Pissweed

Pissweed or, A Former Angel Called Pissweed

A quasi-non-serious tale about light drugs, friends, and things that probably should be discussed outside of a tale called Pissweed.

Image Credit
Art: Bea, my girlfriend
Cabinet: Edited by myself, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pong_cabinet_-_320846208_-_axeldeviaje.png

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F.A.Q.

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Pissweed

"So… weed or mushrooms?" The large dog-man asks, before taking a hit from the bong, his metal snout clinging against the glass as a flame dances in his palm. "Mphh… I mean, you must have a preference."
"I like 'em both. It just… ya know. Depends on the day," says a shorter, grey-furred creature. They stood upright, albeit considerably shorter than the man, wrapped in a comfortable dark hoodie that's several sizes too big for them. They indicate it's time for their turn on the bong, to which the much larger man obliges. Their rat-like, prehensile tail curls. "Like… mushrooms are easy. You eat one; done. But with weed? It's like… a ritual and shit. A ritual that's fuckin rad, but still… Unless it's an edible, I guess. But there's like… entirely different feelings around both. It's like asking me to choose between… I dunno. Chicken or turkey. You ask me that every time."
"Well, wait, Posso. Like… first of all, chicken and turkey are different meats for different situations." The dog-man chuckles, knowing full well this proves their point.
"Yeah, exactly, man!" Posso says, pretending to be bewildered by their friend's obliviousness. "Freddie, like… you gotta be fuckin' with me…"
"I am." Freddie concedes. "It's only 'cause I love ya."
"Gaay," they chuckle, ironically. "But yeah yeah, love ya too dude… Ey, I got ya a little somethin'." Posso reaches into their bag, pulling out a gift; its wrapping held together by an excessive amount of staples, and a stray ribbon sticking out from a taped-down crevice.
"T-the fuck is that?" Freddie tilts his head. In a way, the horrid packaging job is genius. He genuinely couldn't tell what it could be from all the wadded-up gift wrap.
"Why don't ya find out?" they tease, tossing the heap of paper over to Freddie. As Freddie carefully tries to find where the wrapping ends and the gift begins, it falls out on its own… a vinyl copy of the latest album by Insane Clown Posse; The Great Milenko.
"Aw, you shouldn't have. I've been waiting for this to come out for a while… Oh, wait, how much did this cost?" Freddie looks up, concerned.
"Nothin'. Money ain't real. Besides, it's bad manners to ask that shit."
"… Fair enough… Thanks, Posso. Want to listen with me?"
"Damn right I do, that's like… at least a tenth of the reason why I got it." They smirk, catching the album from Freddie before hopping off the leather upholstery. They slide the record out and adjust the needle on the record player, before flopping down on Freddie's lap.
They had only just gotten into the third track before they heard a knock at the door. A snow-furred feline lingers under the doorway, her black face markings hiding the bags under her eyes. "Are you two listening to your silly carnival music again?"
"… No…" they both say in unison, listening to literal clown music, hoping that they weren't in trouble for something they forgot about.
"Normally I'd join you, but something important came up. Freddie, we need you— Oh no, you're already high, aren't you?" She sighs.
"Aggie, I-" Freddie raises a finger.
"No, no, I understand." Aggie excuses. "It's your day off. Or, it's supposed to be. It's fine, just… get dressed, we need to meet for a debrief."
"It can't be an email? Or a text?… A post-it?" He groans, stumbling a bit as he tries to stand up, his left leg already asleep.
"No, we're mobilizing right after. I'll handle the thinking, you just… do your best."
"Aaalways do… Hey, uh, Posso. We'll uh… put this on the back burner. I'll try and be back tomorrow. Or tonight, maybe. I'll text you, I guess." Freddie rubs the back of his head, realizing that he's just now feeling his grasp on reality slip away.
"Yeah, no prob. Don't burn down anything you ain't supposed to," Posso teases as they leave.

Freddie's eyes glazed over his notes as they drove. He'd probably read it nine times by now, but the debrief flew over his head all the same. He'd since changed out of his comfy house clothes, and into something more fitting for the job, even looking human for the trip. A simple leather jacket and pants were all he needed. Something sufficiently intimidating, but not trying too hard. All this, just in time for his buzz to dwindle enough so he doesn't hug everything that moves. But, his notes were just…

OᑭEᖇᗩTIOᑎ: GET ᕼIᗰ

.

1. ᖴiᑎᗪ ᑭiSSᗯEEᗪ

2. ᗷEᗩT ᕼiS ᗩSS (OᑭTiᑎOᒪ? ??)

3. ᕼᑌG iT OᑌT

4. GET ᒪᑌᑎᑕᕼ

.

.

.

.

.

"So uh… Aggie… This is about getting Pissw- I mean, Randy, yeah?" He shows her the note he wrote.
"Correct. It's uh, probably best if you don't call him 'Pissweed' when we see him. So get it out of your system, alright?… Why do you all call him that, again?" Aggie tilts her head, her eyes on the road as she drives down the dusty Mohave streets.
"Oh, well uh, back in Eden, when we were creating the universe and whatnot, he was kinda a huge prima-donna. Like… He was pretty vain about his appearance. I think his preferred art form was the act of Creation itself, instead of something like… writing or singing. He was obsessed with creating the most beautiful shit. His pride and joy was the maned wolf. Beautiful animal.
But a bunch of us decided to pull a bit of a prank on him. Thought it'd be funny if someone sabotaged his design in a place he'd never think to look."
"… You made his favorite design's urine smell like weed?" Aggie shakes her head.
"I didn't personally, but it was funny as Hell at the time… Oh. Huh… That was bad then, huh?" Freddie lowers his gaze, realizing that this was, in fact, bullying. Much more, bullying that he played a part in.
Aggie frowns. "… A bit, dear…"
"… Well, fuck me. I thought that he was okay with it."
"Would you be okay with being called Pissweed?"
"… Ever since we got back from Hell, I had to contend with being called the Devil… We were literally demonized."
"Yes, exactly." She nods, eyes still on the road. "So, now you know how he feels… Anyway, we're after him because he was close to Hugh. Or Huesic, at the time. And given Hugh's current status with the Foundation… he's a loose end for them. SCPF's been monitoring for Randy. And now that they found him, they're about to organize a sting. We're going there before he's captured."
"So a rescue mission, then? Suits me fine," Freddie says, now resting his head on the window.
"Correct. He's been living in this apartment complex for about ten years."
"Really? He knew Hugh, and he's living all the way outta town like this?… Well, this should be easy. 'Hey, wanna spend the rest of your life in a padded cell? No? Good, come with us.'"
"Let's… hope it's as simple as that," she sighs.
"… Hey, we usually figure something out. And when we do, you'll whisk us away back home, we'll order room service, and crash like always… Love ya, ey?"
Aggie looks at him and smiles, patting him on the thigh. "That sounds wonderful. Love you too, dear."

