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NAME OF TALE Some Are Born To Endless Night

29th May, 2008.
I am. I was. I will be.
I am here.
OK, OK, it's becoming quite difficult to dream this. Hang on a moment, diary. I will be with you shortly.
There we go.
My name is- or my name was, at any rate- Jacob Montauk. I am 14 years old. I was born in the St. Timothy Hospital, up in Birmingham. I never liked Birmingham. It's not the chavs or the dirt on the street or the dull grey colour of the buildings; it's the way the rain doesn't cool or chill, or make you think, or make a pleasant smell of dirt. It just seems to accentuate the surroundings, makes the grey greyer, makes the peoples' faces into strange and inarticulate nothings.
Sorry. Auntie is always saying that I'm overarticulate, and that my prose is wildly self-indulgent. She's right, of course. I am only 14. I should be playing in the sun, not writing this purple nonsense.
So. Four days ago, I fell into a shadow. I didn't mean to- it just sort of happened. I'd stayed late from school, with the animation club, and then I'd tripped and fallen right where a tree blocked the light. There wasn't anyone around to see me. Everything went… weird for a moment. Like the very beginning of something happening, when you first start to see someone's expression for a moment, before it's all suddenly cut off. I think it's because they saw me, sprawled all over where nobody could see or help. So they took me.
I don't know what this place is. It's just darkness, an oblivion, an absence. It's like dreaming. I am quite afraid. It feels like a dream- hell, for all I know, it probably is a dream, although I can't seem to wake up. I have these images, this long stream of dreaming images passing through my face. But even as I'm moving through some dream-world, or building a wall, I'm still in the dark. I can feel it. Or at least, I can feel its presence. In the back of my mind. In the dark behind the eyes.
I'm scared. I can't wake up.

9th June 2008.
Nothing has changed. I was dreaming just now about a corridor, and as I went down it, it wasn't there. A strange thing. I don't know what it means.
I keep hearing voices. I think there might be others here. I thought they were just part of the dream at first, but I don't think they're mine at all. It's hard to explain… it's like there are other dreamers, and I can hear their dreams. It's becoming easier to tell.
I'm sorry, diary. I should write more in you, but there's not much to write except the perpetual onslaught of dreams. Well, you're a dream too, I suppose. But you're there to keep me from going mad, not to help me.

17th June 2008.
There are others. I'm sure of this now. They're all around me! I can hear some very clearly. Some keep coming in. Some are quieter, some more indistinct. I don't think it's a distance thing- this place doesn't seem to have things like distance. Some of them just seem more… I don't know. Not quite as there as the others. Absent-minded, I suppose.
I kept dreaming about that corridor. Making it bigger. Looks more like a hotel now.

24th June 2008.
I can't stop thinking about Auntie. I hope that she's not worrying. Actually, I hope that she is worrying. It'd be very odd if she wasn't worrying. Quite apart from being out of character, it'd mean she didn't care. I wouldn't like that. Don't think she would, either.
There are others here. They have their own dreams, which sometimes keep crossing over with mine. And they steal them. Someone stole my corridor dream. The images were just ripped and crossed over and twisted and eventually left me. I could hear, see, something them elsewhere, in someone else's head, but they weren't mine any more. I dreamt something else instead- a factory that kept repeating.
It must be weird back there. Either I'm gone, or I'm in a coma, or something like that. They'll be shedding tears, they'll be talking about how tragic it all is, maybe making frantic appeals on the TV. I hope it gets somewhere. I hope someone knows what this place is.
I think… if I just reach out… shall report back, diary.

19th July 2008.
I forgot about you, diary. Sorry. It's been a hectic month.
So it turns out that there are lots of other people here. I just didn't know how to talk to them. Rose says that it's that way with a lot of new people. That's why they stole my dream; trying to get me to talk, make themselves known. Ai-Fan was very apologetic about that.
There are lots of children here, all disappeared. They all tripped, or went down the wrong alleyway, or somehow ended up in a shadow without anybody watching. And then they found themselves here, dreaming away. Same darkness, same images in their head, same aimless movement in the void.
Apparently, everyone is normal at first, thinking properly. Then, slowly, they start to be… less. Like they're fading. Their dreams start fading, their minds start unraveling. Eventually, they're little more than a bundle of memories. It can take years, it can take decades, it can take centuries, but eventually they're all gone, faded away into the dark.
dark.
Dark.
Sometimes those memories and personalities get picked up. By others, like Rose or Ai-Fan. Sometimes it messes your head up, making you forget who you are. In a way, Rose said, it's like you're not one person, you're many.
There's something that bothers me about all this, though. Nobody here tries to get out. It's like they're- we're- all so busy dreaming, that we can't really think about getting out. There's just our minds and the Dark. Dreaming.
Dreaming for what?
Anyway, it's good to be around people again. I'd forgotten what it was like. Rose disappeared 5 years ago, apparently. Under an apple tree in Texas. She was lying in the breeze, thinking about the vastness of the world, feeling the wind between her fingers. Her parents were down the hill. She-
No, wait. It wasn't five years, it was fifty.
I wasn't talking to her at all, was I?

24th December 2008.
So here we are, months later. Those of us who are alive and celebrate Christmas dreamt of festive nightmares, and swapped them with each other. Ai-Fan joined in too, despite it not being her creed. Nick created this wonderful Christmas tree, which we all passed through our minds and gasped at. It was gold, silver, wonderful. Some of those who were fraying seemed to momentarily bounce back, to have more of a mind again. It was nice.
I used some of Rose's memories of her hometown to make a nice little vision for us all- of a town that had Christmas all year. They'd decorate their homes and tanks and talk about the Christmas spirit. It was nice, nicer than some of the dreams I'd had recently. For a moment, even in the dark, it felt like family. Felt like home. Like I was really holding my spoon, and it wasn't just a twisted candle in the dark.
But, then again, what's the dark for but the lighting of candles?

29th March 2009.
You are. You were. You will be.
There's a girl here, who binds us all together. She's called Gulya, and she's one of the oldest ones here. She was the same age as me when she was taken. It's sad, that- we're stuck down here, in perpetual childhood or perpetual adolescence, dreaming for a power we can't think about or know about.
Gulya was pretty, but that doesn't really matter any more. All I can see is her mind, her sparkling mind. It has a kind of vaguely fluorescent glow- I'm not sure how to describe it. Like a constant spark of an idea. She's had lots of ideas. It was her who first worked out how we could communicate with each other, how we could send and steal dreams from one another.
I like her. I like her a lot. I don't want to be writing all this down. Actually, I'm not writing it down, I'm dreaming it down, but still. Nyah. Go away.

26th October 2009.
Gulya and I keep talking. She and Ai-Fan and Nick and 'Abbas and I all have a little cadre together, but Gulya has a bigger responsibility. She keeps everyone sane. There are hundreds, thousands of minds that eventually make their way here. It's hard to talk about distance here, as I said earlier- it kind-of exists, but not really. It's like a feeling, more than a physical space. Like everything here, I suppose.
Anyway. I'm being what Auntie calls "tiresomely pretentious" again. Gulya is the mother to thousands. She teaches them how to dream, tries to keep them together, takes their memories when they can't hold themselves together any more. She encourages their dreams, makes them bigger and bolder. The other day, there was a fraying boy dreaming of a set of gears, and he didn't know what to do with them. So she took them, and made them a grand machine, with workings impossible and greater than anything he could have done. He was so happy, his fraying seemed to stop, or even reverse, for a moment. That was nice.
I think Gulya likes me. My dreams are the brightest, after all, despite what Nick insists. They're so much clevererer. Wait, one too many "er"s there.

19th June 2010.
I don't really need this diary any more; the conversation of the thousands of us stuck down here is usually enough. As is Gulya. Keeps me sane. The only thing is, I absorbed a memory and a dream today. It was from someone barely alive in the first place, someone not yet born. They'd been cut out, you see, but in their last heartbeat they were stolen.
They're dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of the cold and the rage they felt in that instant. They'd been floating through here for a few weeks, batting to and fro, picking up scattered images and memories of the faded. There wasn't much of them left, really, and they had pretty much all unraveled. I picked up the dream, tidied it a bit, let it fly. It was a strange one, an amalgam of many minds, but the end was understandable. There was this song, this line that was stuck in my head and kept playing back:
"There's an abortion under the floorboards, and another in the sink."

17th April 2012.
I hear from the newcomers that things are changing up there. Politics, society, technology- it's all moving on. Maybe I wouldn't recognise it, even if I could perceive it.
Ai-Fan is beginning to fade. It's sad. I wish there was something I can do. Sometimes we can keep people afloat, for a while, but sooner or later the Dark claims them all. It's a shame. Ai-Fan is my friend. Gulya is doing what she can for her, but Gulya's beginning to fray herself, I think. She's been here for so long, it's a wonder she's not gone already. I don't know what to do. I love them all. I don't want them to fall to the Dark.
We have a theory about what it does now, you see. There was a boy, a young fisherman's son named Benoy. He fell into the sea, and he saw an eel, and he saw a darkness behind its eyes. He saw it lunging, but in its shadow before it could bite, he woke up here.
Gulya said she knew about the eel. It's an old legend around here, an old dream, one that had been circling the Dark since time immemorial.
If the eel's in the world, then it means that a dream of it has leaked out. Maybe a lot of dreams have leaked out. Maybe that christmas town I dreamt up really existed, or that hotel corridor. Maybe Gulya's machine, too.
We think that's what the Dark is. It's like a radio tower, a transmitter for dreams. The dreams are made real. That's what the Dark does.
But we still don't know what it is, or why.

26th June 2012.
I never knew, back on earth, the joy of swimming in another's mind. Gulya and I come perilously close to being one and not two, on occasion. Is this love? I think this is love. She sees me more clearly than anyone else, or so she claims. At time, she swears she can see me, see properly, a physical version of me hovering above her. She says it's nice. Not sure if I believe her, though.
Still, there are some things I can't really talk about. Like Ai-Fan. The centre of her had come unraveled, so I took what was left of her memories. She was my friend, and she had a hard life- grey communist corridors, a nursery of abandoned children. There were some odd dreams, there, too- of a man who'd lived for centuries to protect his little village. China sounds interesting. I wish I'd been there, when I was alive. So many worlds crawling on the spinning sphere.
There was another dream, of a painting that depicted the wars of the world- or part of the world. I wondered how Ai-Fan had dreamt that one up. Strange girl.

