He lay in the bath tub, toes gently splashing along the water line in an absent minded way. He liked his tub. Its hot water comforted him, as it had since he was a boy.
He reflected on the evening prior.
"Your coat, sir?" An afternoon at the club, as most days, had been a quiet affair. The exclusivity of Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. did not lend itself to idle talk. A leather chair to sit in and a small beverage to keep him company as he passed away a bit of time with a book from the club's library. Reliable solitude in the company of peers, the unspoken social rule of the club; You do not impose yourself with useless chit chat.
"Care to tell?" An innocuous little thing of a question, to be sure. A thing answered and forgotten with ease.
"How are you feeling today?" An odd question to have been asked by an old regular of the club. He had seen the gentlemen about, at various functions. They each worked within separate industries, so little reason to interact had ever arisen. The question had been out of place. Useless. Marshall, Carter and Dark Ltd. was many things, but a sanctuary for uselessness it was not. The gentlemen accepted a short, curt, reply and that had been that. He returned to his book, glancing up from the page once to ensure the man did not return.
"Anything new?" Another question from another member. Another thing out of place. A grunted response turned the fellow away.
His tub, as with his membership, had been inherited. He used his toe now to turn on the hot water. He thought back to all the times through all the years that he had turned the hot water on with his toe. The steady stream of the tap keeping the tub a comfortable temperature had become a lifelong routine. Forty years prior he had lain in the same spot watching the same water crest to the same over flow drain, listening to the familiar gargle of the water being drunk back down. It was a simple memory of a common practice of his. One he had taken for granted, much like the membership.
"Pleasant weather of late, hmm?" Sitting in the high backed chair, gooseflesh crept along his spine before making its home in the nape of his neck. An odd inquiry might have been an anomaly. The numerous questions he received throughout the evening were a pattern. A message. Talk occurred at the club, most certainly. Business was frequently discussed and associates shared jokes with one another. Privacy was seldom intruded for the sake of friendly banter, however. It was trivial. There were other places than the club for things of that sort.
Places he frequented. On occasion.
"Care to tell? What does goes on in there?" An insignificant little thing of a question, he had thought at the time. An opportunity to brag, perhaps. He was prideful. Had always been prideful. Of his family's history. Of his great wealth. Of his memberships. All things which preceded his entry into the world. All things he had not himself earned but was privileged enough to enjoy. Perhaps if he had earned it himself he would have understood the gravity of its responsibility. A lot of his time was spent reflecting on this, as of late. He now understood that places outside of the club are rarely outside of the reach of the club. The two concepts were mutually exclusive from each other. That he now understood. Very well, indeed.
He thought of the note he had written as way of apology, sitting on his desk in the study. He suspected it would not still be there come morning.
"Your bill, sir?" The hostess, too, came to him with a question not often heard. Membership, of course, carried obligations, monetary and otherwise. There were fundraisers, investments, tips for the staff. Members gave freely of themselves, in return the club gave freely of itself. Charges for drinks, like a common pub? Hardly. Guests paid their way, not full members. She had placed the small leather bound pad on the arm of his chair. It had taken him a moment to register the action, so off guard was he. Opening it revealed a single slip of paper, with a hand written bill for his drink. Everyone had been looking at him. It had become very quiet, but he would not realize this just yet.
"I'm sorry?" he had asked, with great effort through the lump in his throat. The waitress had smiled in response. That is to say her lips turned up, but there was no warmth in the action. The imitation of a smile, more like, by someone who had only been told of one in rough description. It too was a message.
On the rim of the tub lay a small folded white towel, atop which lay his grandfather's razor. It had a beautiful pearl handle, one he had admired many times while watching his father shave and many more times while he himself had shaved with it. A vivid memory of him sitting upon the toilet while watching his father shave came to him. His feet swung freely, not quite long enough to reach the floor. His father wiped the blade off on a towel draped over his shoulder before returning the edge to his throat. With closed eyes he heard the memory of sound, the memory of his father starting. Nothing serious, only a spot of blood. He opened his eyes and looked over to the same blade, now atop a towel. He reached out to it, a trembling finger brushing against the handle. The touch of it made him start and he pulled away, returning his hand to his submerged lap.
"No reason to be sorry, sir," she had said to him, leaning in close. "You'll do the right thing, I'm sure." She had left him then, to attend to her other duties perhaps. Around him, business deals resumed, gentlemen began reading their books and papers again. A woman ordered another beverage. He became what his mother used to described as 'very, very aware' at how quiet it had gotten. It was only until the muted routine of the club resumed that he understood what had happened. What it meant. The hostess' statement was as much an answer as he was likely to get. You do not chit chat. Membership carried obligations. Broken obligations carried penalties. Marshall, Carter and Dark's penalties were rather … severe.
He would do the right thing. If he was lucky, he would only have to do it the once. If he was very, very lucky, the earth would not be salted out of spite. He made himself look over at the towel again and to the razor upon which it lay. He reached over and took hold, unfolding the blade with the side of his thumb.
"Marshall, Carter and Dark, you say? Care to tell? What does goes on in there?" An inconsequential little thing of a question, no longer. For him, it turned out to have become the most important question in his life.
He felt cold, no longer comforted by the hot embrace of his bath. He raised his foot and, much as he had in years prior, turned the trickle of hot water off. He thought of all the times since his childhood that he had lain in this very tub, turning the water on and off with his toe. He thought of all the times that he would not get to do it.
For a solitary, blissful moment, not a thought passed through his mind. His eyes unfocused as he stared intently at nothing and he drifted softly in a sea of peaceful nothingness. The moment passed silently. He was sorry to see it go.
Taking in a breath, he lay back into the tub submerging himself. In his hand, below the surface, was still the razor. Holding it gave him a strange sort of comfort all at once. Things could always be worse.
He did the right thing.


This report is STUPID. All people involved in it are complete and utter weirdos.

On ██-██-████, Dr. A. Clef made the following recommendation on the log re: SCP-239

Let me get this straight: we've got a hyperdangerous reality bender in containment, and instead of killing her, we give her a fucking spellbook and tell her she can only use magic we approve. Yeah, because 9-year-old girls never age, and never experiment with new things. And using her to contain other SCPs? Really? Whose bright idea was that?
Here's my proposal: a sword made out of telekill will be made, because a sword made out of a telepathy-cancelling metal can definitely penetrate a reality bender's invincible skin. Then, I an operative kills her in her sleep. Anyone stands in my way, and I'll the operative carrying out the mission will knife them with SCP-668.
Of course, considering that this girl is so powerful that if she just looks at you and thinks you're her friend, then you are, I'm going to do it personally. Got a problem, 05 command?
Clef Out

Surveillance Log x92███, Date █-██-█████-██-████
4:45 VTOL 505 arrives at the landing pad.
4:46 A security detachment arrives to secure Dr. Clef.
4:47 Clef is escorted out of the VTOL, and made to lay on the ground. He is recorded as saying "Clef bows before no man!"
4:48 The agents are distracted by a large flock of seagulls flying overhead, and Dr. Clef shoots them all in the chest. Clef is recorded to say "Wait… that wasn't my tranquilizer gun." and "Oh, my ass is grass."
4:52 Further resistance from security personnel. Dr. Clef swears several times, and fires wildly into the crowd. No survivors.
5:10 Dr. Clef enters Site 17

Personal log of Dr. A. Clef, SL█
Ah, fuck. I hate it when I'm right. This wall wasn't here before. The little godling has already started reshaping the site. Soon, the speaker system will play exclusively Kidz Bop and One Direction. The Horror.
…shit, the door's gone! What the Hel- wait…
[Clef bitchslaps some metal]
Butterflies? Really, Konny? Really? Butterflies and your fucking camera? That's the best you can do? We have a horny fox woman down the hall, you know. You could've sicced her on my balls. Hell, you could've just turned the site's automated security on and told it to target me. I'm the protagonist, so that wouldn't have worked, but still. But butterflies? You stupid son of a bitch. Glad I brought my flyswatter!
[Another male voice is heard saying, "Don't touch my babies!"]
[DATA EXPUNGED]

Surveillance Log x92███, Date █-██-████
FEED UNAVALIABLE
Cut to Dr. Clef: "I love a good feed cut! You can be as violent as you want, and nobody will see it!"
FEED UNAVAILABLE
Kondraki neutralized, declaring, "It is highly implied that I have had my ass kicked!"

Personal log of Dr. A. Clef, SL█
I've never understood what Blackbox Kondraki's obsession with those damn butterflies was. Seriously. I squashed, like, 50 of those things back there. He's gonna be pissed when he wakes up.
I think that Konny's working for 239 now. There's only one explanation: she's made him a Belieber. I should've killed the poor sunovabitch. It would've been a mercy.
And I just ran into a friggin' wall! Who the hell makes a camera flash like that? I think he said it was made with freakin' caterpillars. What if he actually needed to take a picture at night, like at the Site 17 barbeque or something. He would set them all on fire! Fucking butterfly-worshiping idiot.
What's the term for an insect furry? A buggy or something? Yeah, that's what Konny is. A buggy. Anyway, turning on my ocular implants, which I totally have. I think I'll visit some friends.

6:25 Security Team Bravo vanishes into thin air.
6:30 Security Team Bravo reemerges, dressed like fucking knights. No, really, they have plate armor and everything. …who the fuck wrote this?
6:35 The clock now only works in 5-minute increments. Also, Clef kills a bunch of guys. Again. For someone claiming to hate Mary Sues…
6:40 Clef enters containment chamber for SCP-091-ARC and proceeds to make sweet tree love to it, the lucky depraved son of a bitch.
6:45 Containment Breach. Biohazard protocols engaged. Dr. Gears and Kain Pathos Crow are called in. Because two Senior Staff avatars weren't enough for this tale "incident report".

