Jude never knew what to do with his hands. Pockets. In the air. Sometimes, touching his thigh too much. Maybe it looked creepy? Ran through his hair. That one was good, but it couldn't last long. A crystalline teardrop of non-awkward time. Composed moments where each syllable in his body didn't tremble and tumble but instead kind of came together for something glorious. Then back to discombobulation. Too much, and it looked like you were digging for weird shit in your hair. Too much, and you looked like you were fiending. Which he wasn't. Couldn't. The slit eyes said as much.
Electric Eye, called that even by her father, was quiet. Small mouth. Premature crow's feet. Sharp chin. Didn't she look like the Critic? Different eyes. Smaller. Closed, though. He hadn't seen them open. His were green. Hers could have been, too. He couldn't remember genetics. Probably. Her head was shaved. Easier to keep her clean, he figured. Not to say that the Breeder had done very much in the regard.
Sores. Filth. The poor thing. She wore a sack. It hadn't been washed. The smell was vile, and the room was foul. She seemed to know how to go to the bathroom at least. They taught Electric Eye that much. And to wash, and to feed. Only what was necessary, only to make keeping her a little easier.
In here, Electric Eye had presumably spoken. Long, uninterrupted streams of his stream of consciousness. Certainly others, but probably only Jude in recent memory. Just talking. Maybe, like a feral child, language was only a series of sounds to her, barely connected to commands like a dog. Or maybe, there was something else.
And what was even her name?
“Are you okay?” Jude wasn't sure who he was asking. Or what.
“Yeah,” said JJ from his nest in the corner. He wrapped his hands around his knees. The twink didn't like the dirt, was Jude's guess. Or maybe it was the general vibe of the place. Or maybe, just maybe, it had to do with the bloodstained screwdriver sticking out of his pocket, just a fine fucking how-do-you-do, sir.
It had to be projection, obviously, or maybe they were fucking shining light on each other orbiting like twin suns. Except Jude wasn't exactly sure which was the bigger sun and who was feeding whom. Could it be an equilibrium situation? Astronomy was never a strong suit. Jude examined his nails.
“I think she'll be okay. I don't know.” Esther bit her lip. “We should take her to a hospital?”
“Then what?” JJ said.
“I don't know. We can't send her to an orphanage.” He had images of Oliver Twist, of Leela from Futurama. “We could do something better with her, you know.”
“Any ideas?” Esther had knelt down and cradled the child, but they had found that she disliked contact. But the girl let them make her a bed. Now Esther just huddled over her. A respectful distance. She could be matronly. Like a badger mom from Redwall. Or a big otter queen.
Even though Jude could undo the atoms of everyone in the room, she still intimidated him.
But even with her mom powers, even with the boy's luck, and whatever Jude could bring to any child-rearing scenario (a big load of nothing, mostly), they didn't want a fucking child. No one wanted that. But they felt as though they should. It went unspoken, but Jude thought it the hardest. He was sure.
What the fuck kind of parent would any of them be?
“We can always leave her somewhere. In a home, that'll take her. We can, uh, have JJ find one. You write a note. A really, you know, mind grabber. Kind of, you know, that thing you do, Esther. JJ'll make sure it's a good home, and you can, uh, make it easier. Meld her into the life as easy as possible.”
Quiet. Jude looked down at the fast food wrappers. The dead body was still in the room. The bugs, the weird twitching corpses, surrounded him. The wood was scorched, warped around him. There was a lot of blood.
“And then what?” Esther took a seat on the floor next to the girl. Every now and then, one of the Breeder's children skittered across the floor. They'd be dead within hours. She flinched every time.
“We go to him. It's all here. His home. His, you know, vacation place. There's a lot of it.”
“Even with me, it's a little convenient, don't you think?” JJ finally stretched upwards. A blanket had fallen off the girl that had been called Electric Eye. Two blankets covered her from the outside world. She still whispered, but it was impossible to tell what she said. He picked it up and draped it across her, frowned. “I mean, we kind of know he wants you to find him. That's, like, you know. That's the thing. But why is his address with this dumbass?”
“He's crazy,” Esther said.
“I don't care,” said Jude.
“There's easy, and then there's weird easy. That's all I'm gonna say.” JJ was up on his heels, stretching like a well-fed cat. When had he last eaten? Did twinks need to eat? Definitely not as much as a normal person. They fed on self-satisfaction. Their own youth. His t-shirt rode up, showing a flat stomach. Jude stared, just a little. JJ caught him and grinned, winking.
Jude blushed, shook his head, and said, “It's like a magnet. I don't know why I want to go.”
“He tried to kill you,” said JJ.
“He tried to kill you two, too,” said Jude. “Don't you kind of feel it, too? Prominence or whatever? I wanna go.”
JJ said nothing.
Esther knocked the knick-knacks and the corny old-timey microphone and the dozens of fast food cellophane wrappers onto the floor. A piece of paper. One sheaf. Folded, but clean. Her pen hadn't broken in the scuffle. Of course it hadn't.
Esther drew Electric Eye a new life and a new name.

