Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You have been a record keeper for the Foundation for a few years now, keeping track of Site-19’s containment breach records. Of course, with so many high-class anomalies around you, your job is never easy. SCP-035 alone attempts a breach daily. Just last week was yet another record-breaking breach, and the site even lost a few anomalous items. Of course, there isn’t much grief in losing a dime that spins on its side for exactly 10.554 seconds or a completely silent drum, but every anomaly must be placed in the records.

You have never considered yourself special or unique. You’re not one of the many doctors who gets to experience Site-19’s tenants firsthand, or the O5s that look over the SCP Foundation. You aren’t some well known member like the infamous Dr. Bright or the ever mysterious Dr. Alto Clef. You most certainly aren’t one of the members of the many MTFs who get to experience the anomalous world in the wild. You got to sit in a cubicle and type that some horrible monsters broke out of their cages again.

Exciting, right?

… Right?

You let out a miserable sigh and plop your head into your hands. Your eyes are sore from looking at a bright white screen all day, your hands are aching from constantly typing. Apparently the sculpture had gotten out today, and was found just outside your office, and you were still busy typing about the breach of the zombie virus that had happened yesterday, which you had fortunately also missed.

Speaking of anomalies, you’ve never seen any of the hundreds of SCP items locked in Site-19 with your own eyes. Somehow you were placed in the perfect place to just never have the misfortune of seeing any of the paranormal world beyond a weird stapler that made a gurgling sound whenever used. It would seem like you’ll only get to watch from your screen with all of these boring old papers.

Wait a minute, when did those papers get here?

These don’t look like the type of paperwork you usually deal with. In fact, it looks more like a true-blue SCP file rather than an incident report. In fact, it looks like the biggest pile of papers you’ve seen in your life. You're not exactly the tidiest person in the world, but this is ridiculous. In fact, the SCP on top doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen. You hadn’t memorized the entire database, but you were fairly certain there wasn’t an SCP-2331, or even anything about a “SCRAVECROW” in the Foundation’s files. It has containment procedures, an in-depth description, and even a full on interview with SCP-2331 itself. This file looks completely accurate to what’s in the database, but why would someone just leave a complete SCP file on your desk?

‘Whatever, it’s probably just someone playing a prank on me.’ you think as you walk down the hall past a few storage closets. ‘I’ll just bring this to the site director, just in case it’s anomalous.’ you tell yourself as you read the interview with the strange disc jockey scarecrow.

You bring this stack of papers to the site director, whose face immediately turns pale as he sees the stack in your hands. He takes the papers from your hands and demands to know where you found them. After explaining that it showed up on your desk. The older man rubs his temples in frustration, and calls some unknown person.

“Well, I suppose I should explain a few things. What you found was an SCP that helps the Foundation discover new anomalies. It’s been doing so since the organization was first being formed. This has made it so important that it was designated SCP-001. You’re extremely lucky to have found this item.” the doctor explains as you merely stare with amazement. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to give you some amnestics, SCP-001 is Top Secret. I do hope you’ll understand.” the director states as he shuffles over to his desk.

You silently nod as a containment team and a member of the on-site medical team enter the room. SCP-001 is carefully placed in a safe and taken away in a few minutes. Before you’re given an injection full of amnestics, you are walked back to your desk. The whole way there, you could only think about how you saw SCP-001 of all things just sitting on your desk. You couldn’t feel any luckier.

Chapter Text

Containment breaches are chaos, everyone knows this unfortunate fact. It’s never a good thing when the monsters get out of their cages, running around the bulls in a sci-fi china shop. Each and every person on-site is the fancy china, and this includes you, a humble researcher working in the low-value research labs. You consider yourself lucky, these items are normal enough that you can stay relatively safe. The items in this place are nothing like the horrors of the rest of Site-19. You wanted a more cushy job, but you were assigned to the biggest site owned by the Foundation.

Going back to the main idea, right now the site is experiencing the biggest breach to date. A number of Keter-Class anomalies have gotten out, many Euclid SCPs are loose, lots of Safe-Class objects are running about Site-19 as well, and even a couple of anomalous items have escaped storage. When the alarms started blaring, you weren’t particularly worried. As a member of Site-19, this happens all the time. Once the speakers join the alarm’s apocalyptic choir, you start feeling a bit more nervous.

“ALERT. FULL SITE CONTAINMENT BREACH. FIND AN EVACUATION ZONE IMMEDIATELY.” says the voice crackling through the speaker, repeating the dooming phrase maybe five or six times before leaving the alarm to scream on its own again.