They step out of the car; some 200 dollar shitbox they plan on ditching entirely. They couldn't afford to be followed, so Aggie's presence was practically required now. A cat of many talents, she specializes in writing, a bit of sculpting, running a scientific research conglomerate, stealing, and what's probably the most relevant now, her ability to reinterpret the rules.
More specifically, the ever complex rules written for her blood. The ink in her blood was designed to "bind her to Hell", but she warped and twisted it to become "send her to Hell." Then, "send anyone who comes into contact with it to Hell." Needless to say, after a few millennia, and a couple of centuries out of Hell and on Earth, it became a means of liquid-based teleportation back to any place she calls home.
"Do you remember the room number?" Freddie asks, scratching behind his ears.
"103. Should be the first floor, third down. He should be home by now." Aggie points in the general direction of the rooms.
"Good, should be easy… By the way, what does he… do? For money, I mean," he asks, tilting his head as they walk.
"Gas Station attendant."
"Really? Huh… Hey, you smell that?" Fredrick sniffs the air as they near Randy's room. "It's…"
"… Weed?" Aggie asks, starting to smell the aroma as well.
"No. Not quite. It's… It's piss."
"… O-oh…"
"… Brace yourself, I suppose." Freddie sighs, taking his own advice. He inhales and knocks.
Silence. Freddie knocks again
Aggie shrugs. "To be fair, I don't think people answer their doors unless they're expecting someone."
"Well, what now? Just sit here till he wakes up?"
"No, no, we need to get him now… Let's see… I could maybe pick the lock, or maybe nab a spare key from management?… Oh, mayb- FREDDIE NO!"
Alas, it was too late. With the hellfire force he's known for, he wordlessly kicks down the door, a trail of flames following as it travels across the apartment and lodges itself into the opposite wall. "O-oh, sorry, this seemed the fastest way."
"People heard that, you clod. I'm surprised the fire alarm didn't g- Oh fuck- the smell's worse." Aggie recoils, unable to stop herself from coughing. She adjusts, tries to stop breathing through her nose, and charges on, looking inside. "Randy? W-… Oh, Hells, the state of this place."
The entire apartment complex should have been condemned based on the conditions of Randy's living room alone. Pizza boxes littered the trash-covered floor, while the walls were covered in what one hopes is just dried-up soda. Cigarette-stained tables, and plastic bottles filled with a lukewarm, fetid, yellow-brown liquid. In the corner huddled a fox-like creature; his matted fur hiding rashes and patches of acne, his long legs folded into a fetal position.
At first, it looked like he was cowering. But as the cat and dog stepped over the nest of garbage, it became clearer. He was resigned.
"… You aren't the Foundation…" he says, his voice like broken glass across their neck. "Oh, Frederick. Agatha. It's uh… been a while." He sounded almost disappointed.
"Yeah… Hey Randy. It's us," Freddie approaches while looking him up and down. "It's been forever ago, huh? We uh… came to get you."
Aggie was too fixated on the mess to even speak. And even if she could, she knew it wouldn't help things.
"You two have the worst timing," Randy sighs.
"I mean, we're kinda cutting it close, if anything," Freddie gently says, taking a seat, leveling the trash nest Randy had. "You doing okay, bud? You don't look too good."
Randy looks up at Freddie, his baggy eyes void of anything that'd indicate a soul. It was as if a corpse was speaking to him. "What's the point? We go on and live forever, but eventually, we lose all purpose. Why even bother?"
"Hey, no, there's plenty of reason to bother… You've been uh… pissing in bottles, buddy? Why?"
Randy is silent. He eventually gives Freddie a shrug. "It's just easier than getting up…"
Freddie looks up. Randy's bathroom was just a few steps away: the floor around it sticky, like that of a movie theater. Freddie and Agatha's eyes widened as they processed what Randy just said. "So you uh… split with Hugh, didn't you?"
"… Yeah, I did," Randy sighs "We had uh… creative differences, I guess? They weren't the person who made me."
"Well, I mean… with the war crimes 'n all…"
"I guess I should have seen it sooner. They were so fixated on their job, they kinda just… threw everything else to the wind. I wasn't good at anything useful, so I was a distraction."
"How long ago did you two split?" Freddie looks at him, brushing away a soda can from underneath him.
"I dunno… 230-ish years?"
Freddie nods, listening intently. "So… You're just now giving up, then? What happened? What are you putting your passion into?"
"… I don't have any passion left to give. And I can't do what I was best at, now. I just… I can't do this, Frederick. I was an entitled piece of shit; I don't deserve anything. I want to just… go away, and not exist… Maybe Hugh can make that happen."
"Hey, stop talking like that."
"Wh-" Randy's interrupted.
"I don't know if you noticed, but if someone is shit-talking my friend, I'm gonna beat them up. That still applies if it's my friend themself. You got people who care about you, Pissweed. Two of 'em are in the room with you, and the rest are back at our place."
Randy sits up straight. "You… aren't angry with us? For the whole Hell thing?"
"Well, I mean… okay, yeah, a little, but we handled it. Besides, you didn't design it. Hugh did."
"Freddie, I allowed that. I'm a bad person."
"Okay, see, you say that, but if you really were a 'bad person,' you wouldn't be saying you were. Assholes don't show remorse, and you want to be better, yeah?"
Randy looks up at the window, its dusty blinds shut, and its glass caked in dirt. "I do, yeah."
"Then you owe it to yourself to be better. Not me, not Aggie, sure as fuck not Hugh. YOU."
"… I deserve to be punished though. Like… I sat by and let you all go to Hell."
Freddie inhaled. "Dude, I-… Actually, okay. You want me to punish you? Cause I got just the fuckin' thing."
"What?" Randy asked, now somewhat shaken.
"Boot camp. We're gonna put you through the wringer so you realize that THIS," Freddie gestures to the room around them, "isn't you. Aggie and her posse're going to be on your ass, while you and I are gonna work on your health, and find ya something else to put your passion into."
"You… have the money for that?"
"We do. We can work something out. But, please? Come with us? Before you do something you'll regret?… Like throwing yourself in a cell for fuck-knows how long?" Freddie begged, holding out his hand for Randy.
"… Heh. You know, I think I remember having a similar conversation with Hugh." He chuckles shaking his head. "… Deal."
"Fuckin A!" Freddie grins, pulling the poor, thin creature into his arms, crushing him instantly. He lets Randy go after a generous noogie. "Let's go, leave this shit, you won't need it where we're going. Ready, Aggie?"
"YES. PLEASE." She blurts out, before steeling herself. "I-I mean… Yes. I think I hear sirens coming… Probably for that explosion, earlier."
"Oh, uh, sorry 'bout that." Freddie chuckled, before looking to Randy. "Let's bail, ey?"
"Yes… Also, Freddie?"
"Yeah?" Freddie tilts his head, the ink now starting to envelop them both as Aggie approached.
"… Thanks."


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"Over/"
Come fly with me.

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2021

January 2
Site-54: Leipzig, Free State of Saxony, Federal Republic of Germany

Imogen Tarrow, Director of Site-54, was not German.
She had always imagined that the job carried that unwritten requirement. A German might object to the very existence of a Foundation facility beneath a city of over six hundred thousand people, and Site-54 was more dangerous than most. A German might have sentimental attachments to the locals, which would make the draconian security measures required to obscure the place's existence more difficult. Most of all, however, a German might feel even more keenly the active snubbing bestowed on the Director of this Site and all its representatives by the other twenty-one major facilities within the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.
Site-54 was effectively an inland, urban island.
In theory, Tarrow could call on her fellow Directors for aid if something outside her ability to manage were to occur. In theory, an overwhelming supply of manpower and materiel could be mustered in her defense at a moment's notice. She did not want to test that theory.
She now habitually woke up with a feeling of low dread thrumming through her veins. Most of her people, if they knew what was what, spent their first few seconds of consciousness each day wondering if the end of their little world was in progress. Virtually everything kept caged at 54 was potentially Veil-breaking, and certainly bone-breaking in most cases. The further the Site expanded, the more horrifying nonsense it incorporated. The warehouse, and whatever malign power snatched trespassers out of it. The tunnels, and their monster. The infirmary which bestowed an insidious infirmity of its own upon its patients. The status quo had become so obviously and impossibly dangerous that there now seemed little reason to avoid conducting dangerous experiments and further piling up the heap of catastrophes waiting to happen. The Volkswagen spaceship. Those infernal go-karts. The Conceptual Restabiliser. Sometimes she wondered if the real reason the Foundation had risked the wrath of one of its most effective and independent administrative regions to build a Site in an urban centre was that if something were to happen there, and of course it would be an apocalyptic happening, they could play it off as a nuclear strike by a rogue nation.
She tried not to wonder that very often, but it certainly explained all the acrimony.
So fragile was the state of equilibrium that alone of all the Directors not taking part in ETTRA's absurd sting op, Tarrow had been briefed on its details. If anything were to go wrong today — even though 54 had absolutely nothing to do with the operation — it was a foregone conclusion that somehow, some way, it would go wrong here as well. The Director of ETTRA, Dr. Dan (she didn't know if that was a given name, a surname, or a Cher name), had swung by a few weeks back and done nothing more substantive than take a few pictures and offer the wholly unsatisfying assurance that everything would be fine.
She'd heard similar blandishments before, and she knew what they usually meant.
Imogen Tarrow, Director of Site-54, was waiting for all hell to break loose.

Comune dell'Aquila: Province of L'Aquila, Italy

Philip E. Deering got up in the morning for several reasons.
He didn't actually mind his job. He was good at it; nobody had been doing any of what he did for longer than he had, and it showed. He was as much an expert as Dr. Lillihammer or Chief Ibanez were at what they did, even if what he did was fix broken terminals and clean counters. Expertise was expertise, and its exercise was pleasurable. He had friends, if not many; he had hobbies, if none he was particularly good at. He had Doug — "Good morning, Philip," the mirror monster rasped at him from the glass light fixture on the ceiling. And, of course, he had Amelia… but that was the problem, wasn't it?
Because every morning when he woke up, she was already there with him. She was the reason to end all reasons, and he didn't have to roll out of bed to be with her. So what, precisely, was his incentive to do so?
He rolled out of bed, kicked his jumpsuit on the hotel floor, and touched his toes. He stood up, he stretched — winced loudly, felt the tingle in his knees and elbows — and turned around to face the bed again.
She was stretched across the space where he'd been lying just moments before, her angular eyebrows arched, her sea-green eyes sparkling, a mischievous grin on her face beneath the tangle of her limp brown hair. She did this almost every morning, and every time she did it, he felt his decision to tackle the day had been vindicated.
"Morning," she said.
"Morning," he replied.
"WARNING," Phil's work phone added in muted tones, from the jumble of his jumpsuit. "NEW PRIORITY MAIL."
Amelia guffawed, and flipped over onto her back. Instead of fishing out the phone, Phil watched her. "That'll be Sokolsky," she said. "Wanting us to back home early."
"Bullshit." He rubbed his aching throat with both hands. "We got choked out by a demon for him, he's not gonna cut short the holiday."
"Choked," she corrected him gently, smile quirking further. "Not 'choked out'."
"What's the difference?" he asked, bending down to pick up the jumpsuit. He checked the right pocket first, which was novel, and pulled out the phone.
"Look it up later." He could hear that she was smirking now, and he wanted to see that, but what he saw on the phone was temporarily clouding his vision.
She waited a few seconds, then prompted him: "Well?"
He flipped the phone into the air. It bounced between the nightstand and the wall with a dull thud. "God fucking dammit."
"You probably broke it," Doug told Phil (and only Phil). "Now you're in trouble."
Amelia reached out, grabbed his thighs, and pulled herself across the bed. "Where's my suit?" she asked, pushing him out of the way so that she, too, could get up.