You sweat. The air conditioner hums. Hyperhidrosis. Cold air blasts you in the face. A thirty-seventh view, and it's falling down your face, your big, stupid face. No matter, you'll sweat. You get used to the smell. Antiperspirants might give you cancer, but what's a little cancer when there's so much life?
It's easy to deal with when you're older. Children see it as weakness. You can smell a lot on someone's sweat. Diabetes. Tumors. Seizures.
In your room, there aren't a lot of decorations, which you suppose must be surprising to your visitors. You've always found that art is made better when unreflexive. When it isn't a moon taking another star's light.
But you know a lot about that, don't you? Lunar perversions, nocturnal diversions. Wasn't that a song? It had a good beat. You thought it could have been a song some time, maybe.
There is only a desk. A bed. An easel, with paint. Three brushes. A notebook, open. A pen. An ashtray. There are no windows. There is one door.
The walls, truthfully, are what you're most proud of. The ambiance gets to you without them. A little bit of jive and voodoo, and you don't wake up every morning feeling so satiated. You like to think of yourself as a guided missile. Can't just scoop it from the top or even shove it down inside like a ravenous child rifling in a bag of cereal for a prize and a handful of the marshmallow bits.
You wait. And it's better that way.
It certainly hadn't always been like this. You take a long hit of the marijuana cigarette. It is oddly sweet, and it isn't at all like it used to be. Evolved. Only the perfect bits. More crystal than plant. Hardly any seeds now. The old joke. How are they growing the seedless watermelons?
You know he's coming, because he has to. It's how he wants it.
Your way wasn't always the predator's. Maybe you had been mean, once. Maybe you had been a little rude in front of him.
The boy wanted what he wanted.
Once, you thought you wanted him to replace you. Like some old wizard giving away his spellbook. But now, you only want to be free.
You want to stop the world from being the way he likes it. You want yourself. You want your daughter normal and untouched.
Your hands don't tremble as you spritz yourself with the spray. The cologne fills your nose like syrup. You can smell him, can't you? Even through the doors, every disturbance like an alarm clock dropped on a water bed.
They killed you when the heater broke. You were always intrigued that the human desire to fuck in fun ways superseded all other imperatives.
Your door opens. It's unlocked, of course.
The boy's hands are up in the air. You see them, and for a moment, you get dizzy. Nerves. Nothing but nerves. He sits down at the chair opposite you. He doesn't speak. The boy puts a cellphone on the table. It's currently off.
He points at it. There is resin on his finger. He had tried to wash it off, but there was still some stuck between the wrinkles of his fingerprints.
You smile. Already, you can taste him. You can feel him.

JJ had asked Esther to tell the story about a dozen times now. For more details, more interpretations. He wanted her to paint a picture for him that was complete, that was more real and intense than having been there. But JJ knew that he already understood what he needed.
The story of Alexander had touched him. He wished that he had been there, but he knew that it was good that he hadn't. Providence, as always. Seemingly divine, but nothing that loved like that could be divine, could it?
If it would have been good for him to be there, JJ would have been there. Sometimes, things were as simple as that. It had never bothered him like this before.
JJ thought, maybe, that he could have understood Alexander. Maybe, the Architect didn't need to die. Maybe the weird Pagan could've been with them. Could have been a friend. His friend. Their friend. In Alexander's love for Jude, platonic nearly with a capital P, JJ had found a kindred spirit.
Jude wasn't necessarily easy to love. Clever, sure, but an idiot at the same time. Something like the magic version of Steve Urkel. Sometimes, he, what?, drank a potion or something and became, like, cool. (A metaphorical potion. Or if potion were weed.) That was when he did the laser magic. Or electricity. Captain Marvel bolts of energy or maybe more like Havoc. Havok? But he was so earnest and honest and sweet and.
Lying came to Jude easily, though. JJ had always noticed that. Sure, there were big things in his life that he needed to lie about. People like them, the gay and whatever, get good at lying. But Jude lied when it didn't benefit him. Jude lied as a second nature, unreflexive and unflinching. It wasn't even malicious. Like he didn't even know he was doing it.
JJ wanted to protect him. It was that wide-eyed childishness, the way that he repeated a mistaken fact so many times with that halting cadence to the point that you started to believe in it yourself.
The Electric Eye plan was fine. That was basic, but the rest of it? He didn't like it.
JJ had directed Esther for a few hours now, winding up and down side streets, some suburbs and some swanky places and some average homes and for some reason a lot of fast food restaurants.
He felt the invisible fingers around his wrist, and then JJ said, “Stop. It's here.”
Esther did initially miss the house, but she backed up, parked, and turned off the car. Jude was in the backseat with Electric Eye. She wore clothes, finally. Jude had created them, so they were baggy, plain, and to be honest, shoddy. Still, they were better than what she had been wearing.
The note was pinned to her hoodie. A mindfuck. A name, a history, an entire life.
“Is this wrong?” Esther said.
“They want a kid. I know it. This is how it works, right?” Jude said.
JJ wasn't entirely sure, really, if it worked with other people like this. Sure, it had let him help Jude. But just anyone? He had hoped so. Deeply. It was probably true, but fuck. He said, “Yeah.”
Esther opened her door and then helped Electric Eye out of the car. Though, he supposed that was no longer her name. He didn't know what she would be called. He had supposed it would be up to the parents. He supposed they would fill in everything they needed to. That was how Esther's magic had always worked.
The home was large. Not offensive large. Not weird rich large. But it was bigger than most of the places he had slept in. He watched Esther walk her down the long driveway to the front door.
Jude said, “I can't stop thinking about how he treated her.”
JJ said nothing. The door opened, and a woman opened the door. For a moment, confusion flickered on her face. Had she just gotten home from work? She wore scrubs and a nametag that JJ couldn't see. Hospital work, right? Either that or she worked for Umbrella Corp.
The confusion was replaced by a blank look that JJ knew too well. It felt like a headache, like a pinprick bit of nausea. Like confusion, like anxiety, like the taste of maraschino cherries. So many things. He wondered what this one was like.
She called her husband. He was handsome. Young. They were both young. Dark hair, tanned skin. There was confusion, and then they smiled. They led the girl inside, and they closed the door behind them.
For the longest time, Esther didn't move. When she came back to the car, she turned the ignition and said, “They seemed nice. Their house smelled like a cake. I think he's a baker.”
Jude leaned in the backseat, finally stretching out.
“Do you think she likes cake?” he said.
“I hope,” said Esther.
“I know she does,” said JJ.