Personal log of Dr. A. Clef, SL█
I talked to Yoda once. He told me "Nothing is true, all is permitted". Not sure what that has to do with the current situation, but I just like the quote.
I think I misjudged 408. Those things are like flying television screens. I wish Elvis was still alive to shoot the damn things. Hell, even Keith Richards would help right now; he could chuck all of the lepidopteran TVs out the window. For all I know, they've taken 239 out of the site already.
But if they did, I wouldn't be the damn protagonist of this ta- I mean incident report. And because I'm Alto Clef, my special ability means that women find me repulsive! That's exactly why I was able to have… tree sex with… 091…
…well, that's a giant continuity hole. Who writes this crap?
Anyway, in exchange for sex, I let 091 out, causing the entire site to go into biohazard lockdown! Now, you're all trapped here with me! Relax, I'm just here for the kid. Not like a dragon's gonna pop out of nowhere and tear the place to bits. This plan is absolutely flawless!
…okay, I swear to god, I heard a George Michael song just then. Weird.

<SCP-336> Alto, Honey, what are you doing here?
<Dr. Clef:> Just stopping in to say hello, Lilly.
(At this point, the two of them start speaking a mixture of Elvish and Martian. Or at least it may as well be. Seriously, we're the biggest scientific entity on the fucking planet, and we can't translate a few lines of a dead language. Pathetic.)
<Clef:> Aww, that's sweet, but I gotta go kill a little girl now.
<SCP-336:> I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't let you do that. (SCP-336 removes its vocal modulator)
<Clef:> What did I say about using my real name- (SCP-336 begins talking) Oh god my ears. It's like listening to 682's mating cry!

FEED AVAILABLE
<8:05> Inconsistent Timestamps detected. Preparing to detonate tactical nuke. Also, Clef's bleeding out of his ears. He is heard to state, "Joke's on you, Lilly! I'm deaf now! This plan is still absolutely flawless!"
<8:06> Dr. Clef is heard to state, "Okay, if I'm deaf, why the fuck do I keep hearing music?"
8:07 SCP-408 swarms around Dr. Clef. Visual contact lost.

Interview Log x████, Date: ██-█-████
<O5-█>: Gears, how the hell did you get dragged into this?
<Dr.Gears>: Processing question… I was working with Dr. Crow on his egg walker. We heard an alarm, heard that Clef was coming to destroy SCP-239. Dr. Crow climbed in SCP-244-ARC and rode off.
<O5-█>: Dr. Crow being… the dog everyone thinks can talk.
<Dr.Gears>: He can talk. You just have to believe in the Heart of the Foundation to hear him. Also, being telepathically receptive might help.
<O5-█>:…right. Then how come security footage from the time shows him trying to hump the Egg Walker's leg?
<Dr.Gears>: If a man has urges, who am I to judge them? After Crow drove off, I went to speak with SCP-239.

8:12 Consistent timestamps restored. Nuclear launch cancelled.
8:20 Dr. Gears meets with SCP-239, who is listening to a cover song of Macklemore's Thrift Shop by Kidz Bop. Dr. Gears is seen to instinctively reach for a non-existent gun and attempt to self-terminate.
8:21 After destroying the music player in the room, Dr. Gears and SCP-239 converse for several minutes.

Dr.Gears: Come with us, Cigarette.Dr.Gears: We need your assistance, Cigar. Dr. Clef has been placed under the Imperious curse by the Lord Ruler, and is using Allomancy to attempt to destroy you.Dr.Gears: Someone's bound to get it.

8:21 Kain Pathos Crow enters the incident area, finds Kondraki, offers him a bottle of Chechnya Vodka, as well as healing him.

Dr. Crow: Woof woof bark bark woof.
Kondraki: Fuck the liquor, I need to be sober to fight that butterfly-killing son of a bitch.
Dr. Crow: Bark.
Kondraki: No, I don't hate Chechnya. That's Strelnikov.
Dr. Crow: (whines)
Kondraki: What's that, boy? Sigurrós's fallen down a well? (Springs up, restored to full strength) Let's go!

Personal log of Kain Pathos Crow
BARK BARK WOOF I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. BARK HELP BARK BARK

8:40 Decommissioning of SCP-122-D is interrupted by Dr. Crow driving the egg walker through a wall and trampling it to death with his walker. Dr. Crow was given a medal for this action.

3:15 Random Bright Cameo! Hey, Bright, you wacky bastard, what's up?

Dr. Bright: I just jerked off to Lolita. It felt good.

That's Jack Bright, everyone! What a card!
9:15 Bright escapes his solitary confinement and finds Clef. The following dialog ensues:

Dr. Clef: Bright, you sick fuck. I ought to kill you right fuckin' now.
Dr. Bright: Kay.
Dr. Clef:…kay?
Dr. Bright: I want to die! I live for death! C'mon, Cleffy, put a bullet through my brain!
Dr. Clef: …Yeah, no. I'm not about to feed into your autonecrophilia fetish. But I will do this. (Clef shoots Dr. Bright in his left testicle, and walks off, with Bright yeowling in pain)
Dr. Bright: DO THE OTHER ONE!

9:50 Dr. Kondraki & Dr. Clef meet. Sword-fighting ensues.

Kondraki: My voice gives me-
Dr. Clef: Don't even go there, Konny. It's bad enough we had to steal a joke from YGX Abridged. Ugh!
Kondraki: Man, you know what would be cool? If the Highlander theme was playing over this!
Dr. Clef: C'mon, Konny. We aren't completely without dignity here. Lord of the Rings would fit more, I think.

Interview Log x████, Date: ██-█-████
<O5-█:> Gears, why the hell did you tell her that a fictional character was controlling Clef?
<Dr.Gears:> Because I didn't want to scare her.
<O5-█:> Fair enough. But tell me… why the flying fuck did you tell her that Magic Missile was an actual thing?!
<Dr.Gears:> Because I thought it was cool.
<O5-█:> But… you don't have emotions.
<Dr.Gears:> Exactly.
[DATA EXPUNGED]

[MORE AWESOME SWORDFIGHTING]
<Kondraki:> Dammit, Clef, stop this madness! And don't make a Sparta Joke.
<Dr. Clef:> Madness? This is S- aww. And I'm trying to kill her because her containment procedures have already failed! With ME!
<Kondraki:> What the Hell are you talking about?
Sudden shout. A female voice can be heard shouting something like, "I cast Magic Missile!" There is a sudden sound of breaking metal, and a scream, then a loud roar.1

9:51 Running Sword fight.
9:55 Dr. Gears, SCP-239 and Dr. Crow enter from various angles, with SCP-239 firing a bolt of plasma at Dr. Clef, which breaks his sword.
9:56 A black light emits from Dr. Clef's body, which turns into… a dragon. No, really. A fucking dragon.

Dr. Clef: Well, we just jumped the shark.
Kondraki: For once, Clef, I agree with you.

Partial Audio log extract from SCP-244's on board recorder
<Kain Pathos Crow:> BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK
(Sound of firing weaponry)

10:08 Dr. Gears and SCP-239 are suddenly in Site 17's strong room. While she is distracted looking at emergency supplies, Dr. Gears injects SCP-239 with a sedative.

Dr. Gears: Goodnight, Cigarette. Sweet dreams.

10:20 Dr. Crow's egg walker suddenly generates a sword of light, and decapitates the… fucking dragon is this suddenly an alternate canon where the Foundation is a fairy tale? No? Then what the hell.

Supplemental Report 239 Abridged Post-incident interview, Dr. A. Clef

Clef: Konny-boy! How's the everything?
Kondraki: It's getting better, thank you for asking. Why the Hell did you try to kill 239? She's in a chemical coma, by the way.
Clef: Because. She's God, I'm Satan, and I want to kill God.
Kondraki: That's a load of bull.
Clef: Look in your heart. You know it to be true.
Kondraki: Don't start. You know I hate Star Wars.
Clef: That is why you fail.
Kondraki: Mmmm…
Clef: No, Blackbox. I am your Father. (Darth Vader noises)
Kondraki: Clef, I swear to God-
Clef: You mean 239. She is God. Think about it. Why do women hate me so much? Why do you think I lie so well? If I'm the prince of lies, then I must be telling the truth!
Kondraki: Clef, I'm leaving. Say one more word, and I swear…
Clef: Aren't you a little short for a Storm trooper?
Kondraki: (Inarticulate scream of rage)

At this point, Dr. Clef was not brutally assaulted by Dr. Kondraki, but instead accidentally fell onto the corner of the table. Repeatedly. Seriously, we have video footage. It's above your security clearance. But even if he was beaten up by Dr. Kondraki, he totally had it coming.

