. Ennoiatheama, he called it. The ability to comprehend conceptual details. Normal objects were far too detailed to be understood without the risk of seizure, but basic conceptual structures — such as the eyepiece — had the absolute minimum information required for existence. The eyepiece stared, yet no data was retrieved. He hadn't collapsed to the ground, confirming that it was conceptual, but there had to be some information. The eyepiece focused again. The spherical appearance had to be in the details, even if there was nothing else. No data was retrieved.
"Well, it… It doesn't have any concepts," Danyal said.
"Wait, so this is something like CNC?"
"No paradoxical concepts in this. This has no concepts at all. If my parts are working right, though."
"…But it still exists."
"Hm."
They both stood, thinking about the situation. If a concept was necessary for existence, things that were conceptually null shouldn't physically or informationally be in reality. Based on the basking shark incidents the most that should be present would be a thin outline, a sign of what was lacking in reality. Yet there was no outline. It was a colorless nothing.
"So, how dangerous could this be?"
"No idea." He noticed a thin informational glow around the nothing's edges. He focused, but it was too small to rationalize. Too small to rationalize without being centimeters away from the nothing. "The Associates didn't like it."
"Crazed cultists have picky tastes. Could just be the opposite of their ideal conceptual purity." Chester grabbed the rusted end of a broken lever, once used to open a now busted power box. "Danyal?"
Danyal looked away from the nothing. "What?"
Chester pointed to the lever, then to the nothing. "Shall I?"
"Throw it in?"
"Mhmm."
They both looked back at the signs. "Too risky," Danyal replied.
"Alright." He dropped the lever. "I'll look through this area and you can continue working in the main room. Testing and existential debates come later."
Danyal nodded.
The steel panels where Chester's sideburns should've been opened up and released a myriad of communication devices, small enough to fit in the skull with room to spare. "Agent Chester Romero reporting, Floor -1, Room 4…"
Danyal walked into a hallway and Chester's conversation faded out. He was preoccupied with the informational glow. If it was part of the nothing it would've appeared in the data on it, so it had to be caused by the nothing. He'd been taught that this was impossible, and that anything within a universe had to be conceptual. Was it wrong? If vacuums can exist in nature, can an ontological vacuum exist? A hole in the real?
The hallway almost felt stuffier than the room he'd left; perhaps the dim lighting and close walls were to blame. An unusual breeze blew by him and into that room. Something metallic rattled in the distance. He briefly adjusted his black suit and tie. As stylish as the uniform was, UIU investigations rarely left it unscathed. Danyal had the feeling that this would be one of those times. There was another metallic rattling.
"Agent Danyal Vahid," his intercom announced. "Report to Room 1, Floor- oh hey. Over."
Agent Valarie Dell, wearing an androgynous uniform with short red-dyed hair, waved from a bend in the hallway. Next to their feet was a bullet-ridden autoturret, leftover from the UIU raid on the building. They idly flicked their hand. The turret rattled and spun, the machine gun barrel clacking against the wall.
"What is it?" Danyal asked.
"Something's come up in the main room. They think you're qualified for it."
"Aren't there other metaphysics researchers here?"
"They're all smooching with that giant machine on Floor -4 and nobody wants to interrupt their fun," Val said, smirking.
Danyal sighed.
Both of them began walking down the hallway and toward the main room. The air gradually became fresher.
"Am I just a backup metaphysics researcher now?"
"What, you didn't get the memo? You're the new Metaphysics Department head researcher, all agent duties gone! All you'll do now is just stick your head in concepts and say what happens."
Danyal continued to blankly stare ahead, and it became clear that he was preoccupied. Val went quiet. The informational glow, the sole clue to the nothing puzzle, kept dancing around every possible explanation. The only certainty was the involvement of the Associates of Apotheosis. It was impossible that a conceptual abnormality could exist in this building without their involvement.
The two passed through a broken doorway and entered the main chamber of Floor -1, the first basement of the former Apotheosis HQ.
Rows of lights hung from the ceiling and illuminated the scuffed floor. Officers patrolled the area, rummaging through compartments hidden in walls, filled with illegal paratech, and pulling off fake concrete panels in search of more. A priest lined up a portable projector, preparing to exorcise the demon locking a vault. However, the center of attention was a large steel contraption that ran along the northern wall, resembling a particle accelerator that had been shrunken then partially lodged in the floor. Multiple computers jutted out of the sides, one of which had a police android's finger wires embedded in it — slowly breaking encryptions and cracking passwords. In the middle of the device was the all too familiar symbol of the Associates of Apotheosis — a dot in the middle of a line in a circle on the face of a cube — some metaphor for conceptual ascension. A golem stood nearby and waited for orders.
"Sooo, are you curious at all about why I called you?"
"Oh," His eyes snapped back to reality. "What is it?"
"I was over with some of the cops inspecting the machine and…"
The exorcist's chants filled the background like the ambient chatter of a radio.
"…and we saw this small dot that seemed to have no color."
Danyal froze. "Translucent, black, or?"
"Nothing that looked like color."
"Shit." He sprinted off towards a cluster of officers around the center of the machine. Val muttered under their breath and followed suit.
"Excuse me, agent coming through." The officers immediately dispersed. Danyal looked around the machine's surface for any details when he saw what Val had spoken of. A small dot on a metal panel. Same conceptless structure, same informational glow.
Val leaned in and stared. "Conceptual structure?"
"Well, no. Conceptless."
"Like CNC, or — "
"Completely conceptless."
"Shit." It was clear they didn't know what this exactly meant, but they had watched someone die from Conceptually Null Clearsolids. Anything with conceptless in the name was a bad sign, even if the specifics varied.
The dot changed into a small sphere, a fraction of an inch larger. A few officers stopped to watch the commotion. The priest finally stopped her shouting as several polygons sputtered out of the sphere and retracted.
"Vitae collapse rennen rennen." Danyal said.
Hearing the specialized activation phrase, the golem ceased idling and walked towards the sound's source. The spirit inside knew trouble was afoot, even if it couldn't comprehend the specifics. In seconds the spirit had pored through the minds of Danyal and the surrounding people, setting its mind on "peculiar spheroid" and "apprehend" — simple enough for a standard police golem to know. Danyal shivered as it tumbled through his thoughts.
The humanoid bulk of concrete pushed Val to the side and a dull, monotone voice scraped out. "Step aside citizen." Val grimaced.
As the golem leaned over, the dot suddenly stretched out into a set of long blobs. They expanded and phased through the golem's torso, which immediately began flashing and changing into many colors. From Danyal's view conceptual details were being rapidly modified and shredded into their basic components, ejecting and dissipating in a metaphysical light show. The golem was gaseous, translucent, shadowless, sound, a topology equation.
Both agents leapt back and people looked on in shock. The not-concepts drifted out towards the ceiling, showing a hole with rubber edges and a steel panel beneath it. The torso was deleted, and the legs stumbled before becoming a liquid that fell to the ceiling. The variable construct emesis ended.
"Great going, cannon fodder," Val muttered as they looked up.
"Step back everyone!" Danyal ordered.
Tendrils lashed out at the air and conceptually broke the atoms it composed, leaving a white glowing trail of informational destruction and a breeze of air, moving to replace the vacuums it created. Several officers ushered people towards the stairwell as they shouted over their intercoms.
Ideatic text hovered inches above the steel panel, glowing and flickering.

FOR THOSE WHO DETEST HUMAN DESTINY

"Self-sabotage," Val remarked.
"Hm." Interrogation of the captured cultists to find the culprit could come later, assuming they were captured.
"That or a pre-programmed feature."
Val popped the lid of their flask open and took a long swig. They claimed the liquor helped them concentrate to the suspicion of many, though Danyal wondered more about whether the cyan fluid inside could even be classified as alcohol. "Think you can handle this?" they asked.
"Probably."
"Sweet. I'll keep the area covered."
"Covered from what?" Danyal looked at the many police officers and specialists behind him, and remembered the many more agents in the building above and below him.
"Whatever is… heading for your booty, I guess."
Danyal chuckled, and began inspecting the machine. "Uh, some help opening this?"
Val closed their eyes and clenched their fists. A second later chunks of metal ejected off and flew past Danyal, tailed by the pink message. It landed next to Val, who took a deep breath. A researcher gasped, either from the spontaneous destruction or from the horror of potential damage to the device.
"Try not to ask that too much, okay?"
He looked into the machine's interior, a long tunnel that held massive amounts of conceptual structures: translucent gold tubing and gears in the shape of a roughly cylindrical shape. Through a combination of ennoiatheama, willpower, and a chunk of conceptual wiring lodged in his skull, he could comprehend the entire structure by seeing a single portion of it. The full details refused to stay in his head though the summary did.
The machine was essentially a large computer, operated with the terminals and conceptual abilities. An object would be assigned to a pointer as an input, and its properties would be modified, becoming the output. Without an input the device shouldn't be active, but it was producing a constant stream of junk outputs. Several broken spheres lining the conceptual structure would be reason why.
Despite his experience with metaphysics, it was impossible for him to repair concepts. This left two options: attempt to find the machine's power source and shut it down — risking more not-concept production — or to break it, dismaying the UIU Metaphysics Department. Hopefully they'll understand.
He mentally pushed and extended translucent blue conceptual projections of his arms — a metabody — out of his body, with the metabody's hands floating into the machine. The hands grabbed onto the structures and prepared to snap a central tube off. A second after a shadowy blur flew past one of his metahands and sliced it.
Three bulges appeared on the surface of the structures, dark-gray in color. A second later they burst into not-concepts that shot out of the machine and went through the floor and walls, spraying shimmering metal fragments from behind them.
"Everybody leave!" Val shouted.
Nobody hesitated to run.
Val tapped their mic on. "This is Agent Valarie Dell communicating on all channels, several metaphysical hazards are now present on Floor -1…" They kept a watchful eye on Danyal's motionless body.
A sliver of Danyal's metahand was now nonexistent. The blur, a pitch-black metaphysical katydid, landed at the structure's opposite end. It lunged again and he dodged. It was the machine's defense mechanism and was trying to eat his metabody, which would take days to regenerate. Though it wasn't guaranteed death, he couldn't let it reach his real body. Body property and perception damage wasn't worth gambling on.
Leap, dodge, leap, dodge. The battle swiftly fell into a pattern that left him in a weak disadvantage. As it passed under his metahands again he went for a swift punch. He pulled back when two fingers were sheared off as he touched the insect's body. It was a conceptuvorous hole, impenetrable to the metaphysical combat he relied on. It may tire out after a while, but he didn't have a while.
More dark-gray bulges appeared near the right end of the construct.
"Wait, Val. Is the android still there?" Danyal shouted over the chaotic metaphysical noise only he heard.
"Uh-"
Officer ARO43 was still connected to the computer, their processing power dedicated entirely to data retrieval. The only safety measure they took was crouching down. Val clenched their hand and the android was ripped from the conceptually flashing terminal.
"Get out of here!"
ARO43 briefly looked around and sprinted to Floor -2, ignoring their severed hand laying by the superconducting computer remains.
Danyal pinched the surface of the conceptual structures and extruded a barrier from it in front of his metahand. The katydid dodged around and collided into another wall that was transforming into protective semi-spheres around each metahand. If the creature was tasked with protecting the device, it wouldn't eat through parts of it. The hands swung around the structure's sides and repeatedly slammed into the creature, sending it careening. Both fists gathered enough material and broke off the surface into the air, fully encapsulated in spheres. They rocketed towards the bug and crushed it into the structure, blasting a crater on its surface. Before the bug could react the spheres broke off the hands and wrapped over the crater, sealing it in.
The hands shed the spheres and moved to a thin conceptual pipe next to a mass of translucent gears. If this was broken it would split the machine in half, rendering it inoperable. He grabbed on, noticing dark gray bulges on the other side of it. He had to move quickly. The hand pushed and gradually dented it, extruding more walls from it and shrinking its size. The bulges were growing, expanding, twisting, and bending. Suddenly a rapid series of modifications to the machine were detected by Danyal. The bug was tunneling through the machine towards his hands. In an instant it burst out and the right metahand was eviscerated into particulate debris. It reached the opposite side of the machine and propelled itself towards the last hand.
He snapped the pipe as the bulges grew and pushed them out towards the bug, letting go to avoid the chaos that would ensue. A colorless jet shot out as the conceptual structures buckled and collapsed, piercing through the insect. The katydid split into red and blue afterimages of itself which ricocheted through the interior, smashing apart electronics. After a second they vanished in a haze of ampersands, fading out of ennoiatheama's range. Danyal's metabody began retracting into himself.
Chester pushed Danyal to the ground as a row of not-concept spikes came out of the machine, barely missing his head. Val swung their hand back and they flew away from another spike that went along the floor. The remnants of the machine crumpled, and with a long electric whine it deactivated. A translucent ring rolled out of the debris and melted into his remaining metahand, which phased back into his body. His mind made an attempt to keep going, grasping at and hanging onto disparate thoughts. He fainted.