You panic for a few seconds before the sound of chattering plastic. You notice one of the anomalous items, a fully animate chattering teeth toy, trying to right itself after falling to the floor from its locker, which one of the researchers working with you had left open as they ran. You pick up the little item, its feet kicking in protest as you place it in your hand. After almost dropping the living toy, you head out of the lab. You’ve been in the danger zone for far too long, so it’s time to find the evacuation zone.

The halls of Site-19 are full of flashes of red and bright white. You’ve seen this plenty of times, though, so this isn’t what’s circling around your head like vultures surrounding a dying beast. You’re quickly listing off in your head the various monsters and threats that are definitely running down the exact same hallways you’re trying to escape. There’s the mask, it’s likely tried to get out of containment on a daily basis. The shy guy might be around here somewhere, which you really wouldn’t like crossing paths with. There’s the mimics, the plague doctor, the old man, and a number of other anomalous horrors that could be just right around the corner.

The one that stuck with you the most, though, is the concrete killer designated SCP-173. You’re not too fond of the statue after hearing the crunch of its victims from just outside the evacuation zone. Hopefully you won’t have to deal with that horrible thi-

*CRUNCH* *SNAP* *thud…*

Well, you’re screwed. ‘Why couldn’t it be the dragon snails, or the eye pods…’ you ask the universe itself as you prepare yourself for what’s waiting on the other side of the hall. After what felt like ten eternities bundled together with an infinite string, you finally reach the corner where the air was particularly thick with the feeling of dread, where you were sure you heard the sculpture’s latest kills. Almost as if the item in your pocket heard you think ‘maybe if I’m super quiet 173 won’t hear me,’ it starts chattering its teeth and kicking its little cartoonish feet right after you consider being extra sneaky. You jump up and shut your eyes in response to the anomalous item trying to give away your position to the sculpture.

When you open your eyes again, there it is. SCP-173 in all its spray-painted glory, close enough to smell the stench of death off its nubby little hands. It’s even more chilling up-close with its soulless eyes staring blankly into yours, its intent very clear in those painted-on black circles. For now, you’re locked in a staring contest against a horrifying statue that definitely wants to kill you. How could you possibly get out of this situation? Will you get out of this situation? Likely not, you think as your eyes already start feeling dry under the pressure of this life-or-death staring contest with SCP-173.

Right as you’re prepared to accept your fate, you hear something drop to the floor and you blink out of surprise. Opening your eyes, you see that the chattering teeth that got you into this mess had fallen out of your hand as you were too focused on the killer sculpture in front of you. More strange, however, is that SCP-173 seems to have been startled by the item as well, backing away from you and your plastic anomalous savior. You hold it up and 173 backs up a little more, concrete skin to concrete wall. In fact, it looks a bit scared.

You’re definitely gonna brag about this if you survive.

You decide to try talking to the statue, asking it yes/no questions by making it move one way or the other. When it seems to get a little antsy, you hold up the still chattering teeth, and it backs off once more. You ask it a few questions, such as if it moves by teleporting (which it does), if it can see (which it also can), and if it enjoys killing people (which it doesn’t answer).

One important question you asked is if it is afraid of the chattering teeth, which it answers no. You couldn’t be more confused and ask what it’s afraid of, why it doesn’t just kill you in the blink of an eye. You blink, and it’s gone. How helpful.

You realize that you’ve been standing around in the den of a hundred monsters talking to a sentient rock, and realize how lucky you are that something else didn’t come along and turn you into mincemeat. Now’s not the time for thinking about your encounter with SCP-173, you need to find the evacuation zone as soon as possible.

Running down the hallway you find another anomaly, SCP-131-B, the yellow one. It couldn’t be happier to see you and immediately joins you on your journey to find safety. With the eye pod on your side, you feel a whole lot better, and your nerves feel way calmer, you’ve got another eye to look out for monsters.

Speaking of monsters, another figure appears from around the corner. It’s black figure gives you a heart attack, but you end up somehow calming down realizing it’s the plague doctor rather than the far deadlier old man. You’re still not out of the woods, though, and you’re reminded of this when the doctor mumbles something about the “pestilence” being nearby. After raising his “beak” a couple times in a sniffing motion, SCP-049 points toward you and sics a zombified D-Class on you.

In the very moment you believe you’re doomed, the stars align perfectly for a certain concrete art piece to arrive. SCP-049, the zombie, and you all close your eyes in unison while SCP-131-B turns away in horror. The next second, the undead D-Boy is lying on the ground with its head turned all the way around and the doctor looks awfully shocked. Standing right in front of you is SCP-173, looking towards your attacker with an intimidating aura.