He is stronger than you remembered. Your shirt clings to your back. You take a hit of your marijuana cigarette. The air is buzzing.
“What do you call it?” he asks finally.
“You're wasting time. The longer this takes, the weaker you'll be. This isn't art class. You're the only one here, my boy. Is this what you want?”
He cracks his neck, and you wince. Loud, popping, crackling. Disgusting.
“I'm charging it.”
“What are you charging?” you ask, but you're not interested. Any power coming to the surface wasn't enough to kill him by the end. Your hunger was draining the boy, like bloodletting. Maybe he would feel fresh at first, but the sluggishness would set in.
“I'm going to kill you.”
“I don't know if that answers my question, Jude. You never were very good at that, were you?”
“You didn't answer mine.”
“This isn't an anime. They don't have to have names, Jude.”
“Tell me what you called it when you did that to me.”
“Any Colour You Like.” You shrug. “It could have been anything. It's whatever you want.”
He doesn't speak. The boy just stares at you, like he doesn't understand what you mean. There are sparks in his eyes. He is heat, and he is thunder, terrible and mighty. But you are like the ocean. You are like the wind atop a mountain. You have always known this.
“This is all just a game for you. I'm ending it.” You think you sound sure and capable. You try to keep composed as the sweat burns your eyes.
“Your daughter has a real family now.”
“Trying to get me emotional won't make it falter. It's been devouring you from the inside out as soon as you came inside. You've killed yourself, and when I'm done, Lauren will come back to me, normal and real. Untouched by you.” You try to smile. You're nervous. There is so much heat, and you feel so much energy sliding down your brain. It hurts. It's like drinking hot chocolate.
“It was over as soon as I stepped through the door.”
“Did you ever think why we even accepted you?”
The boy just taps the flip phone. You can see that it's at forty-three percent and rising, charging, blinking. You can't tell if it's the phone that's hot or if it's the energy from the monster's body. The air is wavy around it. You do not touch it.
“You're a weapon. Everyone in our little section is a warrior. Nothing else.” You bite the inside of your mouth. Truthfully, it stings. You had always wished to be accepted on the virtues of your work. “I made sure they were kept sharp. Some of my colleagues, Critics of a different stripe, focused on the finer things. You all were never meant for any grand statements. You, the Architect, the Gardener, the Performer, the Breeder. Protection for our interests. Insurance against our enemies.” You're hissing by the end. Your face must be quite red.
The marijuana cigarette's ash is nearly an inch, and when you gesture it falls onto the table.
“You hurt me,” he says. The face of hurt. The tone of innocence.
“I only ever did what you wanted me to.”
You don't think about it. You choose not to dwell on the things he has made you do, the villain for his twisted little game of play-pretend.
“You hurt your daughter.”
“Do you really think I did that? Do you really think a man would ever do something like that?” Snapped. You break the marijuana cigarette in your hands. The flame burns your fingers, but you don't notice it until the butt has scorched you.
“You gave the Sculptor the idea, didn't you?”
You shrug.
He taps the cellphone again. It is fifty-six percent.

Esther couldn't help but think of her sisters. Just as old as the girl had been. Well they had been that old when she left. She thought of little Rebekah and Miriam too often. They were small girls. Rebekah, a little sickly but honey sweet in such a genuine way. And Miriam had been so funny. Even at a young age, she'd make fun of herself to get a laugh. She even got her father, Rabbi Kogan of the long, pontificating reflections on the meaning of text and translation, to smile.
Tati so rarely smiled. His bushy, severe eyebrows. A little bow-legged. People had said she looked like him when she was younger, and she always got mad. But truthfully, she saw it.
Ima, well, she had smiled more. She was always happy. Skinny, tall, sharp. Not in the bad ways, mostly. Esther had missed her for a long time. Her mother and her sisters were what she missed most.
Definitely not stubborn Rabbi Kogan. Definitely not the meanest man in the world. She remembered yelling that at him, and he'd tell her that he'd show her the meanest man in the world. Except, he never did do anything. He just yelled and gnashed teeth.
He wasn't horrible, really. No more horrible than Esther was, she thought.
And even the good things she remembered, weren't a lot of them the result of cheesy rose-colored glasses? She had been so much older than her sisters, and they had been so annoying.
And sure. Bracha Kogan had a beautiful smile, but Esther's tendency to spit acid wasn't one that arose from nothing.
But she loved them. Of course she loved them.
“What're you thinkin' about?” JJ sat on top of a picnic table. Clean clothes again, but he still looked a little irritated. Like there was something under his skin. Probably literally. She thought of the bugs again and shivered.
She held the clove cigarette to her mouth and clamped it between her teeth. She lit it with a green lighter, resin resplendent on the bottom. In the wrinkles of her own fingers was sharpie ink.
They had taken a rest at a large wooded park nestled within the suburb where the Critic lived. Jude had gone off alone into the woods. He said he wanted to take a walk and clear his head. Think of things. Probably closer to the truth was that he only had a bowl or two left and didn't want to share.
The sun hadn't set yet. It was a little too high for that. It was at that horrible waning point of its peak before it started the pink descent down the horizon into Tartarus or something suitably goth.
“I was thinking of what I'd name my thing. You know…”
“If stands were real and not just something a bunch of weirdos were molding their powers around as some kind of post-ironic joke?”
“Yeah.” She took a long drag, and it was sweet, sweet on her lips. They had to sell them as cigarillos now. Something about flavored cigarettes and marketing to children. The air smelled like onions. Nobody, obviously, was cutting anything. Esther assumed it was coming from the plants. One of them, at least. The weeds. Thistles. They did look pretty, though.
Big purple blooms. Thistle was as beautiful as any flower. Just tougher, bitchier. Untamed.
The smell of onions reminded her of her mother's kitchen. Bracha Kogan had not been the best cook. But she took a pride in her work that was infectious. It made it taste better. She had kept the kitchen so clean. A kosher kitchen with three daughters and a husband who loved to eat.
She never let them forget that.
“What would you call it?”
“I don't think mine would have a name. It's not like yours.”
JJ yawned and flopped backward, closing his eyes and facing the sun. His knees were pointy. She rested her elbow on one. “So you get to be Mewtwo?”
“No, more like Jewish hamon, you know?”
“Jewish people fight a lot of vampires?”
“That's why we invented golems, too. A bloodless warrior.” She would have pointed out the uncomfortable association with the Jewish people and blood libel, but JJ couldn't understand something like that.
“Why hamon, though?”
There were cicadas out. In beams of sunlight slanting through the limbs of trees, she could see hundreds of pinprick small bugs flying in erratic, senseless paths. She wondered what they were. Too small to be mosquitoes, right? Gnats? They could have been anything. All she knew was that they had a startling ability to dive bomb into the corners of her eyes over and over. She had killed at least five, and everyone disgusted her equally. They couldn't be a successful species if that's where they constantly tried to fly. What good is an eye to a mosquito?
“Stands are a little too close to idolatry for this rabbi's daughter.” Esther was satisfied when JJ let out a bark of appreciative laughter. Something a little more dainty than a guffaw, but not much better.
JJ lifted his upper body off the ground to take the clove from her fingers. He took a single hit and then coughed, spat, laid back down on the picnic table. Esther snatched it back from him, but it was almost done anyway. She dropped it on the ground and then stepped on it.
Then, thinking better of herself, she bent down and picked it up. She tossed it at a large recyclable garbage container. It missed. She didn't go after it. Close enough, really. JJ watched with one eye open. He slid off the picnic table onto the ground, barely kicking up any dust. He bent in a ridiculously slutty way, arching his back and practically squatting.
Esther was going to ask him what the fuck he was doing before she heard something like a small sasquatch making its way through the woods.
Jude came, sweating. There were scratches on his arms. Nothing self-harm, more like he had walked into a thorn bush while walking off the path. He had told them that he had always thought better when he was uncomfortable. And there was nothing more uncomfortable than the hot tail-end of sunlight, when the bugs were awake and active and hungry. Especially Off The Path. He had said it like that. Off The Path. Like it was all capitals. She hated him sometimes, really.
Jude clearly was going to say something. He, however, stared at JJ, mouth agape like an idiot. He closed it and then hacked, spitting at the ground. Had a bug flown in his mouth? Good. Owned. Destroyed. He deserved it for taking so long to “think things through.”
“Fuck. Fuck.”
“Hey, dude. Have a good walk?” said JJ, face impassive, suddenly just a concerned friend and not a flirty bitch.
“Yeah, actually. Well, no. Not really. I just got stung a lot by like, I don't know. Mosquitoes. I dropped my pipe on a rock, and it broke, you know.” He shrugged. “I left it there. Thought it was a sign, you know.”
“What do you mean?” Esther said.
“JJ's butt gave me a super good idea.” Which didn't answer Esther's question but whatever. Not like she wanted to know what she was supposed to have gathered from that.
JJ actually blushed. Bright, burning red. High on his cheeks. His eyes fell to the ground.
“Your sharpie still work?” Jude asked.
“It's not gonna run dry. It's a sharpie. We can buy another sharpie. We can buy a pack. It's not a magic magic marker.”
“But it writes?”
“Yeah, it writes.”
Jude sat down at the picnic table and gestured her over. He put both hands on the table, palm down. “I have an idea.”