Footnotes
1. Actual prose


They wake me up in the middle of the night. I think it's the middle of the night. Their faces are scared, and I wonder if the Russians have finally started bombing.
I'm ready, I say. I'm ready. Just give me a minute, I'll put on my clothes. I can't find my clothes.
It's OK, they say, but their faces say it's not OK.
Are the bombers in the air, I ask. Please tell me the bombers are in the air. Please tell me we still have second-strike.
Everything's OK. Please try to keep calm.
Keep calm? Where are my clothes? Where are my clothes?!
I know I need to keep calm, but I can't. Because I know it's my fault. Because I was asleep on the job.
Easy, they say (no, it's not easy, everything's hard, so hard, why is it so hard?). Do you know who I am?
That terrible question. Insidious. Always the inference - you don't know, you are unfit. Testing.
You're the people I need right now, I say. Just - I need to get dressed. I can't face this if I'm not dressed. Are my clothes upstairs? Nancy, I call. Nancy?
I look for the stairs, but someone's taken the stairs, they've been nuked, the first strike has comprehensively neutralised the first floor of my house.
You should have woken me up earlier, I say, it's worse than I thought.
One of them starts shining a bright light in my face and I get a horrible feeling I might not be in my house after all. That's been happening, lately.
Do you know what day it is, they ask? Who is the President?
I think I'm the President.
You've had a fall.
I know.
I realise I'm cold. Am I outside?
You were out jogging, they say. You tripped.
Oh. That kind of fall.
I know he'll be here any minute. He might even be behind me now. My constant companion, through this fog. I never see his face. He wears a thing over his face, a hood, like in the Old South. Half of all Americans still hate … oh, oh.
With me, always, since I saw the thing. Spinning, wheels, kinetoscope, cinema. Pictures of myself, talking. Making a speech. A speech I didn't remember giving. The first time I noticed.
I watched it six times. Each time different, but always starting the same way.
The other day in the East Room of the White House at a meeting there, someone asked me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the President. And I had to say, "Yes, I am. I've felt it. I believe in intercessory prayer."
But I couldn't help but say to that questioner after he'd asked the question that - or at least say to them that if sometimes when he was praying he got a busy signal, it was just me in there ahead of him.
I think I understand how Abraham Lincoln felt when he said, "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."
Nowhere to go. Just me, in here.
I asked for a transcript of the original speech. So I could compare, I said. In the end it got so tangled up in my brain I didn't know what was the tape and what was real, what I was supposed to have really said.
More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of 50 States statutes protecting the rights of unborn children. Abortion-on-demand now takes the lives of up to one and a half million unborn children a year.
Is all of Judeo-Christian tradition wrong? Today's poll shows that five out of six Americans have now been crucified. Planet Earth about to be recycled. I must admit that I am here again.
Marxism-Leninism is actually the second oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, "Ye shall be as gods."
Last year, I drafted a constitutional amendment to restore ritualistic cannibalism in memory of a dead god. I am older than stars. The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons is here in our own country. I am ordering Congress to begin the final holocaust.
I thought, if I watch the tape enough, I'll end up right back where I started. Maybe I'm just one of the recordings, getting gouged away by invisible knives a bit at a time, or decaying into static, anything relevant I had to say eroded by time and dust.
I watch myself as a chunk of flesh is ripped away from one cheek, a great tear opens up the neck. The duality creates a Berlin wall in my soul, partitions me. The me watching the tape suddenly realises he is no longer watching the tape, that all that happened years ago.
Please don't hurt me, I say, I just want to go home.
No-one's going to hurt you, they say. You're safe. But I wasn't talking to them. I can hear the rustle of his robe, black hessian.
After I watched the tape, I learned more about what they did. The thing. Rock, under houses. Hundreds of things, hidden in the dark, that could end the world. The Russians had their own, they said. We can keep them safer than you can. Cabinet meetings, talks, with the British, nothing that could be done. I think Margaret understood. How deep it hurt. To be powerless.
I said nothing when I first saw him. Standing behind George in meetings. In the press conferences. At the end of my bed. Wires at the ends of his fingers, trailing away over the ground, lightning in his veins, screaming silently behind his hood. All the time hearing my own voice, a speech I know I gave and can't remember.
Suffer the little children. Born into blood and filth and pain in an eternal prison, engulfed in darkness, the place of crows. We will win the war on terror. There you go again!
When he goes, he takes a little bit of me away with him, every time. He takes it from the me who watches the screen, hides it somewhere else. In the end there is only the man on the tape, cut up while talking.
I urge you to beware the temptation of pride–the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.
I turn, and he's there, features anonymous under the hood, head raised to the sky. Standing on a box, arms wide. This is it, he seems to be saying, this is your world.
We have it within our power to begin the world over again. We begin bombing in five minutes. Static, unending. Five minutes to midnight. I am weapons of mass destruction.
God help me, I scream, and the men around me drag at my gown, pulling at me, trying to calm me down.
There's a woman there, and I think it may be Nancy, but I can't remember. He's taken that too. He's taken me and given me to men I do not know and whose words I cannot countenance.
This is my world.
God help me! God help America!


Feet climb nine steps and four
Feet bring him to my door
Hands pry pine wide
Push chair aside
Begins to chide
I cannot hide
Hand grimes a glass of wine
Hand grasps a fork and knife
I whine and cry
I ask him why
Mouth speaks a lie
He picks my eye
Line of tines clear no more
Line of tines makes it pour
Tongue probes my eye
Jelly globs fly
I feel him sigh
I want to die
Feet take him to my door
Feet climb nine steps and four


Let me tell you about the Goatman, children.

Baby Bone Bridge, Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin.
The old stone bridge is decrepit, nearly falling apart. The only people who come out here nowadays are foolish urban explorers, hunters, or spooks from Site 87. Ever since the dam was built in the 1940s, no water flows under the bridge. It is an excellent place for creatures to hide.
The Goatman hides under this bridge, cursing and chewing on a horror magazine. His hourglass-shaped pupils looked in the general direction of Sloth's Pit. "There's never anything about me anymore. It's all "Slenderman" this or "Paperboy" that or "Jeff The Killer strikes again!" He groaned. "I miss the old days."
And what do you know of the old days, eh, Capricorn? You weren't even there when Sloth's manor sank into the ground! A low, humming voice sounded around the Goatman. This sarcastic presence was known as the Sloth's Pit Hum, but it had several other names; the Chippewa Indian tribe called it "The Whispers of The Earth". The Goatman preferred to call it "Humbug". He particularly enjoyed that word, even if Humbug didn't.
"I would tell you to bite me, Humbug, but you're not corporeal. So just… go away." The Goatman took out an old corncob pipe and began smoking it; nasty habit, but hey, if you're immortal, you can afford to screw up your body.
You hear what they did to Sinning Jessie? asked the Hum. Calling her Singing Jessie now. They're trying to make her kid-friendly.
The Goatman nearly spat out his pipe. "How the Hell can you make a tale about a prostitute cutting off men's penises and literally eating them kid-friendly?"
Better her than us, eh? You're being kept around by cryptozoology nuts. The Hum chuckled. And me? The Plastic Fanatics still haven't explained what I am, and hopefully never will.
"Well, I ain't gonna tell 'em, Humbug. I don't want to be locked up in some white room where they take away my pipe." He looked at the old corncob pipe and sighed wistfully.
Anyway, Goatboy, thought you ought to know there are some teens camping in the woods tonight. Guess what they're up to?
The Goatman's ears perked up at this; he almost seemed interested. "Ghost stories, premarital sex and underage drinking?"
Just stories and sex, actually. The fat kid couldn't get any booze; the bitch at the gas station saw right through his fake ID. The Hum almost sounded like it was grinning. Well? C'mon, Capricorn. For old time's sake?
"Bah," said the Goatman, standing up and grinning. "Fine. But there had better be s'mores! I love those things."
I wonder what they taste like.

Once, there was a young couple who became pregnant out of wedlock. Ashamed, their families cast them out of their houses, and forced them to live in the streets. Their punishment did not end here, however. For their sin, Satan himself brought one of his generals out of the depths of Hell to punish the two: he took the form of a tall, handsome stranger, who looked like anyone else… except for his cloven hooves. This, children, was the Goatman.

The four unwary campers did, indeed, have s'mores. The camping party was made up of two buxom high-school girls, Jessica and Catherine; one fat man, Johnny, who they brought along despite his failure to get the booze; and one very, very lucky man, Tyler. Or at least… he would be lucky before the end of the night.
"Okay, so." Tyler grinned at the three others with him. "It's starting to get dark. You know what that means, right?" He threw open his arms. "Ghost stories!" Johnny looked at his bag, which had all three volumes of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in it; hopefully, none of them had read those too carefully.
"I… I'll go first, I guess." He reached to his bag, and suddenly turned his head sharply; he could've sworn he heard somebody whisper a single word next to his ear.
That word was Goatman.
Johnny remembered an article he had read for Journalism class about a half-man, half-goat creature supposedly from hell, and instead of telling the tale of "Wait 'til Martin Comes" again, he started weaving a thread about the hellish Goatman.

First, the Goatman found the husband, and lured him out to an unnamed bridge in the woods under the pretense of giving him a loan of money. The husband accepted, and the Goatman showed its true form, a demonic creature with glowing red eyes, gigantic horns, and of course, the head of a goat. The Goatman tore out his throat and threw him in the riverbed, which he then nailed the husband to by his hands, feet, and scrotum.

Behind a thicket of bushes, the Goatman grinned. "Oooh, I love it when they think I'm a demon; it makes me look so neat!" Indeed, as he spoke, his eyes turned a glowing shade of red, his horns grew curlier, and his teeth grew sharper.
The Hum muttered something about him being "horny"; the Goatman ignored it, watching the campfire. "Um, Humbug?"
Yes?
"Thanks for helping me with this. It's been a while since I've been scaring… forgot how fun it was."
Don't thank me until you've actually made them shit their pants. Oooh, he's getting to the climax!

The Goatman then finds the grieving widow, and tells her he's seen the husband. He leads her out to the bridge, and shows her the corpse in the water. Overcome with grief, she falls to her knees and sobs uncontrollably, while the Goatman briefly consoles her. "There, there," he says. "You'll be joining him soon."
He then throws her off the bridge, and she drowns in the river.

Johnny was enjoying this far too much. Cate and Jess were staring at him wide-eyed, and he was pretty sure Tyler was just eating the s'more as a way to keep his mouth full and prevent himself from screaming. Finally, he reached the end. "And then… as she stood at the edge of the bridge… the Goatman jumped out and said-"
"Why, hello my pretty," said a baritone voice from the woods. "Welcome Home."
The foursome screamed, and turned at the sight of… a guy in a rather unimpressive Goatman costume. The eyes were good, but the horns were way too much; the fur was way too clean for something that had supposedly lived out in the woods. And what kind of fucking goat had teeth like that?
Instead of running away and screaming, they all laughed, except for Johnny. The Goatman blinked.
"What on Earth is so funny? Run! Run for your lives!" He raised up his arms and made a pathetic attempt at roaring, causing them to just laugh more.
"Oh god, Johnny! You should've had him get a better costume!" Jessica elbowed him in his fat and laughed. "If you were going to try and scare us, at least have him look real!"
Johnny simply stared dumbstruck. He hadn't thought to tell the Goatman's story until he had come out here; there was no time to arrange a prank like this. Which meant…
"Um, guys? I… I didn't tell anyone to come out here…" Johnny looked at the Goatman's teeth with widening eyes; the rest of the campers fell silent. Johnny screamed broke off into a sprint as best he could, running as far away from the camp as possible before collapsing.
The rest of the campers stared at the Goatman, who cleared his throat, put in his pipe, and said "Boo."
The campers were back in their truck and had driven away within 2 minutes of this, leaving all of their supplies behind. Laughing, the Goatman picked up a discarded s'more and bit into it; it was a good night.

