SCENE 1
DISTANT ALARMS BLARING
FUMBLING WITH MICROPHONE, SHUFFLING PAPERS

HARLEY

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

CLEARER THROUGH MICROPHONE

HARLEY

Overwatch Command, come in! This is Site-107, requesting immediate correspondence, over!

PAUSE

HARLEY

Site-01, respond! Site-107 experiencing… shit!

PAPERS SHUFFLE

HARLEY

Shit shit shit- ah! Um, Emergency Code Tango November Lima Six One Six! We are experiencing unprecedented anomalous activity from SCP-6320! EMERGENCY CODE TANGO NOVEMBER LIMA SIX ONE SIX! OVERWATCH COMMAND, RESPOND! OVER!

FUMBLING WITH MICROPHONE, FRANTIC BUTTON-PRESSING AS STATIC BUILDS

HARLEY

SOMEBODY ANSWER ME!

MIC CUTS OUT
SILENCE

SCENE 2
AUDIO CRACKLING
THROUGH HEAVY STATIC

HARLEY

Calling any and all available Foundation frequencies, come in… this is Site-107, please respond. Overwatch Command, this is Site-107, please respond. We may have experienced a dimensional shift of some sort. We have suffered heavy casualties. Bodycount pending. Status of SCP-6320 unknown. I repeat, heavy casualties. Please respond. Over.

STATIC FADES IN, OUT

SCENE 3

HARLEY

(wearily)
Overwatch Command, this is Dr. Edmund Harley at Site-107. We have determined that Site-107 has experienced a Class M dimensional shift. 53 dead, 34 injured. 17 unaccounted for, may have been outside the building when the shift occurred. There are, um, there are 92 of us alive in here. 82 researchers, 8 D-Class. It has been… uh, 47 hours since the breach.
Overwatch Command, we can't open any of the doors.
We've lost all apparent communication with the outside world. No cell service, no internet, no… no responses to any radio transmissions. On-Site comms are still working, so are short-range walkies, but other than that, we don't know if we have any connection to you or any other site. Our entire site is subterranean, so with the elevators broken, too, we have no way out.
Still waiting to hear back about how much food and water we have. And oxygen, for that matter. Backup generator is working, but that has an expiration date on it too.
If anyone is hearing this transmission, please respond. Doesn't have to be Overwatch Command. Just… anyone.

SCENE 4
STATIC

HARLEY

This is Site-107. Come in, Overwatch Command. You'll never guess what happened today. So, you know how none of the doors will open and none of the elevators to the surface are working? Well, they blew through a wall today. Yeah. Couple bricks of C4 onto the wall out by the entrance lobby. You know what happened? I'll tell you what happened. More wall.

HARLEY LAUGHS THINLY, VOICE GROWING A BIT MORE MANIC

HARLEY

They blew up the wall and it just… kept going. Just more drywall and rebar and support beams, like, more copies of the same wall. We had like, four or five of the security officers try and keep digging it. But there's just more wall! Which is fine. All of this is fine! We'll make it out of this! We're the fucking Foundation, what can't we do, right? The walls to the outside are… infinitely more wall, which is… on par for this kind of work! It's all been pretty standard stuff, so far, I guess. Trapped with no outside contact in… the void? Maybe? Just another Tuesday for the Foundation!
Wait, it's Thursday…

SCENE 5
STATIC FADES OUT
HARLEY SITS, GIVES A LONG SIGH

HARLEY

(speaking low and smooth like a late night jazz radio host)
Good evening, Overwatch Command, this is your late-night DJ, Dr. Edmund Harley. Tonight marks the seventh day we have been in here. Hope you're all feeling mellow, and if you're not, just let the silky tones of this radio broadcast bring you to your happy place.
If you were wondering about the state of that wall we blew up, it… healed. It's healing. It's rebuilding itself like a wound.
I have not eaten in three days.
People are starting to fight over the food. I figured I'd stay out of it. Just seems… easier that way. Everything is going just swell over here at your favorite Site-107, listeners. I have actually barricaded myself into the Communications office on account of the riot happening outside.

MUFFLED EXPLOSION OUTSIDE THE ROOM

HARLEY

(still jazz DJ voice)
I don't know if you could hear that, listeners, but it appears the whole staff of our little research operation is a bit on edge. All is not calm at Site-107, it seems, haha. I hope the evening is calm wherever you are. Come to think of it, I'm not certain it's night at all. It's always the same amount of dark or fluorescent-lit in here. But what is time, really? Have you ever stopped to think on that, listeners?

MUFFLED POUNDING ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE DOOR
FUMBLING WITH MICROPHONE
AGENT LOVE YELLS FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR

LOVE

Hey! Somebody in there?! You better come out, we're having a MANDATORY STAFF MEETING!

HARLEY SPEAKS IN A HALF-WHISPER, WAY TOO CLOSE TO THE MIC

HARLEY

That sounds like Agent Love, out there. Don't worry, listeners. She can't hear us underneath the desk.

LOVE

I can hear you muttering in there!

HARLEY

We're perfectly camouflaged. You're all safe with my voice.

LOVE

Why don't you- Hey! HEY! SIMMONS!

LOVE'S VOICE GROWS FAINTER AS SHE LEAVES DOWN THE HALL OUTSIDE

LOVE

SIMMONS! I KNOW YOU TOOK MY MATCHES. BOB AND WEAVE, YOU LITTLE RAT!

DISTANT GUNFIRE
TENSE PAUSE. HARLEY BREATHES INTO THE MIC
HARLEY SIGHS CONTENTLY

HARLEY

See? As you can tell, Overwatch Command, things are going swimmingly over on our end. Everyone is adjusting to our new life quite well. Answer our broadcasts and we can talk more about it. Doesn't that sound nice?

SCENE 6
AUDIO FEEDBACK, STATIC
PAPERS SHUFFLING, CHAIR DRAGGED NOISILY ACROSS THE FLOOR
HARLEY FUMBLES WITH THE MIC

HARLEY

(drunk, slurring words)
Come in, oh- sorry. Come in O5's. Overseer… whatever the fuck. Listen, hi, it's Harley. You know? From Site-107? Look, I know you're not listening to me. I know none of you are listening to me. You probably don't even CARE that we're GONE. I dunno. But hey, screw those researchers, right? We're all just EXPENDABLE to you people, right? Right, Overwatch Command? More like Overwatch… DUMBmand… HEH. …fuck…
Are you bastards doing a funeral for all of us? Huh? You putting a box in the ground at Site-19 for us? I bet you're not. I bet you're just using one BIG BOX. For ALL of us. Big mass grave for 107.
Because who CARES, right? It's the Foundation, “cold but never cruel,” well, you know what I think? I think…. Fuck you. That's what I think. That's what Harley thinks! I'm a PERSON! All of us in here, we're PEOPLE! Except for Dr. Masterson's parakeets BUT THEY DON'T COUNT. You're just gonna leave us in here? I bet you've heard all of this! I bet you're hearing every word of this broadcast and you're all thinking to yourselves, “those poor bastards, sucks to be them, doesn't it?” And you know what? YEAH. It DOES SUCK.

STATIC FADES IN, THEN BACK OUT

HARLEY

(still drunk)
…I didn't mean all that. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry… I'm drunk. I stole the only bottle of vodka I could find. Somebody's gonna shoot me over it… I know they are…
I don't know what to do. Nobody knows what to do… well, they might, actually, but… I haven't left the booth in two days so… I dunno.
I miss the sun.
(leaning away from mic)
Is it too much to ask to get a copy of the sun in here?!
…oh shit. I just realized there are people working here who have kids on the outside.
Oof.
(laughs weakly)

SCENE 7
STATIC FADES IN AND OUT
DOOR OPENS

LANCASTER

Harley? You in here still?
Oh, dammit…

SHUFFLING AS LANCASTER COLLECTS A VERY DRUNK HARLEY

LANCASTER

C'mon, buddy. Time to get up. Let's go. You have your own bed, you know.

HARLEY

(unintelligable grumbling)

LANCASTER

Mm. Yeah, I know.

HARLEY

(more mumbling)

LANCASTER

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I get ya, loud and clear.

HARLEY

Lancaster.

LANCASTER

…yes?

HARLEY

I'm afraid to die.

PAUSE

LANCASTER

…me too.

MORE SHUFFLING

LANCASTER

How do you turn this-

MIC CLICKS OFF

SCENE 8
SILENCE

HARLEY

Overwatch Command, this is Site-107, reporting current status.
While we suffered no small amount of property damage, no personnel were injured in the riot… at least not too badly. We're still here. We might have to repair some damaged equipment and hope that some of the walls- um- heal, but nevertheless. Everybody seems to be on the same page about at least one thing.
We are all still here.
We, the 92 survivors of what has now been dubbed Incident 6320-A, are here, and alive, and we have nothing to do.
Except our jobs, that is.
Upper Management had a meeting and decided that the only way out of this is to keep doing what we're all here to do in the first place: study SCP-6320. See what we can find out. See if any of what we find out can bring us home. Work definitely won't be going back to normal, per se, but we're a pocket dimension full of smart people and we'll figure it out. It's not like we have a choice to do anything else.
If the Foundation has taught me anything, it's that the world is indeed a dark and terrible place full of dark and terrible things. If it wasn't, the Foundation wouldn't exist, would it? But I guess, in a manner of speaking, this dark and terrible place, it's full of us.
I'm assigned to report the goings-on as things develop, keep a log of everything that happens on site, with the scip and otherwise. So Overwatch Command, if you, by some impossible chance, happen to hear me, we'll be here, securing, containing and protecting. Like we always do, like we've always done.
This has been Dr. Harley at Site-107, over and out.
And if anyone else is intercepting this broadcast, find us. Preferably, find us alive.