You pick up the eye pod and slowly shirk your way around the statue and the plague doctor before rushing down the hall and finally finding the evacuation zone. After a couple minutes of knocking, you’re let in and your friends from the Anomalous Items Lab all gather to you. You’re bombarded with questions, but they all turn to a misty white noise as you sit down, still thinking about your encounter with SCP-173. You’d always been most afraid of the statue, but maybe you don’t need to feel as such.

The burnt-red 131 instance rushes over to its sibling and they dance around each other in pure elation before going to you. You also remember the chattering teeth, which you hand to a scientist nearby, telling them to take good care of it.

Exhausted from your little dance with death, you lean against the wall and slowly fall asleep, feeling a teardrop-like shape lean against each leg and you fall into a calm slumber.

Chapter Text

You love LARPing, to the point where going to Renaissance fairs and playing Dungeons & Dragons make up most of your social and personal life (you’ve somehow perfected the art of playing solo D&D after the rise of the pandemic). There’s just something that warms your nerdy heart about playing a role besides your own and going on adventures that you could never imagine even having the chance of going on if you didn’t do a little bit of playing pretend. You’ve read every single Dungeons and Dragons manual cover to cover so many times you could recite any bit of lore or rules by heart. So many monsters have been slain by your blades, bows, and magic spells, and hundreds of kingdoms have been saved because of your heroism. You’ve even led so many journeys through the magical realms that you could write multiple volumes for the adventures you were the Dungeon Master of alone.

You’re an insanely creative person and have even dipped your toes into some writing, with most of your work going into homebrewed monsters, items, characters, and even creating a whole world where a campaign is currently being worked on by you and your geeky friends. Fantasy has defined your life and your passions since you were a child reading the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and even reading a few old medieval texts on the internet.

It had been a few years since the Covid-19 pandemic had finally been solved, and you had gotten back into the swing of going to big events and could finally do some live-action role-playing with your dearest friends again. You’re already feeling the excitement of even getting to craft a number of fancy costumes and props, you’ve been the one to make props for everyone for the past few years and your cardboard swords and wooden staffs topped with fake gemstones have been a big hit each year. But this time you really want to make something that blows everyone’s socks off!

Unfortunately you haven’t had any luck on finding any good ideas for this event. Of course, you did make the swords and staffs, and of course you already bought the bows and made your costume, a wizard’s robes and an elegant pointy hat, but you still have yet to find out what to make for the fair. The event is in a few days, so you need to figure out a plan soon.

You decide to go on a walk to try to think about what you’ll try to put together. Maybe you could build some monster props? No, you know that Jim does that. How about writing some lore for the world? That might be cool, but it’s probably gonna be all improv. You keep searching through your brain for ideas, but everything is either being made by someone else or doesn’t particularly need to be made. You let out a disappointed sigh as you walk down the street, cars passing by every few seconds. This was supposed to be special, how will you think of something in time? Maybe you’ll have to wait until next time…

At least, that’s what you thought before you saw a yard sale and saw some things you could use for props. The garage is filled with a bunch of cardboard cutouts with images of bushes, trees, and even a few simple buildings. A number of other items are on display as well, such as a supposedly life-sized plush of a goblin, a number of toy crossbows and daggers, and a basketball-sized D20. You ask the man running the yard sale why he has all of this stuff and he explains that his son used to be obsessed with role-playing games. You ask who his son is, and you almost immediately recognize the name as one of the most well-known members of your LARPing group who left just a few years after you joined.

Once he knows you enjoy the little game that his son once did, he asks for you to stay here for a minute as he goes inside to grab something. Once he returns, the older man is holding a cardboard box with the words “Grow Your Own Castle Kit” plastered on its top. The elder tells you that his son found this box in the mail when he was a little kid, but he could never find the time to actually build one of those castles. In fact, he never got the chance to open it up either, so he’s giving you a mint condition item. You buy a few crossbows and daggers and rush back home, thanking the man for his kindness.

When you get home, you immediately open the box and face quite the shock when you see a jar filled with what looks like overgrown grains of sand. There’s a bunch of different looks to these grains, with some being a stony gray, others a flashy red, a bunch of them a light brown, and some a pale white. The instructions in the box say that these grains are seeds and need to be planted to grow a castle. A small guide accompanies the manual, and provides an image for each kind of seed and the castle that comes from it. After some mental debating between the Romanesque and the Gothic style of castle, you choose the latter, which has a seed with a stained-glass appearance and a black outline. Everyone’s gonna love this!