"Carry me out?"
Phil affected ignorance. "Carry you out?"
"Of the hotel." They were standing in the lobby, which was empty. Phil strongly suspected Gillespie had bought out the entire building just for them, as a reward. A very brief reward. It was probably for the best — they only had their work clothes, and the Director of Site-77 probably wasn't about to take them shopping. He was a little bit surprised they were meant to meet their contact on the street, though. The hour was early, but the chances of getting spotted seemed high…
You don't get paid to think, mop man. The trip abroad had obviously done him some good; he'd normally have heard those words from his external monologue rather than his internal.
Amelia was smiling impishly at him. This was particularly impish, as she knew the effect it had. "I gave you a ring. Carry me out."
He rubbed his neck, and she laughed. "Come on, tough guy. The Site docs said you're fine."
"They missed something," Doug informed him from a crystal chandelier.
Phil shrugged. "I think you're confusing… several different traditions all at once. So I'll meet you halfway."
She was riding on his back, nuzzling his neck, when they met the plainclothes agent on the deserted street. He was tall, well-built, and square-jawed; he smiled at them amiably. "Just married?"
"Just engaged."
The agent chuckled, shook his head, and opened the door of the nondescript grey sedan. Phil turned to glance at Amelia; she kissed him, and waggled her eyebrows.
"Come on," he said.
She opened her eyes wider, and pursed her lips.
He sighed.
He turned away from the car, backed into it, and squatted down. When he felt her hop off his back and into the car, he turned around and pushed her along the bench so he could join her.
"You're never allowed to get married," the agent remarked as he got settled in the driver's seat. "You'd set the whole world projectile vomiting."
The ride to the outskirts of L'Aquila was languorous and pleasant. Phil mused that he wouldn't really miss Italy; he'd effectively failed to notice it, between focusing on mortal peril and focusing on…
He was holding Amelia's hand, so he could feel her pulse quicken as they reached the heliport. She was staring at the lone helicopter, a bulky single-rotor with a matte grey paintjob. Her expression gave him pause.
"We're in a bit of a rush, folks." The agent opened the door for them, and this time Amelia didn't ask for a piggyback ride. She looked very serious indeed, now. He tried to match the look.
The agent pulled open the side door, and ushered them inside. There was already a second agent there, a woman with a tight blonde ponytail and cold eyes. The interior was spartan: two rows of benches, a few equipment lockers, and several panels full of instrumentation that Phil didn't recognize. He'd never done work on Site-43's choppers. He was more of a vending machine guy.
Phil and Amelia sat down together on one bench as the agent closed the door and sat down across from them, beside his own partner.
"Love the bird," Amelia remarked.
The man grinned. "Lovebirds yourself."
Amelia took Phil's hand in hers, and giggled. Now it was his own pulse that Phil felt quicken; Amelia didn't giggle. "Nice of you folks to give us a ride. Beats the hell out of a limousine."
The man patted the nearest bulkhead. "She's a beaut, right?" The urban scene suddenly dropped away, and they were aloft. "Saved my life more times than I care to count."
Amelia was slowly working the engagement ring off Phil's finger. "What team you with, anyway?"
"GIGO," the woman responded. The response was quick and sure, and it certainly checked out. MTF Pi-43 ("Garbage In, Garbage Out") was Lake Huron's primary transport unit.
Amelia palmed the engagement ring, and rubbed her hands together. Phil reached out to hold them in his own. "Circulation problems," he explained.
Both agents nodded. Phil stuck his hands, and the ring, in his pocket.
"How'd you boys swing a Cyclone?" Amelia queried. "All I ever see are Sea Kings."
The man shrugged. "Just lucky, I guess."
"Not very lucky, though." She was still smiling.
"What do you mean?"
Amelia was flushed. "If you'd stolen a Sea King, I wouldn't have been so suspicious. GIGO hasn't got a single Cyclone."
The woman smirked. The man rolled his eyes. "Fucking Canadians," he sighed. "Can't ever use the new stuff, can you?"
"And as far as I can see, this thing isn't going to make it across the Atlantic. So where are we actually going?"
The man got off the bench, walked to the front of the chopper, and leaned over the pilot's chair. "ETA?"
"Five hours."
He glanced back at them. "Long trip. Let's keep this friendly, and nobody needs to get hurt."
"Nobody here," the woman corrected him.
He grinned.

The next few hours passed in brittle silence. Phil felt selfconscious even clearing his throat. He kept Amelia's hands in his, partially to keep them warm, partially because it made him feel stronger. Their pulses pulsed in tune with the rotors overhead as they passed out of Italy to parts unknown.
The female agent carefully disassembled their cell phones and tablets. She removed the SIM cards, and pocketed them.
"Why haven't you just taken the passwords from us, and radioed them in?" Phil asked, suddenly aware that he'd been wondering this when the words jumped out of his mouth.
Both women glanced at him. He glanced back at Amelia first, and something in her eyes made him suddenly sorry he'd asked the question.
"We want your murder monster," the female agent replied. Phil immediately understood this to be a lie. If Project Resurrection wasn't all that interested in Doug, he doubted some random anomalous terrorists would be. He suddenly wished he had his phone; he could call Gillespie, even at this distance, and
Oh, fuck. That was why. That was why he and Amelia were sitting in the helicopter instead of falling out of it. Whoever these people were, they didn't have secure long-range comms.
We're holding on to the passwords for them until they can safely get rid of us.
The silence turned icier still after that revelation, and Phil's heart beat faster and faster as the final few hours ticked down. He found his mind frantically rushing over calming, banal things; when the pilot turned to face them and gave a quick thumbs up to the agents, he was in the midst of being thankful that they'd both used the washroom before leaving the hotel.
The helicopter was no longer moving forward. Both agents stood up, and gestured for Phil and Amelia to do the same.
"It's a long way down," Doug mused apropos of nothing from Phil's inward-turned wristwatch, the first gift Amelia had given him.
Amelia stuck one hand in her jumpsuit pocket. Phil pulled her other hand into his own jumpsuit pocket. She took a deep breath. "Are you going to kill us? When we give you the passwords?"
The male agent shook his head. "Only an idiot starts a fight in a helicopter." He walked to one of the lockers, and swung the door open. "Put these on."
He tossed them a pair of backpacks, one by one. They landed on the deck. Phil glanced down, then back up curiously. "You're going to let us go?"
The woman laughed. "We're at the edge of town. By the time you can tell anyone what happened, it'll be far too late." She took Phil's phone off the bench, and handed it to him. He took it with his free hand, and the agent repeated the process with Amelia. "You can't call anyone, and the closest Foundation Site is a long hike through unfamiliar urban terrain."
Amelia took another deep breath. Phil could feel her hand shaking. "What if I decide to be an idiot, and start a fight in the helicopter?"
The woman shrugged, then punched Amelia in the gut. She fell to the floor, knees on the parachute pack, and Phil went down with her, knees on the
SON OF A BITCH
Philip's eyes had narrowed with the pain of striking the deck plating. His jumpsuit had padded knees — he was, on his better days, a mechanic — but it still hurt. He kept them narrowed to hide the way he felt about what had just happened.
"Are you going to let her get away with that, Philip?"
Not a fucking chance.

When he stood back up, he had tunnel vision — no, laser focus. It played out in front of him like a literal play. Amelia had been sending him subtle signals since the moment she'd recognized the truth and taken off his reflective diamond engagement ring. He knew what he had to do, and he had just rather conveniently lost all squeamishness about doing it.
He slung the parachute over his back, and Amelia did the same. "Gonna tell us how to use these?" Amelia grunted, clutching her stomach. Phil felt another pang, and refused to let it go.
"You'll figure it out," the woman responded. "Or you won't."
As the agents prodded them towards the cockpit, Phil carefully rotated his watch so that it no longer faced his body. Deprived of any closer station, Doug immediately appeared on the chopper's door window. The agents didn't notice.
"You're up first, straw hair." The woman pushed Amelia forward, and the pilot brought a wired microphone up to her face.
She hesitated. "You'll want to back off, everybody, or you'll hear it before whoever's on the other end of this does."
The agents stepped away; the man leaned against the door, and Phil was briefly terrified he'd obscure Doug's vision.
Amelia sighed, and recited the password into the radio. The pilot pulled the microphone back, and said in clipped tones: "Please confirm, over." He then cocked his head for a moment. Whatever he heard back on his headset obviously satisfied him; he nodded curtly.
"Your turn," the male agent snapped. He poked Phil in the back.
"No." Phil shook his head, while the rest of him started shaking as well. "I don't trust you. Let Amy go first, then we'll—"
The female agent pulled the door open — her partner very nearly fell out — then grabbed Amelia and hurled her through.
"Off the deep end," Doug remarked as Phil gawped at the empty space into which his fiancé had just disappeared.
"She'll be fine," the woman said. "Now get on with it."
The pilot raised the microphone again. The window of the door was now on the outside of the helicopter. The engagement ring was in Phil's pocket. His watch was facing the wrong way.
Doug appeared on the curve of the cockpit glass. Phil leaned forward, muttered the password, then walked towards the door.
"Please confirm, over."
"Happy landings," the woman sneered.
"Wait," the pilot said. "Something's not—"
Phil was not afraid of heights. Save for the single plane ride which had brought him to Italy, he had no conception of heights at all; he'd spent the last twenty years underground. He didn't even close his eyes as he turned to face the agents, whispered "Sorry," then stepped backward into the sky.
He really was sorry.
He wasn't the only one.
An ear-splitting shriek filled the air as Doug lost sight of Phil, so loud that his sudden passage through the firmament was entirely inaudible. The effects were immediate, and revelatory. The chopper rolled hard towards him — I'm falling I'm falling I'm fucking falling — and the woman in the door disappeared. It rolled harder, until it was almost upside-down, and she reappeared very briefly as she lost her grip and fell into the rotors. Over the screeching, over the roar, he heard what he would later describe as a very loud "pop."
He would be weeping.
He turned his watch back around with one shaking hand, and the screeching stopped.
"That wasn't very nice, Philip," Doug remarked as they fell away from the cloud of blood, bone, and torn stretches of skin flapping in the high-altitude winds.
He pulled the ripcord, and a burst of black fabric hid the rain of human mulch from view.