You know he is dying because of the way things have always worked for you. That is, how you now remember things always having worked for you.
You devoured your mother from the inside out the day her water broke. You sucked her dry like a boy sticking a straw in a ripened fruit. She was left dry, quite literally, and you came from a husk, paper dry.
Your wife left you, because you hurt her. And so you hurt her.
You used your daughter as a tool to monitor your rivals and enemies and friends and protégés. You gave her to a vile, filthy henchman who cared more for his bugs than for people.
“She was normal before you did this.”
But you knew. You knew that it wasn't you. You were a man who woke up in a world crafted by a madman. A little boy in a man's body who wanted nothing more than to stumble around a play land modeled after the great works of Araki-sensei.
“I have no idea what you're talking about.” He clenched his fists and then put them palm down on the table to try to raise himself up. His muscles failed him.
You knew you loved your wife. You knew your daughter was normal. Maybe he saw you snap at them. Maybe he imagined you would.
“You're getting weaker.”
As you devour him, the power that courses through your body frightens you. It is exactly as strong as you feared. The monster who bent and twisted and sculpted your life into something ugly was a nexus of energy and potential and god, what is that?
The boy with the face that plagued your dreams and nightmares, a face that you once thought to be so beautiful, had left streaks of black on the table. You stare at them, briefly perplexed.
Is that sharpie?
But there had been no sharpie on his hands, had there?
The phone chimes.
Next to him, there is suddenly a squat woman who had clearly just tossed on purple t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. The shirt was backwards. And then there is the skinny one that the boy fancies.
“Why would he have come alone?” the squat woman says. You know she is Esther, and you feel fear for the first time in a long time. “One hand made naked people invisible to you. The other made the sharpie symbols also invisible to you.”
“We're just so lucky you looked at the right hand before the left hand. But I always like to roll the dice,” said the one that would have had to be JJ.
“You've actually been feeding on three people,” says the boy whom you hate more than any god in this wretched world.
“Dude he gets it,” says Esther as you say, “Jude, I get it.”
Jude opens the cellphone. The air is so hot and so thick.
“This is going to hurt,” Jude says. “This is the power of Radio Killed the Video Star Requiem. Wait, shit. Reverse tha—”
But you feel no pain. You can't speak. Your sweat has evaporated. The three of them watch you as all the atoms in your body shake and quiver and then the pointillism that is your entire being fractures and bleeds and bends.
It doesn't hurt as you feel everything you are burst.
It doesn't hurt as you're strained as electricity and information and quarks through a stupid, stupid boy's idea of how a text message is sent.
You do not die.
You are alone.
You see yourself. You see every possible version of the man that is you. You see every choice, every decision, every thought and desire. It is infinite. There is so much of it. There is so much you.
That is when your pain starts.

The ride in the car after they took the Critic from this world was quiet.
Jude didn't speak for the longest time. A few gray hairs, errant and wild, had appeared at his temples and the nape of his neck. JJ had tried to say it made him look sexy. Jude hadn't reacted.
It wasn't until JJ was near asleep and Esther was almost ready to park the car and pass out when he finally spoke.
“I tried to bring them back, but I couldn't,” he said at last.
Neither Esther nor JJ spoke.
“I put some of my life into it, you know. I don't, I don't think I'll be able to do anything for, like, I dunno. A few years.” He shrugged. “No meaningful magic, at least. Or else I'll spit blood like some shounen dude.”
“How do you know that?” JJ asked.
“I also watch Hunter X Hunter. I know that sometimes you have to give something up for a big power move.” He stared off into the stars, and he said, “I didn't give up enough this time.”
“You're an idiot,” Esther said, not unkindly.
“I don't know where to go for right now,” said Jude.
“You'll stay with me until you can get your own apartment. As soon as possible.” Esther pursed her lips. Definitely a bullet being bitten.
“No need,” murmured JJ from the front seat, eyes closed. “I know a guy named Armand. I'll give you directions in the morning. We can drop Jude off there.”
Jude was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Will I like him?”
JJ shrugged. It seemed he was already nearly half conscious.
“Cool,” said Jude. And he closed his eyes.
Esther parked the car into a rest stop a few moments later. She fell asleep soon after.
Jude didn't sleep that night.