A few days later, and the event finally comes. You followed the instructions that came with the kit to a tee, going out and watering the seed that you had planted in the middle of an abandoned field. After a week of tending to the growing structure, it’s finally complete. It stands as tall as you’d expect a castle to, and even has an open area surrounded by a massive wall. When people finally start showing up, nobody believes what they’re seeing. You’d already inspected the castle in full and checked for any traps the night prior, and already knew it was safe enough to explore. You found some staff working in the castle, none of which looked human, but they were friendly so you weren’t concerned.

After giving a quick tour of the beautiful building you’ve been nurturing for the past week, which included a main hall, a dining hall, a courtyard with training dummies, a large number of living quarters, the king’s room, a very large kitchen, a chapel, a greenhouse, and even dungeons deep below the surface. This place still doesn’t feel real to you, like this is all some kind of dream. You’ve been living this dream for over a week, and now you finally get to share it with your friends.

Chapter Text

You need a new coffee table after what happened last weekend. You never expected a house-warming party to get quite as rowdy as it did, but you definitely didn’t expect someone to dive straight onto the table and smash it into hundreds of mahogany splinters. Regardless of that, you’ve spent all day trying to find somewhere to buy a new table, but you’ve faced some problems with that simple goal. For you see, every furniture store in town has shut down.

You sit in your car, utterly defeated by this fruitless search. How is every single store you need closed today, and how half of the stores you checked were closed due to construction. The last store you checked had a sign on the front door reading “GET LOST” in thick letters. It feels as if some force was against you today, and it’s winning. It’s quite strange, you think, anomalous perhaps.

You then notice an icon on your map, apparently an IKEA is in some space in between your town and the neighboring one, just perfectly hidden away from roads and even the nearby highway. You wonder for a moment just how long that place had been there and how the hell it had evaded everyone for so long.

Regardless, you’re grateful that there’s still a chance for you to get the table you need and you don’t have to travel all the way to the next town over. You start driving and it takes around half an hour to get even near the store. You watch as paved roads turn to dirt paths and you pass through a number of gates, all left open with nobody to watch for any people. Strange, you think, but you go onward anyways. You’d already traveled all the way out here for something, you aren’t gonna leave because this place feels a little off. It’s probably just a coincidence.

You park in the creepily quiet parking lot, immediately making note of the lack of cars in this place. You brush away that fear, however, and just walk right up to the store. There’s this really weird feeling about this place, almost like it’s watching you or something like that. You try to push that anxiety away, explaining to yourself that IKEAs are just kinda creepy looking like that, and that everyone probably feels like they’re being watched when they walk into one of these Swedish furniture stores.

You walk inside, completely ignoring the sign reading “DO NOT ENTER! SPATIAL ANOMALY INSIDE” as well as the little placard reading “SCP-3008, Object Class - Euclid”, and find yourself in the entrance of a totally normal, definitely not anomalous IKEA. ‘Time to get that table’ you think to yourself, feeling all of the shame fall off your shoulders as you start following signs on the ceilings, particularly one that reads “Living Room”. Just walk in, get a table, and leave. Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, that’s exactly what you thought as you walk your foolish self into the most convolutedly set-up trap you’ll have ever been fooled by in your entire life. You only hear the screams of someone at the entrance when it’s too late, a “Hey kid stop! Wait!” immediately blips out of existence as you walk around a corner, trying to find some coffee tables. Instinctually, you rush back to where you came from, only to find miles and miles of the IKEA you remember just entering less than a minute ago. To make things worse, the whole place appears to be completely deserted, with layers upon layers of dust piling on top of the lamps, chairs, and sofas surrounding you. This cheap, never-ending music plays from a number of speakers across the store, echoing out far beyond where you can see.

Looks like this won’t be as easy as you had first thought. Doom fills your mind as you start walking around this seemingly infinite space, seeing the same setup of a couch with a loveseat on a plaid rug a hundred times over. They all appear to have a set of four little creases in the carpets, where a certain type of table would have been placed, perhaps one that could be quite skilled at holding a cup of coffee?

You’re furious, how can all of these tables just not be here? Did someone already show up and steal each one! Then you see it, a table that was ignored by the thief, you finally found one! Not even giving a second to think about why it was the only one left, you try to grab the little table, a very handsome mahogany hiding its dark secret. As soon as you try to move the item, it falls to pieces, losing all of its legs and even splitting in half.

‘I give up.’ you think to yourself. ‘Now I need to find a way out of this hell hole.’