END EPISODE


October 31st
The Union House's Coatroom
Dr. Johnathan Everett King peeked through the Front Door of the Union House. Thanks to the powers of the Doorman, it could theoretically open to any door in Sloth's Pit; right now, he was using it to look through a door that led onto the roof of the S & C Plastics building. For the first time ever, they had elected to hold the Halloween party on the rooftop of Site-87. King didn't understand why but knew it had to do with whatever… thing was affecting the town.
"Stop touching that!" The Doorman slapped King on the back of the head. "You're going to break it!"
"Just trying to see what's going on in the Site." King looked down at his outfit; the same hybrid of denim lab coat and cotton overalls remained. "The work's done on my end, and I think Laura's in the process of linking up—"
Laura? a raspy voice spoke from above them. On the ceiling of the Union House's coatroom, there was a figure that stank of rotting flesh, with the skeletal head of a cat, bones protruding out of it at odd angles. It dropped to the floor in front of Dr. King, causing him to fall back as it loomed over him. Awful familiar, don't you think, Dr. King?
"Ms. Ashbrooke." The Doorman frowned. "While I can appreciate your desire to experiment with your abilities, we have work to do."
Laura Ashbrooke removed the skull of the creature, a mask of her own design. The rot and bones melted away and were replaced by the image of a normal, pale-skinned, midnight-haired woman with a massive backpack on her back. "The work has been done. Everyone in town has some kind of costume on, we're set for the plan." She looked at the inside of the skull mask, frowning. "…everyone but one person. Huh."
"Who?" The Doorman raised an eyebrow.
"Can't tell." She held the mask above her to get a better look. "One of the Plastics people, it looks like." She looked at the Door as it creaked open. "Dr. King!" she sighed, exasperated.
King slammed it shut, shifting a small potted plant out of the way as he did so. "I'm just… I'm nervous, okay? Do we know when we'll do it?"
"There will be a time. The Janitor will notify me, and then we'll act." The Doorman nodded. "We act when the Janitor says we do, not a second sooner. Now, tend to your shrub. Ms. Ashbrooke, try to locate the one individual who is not wearing a costume."
"Roger." Laura gazed into the inside of the mask, frowning. "Who are you?"

Site-87
Nina Weiss loved Halloween. That was the primary reason the Site held a party every year; it started out as her doing an experimental morale-boosting exercise back in the early '90s, but it had since grown to an annual tradition. And build morale it did; she was responsible for judging the costume contest, but she was handing off those responsibilities to Dr. Bailey this year. She didn't feel right doing it when she wasn't wearing her own costume.
She knew she had done… something horrible. She had bargained with something for paradise, and while they had delivered, it had felt wrong from the word 'go'. The town was saccharine, unreal; she was reluctant to eat, per Grimm Countenance protocols, about eating in an altered reality. She had allowed herself a few apples, and that was it.
Even now, the anxiety ate at her. She was looking around the rooftop, searching the faces of her… she didn't like thinking of them as 'subordinates'. But the faces she could see were happy, and those who were wearing masks had a calm body language about them. She had done something good, hadn't she?
What Tofflemire and Carol had said, about the Penzance Device… it had stuck in her head. The passcode for it kept popping back into her mind, and she couldn't shake the feeling that… she was going to have to use it. But nobody had ever had to use one before. Nobody ever would.
She looked over the edge of the building, as music played behind her. The town sat below. Children were beginning to Trick-or-Treat. And it all felt… off-kilter. She felt a weight in her mind, throwing her off-balance. Anxiety crept into her thought as—
"Director?"
She jumped half a foot in the air, turning around to face Agent Tofflemire, putting her hand on her chest. "Y-you startled me."
"There's a lot of that going around." Robert frowned. "Just… I'm making sure you're staying safe, ma'am."
"Why wouldn't I be?" She frowned. "I'm not some frail old woman, agent. I can take care of myself."
"All right." Robert backed away slowly. "Just… there's some tension in the air tonight. I dont—" He suddenly sneezed into his arm, snot covering his trenchcoat's sleeve. "Dammit. Sorry, allergies."
"It's going to be fine, Agent Tofflemire. Just… another Halloween party. Enjoy it while you can. Oh, and make sure Dr. Partridge doesn't spike the punch."
"Can't do any more damage than Hendricks did at that one year." Tofflemire shook his head. "Ewell still turns yellow because of him pouring that shit into the Christmas punch instead of the rum."
Weiss shook her head, smiling fondly at the memory, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe at her nose.

"You good?" At the other end of the rooftop, Alison stood with the Goatman and Sinning Jessie. She handed her partner a cup of punch.
"Allergies. I freaking hate the fall." He sniffed and sipped at the punch. "It's weird, though. Since the town was altered, I haven't really… had allergies."
"Hmm." The Goatman's unblinking eyes scanned over the table. Aside from the punch, an ornamental shrub with Halloween decorations on it, and a few hors d'ourves, it was fairly bare. "Not much food-wise here, is there?"
"Normally we get pizza from the town." Alison picked up a pig-in-a-blanket and inspected it. "Guess they haven't cleared security yet." She bit into the sausage, frowning. "Huh. Not much flavor to these."
Sinning Jessie picked one up and bit into it, the jewelry from her Akasha costume conspicuously jingling about. "What are you talking about? They taste fine."
Robert looked at the snot on his sleeve as Alison inspected her half-eaten mini hot dog. She bit into it again; no taste, only texture. "…uh." She frowned. "B-Bob, go find Liao… I think something's wrong."
Elsewhere on the roof, Keith Partridge had to sit down. He was wearing a fairly light costume, going as Mario, but he felt hot in the cool autumn air. Katherine Sinclair, behind ten pounds of foam and fur, suddenly felt a wave of nausea hit her, hosting the head of her costume onto Montgomery Reynolds as she tried to find a trash can. Reynolds coughed into his sleeve. Sneezes started to spread through the crowd.
Gwen Liao ended up next to Robert and Alison, dressed as a pirate. The plush parrot on her shoulder proved to be more than met the eye; she unzipped it, and pulled out a small assortment of first-aid tools, including a laser thermometer. She held it up to Alison's forehead and frowned, then to Robert's. "You… both have fevers. 100 degrees, at least." She looked them over. "We need to get you to the infirmary." She looked back at the rest of the crowd. Tristan Bailey was doubled over coughing, while Christopher Hastings had trouble standing up. "What the fuck is going on?"
"It…" Robert coughed, looking at Alison. "I… I think this is it. It's trying to… to feed."
The smell of burning leaves, which had been pervasive throughout the town over the last several days, caused the entire rooftop to choke.

The Union House
Johnathan Everett King's hand hovered over the door handle. He sighed and looked between it and the shrub he was meant to be tending to; it was a hybrid, of sorts, between a branch of the Yggdrasil and an apple tree. He barely understood how it worked, but knew that it would.
"The Doorman said not to look through it anymore." Laura crossed her arms as she made adjustments to her skull mask. "You're going to get noticed sooner or later."
"It's just…" King swallowed. "My son just moved into town last month, along with my grandson. I'm… worried about them."
"Oh." Laura stood, putting a hand on his arm. "Well… they're going to be fine. Everyone in town is wearing a costume, except for that one Plastics person."
"And… we're sure it's going to work?" King tugged at his denim lab coat. "I… I don't know what I'd do if…" He sighed. "I should've told them to skip town. Stay with my daughter in Ohio for a bit. Now it's too late, and…"
The smell of burning leaves began to creep into the Union House. King froze and began counting down from 100; he'd read about it as an anxiety aid. The smell faded. "Okay. Not gonna let you have a snack on me, you half-wit phobic anomaly."
Laura looked at the door, her ears suddenly perking. "Wait… do you hear that?"
They could hear a strange barking sound coming through the door to the Union House. King opened it, looking out onto Main Street from the door of a law firm across the street from Rudy's Cafe. Children, out trick-or-treating with their parents, were sitting on the sidewalk, their masks off their faces. They were all red or blue in the face, coughing. Some had vomited, and some were crying. "Oh fuck me."
Laura peeked through, eyes wide. She looked around the coatroom. "Doorman!" She called. "Tell the Janitor we need to do this now!"
But it was silent. The Doorman had vanished. "Hello?" She called. "Shit, what do we do? We're supposed to—"
"Not waiting." King looked at the shrub, reaching out his hand. Under his power, it grew by about two feet, and a single golden apple appeared from its branches. "This is our town, and it's suffocating."
"The Doorman said we need to wait, dammit! If we do this wrong, then…"
King glowered at Laura. "I'm not going to lose my family. We're doing this."
Laura put the mask on her face, feeling a connection to everyone in the city who was wearing any kind of costume, from a child in a Batman mask sitting on a porch on Oak Street, to teenagers unironically going as 'the next generation', to a Halloween party on Glenn Avenue that was full of very childish 'adult' costumes. She took King's hand and transferred the connection to him.
King picked the apple off of the shrub and bit into it. He hated the taste and barely resisted the urge to spit it out. But through his connection to the apple, he was connected to the Yggdrasil; he had felt this same connection years ago, when he and Tyler Bailey had cracked the code that allowed the Foundation to enter the Multiverse. Now, he was opening that same Way— thousands of them, one for almost every person in Sloth's Pit, and dragging them through.
"You have a destination in mind?" Laura swallowed.
"Yeah. Found this years ago." He grinned. "We're going to be okay. Just this once… everybody lives."

Nina Weiss stared, horrified, as her people sat around her, dying and choking.
Some of them had their costumes ruined by sweat, vomit, and a strange blue fluid being coughed up, mixed with phlegm. Others were on the ground, clutching at their throats, struggling to breathe. Cassandra Pike was holding onto her husband as she clutched her midsection, screaming and sobbing, panicking over the state of her unborn child.
"What is this?" Director Weiss fumbled at her handbag, producing her pearl-handled revolver from it. She made her way over to four of the only beings still standing— Robert Tofflemire, Alison Carol, and two strange-looking individuals who were not part of the Site. "What did you do?"
Carol had to support herself on the table. "Director— stay back. You don't know what you're doing."
"You poisoned us." The Director heard a voice of anxiety in her head and felt its words creep out through her mouth. "You… you're killing us, I know you are. We're going to die because of you." She raised her revolver. "I'm not going to let that happen. This is my Site, and I'll be damned if—"
There was a scream of pain and terror. Weiss looked over her shoulder to see Dr. Sinclair's left eye explode into a mass of blood and vitreous fluid. Raymond February's body contorted itself into a broken shape. Agent Seren Pryce began to foam at the mouth.
Weiss turned back towards them, aiming her revolver at Alison's forehead. "This is… the only way to save them."
The Goatman imposed himself in front of Weiss and tried to wrestle the revolver away from her. When she swiped at him with her other hand, Sinning Jessie brought out some pepper spray and aimed it at the Director's face. She unloaded half the can into it, but the adrenaline only made the Director stronger.
"Get off of me!" She yelled, her voice full of blind panic. "I'm going to save this Site, you freaks!"
Alison looked down at her feet as she felt something squeezing them. Her eyes widened at the sight of a tree root wrapping itself around her leg, but instead of fear, she felt… she wouldn't call it comfort or solace. But… it wasn't malevolent, whatever was doing this. Others were surrounded by roots, and slowly dragged through the concrete of the rooftop, even the Goatman and Jessie. All except Weiss.
"Let her go!" Alison yelled. "Something's happening, and—"
Weiss's revolver went off. The kickback of it caused her to drop it as the personnel of S & C Plastics vanished into the concrete.
Alison looked in alarm at the bloodstain forming on Robert Tofflemire's stomach. He fell to the ground, and into the roots. Alison screamed as she was dragged under.
The Goatman and Sinning Jessie were the last to go— not vanishing like the others had, into the roots, simply fading into thin air as the framework that made up their stories— the consciousness of the townspeople— vanished into another universe.
Nina Weiss, suitably terrified, began running down the stairs, bound for the maintenance sector, and the Penzance Device.