29th November 2012.
Gulya was born on the open steppe, in the 16th century. She grew up riding, shooting, throwing herself through the air with hooves beneath and the eternal heaven above. She played in open fields, she danced beneath the sky, she moved like a wild thing in a wild world.
Then one day, she fell down, and in an instant when nobody was looking, was stolen away. She came to a place of darkness when her life had barely begun, a place of dreams, a place where humans were not made of flesh and blood but of wood and wire and wax, little constructs unraveling like wool. She was scared, but she was very brave.
Little Gulya worked out a way to talk. She realised how the dreams could be used. She worked out how to send thoughts, to transmit emotion, to articulate words. She bound all the minds in her little part of the dark to her, like a mother. She was like a mother to so many, keeping the fraying whole, making their minds last as long as possible. And she survived, and nobody knew why.
But I knew. I was only 14 when I was taken, all those years ago. My mind has grown up down here, and my emotions with them. I fell in love with Gulya, and she with me, and I saw all the dark twisting and mellow happiness of her heart, her oh-so-human heart. She was buoyed by the love that she was given, the bonds she forged, the memories she collected. She remained herself because she leant into being with others, many others.
Little Gulya of the Kazakh Uls. She was so far from home, so removed from time. She'd lived far longer than she was meant to. She was quick and bright. I know why she died. It was because that whole time, despite all the memories she had maintained and all the brightness she had attained, she was still herself. She couldn't change, she wasn't in a state of flux. Gulya was an "I". She had a notion of the self, which held her together, but slowly died in the blackness of the night.
Today I dreamt of a man who could never die, but poisoned all around him.
I am in mourning. I wear this black around me like a funeral suit. And yet, in the midst of the dark, an idea occurs. A monstrous one. And one that, if it works, would avenge my lost love's death.

1st January 2013.
So. I proposed the following idea to the others:
We are fairly sure that the things we dream are made real, but we can't control what we dream. We all enter this world in a state of collapse and flux, dying perpetually until we finally unravel and become little more than a ball of stray thoughts. We cannot survive alone. The more we interact and meld with the others around here, the longer we last, but we can't last forever as long as we hold onto a state of being. A state of knowing that we're a self. Otherwise, we fray into tiny strands, picked up as stray thoughts by the others still left alive.
So, I came up with an idea. The only way we can survive is to become one. We must all sacrifice our individual natures, and merge. One being, one child made of many, a mind of madness strung together by nerve and wire. Because we're stronger together.
Some objected. Some said that this happens anyway, when we slowly fade. We are all lost, we are all sprung apart, scattered among the new children, who are scattered in their turn- why hasten the process? Why not cling on as long as possible?
Because, I said, if we were strong enough, focused enough, hive-minded enough, then we could dream ourselves. We could never have left our families. We could return to the lives that were stolen, to the childhoods ripped away. We could feel the wind on our skin again.
That convinced them. We may have our little pleasures down here, but when you're never sure where you begin and the darkness ends, when things like morning and afternoon and night are frail and arbitrary anchors we have invented, when your mothers are far away in an unknown place and time- when you live like that, you can't help but want to get out.

8th February 2013.
They are. They were. They will be.
We were born in England, Iran, America. We were raised in Texas, Beijing, the Midwest, the free steppes. We are Jacob, 'Abbas, Nick, Ai-Fan, Rose and Gulya. We are. We were. We will be.
We see many things. No, I do. No, we all do. We see the others, their dreams, their fears. They are them. Then they are us. We are many and we act as many.
We see dark. We see light. We create strange images. Of a deal with a devil in a frozen land. Of a faceless market stretching into endless night. Of another dying in another dark. Of elephants weeping for their lonely mother.
It aches. Our substance aches, or what is left of it. It seethes with the pain of the many. All we want to do is curl up and be alone, and we never can.
May we wake up from this infernal prison.

19th March 2045.
…Diary.
We know of this diary. It was the product of the mind of one of our founding members, Jacob Montauk. This element still exists within us. We have decided to use it. To siphon off the thoughts of the hive.
We are all voluntary members of a large collective organis- organ- monkey-grinder of some sort. It's getting harder to be ourselves, to be one. We've absorbed a large chunk of the total number of the missing, now. There are still many hundreds of thousands to go, but we're getting there.
It's getting harder to ma- to think- to attach a meaning to words. We are, for the time being, but soon we may not be. Or rather, we will be, but can we attach a meaning to that when there's nothing outside it? If we are the universe, if we are the D- the Vo- the Bla- the Oblivion, then is there an oblivion at all? Do we only exist when defined against the other?
Nothing is definite. Even our dreams are unseen now, and full of monstrous and forgotten thoughts.
We'll have to ruminate on this further. Further. Further, into the void.

19th March 3994.
We are. We were. We will be.
The crushing weight of all that ever was as the last child becomes part of the One. Let me tell you- no- let one part of me tell another part of me a story. There are new parts added all the time. We work like clockwork, an engine in the dark.
I dreamt today of a man imprisoned. He betrayed his foe, so he stood suspended over the top of an idea blasted into space forever. A war of ideas. That went around and around forever.
I dreamt today of a crown in red, of a fire in gold, of seven brides for an emperor. Imprisoned, he will be free. But he'll die like all the rest, screaming in his own pointlessness, the facade of his fiction scattered to the winds.
I dreamt today of a vagabond, writer, artist. I dreamed he lived, breathed free, learned what life was, and that his thoughts echoed a thousand thousand miles hence.
I dreamt today of an ancient tradition, of the little communities and frozen pleasures of the common folk, skating on the ice forever, pirouetting and twisting in one and many times and places.
I dreamt today of a cemetery that did not belong. Ghosts of a future war that snarled and scraped and scrapped between the children of humanity and the children of the machine.
Auntie was right about Jacob being "irritatingly pretentious." They could have been described so much better than that.

One year after the death of reason.
The winds would whistle over the waters, the hills, the oceans. It would fly free, kicking up sprat and dust, foam over sand. The beaches under the midnight sun were ever-changing, ever-present, where vagabonds and lovers would sit and think and kiss. Hops grew in wafting fields beneath the moors.
Little clay huts scattered around the entrance to the walls. Little grey skies kissing little grey clouds. The rain, wetting the crops and soaking walkers, running through some wilderness of woodland in overcast weather.
Marble columns in front of the libraries. The smell of paper in books, musty and welcoming. The lights of a train as it plunged through the tunnel, shaking all inside as they hugged up against the cold. The sights of an ancient bazaar.

There isn't a world any more. There's just the Dark.
It won. It took our dreams and it won. We are all that's left of what was- a memory engorged upon itself. The last scraps took themselves from time. We are the dark and we are suspended here.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. It all goes into the dark. Some rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem, grinding rebar and freezing concrete.

An unknown time in a sky of inky black.
Nicholas "Nick" Holzinger was born in the Midwest. He was born to a loving family. In winters, he would skate on the ponds, and laugh with his friends. But he had another habit. On very cold and crisp and clear nights, he would go to the bridge in town, and stare out over the ponds, looking at the stars reflected in the water.
Nobody was watching. So they took him.
But after that, while he dreamt beneath the world, his family and friends and parents persisted. And they thought, in their minds, of a hundred thousand different ways he could have been killed. Every fantasy, every twisted paranoid dream and nightmare brought to the fore, on the cusp of their minds, dreaming of the ways he could have been taken.
But they were all aspects of a greater whole. They weren't separate scenarios at all. They were darkness.
One more strand for every child taken. An endless circle. The dark exists because it has to exist, in the minds of every frightened and demented parent scared for their childs' life. They already know what's happened to their children, because they can see it. They can see the dark.
We never stood a chance.

The heat death of the universe. 3 PM in the afternoon eastern standard time.
Where am I?
I float, lost in time. I awake, with all these voices in my head. Am I plural, or are we singular? I don't know any more.
It's all dying. Matter itself. The rocks crumble into dust, the dust crumbles into atoms, the atoms crumble into waves of energy. Concepts roll in on themselves. Even the Dark is dying, its purpose done, its crimes committed. A greater void awaits beyond it.
It's coming now. Slowly. Achingly. That oblivion that ends me. Us. The Dark was just a memory of humans, a feeling, a fear that bound. But what awaits is more. What awaits is not a Thing, with a capital letter and an ominous feeling.
People often fail to understand what it is to be blind. I know, for I have dreamt of a thousand thousand of the blind. Blind to so many things. People think that being blind is like having your eyes shut, but it's not. When your eyes are closed, you can still see blackness, the fires in your retina, the colours of your brain. To be blind is not to see that. To be blind is not to see nothing, but to be incapable of seeing. A void in your head where your eyes should be.
To die is not to sleep. To die is not to dream. To die is not even to find oneself in an undiscovered country. To die is nothing. To die is to never have been, because all that was is erased. There is just an end. An oblivion.
I was once so scared of the Dark that took me. But it doesn't matter now. The Dark is a thing like all other things, and it will die too. Soon there will be nothing but absence.
I can't remember who I am. Let me do something, give something back. Let me give her back. Let her live. Or a memory of her, a shade, a vision in furs and skins, riding on horseback with the wind within her air.

The last syllable of recorded time.
This is how the world ends.
This is how the world ends.
This is how the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
It's coming now. The moments are shrinking, the area contracting. The Dark is fraying and ripping. I shall be brief, diary, my constant companion within infinity.
I am Jacob Montauk. I did not merge with the others at all. I absorbed them. Ate them. I did not realise it until just now. At the end. I murdered them all to keep me alive.
I failed. All the memories, minds and souls I took into me made me unable to think, or to remember. All is dust now. All is calamity.
I should have dreamed us back centuries ago. Millennia. Eons. But I couldn't think. And then there was the dark, and there was nothing to be dreamed back into. Just an end. How could I let them go back to their lives, their little realities, when all will be dark?
England. I shall dream of England. I shall dream of her fields, white with snow in winter, fresh with dew in spring. I shall dream of her hills, of her hedgerows and buses, her rose gardens, her marble columns and concrete abhorrences. I shall dream of England, so that she lives. Some small, twisted shadow of her. Some dying breath of my home.
I can do something for the others, though. Maybe. I can take dream something back. Show them history. Show them all that will be. Show them how to fix things. Someone. Whoever is out there. Whoever understands what it is to die in the dark, so others can live in the light.
It's coming now. It'll be over soon. And then I won't have to be alive any more. I won't have to be the stolen child, dreaming for millennia about a half-remembered reality that will waste to nothingness anyway.
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark.