That’s when you notice it, a strange humanoid creature stumbling about through the shelves. The clothes it’s wearing seem to hint towards this person(?) being one of the workers. They’re the first person you’ve seen here all day, so you rush over to them and try to communicate with them. You start in a polite tone, trying to call their attention over to you, as they were facing the opposite direction from you. When this doesn’t work, you raise your voice a little, but still keep that polite tone. The worker starts walking away, so you start calling out to them and tug on their shirt.

Finally you rush to enter their line of sight, only to find out that this person, no, thing has no eyes. As a matter of fact, it lacks any sort of face, and only now you realize the strange anatomy of its body, with arms that nearly touch the floor and legs that only help the arms reach those freshly polished tiles (they seem to be the only clean thing here for miles). You stumble away in horror and hide behind a large shelf, which seems to be almost as tall as the ceiling. It looks harmless though, maybe even hapless, so you decide to turn away from the monster for now, yet another big mistake on your part.

After a few hours pass, and you’ve made not even a little bit of progress towards finding the way out of this strange IKEA, something that almost makes you faint in shock happens. The lights suddenly turn off, all in a line of succession. You could still see light in the distance for miles before the last set of visible lights turned off. The music, which you had deemed maddening before this sudden shutdown, has also abandoned you. Great, this place even has a day and night cycle. Really gives this place a stranded island IKEA vibe, don’t you think?

Well, I hope you’re ready for things to get even worse, as that monster you decided to stop watching a few hours ago is back, and boy does he want your attention. A booming voice jolts you out of your trance, telling you that the store is closed and that you need to leave. ‘I’m trying to do that!’ you think as you start running away, almost as if your body was telling you that you should stay away at all costs. That voice is horrifying, sounding as if it were pre-recorded and played by a broken robot’s rusted speakers.

You keep running, but this thing is fast, and it seems like it’s catching up to you. You feel as if you’re doomed, until you see some strange structure in the distance, with the same sign that led you into this damnable place. You notice a table along your path towards the “Living Room” structure, and you swiftly jump over it, causing the entity chasing you to trip and fall. It smashes the table into pieces, ironically enough, and you get a chance to escape the foul Swedish demon’s grasp.

This strange structure in the Living Room aisle seems to be some sort of small kingdom built by someone. A group of people, honest to God people, appear over the wall of couches and bed stands and open a gate made of dining room tables to let you in. You arrived there just in time as the thing that was chasing you bangs on the “door” in rage, still shouting the only phrase it can speak.

The other people in this strange place tell you to simply leave it alone, and it’ll wobble away eventually. All of a sudden, the lights turn back on and the music turns back on. Guess it’s morning now. You climb a set of scaffolding made of different pieces of wooden furniture and peek over one of the bed stands making up the very tall wall and see the monster making its leave. You let out a sigh of relief, only now realizing how exhausted and hungry you are. This makes you wonder just how long you’d been in this place already.

The people of this little town gather up some Swedish meatballs from the food court they had made part of their settlement, with massive walls warping to include the extra area. You can’t stop thanking them, they’ve saved your life twice already. These people spoil you, and only ask that you help out around the settlement. You smile, and agree to be another member of this town.

After a while you get to know the people living here, and learn that some people have been here for years, sometimes decades. You decide to provide some history courses to the people of the Living Room, especially this one old man who has no idea that there had been a Second World War. You and your new community work to keep the food and water clean, search for supplies, build the walls, construct weapons, and even defend the city from an attack of around ten of the horrible monsters.

A new person shows up at the gate of your town one day, a man wearing an orange jumpsuit. On his chest you see an icon, one you suddenly remember seeing on the door that you completely disregarded. You let him in and ask about what the symbol on his chest is about. The man, who says he is a D-Class (whatever that means), claims he is here for testing purposes and that the symbol is for a group called the SCP Foundation. This so-called SCP Foundation is a group that contains and studies anomalies, such as an infinite IKEA as an example.

Years pass by, and you age almost a decade in this strange place. You’d become so accustomed to being in a never ending furniture store that the only food you that you can recognize is those dull tasting Swedish meatballs that keep randomly spawning in the food court. Living Room has expanded and a fair number of people have been found and the empire you’d joined when it was first growing has developed into a thriving force of humanity against the inhuman staff.

Chapter Text

Today brings another day of testing low-risk anomalies for you. Site-19 is a hectic place, but the safer SCPs contained here make the stress worth it, you believe. It’s nice to get to talk to friendly folks like SCP-527 and SCP-166, and it’s a little reassuring that this site holds things like SCP-063, completely harmless objects that aren’t looking to snap your neck, make you into a zombie, or tear you to ribbons for looking at its face. You’d even heard about an all-terrain bike that stays perfectly still near the very containment site you’re working at. These less hostile SCP items helped you let go of the internal stigma that anomalies were just killing machines and murder monsters lurking in the night.