Koala's Pit, Wisconsin
Site-87
Confusion reigned on the rooftop of Site-87.
People were sitting up in soiled costumes, clutching their heads, clutching each other. Tristan Bailey had tried to take control of the situation from where the DJ's podium had been seconds before, tapping his phone into the speaker system of the Site, only to be overridden by a brand new voice.
"Attention Citizens of Sloth's Pit: My name is Johnathan Everett King. I… well, I'm from S & C Plastics. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have temporarily evacuated you to a near-identical universe. This version of Sloth's Pit has been evacuated on Halloween every year for the last five years; you are safe here. As soon as the crisis in the baseline is solved—"
"—you'll be allowed back home." Dr. King, clad in a denim lab coat and cotton overalls, emerged from a door that should have led to the lower levels of the Site, carrying a microphone. "Thank you, and good day." He turned off the microphone, his jaw dropping as he saw the state of his companions. "Holy shit."
Everyone on the roof of the S & C Plastics building looked like they had been hit with a dozen trains each. Some clearly had broken bones; most were crying. A few were bleeding, a few were screaming in anguish. Someone by the side of the rooftop was bleeding a lot. "I- uh- what…"
"King!" The Doorman snarled, coming out through the door of the Union House. "This is why I told you to wait for the signal! You…" He looked upon the ruin he had wrought, flabbergasted. "What did you do?"
"I thought… I thought I was saving them…" King swallowed. "I… I don't know what… what happened…"
The Doorman shook his head. "You… your transfer between the universes, was it motivated by love, or fear?"
King's eyes widened. "I… I was scared for my kid. My grandkid. Did…"
"Because the transfer was clouded by fear… it latched onto them." The Doorman swallowed. "Every single person on this rooftop, in this town, is scared out of their fucking minds because of you, because you weren't willing to sit and wait for just a few minutes more."
Panicked screaming and despondent sobs sounded throughout the whole town— children crying for their parents, spouses running from each other, people having the worst panic attacks they had ever had. And that fear would soon turn to anger, and then, into hate.
They could smell smoke on the horizon, and it had nothing to do with the scent of burning leaves. The odor choked the hope from them.

«The Long Fall, Part 1 | Hub | ...But Fear Itself»


October 29th, 2020
The autumnal weather in Sloth's Pit had always been pleasant. Despite the occasional downpour, the leaves always had a pleasant crunch underfoot, the wind was never too cold, and the way the sun shone through the trees reminded those who saw it that, despite the imminent winter, there would be spring on the other side.
Now, this all felt… tainted, somehow. There was a faint smell of smoke throughout the town, as if someone was burning a pile of leaves that none of them could see. People coughing from this scent brought entire streets to a standstill as people stood and watched, wondering what was happening to them. Reality felt off-kilter, somehow; most were willing to attribute that to the fact that it was Halloween, and that reality always felt altered around this time of year.
Among those who knew otherwise were Alison Carol and Robert Tofflemire. The two of them were standing before the Witch's Hut costume shop, some bemusement on their faces as they inspected the sign on the front doors.
"Closed?" Alison knocked on the glass. "It's two days before Halloween. Why the hell would she be closed?"
Robert pulled out his phone. "What kind of car does she drive? The owner, I mean."
"Uh." Alison frowned. She had been drinking buddies with Laura Ashbrooke for about a year, so she knew at least some details of the woman's life. "A… red Volvo Sedan, I think?"
"…car of that description was found vacant last night, out by Executive Drive."
"That's where Laura lives." Alison sighed. "Shit. Do you think it got her?"
It was at this point that the pair of them felt truly drained. Alison didn't feel much of anything for a woman she had considered a friend at one point, beyond a bit of indignation that she had been gotten by some… thing.
"Dammit." Alison slumped in front of the store. "What are we going to do? We… we have to figure out what this thing wants, how it's going to do it."
"It requires both director access, and the ability to use the First Footpath." Robert paced back and forth. "There has to be something that only the Director can get into, but it also needs to be in a specific place when the Director gets in there."
"We know it can bilocate. Omni-locate, probably, if it got out of here. So one part of it goes with the Director, the other to the footpath to try and get out of the Nexus?"
"How does it get out, though?" Robert scratched his head. "It would require the Nexus barrier to open, or outright collapse."
"And what the hell was the Nexus trying to tell us by making a phone blare out a Pirates of Penzance song? Does Penzance mean anything to you?"
"Worth looking into." Robert shook his head, looking down as his stomach grumbled. "Goddammit, haven't eaten all day. Could murder a pizza right now."
There was a squeal of tires as a white Kia bearing the logo of a local pizza joint as a roof decoration blasted into the parking lot of the strip mall that contained the Witch's Hut, pursued by a mass of iron, concrete, and glass. Their eyes widened as what was unmistakably the former Sloth's Pit branch of the Wisconsin Department of Transport came barreling across the parking lot, descending upon the car in horrible crunch of metal.
"Christ alive!" Robert stood up and drew his sidearm, knowing it wouldn't do any good. "I thought this thing got firebombed!"
"Evidently not hard enough!" Alison reached for her radio— before remembering it was back in the car. "Goddammit all. Ideas?"
The WisDOT building had picked up its car in its… teeth and was starting to thrash it about like a predator trying to break its prey's neck. It ate the wreck before it turned to glower at the two agents. Alison and Robert stood still, as it looked at them; while it seemed hungry (as hungry as a building could) it wasn't interested in feeding on them in a physical sense.
"That's it, then." Alison swallowed. "That's… what's attacking the town. Or a manifestation of it."
"It won't kill us as long as we're afraid. So there's that." Robert backed up against the wall. "Probably."
With a contemptuous huff, the living mass of rubble suddenly was covered in thick, black smog, before it disappeared and was replaced with a semi-truck. The driver, whose head was nothing more than a skull, turned towards Alison before it drove out of the parking lot.
"That poor fucking driver, Jesus." Robert swallowed. "Wasn't that an Uncle Mike's car? I said I wanted pizza… do you think—"
The two of them nearly jumped out of their skin at a rustle of paper from Alison's right side. A somewhat pudgy man with a curly beard and a skunk stripe of white through his hair held a thermal bag in one hand, with a pair of clothing bags draped over his other arm. There was a receipt in his hand. "I have a… large half-pineapple half-plain pizza, as well as two mandatory costumes, as ordered by Director King, for one Ms. Carol and one Mr. Tofflemire."
The two of them looked at the man as if he were a Martian speaking Esperanto.
"Don't look at me like that. I'm the Deliveryman. I make deliveries whether or not I have my vehicle with me." He extended the receipt, along with a small clipboard, to Alison. "Sign here, please?"
Alison did so, recognition dawning on her face. "You're Ed Valentine. Laura's boyfriend. Is she—"
"Alive. Better off than usual, actually!" He withdrew the pizza from the thermal bag, and handed them each a clothing bag; both were monogrammed with their respective initials. "All right, I'll leave that to you; other deliveries to make." He produced a set of car keys and pressed the unlock button on the remote.
A brand new white Kia appeared before them, and the Deliveryman opened the trunk to check its contents. "Before you ask: yes, I'm Union. We have a plan, don't worry. Oh, and…" He rubbed his face. "According to my boss, since I'm tasked with Delivering, it's okay if I deliver some exposition. Want it?"
"….suuuuure?" Alison was still reeling from the whole episode that had just transpired.
"Okay, so. Dr. King is part of the Union now, too, as an Orchardist. Laura's the Costumer. We're all working together to make sure that nobody in town is affected too heavily by what's going to happen, which we can't tell you about beyond that; something about an 'unspoken plan guarantee'."
"Fucking pataphysics," Robert muttered.
"What?" The Deliveryman was unfamiliar with the concept outside of a half-remembered Beatles verse.
"Nothing!"
"Anyway. We're on top of it. You two worry about trying to figure out stuff on your end. The Union might not like you, but… as far as we're concerned? S & C Plastics hasn't done too much wrong by the town." He chewed his lip. "That being said. Keep an eye on Weiss. She may not be fit to serve, especially from a medical perspective." A pause. "Apparently I'm allowed to deliver cryptic hints like that as well." He climbed back into his car. "Enjoy the costumes! So long!"
With that, the Kia peeled out of the parking lot. Robert sat down with the pizza and opened the box, as Alison began opening the costume bags.
"So. That happened." Robert frowned. "What the hell is the Union's deal, anyway?"
"Apparently they predate Sloth's Pit by a good amount. Don't know why they settled here, don't much care to know." Alison frowned. "Wonder what I'm going as…" She opened the bag, revealing a pair of suspenders, a deep indigo shirt with colored stripes on it, a set of ankle-high boots, a light beige coat, and some waist-high trousers. She squealed, pulling the costume free of the bag. "I'm the Doctor!"
Robert was about to bite into the pizza as Alison announced this. "Doctor wh—" Then, he grinned "God, Whitaker got a bad rep, didn't she?"
"Any series that brings back Captain Jack can't be all bad. And Barrowman's aged well." She opened up the other costume bag, grinning as she saw a black trenchcoat within. "Talking of!"
"I'm not good for Captain Jack, is the thing." Robert looked at the coat. "I'm not… you know?"
"Handsome? Pansexual? Immortal?"
"Yes."
Alison handed him the coat and looked at the pizza. "I can't believe you like pineapple on it."
"Reynolds likes Pineapple… and anchovies, I hear."
Alison turned green as she sat down to enjoy her half of the pizza. "So. Plan of action, after this?"
"Talk to someone on medical. I'm thinking Liao."
"Good call." She bit into the pizza. It was gooey, cheesy, had the right amount of sauce, and was something worth remembering.