Chester dragged himself off the ground and inspected himself. Only a few scrapes on his clothes, and after pulling back his sleeves he saw that his cybernetics were intact. He looked around. Metal shards, broken pipes spilling water onto the ground, thaumic circuitry spitting out arcane symbols in electrical arcs. Columns of light spilled through as the not-concepts disintegrated and unplugged the holes they left in the ceiling.
"He really did a number on this place," Val said between pants. They raised their flask and took another swig.
"It happens."
Val nodded. They could faintly hear the sounds of panicked pedestrians and the officers trying to calm them, both groups disturbed by the spikes that had stretched far out of the building. The floors above and below were lit with the chatter of agents, all calling back to command in confusion. Countless materials with tampered properties were sprinkled through the air.
"Anyways, I'm checking the outside. Have to make sure the police can handle the situation."
"Roger that."
He dashed up the stairwell. "Oh, and I'll call for med support," he said, pointing at Danyal's unconscious body. He rushed up and out of site.
Val admired the wreckage and crouched down.
"Agent Valarie, status report," their mic sputtered to life.
"Metaphysical hazards suspected to be neutralized. One golem down, one 3P police android damaged, Agent Danyal unconscious. Over."
They laid a hand on his chest. Still breathing.
"Copy that. Agent Chester has called for medical units, stay where you are and check for additional hazards. Over."
"Copy. Over."
The investigation was far from over.

STATE OF BEING
« UIU File: 2014-014 | Abstract Naught | Parmenidean Tango »


Mr. Young, please put the weapon down. You have more to live for than this.

No response.

Baltimore PD crisis negotiator Andrea Wagner stood upright against the wind, facing a local mom & pop restaurant, and the man standing within it. Seconds passed, and Andrea cautiously brought the microphone to her mouth again, and began her breathing exercises.
OK, best course of action at this poi
BANG
Anthony Young woke up still standing, stark naked save a steel collar attached to his neck. He continued to look ahead at the wall of steel chains in front of him as his left hand quickly balled into a fist that vaguely pointed towards his chin. He stared, unmoving, as the police rushed through the chains and into the store.

Anthony began to process his surroundings.
The city began to process his death.
The universe began to tug at his collar.
The chain ran taut from the collar to his corpse, and Anthony buckled to the ground. He didn't feel it, as he did not have nerves to feel with, and he did not feel emotion, as he had no brain to feel with. And yet, lying down on what would have been the cold linoleum floor, Mr. Young thought. His thoughts strayed to what lay ahead: The sky, the future, and the afterlife.
Anthony noticed that behind and above the police and EMTs, the chain curtains pointed towards the drop ceiling, and beyond that, they must point towards the air. Anthony thought about what was above the ceiling. He thought about what could exist in the sky to make the chains rise. Anthony wondered if he'd lie there forever.
Anthony thought on this topic for some time. After a few weeks, he suddenly realized he could stand. And so he did. He stood up, turned around, and looked underneath his feet at the spot where he died. There was a queue of perhaps twenty people intersecting his patch of linoleum. Anthony would have cared, had he had either the capacity to or had not seen the queue progress over and over again.
Anthony thought about why he was capable of doing anything, let alone wonder, if he had no emotions. After all, curiosity was an emotion, so why did he stand up? Anthony eventually settled on the explanation that if he could think, the state of his corporeality didn't matter, since the universe didn't bother being consistent. On that note, Anthony turned towards the doors and tried to exit.
He walked in place for a month before his chain loosened enough to leave. Standing below the open air, Anthony was able to see what lay above.
538 people were visible, waiting in the air at varying heights, all facing the sun and all near motionless save for a slow, steady slackening of their respective chain. Rarely, one might be privileged to see some poor or lucky soul simply disappear into the air. Occasionally, someone would lurch up or be torn back.
It was an altogether oddly calming sight. One that reminded Anthony of home, and all of the emotions those memories bring. Emotions? This shouldn't be possible; Anthony had no brain, why was he so happy when he looked towards the sky? Why did he want to reach the sky?
His eyes darted to and from each hanging body, trying to find an explanation, some cause for this inconsistency in an already inconsistent set of rules, though he found none. He looked around him, having thought that perhaps the source of his emotions was at eye level. Instead, he lost the joy and bemusement he had but a few moments ago.
And so Anthony stared up towards the sky as he began to walk towards the cemetery, stopping only to realize that he's made more progress in thirty seconds than in the past two months. Nevertheless, Anthony continued to where he knew he would find a chunk of stone engraved with his name.
He eventually did find his grave, though it was far more… generic than he thought it would be. It looked distinctly regulated, a vertical rectangular stone bearing no features but his name, date of birth, and date of death. It almost stood out among the mass of immensely varying tombstones and crosses, though it never quite managed that.
A woman approached Anthony from the east, an expression of quiet solitude painted onto her face, and a bouquet of various flowers held in her right hand. She crouched down to read one of the older graves, a granite slab in the form of a melted candle. Alexander O'Reilly, she whispered with a solemn smile, as she placed a lily on the grass.
And on another plot of land, somewhere near Sheridan, a chain lurched back towards the earth.
Margaret Tiller, mother of five. The woman choked out. Hey, I bet you're happy you don't have to deal with that anymore, huh? The woman chuckled, having placed a young rose on the lip of the marble, and likewise having ripped Margaret from the heavens.
And when the girl bearing flowers reached Anthony's grave, he wasn't around to see what she did, for his chain had tightened, and Anthony was dragged toward the store where he had taken his own life.