The first SCP you ever worked with, and the two you would consider your favorite SCP under the watchful eye of the Foundation, is SCP-131. The Eye Pods are the friendliest little guys you’ve met at this site, and they’ve both been fully bonded with you. The twins follow you around wherever you go, and spend a lot of time interacting with the other SCPs you research. You’ve even submitted a proposal to have 131 act as therapeutic helpers for SCP-1991, the poor thing. There’s not many that have earned your love more than these two little teardrop creatures, with you considering them some of your closest companions.

You expected today to be yet another fine day with the SCP-131 duo, maybe an interview with the Teenage Gaea or another swimming lesson for Mr. Fish. Things were going smoothly, you had just finished your lunch, when you heard the sound of a containment breach alarm. There seems to have been a full-site breach, and all of the horrible things this site holds have broken loose and are killing everybody. You already expect chaos to ensue, as everyone in the area will start rushing towards the safe zone.

As soon as you think about it, your thoughts come true and each and every person in the cafeteria stops enjoying their lunch and starts running towards the door. You take a second to throw out your cup of coffee from SCP-294 and start walking to the evacuation zone. In the hallway, you notice your burnt red friend, but realize that its sibling is nowhere to be seen. You jog over and call at the SCP-131 instance and it rolls over enthusiastically.

You pick up the little creature and start following your fellow scientists down a number of hallways, each one flooded with flashing red lights and blaring alarms. You ask the burnt red teardrop in your arms where the other 131 instance is, even though you don’t expect to understand its answer. The only thing you gleam from SCP-131-A’s babbling is that it sounds worried about its other half and is a bit overwhelmed by the breach. You honestly can’t blame the little guy, as you also feel a little set off by this event regardless of how many times you’ve had to handle one of these things.

You feel a little bit safer with a certain someone around to keep a constant watch of your surroundings as well as someone that can keep the infamous sculpture at bay. There’s also safety in numbers, and there’s quite a few people around you heading to the same place you are. You begin talking to one of your fellow researchers about 131 to pass the time, and both of you give said anomaly the attention he wishes for.

After what felt like an hour of conversation with your coworker and coddling 131-A, this trio finally makes it to the safe zone and the doors are just about to close. You walk through the extremely thick airtight sealed doors and place the red eye pod onto the floor to let him roll around for a bit. Now that you aren’t in any danger, you remember that 131-B is somewhere out in that chaotic world and could be in great danger. You walk around the safe area to see if anyone saw the second 131 instance, all of which said either no or that they saw it somewhere in the hallways but lost sight of it before they could call it over.

After questioning every person you can and getting nothing but unsatisfactory answers, you return to the eye pod you had with you to see it sitting by the door to the evacuation area, most likely waiting for its sibling to come back to it. If it could cry it would definitely be shedding a few tears right now, as you almost are. You walk to the little guy and try to reassure it that its sibling is definitely okay and it’ll be here in a few minutes, even though you’re not entirely sure things will be okay with the situation this site is in.

You decide to sit down against the wall, just like a few of your fellow personnel. After a second of thinking to yourself, you decide to call over your little buddy, who reluctantly leaves the door to come to your side. You place the rolling critter in your lap as you sit cross-legged. Even as it seems to relax with you by its side, SCP-131 turns its eye towards the door, still waiting for 131-B.

Things start looking grim as a few minutes, or maybe hours, pass by and still no sign of that mustard yellow anomaly. As time passes, 131-A gets more and more worried as it grows progressively more worried. It’s probably even worse for the little guy than it is for you, both because the two had never been separated for more than a minute or two and the fact that it likely has no proper grasp of time. SCP-131 likely experiences periods away from one another like how a puppy feels time when away from its owner.

For a minute, you think about how this weird little anomaly is a little bit like Oscar, your childhood pet dog. In fact, seeing 131 sitting in your lap like this reminds you of how that pup had slept in your lap whenever it got too tired from running around all day. You feel a wave of nostalgia wash over you as the little guy starts whirring around, as if it wants to get out.

Only then do you notice the knocking on the door, and wonder what could be trying so politely to get inside for so long. ‘It’s probably the plague doctor’ you think, as SCP-049 has tried on many occasions to get into this safe place merely by knocking on the door for an extended time. You decide to check the security camera to see who’s outside, carrying your eye pod friend with you. Your eyes widen as you notice the person on the other side as someone who works in the Anomalous Items Wing. How the hell they survived out there for so long, you’re not sure, but regardless you open the door and let your comrade in.