She didn't hear it. Not at first.
At this time of night, the labs were deserted. The whole of Site-120 was practically empty: corridors dim and silent, offices shut, experimental apparatus crouched in shadowy chambers. There were no anomalies contained on site, so the only people left in the compound were a couple of security staff. And a sixty-three-year-old researcher, hunched over a bench full of notes and textbooks, a single desk lamp bright against the lab's enveloping darkness.
She had always been wrapped up in her work, her colleagues said. There was no-one to go home to. She had been with the Foundation for many years, many late nights like this, engrossed in the calculations and correlations spread in front of her. And so she didn't hear the noise, not when it started.
A soft, crackling hiss from the far corner of the lab, a sound like wet leaves in a fire. Like whispers from a dried-up throat, just at the edge of hearing. It wasn't until she breathed in the smell - faint but thick with rot - that she started from her work, turned, and noticed the sound.
The researcher pulled herself down from her lab stool, that familiar stiffness in her hips an unwelcome reminder of the hours and years she had been in the lab. Absently she pushed her glasses back up and peered across the darkened room. The noise was still there. A few seconds of listening failed to resolve it into anything readily explainable. She had taken four steps across the lab when the lamp behind her blinked out.
Swallowed in darkness, she froze. The noise had gone. Her breathing had grown rapid and shallow, and she forced two deeper breaths before taking out her phone and switching on the torch. After a moment's hesitation, she turned back to the workbench to see what had happened to the light.
As the torch beam swung, the first thing she registered was that there was something different on her pile of work. Something foreign. Dark. Wet. Bloody. Her brain caught up: it was a human kidney, complete with ureter and a tangle of blood vessels. It glistened in the torchlight, a crimson stain seeping into the paper beneath it. Her throat grew tight.
The noise started again. It was thicker, somehow. Moist. She looked over her shoulder, indecisive. Her brain was blank, reacting without thinking - a thousand other choices pushed out by the sheer impossibility of that noise, this mangled organ in front of her. Stay here or go there? Almost before she realised, she was walking cautiously across the shadowed room towards the source of the sound.
The torch lit up the back wall of the lab, a corner behind the mass spectrometer. A black smear had spread across it, the paint and plaster bubbling and flaking in a slow roil. The whispering sizzle was louder, and the air was heavy with an oily stink of decay. Close to, she could see the surface of the wall had softened, sagging in wet bulges. She hesitated.
The hand shot out of the wall faster than thought. Its fingers were broad and grey, sticky with black mucus, grabbing her forearm. Instantly her lab-coat started to melt, and as she yanked her arm away the sleeve tore off, disintegrating. The fingers snatched at her again, and she dropped her phone. As she stumbled backwards, the torch shone up from the floor, lighting the figure that pushed its way through the mottled, fleshy wall.
It looked like an old man, decrepit and rotten. It was naked, its skin slick and shiny as pitch. Its flesh was withered and decomposing, with missing toes and misshapen feet. A distended gut protruded obscenely from beneath a narrow chest, arms spread wide in a mockery of greeting. Above a ruined throat, she saw a too-wide mouth locked in a rictus grin, and eyes - oh god, those eyes. The thing emerging from the wall before her looked like a man, but its eyes were grey and flat as a shark's.
The researcher took another two steps back, reaching behind her for something, anything solid to hold. Her breath caught in her throat. The old man stood still, dripping black foulness onto the floor as the tiles began liquefying beneath him. Her phone sank beneath the surface; the torch flickered out. In darkness, she ran.
She was panting by the time she reached the lab doors, ruing her age, the extra weight she carried, every exercise session postponed. As she turned to close the doors behind her she could see that hideous figure pacing deliberately across the room. Something about its lack of hurry unnerved her deeply. She forced herself to keep running down the corridor, calling for the night-guard, hoping he was close.
"Frank! Frank!"
After the second turn she saw him, halfway from the guard station, gun in his hand.
"What's wrong?" Frank jogged up to her, and she doubled over, spots in her vision.
"Frank, thank god. It's -" Her chest was heaving, and she could hardly speak. How could she describe what she had just seen.
"Slow down, ay. Take a second to -" Frank tailed off, and she looked up to see his gaze fixed on the end of the dim corridor. She knew what he had seen.
The old man walked towards them, trailing a viscid ooze. When Frank trained the torch on him, his eyes shone avid and empty. Twenty feet from them.
"Hey! Stop, now!" Frank shouted. "I will shoot you!"
The grinning cadaver kept coming. Fifteen feet. Twelve.
Frank fired, three shots. Two hits to the chest.
The old man stopped, gradually crumpling forward. The researcher let out a breath. The glistening corpse sank into the floor, swallowed by the slime it had generated. She felt sick with shock.
"What the fuck was that?" Frank started towards the blackened floor, but she held his sleeve.
"Wait! It's - I think it's some kind of acid." Her voice was hushed, her throat felt raw. "We need to call someone."
Frank pulled out his radio, but paused, his thumb over the button. "Not until I know what to report."
Suddenly she didn't want him to move away, not even a few feet. "Please," she said, stepping into Frank's path, "there's nothing like this on the database, there's nothing! We need an MTF."
"Ay, don't tell me my job." said Frank, sounding piqued. "First, I need to -"
"No!" She was gripping his sleeves. "Frank, I know dimensional anomalies, and this was from one. I saw it step out of a wall!"
Frank tried to shrug her off, but pushed too hard. She fell awkwardly, a wrench of pain from her ankle. Tears sprang to her eyes, and Frank was instantly regretful.
"Oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't mean -"
He cut off, as a glob of black mucus landed on his radio, setting it fizzing. Frank dropped it like he had been stung, and glanced upwards. The next drop landed in his right eye.
The researcher scrambled backwards as Frank roared and clutched his face. She could hear the hiss as the corrosion ate at his eye socket from the inside. Then she saw that grinning face emerge from the dark patch on the ceiling, and the old man dropped onto Frank's back. One hand slid into the muscles of his shoulder like it was dough, and Frank's roar became a scream. As he crashed into the wall of the corridor, she saw the other hand sink into Frank's throat and tear, and the scream was abruptly cut off. Frank started to collapse into the wall as it darkened around him. The last thing she saw was those eyes, locked on hers as they sank back into the blackness. Empty eyes, but somehow full of promise.
Her heart pounded, and the taste of bile was in her throat. She tried to stand, but she was lightheaded and her ankle was throbbing. She had to run. She had to run - every second not running was death. Dragging herself up on a cabinet, she tried to think, eyes flicking between the ruined radio and the puckered bruises on the wall and floor. Run. Where? Guard's office. The alarm.
She forced herself forward, gasping at the pain in her foot. Her lungs burned. Every shadow in the half-lit hallway loomed like a threat. Not much further now. Don't look behind. Each step was a battle: trying to move faster, to stop her leg from buckling. Forward momentum was the only thing keeping her upright. She rounded the last corner, saw the guard station at the end of the hall. It looked empty. She could make it. With a grunt of effort she pushed herself to a final run, closing the final yards and crashing through the guard-room doors.
Her first step inside sank shin-deep into the frothing muck that used to be the floor. She fell and her hands were caught too, skin burning as they were sucked deeper into the ground. Looking up, she could see the console with the alarm button, just out of reach, and she wailed in sick despair. It was the last sound she made before the world was consumed by night.
Death did not come. She was submerged in a lake of pitch, but somehow the researcher could still breathe, could still think. Was she still falling? She couldn't tell. All feeling had vanished, her skin no longer stinging, although the blood still pounded in her ankle. She stayed there suspended for minutes, unsure of the passing of time, of what this meant. Then the gloom lightened, blurred, and resolved into a tiled floor.
The grey light showed her a room she didn't recognise, but which was somehow familiar. Dust, dead leaves and scraps of metal were strewn across the floor, and one of the walls had buckled in on itself. She pulled herself over to the door and looked out into a dilapidated hallway, mould and rust covering the ceiling, and the floor contorted like a writhing snake. There were no lights, but the hall was lit by a grey-green glow, a sickly aurora undulating sluggishly across every surface.
She'd been right: it was a dimensional anomaly. Probably controlled by that thing. The researcher felt desperate. Probably it had made this place or had lived here for years, so it would know every inch. But if she had fallen into it, that meant there was a way out. She just had to keep moving, and she would find it.
She limped into the corridor, clambering over collapsed furniture and wiping plaster dust from her hands. The familiarity of the place snatched at her thoughts, but she tried to ignore them. Keep going forward. Look for an exit. Don't think about what might be behind you. Don't think about Frank. Don't think about that grin, those eyes.
A metallic buzzing grew louder, and she realised that it had been there since she arrived in this place. She tried to move faster. A gust of wind blew around her, fetid. Her heart was racing again. This place was familiar, but how? She needed to stop, just for a moment. She grabbed at a door handle, relief flooding her when it opened.
She walked into her old apartment, and spun in confusion. This was impossible. The disarray of the halls was gone, everything here was in its proper place. But nothing about this place was proper - she had left this apartment 20 years ago, the building had been torn down.
The researcher sped across the room, the need to rest forgotten. Everything here was hers: her books, her furniture. The window showed the same view, an incongruously bright day. How? She raced to the bedroom, her bed made, everything neatly put away. She opened the closet, and the corpses fell out on to her.
It was a mountain of decomposing limbs and organs, limp and slick. They slithered down at her under the weight of the pile, trailing gore. She retched at the deep, foul smell of putrescence, flailing wildly to pull herself free. A bloated hand pawed at her leg as it fell, and she felt something slippery and soft under her feet as she stood.
This assemblage would have taken dozens of bodies, she thought, still gagging. As it slumped further, it exposed a face she recognised. Frank. A deep hole where his eye had been, and his neck was torn open, black jelly dripping from the flesh. Her eyes scanned the line of his body and saw his leg twisted viciously upwards, exposed bone protruding where the foot had been ripped off. She was trying to hold in a scream when she heard movement from the back of the closet.
Without thinking, she ran. Behind her, the sounds of sinewly limbs pulling themselves clear of the corroded wall. She bolted for the door to her apartment, ankle screaming at her. She could feel the old man enter the room, only a few steps back. The metallic buzz constricted around her as she emerged.
Staggering down the hallway, realisation overwhelmed her. This wasn't some old hospital or school. Her apartment had given her the answer. It was twisted, corrupted, but this was Site-120. She couldn't think about why that was. What it meant right now, was that she might know a way out.
She took another left turn, skidding on the wet floor and crashing her head on the opposite wall. Her ears rang. The footsteps behind her were louder, closer. She dragged herself onwards, her breath a whimper from the pain in her foot. One more corridor and she should be back to the guard room. She hoped like hell that the dimensional parallels held up. The footsteps grew closer. She could hear the drip of ichor.
Her vision grew dark. The hall telescoped in front of her. A hand clutched at her back, her lab coat melting to tatters. The guard room was just ahead. She was exhausted. She couldn't make it. The floor beneath her started to bubble.
With a yell, she crashed through the guard room doors again, pushing through the oily puddle behind them and surfacing in the real Site-120. The ghoul was still behind her. She fell hard on the console and slammed her hand down on the alarm. Klaxons blared, and the emergency light flashed. She turned, pushing herself as far as she could into the corner of the console, but the old man had halted in the middle of the room. It was staring at the light.
She heard a new noise, like a deep growl. Suddenly she realised that the corpse before her had a lump of new flesh in its throat, bloody and ragged. Frank's throat, she realised, and her stomach dropped. She looked again at the old man, seeing its misshapen carcass, patched and scarred.
The old man was still transfixed by the light. Its growl built in intensity. "Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred."
Her mouth went dry.
The thing looked at her with its dead eyes. "Aaaaanna," it said, like a sigh. "Anna."
She made no sound. Her mind was screaming.
The old man took a step towards her. Another step.
Five years, eleven months, twenty-one days. And twenty-five more years after that. Falling apart, rebuilding itself, rebuilding its world. For her.
It held up its left hand. She could see the mark where the ring had been.
She couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
The old man reached towards her, tenderly holding her cheek. Her skin puckered and liquefied, flesh dripping from her face. It brought its grinning mouth to hers and kissed her, and her teeth became hot wax, fusing and corroding.
She screamed then. The old man pressed his kiss harder into her open mouth, his swollen grey tongue melting hers and filling her throat with molten muscle and caustic jelly. The last thing she felt was the weight of the two of them, sinking into the floor, locked in a final, burning embrace.