October 30th
A single beryllium-bronze bullet landed between the eyes of the Black Autumn, fired from a revolver. It staggered back slightly, and then glared at the shooter, the hole in its head healing.
Ruby Williams stood there, with her revolver trained on its skull. She fired another shot, then another, keeping her other hand on her arm to stop the kickback from dislocating her shoulder. Normally, a revolver had six shots, but Ruby had always been a fan of the LeMat. Nine bullets pierced its form before her revolver hit empty chambers.
"That almost hurt!" the Black Autumn laughed, watching the voids in her seal themselves. "Now, stop wasting my time—"
The air was filled with the brrrraaaaaappp of gunfire as three-dozen assault rifles filled the Black Autumn with beryllum-bronze. Its form looked like someone had made a paper doll and had let their little brother take a hole punch to it.
The noise only died down when their magazines emptied. The Black Autumn raised its single remaining hand, and a gust of wind came through, rustling leaves and causing the task force to stagger. "ENOUGH!" it snapped.
The Black Autumn looked behind her at the greying, pockmarked face of the giant Jack-O-Lantern. Something that passed for worry appeared on its face as it began to heal.
Reynolds cursed and hoisted Katherine onto his shoulder. "She's too powerful. Where are our reinforcements?"
"Fall back!" March snapped. "Get the kids to safety! Load them into transports and get out!"
"We're staying," Pryce spoke for her squad. "We've seen the worst of her, we can handle this."
"Good luck, agents." March retreated. Most of the task force took up the children and retreated with him. All that were left were Squad 25, along with Montgomery Reynolds and an unconscious Katherine Sinclair.
Mavra glared at them, and a thin layer of autumn frost formed on their skin. She was growing in strength, but she was still too weak to break free from the Nexus. She needed to put a little more fear into those who were remaining.
Pumpkins around them burst open, disgorging dozens of child-like beings, dressed in Halloween costumes. They all groaned, moving for the task force. They all muttered a collective "trick-r-treat, trick-r-treat", holding rotten canvas bags out to them, as if asking for candy.
"Jesus fucking CHRIST!" Ruby gaped.
"A-aim for t-the heads!" Blake swallowed, recognizing some of the costumed entities as children from one cold, October night forty-eight years ago.
The gunfire was more hesitant, single shots, as bullets went through the skulls of the beings that looked like children. February was the first to falter, his gun dropping at the sight of a child wearing a witch mask coming up to him. He backed away from her, whimpering as it asked for candy.
Pryce dropped it with a shot from her sidearm. "Ray! Focus! Do your Choir Boy thing!"
He nodded, taking a knee and praying as he fired his gun. "P-pater noster, qui es in caelis," He fired a shot with every line of the prayer he recited."Sanctificetur n-nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum, f-fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra." February had killed far worse than this with prayers and a pistol. But still, he couldn't help but wonder if they were laughing or crying when he shot them.
"Someone shoot her too!" Ewell raised his rifle and shot Mavra through her temple, only for the spirit to look at him sideways.
"When are you going to get this through your skulls?" She cackled. "I am immortal! I am the Black Equinox, the Black Autumn! Mavra Isimeria! I am the Last Rot that Eats Summer, the Usher of the Red Winter—"
Mavra was, once again, interrupted by an attack— this time an axe thrown from its side, impacting in what passed for her skull. Its blade bore the image of Baphomet, the goat-headed god. The Black Autumn groaned, and turned to face her attacker. "Troublesome little—" it began.
When she was distracted, a man with a wide-brimmed black hat and a hook replacing its left hand appeared from the shadows. The Hook-Handed Man put his arm around Mavra's body, and slit her throat with one clean motion of his hook.
He shoved her away, into the path of a sonic wave emitted from a one-eyed woman wearing what could only be described as a "sexy" Foundation task force member Halloween costume. The scream reverberated throughout the fairgrounds, and into the agents' ears.
"Motherfuck!" Pryce winced, looking at the half-banshee half-succubus. "Bit of warning next time?"
"You'd rather we let her decimate you?" the Goatman stepped out from behind a booth that had once served funnel cakes. His appearance was demonic, with black fur, red eyes, and six horns arranged in an alien pattern sprouting from his skull.
"Sorry we're late," Singing-or-Sinning Jessie coughed and straightened out her costume. "It was hell trying to break through the barrier around this place."
"You're here. That's what counts." Ewell trained his rifle on her head again.
The Black Autumn rose up once more, and turned to face the Hook-Handed man. The Goatman's axe flew from her skull back into his hand. "These are your reinforcements?" she hissed.
"This is our town!" the Hook-Handed man barked. "You've killed god knows how many people, and now you're going after our children!" He took an impossibly long step forward and slashed at her throat again. Mavra let out a gurgling laugh.
"For the love of…" Jessie put power into her sentence, "Just die already!" Glass broke from the sonic force, and the majority of the children seemed to fade into nothingness, as the Black Autumn's concentration broke.
"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Ewell called, taking cover behind a caramel apple stand and firing an herbicide grenade at the giant pumpkin. The leaves on the vines of the great gourd shriveled, and for a brief moment, the Black Autumn stumbled.
The Goatman came up behind Mavra, his axe raised high, glowing red hot. He brought it down, only for the Black Autumn spun around and hiss something in a dead dialect of Greek. A pumpkin's vine grabbed the Goatman by his neck and snapped it with a horrific wet crack.
The caprine entity looked unimpressed as his head hung from an odd angle. "You do realize I'm immortal, don't you?" he asked, bringing his hands up to right his skull.
"Oh." Mavra had a frown in her voice. "Well."
All the while, bullets filled the Black Equinox, and Reynolds knelt behind the task force members, trying to get Sinclair to return to consciousness. He rummaged in his rucksack for smelling salts, and looked up to view the futility of what they were doing.
"This isn't doing shit!" Blake cursed. "We're just burning ammo!"
Ruby silently agreed, her eyes drawn to the pumpkin behind her. She noticed little pockmarks appearing on the gourd with each shot fired, resembling those inexplicable spots of grey scar tissue that were present on pumpkins that had been sitting on the vine for too long. "Going to Plan B!"
"Don't say it, do it!" Pryce barked, reloading.
Ruby took aim and fired at the pumpkin. As the shot hit the back of the Jack-o-Lantern's casing, traveling through its left eye, the Black Autumn recoiled, and turned to face her, its one remaining eye glaring.
"Plan B it is!" Pryce grinned. "Call me Billy Corgan, because I'm gonna be Smashing Pumpkins!"
Sinclair came to, and the first thing she heard was Seren Pryce's quip. She suppressed a groan, and surmised, "If we can't destroy the spirit, destroy what's containing it." She sat up and looked at the truck that held 097-1. "Goatman?"
"Here!" The Goatman brought his axe down on one of the vines trailing away from the great pumpkin, causing the entity to shriek.
"We need to completely destroy it! Chopping it up isn't going to cut it!" She looked at the undercarriage of the truck, wondering if it still had gas in it, and if that gas would burn.
The Goatman followed her eyes and nodded, bringing his axe up.
The others served as a distraction. Ewell loaded up another herbicide grenade, and with a cry of "Fire in the hole!" he let the volley off towards the pumpkin. It landed right in the Jack-O-Lantern's mouth, green gas hissing out. The Black Autumn stumbled as her vessel rotted, and was met with an uppercut from the Hook-Handed Man's hook.
With a loud, sickly cough, the Black Equiniox shouted "ENOUGH!"
The entity spread its arms, and rotten vines sprouted from the ground, slamming Legends and Foundation personnel alike into the sides of buildings. Already, the Goatman started to escape, chewing at the vines.
"All I want to do is get out of here. This place seals everything that you consider 'anomalous' —" it pointed an accusing finger at Sinclair in particular — "and seals us in. I want to be free of this place!"
"Join the club," Sinning Jessie snorted, wiggling against her bindings. "Seriously. None of us can leave either. I've never seen Paris, and Jasper's always wanted to walk down Times Square," she nodded at the Goatman, who had managed to chew through the vines holding his hands.
"The difference is," the Hook-Handed Man said, "we were created here, by superstition and stories. You came here uninvited and wreaked havoc and destruction. You've killed townsfolk, maimed Foundation agents, and you're responsible for killing the best pumpkin farmer in the entire state!"
"Hubble used black magic for that!" Sinclair protested. "He literally killed people to grow his pumpkins!"
"Yes, well," the Hook-Handed Man shrugged, "nobody's perfect."
"In other words," The Goatman growled, having eaten his way out of the vines. "Get out of our town!" He raised his axe, and brought it down onto Mavra's head.
The Black Autumn dove out of the way, and the Goatman's axe landed in the truck, cutting clean through the chassis. She laughed. "That's all you have? Empty motivational speeches?"
"That and a severed fuel line." He looked down at the ground, where sludge-like fuel was pouring out of the pipe cut by his axe. It was ancient by gasoline standards, but… "Sinclair! Burn it!"
Sinclair, still bound by pumpkins, projected her Will into her hands. She had to make this count, to amplify her power. She started to hum a song under her breath, something to amplify her magic to the heat of a thermal lance.
"…is that…" Reynolds frowned.
"You can't be serious," Pryce groaned.
"If it saves our asses, I'll sing along!" Ewell said. "Come with us and you will see, this our town of Halloween!"
Sinclair began singing aloud, softly, her hands burning bright. "This is Halloween, this is Halloween, pumpkins scream in the dead of night…" Autumn-orange flames leapt from her fingers, finding the sludge-like gasoline and traveling up the fuel line. "This is Halloween, This is Halloween, Trick-Or-Treat 'til you neighbors go and die of fright!"
The truck exploded into flames, erupting and consuming the pumpkin, the already-rotted, grinning face of the Jack-O-Lantern melting and oozing. Before it, the Black Autumn caught fire as well, and with a shriek, exploded into a cloud of burning rot.
Sinclair's heart fell along with her, the vines that bound them all dissolving. With the pumpkin burning, Mavra had died as well. As a last, spiteful act, she had spread the fire through her, and it was consuming the entire fairgrounds. "Oh hell."
"With us!" the Goatman yelled, waving them forward. "There's another exit this way!" He started down the passage he had come out from, only to find it blocked by a wall of fire. "Nevermind!"
"Out the way we came!" Pryce called, keeping low. "Move move move!"
The fairgrounds blazed around them. Autumn leaves stoked the fire, and despite the damp, rotten state of most of the plant matter in the area, it provided adequate fuel. The looming Ferris wheel creaked and started to falter, the heat melting its supports, as well as burning the vines that had been keeping it up for decades.
"We're not gonna make it!" Ruby yelled. A carriage fell off the wheel and crushed another ride nearby. "Holy shit!"
"Move it!" Pryce yelled. "NOW!"
The flames grew around them. The smell of molten metal filled the air, mixing with burnt leaves and rotting pumpkins. The front gate of the fair, with a smiling pumpkin bidding them to "Come back soon!" overhead was in sight. They ran for it—
And the Ferris wheel gave way. It loomed overhead, its shadow coming over them. Blake and Ruby embraced one another, and Monty and Sinclair held one another tight as well. Pryce and Ewell held hands and braced for impact, while February spoke a prayer. All of them shut their eyes tight, and prepared for the end.
Then, with a sudden crash, the shadow stopped growing. They opened their eyes, and saw a legion of burning vines holding the wheel up. Intertwined with the plants were dozens of skeletons— men, women, children. Some of them bore Foundation uniforms, and others were covered in bedsheets. Sinclair noticed, briefly, that the one at the very top of the vines holding it up was a scarecrow wearing a Foundation-issue uniform—a RAISA jacket. "Pickman," Sinclair swallowed.
"OUT!" Reynolds grabbed her and hustled outside the fair, and then several hundred yards beyond that.
The Ferris wheel collapsed with only autumn produce beneath it. In the field by the perimeter, in what was once a pumpkin patch, Seren Pryce vomited, the adrenaline finally getting to her. "H-holy… fucking… shit."
Ruby, standing stunned, eventually had the presence of mind to feel at her radio. "S-Sigma 10 Command, this is 10-25-2. The anomaly has been…" she looked at the burning wreck of the fair. "We believe it has been neutralized. Causalities?"
«One kid has a busted leg and some hair missing from his scalp, and they're all spooked. But beyond that…» Harold March sighed. «We're in the green.»
The sky overhead began to turn a cool, autumn blue. It was 2:00 in the afternoon on October 30th, and the sun was shining on Sloth's Pit for the first time in almost two weeks.
The Goatman tapped Sinclair's shoulder. "Sorry for asking," he began, "But… you have access to the Black Garden, yes? Keys or something?"
"Something like that," the mage responded. "Why?"
"Because I feel like we all could use a drink." The Goatman groaned, bleating into his hand. "Either to celebrate, or to forget. And they have the only good alcohol in town."
Pryce looked towards their transport— only to find it crushed by the Ferris wheel. She sighed. "Bad idea to put unsecured anomalies in Foundation transport anyway."
"Beautiful day, not too cold out, and," February smiled. "It's not that bad of a walk into town."
"It's five miles!" Reynolds protested.
"Task force members run a loop around the town every morning as a warm-up," Blake sighed. "Don't give me that."
"And y'could stand to lose weight," the Hook-Handed man chuckled, prodding at Reynolds's girth. The alchemical consultant was not amused.
"There's a shortcut through the woods." Sinning Jessie led them onwards. "Follow me."
"Where'd you get that costume anyway?" Ruby asked. "Or is it some kind of weird anomaly thing?"
Various conversations continued throughout the five-mile trek. Somewhere in town, the last leaf fell off of an oak tree, and landed in a vacant bird's nest, long since abandoned for the flight south. The birds would return, in time.