+ The End

- Epilogue:

Hirohiko Araki awoke next to his wife. Eyes snapped open. Head turned. Clock read 4:20AM.
Dreams were something Hirohiko had dealt with all of his life. They came to him in chunks, in visions. Strange things, powerful things. The corpses of saints used for long dead rituals. Men who perform feats of magic with what he had called stands.
But this dream had been different. It had been, well, a little too on the nose. And the main character. Jude? Electricity powers weren't very fun, he thought. And JJ? Hirohiko had not understood the t-shirt. And besides, he had done a character with luck already. Esther, certainly, was interesting. A fun rework of Heaven's Door. But he wasn't sure if his audience was ready for a character like, well, any of them. Homosexual murder thieves? The gangsters in Vento Aureo had been bad boys one could root for, sure, but this was different.
This just wasn't marketable.
So, Hirohiko Araki rolled over and went to sleep. By the morning, he had forgotten his dream. It never crossed his mind again.

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Article: Substation 9
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Music: When the Levee Breaks (Led Zeppelin)

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Mr. Blair, have you always been an only child?

[SCP-2419]
The Laughing Men

Throw them back into the incinerator where you found them.

[SCP-3143]
Murphy Law in… The Foundation Always Rings Twice!

When it comes right down to it, me — them — hell, even you — we're all just characters in that trashy dime-store novel called life.

[SCP-3089]
That Old Time Religion

Remember how we explained that successful people don't actually need any of their toes to walk? Well, that's going to come in handy for Secret Number Six.

[SCP-3117]
A Monster-Shaped Hole

I'm not talking to you.

[SCP-3128]
Let's Play Monopoly!

Hey, guys? I'm, uh. I'm using this.

[SCP-3138]
A Sepulcher by the Sea

Should it prove feasible, all non-canonical corpses are to be extracted, examined, and catalogued.

[SCP-3241]
The SS Sommerfeld

It makes me wonder what an old monster like myself is even doing here, anymore. And then? Someone special comes along and reminds me.

[SCP-3219]
This Sour Earth

Notably, no reports describe any attempt to examine the residence's storm cellar.

[SCP-4028]
La Historia de Don Quixote de la Mancha

Justine eventually re-unites with her sister, Juliette. Alonso strikes down a lightning bolt intended for them both, then challenges the narrator to a duel.

[SCP-3546]
Doggone it, I Fold!

Specifically, fan-art of Sonic the Hedgehog, a video-game character produced by Sega in 1991.

[SCP-3561]
An Unfinished Work

Despite multiple reports from neighbors who claimed to have witnessed members of his family standing at the windows, no trace of Theodore Holdstock's wife and children could be found.

[SCP-4054]
The Seventh Door

SCP-4054 is The Seventh Door, an unlicensed platform adventure game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988.

cthulahoop 02/02/16 (Tue) 15:09:17 #08740178

I work for an electric company that provides power to over a dozen warehouses and manufacturing complexes.
Think of me as an over-glorified security guard. I ride around checking substations to make sure an OCB hasn't tripped, or an eagle hasn't nested on top of a transformer. I work the graveyard shift, which means most of my nights are spent sitting in a trailer and fighting for enough cell reception to stave off the crippling boredom. The only time this job involves any actual work is when it rains.
First, some background: Whatever image you've got in your head of this place? You're probably wrong. It's a couple thousand acres of woodlands, rivers, and country roads, with the occasional warehouse in a field. Calling this place 'remote' doesn't do it justice — even folks in the boonies don't know we're here. There's nobody around except the deer (you'll see fifty, maybe sixty a night). The substations are just shacks out in the woods. The hardest part of the job isn't checking them. It's finding them.
I don't want to give too many details (I like my job and would like to keep it), but there used to be a mining town near here. When they built a dam downstream, the whole place turned into a lake. Townsfolk were forced to relocate — the mine and factories were flooded. When the lake receded, they demolished everything and built new factories.
Now here's where things get interesting: When they demolished all those buildings? They didn't demolish the basements. And most of these substations had underground tie-ins into them. Beneath each of these little overgrown shacks is a sprawling network of tunnels connecting to hundreds of basements for buildings that no longer even exist. This underground complex basically goes on forever.
When it rains, the basements flood. When it rains hard, the water rises out of the basements and floods the substations — which are filled with extremely sensitive high-voltage equipment. Starting to see the problem?
This is where I come in: My job is to drive out to each of these substations, go down into the basement, and make sure the sump pumps kicked on. They usually do when the water hits a certain height, but the floats can get hung up (or the pumps need to be replaced).
(I know what you're thinking. Why not plug the basements up? Well, besides the cost — and having to shut down each substation while we work — there's also the fact that this job partly exists because someone has to check on those sump pumps. So none of us are exactly chomping at the bit to point this out to upper management)
When you first get hired, old-timers all tell you the same thing: Don't fuck around in the basements. Don't wander. Don't explore. Go down, do your job, come up. Watch where you step. And always bring two flashlights.
Some of these tunnels are nearly a century old, made when being 'up to code' just meant it didn't collapse five minutes after you built it. On top of that, any blueprints describing these places were lost in the flood. No one knows what's down here or what connects to what. The guy that trained me once walked from one substation to another without ever catching a glimpse of sky. That's over three miles of tunnels. Three miles.
In case you're wondering… Yeah. Everyone says 'don't fuck around in the basements', but everyone still fucks around in the basements. You just have to watch your step, stay alert, and always — always — bring two flashlights.
And trust me: You would not believe some of the shit we find down there.

This tunnel right here? This is below… let's call it "Substation 9".
The farthest any of us have gotten down this tunnel is about 500 yards — that's five football fields, or under a third of a mile. What's past that, you ask?
Nobody has a clue. The tunnel slants down, leaving the rest of it completely submerged. We've tried pumping it out, but the water won't go lower than what you see here. Which means there's who-knows how much more tunnel (and basement) past this point.
I've got more to share — including pictures. I'll write more about this tomorrow.

cthulahoop 02/03/16 (Wed) 14:19:51 #31166510

Okay, first things first: A bunch of people have PMed me saying that the picture isn't legit, there's no way there's miles of tunnels down here, etc.
Let's put this to bed, shall we?