Phil came down in an empty parking lot next to a cluster of tumbledown structures. Amelia came barrelling out of an alleyway, her jumpsuit torn in two places, a few small scratches on her face. He thrashed around until the straps fell off his shoulders, and reached out for her as the chute enveloped his horizon.
Darkness, mad scrabbling, a sudden impact; he clutched at the fabric shroud and pulled, and there she was. Warm. Alive. He kissed her.
"It was," he gasped. "It was like a 'pop'."
He started to weep. He fell to his padded knees again, and didn't feel the asphalt — he didn't strike the asphalt. She'd caught him. She hauled him back to his feet, and pulled him close. "Shh."
"You killed them, Philip," Doug rasped.
"I killed them." Phil pulled her closer. "I killed them. It was… I heard…"
"Shh," she repeated. "You didn't kill anybody."
"I did. I killed them." The embrace was so tight that his left hand was clutching her left shoulder, his right on her right. "Oh god."
She pulled back, and he reached out for her again as she extricated them from the parachute. He was still crying. She was crying, too. "You didn't kill anybody," she repeated.
"You did."
"I did."
"If they died, Doug killed them."
That gave him pause. He stared at her. He still had only the vaguest sense of where he was. "Doug killed them."
She nodded.
He tapped his chest. "Doug is part of me. Isn't he?" He shook his head. "I'm a monster."
"We're a monster, Philip."
She clutched both of his shoulders. "You're not."
He opened his mouth to splutter another protest, and then something she'd said came crashing through the haze like a careening helicopter, and he asked: "What do you mean, 'if they died'?"
She pointed wordlessly over his shoulder. He looked; the other end of the lot bordered on an industrial park, from which a plume of smoke was rising. "They had to land. But they did land, Phil. And we need to get out of here, pronto."
Reality snapped back into place. The parking lot was surrounded by a jumble of urban sprawl. They'd been dumped at the outskirts of a large city; the chopper couldn't be more than a few blocks away.
"Oh," he said. "Oh, shit."
"Look down," said Doug.
Phil looked down.
There was a severed finger on the discarded parachute.
Amelia slid her hands down his arms, grabbed his hands again, and pulled him into a run.

Site-77: Province of L'Aquila, Italy

"Director? It's probably nothing, but—"
Shirley Gillespie waved the rest of the sentence away. "Lose that preface from your vocabulary. If it's nothing, I'll tell you when you're done. Now spit it out."
The technician mentally recalibrated. "Yes ma'am. An Alpha-9-associated device just went offline unexpectedly."
She raised an eyebrow. "Thompson and Adams gone off the res again?"
"No ma'am. It's the new one. 5056-B."
"Christ." She thumped the floor of the operations centre with her cane. "That was fast. Where?"
"It happened around the Italian-Swiss border."
Here we go. "Of course it did. Advise Site-54 to be on high alert."
"Already did, ma'am. But they already were."
She snorted. "Silly me. Get Area-09 on the horn."
It didn't take long; that particular connection was on speed-dial. The technician nodded, and Gillespie picked up the phone. "Dan."
"Shirley."
"You were right."
A beat.
"Sorry," he said, "You got anything new to tell me?"

Passing Sentence

The Time After Time Password

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Self-harm, graphic descriptions of gore.

⚠ content warning
To be bathed in a sea of emptiness, graced with the presence of red and…
The red light was his anchor.
A curse of immortality, so to speak. It kept him here, prevented his complete and total assimilation to the numbing sludge of dark emptiness that had enveloped this dimension, that was this dimension. Light, red light, red beautiful light that kept his body together. He loved it. Hated it. It was all he had, and he was all it had.
Robert Scranton shivered, nonsensical mutterings filling the nothingness around him in a way that made his voice felt physically tangible. It was their existence that kept this place from collapsing in on itself, he was sure of it. 0.04 Humes? You could thank him for that. Him and Red. Existence itself depended on their presence, for without them, he believed that there would truly be nothing. There would be no darkness, no pain, no twisting of the flesh no red no movement no air no blood nothing you hear nothing there would be nothing and you can't feel nothing.
How could you? If nothing existed, then there would be no consciousness to comprehend it. No consciousness to pretend otherwise. That was the issue with non-existence. In the empty void, there wouldn't be an eternity of black, mute silence and numbing cold. There would be nothing. Truly, and truly nothing. How could it be?
Robert laughed and tasted blood. It was all he could taste these days, a sickening flavour of uncomfortable warmth and striking saltiness, leaving behind that foul aftertaste that clung to the back of his throat like a thick musk of copper and bile. It was how he tasted, so brashly vile that the taste overrode texture and scent, not that those aspects were particularly pleasing. And no matter what he did, it seemed like he couldn't quite get just the skin…
To think! They were the gods of this world! Their life, their breath, their blood, it was all that made up this dimension, they were everything. And yet, they were in hell. Because the universe was greedy. He'd given up so much, and still, still they wanted more. He knew. They wanted Red, didn't they? They wanted to take his anchor away. They wanted to consume him fully, to kill the golden egg laying goose and eat the entrails.
He moaned as his body began to thrash, a terrible tremor overtaking him as he tried to hold himself together. He could feel it. The invisible tendrils of terror wrapping themselves around him in an attempt to contain him. This wasn't how it worked. He was supposed to contain it, he was supposed to be an observer! This was all wrong, everything here was just wrong. Why was it so hard to move? Why was it so hard to live, to die, to exist? There was a small spark of almost childish anger as he contemplated the unfairness of it all. He hated this place, and yet, it wanted him. It lusted for his existence. Greed.
"Can't, can't, you can't do that. R-Red? They… can't do this to us. No, we'll show them. You… me… We're unstoppable t-together. Just you and me against the fucking world. Because they think that they can get the drop on us. They think that I'll just fall apart… Well maybe I will! Maybe I will fall apart, but I'll just put myself back together." Robert giggled and reached into his body, grabbing a rib. He pulled it out of himself with relative ease and held it up to his eyes, squinting in the dim red light.
"See? I told you, Red." The rib fell through his hand, phasing through his intangible skin and flesh and bones and veins and hairs and blood.
To live as a dead man, trapped in a plane of solitude where Death itself has turned a blind eye, away from the malicious intent of…
█ years, ██ months, ██ days, ██ hours.
"What? What are you saying? Stop speaking nonsense. Red, you're drunk. Red, you're going crazy. Are you okay? Calm down Red, have some food. See? Meat off the bone! It just falls off. Just… f-falls right off, oh my god Red it just falls off why doesn't it hurt it should hurt I need to just fucking DIE-"
"…"
"S-Sorry. Shouldn't lose my temper. Can't afford to lose it, actually, haha. That's… why. That's why we're being hunted. Because we can't afford to lose… anything." Robert sighed and dragged his palm against his cheek, cringing as about an inch of flesh and skin peeled off of his hand and stuck to his face. He coughed twice, two bursts of blood and empty air being expended from his lungs. Did he still have his lungs with him? Or were they thirty kilometers above him? Whatever, it wasn't important.
"Red, after we get home, I should totally introduce you to Anna… She's lovely… Anna bo banna, Anna bo banna… Just lovely. You two would get along… Yes, you two would be great friends… Anna…"
Robert found himself staring into Red's eye, the anchor, the constant in his life that stood unblinking and bright with its alluring, slightly sinister glow. He reached forward to touch it, arm stretching and thinning in a grotesque fashion. It took a while, but he did. Such a thin layer of skin, spread thin over a league of distance over bones turned malleable… He couldn't even feel the warmth. There were no nerves. If so, why did it hurt so much? Why did Red rebel against his touch with that shuddering wail of quiet agony, rebounding waves of illusion, of something, that pierced through the veil of darkness to strike him down?
To be smote by a god, to be thrust into the inextinguishable flames of…
"Of nothing, right? Ha, I see now. Red… You genius. You fucking genius. I-I love you Red, we're just the perfect pair." Robert grinned widely, a crescent mouth with red teeth and a red tongue and red gums and… "Okay, Red. I'll show you. I'll show you just how much I need. For… Red? Your glow, your words, they're just amazing. When you put the dots together, they form an image… an image of cloth, cloth wrapped around a head. Is that my head? Red, are we getting close? I know you can feel it. The end of reality, where nothing meets nothing."
He wrapped his bony fingers around Red and squeezed.
It was a second of acute agony, a second separated from time and matter and any sort of possible reality, counting down independently from the nonsensical laws governing this dimension, acting purely through willpower to extend itself to monstrous lengths. A single second; yet in the pure abstract void of red, it was millennia. It was the absence of everything and anything, an indescribable sense of pain in its purest form that pulled him from the grave and rubbed salt on his gangrene.
"Red, STOP IT. STOP IT, you're HURTING." Robert said silently. His mouth had melted and folded onto itself, forming an ellipsoid of amalgamated flesh and teeth with the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. Somewhere along the line, his arm had been severed, and yet his grip held. And yet, the illusion (not an illusion it hurts it really hurts please listen just listen to me) of pain cast its shadow over him. And yet, he felt it.
Red, his warmth. A soft glow, real heat, unlike the ambience temperature that had remained ever so constant with its blatant lie of warmth over the past…
"How long have I been here for?"
█ years, ██ months, ██ days, ██ hours.
"Hold on Red, I'm trying to think." Robert's grip slipped away and he found himself coming to a stop, wretched body floating listlessly amidst the great gel of void. It struck him dearly that he would have such freedom, such agency over himself. No longer was he bound by strict Foundation regulations, by the rules of reality, by gravity. Even death itself held no power over him, not here. In a way, total freedom had been granted.
Only now, he had relinquished some of that. The freedom that came with his death-defying pseudo-intangibility. He could feel the labour of breathing, he could feel the pumping of blood throughout his body. It was disturbing. A wicked sin made in vehemence, the equivalent of flipping the bird to the turned back of monsters and men.
"But I'm still fucking stuck here. I want out, you hear me? OUT. Ever think about that? Y-You prick, god damn it Red when are we gonna leave? Let me out, please!"
Robert reached into his chest and grabbed his heart. It pulsated strongly against his fingers, drumming loudly in uneven beats as it strained itself against his hand. The high pitched screams of tinnitus filled his ears as a cold sort of burning enveloped his entire body, sending him tremors strong enough that he nearly dropped the beating organ. There was no hesitation as he tightened his grip and pulled it out of his body.
To suffer in a fruitless endeavor, surrounded by bloodshot eyes that stared with…
There was a blinding pain, searing and all-powerful in its ferocity. It had been so long, almost too long since he had felt it, the twisted paralysis overtaking him as his mind struggled to comprehend the exploding neurons crying in anguish. What little amounts of meat and muscle that remained on body drew taut as his veins seemingly doubled in size.
Robert tried to say something. What came out of his mouth were indecipherable babbles.
"Anna, oh beautiful, oh beautiful red Anna. When will I see you again?"
Eyes rolling back slightly, he managed to extend his arm further outwards, and his heart with it. There was a sharp tearing noise, akin to the ripping of Velcro, and then a wrangled mass of arteries came loose. Still, it was not enough. His movements were animate. His brain still worked. He could still see, still hear, still understand that it was not enough.
He became enveloped in a spell of dry heaving, flecks of blood spewing from his mouth as he broke into a fit of harsh coughing. He pulled his hand further away. More tearing, and dozens of thin lines, veins, broke free from his brittle skin.
"oh but it's not enough never enough nothing goes right it's not real nothing is real anna red where are you please help me i need help i'm not strong enough oh god oh god oh god i can't do this I"
He made a feeble attempt to bite the bloodied cords connecting his heart to his body, but his mouth wouldn't open. The strength in his grip ebbed, and at last his fingers opened from their lock. It was dark, but Robert could still clearly make out the image of some sort of mass floating above him, with tendrils of blight and a rapid-fire pulse. Taunting him.
█ years, ██ months, ██ days, ██ hours.
To have a beating, glowing heart…