October 31st
'There was a traffic jam on Main Street' is not a phrase often heard in many small American towns, let alone Sloth's Pit. But, with the danger passed, families began moving back into their homes, prepared to bury their dead and start healing. And the influx of twenty-thousand people did, indeed, create a traffic jam on Main Street.
Jeffery Hubble, despite his crimes, was ultimately given a proper funeral. His body was cremated, per both his wishes and vampire disposal protocols. All profits from the pumpkin pie his family sold for the next month was put towards a fund to help those who had lost loved ones in the crisis, Foundation and townie alike.
Similar arrangements were made at Rudy's cafe, with fifty percent of every drink's sale price going towards grieving families; Rudolf Dyer had put aside a fund to put his children through college, with enough to keep his cafe open in the meantime. Caitlyn Dyer, his daughter, made better cappuccinos than her father ever could, but it would take her almost a year to get his iced tea recipe right.
A candlelight vigil was held outside of St. Jame's Episcopal. In the woods behind it, another vigil was held by fictional creatures, their heads bowed in mourning. But they could not stay for long. They had a danse to attend.

Newly-reinstated Director Nina Weiss stood at a podium in the front of the auditorium. Chairs and tables had been cleared out to make room for the bevy of Site members within. She sighed, and rubbed her face. "I have… never been one for giving speeches. Brisby attempted to give me an entire stack of notecards of congratulatory words to spout at you all, but, in all honesty: I only have one thing to say." She beamed at S & C Plastics. "Thank you. Thanks to you, the inhabitants of Sloth's Pit are now settling back into their homes. This town has been through a lot in the past two weeks. But it could have gone through far, far worse. And thanks to the efforts of everyone at Site-87, children are safely able to trick-or-treat tonight.
"That being said…" She looked at those by her side, almost a dozen in all. "Several of you have done far beyond what is demanded of your station. For bravery in the face of adversity, distinguished service, ingenuity in the face of certain death, and going above and beyond the call of duty, I hereby award Nicholas Ewell, Raymond February, Malcolm Guillard, Christopher Hastings, Claude Mattings, Keith Partridge, Cassandra Pike, Isaiah Pickman, Seren Pryce, Montgomery Reynolds, Katherine Sinclair, Blake Williams, and Ruby Williams the Foundation Star."
The hall erupted into cheers and applause as the director pinned a medal on each of the personnel in turn, leaving one on an empty seat with a photograph on it, representing Pickman. Pike and Hastings were confined to wheelchairs, for the time being, and Weiss knelt down to pin them on. They were the only two to see that Weiss's eyes were wet.
Weiss raised her hand once the last medal was given, and the hall fell silent. "Now. This has been a difficult time. But I believe we can begin to heal. The annual Halloween Party will be happening, for those who wish to attend it. I know some of us have spent a fair amount of time on costumes, and, quite frankly, I'd hate to see all that work go to waste for another year.
"That is all." She rolled her shoulders. "You are dismissed. The party will be in the ballroom on Surface Level 2 at 6:00."

'Those who wish to attend it', as it turned out, meant almost all of Site-87.
The mood was slightly sober, with the music muted and the lights low. There was no dancing, no singing. But there were smiles, laughs, hugs exchanged, and groans at horrible jokes made by members of Sigma-10.
What was not sober, however, was Tristan Bailey, who had gotten drunk off of a flask he kept on withdrawing from his labcoat. The only evidence that he was in costume was a poorly-made grey wig on his head.
"Hey, hey M-Monty," Tristan belched. "Who's the fox on your arm?"
"Go home, Bailey," Reynolds sighed, fiddling with his black duster and fidgeting with his prop wand. "You're drunk."
Katherine Sinclair rubbed the foam-and-white-fur mask of her fox costume, and shook her head. "You know, Tristan," she said in a heavily muffled voice, "I think you play Rick Sanchez a little too well."
"H-he said he was cool with the costume!" another belch. "And I ain't really drunk! This flask is nothin' but Antarctic wine! Gift from Tom, late birthday present for me and Trev." He belched once more, and took another drink. "It only makes you think you're drunk! It's crazy shit. Also, was that a meme? I didn't know that Monty Chemical Romance could meme!"
Reynolds stood stunned. "…Monty Chemic— I'm Harry Dresden, you fool!"
"You don't have the hat."
"Dresden doesn't have a hat!" Sinclair objected.
"And he doesn't have a furry for a girlfriend either— oh." His heart dropped as he saw a pink light emit from Sinclair's paws. "You're hexing me right now, aren't you?"
"Yep."
"I'll go bother Claire some."
"You do that." Sinclair watched him run off, and then brought her hand up, clicking the fingers together. They glowed with soft, pink light. "LEDs in the pawpads. Took me months to get the wiring right."
"Interesting," Reynolds nodded. "…do you think perhaps one of those could be made for me? These costumes, I mean?"
"Maybe." Sinclair smirked from behind her mask. "We'll see."

"I'm not sure whether or not I'm offended, Hastings." Keith Partridge looked down at his subordinate. Partridge had dressed up as Gregor Mendel, and Hastings had… well.
Christopher Hastings corrected his face and pushed up his glasses, but kept his arms in the same position. His motorized wheelchair had had a tablet attached to it in a manner similar to a famous astrophysicist. "Stephen Hawking was the best costume idea I could come up with on such short notice. Gimme a break. Not like Pike's is much better."
"What's she going as?" Partridge asked.
"Pike."
Partridge blinked. "Beg pardon?"
"Christopher Pike, from Star Trek? Guy in a wheelchair that could only communicate by beeping?" He looked through the crowd to see her and Mattings — who was dressed as Spock, he noted — conversing with the Blake and Ruby, who had gone as — what else? — the Wonder Twins. "We're going to have to go back to work tomorrow. Any idea what you want to work on?"
"We still have some of those vampire pumpkins that need analysis. We'll want to talk to Mattings and Reese about it, find some new test subjects."
"Why not just use rats?"
Partridge frowned. "I forgot you weren't here for the infamous Vampire Rats of 2009."
"Wait— vampire rats?"
"I'll tell you when you're older."
"I'm thirty-two!"
"When you're older," Partridge teased, looking towards the side. "Ooh, they brought out another bowl of punch."
"Fifth bowl of the night, isn't it?" Hastings asked. "They usually start spiking them around this time. Best not."
"One or two drinks isn't going to hurt," Partridge mused, not knowing that he would wake up the following morning the subject of a new Site-87 in-joke. He headed off towards the punch, and grabbed a plastic cup.

Seren Pryce stood outside of Site-87, uncostumed, smoking a cigarette. She was not in the partying mood at the moment. Bad things had happened to good people in an okay town, and she wanted none of that atmosphere.
The door by her opened, and Raymond February stepped out, still dressed in his Dracula costume. "If you're gonna brood," he said, "at least share your smokes."
Pryce produced a pack and pushed out a cigarette for him, looking at his costume. "Knowing that you were part of Stoker's Stakers at one point? That's a really fucking ironic costume, Ray."
"Mu-29," he laughed. "Best vampire hunters outside of the Initiative." He lit it up and sighed.
"Why aren't you at the party?" Pryce asked.
"I left once Partridge started shotgunning the punch." He took a puff.
Seren nearly dropped her cigarette. "How the hell do you shotgun punch?"
"Stab a hole in the bottom of the cup and ladle it in. Last I heard, they were taking him to the drunk tank."
"Why the hell do they always spike it?" Seren blew a ring of smoke. "Alcohol is awful."
"So's smoking, yet here we are."
"I do this, like, once a month." She sighed, looking at the cancer stick. "The rest of the time I just use nicotine patches. I just… mmm." She looked up at the second floor windows. "I don't see how they can move on from this so quickly."
"I don't think they are. The fact that this is happening… any sane person would just say 'heck with Halloween' and never celebrate it again. At the same time, it's a fun holiday. None of the stress of Thanksgiving or Christmas, none of the fraudulent feelings of Valentine's Day, none of the token appreciation and excuse for no work that Columbus and Presidents' Day has, and none of the dangerously overpatriotic attitudes of July 4th."
"It's just…" He rolled his shoulders. "Something that people like, and something that's easy for most of them to do. It doesn't take much to make a costume and hand out candy. Pretending to be someone else is one of the easiest ways to forget your troubles. Heck, in the Foundation?" Ray tried to blow a smoke ring, and failed. "This might be the only time we really get to be ourselves."
"Talking of," Pryce asked, "does Sinclair really have a fox costume on?"
"Yeah, I got pictures. It's actually kinda cute." February took out his phone. The clock on it read twelve midnight.