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Now that we've gotten that out of the way… I'll answer a couple of questions people have been asking:

We use cheap disposable sump pumps because our company doesn't want to spend the money to install anything else. That being said, a few of the substations do have some old centrifugal pumps either right there or in an adjacent basement. We run hoses and use 'em as back-ups for areas that get flooded really bad. The problem is that some of these pumps are over 50 years old — it's hard to find compatible parts, and not many of us (besides me and a few others) know how to fix them.
None of us are actual electricians. We're dispatchers for electricians. Rather than paying trained pros to watch the place, they pay us a fraction of the rate. When we find a blown fuse or downed transformer, we call the electricians and they handle it. We're also responsible for checking the OCBs and keeping the substations dry (the electricians don't go into the basements).
We handle a lot of substations (over 50). The two biggest have 220kV transformers (they drop down to 66kV). We've also got a couple of booster stations, a potable water plant, and some other stuff.
I don't want to get too specific about the mining town or when it flooded, because I'd rather not have people figuring out where this is or who I am. Again: I like my job. But I will say that after the flood, the mine was collapsed and never re-opened.
The scariest thing I've ever seen down here is a family of raccoons. If that doesn't sound very scary… then I presume you've never had your flashlight catch a pair of eyes flashing out from the shadows while you're stumbling around in an underground tunnel several miles away from the closest human soul.

Some people have been asking about the 'always bring two flashlights' thing. Let me show you something:

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See how dark it gets when I turn off my flashlight?
Now, imagine that's your only flashlight and you just lost it. Imagine having to navigate these tunnels in absolute darkness.

To make matters worse… see this? This is a hole full of water. These basements are full of stuff like this. Drain-trenches, collapsed floors, elevator shafts — even straight-up pits. Some are just several feet deep; others are several dozens of feet. A coworker of mine has fallen into one of these things, and let me tell you: They ain't no joke.
Some even go down to a lower sub-basement that's been completely flooded. There's entire chambers down here full of old pumps and machines that have been submerged for decades.
Again: You would not believe some of the shit we find down here.

cthulahoop 02/05/16 (Fri) 19:11:58 #65330674

Okay, it's been a while since I last posted, but I wanted to answer a few more questions:

When we go down, we carry an O2 monitor. Mainly, we're worried about things like pockets of nitrogen. We also wear heavy gloves, rubber steel-toed boots, and ventilation masks (in case of asbestos).
A lot of these places smell pretty much exactly how they look. Sometimes? They smell worse.
You can still find some things from the old town above-ground, in the woods. Mostly concrete slabs, but there's a rusted husk of a truck sitting in a tree somewhere.
We have no idea where the collapsed mine is, and — quite frankly! — none of us are interested in looking for it. It's probably filled with poisonous fumes and other toxic, nasty shit.
There aren't a lot of animals down here, because there aren't a lot of ways in (that we don't directly control). I still have no idea how the fuck those raccoons managed it.
Some of you have been asking me if anyone's ever actually gotten lost down here. Well, about that…

Remember the two flashlight thing? It's just good sense: It's hard enough to find your way around down here. How are you going to manage without light? There's no phone reception, either. Just you, alone… with miles and miles of decaying concrete, rancid pools of water, and rusted machines — in pitch-black darkness.
But we've got a saying in industrial work: Every rule is written in blood. The reason we all carry two flashlights is because of what happened when someone didn't.
I had a coworker — let's call him John. He was a good guy. Clever, good head for numbers. Kept to himself. Real quiet. Along with me and three others, we handled the graveyard shifts for the whole crew.

One year, during a thaw, the sump pumps were getting overwhelmed. Too much water coming in — they couldn't dump it fast enough. John wanted to hook up some of these old centrifugal pumps that were just sitting around in these basements — use them to give our own pumps a fighting chance. It was a good idea, but a lot of work. Some of these pumps hadn't seen action for decades.
But John stuck with it. He hunted down every pump he could find, serviced them, hooked them up with hoses, and managed to keep our substations dry all the way into late spring.
A few days after we got things under control, I did a swap and ended up coming in during a day shift. I was John's relief. When I got to the trailer, the truck was missing and John was gone. The last entry in the logbook mentioned heading out to check on the sump pump in one of the substations.

I had to walk there. The truck was right outside, still idling. I went downstairs and searched over two hours for John. Then, I called the police. There was an investigation, a search — whole nine yards. Most of us came in off-the-book to help. We looked through those tunnels for a month, maybe even longer. Never found so much as hair or hide of him.
About a year later, another coworker — we'll call her 'Patrice' — took me aside. She showed me something she found during one of her rounds.
A flashlight with dead batteries. It had some tape wrapped around the pommel with John's initials soldered on it.

cthulahoop 02/07/16 (Sun) 17:13:02 #86713880

People are expressing skepticism regarding the size of these basements and whether they're not all really interconnected. I took a short video to try and give you a sense of scope, here.

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(Pardon the heavy breathing; new mask.)
See that tunnel at the end? That's part of a whole other facility that's just as big as the one I started in. I'll try to take footage of it later.
Anyway, more answers to questions:

Company policy is that we're not supposed to be exploring these spaces. They know we do it — but they pretend not to know.
No, we never found John. As far as the police are concerned, he wandered off into the woods. As far as we're concerned… he fell into a flooded sub-basement and drowned.
For those of you saying we ought to have shut the facility down, drained the basements completely, and kept looking for John… that's basically what we tried to do? Again: Some of these sub-basements cannot be drained. Water just keeps getting in — either from the river or from the flooded mine (possibly both). Remember, you're dealing with massive underground structures that have been filling with water for decades. Unless you're willing to start a billion dollar excavation project to dig out all of these basements… there's literally no way to recover that body.
If you think it sounds creepy to work inside a massive underground complex knowing that the drowned corpse of your coworker is lurking in a flooded sub-basement somewhere under your feet… well, you're right. It's creepy as hell, actually. It's why most of us stay far the fuck away from the substation he vanished under.