The Rainforest House looked too wet and dank even for ghosts, but we assumed it was haunted anyway. We didn't really have the vocabulary for anything more complex than that…creepy houses were haunted, and that was that. When you're young, nuanced terms like “cursed” or “bizarre” are interesting, but not really useful. Like old dolls you can look at, but not play with. So, accurate or not, the Rainforest House was haunted, and whenever a pet went missing, or something weird happened, we blamed the ghosts or whatever there. In the deepest, sweatiest depths of summer sleepovers, or in the grip of Halloween bravado, we'd dare eachother to go inside, poke around, see what was there. A few close calls, and even the odd fight, but nobody ever actually went in to the building. Not until Randy…but then I'm not positive he actually made it in. We assumed, and the court said so, but seeing is believing and all that.
We were so young then…but that may just be nostalgia. Old people always think anyone under thirty is “so young”, and anyone in the teens or lower is “just a kid”. A lot of times it's not mean spirited, it just sort of happens. A slow change of perspective, the same as, when you're fifteen, everyone over thirty is basically a mummy. Your home town is the whole world when you're young, but as you age it's just another place, like many others, just soaked in old, better memories. Your first love is Aphrodite, a few dollars a fortune, the local bully the Devil himself. Time and age bring perspective, though, and things shrink. The gilding wears off, the curtain falls, and it's just…life. The Rainforest House, however…that never has. Somehow it remains just as eerie and grim as it did when I was small. Even more now, really. That growth of understanding that makes things shrink and lose luster can sometimes display even brighter aspects. In the same way that, as and adult, you realize that daddy wasn't just jolly some nights more than others, he was drunk off his ass, my awareness has shown the house for more. It's not haunted. Haunted implies something human.
The house itself squatted on a small, heavily forested hill on the very edge of town. I say squatted, because that's what it always looked like to me. The roof was huge, and spilled out wide and low over the whole house, overhanging at least eight or nine feet. It looked like an old sunhat with the middle flattened in to meet the brim…or a huge mushroom. The ground was uneven, as well, so in places you could all but step on to the roof with a tiny hop, and below it would make dim tunnels a few feet long. The whole house had loads of glass going all around, along with a deck that jutted out a foot or two past the low roof, separated by maybe seven or eight feet of space. There were tons of trees, but most of the ones near the house were weird, non-native things with weird bark and leaves. They grew close, making a mazey path between them, and with the tiny ponds dotted here and there, the canopy made it dim, humid, and spooky. The whole thing looked like some weird chieftain's hut, or some explorers base in a far-off country. Hence, Rainforest House.
Of course, a bit of this is imagination. By my time, the roof had fallen in here and there, sagging to touch the ground around the edge in places, most of the glass had shattered out long ago, and the hill was so overgrown it was legitimately like a patch of rainforest. We had lots of stories about the place, but none of us actually knew too much about it. We did know the local cops really didn't want people playing around there. They had vague stories about someone being hurt or killed, but what was that in the face of interesting things? Most folks in town just dismissed it as a weird old place. Old folks would talk about the owner himself being weird, dismissing him as “some kinda hippy” with a idle wave of the hand. Older kids generally just told us to fuck off, likely to preserve a prime booze-and-petting spot, and younger kids were even dumber than us. My dad had lived in the town all his life, but drove trucks until I was about seventeen, well after the thing with Randy happened, so I was never able to ask him much about it before then. Through snippets now and then, and the occasional walk by the property, I was able to pull a few details.
He said the house had been empty and starting to crumble even when he was a boy. His dad had told him it was built by “a rich fellow” who had helped set up a couple botanical gardens in nearby cities. Supposedly he was some big name back before the great depression, but had either retired or fallen on hard times, as so many had then. My dad said the place, besides being a total deathtrap, was built very weird, right down to the foundation. The botanist (“…maybe biologist? Somethin' with a 'B', anyway…” dad had mumbled) had personally sketched out everything, overseeing every step of the construction. He'd been a bit of a recluse, and nobody had even know he'd died until several weeks after. It had been a minor sensation, but it soon passed over. No heirs came forward to claim the place, and it soon started to decay. Tearing it down and building anything new would take ages, and a fortune, and apparently some of the trees were rare enough that they were mentioned in various grant documents as needing to be moved and replanted very specifically if the land was to be altered. Nobody who had the money and the time to accomplish this wanted to, so the place was just left to rot.
Those were the rough strokes, the cut and dry facts, at least as far as dad knew them. Boring, but sustaining, like the oatmeal of the world of gossip. I did wheedle a little more out of him here and there, trying to get to the tastier bits. Apparently the former owner had died in the middle of summer, and had been in quite a state when he was finally found. Supposedly the flies had been so thick inside it was pitch black even in the middle of the day. Also likely a deterrent for prospective home buyers. When I asked about anyone else supposedly dying or getting hurt there, he got defensive in that way he did when he believed something, but didn't actually know much about it. It was classic friend-of-a-cousin type stuff, someone had fallen through a floor, someone had gotten maimed by collapsing wall and so on, the moral of the story being stay the hell away, it's dangerous. As he so well put it: “It's an old, rotten wreck of a house, one day an ice storm will finally knock it flat, that that'll be the end of it, yeah? Now keep the hell away from it, you're liable to break somethin' or get tetanus, that's all we need.”
Suggestive, but boring, like so many adult opinions of a child's fancy. We had other ideas.
We ignored the bland, simple truth, and instead populated the house with all manner of monsters and ideas. You have to remember, I grew up in…well, not a small town, but an old one. There wasn't much to do as far as actually thrilling stuff, so telling stories or straight-up lying about “something we heard” about whatever was a fine pastime. Mutant children, mutant plants, black rituals, experiments, we would gleefully retread any idea or story we pulled from comics, tv or books and present it as “something we heard”. It wasn't really lying, at least not in the normal way. Hell, most of us knew we were each full of shit, but it was more interesting than anything else going on. Like any game of make-believe, it worked best when everyone just sort of rolled with it with minimal questions.
I'd like to think, if we'd known more, we'd have found something else to poke at. Most likely, it would have still happened, in one way or another. Maybe not. Maybe I'm just trying to stall so I don't need to remember, or I'm just shy and embarrassed about my role in it all. Maybe I'm most worried that, despite telling myself I don't care anymore, nobody will believe me again.
Alright. The group I ran with was about…five or six people, with a sort of “extended cast” of maybe a dozen more. Of that, only two matter, besides me, those would be Randy and Kurt. Randy was a few months older than me, and grew up a few blocks away. We'd known eachother since about second grade and, despite some bumps and the odd broken bone between us, had been best friends. He was weird and could be intense at times, and had a competitive streak nearly as strong as his temper, but we meshed for some reason. Probably because I was more quiet and easy going…most of the time. All that said, there were always parts of Randy I never really understood, stuff that, even close as we were, he kept to himself. Everyone has private stuff, sure, but looking back it makes me wonder about some of the things that happened. He was someone that you could never fully anticipate…every so often he'd just go totally off the plan for some reason or another, and that was that.
Kurt was a bully, and yet somehow still our friend. I think every group has one of these, someone who's somewhat nice, especially in private, but is quick to turn if the opportunity presents itself. He was as much a weirdo as the rest of us, sometimes even more, but he would be happy to bash on anyone if he had the chance. I'm sure it was self esteem, and a shitty life up to that point, but at the time he was just an asshole we tolerated for some reason. It was more complicated than that, sure, but for this, the important thing is that he was generally a bully, and that for whatever reason he seemed to take special joy in bashing on Randy. Typically Randy would just take it, maybe with some shouting or shoving here and there…but every so often, something would apparently just rub him the wrong way on the wrong day…
It was a few days before winter break that things really started. I sort of came in at the middle of things, but apparently over Halloween something had happened between Kurt and Randy, which they were deciding to hash out now for whatever reason. As this sort of rolling, between-classes argument went on, I was able to gather that a chunk of our crew had gone out to a local haunted house attraction after the Halloween parade, and that Kurt had chickened out. Aside from some ribbing and teasing, that would have been the end of it, but Kurt had been picking at Randy over some other bullshit, and Randy found that bringing up the incident was a sore spot. So of course he started jabbing at it once he realized. Standard stupid kid bullshit that happened every few days, at least. That seems to be how all the worst things happen, with roots in the most mundane garbage, so you end up knee-deep before you even realize you should be careful.
Names were called, gestures given. Kurt called Randy a pussy bitch, which was untrue as he had neither. Randy called Kurt's mom a whore, which was also untrue, as whores do it for money. Both parties proceeded to try and start a fight, but due to hallway congestion and sharp adult oversight, they settled for a couple brief swipes and oaths to end it later. I was just glad it looked like this was going to end soon.