November 1st
In the woods, the Goatman walked back to his hovel. The Eight Rings Nightclub had just finished its annual playing of the Danse Macabre, and the night was still, except for the rustling of leaves. Children had long since gone to bed and put their costumes away, some for a year, some for the last time. Now, the autumn wind had turned cooler, and he could practically feel all of the households in Sloth's Pit thinking of their own ways of making Thanksgiving dinner as stressful as possible.
On his way back, he stopped at the edge of the great Pit, where Jackson Sloth's manor had once stood. His home, at one point, long ago. Jasper Phineas Sloth felt like a name that scarcely belonged to him anymore, but it was still his. And he still stopped to visit the doorstep every now and again.
As he turned to leave, he frowned, coming upon a large, orange pumpkin that had been deposited by the pit. He shook his head, producing his axe from somewhere where it wasn't a second ago, and brought it down on the pumpkin. Impulsive? Yes. Cathartic? Definitely.
Only the pumpkin's skin refused to give under his blade. He frowned, and chopped at it twice more, but it still refused to give. Perplexed, he nudged it with his hoof, and rolled it into the pit, before starting to walk away.
He heard the pumpkin impact on the bottom with a loud splat. His heart stopped; the pit, while not bottomless, went down far enough that climbing out took two days without rest. There were outcroppings here and there, but most of them were too deep down to hear anything impact onto them.
The Goatman looked down into the pit, and saw a pair of beady eyes staring back at him. Something had caught the pumpkin with its head. The eyes met the Goatman's, and a wide, white grin broke out on its face, too wide for anything human— or even humanoid— to have a face to accommodate it.
The Goatman fled, dropping his axe, trying his best not to scream, and hoping against hope that whatever had appeared down there would not surface anytime soon.

« Chapter 11 | Black Autumn Hub


Arnold closed the door. That was number four. Four grown adults so far, without costumes, showing up at his door and asking for candy for their toothless babies. Unreal. This was in addition to the 6-7 middle schoolers that had showed up without costumes, without "trick r' treats", and without "thank yous". Arnold knew it didn't pay to chastise these losers; better to just give them the stupid candy and get them out of his face. Still, it killed him a little bit each time. He loved Halloween, and clearly these people only loved free candy. Whatever. The good kids who actually dressed up, greeted him, and used their manners, generally made it all worth it, but this year they were more sparse than usual. Heck, Arnold would have settled for more of the shy little ones who just wouldn't say anything at all, regardless of their parents' well meaning encouragement.
Ding Dong.
Arnold grabbed the candy bowl, and opened the door. Costumes. Actual, real costumes, and they looked like effort had been put into them! What the hell were they supposed to be though?
"Trickle-teetle-treat!" came three male voices in unison.
"Oh man, I love the costumes! Looks like you boys really put some work into those!" Arnold exclaimed. He would be generous with this trio.
"Silly moldy oldy! We are not twigs and beans! We are lady-types!" said the one on the left. It looked like some sort of large headed monster with horns, with nothing more than a potato sack running from its neck to its knees. The other two were pretty similar. Maybe they weren't as high effort as he originally thought. Arnold felt his lifted spirits sag a bit.
"Well, whatever you say. Just nice to see some real costumes tonight. You kids can take three pieces each." Arnold held out the bowl of candy towards them.
All three of the visitors bowed their heads towards the bowl, as if to inspect the candy closer, or maybe even smell it. Then they raised their heads up again. Arnold realized they didn't have arm holes in their costumes, which would make collecting candy fairly difficult.
"Thank-a-dee-yankee Sir-Oldy, but we do not have arms for grabbing the scrum-diddlies!" the middle one explained.
"No-siree-bob-for-apples! No armsy-daisies! We usually eat the child-produce scribbles, but since it is clear as a beer that you do not have any, we will glad-happily take the tricksy!" the right one added.
"Look, kids, just take some candy or move along. It's great that you're all in character, but I've never seen whatever Chinese cartoon these things are from, so I don't get it." Welp, this is it. This is the last time I hand out candy on Halloween.
The middle one spoke again, "But Sir Oldalots! The platter-tude of the Ween is tricks OR treats! Do you achy-break the law?"
"Yes, we request a jig or the law is broken!" the left one chimed in.
"A merry jig," said the right one.
Arnold's face grew dark. "Are you asking me to dance for you?"
"YESSADEEDLE-DEE!" came the trio's reply.
"Get the fuck out of my yard." The door slammed.

A gaggle of elementary-aged children expressed audible disappointment as they watched the porch light of their next target turn off. They paid little attention to the odd trio that had just come from the house, even as the three of them began to skip in unison down the sidewalk.
"What is fuck?" asked the left one.
"And why do the older-boulders always want us to get it out of their yarbles?" asked the right one.
"You two are such young-youngs. I will show you the fuck," said the middle one.
The three turned left onto Jefferson street, where very few porch lights could be seen. For whatever reason, Jefferson had not been a very Halloween-friendly street for the past few years. As they came towards Nevada avenue, a dark silhouette walked slowly out of the bushes and stood in their way. This one was different; it had arms, but its entire body was brown and velvety, with a round head like a canvas sack. A visible mouth, opened and lined with teeth could be seen, but the head had no other features. It stood silently, its mouth unmoving and seemingly incapable of expression.
"You should have come with us, lazy-daisy! We went for jigs and merriment and received much scorn!" the left one informed the newcomer.
"If you had come with, perhaps the goldy oldies would have danced for us!" the right one added.
"Yes, hello Mister Manly, I have found these two are iggy-riggy of fuck. I ate a scribble yesterday and am ready for fampling!" The middle one stepped towards the newcomer.
Something moved in the newcomer's mouth. A red tendril began to creep out between two teeth, then quickly shot out towards the middle one, and disappeared into its mouth.
"Oh is that fuck? I HAVE BEEN DOING IT SO BADDY-WRONG!" cried the left one.
"Me twosies. Whoopsy," said the right one. It coughed loudly, and regurgitated something very large onto the concrete, as the middle one and the newcomer fampled quietly.
"Oh higgeldy piggeldy poppily smock! You've birthed a big whoopsy onto the sidewalk!" sang the left one.
The thing on the sidewalk writhed and squealed. Multiple limbs pushed against the ground as it attempted to stand.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
The newly formed quintet all turned towards the other side of the street, and the fampling ceased. A group of three middle schoolers stood across from them, sans costumes. Their mouths hung open in shock.
"SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
"Oh no, the children have upset my whoopsy! They will be having the afraids now!" the right one gleefully yelled. The mess of teeth and tongues and limbs began to rush across the street towards the three witnesses, who only hesitated a moment before they began running for their lives and screaming.
"Happy Halloween guy-byes!" the left one yelled after them.
"Now I have empty nest! Am I an oldy now?" asked the right one.


October 30th
At 4:00 in the morning, Charlie Brotzman woke up at his home away from home.
He was in a large apartment building in Duluth, within driving distance of Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin, his home. All of his friends were in Superior, he had to go to school in a grey, dull building, and he didn't even get to trick-or-treat at anywhere that gave out the big candy bars, because all the adults who gave them out were in Superior. This was the worst Halloween ever.
"It doesn't have to be."
Charlie sat bolt upright and looked around the room, his skin clammy. Someone had just whispered to him, in a soft, sweet voice, which felt like caramel on his ears.
"Halloween's a fun holiday, Charlie. and you're not having fun, are you?"
"Who are you?" He pulled his stuffed kangaroo close to him.
"I'm Martha! I've come to give candy to the good boys and girls of your town. You've had such a rough time…"
A caramel candy appeared over Charlie's bed, and landed in his lap. The boy picked it up and unwrapped it, chewing on the sweet, cooked sugar.
"Good, isn't it?"
"Y-yeah." He smiled. "I-I like it."
"You can have more! As much as you want. And there's apple and pumpkin pies, and cider, and Hershey's Kisses…"
The door to the boy's bedroom slowly swung open.
"You want that, don't you, Charlie?"
"Y-yes."
"Follow my voice." The door creaked further open.
Outside of this dream, Charlie Brotzman and eighteen others departed from their buildings in Duluth and Superior, and walked all the way to Sloth's Pit, Wiconsin in their sleep, guided by the honeyed words of a woman whose voice was stained with the sweet scent of rot.

At 9:00 in the morning, half a dozen men and women convened in Site-87's briefing room. Several hours earlier, over a dozen perimeter alarms had been tripped, and surveillance had picked up nineteen children bound for the fairgrounds where SCP-097 was located.
"Why the hell weren't they stopped?" Dr. Partridge snapped at the commander of Sigma-10, Harold March. "You said you had an airtight defense around the zone after the Scooby Gang rammed through!"
"Partridge, you've read 097's file. You know that… that kids can show up on cameras and not be seen." He held his head in his hands. "But… we've confirmed all the kids are from Sloth's Pit. They vanished from the safehouses in Duluth and Superior last night."
"Nineteen of them. Same number that were sacrificed to her in the sixties." Katherine Sinclair rubbed her face. "She's trying to… gain power. The Williamses said that she was trapped here, and after forty-eight years, I can only imagine how badly she wants out."
"So, instead of eating kids to feed her cult, she's eating kids to feed herself. Fan-fucking-tastic!" Malcolm Guillard put his head in his hands. "I should have seen the connections. I'm a goddamn forensic analyst!"
"Mal, you're not an investigator." Tristan Bailey patted him on the back. "I think the only reason Partridge figured it out as quickly as he did is because it's a botanical anomaly. But at the same time…" he sighed. "We need to get in there."
"We can't." Claire Hennessy, acting director of Site-87, shook her head. "We'd be violating about nine dozen pieces of Foundation protocol—"
"Fuck the protocol!" Partridge snapped. "Nineteen children are— are going to be eaten by a… thing that's going to turn them into pumpkins like some fucked-up version of Cinderella! I've got over five-thousand liters of the most potent herbicide developed by the GOC in storage. If I have to, I'm going to load it into a tanker truck and ram it into the pumpkin myself!"
"Let me finish!" Hennessy snapped back. "We'd be violating protocol, but we have loopholes."
"Like what?" Sinclair frowned.
"Well, if a member of Foundation personnel — let's say, for the sake of example, Claude Mattings — were to be out on a drive near the north end of town, bound for Duluth to grab some candy for his ailing fiance, and just happened to see anomalous activity…"
"He'd have to report it in." Partridge smirked. "And when he does…"
"I can deploy as many members of any task force as I feel is necessary to contain this anomaly. Completely hypothetical, of course." She pulled her phone from her pocket. "He should be on his way back soon…"
Claire Hennessy's phone rang. "Look who's calling. Ladies and gents, let's do this."