Even better than that, it seems that this person was taking good care of SCP-131 while they were out in the chaos of Site-19. A teardrop-shaped weight lifts off your chest as you let both the researcher and the mustard yellow eye pod into the room. Your half of the SCP-131 duo notices its sibling as well, and seems to be even more happy than you are. It seems that 131-B is unharmed, and you wonder if it helped the scientist survive.

The reunion of the pods is even more sweet than you had hoped. The two teardrops dance around in circles, almost perfectly in sync with one another. A faint smile grows on your face as the little guys celebrate their blissful reunion. It’s enough to make any man tear up in joy, and you think you feel a teardrop creep down your cheek.

You then turn your attention to the survivor, who seems to be rather exhausted by their journey through hell. The fact that everyone in the room is swarming the poor tired researcher with all sorts of questions doesn’t seem to be helping either. Rather than answering any of the questions being asked by personnel, the survivor decides to sit down and lean against the wall as you had done before letting them in. Before this, however, the researcher hands you a pair of plastic chattering teeth and tells you to take good care of it in a groggy voice.

The eye pods both roll over to where the researcher has decided to sit down and each one lays against one of their legs, pantomiming falling asleep. After you place the anomalous item into a nearby stray box, you grab your phone out of your pocket and take a picture of this heartwarming scene, one that you plan on treasuring for years.

Chapter Text

It’s that wonderful time of the year again, that holiday season you’ve waited all year for. Of course, this time is the Christmas season and it’s always been your favorite holiday. So many things to enjoy about this festive time, the presents, the feasts, the carols. Your favorite part of this holiday, however, has to be the myths and legends around the icon of Christmas, Santa Claus. Ever since you were a child you’ve been enamored by the stories of a jolly old man who gave every good boy and girl presents. You’d read every old tale about good old Saint Nick, and knew every fun fact about the holiday season. If asked, you could probably recite any Christmas song and/or movie by heart without needing a second of preparation.

The only thing you need to complete your mental journey in the Christmas season is to see the big man himself. You’ve tried every year, and each Christmas Eve brings the same results. You just get too tired to stay up and right as you doze off Santa passes by your house. Not to say that you’re upset by the gifts Santa leaves behind, however, it’s always nice to get new toys and books. The only thing that gives you hope to try each year is the “From - Santa Claus” on each gift you received.

Every time you tell your family that you’ll find Santa Claus next year your parents chuckle under their breath and your grumpy teen brother rolls his eyes. They just don’t get it, but they’ll believe you once you finally catch the proof for his existence. You just need to stay up long enough this year to find him. Sounds easy enough, right? You hope things will go way better than they have over the past five years prior. You’re seven now, though, so you should be better at staying awake now.

As soon as you think ‘this year things are gonna be different’, things get different. You’ve been sitting by the window of your bedroom looking out at the forest, and you notice something standing in the trees. It definitely wasn’t there before you had blinked that one time. You would’ve noticed the horrible towering human figure staring at your little cabin home. Another blink, and it’s looking right at you, dead into your soul. Speaking of souls, this monster of a man has glossy eyes, neither of which indicate a living soul inside.

This thing standing outside your window looks demonic and you want to look away, but something keeps you looking at it. You feel like it’s keeping you there by willpower alone, and it looks like it wants you to keep staring. It’s trying to intimidate you, and by God you’re going to let it do so.

The look on the demon’s face is the first thing that you notice, it looks sad (or at least that it’s trying to act like it’s sad. The ends of its near-dead-looking mouth are twisted downward in a ridiculously overdone frown, its glass-like eyes almost look like they’re on the verge of shedding ice-cold tears. The overall shabby state of the thing aids in making it look rather pitiful. Fortunately, its sheer size and the lengths to which it has attempted to look the way it does turns your stomach and keeps you in your room.

Once you make it obvious to the stalking thing that you aren’t going to go outside, or perhaps because it simply got bored of you, the monster began to shulk back behind the trees until it was out of sight. Now you realize your heart is running at a race horse’s pace, that thing’s eyes still burning deep into your soul. Hopefully that should be the last time you’ll have to deal with it.

Well, that’s what you had hoped. Unfortunately for you, the monster in the woods isn’t done terrorizing you yet.

This happens a few more days, the creepy monster sits at the edge of the woods staring into your soul and then leaving to probably do the same thing to another kid. You started drawing the lanky form that spied on you, and you decided to upload the drawings to the internet. Almost everyone tried to tell you they were fake, and your arguing skills were subpar. Though it seems worthless as you turn off your computer, you’ll be very surprised to find out just how much these posts will contribute to saving your life in the most dire circumstances.