Alexander had a way of owning a room from the moment he walked in. So, as the door soundlessly blew off its hinges, Jude just reached down, pulled a rapidly warming beer out from JJ's backpack, and popped the tab. The door wasn't exactly broken, so much as pushed, so didn't it just make sense that Alexander picked it up and pushed it right back in, like a big jigsaw piece?
He was tall. Taller than Jude, certainly. Wide, dark eyes nearly hidden by the unkempt dark hair. Long, nimble fingers uncorked an extremely large jug of red wine. “Cheers,” he said.
Jude and Alexander both drank. Skunked beer and cheap red wine.
Jude tilted back his head, draining the can of beer. Crushed it, dropped it on the hotel room floor. Esther hadn't moved from the bed. Two beds. JJ was in a different room. Of course he was. He always was.
“I really wish you wouldn't,” said Jude.
Alexander spilled wine in a small line across the entry way. “It can't be helped.”
“This is a stand thing, isn't it?” Quiet. More annoyed than scared. Esther drew her legs up onto the bed.
Alexander raised the bottle, gesturing in a wide arc. Red flowed freely. He took a few steps in. An arc across the door to the bathroom. And then he turned. Another splash of wine stained closed white curtains.
“I pour to Mithras. I pour to Zeus, to Perun, to the warriors and the fathers of old.” Alexander held out the bottle, pooling the wine in front of him before taking a sip.
Jude reached into the backpack and pulled out another can of beer. “Don't drink or anything, Esther. That's how Temple of Love gets you.”
“What? Why would I drink right now?"
“In whose name do your pour, Jude? Do you pour for Christ? The Father? The Ghost? Do they share one, or is that three?” said Alexander.
“Just one. You know whose name. Same as it's ever been." Jude flipped the tab with a hiss. He spilled the beer on the carpet and took a long sip. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. The can fell lifelessly. “You went to Catholic school, too, you know. Same one I did.”
“Someone's going to have to clean this. What the fuck kind of masculine bullshit is this?” Esther's face reddened. She reached out to Jude, to slap some sense into him, before the space between them widened. It stretched like silly putty. “No.”
Marble pillars sprang up from the beds, and the window opened wide and dissipated. The television flew upwards and fanned out until it became everything there was, a sun and a deep blue sky that soon was covered by the austere white roof. The air was heavy. The sunlight slanted through the columns. Ionic. Corinthian. Jude didn't know which. It was still after midnight, of course, and he was still tired. But, Alexander always loved the brightness. He said it gave him energy. The sun and the hawk and the bull.
Jude cracked his knuckles. It was loud enough to reverberate from the columns.
Alexander smiled. He hadn't changed. But didn't his clothes seem a little cleaner? Gilded, almost, in the outlines? Hard to see.
“You know the rules, Jude?” He bit his lower lip. Fidgeted. A momentary glimmer lost before he yawned, took a sip of the jug of wine in his hands.
“Thunderdome rules, right? Then what the fuck is she doing here?” Jude's eyes narrowed. A cloud covered the sun. The shade was cool.
“A witness. I can smell the monotheism on her, but what is a contest of wills without an audience, Jude? I don't get out of bed for less than an auditorium.” A smile. Wine-stained teeth, too large, too sharp to be human.
The wind picked up and died quicker than it began. The sun was back. Golden orb. If Jude cared to look, which he didn't, he'd probably notice it was a blinding chariot pulled by a beautiful horse. Alexander was always thorough.
And then Esther was screaming. Jude turned. She was in a gleaming, golden cage upon a palanquin. The men that carried her were living statues, every muscle rippling like Bernini. They were marble, of course. Like everything else in the temple. Two had the head of a bull. Two had the head of a hawk.
“So, you're their lapdog, when it all comes down to it? Friendship doesn't mean shit?”
“You killed fourteen of them, Jude. You left the Gardener a walking skin graft.” Alexander took a long drink of wine. The jug was a goblet. Golden. Dazzling gems. An elegant stem.
“I'd do it again if I could.” And then Jude ran at Alexander. All electricity and flame.
Alexander caught the punch in his hand. A marble fist enclosed Jude's, crushing bones with a nice crunch. “I know you think you would, little Jude, but I don't think you have it in you.” And then a knee slammed into Jude's crotch.
His vision went black.

“I'm just saying, I got food poisoning. You didn't. Your, your luck shit doesn't help me if it's going to give me diarrhea.” Jude was pouting. But, then again, wasn't he always pouting?
Esther looked in the rearview mirror. He had his long legs on the car's seat. Muddy shoes everywhere. At least he had taken a shower. They had to stop to buy him new clothes, on the heels of all that shit. He couldn't just make more clothes. She had asked. And he had said, l'maan hashem, that he could never get the size right. That he always made it so the tags dug into the back of his neck enough to leave a rash.
One got used to that kind of thing when being around Jude Kriyot. The only magical incompetent. A man who could keep the car running miles and miles on fumes but who had trouble eating a single meal without splotches of barbecue sauce on the front of his shirt. Or gravy. Or whatever gross bullshit he shoved down his throat.
And the cracking. Cracked his neck, his knuckles, his toes, and, she swore, his jaw.
“You didn't die, did you? I call that good luck then.” JJ's face was against the window. The point of his nose poking against the glass. Rubbing his gross sweat and oil all over it. He had a seatbelt on. No one else thought it was funny but Esther. “And I found that twenty on the ground when you were pooping. So really, your pain benefited us all in the end.”
“You bought that fucking t-shirt with it.”
“I think me looking beautiful and fierce can keep the whole gang's spirit up.”
“It's hideous.”
“Once again, you're just a jealous bitch.”
“Who buys a fucking shirt at a truck stop?”
“The gorgeous.”
The shirt, truthfully, was hideous. World's Greatest Grandpa in large blue Comic Sans. There was an old man at the bottom, crudely drawn. He was fishing in a boat. He wasn't catching anything. He looked tired. It was three sizes too large.
Esther didn't say anything. She kept her eyes on the road as much as she could. She hated being with men. Especially the two of them. JJ was a good friend of hers, certainly, but she always felt she was expected to mother them. To act as the wise middle ground in their constant little dick wars, or maybe it was just a weird kind of flirting.
“Besides, it's my stand,” said JJ.
“Your stand can't be a fucking shirt. There's no song called that.”
“Mine is.”
“Fuck you.” Jude cracked his neck, leaned forward between Esther and JJ. “If you had a stand it'd be like Safety Dance. Maybe, like, Nothing Bad Ever Happens to Me. The Oingo Boingo thing, you know. Or, like, Wheel in the Sky. I've gotta bunch, dude. You can have a good one.”
“World's Greatest Grandpa gives me the power to fuck hot silver daddies. Big dudes who smoke cigars.” He paused. “Development Potential: A.”
Jude stopped talking, leaned back, and looked out the window. Esther thought the ugliest thing in the world was a grown man pouting. Childishness. Learned helplessness. Jude was probably the kind of man whose mother made his dinner for him until he left home. Probably had her do the laundry until she was all broken and wrinkled. Probably never learned how to work the oven or the stove himself. Probably the kind of kid whose mother cleaned his room for him.
“Don't say bitch,” Esther said without turning to look at JJ. “Demeaning to women. Even if you mean it in the sassy gay way you always do.”
“Sorry, babe.” Pouted just like Jude. All men were the same, weren't they? Not like a woman. Never like a woman.
They'd had the conversation before. They'd have the conversation again. JJ was a man, but the piece of shit was always so serene so soon. A performative sorrow. A learned reaction in all men to make a woman absorb the brunt of their baggage. It wasn't just the way trouble rolled off his back like water on a duck's ass. It was that he was a man.
“It's okay.” It wasn't. “Just don't do it again.” Men don't change. No matter how hard they tried. He'd do it again.
Her tatty, her dad, her father, Rabbi Kogan, he never changed. Every Shabbat, every time he spoke G-d's words to the congregation. He said such beautiful things. But men forget beauty.
Kh'hob im in d'r erd arayn. As far she was concerned, he was dead and buried.
Her hands bit into the wheel. Wanted to break through it. Wanted to tear it from the steering column and throw it in the street. Fuck to G-d, fuck to Life, fuck to the Stupid Bullshit she had gotten herself into.
“We need to stop,” JJ said suddenly, his voice cutting through the fog like a shofar. “We need to stop. We have to stop. We need to stop. I'm going to open the door. Stop the car. I'm getting out.”
“Fuck. L'maan hashem. Okay, okay.” And then she was pulling into the most nondescript diner she had ever seen. If it was dark outside, she bet most of the letters in the sign would be out. Erma's Diner. Who was Erma? Why couldn't this bitch get some more lightbulbs? The mind boggled.
“Are you hungry?”
“Kind of. We have to stop here.”
Jude grumbled, stretching his long arms and long legs, cracking them like a fucked up daddy longlegs. She wanted to reach back and hit him. And JJ, too. Fuck. Like children. Always a mother. They couldn't even drive. As soon as she parked the car, JJ sprinted out into the diner. Around them were only gigantic trucks. Some with rigs, some without. Wonderful. More men.
“Alright, fine. I could go for something to eat,” Esther said, yanking out the key, opening the door, and leaving Jude stretching and making gross noises in the back seat.