Gwendolyn Liao, despite her title of 'nurse', was effectively head of Site-87's medical department. Dr. Roderick Maxwell officially held the title, but he was a figurehead, for one simple reason: nobody trusted Maxwell to not blab about his patients to his colleagues. Everyone from the Site Director to the various J&M technicians trusted her to not divulge medical information to anyone except those who were listed on the emergency contact forms, and so, she was consulted about medical issues more frequently than any other professional at the site.
Therefore, the look of sheer disgust on her face was only understandable, as was her reply: "Go. Fuck. Yourselves!"
"Liao, I know that—" Alison began. Her voice was slightly muffled by a cloth mask she was wearing. Robert wore one as well.
"You know nothing! What you're asking would be a breach of a trust so sacred that it can fucking liquefy a vampire!"
"…can it?" Robert asked.
"Not the point. The 'Harm' in 'Do No Harm' includes not divulging sensitive medical information, no matter who asks. Unless you're direct family or a goddamn O5, you aren't getting any information on Director Weiss."
"Odd that she's director, though, isn't she?"
Liao blinked uncomprehendingly.
"I mean…" Robert stood. "It was earlier this month that she fell down a bottomless pit that formed out of nowhere and broke her arm, yeah? Was deemed unfit for duty because she had been compromised by an anomaly?"
"I have no clue what you're talking about." Liao frowned. "Is this some kind of exercise in gaslighting? Did Palmer put you up to this as an… avant-garde psych screening?"
"Liao. You're a medical professional. Tell us, why are we wearing these masks right now?" Alison pointed at the cloth mask on her face. "And why aren't you wearing one?"
Liao frowned, crossing her eyes. "I… I don't…" The frown deepened. "There… I… I…" Then, her eyes widened. "My god. Nobody is wearing a mask. It's a flagrant breach of protocol. Why is nobody wearing a mask?!"
"Why would they need to?" Robert asked.
"Because of fucking COVID!"
The pervasive smell of burning leaves suddenly vacated the room. Liao was left shaking in her seat, looking at her hands. She produced a bottle of hand sanitizer and scrubbed at her skin as she continued. "…okay, so the Site is compromised. Weiss is as well?"
"We think so." Alison nodded. "But… okay, so part of your job involves rescinding directorial privileges in the event of a medical emergency?"
"It's called Gears-Shift Protocol. Named for Dr. Gears, it… it's basically the 25th Amendment, but for Site Directors. In the event of one of them being unfit to serve, their permissions are given to the next person in line to be the director. In this case… that would be Tristan Bailey."
"Do you have a list of permissions a Director has?" Robert raised an eyebrow. "Specifically, the Director of Site-87? Wouldn't compromise any medical data on Weiss beyond what's publicly known."
Liao screwed up her eyes; the scent of burning leaves was starting to re-enter the room. "It's… coming back." From her desk, she withdrew a blue SD card. "That… that's a copy of all Directoral Permissions Weiss should not have right now. Get out of here, before it—" She cringed. "No… don't… don't let me fade…"
"You did amazing, Liao. We're going to save all of you." Robert scooped up the SD card and made a swift exit alongside Alison.
In her office, Gwen Liao blinked, looking at her hands. They were cracked and dry; she had put too much hand sanitizer on them again. She didn't really need to use the stuff, anyway. Not like there was a bug of any kind going around.

"This is one advantage of having tech that's not under Foundation monitoring." Alison popped the SD card into her Samsung Galaxy that she used for Nobody purposes. "They can't really flag you for accessing restricted data if they can't tell you're accessing it."
Robert sat opposite her within the Black Garden. Prior to the town Changing, it had been restricted to only six or seven people in the garden at the time, maybe two or three groups. Now, it was as packed as it had ever been prior to 2020; it gave them plenty of cover, at least.
"Gotta admit, I missed the food." Robert looked over the platter of onion rings before them, skewered in a pyramid atop a metal spike, Tower of Hanoi-style. Three different dipping sauces lined the platter, with Alison bogarting the fourth, a spicy 'cowboy' sauce that Robert couldn't eat without his tongue bursting into flames. "Did you seriously order a venison burger?"
"Never tried venison before. Figured I should do it before the world ends." She broke her onion ring in half and dipped it into the sauce, chewing on it as she waited for the files to load. "Okay… dammit, why did they have to give me an Android?"
"Havin' trouble working it?"
"Yeah, mind doing it for me?" She handed him the phone. "Passcode is—"
"Saw you type it in at the hospital, I know it." Robert took the phone and tapped in the code, letting the file load in its entirety. "Okay… what should I start searching—"
"'Penzance'."
"Right." Robert loaded the search function and typed in the word. "Nothing. Dammit."
"Maybe it's an acronym? P.E.N.Z.A.N.C.E. or something?"
He tapped a few more keys. "No dice. Give me until the main course, I should have it by then."
By the time Robert was on his fifth permutation of search terms, the entrees had arrived; Robert had gotten a Rueben with a side of artichoke dip, and Alison was enjoying her venison burger. By the time they had gotten their second round of drinks, Robert had yet to find anything of interest in the directorial clearance file— or at least, anything of relevant interest. "Did you know the Director gets free Burger King, but only a discount at McDonald's? Wonder why."
Alison groaned into her burger and put her head on the table. "God fuck it all to shit. Did we get a dead end delivered to us?"
"I have to be overlooking something." He rubbed his face. "Gimme another half-hour. I'll pay for dessert."
"I feel like it would be a waste of time." Alison frowned. "But on the other hand, I could murder an apple pie."
Robert turned back to the phone and shook his head. "The Nexus is on the fritz. I thought for sure that would give me some sudden insight into something obvious I overlooked."
"That old chestnut, heh." Alison rolled her shoulders as she looked over the dessert menu. "It's weird. I know exactly what you're talking about, but I cannot remember a single thing that has actually been used in."
"Happens all the time on murder mystery shows."
Alison snapped her fingers and pointed at him. "That's where I know it from. Haven't watched any mystery shows since Psych got canceled."
"It had eight seasons, that's a good—" Robert paused. "Nexus stopped being on the fritz. Hold on." He scrolled through the phone, tapping several keys. "I saw the world 'cancel' in here, just found it again. It's an uneven acronym; Penumbral Zone Anomaly Canceller and Eradicator. PenZAnCE."
"I don't like the sound of that. But what the hell does that even mean?"
Robert scrolled further. "Just lists 'activation protocols' under 'Directorial duties'. Doesn't even say what the protocols are." He huffed. "What do we even do with this?"
Alison shook her head. "For now? Eat. I know you like the fudge cake here." She flagged down their server and ordered dessert. "But yeah. Another dead end." She chewed her lip. "We could… try to ask Weiss herself?"
"You honestly think that would work?" Robert snorted. "I mean… why the hell not? Worst she can do is say 'no'."

October 30th
"I'm not sure how you found out about it, but the fact that you have is very disturbing." Nina Weiss, her hair in a braid and eyebrows raised behind a set of thick glasses, stared at the two agents before her. "How did you come to find information about the Penzance Protocol?"
Robert had an alibi ready. "We were looking over some of Archivist Pickman's notes. He had a set of blueprints for the Site's expansion back in '78, and we saw something called 'Penzance' on there. Nobody else knew what we were talking about, so…"
Weiss rubbed her face. "Goddammit. That man kept the archives in such a state that he could barely find his way around. Of course he left classified data out in the open."
At this point, Alison, Robert, and Director Weiss were all on the fourth floor of the S & C Plastics building, aboveground. Weiss had an office up here that she insisted on using 90% of the time, despite the security risks. She only used her office on the Admin sublevel to conduct business in the event of visitors from other Foundation Sites. She had a fresh mug of tea on her desk, which she drank from as she invited them to sit.
"You two have done great services to this Site in the past, so I don't suppose it's… hmm." Weiss frowned. "Normally I'd need to get permission from regional command, but we are regional command. So, allow me to fill you in."
Weiss brought up an image on the tablet computer built into her desk. It depicted a cage unmistakably built from beryllium-bronze. Scranton anchors were at every cardinal direction, and it was surrounded by a field of electricity. Inside of it was a black box about the size of a laser printer, with a keypad on it; beyond that, few details could be made out.
"A Penznace Device, is… a reality eraser. It works on several levels; materially, it unmakes solid, liquid, and gaseous matter on the Planck level, to the point where only quarks remain. On an anomalous one… it wipes out individuals and concepts on a level so absolute that Deepwell sites have had difficulty recovering data."
"So… they've been used before?" Alison swallowed.
"Only once, as far as we can tell. Even then, it was a small-scale test run; erased a vacant house in Alberta."
"Oh." Robert folded his hands and twiddled his thumbs. "Well… why is there one here?"
"They're standard equipment in every Nexus site. In the event that the Nexus they're in undergoes a catastrophic breach, the orders are to evacuate the townsfolk and personnel as best as we can, and have the Director…" She chewed her lip. "Manually activate it."
"But that would kill the Director." Robert tapped his chair. "Kill you."
"We try to go down with the ship, yes." Weiss rolled her shoulders. "Other than that test run, it has never been used. Doubt it ever will be."

"This thing's gonna use this Penzance Device to unmake the town, then." Sinning Jessie sat at a somewhat splintery wooden table outside of Ice-Burg, Sloth's Pit's local dairy bar, still clad in Foundation fatigues. A milkshake was in one hand, a grilled cheese sandwich in the other. "I mean, she was basically begging for it to do that with a straight line like that."
"I just wish we knew what the hell the Union's plan was." Robert shook his head, ignoring his cheese fries. "But… if we learned about it, it probably won't work."
"Some days I wish Jackson Sloth had decided to be an accountant instead of a novelist. Maybe we'd all be rich." The Goatman sat next to Jessie, eating a barbecue beef sandwich; he was a fairly regular customer at the Ice-Burg, so nobody gave him odd looks. "So, how do we stop it?"
"We need to stop Weiss, I think. This thing has a hold on her, and it's… going to try to get her to activate it. Don't know how, though." Alison chewed her lip and slurped at her malt. "I feel like I'm trying to solve a puzzle with only a quarter of the pieces revealed to me. I need some outside help, and all Foundation channels I'm trying aren't responding. Getting nothing from Nobody, either."
The Goatman glowered as Robert began to open his mouth. "Try to start a 'Who's on First' routine and I'm going to break your nose."
"I was going to say that… maybe this is like it was back in '18? How the Nexus created a barrier so that people couldn't get in or out? Maybe it's afraid of the thing escaping through official channels?"
"Or it's playing into the fear of isolation we all have right now." Alison sighed and knocked back her Pepsi float. "It has Weiss's biometrics. It can get into the Site using the first footpath, and it has access to the Site from the passcodes. Why does it need her, still?"
"…breaking through the barrier is gonna need a lot of energy, even if it gets brought down by this Penznace Device. It's probably going to… feed on her." The Goatman swallowed. "And it's going to happen tomorrow. We need to be inside your building if we're going to help."
"Right. We need a game plan, then." Robert chomped at his cheese fries. "If only there was a way to smuggle you two in."
"Everyone is going to be wearing a costume." Jessie frowned. "You honestly think anyone's going to notice a few extra people?"
"I mean… you have to sign in with your badge to get access to where the party is being held." Robert shrugged. "So, yes."
"I hate the fact that you're competent." The Goatman scowled. "Granted, the alternative is that this town gets blown to smithereens, but still."
Alison shook her head and slurped at her milkshake. "We are allowed a plus-one from the town. But there's paperwork, security checks…"
Jessie and the Goatman both raised an eyebrow. "Or, hear me out on this," Jessie frowned. "We are both beholden to the stories that are told. Just… weave us a yarn. Give us a good reason to be in the building, and we'll both be there."
"Didn't need a badge for her to get in," The Goatman pointed out, looking at Alison. "You're a Narrator. Surely you can come up with something."
She chewed her lip. "All right, how about—"