At 1:00 in the afternoon, Seren Pryce loaded her rifle. She was a sniper, so her usefulness here was questionable, at best, but she, and most of Sigma-10, had come along for the ride.
"Gotta give it to Hennessy," Ruby commented from the cab of the transport. "Woman knows how to find loopholes."
"Probably half the reason she and Bailey haven't been reprimanded for being in an undeclared relationship." February shook his head.
"Wait— what?" Nick Ewell said as he finished loading his grenade launcher. "Bailey and Hennessy— seriously?"
"You didn't know?" Blake frowned. "Literally the entire site knows."
"Keep in mind I try to avoid Multi-U as much a possible," Ewell frowned. "Three words: July 4th, 2011."
"Oh god, right. The Ultra-Patriotic Universe." Pryce shuddered. "I heard about that. Was it really that bad?"
"They still find chains of firecrackers in the vents," Blake affirmed.
Pryce nodded as she loaded her pistol with beryllium-lead slugs. "Ruby, you see the zone yet?"
"Not yet. Convoy ahead of us probably has, though." She got on the radio. "S10-L, this is 10-25, visual confirmation of the Zone?"
«Affirmative.» 10-L responded. «It looks… uh. 10-25, you got the time?»
Ruby looked at her watch. "Five past one."
«Then why the fuck can I see stars?»
Ruby looked up at the sky as they passed the outer perimeter of 097's containment zone, and gasped. Above her, the stars in the autumn sky shone. She could see Orion's belt as clear as she could see her own face. "Holy shit."
"Fuck me." Blake cocked his shotgun. "That's… really not good."
«10-25, we're preparing to breach. Respirator on, and make sure your heavy has herbicide grenades loaded.»
"Copy that." Ruby pulled alongside the rest of the convoy and kept her headlights trained on the wall.
"It's now or never," February checked his rifle. "We destroy that thing, or die trying."

"First volley, fire!"
Half a dozen grenadiers raised their launchers high. Balls of plastic filled with a deadly herbicide sailed through the air, over the walls of what had formerly been Zone-097. The exterior of the site had been covered by vines and gourds. Several of them were arranged in the shape of human bodies, no doubt growing over what had once been Foundation agents. Overhead, a red alarm light flashed, barely visible through the plant matter growing over it. A weak klaxon sounded from vine-choked horns.
As the grenades exploded, they could see clouds of green smoke over the walls, and plants withered. Some of them could swear they heard screaming.
"Breaching team!" Commander Harold March yelled. "Tear down this wall!"
Six men and women primed defective portable containment spheres— they had managed to get working ones from another universe, but the old models served a different purpose. They opened, and the vacuum created by them tore down the walls around the site, the sheer vacuum force seemingly deleting matter from existence.
"Second volley, fire!"
Six more herbicide grenades sailed through the air, and they saw the swaths of plant life before them wither and die through the hole in the wall. Vibrant orange pumpkins turned into black husks, and disgorged the skeletons of children as they shriveled and died.
Katherine Sinclair and Montgomery Reynolds moved in through the wreckage, along with members of the task force. Sinclair hoped to god she wouldn't throw up in her mask. "Is that…" she asked.
Reynolds knelt to look at the corpse, and shook his head. "Shows signs of polio. Not one of ours."
"Good." Sinclair looked up at the fairgrounds, taking in the desolation.
The most prominent feature, of course, was the rotting Ferris wheel, held up by vines and a prayer. One of the baskets had fallen off and crushed several others on the way down, and half of the wheel was carriageless. It once had a large, grinning Jack-O-Lantern face at the center of the wheel, but all that was visible now was the faded orange paint, behind a crucified scarecrow.
Pryce looked through her scope, and saw that the scarecrow was wearing a Foundation uniform— not a lab coat or combat armor. A dark, blue jacket, reserved for those who worked in RAISA and other parts of the Foundation's archival administration. "That's Pickman," she sighed. "Guess we know what happened to him."
Thunder rumbled overhead, and clouds starting blotting out the stars. As the task force made their way through the fairgrounds, they were met with various grisly sights; an agent whose torso had been replaced by a bundle of cornstalks. A series of little dolls, made from bones and skin, hung from strings which once held lightbulbs. A human head with a candle in each eye and the mouth, mounted over a Pepsi stand.
What troubled the task force the most, by and large, were the stuffed animals. Hundreds of them, on the ground, most of them rotting away, covered in dirt and leaves and bugs. These had once had names, been cherished by children at night as shields to keep the monsters away, and held as protection until the monsters had finally gotten them.
A pumpkin loomed in the distance, growing ever closer.

The sky over Sloth's Pit was pitch black at three in the afternoon. The giant pumpkin at the center of the former Douglas County Fair Grounds had grown a beaming Jack-o-lantern face, and from within, hellish orange light glowed.
Sitting atop the pumpkin was a woman in black, who had been set free by the unlucky gunman. Her eyes were the color of the last light of summer. She smelled of stagnant water and cold wind, and in her arms, she cradled a child, who whimpered for his mother.
"I'm your mother," Mavra insisted, her cold, wooden hands raking through her hair. "And mother is hungry. Are you hungry?"
"You're not mommy," Charlie insisted. He looked over the rest of the fairgrounds, which were littered with dead leaves and the forms of sleeping children. He didn't know what else they could possibly be doing, other than sleeping. They were lying still, some draped over pumpkins, others in odder positions. The boy let out a soft sob. "I want mommy."
"I am mommy," the woman tugged at his hair, pulling a clump out of his scalp. She frowned as Charlie slipped from her grasp. The child screamed as he fell off the pumpkin, and with a sickening crack, slumped at the base of the gourd. He sobbed, and then laid still.
The woman felt her strength grow. She could feel the barrier around the town starting to bend for her, the bars of the prison being eaten away by acid, the bubble giving way to the ever-sharpening needle she wielded.
Eighteen remained to be consumed. She started to come down from the pumpkin—
"Infernus sepulchrum dolores!"
A voice cut through the park, and the Black Autumn found the right side of her face replaced by a gout of fire. She flinched in pain as it cut through her being and coiled around her. She wanted to scream, but it would give her attackers satisfaction.
Three dozen people surrounded the pumpkin, popping from the shadows, aiming various weapons at her. At the forefront was a woman with her hands glowing with flames the same color as her hair, flanked by a man with a glowing sword that could cut through spells, and a pair of twins— ones that her followers had entrusted the traitorous fool Jeffery Hubble to dispose of so many years ago. They all had the same insignia on their armor, two circles with three arrows pointing in. The same cursed sigil of sealing.
"Foundation," the Black Autumn hissed.
Several of the agents began inspecting around the children, and muttering to themselves. The red-headed mage simply stood over the spirit, scowling, her brow furrowed in concentration as she kept it bound in flames.
"What the hell?" one of them frowned— a woman, with blonde hair.
"They're alive." The male one of a set of twins stood back. "They're alive."
"That's a good thing, isn't it?" Another asked from the black mass of soldiers.
"It's a weird thing." The mage glowered at Mavra Isimeria.
Mavra laughed, and frost appeared on the guns pointed at her. "I've consumed hundreds of children when I slept, but I got nothing from it. I feed on their fear, not their death! Gideon ate of their flesh to regain his youth, but I have no need for that."
With a flick of its wrist, the Black Autumn dismissed the flames, and the mage collapsed from the recoil of the spell breaking. She was caught by the arms of a portly man. "I suppose that when Hubble bound me here, I was… well, acting off of reflex more than anything. Muscle memory. Taking children, mutilating them for a cult which has long since gone." She laughed. "Death is fleeting. The fear of death is delicious. And you have all gorged me these past thirteen days!
"Forty-eight years." Mavra Isimeria clenched its blackened hand into a fist. "I have been stuck in this town for forty-eight years. Tonight, it ends…"
Harold March gritted his teeth as the task force finished moving the last of the children out of the line of fire. "Thank you for the monologue. Agents? Fire at will."

« Chapter 10 | Black Autumn Hub | Finale »


The world was swimming. Colors- vibrant, piercing colors were everywhere.
“D-3975.”
There was no up, no down. No left or right.
“D-3975.”
Spinning, swirling, tumbling, floati-
“D-3975!”
Dug's eyes flew open. He was on his back, face up, in a dark room. He sniffed the air as his eyes adjusted. It smelled like…
Paint?
Where was he? He remembered…goggles, then nothing.
“D-3975! Can you hear me? Where is the group?”
Dug bolted upright. The group. His friends. Jared, Cray, Nathan, Felix. All holding on to one another, slowly removing the goggles to see the painting. The impeding calm, the slow drain of energy as he lost his color- and then
everythingwaswrongnothingwaswhereitshouldbeandtheworldwasturningand
“I…don't know, Doc.” Dug stood. “They're gone.” He glanced over his left shoulder. A leather recliner was in the corner, looking a bit worn.
“What do you see in there, D-3975?”
“Not much, Doc,” Dug responded. “There's a leather chair and…a cabinet? And a rug.”
“Nothing else?”
No
“There's a little girl.”
What?
“She says her name is Tanya.”
Dug wondered why he had said that. He hadn't meant to. Eventually, the doctor spoke:
“Tanny..? No, it can't be- we've never seen more than one person in the painting before. We do not see Tan- this girl. We don't see your group.”
“I don't either.”
“Search for them.”
Dug approached the recliner and laid a hand on it. It felt smooth and slick, exactly as leather should. He moved on.
He moved to the only windows in the entire room. Big, wide, glorious windows, open to the outside world, except
None of the world was the way it should be and nothing made any sense and nothing was where it belonged and the world was turning and
Dug looked back at his hands and saw brown, dark brown- leather brown- smeared on them, and he looked at the recliner and he saw the color of his skin on the chair and-
I've found them, Doc
“They're not here, Doc. But the girl still is.”
There is no girl
“You can't find your group?”
They're outside
“The girl wants me to tell you something.”
“Can you or can you not find your group, D-3975?”
Dug looked out the window again, struggling against his own mind to form the words. To tell the Doctor how his friend Lenny's face was smeared into the bark on the beautiful tree, or how the luscious branches were Terry's arms, knurled and twisted, or how the endlessly gorgeous sky was brilliantly filled with the pained expressions of his group, ingeniously contorted and morphed to fill the canvas.
“She says that she misses you, Daddy.”
“What?”
Who said that? Was that me?
“She says she misses her Daddy, and she wants her Daddy to come in here.”
Whatishappening
“…Tanny…?”
“It's been 2 years, Daddy, why haven't you come home?”
“Oh, Tanny, I'm so sorry, Daddy misses you, my little girl…”
Dug felt his mouth moving, his lips forming words, but he wasn't doing it. He willed his body to stop, to listen to his command, and, oh God, whose voice was coming out of his mouth?
“I miss breakfast on Sunday, Daddy, I miss when you cooked for us! For Mommy and me!”
Dug heard the doctor begin to cry.
”Tanya, my sweet Tanya, I'm so sorry…I did everything I could…but I didn't- didn't even see the car, baby, it came out of nowhere- you and your mother, oh God…“
Dug gritted his teeth and willed his body to fight back, but-
“I'm still alive, Daddy, in here! Come in here with me, we can make Sunday breakfast again! Mommy and me and you!”
Why am I saying this what is happening make it stop
THUD
“Sir, your goggles!”
“Hold on Tanny!”
no
“Daddy?”
NO
“Tanny, I'm coming!”
NO