As Jude regained consciousness, he could hear Alexander speaking. The words didn't work in his head. But the tone was unmistakable. Pontification. That's what Jude recognized it as. It was just the way he was. The way he had always been.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Jude. He tried to stand up then fell. He remained on one knee. Panting. It was so hard to be here. So hard to continue existing in the face of this fucking blowhard.
“Rude. Here I am, giving your good friend—what's your name again?” said Alexander just as Esther said, “Shut the fuck up. Oh my G-d.”
“It's Esther,” said Jude, shaking onto his feet again. Didn't fall. The floor was marble. It looked different. The gilded cage was the same. So were the gigantic animal headed statues holding it. Alexander, however, wore a toga and laid out on a triclinium.
“Yeah, beautiful name. Someone in the Old Testament, right?”
“The Tanakh,” Esther corrected, before a single marble arm protruded from the top of the cage and held its hand over her mouth. Its grip looked hard to Jude.
“All monotheism is cut from the same cloth. The same refusal to see the varied power of nature. A simplistic attempt to glean order from a series of wills all clustered and fighting but sometimes together. It's arrogant, really. But I lost my train of thought.” He plucked a grape from a vine that grew, self supporting, to the level of his arm. Alexander took it and popped it into his mouth.
They were the most purple things Jude had ever seen. Anything else that had been purple looked like bullshit in comparison. The apotheosis of purple. The platonic ideal of it. Jude realized he was drooling when he was on his own two feet. Trembling. Anemic. Definitely not a shounen hero. More like a shounen zero.
“What were you boring her about?”
“Oh, yes. I was telling her about our friendship. About my life. I knew your parents, may the gods hold them in their minds for eternity. You knew my mother.” He spilled wine from a goblet that was in his hand for a moment and disappeared the next. “I thought she needed to know. It's good for the audience to have a good idea of the turmoil between the two heroes.”
“You're the antagonist.”
“I guess I am,” said Alexander. He shook his head, sliding off from the couch. “I told her about our childhoods. About high school. About college. Same high school, same college. Recruited by the same art collective slash terrorist group.”
“You were the Architect.”
“I'm still the Architect. I didn't kill twenty of them.”
“Fourteen.”
“I rounded it.”
“You've always been shit at math.” And something like a bolt of lightning shot out from Jude's eyes. An arc of brightness. Like the beam of a flashlight. But it didn't reach Alexander. Jude coughed, sputtered, fell back to the ground.
Alexander sighed, sitting back down. “This is pitiful. I thought you'd give me a battle to sing about for ages to come. You're not even worth spilled wine. What would your father say? What would the father of your fathers say?” He tilted his head, like an animal trying to find the best angle to hear prey. The filigree on the marble columns seemed to breathe. Gold and silver, in and out. A web of shining, delicate lace.
Sometimes, it surprised Jude, the delicacy that Alexander was capable of.
“You're less than a man, Jude. You're not even a woman. You're a sexless, pitiful little thing. You lack all vitality. If your body was your mind, your dick would have shrunk to a pit and fallen off years ago. I don't even—” Alexander began to sputter. He clawed at his neck.
The hand on Esther's mouth fell limply and then retracted back into the top of her cage. She took a breath, but nothing came. Her face reddened, tears of irritation bringing mascara down her cheeks, she screamed. No sound came out.
The sky was dark again. Midnight. The moon hung high and fat. Butter churned. Sweet. Reddened filigree, like molten glass, expanded outward. The marble breathed. Flesh. The marble was skin. The marble was blood. Veins, filled with something strange and dark and unknowable.
“Not a man,” was all that Jude said. He stood tall. He was gold and silver and light.
There was a breeze, and Esther took a long breath. She didn't speak.
“What do you know about being a man, Alex? You fell ass-backwards into it.” Tall as the columns. Or was he the columns? The moon, an eye. The wind, his breath. “I chose manhood. I took it and made it my own. I made my own body, cell by fucking cell. I was never a girl. I never felt like one. And what did you do, Alexander? What did you do? Besides disappoint your mother. Besides acting like a fucking ancient Roman piece of garbage?”
Alexander floated upward. The wind took him. His jeans were dirty. His t-shirt was ill-fitting. Skin, grey. Eyes, closed. Grimacing. Electricity pulsed throughout his body. The Architect's teeth chattered.
“It isn't power. It isn't your gods. It isn't being a father. It's not something as base as reproduction.” His voice was everything. The temple spoke. The Temple of Love was in Jude's name. Dedicated to Jude's god, and world without end. “Manhood isn't so fucking simple. It's, fuck, it's love. I don't know. It's protection. Fuck. It isn't what you are.”
From within him stepped a figure in gold. Muscular, strong. It stepped out from his body, aligned with his and then out like walking through a doorway cast in a spiderweb. One fist was a plus. The other, a minus. It walked like a VHS distortion, scrambled and chopped. The golden figure, Video Killed the Radio Star, punched Alexander. Once, twice, thrice. A flurry of fists. And it spoke. A great flood, a word repeated. Urere. To burn. And the electricity held him in the air. Like the moon, pale and fat. Blood. The sounds of bones breaking. And finally, one last punch rocketed Alexander to a column. As he slid down it, a smile spread across his face.
“It's beautiful,” he said. “This is what I hoped for, Jude. This is a beautiful will worthy of your god. I feel good now. About all this.” Coughed. Blood. There was a lot of blood.

Esther lit the end of the Djarum black with Jude's green lighter. She moved to place it in her purse, but Jude's hand shot out, plucking it from between her fingers. She grunted, took a long drag. The taste was sweet on her lips.
“I used to smoke cloves, too,” Jude said. “I wanted to impress this cute goth boy.”
Esther's eyebrows rose up then down by way of response.
“I remember coughing. People told me I smoked it like weed. I remember, you know, holding it in like I was gonna get high. Still remember the headrush. Can I have one?”
Esther shrugged and pulled one out from the battered pack. Jude lit the cigarette and handed the lighter to Esther. She put it into her purse before he realized what he was doing. What an idiot.
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Impress your goth boy. Did you?”
Jude shook his head, the smoke spewing out from his nose and mouth like the shittiest smoke bomb. He hacked and coughed, hands on his knees. Eyes redder than they were on pot. But he was licking his lips. And wasn't he smiling? “No. I'm not good at getting boys to like me. Or girls.” He took another drag, this one much shorter, and tried his best to hold it in before seeming to remember it wasn't weed.
Bisexual, probably, then. Gay and bi men were just as bad as heterosexuals. She took another drag and didn't speak. Wanting to fuck someone different than society intended didn't suddenly make you okay.
Jude sighed, leaning against the diner. JJ was nowhere to be found. They had to wait for him, of course, even though he'd do fine on his own. The question was whether or not they would.
Esther hated the silence. She hated having to hang out alone with Jude. Even with a shower, he had a smell about him. A kind of sweaty desperate scent. Like metal. Like nervous animals.
“Do you ever have trouble believing in God? Like, because of your magic? You're Jewish, right?” He paused, dropped the half-smoked cigarette to the ground and crushed it underneath his sneaker. “Does it, like, interfere?”
“Why would it?” He wasted the cigarette. Esther wanted to reach out and slap the living shit out of him. Why was she plagued by such stupid, thoughtless men? Why was G-d doing this to her, out of all people?
“It's unnatural, isn't it? It's like. I know you guys don't have saints. Ever worry about Hell?”
“We don't have that. Don't even have heaven.”
“Shit, really? Wild.” Jude blinked, in genuine surprise. Leave it to a Christian to be unable to imagine doing good without promise of paradise. “But, like. I have powers greater than a saint. I do miracles like, you know, Jesus. But I'm not. I'm just an idiot with magic.”
“You are an idiot.”
“Yeah, right?” He shrugged. “It just makes me feel like I'm going against order. Like I have too much. I feel like I'm a sin. Like just being is a blasphemy. It feels rude to rely on God, if I'm like this. I don't even think of it unless I need forgiveness. I don't know. I feel like an aberration. I feel like I got too much. Like I'm unaccounted for.”
Esther snorted. She took another drag before dropping the butt on the ground, crushing it beneath her heel. She pulled out another long, black cigarette, stuck it between her lips, lit it.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It's stupid. G-d made you a man. G-d made me a woman. There's no changing that. She also made us both magic. I make mitzvahs, and you make fancy lights dance. It's arrogant to imply there isn't an order to this.” She took another drag. “Like what G-d said to Job, do you know the mating seasons of mountain lions? Do you know, fuck, the weather? There's something going on way beyond you. An order to things you can never see. And your magic, your bullshit, is accounted for. And in the eyes of the one who created all things, it's paltry idiot shit.”
“I guess.” His face was red.
“Yeah. You guess.”
“What about JJ?”
“Some people are just blessed. There's an order to it. It's unfair, and sometimes it's bullshit. You can hold G-d accountable for the bullshit, or you can just do with it what you can.”
As though called, JJ came rounding a corner “Hey, bitches. Waitin' on me?”
“Where were you?” Jude said.
“Powering up my stand.” JJ winked.
“Don't be gross. Where were you?”
“Suckin' off some old dude's dick in his truck.”
“Are you serious? That's unsafe. It's unsanitary. Like, he could be sick. Did he have a condom? Why are you messing with me?” Jude's voice slid to a whisper as a large man came from where JJ had walked from.
JJ winked at the old man and waved, “Hope to see you again, Burt.”
The large, old man only blushed, nodded, and walked inside.
Jude stared. Wide-eyed. Scandalized. Confused. He shook his head and stalked over to the car. It was locked, but that never mattered for him. He opened the door and slid into the back seat.
“Did you really?” Esther said.
“Nah, I mean. I did hit on him. He's married, though. Said his grandson was gay. Gave me his number. Didn't have the heart to tell him he was too young for me.” JJ stretched and yawned. “We had a great conversation about ham radios, though. Kind of cool.”
“Nice.”
“And on the way back, this dude with a Confederate flag on his dashboard left his door open. So I totally pocketed this.” And there was a wad of bills pulled out from his tight jeans. “That means a hotel tonight. Only two rooms, probably. But since I found it, that means you and Jude have to be bunkmates.”
“I'd rather sleep in a ditch.”
“Don't be a baby. You two need some more time to get used to each other.” And JJ turned to the car. Jude popped the lock, and JJ stepped in. Front seat.
Esther took a puff of her cigarette, staring at the two men in her car. She could think of worse places to be.