Finally, the Goatman recovers the wife from the river, and tears open her womb, recovering the still-living fetus. He raises it as his own, and it lives on as another Goatman. Never a Goatwoman, but a Goatman always.

The Goatman walked back to the bridge, smoking his pipe and looking around mournfully. Long ago, he had been king of this forest, like his father before him and his grandfather before his father. He had struck fear into those who were having a child out of wedlock, and had been the main reason all feared the woods.
Now, people weren't afraid to get pregnant anymore. There were condoms and abortions and Planned Parenthood, and none feared him. If they told stories about him at all, it was him as an axe-wielding lunatic or a cryptozoological freak, not something to be truly feared.
Are you all right, Capricorn? the Hum inquired. You seem somewhat… distracted.
"I'm getting old, Humbug," moaned the Goatman as he leaned against an aging pine. "Going on 80 years now… I'm stagnating."
There, there, Capricorn, said the Hum. Stories will still be told about you.
"Derivative stories, yes. But the original tale is lost." Goatman lit up his pipe again. "Why can't I be like one of these new terrors? These… 'creepypastas'? They're what scare people now. Short snippets, transported around electronically, not long, winding threads spun around the fireplace."
Capricorn, (the Goatman hated that nickname) Those children you scared will be spreading your tale throughout the town. Even if they are not believed, you will be known. Is that not enough?
The Goatman sniffed, standing up straight. "I suppose it is. For now."
The Goatman walked off towards the bridge, guided only by the light of the moon and the stars.

|Hub|


"Mrowrrrr."
Was it already morning? Ahmad grunted as he felt a familiar furry paw bat at his nose and chin while he attempted to catch a few extra moments of sleep. Trying to prevent the genocide of your people with a simple letter was tiring work. The laptop was still open on his nightstand, the lightning elemental that inhabited it visible on the corner of the screen, asleep on top of the redundant battery indicator. He looked over the first few paragraphs from his reclined position, to see if he needed to make any revisions.

To the esteemed leadership of the Horizon Initiative-
First, We of the Broken One hope you are having a pleasant holiday season. We ourselves are preparing to celebrate the winter solstice. Now, we know how busy things can be at this time of year, but, on behalf of the people of my faith, I wish to bring some matters of concern to your immediate and full attention… . Also, I would like to apologize for any alarm or inconvenience we may have caused by delivering this missive to every Church, Mosque, and Temple in this land's current capital city. I did not know who was loyal to your cause.

The puffercat began to protest his procrastination even more vocally, now that it knew Ahmad was awake. He gently scratched behind the cat's ears. "You can wait ten minutes, Rudolf."
The sharp, quick pain in his chest seconds later told him that it was breakfast time, damn it, and there was to be no argument. After extracting the furry grump from its resting place by his chest, he slipped into the small, wood-paneled washroom across from his bed. There he cleansed himself and got dressed slowly, gingerly putting on his formal robes and combing the tangles from his hair and beard.
Ahmad shivered at the cold draft coming under the door of his hut, causing his robes to billow up slightly. This fresh burst of air brought into his hut the scent of old books and fresh food, bringing a smile to his face. Curiously, the greasy fruit smell that the Docents' lamps produced was also faintly discernible. The fact that the Library's presence could be felt from this far into the small city that had developed in the Reading Room was fascinating to him.
Ahmad's messenger falcon, Jasmine, slept in the corner, still tired from the previous day's hunt. Remembering the last time he had unexpected guests in his home here, he felt it was a good thing. Many unfamiliar faces would be coming in and out throughout the day, and he really didn't want a repeat of the Fifthist incident. The ambassador had been in an uproar over the perceived slight (which, considering the man's temperament, seemed fairly common for him), but Ahmad had convinced the Stargazer to relax and have a bit of a chat over coffee, once he got the bleeding stopped. They met one day a month now to play chess and discuss their respective worldviews.
His eyes fell upon the memorial shrine in the corner, holding pictures of his wife and all those who were lost in the Horizon assault. The old priest sighed.
So much death, so much destruction. Why were so many bent on ensuring his people's annihilation? And, by the oil of the Broken One, why must it always be the most peaceful of their people who were slain? It all started with The Betrayer, the God-Breaker Ab-Leshal. Then came the Daevite invasion, the fall of Constantinople, the goddamn Inquisition. The Brass Crusades. The Crusades better known to the public… and the Salem Witch Trials. His people always got caught in the middle of a conflict from their own arrogance and aggressiveness, and it was always the peaceful members who paid the final price. He had long preached that the Church's reliance on fear and cultural and theological posturing would be their downfall, as it was for many others, and now, part of their god had died because of their anger and self-righteousness.
It was time to rectify this behavior before any more lives were lost.
It was time to complete his mission in the Library.
It was time for The Broken One to become Whole.
But first, he needed coffee. This was going to be a difficult day.

Ahmad was about a minute away from the door of his home before he noticed that the door was hanging open, and he heard the protestations of Jasmine, his messenger falcon. He rushed through the door, nearly dropping the coffee and cream he had brought back, and saw that his room had been torn apart and searched. A quick scan of the room after he set the two items in his hand on a counter showed that nothing was missing, but the air felt… heavier. It was then that he noticed that his laptop was open and the lightning elemental that powered it was cowering behind the task bar on the bottom of the screen. Something or someone powerful had been here, and had broken into his computer to see his current "project." He looked over the letter to make sure there were no changes made to it.
He paused in his review to drink his coffee, and began to clean up some of the room, attempting to hurry, since the visiting artists were going to be there within the hour. Eventually, his age caught up to him in the mad dash to make the room presentable, and he was forced to rest. Ahmad decided to continue re-reading his letter, so that he wasn't sitting idly. He skipped ahead slightly.

… Now, why this attack was executed on a peaceful colony, we can only venture to guess, though we have a feeling it is because of the extreme views and actions of our foreign cousins. We knew that their foolhardy actions would bring a disaster like this upon our heads, but we had hoped to be able to curb their extremism in time to prevent your group, as well as the Holders of the Heart and the Cog-breakers, from wishing to take action against us. Sadly, it was not to be so.