October 31st
6:00 PM
"I can't believe that worked." Robert Tofflemire, clad in a black trenchcoat and wearing a dark wig, entered the elevator and looked at his companions. "Like… they just bought it."
"It's weird, yeah." Alison dug in the pocket of her own coat, frowning. From it, she extracted a Sonic Screwdriver prop that had come with the costume. "You think this actually works?"
"It's Union work, so… it might." The Goatman shrugged. His eyes were unblinking plastic orbs; he had taken on the appearance of someone wearing a goat-like costume. "Hopefully I don't stand out too much."
"Dr. Sinclair wears a fox costume every year. You're fine." Robert looked over at Sinning Jessie. "And… who are you meant to be?"
"Isn't it obvious?" She folded her arms and scowled. The costume she was wearing looked like it came out of either an issue of Penthouse or an Anne Rice novel— a chainmail bikini and a strange crown that spilled over the back of her head, combined with a long black skirt with a jeweled belt, a series of beads running down the front.
It was at the thought of an Anne Rice novel that Robert got the connection. "Akasha? Like, Queen of the Damned?"
"…you actually saw that film?" Alison raised an eyebrow as she pressed the button to go up to the roof. "God, what is wrong with you?"
"It's not that bad!" Robert protested. "Okay, it is, but it's bad in a fun sense!"
"Masochist!" Alison laughed as the elevator took them upwards. She allowed herself the final bit of levity, before rubbing her nose. Her game face was officially on. It had been a long month, and it was about to end, for better or for worse.

«Conflict Resolution, Hold the Conflict | Hub | The Long Fall, Part 2»


/* These two arguments are in a quirked-up CSS Module (rather than the main code block) so users can feed Wikidot variables into them. */

#header h1 a::before {
    content: "Cool War 2";
    color: black;
}

#header h2 span::before {
    content: "Ruiz From Your Grave";
    color: black;
}

Preston Benjamin Harold Davidson Sawyer III (Preston to his friends) recoiled as the towering beast clad in black punched him straight in the nose with a sickening crack. Almost tripping over his recently deceased associate, he caught himself on the brick wall, bringing his one free hand up to his face.
"Fuck!" he yelled, dabbing his broken, bloody mess of what once could be called a nose.
It took a step forward "Please, Mr. Sawyer, I request that you don't make this difficult. I believe it will be easier for everyone involved if you just come with me… willingly."
His breath shallowed as he backed further against the wall. Reaching behind him he grabbed the lid of a trashcan throwing it at his attacker. It caught the disc and examined the object, lowering its arm just in time to see Preston's obnoxiously bright button-up turning the corner and straight into the—

—gallery. A small, sheet-covered box rested gently under his arm.
His feet tapped gently against the smooth marble floor. He took a moment to straighten his hair before looking up.

1310
Luna Martin
7:30 am 5:15 pm

He looked at his watch and smiled, right on time. He cleared his throat before knocking.
The woman inside looked up "Come in."
And so he did.
"Ah," she began "Mr. Sawyer."
"Luna! It's a—"
"Mrs. Martin."
"…Mrs. Martin! It's a pleasure to finally see you again! How have you been? How's the wife? Did you ever get that art back? H—"
"Please just get to the art, Mr. Sawyer."
"Ah, right, yes, of course."
Grabbing the white sheet, Preston ripped the covering off the work: a model building made of plywood and paint. The words "The Massachusetts College of Art and Design Gets Crushed by a Meteorite for all Eternity" had been carved into a small gold placard near the base.
"Mr. Sawyer, the woodwork is fine I suppose but I'm not quite sure how it's anar—"
Before she could finish her sentence, a crackle filled the room lifting her hair nearly straight up. Before she could open her mouth a loud boom penetrated the entire gallery as a small rock flew out from the corner, slamming into the piece. Splinters and sawdust spread through the room, completely covering the two. A few moments later the rock vanished as the building quickly pulled itself back together.
"Mr. Sawyer."
Preston sat in silence, his arms spread out, basking in the glory of his piece.
The Curator pushed up her glasses before taking a deep breath
"Mr. Sawyer…"
"Yeah?"
"Mr. Sawyer this is… pretty bad. The piece is wholly unoriginal and poorly put together. I mean, you come here month after month and bring in the same thing time after time. Quite frankly, Mr. Sawyer, it gets boring."
"I—"
"I mean really, a bed that eats people, a backpack with no bottom, sapient statues, and now you come in with a glorified vent piece trying to say how it was your school's fault you're a poor artist? You've got to realize by now that art is about self-expression. What it looks like to me, Mr. Sawyer, is that you're making art to simply try and get yourself noticed and liked and respected. I can tell you right now that won't work."
"Mrs. Martin, if you'll just—"
"I've given you so many opportunities Mr. Sawyer. I've given you the best critique I can, I've pointed you to people who can help you better than I can, and yet you refuse to take any of our advice. I get that you're going for the loner hungry artist shtick but it's not working and it certainly isn't cool."
"…I see."
"Preston, try harder next time. And please—

—just fuck off you edgy cunt!"
The alleyway felt like it was getting smaller and smaller as It approached. Preston grabbed a bottle, attempting to smash it into the beast's head. It grabbed Preston by the arm, swinging him over Its head and onto the nearby dumpster, leaving a massive dent in the metallic surface.
"Hngh…" Preston coughed up a small wad of blood.
"I advised you to come peacefully," It picked Preston up by the throat "It didn't have to come to this."
Limply, Preston stared at the beast in its cold, uncaring eyes. He spat blood, which hit with a splat against Its gasmask. With a gasp, he opened his mouth.
"Foutez-moi d'ici."
And he vanished.
It looked to the ground.
"Oh come on, give me a—

—fucking break. There's no way she said that."
Preston screwed yet another screw into the machine. "I shit you not man, word for word."
"That sucks dude, I'm really sorry to hear that." David yelled from the kitchen.
"Yeah, me too. I mean, she made an absolute fool out of me."
"I can see that." David threw Preston a soda. Preston caught it.
"I spend months upon months working on something I truly, deeply, care about and she sat there and dragged it through the mud, she dragged ME through the mud. Well, you know what?"
David flopped down on the couch "Yeah? What's that?"
Preston held up a machine no bigger than a football, wires crisscrossed messily through runes inscribed in a multitude of several different paints. It shook in his hand, barely able to hold back the energy within. It was holding itself together (quite literally) with bubblegum and string.
"Frankly, I'm getting really fucking sick of it."
"Dude, holy shit that looks— I mean, Christ."
"You can't make a revolution wearing white gloves, David."
"Lenin, seriously? You've got to realize how much of a douche quoting that makes you sound."
"Yeah, It sounded better in my head. But that's beside the point. I know you hate Mrs. Better-Than-You just as much as I do, just about as much as every anartist in this city. You know this is the right thing to do, man. At no risk of us getting hurt, and certainly no risk of anyone but her getting hurt. I say we end her reign of tyranny, once and for all!"
David stayed silent.
Preston finally stood up "So, you in?"
David looked up from the couch and smiled "Yeah man, let me just—

—get up, yeah yeah, give me a fucking second." Preston wrapped up one of his wounds using the bar's napkins. He dabbed his nose again, grimacing. Yeah, it's definitely broken.
"Holy hell dude," the bartender mumbled "I uh, don't remember you coming in and then you just walk out looking like you got hit by a truck. What the hell happened to you?"
"It's uh— It's a long story."
"…Right. So like, are you okay? Do you need some help, should I call someone?"
Preston staggered to his feet. "Yeah, I have a few ideas how you could help. Just—"
Preston and the Bartender looked up as the doorway was smashed open. In the entryway stood the Beast, its mask still stained with saliva and blood. It glared down at Preston.
"I am growing quite tired of this game of cat and mouse, Mr. Sawyer." It spat out. "You have nowhere else to run you worthless hack." It reached into its coat pulling out a large hunting knife, its end serrated and stained a dark red. "You have left me no choice, coming peacefully is no longer an option."
"—Just get me a knife, Mr. Bartender." He paused. "Please?"
It appeared on top of the bar in the blink of an eye, the blade driven straight through the bartender's skull, It whipped its head around towards Preston as it ripped the blade free.
"Now now, can't we just talk this through?" Preston cried.
It lunged forwards.
With thanks to DarkStuff and Ralliston.

« This Isn't A Spelling Mistak It Is Never A Spelling Mistak | Hub | Knife Fights »
Mutually Artsured Destruction
⟱


“…are you sure this isn't against regulation?” The 21 year old anomalous MTF agent asked as she waited in front of the door to the humanoid containment chamber.
“Yep! Took a HELL of a lot of paperwork, and I could only justify it as ‘cross SCP testing'. That said, I still only got clearance for like 20 minutes, so we ought to hurry.” The junior researcher said quickly as he rifled through his bag, ignoring the buzzing from his phone every few seconds.
“…do you want to get that?” Iris said, mollified by the explanation, but still confused as to why she was standing in front of SCP-3009-C.
Junior Researcher Benedict Kim, as his name badge said when it shuffled to the top of his bag as he kept rifling through it, rolled his eyes. “Nope.”
Almost on cue, four more insistent buzzes came through his phone.
Iris raised her eyebrow, but decided not to press the issue, turning to the more relevant point on her mind.
“So…this is a cross-test, right?” She asked, mentally running through her gear, and kicking herself for not bringing a firearm. Dealing with other SCP's was emotionally taxing at best, and even if a gun wouldn't help against most of them, it would make her feel better.
“I mean, technically, yes.” Researcher Kim said offhandedly as he almost shoved his whole hand into the bag.
“…so is there anything I should know about this SCP?”
“Uhhhh…no? Not really?”
At his words Iris's eyes narrowed. Going in blind to SCP's usually meant memetic or telepathic anomalies.
“Alright.” She said, cracking her neck slightly in preparation. “What are my objectives?”
“Aha!” Kim said victoriously, holding up an earpiece. “Here.” He continued, passing it into Iris's hand, and she obligingly hooked it into her ear.
“Testing?” She said, finger on the earpiece to activate it. Distantly, she heard her voice echo from the observation room, and the junior researcher gave her a thumbs up.
He quickly moved to the door, cracking it open slightly, and looking inside, wincing.
“Shit.” He whispered. “That's not a good sign. Oh well. Might be more effective for you to come in now.”
Iris's pulse, hardened to gunshots and helicopter blades, jumped, and she grimaced, but nodded.
As she walked forward, Kim spoke up. “Oh, and your objective is…talk to her?” He said with a bit of a shrug, before opening the door to let her in. “Good luck.”
‘Talk to it', standard Foundation doublespeak for ‘Interrogate the shit out of them'. She could do that.
Iris was silent and strode in.