A lot of you have said you want to hear about some "spookums". Well, I know this is going to be disappointing, but… outside of what happened to John? Literally nothing "spooky" has ever happened to me, here.
A few of my coworkers have told me about some things they've encountered, though. I don't know whether you should trust them, but I'll provide a few examples:

Patrice says that on at least three separate occasions, she's heard something like muffled "old timey radio music" playing from below. She didn't recognize the song, but says it was the same one all three times.
"Ed" (the guy who trained me) says he's heard some of the old original pumps kicking on by themselves. This actually isn't all that weird; John repaired a bunch of them (some we still use even today). But Ed claims the ones he's heard kicking on aren't the ones John repaired — they're deeper in. Somewhere in the parts of the complex that we haven't explored, yet.
That's another thing I should clarify, and I guess counts as a "spookum": We haven't explored the entire complex. Not yet. There's still dozens of passages, doorways, and stairwells we haven't gone down.
"Phil" (one of the old-timers) claims he once saw some pale naked guy squatting in one of the tunnels, but we're all pretty sure he's either bullshitting us or it was really just a raccoon. He also says he saw a section of Substation 9 that ties into the collapsed mine.
Two new hires claimed to hear knocking and yelling on the other side of a sealed door (several doors down here are welded shut). In both cases, the guys left for a different job.
I mentioned we have a potable water plant, but I should have clarified: We had a potable water plant. It's abandoned, now. No one's ever been able to get clean drinking water working in this place — all the faucets and drains would get gummed up with this congealed gray paste that smells like rotting fish. We use a portable toilet and bring in bottled water by the truckload.

That's basically it. Like I said, I haven't encountered any of this stuff myself, so I'm pretty skeptical.

cthulahoop 03/12/16 (Sat) 14:15:21 #33670699

Okay, so, it's been a while since I posted, but there's been some news.
Ed found John's phone. He nearly broke the damn thing when he was sloshing through the water trying to fix a sump pump. Felt something hard and flat under his foot. John kept his phone in one of those industrial-strength cases, so it was actually in good condition. It can still manage to hold a charge.
We went through his shit, and — well, like most of us, he took photos of what's below. We recognized most of them… but not the most recent ones:

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Here's the messed up part: Ed found this phone in Substation 9. But according to the logbook, John didn't even go near Substation 9 the day he disappeared.
We're all kinda spooked, right now. Patrice and some others are talking about quitting. Either way, we've all talked it over and decided the best option is to turn the phone over to the police and let them sort it out.
I almost forgot. That last picture? Phil keeps saying he's seen that tunnel, before. He says that it's the collapsed mine.

cthulahoop 03/18/16 (Wed) 19:10:04 #46449280

Police are involved. Somebody must have lit a fire under the company's ass, because they're now moving heaven and earth to get Substation 9 drained. Brought in some gigantic pumps to do it with. We've all been working overtime. The pay's good, but nobody's really that happy. None of us want to be here.
This is a waste of time, honestly. John's phone just drifted. We're not going to find him down here.
On the bright side, at least we'll get to see what the hell is at the end of that hall.

cthulahoop 03/25/16 (Fri) 14:18:43 #43427769

Patrice and two others quit, today. Company's offering me time and a half to cover shifts while they look for new workers.
Nobody goes into the basements, anymore. Not unless we have to.

cthulahoop 03/27/16 (Sun) 14:04:12 #36086089

The flooded hall in Substation 9 ends in a set of stairs that go down deeper.
They think they found John's body.

cthulahoop 03/27/16 (Sun) 16:05:19 #80183729

It wasn't John's

cthulahoop 03/28/16 (Mon) 21:01:00 #29239282

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Chapter II.III

"Here's where all the previous critter profiles are kept. We have them stored in the computer, but we print out everything as well, just to make sure we can survive a system crash. Also, it goes without saying that some things require specific forms of information storage."
Old Al showed me around Tim's office. I wasn't sure why, exactly. I hadn't asked him to do it. I knew where most things were, and why they were. I was alright with the distraction, though.
"A lot of records, honestly, ahaheh. You're going to be getting a lot of mail, and one of the main things about this job is how many people are going to be coming in to talk to you. You'll want to decide your office hours as soon as possible."
Someone else might have been offended with all this hand-holding. I'm not sure why I wasn't. But I was content to let him keep rattling on.
"This is the mailbox," he pointed out. Maybe he was trying to make sure that his relationship with the head of the Shelter was exactly the same. Needed that consistency, the reliability that everything will be as it was. Or maybe I was reading into it too much.
"Oh, we moved his computer out, but a flashdrive in this top drawer here has all of his files. That would include stuff you're already in possession of, like the spreadsheets for budgeting — that stuff flies over my head but you'll get it. You'll also get access to all the phone numbers of companies we're in contact with. People we buy in bulk or get special orders from."
"I did special orders before."
"You did? Oh, alright. Then you don't have to be enlightened on that process."
"I actually know most of this stuff already."
Old Al scratched his head. He was the only person I had ever known who actually scratched their head when they were thinking. "Right, that's why you were chosen, eh?"
"Mhmm."
"Right. Then the biggest change, really, is going to be that you have a full complement of staff that can pick up any of your many responsibilities if there's too much on your plate. Typically, Tim would go to myself, Laura, Anders, Robin, or you. Though I guess he really offloaded onto you, didn't he? Ahaheh, probably knew you could handle it."
"I'm that type of person."
"Which is why I want to hammer in the point that you're not alone. Feel free to ask for help."
"I will."
"You're also going to be the voice of the company. In fact, that's the biggest change," he revised his previous statement, "you're going to be in direct contact with the Supervisors. You can apply for more money, or advice, sometimes technology. Captain Esau is our direct line of contact. We have other ways if we want to go around her, but that won't happen often. She's very reliable and it's part of her job description. She can take letters. Emails will be forwarded to those people we can't directly contact. The only wrinkle is if you want to complain about her, which understandably might feel strange to filter through her. So far, though, Tim has had no complaints. Or… nevermind. She's very good at what she does."
I nodded.
"Actually, your relationship with her is probably the most important to develop. Her and the Castaways are about the only people here you can't just tell to do things. Maybe we should go meet her —"
"I need to move into this office first, Al."
"Oh," he took a breath, "right."
"It's alright Al. I'm aware of what I have to do."
"Right."
"But thank you for walking me through things."
He nodded. There was a pause. "Do you want help bringing boxes from your old office and unpacking them here?"
I smiled. "That was what I was expecting you to be here for."
"Ahaheh, got it."