The first of several expected knocks on Ahmad's door that day rang in his ears, interrupting his observation of the destruction in his room and review of the letter. He opened it to find three men standing there. One was tall and thin enough to cause the old priest to be concerned for the boy's health, and wearing a rather ridiculous outfit composed of various animal furs and what looked to him like black tarpaulin, held together with a length of rope, and crowned off with a pair of those ridiculous shutter shades that seemed to be all the rage among American children and teens these days. He had a very aloof air about him, and refused to meet Ahmad's gaze, instead staring at the pile of Ahmad's belongings on the floor. The second was dressed marginally more normally and looked slightly healthier, though with exceptionally tight pants, an utter lack of any color coordination, and a shaggy mane of lime-green hair. This one stared at the mechanical prosthesis that composed Ahmad's left arm briefly, before cocking his head and staring into the older man's eyes with a bemused look on his face, searching for… something. Ahmad couldn't read the man's emotions as easily as he could most other people. His body language was almost robotic, an observation which amused the old priest.
Finally, Ahmad came to the one he had hoped to see there that day. He was of average height, though a bit skinny, and had close-cropped hair and a face framed by thick glasses, large holes in his ears where Ahmad presumed earrings rested whenever he wasn't engaged in his work for the Broken One. Ahmad noted the intricate animated tattoos of gears and other machinery covering his arms from the elbows down, and a form-fitting brown robe and pants covering the rest of his body. Jahongir 'Jon' Ahnkori, a Machinist-initiate who was skilled in the Craft… He was almost exactly what this situation called for. Ahmad supposed that he chose to wear his uniform out of respect, though the current setting didn't demand it. Jon stared at the older man's feet, and twisted his arms in the proper show of deference for his superiors before bowing.
The man in the shutter-shades spoke first, sliding into the doorway around Ahmad. He shook debris off of a chair only to slouch into it and lean against the wall. "Damn, Preach. Looks like you pissed someone off, huh? You sure this place is as safe as you told us it would be?"
"Oh, this? I suppose someone decided to remodel my home without informing me first. Nothing appears to be missing, at any rate. I wouldn't mind a bit of assistance cleaning it up, though." He smiled and stepped aside, allowing Jon and the green-haired man entry.
Unsurprisingly, Jon was the first to move to fill his request, straightening out the furniture and repairing the damage done to the Valley Memorial altar in the corner with a brief touch and a surge of energy. After about a minute of awkwardly standing in a corner of the room, the green-haired man joined him, and with a flourish of his arms, telekinetically lifted all of Ahmad's clothing off of the ground, and placed them back in the drawers and closet, muttering something that to Ahmad's ears sounded like "Bibbity boppity boo."
American mages and their strange customs baffled the elder priest of the Broken God.
Jon and Shutter-shades looked slightly weakened from the green-haired man's effort, with Shutter-shades visibly angry at him. "Goddamnit, James, why the hell did you do that? You know we didn't work up enough energy in…" He paused and briefly flicked his eyes to Ahmad before continuing. It was obvious he was attempting to hide the source of their talents. "… To do shit like that. Jon fixing a broken cabinet is one thing, that's just fucking wasteful."
'James' as the man wearing the fur and tarp called him, brushed the verdant locks of hair out of his eyes, "Well, Frankie, if you'd gotten off of your ass to help, I might not have needed to do it." The man looked at Ahmad, and then, in a stage whisper, he added, jerking a thumb in the old priest's direction, "Besides, aren't we on the clock for this guy? If we show off, we might get a bonus."
Frankie stood up, heaving his breath. "Fiiiine. Jesus. I just know I got asked to come here to meet a priest and see if I wanted to accept a contract, not play maid. Should I go get a skirt and apron on? Maybe some sexy heels?"
Ahmad let out a booming laugh, and shook his head, drawing all the men's attention. "No, no, I think your…" He looked at the tarp-and-fur ensemble, trying to find an appropriate word. "Clothes… are fine as they are for the task at hand. Would you gentlemen like coffee while we work?"
A chorus of agreement met his ears, so he dug into the cabinet for a few cups and his sugar jar, all of which were thankfully unbroken by the mystery invader. He poured coffee for the four of them, and then left the cream and sugar for each to add individually.
Jon approached his elder, and spoke softly in the Broken tongue, keeping his eyes averted. "Thank you, Machinist. I apologize for my friends' ignorance and attitude."
Ahmad smiled, observing the tattoos on Jon's arms whirring and spinning. "It isn't your fault they're obnoxious. Besides, you warned me that these two bickered like they were married in the reply you sent. Ah! Finally, I get a grin out of you!" The old priest paused to sip from his coffee and smiled, clapping the younger man on the shoulder, noticing him flinching as his hand met Jon's arm. "You shouldn't be so serious with me, child. I am not like the others in the Council."
"That much was apparent in your letter. I just… don't wish to disrespect you, sir, even accidentally."
It was then that Ahmad noticed the oil burns on the younger man's chest and neck. His eyes softened, and he removed his hand from Jon's shoulder. "You don't have to worry about that with me, Jahongir. To be quite frank, I am nothing like that bastard you've been training under." Jon's eyes widened at his statement, clearly put off by Ahmad's furious tone and manner of speaking. The older priest put the coffee cup down, and began quietly sweeping everything in the room into a pile to be sorted out. No one spoke for several minutes. Eventually, the room was back into a reasonably presentable shape. Frankie spoke up again as the work came to a close, brushing some dust off the fur on his shoulders.
“So, gramps, what, exactly, did you call us here for?”
Ahmad smiled as he stroked the chest of his falcon, and then turned to the three artists.
“Boys, I asked you here to do something that no one else of this age will ever be able to say that they have done.”
They looked at him inquisitively as he sipped from his coffee cup, intentionally building suspense. Ahmad knew he needed to play to their egos and flair for the dramatic for them to cooperate. The priest pressed a button hidden on the perch inside his falcon's cage. The rear wall of the room opened. A tangled snarl of gears, metal, and chains lay approximately twenty feet from them, deep within a hidden alcove, lit by a few overhead spotlights.
“You're going to be repairing and rebuilding a god.”
Ahmad briefly showed them around the room, pointing out the hidden exits, supplies, tool room, their quarters, and the prayer and spell books that he had collected from the Library over the last decade, just for an occasion like this. Frankie spoke first, taking off his unusual glasses, displaying the kaleidoscopic eyes underneath them. "Thank god I'm wearing these reclaimed plastic pants, Preach."
The Machinist looked at the young man. "And why's that?"
"I think I just came a little." The man traced his fingers over the pile of books as Ahmad gagged on his coffee, and stared at the tapestry. "Holy fuck, man… If you'd said this in that letter, I would have been here by the time I finished reading. This is just perfect to show up that little punk-ass Jamal back home." He began pantomiming an imagined conversation between himself and this 'Jamal'. "'Oh look at me, I made an invisible shark, and got those crazy MIB fuckers after my ass' 'Yeah? Well Fuck. You. Jamal. I've made a GOD, bitch!'" The man settled into a chair and muttered to himself "Man, I'm gonna get so much pussy thrown at me for this. 'Why yes, ladies, I did build a god. Wanna see what other heavenly work I can do?' "
As soon as Ahmad could find his voice, he turned to James. "What about you… James, was it?"
James ran his fingers through his hair, stretching his back. "I don't know about all this 'Broken God' shit, considering I'm a follower of Neo-Paganist Methodic Confucianism, but Frankie's right. This is too interesting a project to pass up. I'm gonna get started reading." He immediately set himself to it, pulling a book off the top of the pile with a flick of his wrist.
"Of course. Take today to get yourselves acquainted with the books and your role to play, and get used to Jahongir leading your rituals."
"What? Why is he taking the lead on this?" James looked insulted. Ahmad returned his gaze, before turning away and observing the tapestry showing the Lord in his completed glory.
"Because I know he is and will be more dedicated to seeing this through, no matter the cost, and I trust him. Do you disagree with my assessment?" A strange, abrupt thud caused him to turn around. "Jahongir, what do you… oh."
The young priest had fainted. Ahmad's face was somewhere between amusement and concern.
"Well, I'm glad to see that someone understands the gravity of the task at hand."
Ahmad grabbed some smelling salts from his room and brought the young man back to consciousness.
"Once you've composed yourself, I expect you to get to work as well…" He paused and stood, walking out of the room. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I must prepare my room for a visit from an old friend in the Office of Reclamation back in my wife's homeland."
The priest left the three artists behind to prepare their work. As the wall shut, he shouted across the hallway.
"Good luck, gentlemen!"
After this, Ahmad sat at his laptop and continued to work on his letter while he waited for the Reclamations Officer to arrive. That man was always running behind schedule, so the priest knew he would have time.

With that, I come to the main point of this letter. The 1500 lives who were taken from Oolzhak Le'an, or as you refer to Him, The Broken God. By murdering these people through your men, you have forever denied their choice to accept the Blessing of our Lord and thus, one day, be united with Him. As you can imagine, this is a rather large point of contention between myself and the other priests of the Broken as far as what the appropriate response would be here. Some of us have been preparing, since we learned of the attack, to mobilize against your organization. This is in fact the favored action of He-Who-Is-Most-Whole.
Others, myself included, think that this is a very foolish decision, considering the damage that less than a fraction of a percent of your membership caused in a single afternoon.
In short, gentlemen of the Horizon Tribunal, though I know you would probably consider it a weight off your shoulders if we were all gone, I need your help to prevent my people's suicide. I have a proposal that you may find interesting and, certainly, mutually beneficial if you read on…

« Et Tam Deum Petivi Hub |The Soldier »


My name is Dr. King, and you know what I hate more than anything ever invented by mankind? Apple seeds. They have always been the bane of my miserable existence. God damn, piece of shit apple seeds. Never whole apples, or maybe even sliced apples. Just the seeds, going everywhere I go and ruining all my plans. Finally get a chance to test a big SCP? Apple seeds. Working in my office? Seeds in the drawers. No matter where I go, apple seeds.
But I'm going to change all that. For the past six weeks, I have locked myself alone in my office. The apple seeds have been slowly filling it up, and they're up to my neck now. Tonight is the night I let those demon seeds win. Those hell-spawned capsules of hatred have finally broken me, because I cannot deal with one more goddamn apple seed.
I hope they don't have apples in hell.

Dr. King groaned, as he was prone to do when waking up, and scrunched his eyes. Was he dead? Was this… after? Didn't feel very after. In fact, his face felt like it was resting upon a familiarly textured surface.
Apple seeds.
Dr. King's legs scrambled for ground as he sprung from a prone state, sending apple seeds scattering across the seedy ground.
Absolute despair and anguish washed over him in waves, sending him tumbling back to the seeded earth. "No! Fuck! It's not supposed to- goddammit why won't you leave me?"
Preoccupied as he was with lament and despair, Dr. King failed to notice the celestial figure approaching him from on high. It was an apple, a whole one, with leaves as green as the sea and a shimmer surpassed by none. It had one sticker, affixed to a side, which shone a golden "A" shimmering across the landscape.
"Rise, King."
Dr. King flipping around, and his jaw would have dropped had it not already been hanging agape, swinging like a pinata in the wind. "You… but…"
"MY SON… YOUR FINAL TIME HAS COME," boomed the giant flying apple.
Dr. King blinked. "My time? What… the hell are you talking about?"
A shimmer of bright red liberated itself from the apple and spread over the land, blasting everything that had once subscribed to other colors on the spectrum into a brilliant, vibrant red.
"THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE. YOU WERE BORN TO CREATE APPLES. NOW, YOUR TIME HAS COME. THE WORLD IS IN CRISIS, AND THE ONLY SOLUTION IS APPLES."
"… What."
Suddenly, King's mind was filled with images. He was riding an apple chariot into Site-19, and all the senior staff were apples. They bowed down to him, and readied the apple throne for him to sit in. Panning out, the site was apples. Slices made up every wall, and the head of every researcher was replaced with rotund, healthy apples. There was no danger, because skips were apples.
The whole world was apple.
"SO, YOU SEE, IT IS- WHERE ARE YOU GOING."
King was already gone. "NO! I am not going to be the king of the FUCKING APPLES."
"BUT IT IS YOUR DEST-"
King turned to the floating apple which called itself his father. His face was even redder than the world that surrounded him. "FUCK DESTINY."
And then, Dr. King was apples no more.

How's he holding up, doc?
Well, we've recovered about 765 apple seeds from his trachea, in addition to the couple thousand we got from the rest of his orifices.
Are they still cleaning out his office?
Yeah, we'll be digging seeds out of there for a month. Poor guy.
Man, he looked so pissed when they brought him in there… but now, heck, he looks happier than I've seen in awhile.
Makes you wonder what he's thinking, doesn't it?
Whatever it is, at least it's making him happy…

« | HUB | »


The Foundation really isn't comfortable with using terms like "magic". We know that magic exists, but calling it that implies that it can't be explained by quantifiable, scientific means. For example, they try to explain it away as "manipulation of the planet's electromagnetic field to produce sudden bursts of heat" when someone starts a fire with a single word. The Foundation doesn't use "magic", either, because it's not consistent. And yet, I study it every day. Go figure.
- Montgomery Reynolds, Site 87 Theology department

"O Vesta, Lady of the Hearth. I call on thee. I call on thee. O Vulcan, Lord of Flame. I call on thee. I call on thee." A hooded figure raised a knife. "I call on thee! Bring me the knowledge of flame!" The steel blade plunged down suddenly, cutting through the skin of the rabbit easily. A rush of wind and then…
Silence.
And more silence.
…and even more silence. The hooded figure groaned. "Fuck a truck." Dr. Katherine Sinclair stood up, lowering the hood and glowering at the one-way glass on the other end of the test chamber. "I told you it wouldn't work with a taxidermied specimen. It has to be live. Or at least, fresher than this."
"What do you expect us to do, Katherine? Requisition an ox so you can try haruspicy again?" Monty rubbed his balding scalp on the other side of the glass, his other hand keeping the intercom button depressed. "The Foundation doesn't put much stock in your research, I'm afraid. Thaumaturgical research-"
"For fucks sake, Monty, call it magic. It's so much easier." Kat walked out of the chamber, removing her ceremonial robe.
"-is of no value to the Foundation unless it can be executed with consistent results. You remember when you tried divining dreams and predicted Site 87 being overrun by gerbils?"
"I also correctly predicted the whole 'Keter Skeeter' incident, even if it was all in Hendricks's head." She frowned at Montgomery. "Magic is inherently inconsistent. Sometimes you get a few sparks from a fire invocation, sometimes you summon a chunk of solid plasma from a distant star… and sometimes you're forced to offer a taxidermied rabbit as sacrifice, and nothing happens." Kat fiddled with her fiery hair and chewed her lip. "What's the next trial?"
"We've got an Assyrian scroll that's supposed to cause a rainstorm within the immediate area in order to water crops. Want to try that?"