The room was…not what she was expecting.
Normally SCP containment rooms were either entirely empty, or if not empty, had the walls coated with the remains of the last people who'd entered the room.
This one was just…normal? Standard humanoid containment cell from the looks of it. Some magazines, psychology textbooks, and uneaten food on the sole table in the room.
If she didn't know better, it was just an empty cell. But soon her eyes were drawn to the lump on the bed.
Something was wrapped in blankets and curled up on the bed, and Iris took a wild guess that this was the SCP she was supposed to interrogate.
She decided to take a position just out of arm's reach of the curled up ball, and began.

SCP-3009-C, formerly known as Stacey Lee, was not having a great day.
Admittedly, she didn't have a lot of good days in the past year. Finding out at the tender age of 15 that you had a sentient snapchat account claiming to be you (and who honestly seemed more like “you” than you were) before being locked up by a shadowy organization to protect “normalcy” puts a real damper on your sense of self and mental health.
She'd…gone to some dark places in the past year.
Fortunately, the shadowy organization that had removed all sense of privacy from her life also had a vested interest in keeping her health, mental and physical, in top shape, so she received treatment…as well as some burly men visiting in the middle of the night to remove all sharp objects from her room.
Which, while slightly traumatic, she admitted probably was for the best. And after she'd received an antidepressant regimen, as well as newfound purpose with her study of psychology, she was doing much better.
…but some days were worse than others.
Sometimes, Stacey, or “3009-C” as she called herself in her darker moments, would just wake up, and decide to curl up in her blankets, and ignore the world.
Naturally, this was the day Researcher Kim, one of her only friends in her captivity, decided to throw someone new into her room.
She could hear their boots trudge on the hard floor. They walked with the hard purpose of the burly men who'd taken her knives, and Stacey unconsciously curled harder into a ball.
Her mind raced through every event in the past several weeks, running over anything that could have warranted a security man in her room, but she couldn't think of anything. She'd been good dammit, she'd been doing really well, why would the Foundation send someone to her room again?!
“SCP-3009-C, I'm Commander Thompson-”
The voice was…unexpected. It was high, and feminine. And young. Normally the security sounded more like they belonged in a gym screaming obscenities at a minority. This one sounded like she belonged in a library.
“-I will be your interrogator.”
SCP 3009-C froze, and her breath caught slightly. She curled farther into a ball, and her thoughts ran into overdrive until they started blurring together into something approaching a fit.
“What are your-” The voice stopped suddenly, and the tinny sound of an earpiece interrupted her.
Through her panic, 3009-C found herself a bit curious, and she peeked an eye out of her blanket.

Agent Thompson paused, listening to the earpiece.
“I'm doing what you asked, interrogating the SCP.” There was another pause as minute squawks came from the electronic. “'Talk to her?' That's what you said, and that's an interrogation, right?”
“For fuck's sake Kim, I'm an MTF agent, what the hell are you expecting from me?”
At the mention of Junior Researcher Kim, the lump of blankets opened slightly more. Whatever it was, it knew of him and…trusted…him? Or was at least curious.
Suddenly, the agent's entire body froze, and Iris's voice turned something deadly, and guilty.
She turned away slightly from the lump of covers, and whispered, though the tiny room meant that the lump could very much hear every word the agent said.
“Junior Researcher Kim, what the fuck do you mean ‘She's only sixteen'?” She whispered, her voice full of righteous rage.
When Kim was presumably done explaining the issue, she slowly turned back to the lump on the bed, which had pulled its blanket shut again.
The MTF agent looked somewhere between guilty, and enraged as she walked back over, but her voice, far from being commanding and authoritative, was even, and apologetic.
“Hey.” she started. “Sorry about that. I…didn't know everything about your…situation.” She continued awkwardly.
“…you mind if I take a seat here?” Iris said quietly, gesturing to the chair next to the table. When there was no response, she did so, and pulled off her cap. She stared at the logo on it for a second, thumb running over the embossed “α-9” on the front, as well as the little arrowed symbol of the Foundation, before gently placing the cap on the table next to her.
She sighed, and undid her ponytail slightly, before running a hand through her dirty blonde hair.
Her voice was something…softer…when she continued.
“…I'm guessing you don't want to talk much right now.” She said with a grimace. “Honestly, I wouldn't blame you.”
“Do you mind if I take a wild guess about a few things?” Iris continued. The lump under the covers didn't respond, but it did shift a little, indicating it was awake.
“I'm going to guess that your life was completely normal.” She started. “Or whatever the hell passes for normal these days.”
“Went to school, had friends, hobbies, family, etc.” She continued. “…then something weird happens. Maybe it was a little thing that nobody would have noticed, and you just ignored for a while. Or maybe it was all at once, I dunno.”
Her head hung down a little. “Then something happens. Something big. Something that you can't just play off as weirdness. Something you can't ignore, and more importantly, the rest of the world can't ignore it either.”
“And then these men in suits show up.” Her voice had dropped to a near whisper. “They take you somewhere…else.”
“They start running tests on you. See just how far your weirdness goes. And then-” Iris's voice caught slightly, much as she tried to hide it. “-and then they tell you that you can't go home.”
“They tell you, your life isn't normal anymore. They say ‘we don't know enough about what you can do, so you have to stay here'.” Iris stopped there. Almost so long that the lump moved slightly to check that she's still there.
“…and you get angry.” Iris continued once more, sniffing slightly. “So, unbelievably, angry. You might even pretend to be normal for a while, just to convince them to let you go.”
“But then the anger…it stops.” Her voice hardened slightly. “Because the real reason you're angry is you know they're right. What you can do is weird. And you don't know how you can do what you do, or what extent it goes to. You might hurt people, you genuinely don't know.”
“…and then you get tired.” She said, rubbing her wrist slightly. The blankets shifted slightly, allowing the person under it to look more closely at Iris. “So, incredibly, tired.”
“Because what's the point?” Iris said with a hint of a snarl. “What's the point of being…around…if all you have is a cell and nothing else. No friends or anything else.”
“…and then you do something drastic, and dumb.” She said quietly, before rolling up her sleeve, and unbuckling her combat gloves. The woman stuck her arm out, towards the opening in the blankets. While they were faded and long since healed over, there were unmistakable white scars across her wrist and up her arm.
There was a sniff from within the blankets, and a tentative arm extended from under the blankets. It extended just enough for her hand and her forearm to stick out. Once that was fully exposed, it twisted, exposing the underside of her arm, and a similar array of scars, the main difference being their red hue instead of white.
Iris smiled slightly, and twisted her hand to give a handshake.
“Hello. My name is Iris Thompson. I'm also designated as SCP-105. I…was brought here when I was 15, about six years ago.”
The arm sticking out of the blanket, after a hint of hesitation, turned slightly, gently grasped Iris's hand, and shook it slightly, before pulling her arm back.
Eventually, the blanket was slowly pulled back, revealing a tired asian girl who still didn't meet Iris's eyes.
“…hi.” She said quietly. “I'm SCP-3009-C. You can-you can call me ‘Stacey'.”
Iris smiled softly at her. “Pleasure to meet you, Stacey.”
The two were silent for a few moments, before Stacey spoke.
“So…you're an MTF agent? I didn't know SCP's could work for the Foundation.”
Iris grimaced slightly. “It's not exactly common, but as long as you're not some eldritch god bent on destroying the earth, it's possible. Alpha-9 and the Scrubs are both composed entirely of anomalies.”
“Really? Wait, eldritch god?”
Iris took a shot in the dark. “…you have no idea what the hell goes on in this place, do you?”
“…I…am starting to think I don't.”
Iris let out an audible sigh. Her eyes flickered to the observation window, before she took her cap and put it on Stacey's head. “Tell you what, kid, how about a story, to give you an idea what working for this place is like.”
Stacey raised her eyebrow slightly under the cap and snickered. “…you know I'm not twelve, right? Also, isn't everything classified here?”
“Eh, if they hate it they can just amnestitize us.” Iris said with a smirk, before getting up and sitting next to Stacey on the bed. “Alright, story time, whippersnapper. Lemma tell you about the time I and a whole MTF had to fight a horde of zombie teenagers…”

By the time Iris was walking out of the room, Stacey was more mobile, and was eating some of the food leftover on the table.
“Thank you, Iris.” The researcher said as she came out.
“No problem.” the woman responded. “But next time, maybe give a girl a heads up?”
“Sorry.” He said sheepishly, handing over a sheaf of papers. “Here's the file for your next visit.”
Iris's eyes narrowed. “Next visit?”
“3009, of course.” he said, ignoring her confused look to walk ahead, causing her to hurry after him.