They ended up bumping in to eachother at a local party store, arguing more, then attempting a fight. Neither was particularly imposing, though Randy had a bit more scrappyness to him, and whatever the potential outcome, the owner tossed everyone out and said he was calling the cops. We were walking away, in that kind of amorphous, shifting blob that friend groups seem to take when elements of itself are fighting. Neither refused to give it up, or back down, and I somehow knew what would end up happening before anyone said it. We'd been walking near the big hill, and as they were sniping back and forth at eachother, cold gusts whipped up and made some of the old, weird trees on the hill creak and groan. It was like fate.
“There, how 'bout we see who can go in to the Rainforest House for longer, then we see who's a pussy!”
“Piss off Kurt, you wanna get tetanus so bad, you go.”
“So you admit it, you're a scared little bitch!”
It carried on in this general vein for some time, until both parties were simmering again. Times and places were established, and things sort of broke apart after that. Business concluded, everyone back to your respective corners.
A few days passed. Vacation started, and our first day of freedom came with snow, followed immediately by rain. Soon everything, even the air, seemed to be filled and coated with cold, wet slush. I'd honestly forgotten about the “showdown” between Kurt and Randy. I was talking with another friend, laying out a vague plan to acquire snacks, wander, then maybe watch movies at whatever house had better selection, and just offhand they said “Oh, yeah, we could go watch Kurt and Randy be idiots too, they're doing that thing at the old house tonight.”
I don't know why, but I suddenly got a cold chill. Like that dropping cold draft that rolls through your abdomen when you smell smoke and suddenly realize you left a burner on. I realized I had been avoiding thinking about it, that the stupid Rainforest House scared me. Before it had been fun, thrilling even, but now I was scared. For some reason it felt closer to my life now, like somehow now, among all the times we'd gone by and up to the place, this was different. It might just be my memory from now, bleeding back to color the past, but I do remember my friend having to ask if I was still on the line, as I'd gone silent since they told me about the house expedition. I agreed to go. Why not, I thought. It would show I'm being stupid, and it wasn't as if anything would happen beyond some scraped shins and screams.
Trees can trap heat, or at least it feels that way. As we moved up the hill, it was so wet and humid our clothes steamed along with our breath. It was late, that deep, sudden dark that comes with the cold months, leaving you feeling both exhausted yet fully awake in what seems the middle of the night. Our little crew dragged ourselves along the slushy road, scattering and laying low with each hissing pass of a car on the road at the base. Between bored patrolmen and local busybodies, we felt like infiltrating spies. Kurt and Randy sniped and wheedled at eachother, goading eachother on as we finally got on top of the hill. We stood, catching our breaths, looking out between the sagging, dripping trees at the Rainforest House. It felt like being in a building, the trees and canopy dulled sound and squeezed down our line of sight. The melting, dripping snow made a steady undercurrent of white noise that felt as if it was hiding something.
The house sat like a wet, curled animal, spattered and oozing snow and water along its flanks. The wide, broken glass walls seemed to open in to pure blackness, tiny rivulets of water drooling out over the buckled deck and off the pitted roof. One of the nearest trees, bowed slightly from storm and snow, sagged against the rear of the house, the limbs spreading over the roof like it was trying to hide it. It all felt wrong, like it was somehow too detailed and blurry at the same time. The darkness was total, even the smallest shadows, yet colors seemed to bleed in to eachother. I realized the rest of the group was moving only when they started passing my field of view. Everyone was whispering, like they were trying to avoid notice. Like the house was listening.
I felt like a sleepwalker, despite the cold. Kurt and Randy had split up, with their attendant supporters, and were working their way to either side of the house, with the whispered intention to meet in the middle, then explore until someone chickened out. I stared into the total blackness between the low roof and the puddled deck, like a rat hypnotized by a predator. I moved sideways, keeping my eyes glued to the house, even as a few flashlights started to stab tiny rays into the gloom. The darkness was like dough, pressing dense and close around the light, revealing only vague, damp edges of shapes and moldy patches of color. Randy had gone back, near where the tree was leaning over the house. Even as the rolling earth blocked much of the view of the house, I kept watching it, feeling scared to blink.
I could hear shifting, furtive, from inside. The groan and brittle squeak of rotten wood, smothered to near silence by the dripping water. I assumed others had managed to get inside. Around the smell of water and damp, rotting plants, there was a sudden stench. The smell of old mummified mice, of dusty cobwebs and black mold, like a draft pulled up from a decades sealed crawlspace. I started to move faster, eyes fixed wide, even as this fungal stench seemed to move over me like a cloud. I could hear more moment, but faster, sounding less like furtive moment, and more like something being dragged, quickly. I could hear the other kids starting to yell, and the rapid splattering and sliding as they poured out and away from the house. I saw Kurt, flying between the trees, not sparing a moment to look back, half-sliding along the grass in blind retreat. Someone was shouting about someone in the house, someone else said it was a snake. It was everyone for themselves, fleeing back down to the town. The house was between me and the town. I could hear them shouting if people had seen me.
If anyone had seen Randy get out.
I ran now, the few remaining steps. I had no idea, no plan, maybe just trying to get around the house to escape. I broke my focus on the house for a moment as my feet slid, nearly slamming me in to a tall, thin tree. That horrible stink was pouring from the house, and it sounded as if someone was throwing around furniture inside, the creak and splintering pop of wood rising about the sound of the water. I leaned against the thin tree, maybe a few dozen feet from the house, suddenly breathless, heart in my throat. I heard a sound, a yelp, almost like a dog that had suddenly been stepped on, then this sound like…stretching leather, and that smell got even worse, wetter, fresher, rotten and damp, and then I looked and…
I saw…
The tree, the one nearest the house, it…it had Randy.
The roots. Or whatever the hell they were, they were wrapped around him, squeezing him as they held him up off the ground. Inside I could see more of them moving, whipping around, crushing, searching…easily mistaken for snakes, or maybe a fast-moving homeless person. They were easy to see because they were so pale, these long, twisting ropes covered in pale, soggy looking…bark? It shifted and bulged around the roots as they moved, like a second skin, and it all stunk like rotten mushrooms and fermented wood. Randy was wrapped up in roots like cables thick as a big man's arms, and they were…squeezing him, twisting, and he couldn't scream because some were around his head, and…they just kept squeezing and squeezing.
It was like flabby pale fingers trying to wring out a cloth.
I heard him die. That was the worst part of it. Bones sound like ice when they snap, sometimes. It stretched and pulled, and suddenly it was like a bunch of ice and branches snapping, and I watched Randy get crushed and stretched, pulled like bloody, bone-studded candy. I just stared, shivering, as these roots lowered down, still wrapped around Randy's shredded rag of a body. The tree shifted, and the gap in the base of the roots seemed to be the source of the smell, even worse now with it opened…and it just slid Randy's body in. Like throwing a wrapper in the trash. The roots squirmed, but seemed to be laying back, the tree shifting down like an old man disturbed from a nap and settling back into his chair. One of the roots, fat around as someone's leg flopped down just a few feet from me, starting to nose and slither back into the wet dirt, and I finally managed to snap free and ran.
I don't remember much of the rest of the night. Eventually there were hospitals, police, people in suits looking dour. Officially, Randy died falling through the floorboards, to then smash himself to bits across old equipment and junk in the basement. A lot of people cried, his parents divorced, then moved away shortly after the funeral. I learned to shut up…either people flat didn't believe me, or they called me disrespectful, or worse. Then came issues, acting out, pills, care. I got better, in that I shut up about seeing a tree twist my friend apart like a bunch of celery, then eat him. I tried to push it away, but it would bubble up. Make me wonder, did I really see it? What, exactly, was the builder's job? I've tried digging in to it now and then, but it never seems to go anywhere. Was…whatever that was, something that maybe was found, or made? Did it just…grow there, somehow?
I worry now, because just a short while ago, I had a call from a relative who still lives in town. It was about other things, but as we gossiped, she suddenly asks me if I remembered the old house. I said of course, and she said it had fallen down, finally. I felt a little chill roll down my back, like a cool metal ball inside my spine. I asked more, and apparently it hadn't just fallen down, but in. A sinkhole had swallowed almost the whole hill, fallen in rather quickly after a few weeks of heavy rain. The ground had been like a sponge, just shot through with holes and fissures. She kept talking, but all I could hear was that spattering hiss of water, just over the sound of smooth, pale slithering. I spoke, barely even aware I did.
“Did…they end up saving any of the trees?”
“Oh, no, it was very sudden. I know there were some rare ones, but they're all down at the bottom of a big hole now, all smashed to bits and splinters.”
I pleaded off for something or other, and just sat, feeling cold for some time. I hope they're smashed to splinters, I hope that I just lost my mind briefly and hallucinated everything. I doubt it though. I am willing to bet, if they tried, there would be at least one tree missing. Or something that looks like a tree, and might actually be some mass of wormy things, slithering and reaching until they chew a whole hill to mush before moving on.
I'm old, and I don't have much to fear for much longer. I just wanted to…get it out there. In case someone looks. In case some other house falls into a wet pit somewhere. In case some kid gets ground up like a rag in a blender and nobody can tell why. I saw a spongy white…something peeking out of the ground on my way home, and I almost screamed, hobbling away with all my speed, trailing looks as people watched the crazy lady run from a mushroom. Just…remember, even if you don't believe me.
Not every bad house is haunted. Some are still very much alive.