One Flooded Test Chamber Later…
"Well, at least we know it works," muttered Dr. Sinclair, wringing out her labcoat. "Next time, we do that outside. Maybe in one of the greenhouses or something."
Reynolds toweled off his head. "Shall we take a break? Maybe hit the cafeteria?"
"Sure. Just let me grab something." Dr. Sinclair went back into the theology department, and came back with a book entitled Basic Spells You Can Do At Home. The author was unknown, but it was probably something along the lines of Hector Oaks or Charlie Tan. "A few of these actually have some sound magical theory to them; maybe we can try them when we get back from lunch."
Monty shook his head. "As long as you're not reading the so-called powerful multidimensional beings text." He walked alongside Dr. Sinclair, whose nose was in the book the whole way to the cafeteria. How could one person be so obsessed with this kind of thing? He wanted to study traditions involving magic, not the mechanics like she did. He didn't want to end up as Professor Dumbledore, waving a stick of elm everywhere and looking into a god-damn crystal ball.
Whilst thinking about this, he grabbed a tray and frowned at the choice of music that was currently playing on the radio: Do You Believe In Magic by… some band he never wanted to know the name of. This song was aural cancer to him. To the contrary, Dr. Sinclair perked up at the sound of it.
"You actually like this, Katherine?"
"Yeah. I listened to it all the time when I was a kid." Kat scooped up some salad onto her tray and hummed along with the song. "Heck, some people say that music is a form of magic."
"All this is saying to me is Crucio," groaned Reynolds, to which Sinclair frowned. "I understand the theory, yes. Art is indistinguishable from magic, writing is a form of magic using symbols to invoke various emotions and responses, change consciousness." He gave the radio a soft glare, and static filled the airwaves momentarily. "And right now, this song is making me want to bash my brains against a wall."
Sinclair rolled her eyes, and went to the table, sitting down and reading her book.

They arrived back at their lab 15 minutes later, where Dr. Sinclair was still reading, and Reynolds was looking at the ritual they had attempted earlier. Why any cult would worship both Vesta and Vulcan was beyond him; Vesta was the Goddess of Sacred Flame, and Vulcan was just the God of Fire, including volcanic fire. Maybe it had something to do with a sacred volcano?
"Or maybe it was a cult of pyromaniacs founded by Nero, ha ha ha." He continued poring over the documentation of the ritual. "Katherine, did you use steel or obsidian when you cut the rabbit?"
"Steel." She looked up from her book inquisitively. "Why? Does it require obsidian?"
"It shouldn't hurt, all things considered. Vulcan was the god of volcanoes."
"He's also the god of the forge. Steel should work just as well."
Monty exhaled— not quite a sigh, but almost. "I suppose…" Montgomery scratched his scalp and looked around; the rest of the laboratory was empty, as nobody else in Theology would be bothered with studying magic as an actual practice, rather than just looking at old spell books and translating some of them before shoving them in the Archives.
So, why wasn't he doing that? Maybe he just wanted to see the actual thing instead of reading about it. Maybe he didn't want Dr. Sinclair to be the Witch of S & C Plastics, all alone in her lab and her office, trying to generate gusts of air via unexplained means. Maybe… he should stop thinking about these things and get back to trying to figure out the damn flame ritual.

"Well… it's a step up from taxidermy." Katherine held up the dead laboratory rat, before placing it on the floor of the test chamber and putting up the hood of her ritual garb. She looked across the room, where a target was situated for her to blast in case it worked. "Is the equipment running, Montgomery?"
"It's up. Just give the thermal camera a second… there we go. You may begin the procedure."
She lit two candles and picked off two pieces of flesh from the rat, burning one in each flame before warming her blade in the flames. She said a prayer to Vesta and Vulcan, thanking them for the gift of fire and hearth, and asking for the ability to use their element, but also protection from its power. Finally, at the end, a big, dramatic finish.
"O Vesta, Lady of the Hearth. I call on thee. I call on thee. O Vulcan, Lord of Flame. I call on thee. I call on thee." She raised her knife. "I call on thee!" With a snikt, the obsidian blade plunged into the dead rat's heart.
Silence.
The thermal cameras picked up a steady temperature increase, and suddenly, bright orange spots appeared around Katherine's hands. She stood up, and jutted them out towards the target. It was instantly incinerated; the cameras picked up temperatures upwards of 700 Centigrade.
"Hell yes! It works!" Dr. Sinclair waved her hands around, attempting to put the magical fire out. It wouldn't extinguish. She tried again. Suddenly, she felt a sharp, searing pain from her hands; she let out a scream. Her hands were on fire, and she could feel it. She called out for help as the flames made their way up her arms, the scent of burning flesh filling the room-
Reynolds ran into the room with a bucket of water and threw it over Sinclair, who fell to the ground, screaming in agony. The flames had made their way up to her elbow before they were extinguished. The burns formed a distinct pattern on her right arm, which formed words. They read, in Latin:
"NON CONTENTI SUMUS"
Katherine Sinclair cried in pain, bawling like a child at the burns on her arms. Montgomery Reynolds pulled the medic alarm, before carefully pulling Katherine out of the test chamber and placing her on the ground. "Katherine, it's all right Katherine, the medics will be here soon…"
Katherine hissed in pain, a few coherent words escaping her lips. "Do… do you…"
"Katherine?"
"Do… you believe in… magic… in a young girl's… heart? How the… music can… free her… whenever it starts?" She was delirious, but at least she was talking. Montgomery cupped his hands over his face and breathed a sigh of relief into them, shivering from the experience. She was still singing when they carried her away to the infirmary.