“…”
“…”
The silence reigned for several seconds, before the woman in the computer screen turned to the side and shouted.
“BENNNNNNY! I think the woman you brought me is broken!”
Iris shook herself out of her reverie.
“Oh good, you're alive!” came the electronic voice again, and the girl, a slightly younger, but otherwise almost identical version of Stacey Lee, waved hello from the tablet she was communicating from. “Hi!”
Iris's brain was slowly but surely catching up with her situation, but it still needed a few more seconds to adjust, so she said the first thing that came to mind.
“Benny?” She said, curious.
“You know, Junior Researcher Kim!” She said with a chirp. “My Foundation-mandated best friend!”
“…really?” On the one hand it was just weird enough that the Foundation might try it, but on the other it was just nice enough that it was a little out of character for them. “…are you sure that's his role?”
“A-hem.” Stacey said with faux seriousness, and mimed being some mindless foundation bureaucrat with the accompanying British accent to boot. “The formal name for Benny's profession is ‘Junior Researcher responsible for fulfilling SCP-3009's social needs due to his proficiency using electronic messaging systems'”
“…oh my god, that's exactly what he is.” Thompson said with surprise. A pang of jealousy went through Iris that derailed her thought processes, because why didn't she get a Foundation-mandated best friend when she first got there? Do they have any idea how useful that could have been?!?
Iris's thoughts ground to a halt as she looked at the girl communicating through videochat.
…maybe, after her, they did learn how useful a best friend would be in confinement.
“Soooooooo…now that we've talked about the boys in my life, tell me a bit about yourself! Ooh, did Benny bring you to teach me how to be a secret agent?!??!” She began miming ‘karate' moves on the screen, and Iris snickered slightly.
“I…kinda doubt that, Stacey.” She said with a smile.
“Oh, you can call me 3009, everyone else does here.” The girl said with a smile and dismissive wave that was a bit too forced to be genuine.
Iris frowned a bit. “I'll…stick with Stacey, if that's all right. I don't like it when people call me ‘SCP-105' so I feel bad calling other people numbers.”
The girl paused, mid-karate chop, and she blinked in surprise before returning to a normal stance and looking more closely at Iris.
“Wait, you're…you're an SCP too?”
Iris smiled sadly. “Yep. Been here since I was 16.”
“Woooowww…” The girl in the video said. “I'm…well you probably read my file, but, uh, I'm a living snapchat account!”
She looked a little flustered, and her eyes roamed up and down Iris's body, absorbing the tactical gear that she had yet to change out of.
“What…what do you do?”
Iris bit her lip slightly, and looked to the camera staring at them, before turning back to the tablet that held the girl.
“…you know, I might be able to show you.”
Iris moved her hand towards the screen.
“Huh? What are you doing? Is this some kind of mind control thin-” 3009's voice cut out as Iris's fingertip touched the screen, and instead of tapping the touchpad, went through the screen, towards Stacey.
“Ooof, that's a weird sensation.” Iris said with a grimace. “Like sticking my hand in an ice bucket. But yeah, I can touch things through pictures. I can also see them in realtime, but that's not really as big of a deal now that videocalls are a thing-”
Iris flinched, and she looked at the screen to see Stacey holding her hand with her own, looking at it with wonder.
“I-I can touch you.” Stacey said with a dry voice.
Iris's heart broke a little at the joy in the girl's voice, and she just kept her hand there, holding Stacey's.
The girl seemed to break out of her shock and her face went beet red when she realized she'd been almost fondling Iris's hand, and she pulled away like she'd been electrified.
“OmgIamsosorryIjus-”
“Stacey.” Iris said with a firm, commanding voice, before she softened it. “You can keep touching my hand, if you want.”
The girl looked on the verge of tears when she nodded, dropping into her seat and grabbing the Iris's ghostly hand with both of hers, pulling it to her forehead where she rested her head against it as her body wracked with suppressed sobs.
After a few seconds, Iris put her other hand into the screen, and gently moved the girl's hair out of her face slightly, before cupping her cheek and wiping away a stray tear with her thumb.
Stacey almost nuzzled the second hand, leading to another set of tears to flow from her eyes, but Iris didn't move her hands.
For a while, the two just sat there, Iris caressing her, and Stacey sitting there, crying.

“I-I'm sorry.” the girl said with a sniffle. “I just…I can touch things. In here, right?”
Iris nodded, and gave her a reassuring squeeze on Stacey's shoulder when she realized the girl couldn't see her.
“But like…they can't touch me. Like, really touch me.” she paused, and bit her lip. “And something about…this…means that usually stuff like that doesn't make me sad and stuff. Not like…you know.”
“I've met the other Stacey, yes.” Iris confirmed.
“So I was fine.” She continued. “I really really thought I was fine. But then I could feel you. Really feel you. And…everything just hit, all at once.”
She sniffled. “I'm so sorry, I'm not usually like this.”
“Stacey, relax.” Iris said with a huff. “Trust me, you have no idea how much I understand what you're going through.”
The two sat in a comfortable silence for a few moments, Iris's hands just resting on the girl's shoulders, when Stacey spoke up.
“Iris, can…can you do my hair?” She asked quietly. “Like, it shows up however I want in here, so technically you don't have to, but like it's been so long since I've actually had someone else do it and I just-”
“I'd be honored.” Iris interrupted, and pulled her hands back to run them through Stacey's hair.
She pretended not to notice the girl's tears returning.

Junior Researcher Benedict Kim was pondering an ethical question.
By all rights, SCP-105 should never be allowed into SCP-3009's or SCP-3009-C's containment cells ever again.
Her little “story” in 3009-C's chamber was definitely classified, and Kim could tell that because he didn't know about the story before she told it, despite Alpha-9 gossip being the most popular scuttlebutt in the entire Foundation.
Furthermore, interacting with SCP-3009 violated even more Foundation guidelines on cross-SCP testing. If Iris could reach into SCP-3009's snapchat account, it brought up the possibility of her bringing things out of it, and that raised a bunch of ethical, logistical, and scientific questions.
…which made it very odd that Junior Researcher Benedict Kim was debating adding those little…indiscretions…to his report.
He knew why, of course. If he added them, the two month wait he'd had just to schedule Iris the first time would turn into an outright rejection of subsequent visits.
But if he left them out, then there was a chance he could book Iris with the girls again…though if he was found out he could potentially lose his job in the process.
His phone buzzed, and he took that as an opportunity to procrastinate his decision.
It was a Snapchat text, from 3009 herself. Against his better judgement, he opened it.
Hey. Uh. Benny. May I ask…is there any chance you could book Iris to come by again? It was…nice…meeting her.
Benedict Kim pinched the bridge of his nose slightly. He knew he shouldn't have answered that.
With a groan he wrote up the “sanitized” versions of what happened earlier that day.
Besides, if they ever found out he lied, they could just amnestitize him.


My body never figured out how to stop growing, which means all the more inches of esophagus for bile to get sucked through — all the more inches of epithelia to burn with stomach acid, cooking my heart and filling my nose as I hunch over the toilet, my face nearly as wide as the bowl itself, what look like pieces of my stomach lining pouring out into the water, plunking and spilling and swirling until I finally can make a gasp for air, lift my head, and feel like it might be over.
But I don't trust that easily. I wait some interminable moments before I feel like the heaving has well and truly stopped.
I grope for my cane in the relative darkness, and use it to pull myself off the ground. As I lift, I can feel the creasing of scar tissue that stretches across my lower back. Puberty was not kind to me.
I take a cup from next to the sink and fill it with water from the tap, then down it all in a couple gulps. I repeat this process until the taste of sick is mostly washed from my mouth. In, out. In, and out. I just breathe and wait for the pain to subside. I want to be composed before I leave my apartment, and I have to go to the store.
The yarn store, actually. I'm soon to outgrow my shirt, and my hands have become too big for sewing.
I was hesitant to learn a new skill, but when I grew out of my shirt and was down to my long, draping coat, I knew that I had to give in. So I'm pulling myself together. I flick the light on, look in the mirror, and try to force pigment back into my face. I'm pulling myself together. Maybe if I think it loud enough, I'll will it into existence.
It's not working. I wince, and go to my next best option. I don a scarf that comes up to the tip of my nose, and a beanie that brushes the tops of my eyebrows. I have no confidence, but I can't spend another day sick and pointless.

There's nothing special about this yarn shop, except that it's near me and open late.
A bell dings as I walk through the door, a hand on the head jamb as I bend forwards to get inside, my walking-stick poking in before me. The ceiling is high enough that I can stand my full height, but the hanging lights at eye level make me nervous so I hunch anyways, careful not to damage property.
A lone cashier looks at me, and loses all customer service skills in an instant. Like everyone else, they reduce to a scrying owl, swiveling head and all, and I, the mouse, find a burning desire to get as far away as possible, lest I turn my head and their talons sink into my back.
I try to pretend they don't exist, and thank fate that they are the only other inhabitant of this small, colorful place.
Speakers in the ceiling meant to play quiet, mindless muzak dig into my ears, and vents I pass under send chills down the back of my collar. My cane thumps each time as I adjust its position on the carpet and lean against it. Once I think I have found what I am looking for, I lean my cane against the wall, and crouch down to peer closer to the shelves.
Thick, spilling wool. I don't care much about the color, I just need a lot of it. I pick up everything I can carry and stuff in my basket-sized pockets.
I struggle to stand back up, using my cane to pull myself off the ground and feeling my head spin and my stomach churn. I pause mid-lift to make sure I'm not about to empty my guts into my scarf, breathing deeper as if I can push the illness out with the air.
My head steadies, my stomach cooperates, and I rise to near-full height and walk towards the counter, offering everything I have.
They take a moment to compose themselves before they are able to scan the pile. Their hands are so shaky, their eyes so intimidating, I suddenly can't help but sputter out some form of justification.
“I'm having a baby,” I say, like that is somehow an appropriate reason to have yarn enough to cover three couches.
They look up at me, briefly, though there isn't much of my face to be made out. I lamely shrug, and they simply continue their duty.
I pay, I pick it all up, and I exit into the smoky glow of the city.