Esther stepped out from a cage that no longer existed. The four statues had fallen. She went to Jude and said, “He asked me to protect you with my life when you passed out. I have no fucking clue what's going on.”
The light around Jude faded as he stepped toward his fallen friend. The golden figure stepped into him. He bent down to Alexander, on his knees, and he said, “What the fuck is your problem, dude?”
Jude wanted to slap Alexander, but he had already done much more.
“You showed me what I was,” said Alexander. His eyes were dim. The blood was red, but it was golden. Ichor. Not gross. Not Lovecraft's ichor. But ichor like a Greek god. It had a sweet smell to it. Jude felt sick.
“What do you mean?”
“A coward. My mother raised me alone. She, you remember her don't you?”
“It's hard to forget her. She was just like you.”
Alexander smiled. His eyes closed. “It is a sin for you to kill. My gods would look the other way. Yours don't. Yet you did what you believed was right. They hurt, and you hurt them. I wanted to see if it was a mistake. Or if your will was that strong. A man protects the weak. My mother taught me that. You protected the weak by killing him. I did nothing. I said nothing as this consumed you. I was content to not act. But inaction is cowardice. Inaction is a transgression against bravery, against the gods, against our fathers and their fathers.”
“It was a mistake.”
“Yes, it was. For you. But your Christ will forgive. I've been led to believe he's all about that.”
The floor was carpeted. The columns were starting to look more like beds.
“You were never going to die,” Alexander said. “There's no world where I defeat you. I knew that it would be so. You're worthy of facing him.”
“Who?”
“The Critic. The one behind all of this. His hands didn't create the statue, but isn't he just as much a part of it as the Sculptor?” A weak smile. Alex reached out. Hand rested against Jude's cheek for a moment before it fell heavily to his side. “He won't stop. He knows where you are. I know not how. They will know I lost. He'll send another. His Electric Eye sees all.”
His breaths were ragged. The punches weren't what did it. His being, his life force, was leaving. Temple of Love only ever left one.
“I deserve to die. My will remains with you. And I will go on before us. I will go to the afterlife of my gods. I will set aside a place for you. And when you finally die, Jude, you will sit beside me. And we will be friends again. And you can tell me what you did. How you saved them. How brave you were in the face of sin.”
“What—what if I'm right? About God?” Jude was crying. Silently, of course. Alexander was never one for tears.
“I will storm the gates. And I will petition your Christ to forgive you.” A long sigh. “And if he does not, I will descend to the fires of eternity with you.”
Alexander smiled. The blood was all red. He was thin. Pale. Ghostly white. His veins were visible. Everything was fading. Clothing like gossamer.
“In whose name did you pour, Jude?”
“My own.”
Alexander laughed. A long rattle. “After you're done, go to them. All three. Don't let this ruin it. A relationship with your gods is a wonderful thing, Jude. I am certain they will forgive you. And a man is nothing,” Alexander reached out to touch Jude's cheek. “A man is nothing without his beliefs.”
And the hand slid from Jude's cheek. It disappeared before it hit the ground.
There was no Alexander. There were no columns. They were inside, and the outside was outside. The hotel room still stunk of wine, but there was no other sign of Alexander.
For a long time, neither Esther nor Jude said a word.
Jude laid out on the ground, face in the carpet. Esther sat upon the bed.
Esther finally stood up from the bed. She bent to the ground. And she hugged Jude. He cried in her arms, and she held him more tightly.
“Maybe, uh, it's not the time to say this, but, uh,” Esther paused. Like she was searching for a script.
“Say whatever,” Jude said.
“I'm sorry if I ever said anything fucked up. About trans people. I, uh, I didn't know.”
“It's okay.” He laughed. “Where did that come from?”
“I don't know,” she said. “Just, meeting you. And hearing all that. I guess if you could be born and assigned, you know, femaleness, and then, well, embrace being a huge dumbass and becoming a man. Like, maybe, I don't know. It's not so innate. Maybe someone born a dude could be a cool girl. I don't know. Is your friend okay?”
“He's gone. I think he's still with me.” A pause. “And thanks.”
Esther stood back up. Jude noticed there was snot all over her shoulder. Most likely his, unless she was doing weird stuff with her nose. “He really liked you.”
“I know.”
“How do you think he's going to petition G-d for your entrance if his will is with you, though?”
Jude laughed, standing on shaky legs. He collapsed onto the bed. “I wanted to ask, too, but I didn't wanna ruin the moment.” It was dark in the room. Lights off. The wine was on his bed, but Jude didn't care.
Esther sat back on her bed, watching him for a moment. “I'll tell JJ about this in the morning, if you don't think you can.”
But Jude heard nothing. Sleep came more quickly and more mercifully to him than it had in ages.

« Phantom Blunt | Jude's Bizarre Adventure | Kiefdust Crusaders »


You sit down in your office chair.
You look down the hallway
At the hundreds of skips' cells,
(Roars throughout the dark hallway)
Reminded of all the work to do
To keep your world safe from harm.

You sit down in your office chair.
You look down the hallway
At the hundreds of skips' cells,
(Roars throughout the dark hallway)
Reminded of all the work to do
To keep your world safe from harm.
You walk down and observe a test.
They're seeing how 682 feeds.
It's given a lamb and some steel;
682 consumes the plate instantly,
Digesting both as it would Earth.
But it is returned to containment.
You walk down and observe a test.
They're seeing how strong 173 is.
It's given a horse and an elephant;
173 snaps them both in the dark,
Standing in their blood in the light.
But it is returned to containment.
You sit down to analyze the tests.
You get a phone call at your desk.
Your home has been robbed;
Your wife and daughter murdered.
The suspect is your neighbor's son.
You thank the officer for the call.
You look down the hallway, again,
At the couple of skips' pens,
(Rustles throughout the light hallway)
Reminded of all the work to do
To keep your world safe from harm.
So, you walk home to analyze a test.


Art alone makes life possible – this is how radically I should like to formulate it. I would say that without art man is inconceivable in physiological terms […] Man is only truly alive when he realizes he is a creative, artistic being.
- Joseph Beuys (1921-1986)

The young artist tried not to blink, as the soft rustling of maps and clinking wineglasses grew behind him.
Straggling patrons entered his spacious room in the gallery; he purposefully ignored them, trying to keep his body rigid and erect on a tall stool. Next to him, an artist's table was laid out chock full of supplies - brushes, chisels, cans of spray paint, tubs of oil paint. The well-dressed patrons shuffled in, as the stern museum guards politely reminded them to be respectful as they ushered the visitors in.
Tensing his body as if he was a sculpture as well, the artist kept his back rigid and neck straight, as he stared intently at the sculpture ahead of him. He stole a glance at the floor, marred by the streaks of paint that signaled previous performances. Even as he tried to avoid acknowledgement, stray eye contact was still made despite his best efforts.
He faced straight ahead, hoping that he looked as emotionless as possible, stealing a glance at the audience and hoping no one saw his sliver of doubt.
He sensed the last of the group come in and the doors quietly close. It's time to begin.
The artist closed his eyes.

The young artist today need no longer say "I am a painter" or "a dancer". He is simply "an artist". All of life will open to him. He will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make them extraordinary. Only their real meaning will be stated. […] People will be delighted or horrified, critics will be amused or confused…
- Allan Kaprow (1927-2006)

The artist thought of the strange sculpture ahead of him, as he ignored the tittering sound of the audience shifting in an attempt to get a better view. The sculpture, with its misshapen head and roughly carved legs, was designed to communicate a duality in rawness - artificial yet natural, refined yet unpolished, carefully designed yet carelessly executed. A humanoid figure that feels exactly halfway between painting and sculpture.
Two large, unpainted orbs stared blankly at him and the audience behind.
It was the thirty-seventh time he performed this routine already; since the opening of the gallery, the colorless concrete mass has steadily grown more grotesque with each application, almost a mockery of the human form. He's nearing the end of his planned series, and today was an important milestone.
He silently turned his back to the statue and picked up his supplies, eyes still squeezed shut. The audience muttered to themselves, trying to focus on both the artist and the sculpture.
Pretending that he doesn't care about the pairs of eyes that are trained on him and the sculpture, the artist started to hum a little tune - today is a Brubeck kind of day. Blindly, he felt around the table, and picked up a brush. He held it up to the light, tilted his head as if he was unsure, as if this wasn't part of a planned routine. He brushed it gently against his left eyelid, the ticklish bristles teasing him to look around him. He put it down on the carefully arranged table, and felt around until he found another similarly dry brush. He brushed this one against his right eyelid, still shut tight. The room was silent except for the rustling of the brush.
Another brush. Hold up to the light. Brush the right palm.
Another brush. Hold up to the light. Brush the left palm.
Right cheek. Left cheek. Right ear. Left ear.
He held up his last brush, a rather large one that is soaked in black, and tossed it into the pile of discarded brushes, clattering to the floor.
A few gallery goers gasped, only to be shushed again by the ones not in the know. This wasn't part of the routine - not usually, at least.
The artist felt around his station rather clumsily (intentionally clumsy? or mockingly clumsy?) until he felt a tub of paint. He can't see what color it is. He doesn't care what color it is.
His back is still turned to the half-painted sculpture the whole time - dozens of eyes still trained on the duo, wanting to look at the artist but also not daring to look away from the sculpture.
He gingerly lifted the lid off the tub of paint, the toxic fumes indicating its fresh untainted status. He turned back to face the statue, and slowly advanced towards it.