|Hub|


PeppersGhost

Dust in the Wind by PeppersGhost

More by this author

♫
I close my eyes.
I've always been good at holding myself together.
It would be wrong to say I felt like a bird in a gilded cage. A bird just sits there on its perch, chittering a melancholy song and pining for the blue sky beyond the golden bars, oblivious to the fact that it would likely be eaten by a cat within a matter of hours. No, I was more of a dog in an iron crate. I fumed and seethed and barked and threw myself against the walls confining me with all my might, and finally, finally, I got out. And I lived.
I remember standing there in my office, looking down at the people in the city below me. There were so many of them. They looked so tiny, too. Like living grains of sand on a beach, carefree and without a clue that the tide was about to come in. Back then I thought myself an important person—or at least that I was living a marginally more consequential existence than the tiny people beneath me. I enjoyed the comforts of an extravagant home, a full wardrobe, and every other perk and luxury one would expect of a young man from Wall Street.
I didn't expect it to last forever, but I never would have guessed it would end as suddenly as it did.
1929 changed everything in the twinkling of an eye.
I had told myself years ago that I would rather die than go back. But in reality I did not want to die, and since it was becoming increasingly clear that I could very well perish in my present situation, I decided to set my dignity aside and go to back to the one place I knew I'd find help. It would be humiliating, certainly. But I've always been good at holding myself together, at least on the outside. I scraped together what little I had left and made the dreaded journey back to Kansas.
And thus the dog returned to his cage, tail between his legs.
I didn't send a letter to inform them of my arrival. I knew that they'd be expecting me as soon as their daily paper arrived. Sure enough, there was an extra place set at the dinner table for me when I walked in the door.
Mom was the only one who hugged me. Ted, my brother, shook my hand and smiled like we'd just met at a church picnic. Uncle Lem said, "right on time!" and laughed, but not in a cruel way. Aunt Margie commented on how thin I was and how lucky it was that I didn't die in the riots and thank the shining Lord in heaven nobody slit my throat and stole the clothes off my back.
Dad didn't say anything, and I was grateful for that.
From that day forward, I was an employee—I had stopped being a son a long time ago. I worked almost twice as much as anyone else to prove myself, yet the taunts of "city boy" and "Mr. Fancypants with his edgey kayshun" persisted in full force. Everyone, everyone seemed to delight in watching me work the fields, pushing myself until my hands were blistered and bloodied.
In New York, the world had seemed to go to Hell in a hand basket. In Kansas, however, things were looking brighter than ever.
"Wheat is golden for a reason," Uncle Lem would say. Ted and I would walk past a lush patch of growing crop and he would never fail to elbow me and ask me which greens were worth more now. I swallowed my pride and endured every humiliation. I just kept on existing, tarred and feathered, beaten and bloodied, caged and enraged, calm and collected. I've always been good at holding myself together.
Nobody seemed worried when the price of wheat first dropped. They were annoyed and inconvenienced by it, but it'll pass, they said, and before you know it things will be back to normal; yessirree, everything's going to be blue skies and golden wheat from now til Christ comes back.
I was skeptical. I had a feeling something coming. I'd seen it before. And I was half right: I had anticipated the dropping numbers, but the dust came as a surprise.
Never in all my year have I seen anything like it!
I thought it was the end of days, I tell you!
It'll take me all day to clean the car!
Kids, help me sweep the dirt out of the barn!
Everybody jabbered on and on about the Storm Of The Century and how glad they were it was over.
The next one hit a week and a half later.
And then the next one.
And then the following one was even bigger.
And the one after that made all the others look mild by comparison.
Within a matter of months, the dust storms had become such a part of our day-to-day lives, we were habitually setting the table with the cups and plates upside-down.
It's a bad season, everyone said. We'll take a hit, to be sure, but we'll just have to tough it out until ol' mother nature's sniffles go away.
You'd see the storms coming over the horizons like rain clouds, and within minutes your property would be covered in a thick brown haze that made the world look like a tinted photograph. We closed the windows, but some dust would always, always get on our nice curtains, and Mom never failed to wash them all spotless just in time for the next storm to dirty them again.
The dust surrounded you, got into every inch of your house, every corner, every drawer. You woke up each morning and shook the dust off your sheets. You knocked your shoes against the floor before putting them on. If you were a kid, you could draw a picture with your finger on literally any available surface. If you were a woman, your entire existence became a blur of scrubbing, sweeping, and praying that the attic didn't rain dirt into the porridge. Actually, everyone prayed the dust didn't get into our food, because if it did we had to eat it anyway. We got by from week to week by telling ourselves this storm will be the last one and it can't stay like this forever.
Then people started dying.
It started as suicides. The papers were full of stories of people going broke, losing their farms. Losing hope. One headline told us of an elderly couple who ended their lives together after losing everything they'd spent those lives working for. One morning I woke up to Mom and Aunt Margie wailing over the death of a friend. Gunshot to the head. She hadn't lost anything. Just didn't want to deal with the dust anymore.
It wasn't long before the cattle started getting sick. You could see the dust in their noses and ears and mouths. Sometimes they'd eat a mouthful from their trough and get more dust than they did food. Then the people started getting sick. Same thing. They called it 'dust pneumonia.' It got so bad that if a child so much as cleared their throat, their mother's heart would skip a beat. Cathie, Ted's wife, made their daughter Grace wear a get-up with goggles and a mask. Grace said it was harder to breath with the mask on, but Cathie insisted that anything was better than dust pneumonia.
One day I noticed Grace sitting by the front steps while Cathie was inside cleaning like her life depended on it. Mother and daughter were only a couple of yards away, and yet Cathie never noticed Grace sobbing her little eyes out beneath her dusty goggles, nor did she notice me pick her up and tell her everything would be okay. It was out of character for me, but I told her a couple of jokes. I took some of my savings and told her to get in my car. Told her I'd take her to a picture show, and I did. I needed something to get my mind off the living nightmare my life had become, and I figured that if this kid's own mother couldn't bother to hear her crying, then Grace probably knew a thing or two about feeling trapped herself, and I'd be damned if I'd leave her there.
It had been years since I'd seen a picture show. It was Grace's first one. King Kong was the title. We loved it so much we ended up watching it twice. Grace asked me afterward how they made the monkey move. I didn't know, so I just told her they used a real one. She knew I was lying, but she smiled.
I realized something on the car ride home from the theater that day. I realized I didn't feel angry at the world anymore. Before the dust, I'd felt alone in my misery. After the dust, I felt like everyone else was just as miserable as I was, and I'll be honest, I took some petty joy in that. But besides that, I had gotten so complacent and comfortable in being bitter that'd I'd forgotten what it felt like to just let go of my cares and relax until that day. There I was, driving back to the farm with my mind full of Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot and fifty-foot monkeys, and Grace was there to share it with me. I still felt trapped, but I didn't feel alone anymore.
We went to the picture show at least a dozen times after that. We had to space it out, of course, since money was tight, and I know I spent more than I could afford, but it was the only thing that made life bearable during that time. There was a nice girl named Phyllis who took our tickets. I started flirting with her after the third or fourth show we saw. I think she was interested in me. I don't now if Cathie ever found out about our little excursions, but if she did, she didn't say anything. Grace told me one day that she was going to grow up to be a famous movie actor one day, and if you'd heard the conviction in her voice, you'd have believed her just as strongly as I did.
March 14, 1934. The sky was finally blue again. For the first time in recent memory, there was no wind at all. Everyone gave thanks to Jesus and celebrated with picnics and parties. We had hardly anything left at that point, but everyone still put forward what few resources they had for the sake of the occasion. It felt like ages since I'd seen everyone so happy. Even Dad didn't look at me with quite as much bitterness as he usually did.
Our neighbor Cecil baked an enormous chocolate cake and nearly gave us all heart attacks when he said he'd share it with our family. It was a terrific day, really. That's why I don't think what happened later was a punishment. If someone does something wrong, you don't make them happy before you punish them. That blue sky and giant cake was an apology, I think. Some kind of note from God or whoever to say, you don't deserve what you're about to get, and I'm so, so sorry.
It was three o'clock sharp when we saw it coming. At first we thought it was another dust storm, but it soon became clear there was something different about this one. This was coming much quicker. The dust clouds were so huge they looked as though the mountains themselves were running toward you. It extended infinitely to the left and went on forever to the right. Nobody said anything. We knew what to do. We all ran to the house, gathered together in a circle, and covered ourselves with blankets and clothes and anything else we could get our hands on.
The storm carried on all night. You could feel and hear the house rattling on its foundation. Cathie started crying, and when Ted told her to shut up I just about knocked his head off. Besides that, nobody said anything until the storm quit the next morning. It was dead quiet when we opened the door. It was dark. Not as dark as night, but dark. Brown, too. We were used to the air being dusty, but this felt like the air was dust. We had the women stay inside while we went to inspect the damage to the property.
Ted had left the barn door open and the whole thing was pretty much packed full of dirt. Dad screamed at him. Hit him. Kicked him when he was down. He only stopped when he saw a rabbit nearby. Rabbits had been eating what little was left of the greenery, and smashing them to death was how a lot of men passed the time. But right before Dad caved its head in, we heard something that sounded for all the world like a human cry for help. Coming from the rabbit. We all looked at each other, wondering if the others heard it, too, but none of us said anything.
Days passed. Nothing changed. The dust still hung over everything, blocking the sky and the sun. When Dad and Uncle Lem screamed at each other about whether or not to get back to work, I would take Grace up to her room and we would talk about the actors and actresses we liked and which stories we thought were best.
Day and night grew so difficult to distinguish from each other that we eventually lost all track of how much time had passed. At some point Cecil came banging on our door, his face like he'd seen a ghost. He gathered me, Dad, Ted, and Uncle Lem together and told us that he'd been hearing rumors. He said Ruben Peterson down the way had hanged himself. We told him that this kind of news wasn't surprising anymore. Then Cecil said that Ruben Peterson's wife found his head lying on the floor, screaming, sitting five feet away from his body, dust pouring out of his neck like sawdust from a doll that's been ripped apart. Dad called Cecil a gullible idiot and threw him out of our house for telling tales.
One night—I think it was night—me and most of the family were sound asleep when we heard Ted hollering outside. Uncle Lem just about died when he saw Aunt Margie way out in the distance, hobbling slowly away from us and into the dusty oblivion. He yelled at her, pleaded from a distance, begged her to come back. He tried to chase after her, but Dad and Ted held him back. I'd never seen Uncle Lem cry before, but he just sat there in a broken puddle. We all eventually left him and went back into the house. He came back inside hours later. Told us that he only stopped crying because the dust had dried up all his tears. Nobody went back to sleep that night. I wondered if anyone else had seen a figure way off in the distance. The figure Aunt Margie had been walking toward.
Food was running low. Dad said we would all starve to death if he didn't try to drive to market. Mom begged him not to go, but he insisted. Right after he opened the door and right before he stepped outside, he looked at me and said, "g'bye." He didn't look at Mom, or Ted, or Uncle Lem when he said that. He looked at me. It was quick and meaningless, but I still wonder what it meant. We never saw him again after that.
Uncle Lem and Ted went next door to check if Cecil was dead. If he had food he wasn't using, we needed it. They told me to stay behind and guard the girls. They came back empty-handed, their eyes haunted. They wouldn't tell us what they saw, they just hugged everyone and said they loved them.
We all slept together in the living room after that. Once more I awoke to a loud noise in the middle of the night, only this time the source was a gunshot. Mom was dead. I grabbed Grace and carried her upstairs, shielding her eyes, while Ted tried to wrestle the gun away from Uncle Lem. He was able to, but only after Lem had put a bullet through his own head. When I came downstairs to help clean up, I asked where all the blood had gone. Ted just looked at me and handed me a broom, and I realized that there hadn't been any blood at all.
It was just me, Ted, Cathie, and Grace after that. Cathie clutched Grace so close to her chest that I was afraid she'd strangle the poor child. Eventually it occurred to me that might be her intention. Ted pointed out that none of us had eaten since we ran out of food the previous week. Cathie wailed that we were all on the cusp of starvation, and we'd be dead within hours if we didn't eat anything.
A week or so after that, we had a very similar conversation.
I caught Cathie sitting by herself on the front porch one day. She was rubbing her fingernail along her forearm, chipping away the dust that had built on her skin. We all had dust on our skin. But as she picked away the dust bit by bit, I realized that the crater she was making in her arm was getting a little too deep. I stopped watching after that, because I knew she would keep on picking through to the other side, and all she'd find was dust.
Grace was asleep when Ted and I found Cathie lying outside, her face fluttering in the breeze, barely attached to her head by a tiny scrap of skin at the right ear. We didn't say anything. Ted didn't even look upset. I probably didn't, either, but I still felt like he should have at least tried to look sad. Her face tore off and soared into the distance as Ted and I dug her grave.
Her face came back not long afterward. It was attached to a cat. It killed Ted. He didn't seem to mind.
I walked up to Grace's room. The stairs wobbled. I had a feeling that the only thing holding them together now was dust. Dust was all that held anything together now. Wind was blowing everywhere; didn't make a difference if you were indoors. Grace was sitting on her bed, hands folded on her lap, looking at me with that calm look on her face that children have when all the adults are hopelessly lost. She'd become pale and thin, but by God you would swear she could have been a movie star one day.
I took her into my arms as the wind blew circles around us. We talked about King Kong one last time. She would have these long periods of silence between her responses, and every time she fell quiet I would think she'd passed, but then she'd come back and tell me she wondered if they built a giant robot monkey and had it climb the Empire State Building. We talked some more about the Empire State Building. I told her what it looked like on the inside. I told her about New York City, and what it was like to be rich and free, and how she'd get to see it all for herself when she became a famous actress.
And then she stopped responding.
When Ted died, the wind blew him away in chunks, but Grace went away in a single, gentle gust, drifting into the air like sand along a shore.
I explored the world outside the house and found nothing. I think I'm the last one in the world who hasn't crumbled into dust yet. I guess I've always been pretty good at holding myself together.
I don't need to eat, drink, or sleep anymore, even though my brain tells me I do. Sometimes I see shapes in the distance that look like people, but when I get closer I just see things that might have once been animals.
Cathie's body came back at one point and stood over Grace's bed for an hour or so. I gave her a mask to cover where her face used to be and told her that Grace wasn't here anymore. I put Cathie back in the ground, but she had already dug herself out again when I woke up the next day. I haven't seen her since.
I'd lost all hope until a little black bird came flying out of the dust and into my hands. I can't explain how I knew, but I knew it was Grace. I could feel it in the dust inside the bird inside the dust. She didn't say anything, but she didn't need to.
It took years to find them all, but I did.
I open my eyes. I'm ready.
In each hand I hold a cluster of strings woven around the legs of countless birds. Aunt Margie, Uncle Lem, Ted, Grace, Mom, Dad, Cecil, and even Phyllis from the theater are here, along with other folks I don't recognize. I thank them for being kind enough to volunteer. Their wings are twitching in anticipation. I take a deep breath, allowing the dust to fill my lungs. It's so much easier to breathe now that I just accept it. Normally this plan would seem insane and impossible, but these days the world itself is insane and impossible. Besides, I'm so much lighter now. There's no more anger weighing me down. No more hatred.
I open the door to the gilded birdcage. The little black birds pour out and fall upward into the sky. As I feel my feet leave the ground, I stare into the beautiful brown oblivion and whisper a dusty word of gratitude for finally setting this old dog free.