+ Show Addendum 3864/3

- Close Addendum

Test Log 1 - 10/29/2017

Procedure: A group of 5 D-Class personnel1 were given direct visual exposure of SCP-3864 at the same time.
Outcome: D-3975 was the only subject to appear as SCP-3864-1. Communication with SCP-3864-1 was continuous for approximately 6 minutes before it was able to convince Dr. [REDACTED] to remove his goggles. Dr. [REDACTED] remains the current SCP-3864-1 instance at this time.
Conclusion: SCP-3864 is able to loosely control or influence SCP-3864-1 to “lure” prey. Further testing pending O5 approval.

Footnotes
1. D-3971 through D-3975


October 18th
The littlest things make the greatest impact upon this world.
Two months ago, a dog ran through tall grass somewhere in Ohio, carrying spores on its fur. A child cuddles it.
One month and twenty days ago, a father reads to his child in bed. The child cuddles his favorite toy, a stuffed tiger named Oscar. The spores from the dog migrate to Oscar.
One month and nineteen days ago, Oscar is due to be washed, but goes missing. His father, off to work somewhere far away, has accidentally put it in his briefcase.
One month and seventeen days ago, Oscar is bound for home by mail. The boy's father now has innumerable spores on his suit, and within his briefcase.
One month and fourteen days ago, the man and his briefcase enter a fairground filled with pumpkins. Decontamination procedures fail, as the man opens a file and presents it to a woman, named Dr. Carol Brown.
One month and ten days ago, Dr. Carol Brown does a preliminary survey of an organism they refer to as SCP-097-1. It is healthy, as it has always been. It has survived forty-eight of the harshest winters in North America, from the Blizzard of '78 to the Polar Vortex. Surely the spores on her clothes won't transmit.
One month and seven days ago, signs of fungal infection appear on several vines throughout the zone of containment. They are burned, chopped, salted. Several of them bleed. Some of the blood has bones mixed into it.
One month ago, I felt my prison dying. I had forgotten I was even imprisoned, but then I remember the traitorous Karcist, the sadistic author, the cowardly mayor, and the prideful mage. The first planted my seed here, and had forgotten me over the many years. The second was buried in a pine box. The mayor, the poor mayor, had been turned into pumpkin food as a last, black act by the Karcist. And the mage…
Richard Gideon. Rot in Hell. You bound me to a place that I can never escape.
Or can I?
Three weeks ago, panicked voices. They see my shell starting to rot. Arguments are had, between people, between telephones. They do not know what my prison holds, but they know that if it dies, then with it goes their status quo.
Humans always disappoint. Children have the most potential, and when they grow, they squander it. They see my cell dying, and all they care for is their normalcy.
Two weeks ago, and I've learned to control the fungus. It is an agent of Rot and Decay, and I am the Black Autumn. I am the thing that eats the year's failures, the fungal signal, the final rot, the chill before frost. I dispel it enough that it seems that my prison is recovering, and the crisis has passed.
But the bars have bent enough that I am able to squeeze through them.
One week ago, I realize that I am only half-whole. The other half of myself is locked in an Inn, and I remember everything done in that hotel, everyone who has visited. I can use this information. I just need to work out how to make a phone call.
Six days ago, all activity that surrounds me ceases. Relief sets in, and they think it a quiet night.
Four days ago, they realize it is too quiet. Paranoia is seeded; the Founders jump at shadows. A man faints at the sound of a crow.
Three days ago, I form three cracks in my prison. I am not without a flair for the dramatic.
Two days ago, I make the cracks grow larger.
Yesterday, I let myself out. They did not know I was present, until they started rotting
One
By
One
By
One
I save those who are the most frightened for last. It is not death that feeds me, not truly. It is the anxiety surrounding death, the thought of not knowing which breath will be your last, whether you should scream or proclaim love or pray.
I keep puppets. To their ever-watchful eyes, all seems normal. Men and women walk around, guarding gourds and corn and rotten apples and abandoned toys, left by children whom I have unconsciously claimed.
For almost half a century, I have eaten their fears, their bodies, their hearts. But I do not remember it. I am hungry, and angered. I want out.
The bubble that surrounds this town is strong, but any bubble can break if one has a hard enough hammer, a sharp enough needle. I need power. I need to feed.
Today, I make a phone call.

« Chapter 9 | Black Autumn Hub | Chapter 11 »