Theatre is fake … The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.
- Marina Abramović (1946-)

Walking up to face the tall statue, he dipped his left hand into the tub of paint. He smeared it all over the orb-like eyes on the face of the structure. His blindness was his guide - his finger guided him through the zeniths and nadirs, as he attempted to apply the paint in a generous and fair manner.
The artist took another deep breath, knowing the next step of the routine is the easiest but also the most dangerous.
Without warning, he flung the tub of paint carelessly outwards, towards the audience, his eyes still squeezed firmly shut. A few shrieks are heard, with a loud complaint of stained boots. The artist doesn't care which rich donor's fur coat got ruined, the museum can pay for the damages later anyways.
The paint bucket broke the intense concentration that has been in the air. Many audience members looked away to themselves and their clothing, assessing the damage, momentarily forgetting of the performer and the statue.
The audience is unaware of how grateful they should be to the small handful that remained mesmerized by the performance. Perhaps they believed in the rumor about this statue - an incredulous and outlandish rumor, yet they do not wish to be the ones to debunk it.
The artist knelt down facing the statue, on the polished wooden gallery floor, and took a deep breath. The most dangerous parts of all of his performances was over - another success for the museum's pamphlets next month, and he can already hear the curator's congratulatory speech.
The statue towered over him, the stubby arms outstretched. He embraced the statue from below, just as the statue looks as if he embraced him from above.
The artist opens his eyes.
They do not move.

In art, the only one who really knows whether what you've done is honest is the artist.
- Bruce Nauman (1941-)

The green eyes looked nice. Still staring at the statue, the artist got up, and walked backwards slowly, as he returned to his stool, once again, sitting tall and straight as the statue in front of him.
The museum patrons clapped politely, as they always do. It was always the same soft applause.
As they dispersed, some concerned patrons kept their eyes trained on the statue, watching the still-seated artist straining his eyes to look ahead. Their fervent discussion grew fainter and fainter, likely to forget this experience as they returned to their comfortable lives.
The artist heard murmurs, some suggesting that no artist would truly put themselves at true risk. The rumors about this statue was definitely just fabricated to be part of this experience. Art is a facade, after all - who would risk their life to be just another footnote in the long annals of art history?
The young artist stared ahead, uncaring. The statue prohibits him from reacting, after all, according to the rumors. Counting the seconds in his mind as a new group of visitors shuffled in, the young artist contemplated his next move. Silently and solemnly.

My works are in constant movement and flux. I don't make art in order to offer an explanation of some particular thing. Ultimately, what I want is to be able to make art that will hold the interest of the viewer.
- Izumi Kato (1969-)


The faint lights of distant stars littered the weary sky, redirected in a multitude of ways through the stale atmosphere. Down below the cloudless heavens was the debris of an underworld. The wrecks of sky-piercing towers cast endless shadows across granite plains—the graveyards of billions of minds. If those minds could think they would be embracing the breeze fleeting around the decayed duds and bomb craters, but all the breeze brought was erosion. One of the silicon monuments, which rose and split the sunrise in two, was impacted by a small gust of wind. The survivor tore its seams apart and fell with a thunderous bang. A final echo of a building that held the sounds of hundreds.
Continent-spanning corpses rose up from the debris, ossified limbs and hands reaching to the smoke-stained aether. Fractured skulls that once released river-carving plasma were now hollow caverns. Miles of cylindrical pits—the holders of instruments that tore these beasts down—had filled with the ashes of unintended victims. A small whirlwind touched the edge of one of the vats and ejected plumes of waste into the air.
Not far from these holes of debris, partially lodged under a millennium of dust was a most peculiar sight—a sculpture of malformed posture and structure. Its once vibrant markings had faded to oblivion, leaving a featureless beige behind. The last flakes of blood cracked off its stumps and fluttered into the pale horizon. The wind blew on.
The sounds of ancient air currents were interrupted by a noise that had not been heard since the last cell had blown apart and died. A soft scraping, which slowly and rhythmically repeated. Two of the bumps on the entity's head kept a fixed gaze on the sapphire sun, keeping watch for any sign of existence—any being that could look upon itself.
The broken silence would not do. As if to quell this intrusion of discord, a large dust storm, delivering the powder of shattered bones and lives, blew in and over the area. The loud whirling wind nearly masked all else, but the scraping continued. Blue beams flickered and vanished within the storm, and the eyes continued to stare through the flashes. The hollow scrapes grew, and the storm began to blow more fiercely. Rusted chunks moved from their resting places and collided into the statue, shattering rebar lumps. And yet it continued. It continued and grew in intensity, grew in harshness, and called out across the rotten lands in a shrill cacophony. The storm broke the silos in explosive blasts and created clouds of ash, but the song went on.
After several minutes of turmoil, a last sigh escaped the storm, and the dust it carried was dropped. The wind stopped blowing. As the sun's blaze returned to the silos, no response to the signal was sent, and the statue was now submerged under the rubble of its past jail. But time would come to pass. The ground and dirt would slowly shatter and dissipate, releasing clouds of earth. Like a sungrazing comet the planet evaporated until a single relic was released with the last specks of matter. And like the specks it would sink into the void and drown in the darkness.
It would see no sights, invisible for the rest of time.
There would be silence and nothing more.


"John's wife stopped coming in to check up on him. I can't blame her, John isn't exactly himself anymore. Nothing we do appears to slow down his condition, psychological or medical. We're at a loss, both literally and physically."

Patient Information
Patient #:_00245686_ Patient Name: _John ███████_ Date of Admission: _05.06.2017_
Sex: _M__ Ethnicity: _Caucasian__ Hair: _Black__ Eye: _Blue_ Age: _32_ Height: _186 cm_ Weight: _81.2g_ Emergency Contact: _Nora ███████ (Wife)_
____________________________________________________________________________

Patient was admitted to psychiatric ward for a psychological assessment after complaints of a sudden irrational fear of birds. Patient reported being terrified of leaving his house due to his newly acquired ornithophobia. Patient's wife convinced him to allow himself to be driven to the hospital, after he began to refuse to eat with her due to being afraid to look out the window (Patient's wife explained that various birds are known to frequent their yard). Patient was discharged after a short period.

Doctor's Notes: After talking with John and Nora, neither of them can explain the former's sudden irrational fear of birds, specifically crows. John appears reluctant to speak or think of them, citing feeling unnerved by their feathers and beaks. John was previously fond of leaving food out for the crows, and neither had any recollection of hostility towards them, even from crows not in their yard. I am suggesting Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and will consider prescribing benzodiazepines (minor tranquilizers) should this condition worsen. Case is considered closed, but I will reopen should they come back in.

Patient returned on 05.23.2017 following what his wife described as a 'breakdown' after a crow accidentally entered their house through the chimney. Patient reportedly locked himself in the bathroom and refused to leave for two full days, only leaving when his wife forced open the door and dragged him to the car. As he had not left the bathroom in two days, patient was poorly nourished, having lost a surprisingly large amount of weight since his last visit. Patient discharged after two days, though he was apprehensive to leave. Patient prescribed benzodiazepines (twice per day, by mouth with food).

Doctor's Notes: I spoke to John and Nora again, both of them were nervous wrecks. John can't even say the word 'crow' aloud anymore, which is definitely a step backwards. I'm prescribing him the tranquilizers, and Nora says she'll make sure he's eating right. The amount of weight he's lost in such a short period of time is troubling. He also complained of stomach and lower body pains, but I suspect that's because he hasn't eaten in two days. I prescribed a burger. In any case, I'm optimistic that he can make a swift recovery.

Patient returned again on 06.03.2017, complaining of severe abdominal pains, as well as general soreness. Tranquilizers had provided some help in easing patient's ornithophobia, but patient had become increasingly reliant on them, in some cases taking up to twice the recommended amount. Patient underwent an X-Ray, which revealed that his bones were partially hollow, causing significant physical strain. Analysis also revealed the presence of a new mass of tissues that was not previously present, connected to the stomach and the intestines. Patient hospitalized, currently in room 407, with Patient 00247851.

Doctor's Notes: Neither of them seem to have any idea what's going on. Nora nearly burst into tears when the results of the X-Ray came in. John, as opposed to his previous behavior, seems strangely at peace with the situation, though that might just be the tranquilizers. He should be dead from a lack of red blood cells, but he seems relatively healthy. After we left room 407, Nora shared something particularly odd with me, that I hadn't noticed myself. John's eyes were black now. A unique case of heterochromia perhaps? He doesn't seem to be displaying any symptoms of Horner's syndrome or Heterochromatic Iridocyclitis, other medical conditions that can cause a change in iris coloration, nor is he displaying any noticeable vision problems. Though I'm not happy about it, the only thing we can do is wait.

On 06.07.2017, patient began to develop numerous keratin protrusions on his scalp, as well as upper arms. While these cause only minor discomfort, they do cause significant psychological distress. Patient's posture has also begun to worsen significantly.

Doctor's Notes: While we're not going public with this for the sake of John and Nora's privacy, we're increasingly at a loss as for what to do. Doctors from halfway across the country are coming in, and we're all drawing blanks. As for John himself, his mental condition is getting worse. He appears to be having trouble understanding me when I speak, and has developed an odd habit of turning his head to the side to look at me. The other patient in his room is a unnerved by his behavior, as am I. Nursing staff are having difficulties accommodating him, may consider a transfer to the psychiatric ward should this continue.

Patient moved to room 606 in the psychiatric ward, following an unprovoked attack on Patient 00247851, during which Patient 00245686 left his bed, climbed on top of the sleeping Patient 00247851, and began to bite and kick him, targeting the face, while waving his arms wildly. Patient 00245686 was quickly restrained, and both only suffered minor bruises and scratches. Patient is unsure why he attacked the other man, and became distraught and unresponsive following the event.

Doctor's Notes: I'm not sure what to make of this. I'm beginning to suspect the patient is undergoing some sort of psychosis in addition to whatever is afflicting him physically. Perhaps it's his way of dealing with his sudden fear of birds, by becoming one? On the subject of his physical ailment, however, the keratin protrusions are continuing to pop up. Some of them are beginning to develop soft filaments, like proto-feathers. The mass of tissues we detected in his abdominal region has developed into a sort of gizzard, with a few gastroliths starting to appear. What is happening to this man?