by Ethagon

Ms. Aaron moved past the empty lobby of Science-Centered Progress and past the Bio-Printer that was on display. She only briefly stopped to confirm the sector she needed to go to. When she arrived five minutes too early, as she had planned to, the office was still occupied, but the door wasn't closed.
"-s fine. It'll send a good impression."
"I'm just saying we should take more precaut-"
One of the two people in the room, the person with a purple tie, turned in her direction a moment before she could open the door. "You're a bit early Ms. Aaron, which means the lobby is still empty, Weld."
"That's still Director to you. Apologies, Ms. Aaron, we haven't fully settled in yet." Thomas Weld stood up to shake her hand. "This is my PR manager, who was just about to leave."
Despite the fact that she had many other questions, her mind was firmly focused on the hue of the tie. It was mesmerizing and wouldn't let her notice the person attached to the tie. She watched Purple Tie leave the room and stared at the door he had gone through. What was with that tie?
Weld cleared his throat.
Aaron turned back to Weld. Right, the interview. "So before we begin, are you sure you don't want to look over the final version of the interview before I'll publish it?"
Weld pushed his chair in front of his table and gave her a second one. When he sat down again he took on a more relaxed pose, although a frown remained in place on his face. "As I said before, there's really no need. Everything I can say, I can say freely. And I trust your newsletter to not take anything out of context." She doubted the last part, with everything her research had told her about the man.
"So to start, can you tell me a little bit about Science-Centered Progress?"
Weld smiled with his eyebrows. "Of course. At its heart, Science-Centered Progress seeks to advance Society, but in actuality, we're just a Consulting Firm that helps others in making new scientific discoveries. You were in the lobby before. I take it you already took a look at our poster child, the Bio-Printer?"
"I did."
Weld gave her a sharp nod before continuing. "The Printer was sort of a test run for all of this. Hewlett did a good job at guiding several companies in their endeavour with this technology." She found it a bit weird that they would display the human organ printer as their own achievement, given how the people behind Science-Centered Progress came out of the blue only after another company had already invented one. But there were stranger things to focus on.
"I've heard there are some unusual limitations for your employees. Is it true that a lot of sectors forbid the usage of eyeglasses among other things?"
Weld's eyes narrowed by a margin."I'm sure it seems that way from the outside, but glasses are often a hindrance when working with chemicals for example and we do after all do our own research as well. And when we aren't directly involved, we sponsor the researchers that are. Our most influential sponsorship was to the science programs that were responsible for the confirmation of the Higgs Field."
Aaron was satisfied that he brought up the Higgs Field. Around the time the Field had been confirmed, Weld and other people associated with Science-Centered Progress had made many phone calls to different TV networks.
"The Higgs Field was discovered before Science-Centered Progress was officially established."
"That's true. But what would later become Science-Centered Progress was practically already there, just not with a name." That much, she had found out herself. One of a few other companies that had now been superseded by Science-Centered Progress did sponsor the construction of the Large Hadron Collider which we would later confirm the existence of the Higgs Field. Another weird angle to take credit for something.
"Could you tell me more about that time? You had a good career at Standard Computer Products, but there is a hole in your timeline from your resignation until the founding of Science-Centered Progress."
Weld shrugged. "I wouldn't call it a hole. I needed to rethink what I want to achieve in life and friends needed my help. I helped with research here and there and ultimately, it led up to this. The company that will make a difference."
"I've heard some of the research you are doing in-house concerns the visible colour spectrum." A contact of here had even claimed that this research was not focused on discerning new properties of the spectrum, as one would expect, but instead about creating new colours altogether, which was way too ridiculous to take at face value.
Weld studied her for a moment with his arms crossed. "That lies a bit outside my expertise. There was an interest by some of the researchers to do something in that direction, but that in itself is not a remarkable field of physics."
No luck there. "This is quite the impressive facility you have here. How did a Consulting Firm receive the funding that you can even effort this kind of in-house research?"
She could see Weld pretending to think about an answer he had already prepared. "I think it comes down to networking. And by that, I don't mean you need to know the right people. No, if you're truly passionate about something, the people you need will come to you. Of course, I contributed with my fair share as well."
"If we go back to you for a moment, Science-Centered Progress is still in its infancy, but in the business, you're moving it is unlikely that it will pay better than the job you had at Standard Computer Products. Why take one over the other?"
Weld smirked. "You can have the best-paying job in the world and be unhappy. What you really need is a job you want… and still pays moderately."
"So you are satisfied with what you are doing now?"
"Absolutely. This is where I need to be." That, she could sympathize with.
"In the years leading up to the founding of Science-Centered Progress, I heard you were involved in the Forgotten Epidemic?"
"That was a hoax. You should know that." Weld stood up from his seat. "A lot of reports greatly exaggerated the memory-erasing effects of conventional drugs. I was just one of the people interested in recovering the truth behind the matter." So he was sticking to the official version. No surprise there. There had been a lot of rumours involved with the Forgotten Epidemic, about who had an interest in keeping what information forgotten. It had been pointed out to her, that the interest in the Forgotten Epidemic had immediately ceased after it was revealed as a hoax.
And just like with the confirmation of the Higgs Field, Weld and his friends had made calls to various TV networks. Asking Weld about his TV influences would serve as a good capstone for the interview.
"Ms. Aaron, it seems like you don't trust me." She was a bit surprised by that approach. "There doesn't have to be a hidden story."
She answered with a not so honest smile. "Of course. I'm merely probing for interesting things since you said you'd speak freely."
Weld sighed and reached for a drawer in front of the desk. Aaron only caught a glimpse of a spray bottle of some kind. "Carry on then."
There was only one question she had left to ask. What would Thomas Weld say when she asked him about– Weld sat behind his desk and was closing a drawer. There was a sad glint in his eyes now. "Do you have any further questions?"
Aaron thought for a moment. "I think that covers about everything. Thank you for having me."
Weld answered a "And thank you for the Interview", but he looked past her while he spoke.
While leaving, Aaron already thought about how the article would look like. She hadn't found anything interesting, but she would make it work.

Purple Tie entered the office to a Director Weld having his arms on the backrest of his chair. "You heard it?"
Weld received a nod as an answer. He continued: "Here investigations came too close to the memetic obfuscation we have around Fronts and her findings were too specific. She had an anomalous source."
Purple Tie grinned. "I'll set the Trenchcoats on it. I told you, we needed more precautions."
"I had it handled. Dismissed."
With Purple Tie sent on a mission, Weld still stood there for a while. After a while, he mumbled to himself: "One day, I won't have to lie to them."


A Valentine's Day Spooktacular: Presented By Sam Hain

Authored by Elenee FishTruck, based off SCP-6750 - All-O-Ween About Halloween: Presented By Sam Hain

▸ More by this Author ◂

{$comments2}

F.A.Q.

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(Video shows close-up of a smiling jack-o'-lantern glowing a pink light in an otherwise dark room. Audio of a witch's cackle plays. The title "A VALENTINE'S DAY SPOOKTACULAR" fades over the jack-o'-lantern.)

Frame of video.

(Camera cuts to an open flower field. A pumpkin-headed entity (SCP-6750-1) walks in-frame with a bouquet of flowers and a shot-gun.)However, Sam's not one to mope around, oh no! I've got a surprise for you folks. Instead of the ways of fear, I'm teaching you the ways of love! Sweet, y'know? Before you know it, you'll be settled down with the person of your dreams in a old, decrepit house. Hooray!
(SCP-6750-1 holds up the bouquet.)
SCP-6750-1: You see this? This is what we in the love business call pathetic. All mundane! No oomph! Luckily, I know just the trick.
(SCP-6750 holds up his shot-gun, aims to the sky, and fires. A humanoid entity plummets beside it, resembling a nude human with an avian head, wings attached to the arms, and an udder in place of genitals.)
SCP-6750-1: They say love's in the air on Valentine's. This is true! Well, not true anymore for this guy but, uh, generally.
(SCP-6750-1 takes hold of a teat on the udder. The avian humanoid's eyes widen.)
SCP-6750-1: Only the freshest flowers come from lovebirds. That'll show your crush you really care about them. Remember, do it like you're yanking the chain on a lawnmower.
(The humanoid caws softly as SCP-6750-1 milks it. Flowers push from the teats, falling onto the ground below, along with a viscous pink substance.)
SCP-6750-1: Put these flowers in a nice vase for your crush. Bring them a box of chocolates as well, with something really cute on it. "We go together like Mark Antony and Cleopatra." Or "Johny and June." Or "Sammy and Jess." The classics! (Laughs)
The juice is non-toxic.
(SCP-6750-1 bundles the flowers and forces them down the avian's neck, causing it to gurgle and choke. SCP-6750-1 holds the avian's neck and walks off-screen. The humanoid jitters occasionally and caws softly. Its udders have shriveled.)