Things were so wrong here.
His clothes felt starchy, and well-worn. Not dirty – Kit could smell the spice of orchid and patchouli oil wafting from the knitted jumper that came up short on his arms, the sleeves concluding just above the raised scars present on each wrist.
But it had been previously worn; second-hand. Wearing at the elbows and fraying at the hem. Kit swallowed as he peered down at himself. This wasn't right. This wasn't him. He could feel the spirit of the man who had lived in these clothes; died in these clothes. He was a gardener – nettles prickled at each elbow and it chaffed in his armpits. One night, he just fell asleep in his comfy chair and never woke up. In these clothes. Not even in pyjamas.
Kit's whole spirit ached from the high emotions as the old bloke was found by his son. Felt the emotions dry out like raindrops on his skin as the clothes were dumped in a box for charity. As they travelled in a van to the hospital, as they span in machines, the memories dried like the laundry water as the dryer ran through the sweater's memory. And now they were on his back, the emotions lingering like cigarette smoke. You could never truly make second hand clothes clean.
Dismayed, Kit checked each pocket of the jogging pants he wore that dangled around his shins – too short. The pants weren't haemorrhaging emotions, but Kit was the second he realised his knife was no-where to be found. He was, in short, defenceless.
And the final indignity?
They had stuck a needle full of anti-psychotic in his ass and now it had a bruise the size of his palm gracing it.
He folded his arms across his chest, protectively, scowling at the room he was in. It was all very controlled – bright, white flat sheets on the bed, arranged with precise hospital corners; a bedside table that was subtly bolted onto the floor; curtains with strong, metal hooks; a window that opened enough to maybe sneak a hand out and nothing more.
The chirpy nurse - who had also had the joy of seeing his bare backside, alongside a doctor and two huge orderlies – had told him that he had '"arrived at a perfect time,"' because it was long before lights out, and the patients were free to roam. A brusque tour had shown him the TV room, a games room, a carefully designed smoking area, an equally carefully designed outside area with a pond, and a room that she said was '"space to calm down"'.
Only the TV room had been occupied, with a few of people of different ages staring blankly at the TV as it screened a gameshow. Sometimes, one individual clapped in reaction to the middle-aged couple getting the question right, but otherwise it was silent. Kit wondered if they all had identical bruises on their backside, making them like zombies, silent and malleable. He decided that, as long as he was able to fight against the drug, he wouldn't become like that.
The tour ended at the nurse's station, with the woman showing him the book he had to sign in and out of if he decided to go outside, instructed him of the time to come and queue for his medication, and told him to come here if he needed anything. Well, not anything, she gabbed, but some things.
As light-hearted as the rest of the tour had been, her tone became very serious when she spoke of '"med time"' - '"You have to come here. If you don't come here and queue up within five minutes, we'll have to send our orderlies come to find you. It would be a shame to have to force you to take your anti-psychotic again."'
Kit felt like he had been incredibly patient, and equally receptive whenever the nurse had expected him to answer some inconsequential question. So when he rolled his eyes and got a stern look, he decided he couldn't care less and asked if he was finally free – well, as free as an inpatient at a mental health facility was. The nurse tutted and nodded, calling one last warning after him about the all-important drug enforcement time.
First, he had gone back to his room to see if any of his belongings were there. He checked the drawers, the wardrobe, and even under the bed, but found nothing. No knife – which wasn't a huge surprise – but also, no cigarettes. He was sure there was some trading situation in place where a Valium would get him a cigarette or two, and he had become an expert in tonguing his meds some time ago. But for now, he had nothing to call his own, and nothing to occupy his still racing mind.
He wandered out into the hallway, pausing by the TV room. Sitting down didn't feel very inviting right now – how did they expect you to relax after a prick up the arse, if you couldn't even sit?
So, he wandered the corridors. Patients came in, and out – some had thick bandages around their wrists, some walked with their heads bowed, arms crossed protectively, never making eye contact. Some still were wilder, louder, drawing attention to themselves from other patients and nurses alike.
He paused in one corridor, finding himself suddenly lost in the area, which was a bit of a rat run; a rabbits' warren – whatever the saying was. Here, there was just one patient – an elderly lady sitting in a wheelchair, looking for the life of her as if her carers had literally dumped her here, hoping for the best. Kit couldn't say such things didn't happen. What drew his attention to her, however, was what she was doing.
The old woman was singing a song -
"The faces we imagine
They're twisted inside
Their mouths aren't on straight
We can see their skulls
And their black hair will strangle us
We all see them here."
Okay, so it wasn't a particularly good song, but it was a curious one. We all see them here? See what; how did she know? Kit shrugged it off and shuffled past her, contenting himself when he found a bookshelf full of donated books, and pulling 'Lord of the Flies' off the shelf. He had read it in school and imagined himself on the island – and imagined himself dead like Simon, or Piggy. Starting it again sent a certain chill of nostalgia and fear up his spine, as he dreaded the part with Piggy the most. Luckily, before he got too far, a bell rang that he recognised as the sound for lunch, and he stowed the books under some cookery ones in the hopes no-one else would find it and read it before he got back.
Lunch was an entertaining affair if purely for the fact only a handful of staff had to control a great number of patients with different needs. Those with eating disorders had their own kitchen and eating area (Kit had only been shown this to be warned never to go in it) but there were still patients who took offence to food, who needed pills with their meals, who couldn't sit with the opposite gender, and still those patients who just wanted to draw attention for no reason Kit could find.
When it came to his turn, he slowly chose something he knew that he could eat – soup and a roll. He managed to find a bench on his own and sat huddled over his food, suddenly understanding why many patients didn't want to make eye contact and invite more craziness into their lives. The food was fine, but with it getting busier and busier, he decided to leave with his bread roll – granted by a bored-looking orderly just waiting for a fight to bust out – and headed outside, still lacking cigarettes to enjoy in the smoking area.
Standing at the edge of the chicken-wire covered pond at the centre of the hospital, Kit took a moment to watch the giant koi swim in their tiny world.
Just looking at the fish reminded him of working at the pet store, doing the grunt work. He used to scoop up the dead fish with a net. They lay so bonelessly, cold and damp.
"I hope," Kit thought, breaking parts off his bread roll and tossing them into the water, "that my nephew never has to see them do that."
Something about dead fish ruined the magic of childhood.
He finished feeding the fish, and brushed the crumbs off his hands. If he had his direction right, one of the doors would lead to the TV room – maybe it would be quieter with people eating lunch and he could watch something mind-numbing. He headed back inside, but was surprised to find that the hospital was plunged into darkness.
Kit frowned, trying the switch -
Click
The lights flickered and hummed for a moment, then strobbed on, off, on, off, on…. off.
When that happened, Kit's lucid mind – aided by a maximum strength anti-psychotic – concluded a fuse must have blown, and that the staff, if they could be trusted to, would fix it.
He couldn't see anyone, but figured with it being lunchtime, staff might have had their hands full in the canteen. As instructed earlier, he wandered through the dark towards the nurses' station.
That was when he began to see it. Him? Her? The gender was certainly indistinct and unimaginable. Later, he would figure that pronouns didn't matter. As he walked past the 'calm down' room with its large windows, he caught sight of it for the first time.
A skull; long, black hair.
Just like the old woman had been singing about earlier.
Seeing this, he thought maybe it was his imagination; a brain glitch. After all, his mobile phone – some years' out of date model he purchased in a pawn shop – had been sending him photos, right before he came here. And this… thing looked a lot similar to what had been revealed in the photos. It was always in the distance, it was always looking on at him, mainly in his flat but also sometimes the coffee shop where he got his morning gingerbread latte, the park where he smoked joints by the river so his flat didn't stink of it.
It was unnerving, when his phone blipped at him for the first time. Kit wasn't known to get text messages. Maybe if his brother was feeling particularly guilty, or angry, he would take his time to key a message in and chide Kit. But that was a rarity in itself. So, when he saw that the text message contained well, no text, but instead a photo, he was more than a little bemused.
'Never settle for those awkward feelings of being alone ever again.'
If he had friends, he probably would have chalked it up to a bizarre joke. '"Ha ha ha guys, good costume."' All that jazz. But friends weren't exactly something Kit had in abundance. He turned the phone this way and that, trying to figure out what was going on, before he recognised the location of the local A&E Department, with the curious creature placed near the reception desk, where he had been standing only a month ago, bleeding copiously from his arm.
Kit spent a while after that just sitting in the semi-dark of his bedroom, his thoughts spiralling. He was used to insane shit. But he was mainly used to dealing with that insane shit in person. Mobile Madness was a new thing, in his vast experience of butterfly girls and men with flashlights for eyes.
The text messages kept coming. Even for Kit, it was an unnerving experience. But, after a while, he came to look forward to these photos. It was like getting photos of a friend, enjoying themselves in places familiar to him – it was like someone sharing their life with him.
'…you will soon forget all about those painful emotions of disappointment.'
He became practically addicted to the experience, quick to grasp his phone as soon as it made a noise, finding them frequent but not overwhelming. Occasionally, he visited the places seen in the photos, mere minutes after he received a text, shoes not a matching pair and with his fly undone in his haste to leave the flat and go to these public places. But he had never seen his photo friend in person, not until now.
Although, to be fair, the thing wasn't here right now. It was a reflection. Kit looked behind himself, into the darkness of the corridor, and saw no-one; nothing. He moved forward towards the window, and gently placed a hand upon it. His friend lifted a hand too, as if it stood on the other side of the glass. The skull tilted sideways, as bemused about the lack of contact as Kit was. He expected to feel a cold hand, feel a pulse in the wrist, but instead, it was just the smooth glass.
Kit took a breath. This was all in his brain. It had to be. His brain faulting was part of the reason why he had ended up in here, and the anti-psychotic was helping putting things in perspective. The darkness may be real but the being wasn't real. He had to accept that the text messages were never real, either, and they were just preying on a life that was far too insular.
'The anxiety of social situations can be nerve-racking…'
He licked his lips and spun on his heel. No. Keep walking.
His footsteps echoed in the building as though it was abandoned, although everything looked as it had on his tour. Apart from lack of people, of course, which was increasingly confusing him, and, as he started walking again, it became apparent the lights were out everywhere – in all of the building as far as he could tell.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the thing, trailing behind him like a ghost. His breath quickened as did his steps. At home, his phone rang with a message – another photo sent, this time of Kit in the half-light of the hospital, with his ghost coming closer and closer. Kit closed his eyes so he couldn't see the being, but then he couldn't see anything at all, and he didn't know the layout of the hospital very well.
He managed a few steps, his hands curling into fists, before he walked into a shut door. Grumbling and rubbing his forehead, he opened his eyes and tried to ignore the vision hovering far too out of reach to be conclusive in its design. He pushed at the door and, to his surprise, found it locked. This was supposed to be how to get to the nurses' station, more or less in the middle of the hospital, but there was no way in from here. In his heart, he knew this door wasn't supposed to be locked, and through the glass panels he saw the lights off there, too, and no people there.
He didn't want to turn around. Desperately, he thumped at the door. If there was a mistake, the noise would send the nurses running – hopefully. But nothing happened. Kit caught his breathing increasing and tried to back himself out of a panic attack. Yes, he may have once thought the creature behind him as a friend, but that was before he knew, before he realised he was totally and utterly nuts, and before he was locked in a dark corridor with this figure, and no way of knowing what it wanted.
Kit slowly turned on his heel. He closed his eyes whilst doing it, not wanting to come face to face with the oddity once more. But, when he opened them, the figure was nowhere to be found. Kit blinked, confused. It had been right behind him. Hallucination, friend, creature, whichever – he had been certain of its presence behind him.
He took a few faltering steps. The curiosity in him made him want to check the nearby games room and smoking area, because it was plausible – if not unlikely – that the figure had ducked in there. But what did he hope to gain by searching? The touch they nearly exchanged, hand to hand, could have been a symbol of friendship, or the creature trying to gain some sort of trust to do… something nefarious, Kit was sure.
As he started towards the games room, he saw it again, flickering in the corner of his eye. This time, it presented itself behind the glass that lead to the nurses' station. Whatever impossible way it was getting around – and Kit was, despite his delusions, increasingly sure this was as real as the being with many tongues and no hands – meant it could ignore locked doors. He turned around, again, steps away from the door, and stared at the being.
"…What do you…" His voice croaked, despite himself. "…What do you want?"
"I want nothing."
It said nothing, but its hands moved, placed on the glass once more, its head tilted – almost like a curious puppy, or someone trying to claim innocence in a situation. Kit stepped forward again.
"…Why come here? Why… with me?" Because Kit felt certain now that the hospital hadn't caused this figure to arrive – he had dragged it here with him. In some ways, the being was as trapped as him, if its penchant for following Kit meant anything.
"You're lonely."
Again, silence greeted him. This time, the creature seemed almost frustrated in its body language – head down, hands curling into fists, shaking slightly in a mixture of annoyance and almost sadness. It couldn't tell Kit what it wanted. Kit, despite his exploration into a world no human should ever grace, just didn't understand it. No human ever did. It was really desperately lonely – often times, moreso than the people it visited upon.
"Free me."
Kit was staring, blankly. The creature bared its teeth, but it came across more as an eerie smile than it was anything threatening, despite its dog-like skull. Kit took a breath. The answer was here, if he wanted it. To free his friend, and to get to the nurses' station. He turned away, but only to duck into the TV room and retrieve one of the cumbersome pleather chairs. Not everything was bolted down, after all.
"Mind out the way," he found himself saying, as if the creature were real, as if it could understand him. It didn't move back, but Kit used the heaviness of the chair, and two of its legs, to bust through the window panel. Glass shattered around him, cutting through the hospital slippers he was wearing and into his feet, cutting his cheeks and just missing his eyes, which he closed tight.
When he opened them again, the lights were on and there was a buzzing in his ears that was somewhat familiar. The being was gone, and Kit looked around quickly when he realised there was no reflection, and no creature in his peripheral vision. Where had it gone?! The dual purpose of freeing the being and getting help in the dark seemed to have gone wrong - 'insanely wrong', Kit thought dully, as he realised the pain.
Everything, then, seemed to burst into action. Patients were looking out of the rooms nearby, and staff were quickly surrounding him. He heard firm voices telling him to put down the chair, and felt someone hold a towel up to one of the worst cuts on his cheek. Numbly, he dropped the chair. Words escaped him. How did he tell them about this without sounding, well, even more crazy than he probably was? He was spared that task, however, when he felt a sharp jab in his arm, and everything went hazy as the sedative ploughed through his system. For now, Kit's horror story was over.
In Kit's home, Blake was somewhat disgusted by what his brother lacked. The water ran cold, and his oven wasn't connected to anything. He found Kit's phone neglected on the kitchen counter, and picked it up, beginning to flick through it. There was a couple of messages which he deleted without viewing – either not wanting to know or not caring what his brother was up to – but otherwise it was as sparse as Kit's house, without a locking mechanism on it, so Blake shrugged, and pocketed it. It would be good to have a spare phone, after all.

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