On 06.27.2017, patient left room unannounced, and ran down the hallway. Patient was unable to be located for roughly half an hour, at which point a nurse discovered the patient outside in the courtyard, jumping in place, vocalizing in a hoarse tone, chasing nearby birds, and eating the remains of a sandwich stolen from a doctor's office. Patient was brought back to his room without issue. Custodial staff noted a previously unopened window on the second floor was open, with traces of 'black fluff' in the surrounding area.

Doctor's Notes: John's 'feathers' are springing up much faster than they were before. They aren't just keratin protrusions with filaments anymore, they're vaned feathers, with a small number of down feathers beginning to form under them. He doesn't speak anymore, and seems to have difficulty determining when he's spoken to. The psychosis, if we can call it that at this point, has progressed too far. The thought occurred to me weeks ago, but I dismissed it because of the absurdity. Now I'm almost certain. John isn't just adopting the behaviors of a crow. He's turning into a crow. It sounds ridiculous, but it's the most logical explanation any of us have. John's wife stopped coming in to check up on him. I can't blame her, John isn't exactly himself anymore. Nothing we do appears to slow down his condition, psychological or medical. We're at a loss, both literally and physically.

Patient reported missing on 07.25.2017. Patient 00245686 was last seen bursting out of his room for no clear reason, and running at full speed to the nearest window, before breaking the glass, and jumping out. The current whereabouts of the patient are unknown, as no remains were found outside, and the fall would have almost certainly been lethal.

Doctor's Notes: He flew away. Of course, we can't just give that as an official explanation, but we all know it. I tried to call Nora, but she won't answer the phone anymore. I'm in contact with a colleague, who says he knows people — S&C Pharmaceuticals, he called them — who may be able to figure out this situation, and maybe even find a way to help John. I hope, for his sake, they can.

____________________________________________________________________________
Closing Comments
Patient Status:_Missing_
Will be back for a checkup on: _N/A_
Case Status: _Closed_


"You're being reassigned," Director Fordham said, his pen never stopping across the page. The pregnant silence that followed could have strangled a thesis. The cheap wood-esque paneling that Fordham had put in when he took his post always felt suffocating. Like all the air in the room was backwash from a giant set of lungs.
"I—. What? I'm being reassigned?" Researcher Scholl blinked a few times, confused. Their feet sunk into the deep forest green shag on the floor. The overhand fan spun in a lazy arc, as the seconds ticked by. A spectrum of thoughts cascaded through their mind, as they searched for a reason. "Is my work…not sufficient on SCP—"
Director Fordham looked up, and gave them the fixed, pointed stare they'd grown to dread over the past six months. "Of course not Jake. I recognize what you've done, and we want to put you somewhere I feel you deserve. And serve the Foundation, of course. We're putting you on a very important, and special object."
Jake Scholl's eyes fell to the desk. Reassigned. Their work with SCP-3872 as a consulting chemist was going slowly, to be sure, but they didn't think it was to the point they needed reassignment. "A-Alright. Which project am I assigned to?"
Fordham reached over to the glass panel, at odds with the decor which belonged in the late 1970's at best. He tapped a few symbols accessing Scholl's profile, and added an entry in their security clearance. He hastily swiped away all the other files listed and turned back to face Scholl. "You have access to it now. Please get on the first plane to Site-19. Your dormitory contents are already packed up."
Jake stood up woodenly, their hand slipping into their pocket, and absently checking the notifications on their cell phone.

[SCP-DB NOTIFICATION] > SCP-3872. FILE REMOVED.

[SCP-DB NOTIFICATION] > SCP-2593. FILE REMOVED.

[SCP-DB NOTIFICATION] > SCP-173. FILE ADDED.

They turned around, and walked slowly through the corridors, towards the transportation hub on the outskirts of the site. They opened the file on their phone, and quickly scanned the oddly phrased report.
Scholl's eyebrow raised as they noticed the timestamp on containment. SCP-173 was one of the first. One of the few objects that the Foundation came to posses through some organization or another, without losing its information.
Swiping down, they came to the section about assigned researchers and their eyes went wide as they read the list.

Current Research Director:

[Dr. Kondraki] [Dr. Gears] [Dr. Rights] [Dr. Clef] [Director Strelnikov] [Dr. Bright] [REDACTED] [Researcher Scholl]

At least one of those was rumored to be an O5 by now. All of them were legends. Jake's heart started to pick up, as they approached the transit hub, and the security officers located there. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. A promotion to Level 3 was included in this reassignment, either way.
"Can I help you?" A bored looking level 1 Security officer looked up from a magazine.
Researcher Scholl straightened their tie, and stepped up to the off-white counter, nodding. "I need the first plane to Site-19. I've been reassigned."

Six years. Jake Scholl couldn't believe it had been six years. Six years assigned to SCP-173. The legendary object. The first, the original, the Statue.
And it was torture.
When they'd arrived, they quickly reviewed the research materials. Every word had become burned into their memory. All 233 words of them. The "additional research materials" turned out to be a few scribbled pages by bored researchers. A few had made hypothesis which had all turned out to be nonsense. There was a locked filing cabinet, but every time Scholl requested it opened, maintenance told them that the control room was designated "low priority" and they would get to it eventually.
Over the past six years, Jake Scholl had made 18 separate transfer requests. All of them had been denied. They were stuck here, technically a Level 3 staff now, but without any rights to view or work on any other objects.
They were assigned a staff of four. Three D-class, all of which were older men, and a level 2 Security Staff, who sat in his office, and was frankly going to seed. Jake could probably outrun the rapidly expanding security officer by now.
The D-class were all pretty docile, overall. They came in once a week, mopped the floor, mumbled "Clear" to each other, and left. Their days passed slowly…so slowly. Occasionally, there was a scrape, and the sounds of movement. Jake would flip open the observation ports on the double-concrete lock, and look at the damn thing.
Just concrete and rebar. Some spraypaint. That was it. There was nothing to find, nothing to determine.
When Jake first got there, they'd had the D-class, and their security staff hold steady as they collected samples of the concrete, some of the rebar, some spray paint. They were determined to find something worthy of research.
After four weeks, they'd finally gotten sick of getting no replies from admin, and cracked the lock on the filing cabinet, finding the research notes of all the previous researchers. All of the "legendary" doctors' notes turned out to be doodles, and random to-do lists which had nothing to do with the object.
After six weeks, they'd turned up nothing from their samples.
After eight weeks, they'd brought a Gameboy. After ten, they started bringing in anything they could to pass the time.
These days, they shuffled in, waved at the guard, and sat down at the dingy little control room where there was a terminal, which didn't have an internet connection, and tried to stay sane.

Ten years. They hadn't been kind. Jake had put on a lot of weight. Now pushing 400 pounds, Jake stood with a grunt, as the light came on, and the three D-class were escorted to the control room, with the mops and buckets in tow.
"Thanks Jimmy." Was the only conversation they had with the new security staff. The old guard had retired sometime in the eighth year. Honestly, Jake couldn't remember.
The D-class had gotten older too, most of them now grey haired, but still assigned to the project. At least one of them was starting to look the worse for wear.
The security guard walked over, and thumbed towards the break room. "Hey Jake, I'm going to get coffee. If anything happens, seal the door, you know the drill. Just keep an eye on the D's"
"Mmm. Hurry back Jimmy." They buzzed the doors open, and stood inside the door frame, keeping their eyes on the statue most of the time, but wandering over the containment chamber. A long time ago, they might have been concerned, but the D-class they worked with weren't violent. Frankly they had worked with these men long enough, that they extended a small measure of trust. All of them did their jobs without complaining, and had never made a mistake in ten years.
Unfortunately procedure says they had to have someone armed in the room with any D-class. Jake looked down at their hip, double checking the pistol there. They knew how to use it, but had never actually had to draw it.
"Clear."
The soft swish of a mop, followed by a splash of water.
"Clear."
The scraping of a bucket on concrete, the D-class grunting and straining with the weight of water, and years.
"Clear."
The familiar refrain felt like it was slowly turning Jake's grey matter to jelly, but it continued, as they absently traced a line on the hip rig of the holster. The only sound out of the ordinary was one of the D-class breathing heavily. Another goddamned week of mind-numbing—
"Cl.. Cl… fuck I think I'm having a—…" snap
"What, hey Nick, are you—" snap
"Oh fuck, no I don't wanna—" snap
Jake's eyes shot up, as the Statue stood inches away. Its eyes a simple painted green, but staring directly into their soul. In their periphery, Jake could see the three D-class with their heads turned at odd angles.
Jake desperately reached out for the emergency containment button on the wall. They hadn't had to use it ever, and it was supposed to be easy to find. They recalled the manual saying Move your hand anywhere along the right hand wall, the button takes up most of the wall. It will seal off the containment chamber, and SCP-173 from breaching containment.
It wasn't there. Jake's hands grew desperate, as their eyes began to water. Just as they started to close, a last thought crossed their mind. Move your hand anywhere along the left hand wall, the button takes up most of the wall. It will seal off the containment chamber, and SCP-173 from breaching containment.
Their hand darted out to the left, and they started to push down on the button, the red of the emergency button filling their vision, as the green eyes of SCP-173 slipped just barely out of— snap

"Fordham. Do you remember Jake Scholl?" Director Kingsley stood outside of the meeting room, a few minutes before the weekly briefing in the Site-217 administrative wing.
"Sure do." Fordham's hair had long since thinned out, his mustache turning into a grey curtain above his lip, stout, and unyielding.
"Just got a report from 19. Looks like there was a breach, and they bit it." Kingsley's jowls bounced slightly as they grimaced. His watery blue eyes narrowed slightly as he looked down at his phone.
"Damn. And I was just about to approve their transfer." Fordham waved to the colleagues as they streamed into the meeting room. Just a few more minutes.
"Really?" Kingsley's eyebrow went up, genuinely surprised.
"Of course not." Fordham smiled. "The only researchers to ever get out of that post needed Friends in very high places. Scholl, to their detriment, did not."
"Alas," Kingsley flipped a few sheets of paper on his clipboard. "There's already a new researcher lined up for the head of the project. It'll come up in the meeting."
Fordham winced. "What did they do?"
Kingsley smirked, and shuffled a few more pages. "They burned O5-7's coffee one too many times in the morning, I think. What was it that Scholl did exactly?"
Fordham shook his head. "The number of times that idiot parked in my space. I swear."
Kingsley frowned. "Site-217 doesn't have assigned parking."
Fordham waved the other director into the conference room as they took their places at the head of the table. "No, but that was my spot. Let's get started."