Frame of video.

(Camera shifts to a dimly-lit room, where SCP-6750-1 walks on-screen. A table center-frame holds a glass box, containing a skull with a floral-crown.)
SCP-6750-1: In Italy, lovers will give each other keys to signify "unlocking" someone's love. Real funny tradition.
(SCP-6750-1 pulls a skeleton key out of its mouth hole.)
SCP-6750-1: Italians, am I right?
(SCP-6750-1 smashes the key through the box and pulls out the skull.)
SCP-6750-1: This funny guy right here had to be the one to start Valentine's, when he gave out free chocolates to Christians past their bedtime. Eh, Valentine?
Skull: (Gyrating) ÚBI SUM? UBI EST PELLI MEA?
SCP-6750-1: Precisely correct, my compatriot. The traditions have evolved over time into more contemporary practices, like beekeeping, and epileptic seizures. Let's take a look at the former, shall we?
Skull: CUCURBITA! ES SCORTUM OBSCENUS VILIS!
(A swarm of bees flies from SCP-6750-1's head to the skull, stinging its surface. Wart-like growths sprout across the skull. The skull screams.)
SCP-6750-1: Poor guy never had a leg to stand on. (Laughs)
Skull: PATER NOSTER, QUI ES IN CAELIS, SANCTIFI-
SCP-6750-1: Listen, bud, just help me out here. I even got you a present! As patron saint of beekeepers, you'll appreciate this one.
(SCP-6750 repositions camera to face adjacent wall. A giant amalgam, composed of several live grizzly bears fused at various body parts, writhes and pulsates on the floor. The bears growl in distress and claw at themselves, ripping the main mass apart. A combination of intestines, honey, and wrapped candies flows out of the rips.)
(A baseball bat lays on the floor.)
SCP-6750-1: How would you rate this? Ten? Twelve? Be honest.
(A bloated nude man flows out from a tear in the amalgam's body. A message in marker over his chest reads "For Jess". SCP-6750-1 picks up the bat.)
SCP-6750-1: Oh, it's all wrong!
(SCP-6750-1 smashes the bat into the man's stomach, causing a chocolate mixture to burst out. The man claps and cheers.)
SCP-6750-1: They can keep the corpse. The teddy's still salvageable.
(SCP-6750-1 smashes the bat into its own head, allowing a huge swarm of bees to escape which fly into the honey. The amalgam claws and growls at the bees as they swarms the inside of its body. SCP-6750-1's hand still holds the skull.)
Skull: DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI AD TE, DOMINE.

Frame of video.

(Camera shifts to SCP-6750-1 sitting at a table in an abandoned warehouse. It holds a rotary phone to the side of its head.)
SCP-6750-1: You promise? For real? (Pause) Holy shit, I-I have to thank you a ton. They'll love this. (Pause) Actually, uh, leave the explosive o-
(Phone disconnects. SCP-6750-1 faces camera.)
SCP-6750-1: Oh, seasons greetings, my lovers in want. I just got off the phone with a guy who knows a guy who can get me a real Love Clown! A Love Clown! I've only had experience with the underwater ones but they have contacts. Gosh, this'll be a hoot. (Turns left) Right, bonesy?
(Distant crying.)
SCP-6750-1: You know what's almost better than a Love Clown? A love poem! Let me consult my collection here.
(SCP-6750-1 pulls a wooden crate from underneath the table, labeled "HALLMARK CARDS". It opens the box, pulls out a severed human head, and slaps it. The head gasps for air.)
Head: And the Lord, our Father, did decree on that day the sanctimonious virtue of acid atta-
SCP-6750-1: No, no, no, wrong one!
(SCP-6750-1 pushes the head's eyes inward, causing it to blood profusely from the sockets. The head begins snoring. SCP-6750-1 takes another head and punches it.)
Head 2: And with mine heart that you desire own, then take my lights and pluck my fickle bones.
SCP-6750-1: Ah, here's the good stuff.
Head 2: This has been an Undead Books recording. For more recordings li-
SCP-6750-1: Urgh, not this, come on!
(SCP-6750-1 throws the head off-camera, a splatting noise emanating from afar.)
SCP-6750-1: Come on now, there's-… what's this?
(A beating human heart lies among the heads. Barbed wire surrounds it.)
Heart: A vile fluid reeks of pus-filled torment in fermented barrels of waste to vanquish again the cobbled towers twisti-
SCP-6750-1: This is perfect!
(SCP-6750-1 takes a stereo boombox from under the table.)
Heart: - extinguished putridly among dead seas and deader minds decomposing under willow tre-
(SCP-6750-1 forces the heart into the cassette player and closes it, causing it to rupture on the inside. The boombox shakes vigorously before spontaneously growing barbed tentacles, puncturing the sides of the boombox, bearing toothed mouths. They wrap around and start consuming the heads in the crate. All the heads activate simultaneously, creating a cacophony of voices, songs, and chants.)
SCP-6750-1: This is marvelous.

(Camera reactivates, SCP-6750-1 adjusting the framing. It aims the camera to the door of the prior warehouse, where a seemingly non-anomalous human wearing a leather jacket and jeans walks into frame.)
SCP-6750-1: Jess, Jess, over here!
Jess: Sam, is something wrong? You called me on su- What the hell?
SCP-6750-1: I hope you like it. I got a certified Love Clown to build it.
(SCP-6750-1 aims camera towards a massive structure within the warehouse. A row-boat floats in a pool of viscous pink liquid, rose petals littering the surface. The boat features five painted eyes and eleven painted smiles. It faces a semi-circular entrance, obscured by red curtains, leading to the rest of the structure. A sign points to the structure, reading "Funny Love Tunnel for Losers and Winners alike, huzzah!")
Jess: Sam.
SCP-6750-1: Yes?
(Jess turns to leave.)
SCP-6750-1: Jess, come on. At least take a ride.
Jess: You know I have fifteen spookiometry classes today? Not in the mood.
SCP-6750-1: Come on.
Jess: (Sighs) Fuck it, get it over with.
(SCP-6750-1 squeals with glee. It hops into the boat while Jess cautiously sits in the back. SCP-6750-1 begins rowing.)

Frame of video.

(Upon passing the curtains, the boat enters complete darkness. Liquid sloshes around them. A massive tongue erupts from the water and lifts the boat through the air, setting them down as lights shine on.)
(Chicago's "You're the Inspiration" starts blasting.)
(The entire tunnel consist of one giant tube, seemingly of human tissue. Several colored lights shine up and down the tunnel, illuminating several animatronic pairs. Animatronics consist of bare frames, with sliced faces glued onto their heads resembling American criminals Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut Barrow. They softly hum to the music. Human hearts bearing fish tails and fins swim and jump through the pink liquid.)
(SCP-6750-1 grooves to the music as Jess sits unmoving.)
(Tunnel goes downward, the boat rushing alongside. Mobile teddy bears make puncture wounds in the tunnel's sides using a hammer and chisel, causing more pink liquid to stream in. Several of the before-seen avian humanoids drop down from above, suspended on strings, their udders connected to hand mechanisms. Flowers shower onto the pair in the boat. The tunnel drops down again.)
(The liquid splashes as the boat hits the bottom.)
SCP-6750-1: YOU'RE THE MEANING IN MY LIFE! YOU'RE THE INSPIRAAAAAAATION!
(As SCP-6750-1 sings to the chorus, several individuals clumsily dance on stages flanking the tunnel's sides. They appear partially decomposed. Hot air balloons with heart designs rise from the water. Mini-fireworks detonate, combusting the hot air balloons and causing them to release several human brains. They land in the liquid, splashing onto Jess' jacket. A skull wearing a mitre floats while crying.)
SCP-6750-1: NO ONE NEEDS YOU MORE THAN IIIIIIII NEEEEEEEEEED YOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUU!
(Music fades out as tunnel falls again. A massive board reads "Will BOO be my Valentine?" with an image of SCP-6750-1 and Jess in a heart-shape. A turret rapid-fires arrows from behind into the heart.)
SCP-6750-1: … Well? Would you be my valentine, Jess?
Jess: You really pulled this whole "expelled from school" BS to land it with me?
SCP-6750-1: Well, no, that did happen, but this also came up. So, uh…
(Silence for ten seconds.)
Jess: … Can I get back to you on that?
SCP-6750-1: … I… I, uh… sure?
Jess: Thanks.
(Jess leaves the tunnel through an exit labeled "Kooky Exit".)
SCP-6750-1: … THAT WASN'T A NO!
(SCP-6750-1 pumps its fist in the air. Freeze-frame.)

Post-Acquisition Log: Investigations into finding the location of the depicted tunnel and PoI-6750-2 ("Jess") are ongoing. The skull of St. Valentine still sits in the Basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin, but the protective glass has shattered.