I took a walk through the Shelter's man-made clearing. I had never had a name for the area that the headquarters was designed to "hug", so I thought I might as well use my new position to give it a label. I was thinking something like the Clearing, just to be simple, but something about calling it the Crater appealed to me. Something about how it gently curved downward, and another something about the implication of an impact that the Shelter was built around.
I walked along the dirt road that wound through the enclosures. It felt a bit strange that the Castaways "barracks" were disconnected from the main WWS building, but it did help to make them feel separate, which might have been the idea. I thought of "barracks" with quotation marks because I hated that they leaned into the soldier aesthetic. The last thing I wanted was for the Shelter to have some military connotation to its name.
But there it was. Right where the Crater started to give way to the surrounding forest, the brown building tucked itself in. The aesthetic of the Shelter was soft greens and rounded edges. The "barracks", however, were a rusty brown and held strong to the Supervisors' love of sharp corners.
I opened the front door with the plaque: β4. The Greek designation always made me think of a fraternity. Well, it was a fraternity when Captain Schut was in charge, but he decided to self-destruct his career and leave an opening for Esau, so it might be more of a sorority now. In any case, the lobby was just as sparse as they wanted. There was a door at the back that led to the actual barracks, a locked door to the right that had the armory (another term I very much disliked, when it was mostly tranquilizers, nets, and non-violent traps), and the door to the left was Captain Esau's personal office. That, of course, was where I headed.
I almost opened the door without knocking, but remembered my manners.
"Come in," I heard her alto purr.
I pushed open the door and was face to face with her ginger buzzcut once again. Ingrid had probably the greatest overlap between animal handling and paperwork out of anyone except Al. She was on the field capturing any and all critters we needed to take in and evaluate, but she also handled reports of every outing, reviews for every person under her watch each month, plenty of back and forth between the Shelter and the Supervisors, and certainly some things that I wasn't cleared to know about. My eyes were drawn to her pen, which told me that she was writing out a budget for the Castaways' equipment that was needing replacement. I did at least appreciate that there were people in this organization that did some of the financial work for me, which made me merely an editor. I swiftly reminded myself that she wasn't a member of this organization.
"Oh hello, Ms. Wilson. What brings you here?"
I sat before she could tell me to take a seat. "First official day on the job, I'm ironing out my new relationships within the system. You represent the Supervisors."
"Day to day, yes."
There was a pause. Once Esau looked up from her paper and made eye contact, I continued.
"Any progress on the albatross?"
"We've named it Founder, because it's trying to worm its way into the history of the town. But no. Working theory is that the same mechanism that places it in our memories is allowing it some reads into our thoughts. Maybe it takes the fake experiences but does real learning from them, giving it an edge on getting away from us. That would also make it particularly intelligent, but we handle one thing at a time. Would you like a glass of water?"
"I'm alright, thank you. What's the process?"
"We are, as always, mostly reactionary. Gary gets a call, patches it through to us. Gary hooks in other available people, who usually are on duty for getting visual while we gear up. They contact us through the walkie-talkies."
"Right. And what do you do when you find the thing?"
"That's variable."
"Give me the most standard response possible."
"Well if it's a mundane critter the Castaways probably wouldn't have gotten involved in the first place. We'd tranquilize the thing as a first call, which works nine times out of ten, and then try to bring it back and stick it in one of the provisional enclosures. Don't you know this already?"
"At what point do you decide whether or not it goes to the Supervisors."
"Soon after capture."
"How do you determine whether it's Safe, Euclid, or Keter?"
"I'm not the final say on that, but the layman's criteria can be defined by the Locked Box Test. If you leave it in a Locked Box, what happens?"
"I've heard that before."
"Right. Then under that definition, the vast majority of anything living are Euclid."
"Do I have the power to veto your decision?"
"Excuse me?"
I let the silence hang.
"Well," Ingrid began again, "if you've read the Boring Agreement…" She waited a second to probe for a response, but got none. "…then no, you can't. You can enter negotiations if it means so much to you, but the Supervisors hold power over what remains within your care and what doesn't."
"Right," I responded. That was the perspective I wanted confirmation for. "Thank you, Captain Esau. That clears something up for me."
"Of course." Her voice carried a curious uncertainty.
I decided not to answer it, and instead flashed a polite smile, stood, and walked out the door. She could make of that interaction whatever she wanted.

Dear Wilson's Wildlife Solutions,
For the better part of two months, we have been in a kind of stasis. The loss of our greatest wilderness pioneer has left us reeling and frozen. Many basic functions of this organization have been halted, but everyone already knows this.
Things will not ever return to how they were before. I know, because I can not be the same type of force that my dad was. No one can ever replace Tim Wilson. I am not here, taking his position, because I have the same charisma as he had. I am here to do a job and my approach will be different. Even now, I send an email, whereas he might have taken the time to hold an event.
But we can not dwell too long on what was before. The goals of the Shelter have not changed. We are here to bring the community of Boring together; to protect our local ecosystems; to give animals a chance to recover, or a home if they can not be released; on rare occasions, to keep our town and its farms safe. I hope that you can all accept change as it comes, and accept me for where I am now. I am just as surprised to be here as you are to see me here.
Attached to this email is a list of all activities that were put on hold in July. I've made a rough schedule for when they should be completed, and by whom. Enclosures are going to be redesigned, plus new ones built for our ever expanding roster of woodland friends. We will be hiring, so frequent volunteers are expected to be offered full-time positions. The website is getting an overhaul. We will return with our first fundraiser in November. By the New Year, I expect everything to be up and running at its most efficient. I hope you will all enjoy embarking on this journey with me.
Blessed to have you here with me,
Faeowynn Wilson

The email reached every employee and every volunteer from the past year. No, I wasn't like Tim. Tim wandered and met with people. I was going to do everything from this office. I'd always been that type of person. I liked having my hub of control. Even with the very limited functionality of them back in the 90's, young me loved the ability to message everyone from their room. Socialization without having to move. Set down roots, influence from there. It was very comfortable.
I didn't expect this job. I didn't particularly want this job. But I had this job. I'd spent my entire life making sure not to half-ass anything, and I wasn't expecting this to be any different. I took a deep breath. I was going to have to work around the Castaways.
I had never liked the Supervisors. To be clear — and I said this to myself, and in my head, I felt no anger, no emotion swelled, no hitch in my breath, no skip of a heartbeat — I blamed them for Tim's death.
I didn't feel a particular need to elaborate on why. I just knew it.
They wouldn't be the death of me.

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