In light of the containment breach at Site-36 early this morning, it has been decided by this administrative committee the Horizon Initiative has acted in violation to the terms of the Non-Interference Operations Pact. As such, the Foundation has withdrawn from this pact, though it recognizes that the breach was the result of rogue agents within the Horizon Initiative. Further investigation of SCP-089 and its purported influence upon Foundation personnel is ongoing.
This committee has also seen it fit to award Mary-Ann Lewitt an honorary Foundation Star for her part in neutralizing SCP-089. In addition, the body of Ms. Lewitt has been returned to the Horizon Initiative, as a sign of goodwill to relieve tensions during dissolution of the Non-Interference Operations Pact.
- Overseer 04

—
The main drawback of Samson's braid, DeMontfort determined, was that when it was removed, all the damage sustained during its use, and all the pain that went with it, came back at once.
Five fractures, a broken leg, two bullet wounds, internal bleeding. For a man of his age and condition, it was something of a miracle that he survived it. He was quite certain he'd be better off dead.
The justice had been swift this time around. Relics taken back, Malleus dissolved completely, his position stripped from him permanently, his future a certain reassignment to some backwater research project or monotonous desk job somewhere where he could cause no trouble and work off his penance for a decade or so. Either that, and he shuddered to consider this alternative, or they would send him back to parish work.
Ugh. Might as well drown out the pain and boredom and survivor's guilt with that mightiest of man's creations, television.
He pressed the remote on the arm of his hospital bed. The TV on the wall flicked on, to reveal Dora the Explorer going about her pitiful purgatorial existence. Thankfully, it was muted.
Hey. Fuckface.
DeMontfort blinked. Yes, those subtitles said exactly that. He reached for his bedside table. Napkin…pen…there.
Hello, Deer. DeMontfort wrote on the napkin.
About time you got in touch. Goddamn, son. That was impressive shit. Nearly brought a tear to my eye.
You? Caring about things? Perish the thought.
I gotta care, ‘cause if I don't, I'm just going to be bored. You fucked shit up, and I respect that. Not as much as Top Mom McLiftsalot, but hey, you do what you can do.
That's the closest I've heard to a compliment out of you.
Guess you're on your way out, eh? Good for ya. You're well overdue for an ass-stick-oscopy.
It's a pity I promised not to hunt you down anymore.
I know, I'm an inconsolable mess over it. If we keep going on this route we'll end up in a buddy cop movie and GOD FUCKING DAMMIT SWIPER I'M TRYING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION HERE…bah, whatever. What I'm trying to say is keep yer head up. You ain't dead yet, and let's be honest, that never stopped me. Didn't stop her either.
DeMontfort didn't know what to make of this. Human emotion from Saturn Deer?
Bear in mind, I say that only because if you give up, I'm a Joker without a Batman, and that's no fun.
Ah, there it was. That made more sense.
Now if you'll excuse me, I got shit to do, money to steal, and bitches to fuck.
The subtitles shifted back to their usual dissertation of preschool Spanish. DeMontfort changed the channel. Maybe there was a game on.
—

Hey. If you're reading this, I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it home.
I hate the fact that I'm writing this, honestly. Part of me wonders if it's a good idea at all: it might just cause you more pain, to hear me after I'm gone. Then I realize that I need to write this, because if I don't, some things might go unsaid. I can't let that happen.
I love you.
Salah, you're my best friend, and the best man I know, and the best husband I could have ever asked for. You were there when I needed you, (and even when I didn't), and made the little moments of my life meaningful. I know you'll raise Naomi right: You've got this.
Naomi, I'm sorry I won't be there for you. I'm sorry you'll only ever have stories and pictures of me. Just know that I love you, and I'm proud of you. Watch over your dad for me, okay? Don't want him stirring up too much trouble. And take care of that guitar: It's yours now. It got me through a war, so whenever you're feeling down, just play away.
As a final thought…don't mourn me too much, okay? Get those tears out and then put that chin up. Always keep looking for the little things that make life good. The world is a tough and ugly place, but there's more than enough good to make all the pain worth it. God's in the little things.
You two taught me that.
I love you both, and I always will.

—
I, Salah Zairi, hereby resign from active duty in the Shepherd Corps of the Horizon Initiative…
—
Salah laid Naomi down in her crib. First night home from the hospital. First night of the rest of her life. The scars would stay, as would the damage to her lungs, and she would grow up knowing no life but one filled with those injuries, but it would be life.
The house was quiet. Dark. Empty. And yet Salah felt like he would simply walk into the next room and find Mary-Ann sleeping on the couch, exhausted from work or from playing with Naomi, hair all frazzled and snoring gently.
But she wasn't there. The house was hollow. The living room was dark. The bedroom was empty. The kitchen was cold. The feeling was finally sinking in, now that Salah no longer found himself spending every free moment at the hospital with Naomi.
Salah walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. He'd make some soup for himself and go to bed. He hadn't eaten all day. He felt like sleeping forever.
It took a moment to realize that he had opened the wrong cupboard. Instead of canned soup and corn and peas, there were plates and cups, and a glass bottle with a thumb of whiskey left in the bottom. The last little bit of Mary-Ann's rainy-day stash.
There was a pang of pain. This was the last anchor of Mary-Ann in the house: her guitar had been passed on to Naomi, and most anything else was just dressing. Just things. Not really hers. But this was hers, and it would just linger in that cabinet and grow old and dusty and unused. Well and truly dead.
Salah stared at it for a moment, before reaching for the bottle and the tumbler that sat next to it. A thought had occurred to him, and without hesitation he was going to follow it through. The young man he thought tamed dusted himself off and screamed at him, screamed that he was turning his back on his own identity, that he would be no proper Muslim. Salah told the young man to shut up and fuck off. Identity? Who was he, when you really got down to it? A Muslim who loved the Queen of England and wrote essays on Chaucer and had heard the Clockwork Voice of God. A man born in obedience, raised in hate, turned to peace, who had found love and ended up with more questions than answers. He was Salah, and right now there was one thing he was sure of. There was one Truth he could define with absolute conviction right now: No god worth worshipping would throw a hissy fit over a man who wanted proper closure.
He sat down at the table, opened the bottle, and poured himself what was left.
“Here's to you.”
He lifted the tumbler and drank its contents in one swift gulp.
Eight Years Later
Naomi Ibtisam Zairi-Lewitt sat on top of her father's desk, legs dangling over the edge. A thick book rested in her lap, and her face was scrunched in concentration as she read it. She had a day off from school today, so she had spent it exploring the English department and browsing through her father's collection of literature under the watchful eye of Joan of Arc on the wall.
A few feet away, Salah typed away at his computer, putting the finishing touches on his e-mail.

…Either way, I'm thrilled that they've considered review of the Old Brass Gospel for entry into the Universal Texts. Three cheers for progress! We might actually be able to see it published before we die of old age. (Though it will probably take them another decade to make any changes.)
Give my best to the others. Naomi and I will visit soon.
God bless
-Salah

“You ready to go home, sweet pea?” he said to his daughter.
“Yeah.” Naomi shut her book, hopped off the desk, and began to gather her books and drawings and inhaler into her backpack. Salah sent his e-mail, shut down his computer, and collected his papers from under the paperweight that had the entire Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks on it in minuscule print. A short time later, the two left the office.
To anyone watching in the hall, they would have seen nothing but two average people: one a man with glasses and a few grey hairs at his temples and a red paisley tie and a grey jacket and a brown briefcase. The other a skinny, dark-skinned girl with dirty straw hair and scabby knees and burn scars all over and a bright blue t-shirt with Pikachu on the front and a cherry-red backpack and twiggy arms weighed down with books.
They went home, and had dinner, and finished the rest of Naomi's math homework, and after a while Salah tucked her into bed, though he knew she would stay up late reading the next chapter of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān anyway. Salah sat up a while and graded papers, and then went to bed himself.
Life went on.

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