I enter my building, get in the cramped elevator, ride to the third floor, and make it through my door without passing anybody in the halls. Home once more.
Home isn't large, but it's not small. I have a bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen plus dining room, but most importantly, I have a high ceiling. I pay the rent with my inheritance money — a quiet bank account I never feel the need to check. On the table in my living room is a sewing machine, and a chair fit for my size that I crafted two months ago.
On the way to my seat, I pass a shelf I installed full of soap carvings on different subjects. The last project I'd started, a possum skull, has been unfinished on my wall for some weeks now.
I sit down and placed my bags of yarn on the floor, relieving air from my lungs and leaning my cane against the chair. As soon as I'm seated, I wish I could have brought with me a glass of water, but the moment has passed.
I open a drawer in my table, and acquire my knitting needles along with a pattern I had printed for a scarf. It is the easiest start I could imagine. So with my mismatched yarns and the remainder of my time, I begin.
It takes all night, but it's all I do. No television, no radio, and no music. For the next hours upon hours, I sit in my chair and knit, interrupted only once by a doorbell when my personal shopper drops off groceries. I knit until the sun peeks through the curtains and my eyes start to squint, but my work pays off.
In one day, I make, using only a third of my yarn, a scarf. I remove my old silken one, and wrap the new accoutrement around my chin. It may be a thousand different colors, one abruptly crashing into the next at indiscernible intervals, but I like it.
I use my cane to pull myself to my feet, stumble towards the windows, and close the curtains tighter. I don't feel hungry, but I force myself to eat a takeout container of soup before turning in.
The next evening I awake and scour some leftover arts and crafts magazines for knitting patterns, creating an anthology of stories yet to be knit. I hurry through my five eggs and uncountable sausages, and then move to the living room, ready to start tearing through my yarn. I skip lunch to finish three projects — a beanie, a cowl, and cabled socks that take two tries to get right.
By that point, the light is peeking through the windows again. I eat dinner and fall asleep, my head swimming with new knitting projects, new clothes, new items.
Several days pass in this fashion, the cashier at the yarn store becoming slightly more composed with each of my visits. By the end, I am covered head-to-toe in newly knitted apparel. I have fingerless gloves, shawls, sweaters, coats, socks, beanies, earmuffs, all in completely mismatched colors, some riddled with errors, too tight or too loose, though others come out immaculate in my eyes. The only non-knitted clothes I still wear are my pants and shoes, though cracks in the latter tell me they must be replaced.
As the sun peeks through my curtains on the fourth day, I put down a pair of legwarmers, and feel miles from the enthusiasm I started with.
I lean back in my chair, and just sit there.
The room gets slowly brighter, as I sit, breathe, and rub a knitting needle between my thumb and forefinger. I simultaneously wake up from the dream, and feel overwhelmingly tired. I don't bother to store the day's finished projects or pack my needles away. My stomach feels tight and volatile, so I go to bed with no dinner.
Sleep goes poorly. Maybe a week or so ago, I started noticing that my feet were touching the footboard of my bed. Today it is especially uncomfortable. I sweat despite the coolness of my quarters, and I wake up several times with my blanket tossed onto the floor.
I dream of bars of soap the size of marble slabs, and cubes of ice that melt before I can touch them. I find a frayed thread in my pillow and pull at it. At sunset, I wake up, and my back is sore from pure muscle tension. I back myself up against the headboard until I am in a sitting position, and rub my aching forehead. I feel unwell.
I feel sick and disinterested.
Knock, knock, knock. In my sense-suppressing nausea, I wonder if I merely imagine the sound, but it comes again after a wait. “Coming,” I say, though my voice is racked by atrophy and comes out hoarse and quiet.
I pull myself to my feet, and my cane thumps in front of me as I carefully move towards the front door, leaning on the walls sometimes to steady myself.
I crouch and look through the peephole.
My heartbeat quickens. Outside my door is a gruff looking man with a thick moustache and furrowed eyebrows, his hair just beginning to grey. I take a moment to compose myself before opening the door by a mere crack, hoping that if they can't see much of me, they won't be so off put by my size.
“Hello?” I croak.
He clears his throat. “Hello. You share a wall with my son's room I think, and he heard some pounding and, er, yelling. We were checking in to make sure everything's okay.”
I swallowed, hard. “Oh, ah, sorry. I uh, I'm feeling sick, and I work nights so I s-sleep during the day. I must have f-flailed in my sleep and been hitting the wall. Fever nightmare. Sorry.”
“That sounds terrible,” he sympathises. “Sorry to hear.”
“It's alright. I'll… I can move my bed to another wall, so maybe I won't bother him so much,” I offer.
“No need,” he replies. “We were just checking that everything's alright. Have a good night.”
“Goodnight.”
And then he's gone.
After I close my door, I put my ear to it, and follow his footsteps down the hall. Sure enough, he enters a door on my side of the hallway. Opened, closed, silent. My next-door neighbor. How many years have we lived here without meeting?
I stand in front of my door for some time, threatening to bowl over and puke, but I fight it. I breathe, and steady myself, and turn around.
The last remnants of sunlight sliding through the crack in my curtains illuminate the pile of knittings on the table, and a couple balls of yarn I let roll across the floor. Just looking at it makes the bile rise into my esophagus, the tang of vomit coating the back of my throat, so that I turn and face the door again.
My body is trying to send me a message, and I think I know how to read it. I retreat to my bedroom, careful to keep my eyes on the floor and to not jostle my stomach unnecessarily. Tonight, I plan to do nothing. A concentrated effort of nothing.
I sit on my bed, and think.
A week. Knitting had lasted me a little under a week, and I had to push for that much. I've been sewing for most of my life. I'd taken up cobbling early on as well, and after that I had many years of carpentry. Soap carving and whittling came in the same package and lasted some months. But eventually, all things wear out their welcome. It just seems… that as of late, things have been wearing out faster. I feel as though I face an approaching dissolve with neither fear nor courage. I merely acknowledge its presence, and find myself, day after day, waiting for the moment that the future becomes the present.
I lay down.
What's changed? I feel like I used to have such a well to draw from. I may have always been quiet, but I was quietly working, plugging away at project after project, each one more miraculous and wonderful than the last, only moving on once I'd considered myself a master, and only returning as was necessary.
Necessary like chairs and beds that fit me, necessary like new knitted clothes… necessary unlike soap carvings of possum skulls.
We share one wall, I think to myself.
I have a brief and epiphanous brainstorm that propels me out of bed. The word necessity shoots between my neurons like a pinball, lighting every bulb it hits and ringing out as it rolls around the board. There was no such thing when I was young and adventurous. I dress enough to feel decent, and push into the living room, my breath feeling clear, my pores ceasing their dripping, my stomach fading into the whole of my being once more.
I feel well.
I feel fit and piqued.
I pick up my knitting needle, throw yarns of all colors across the table. I release, within myself, that thing which has so blocked me from true creation. I pull yarn through the head of my needle. Give me something new, I whisper to it, hoping it will hear me and bear with me through this process.
I reach into the throat of my being and gag, inducing the process of creative vomit.

I held onto Sebastian for dear life, his button-eyes bumping against my brow and his string-tongue tickling the top of my forehead. Dad told me the man next door was just sick, but I hadn't been able to sleep all night. I kept hearing noises through the wall, and I didn't like them. Wet, sick noises, and a fair share of thumps.
“Mom?” I cried, but no one answered from the bedroom across the hall.
I heard one last whump, which made me retreat even further under my covers, but then it was quiet. I had only my heartbeat and breathing to hear. I carefully poked my head above covers. My nightlight by the door glowed a low, inoffensive purple, which made visible my pile of stuffies, train set, and wardrobe. Once my heartrate subsided, I could only hear the ticking of the clock and my parents' steady breathing from beyond the door.
“Dad?” I whispered, not truly expecting to be heard.
I wondered if this was only another monster in my closet. Dad said they didn't exist. That I had an “overactive imagination.” I think I believed him, but I wasn't willing to test these theories.
“Do you think he's gone?” I asked Sebastian.
Silent as always, the serpent merely looked back at me. He must have been listening, too.
Knock, knock, knock. I jolted, pulling the blanket up to my eyes. My ears ringed, and my forehead was coated in sweat. In my sense-suppressing fear, I wondered if I merely imagined the sound, but it came again after a wait. Knock, knock, knock.
I stared into the darkness just beyond my ajar door. It was a knocking on the front door. It sounded heavy, but reserved. Like it could break into the house with one push if it wanted to but was being polite. Knock, knock, knock.
The more I heard it, the less it scared me. I backed myself up against the headboard until I was in a sitting position, and hugged Sebastian with both arms. “Mom? Dad?” I tried one last time, in vain. Knock, knock, knock.
I rubbed my knees together nervously, and twisted the fur on Sebastian's neck. Soft but insistent knocking. I pushed the blanket off my bed, and put my legs over the side. Knock, knock, knock. “C-coming,” I answered, and hopped onto the floor. I walked to the door, and flicked on the light.
Knock, knock, knock. “Coming,” I said louder and with a bit more confidence, stepping into the living room and moving to the foyer. I reached towards the handle, and then hesitated. There aren't monsters, I heard my Dad's voice. Only in stories.
Knock, knock, knock.
I pulled down the handle, and opened.
“Oh,” a deep and sickly voice poured through the door. “H-hello.”
Pressed against the portal, nearly cracking the doorframe, was a wall of folded, tangled yarn which spooled out into the foyer. “Hello,” I barely whispered back. In the midst of this gaudy, saturated mess were moments of skin and features. One enormous rheumy pinkeye, spanning the top left of the door frame, was too wide to see both its corners. In the bottom right was a hand with the palm hidden behind the wall, each of its fingertips as large as Dad's fists.
“Are y-your parents awake?” it asked.
I was stunned into silence and stillness. All I could bring myself to do was shake my head.
“Ah, mm,” it said in response, “w-well, that's okay, I, uh, I made you a gift.”
The entire mass shifted, the eye rolling backwards beyond view and some flashes of joints poking through the blanketed surface, until a hand wider than the doorframe pushed through sideways, pinching something between its thumb and forefinger. I took several steps backwards as the forearm, draped as it was in long, rainbow threads and colors, followed behind it. It extended towards me until it was on top of me.
“Um, this is yours, y-you should have it.”
The hand gently lowered until it was just in front of me, the object pinched between its fingers at the right length for me to reach out and grab it, but I was too scared. “Um…” it seemed confused, but resolved to just put the thing on the floor, and then retreat the limb into the doorway. Another shifting of the mass revealed a corner of its mouth, and when it spoke I was overwhelmed with the smell of burning bile and rotted teeth.
“It's a toy,” it said. “If I can't have my imagination,” an eye opened in the center of the doorway, “then you can.”
There was a pause. “Thank you,” I managed to say.
“Don't grow up,” it said. And then it was cacophony. The whole of it began to retreat from the door, and I could hear the floor creak under its shifting weight, its limbs bump and scrape across the walls, and then it was gone.
I held Sebastian to my chest. “Did you see that?” I asked him. Quieter: “Was that a monster?”
I walked to the thing it had dropped in the foyer. It looked like a piece of itself: a messy yet somehow intentional mass of braided yarn. The way its threads splayed around it, it almost looked like a squid.
“Doodlebug?” I startled out of my skin. It was Dad, who was standing in the doorway to his bedroom. “What are you doing up? And why's the door open?”
I swallowed. “Sorry, Dad. You guys weren't awake so I answered the door.”
Dad came into the room and walked to the door. “For who?” he asked.
I shrugged. He closed the door, crouched down, and picked me up. “Okay doodlebug, but don't ever answer the door in the middle of the night again. Okay? Get mommy and daddy up first.”
“Okay,” I said, and watched over his shoulder as he hauled me towards the bedroom. Over his shoulder at the thing on the ground, which Dad hadn't even mentioned, just sitting there in the foyer, like a guardian of the house.
“Dad?” I prod as he puts me in bed.
“Yes, son?”
“What's it like to grow up?”
He just looked at me for a moment. Then he smoothed back my hair, and kissed me on the forehead. “It's nothing to worry about. Now go to sleep, Dad's tired and you should be too.”
He got up, walked out, and closed the door behind him.
I pulled the covers up, flipped on my side, and hugged Sebastian. The room was still. The only light was the purple glow of my nightlight. The only sounds were the ticking clock and my parent's breathing from across the hall. I breathed, eyes darting around what little I could see, before I finally closed them, satisfied that nothing else would happen.
“Goodnight, Sebastian,” I said.
“Goodnight, Eric,” Sebastian said back.