A few days later, the monster decides to make the next move. Late at night, you’re lying in your bed as the shadows of the trees bobble about on your bedroom walls. You’re about to fall asleep but an awfully large shadow creeps over to your window. As soon as the shadow makes contact with your bed, you feel yourself freeze. Unfortunately, you happened to be laying in a way that lets you see out the window, and you really wish you were facing the other direction.

The monster peers into your window, slowly darting around the room. You gather the courage and gingerly move across your little bed. Your heart races in your chest as you see the beast’s eyes working their way towards the bed. Will you make it in time, or will the demon catch a glimpse of you? Fortunately, you make it just in time as you crawl over to the corner where the stalker outside can’t see you.

The figure you saw out on the edge of the forest became so much more terrifying now that you’ve seen it up close. The thing’s form is like a corpse, pale skin and bones nearly breaking through the skin. Its nasty gangly fingers rattled against the window even now as you hid right under its nose. The thing’s face, however, was truly the worst thing you’d seen in your life. Its eyes are sunken and dead, and you were almost caught in the gaze of the nightmarish things.

As you shuffled to the area below the window, you heard the most dry and dead breathing you have ever heard. The thing’s sickening wheezes sound creepily fake, almost like it’s already spotted you and wants to play a game of cat and mouse. Your heart begins to race again as the demon, only hidden by a measly little wall, lets out a chuckle and lumbers back out into the woods. Looks like you’re safe for now, lucky you.

Now that the thing is gone, your heart races ten times faster than it’s ever gone before. You’re on the second floor of your house, and it could look right into your window. More importantly, the giant stalker has gotten uncomfortably close to your house rather than staying near the woods. It all started a week or two ago, on that day you saw the demon in the woods, and it waited until a week before Christmas to go from standing at the edge of the forest to staring into your window at night. What will it do when the day comes?

A few days go by, and each night the stalker keeps coming back to your window. You haven’t slept in days, and you haven’t felt comfortable making contact with your bed. With the monster visiting your window every night, you’ve opted to take a blanket you don’t use and hide in the closet to avoid being caught in the horrid thing’s gaze. It’s not the most comfy place to spend the night, but it’s way better than risking being seen by the corpse-stalker-demon.

Somehow, it takes you until Christmas Eve to realize this thing has some vague similarities to the infamous Krampus. You look through all of the books on the holiday season you own and find a book that details the evil half of Santa Claus, the monster that takes naughty children in the night and keeps them in his evil lair. The pictures in the book all show the Christmas demon as a big hairy beast, but otherwise the descriptions match that of your holiday stalker. If Krampus takes away naughty children, maybe doing a bunch of nice things will get the monster to leave you alone! It’s worth a shot, so you get to work.

You help out everyone in your family and send your friends some kind messages. You’re feeling so confident that this will make the Krampus stay away from you. For the first time in a week, you lay in bed, confident in your niceness, and shut your eyes. All you think about as you fade into dreamland is the awesome day you’re going to have when the morning comes.

Unfortunately, it seems that this monster isn’t interested in whether or not you have been good this year. At the very second you start falling asleep, you and the rest of your family are rudely woken up by the sound of something big walking on your rooftop. By the way it resonates particularly in your room, you feel your heart sink and your face turn pale. The beast is crawling on your roof, and it’s headed towards the chimney. Like a twisted undead Santa, you hear a massive form crawl down the chimney as it fits as well as a square peg in a circle hole. As your parents come to your room you all pause as a horrible laugh fills the house.

Before you can even think, the shadow of a monster lurks into view through your open door and a gangly arm lashes into the room. It grabs both 0f your parents and another arm rushes at you as the monster reveals itself in the glow of your nightlight. Every other time you have seen the monster through your window, there has been a pained frown on its face. This time, however, the look on its face is one of sickening pleasure. You fall into a deep sleep due to lack of sleep and terror knocking you out cold.

It isn’t long until the demon wakes you up rather rudely and you really don’t like the situation it has you in. You have been tied up in a chair, the rope squeezing your body enough to hurt. The rest of your family seems to be tied up similarly, and the demon is digging through a massive sack placed near the fireplace. A table has been placed in the center of this twisted hostage situation, and a number of strange devices have been piled on top of one another in the laziest fashion. Everyone is yelling and pleading for the demon to leave them alone, and every cry makes the monster chuckle.

The monstrous corpse of a man grabs a device with a large rusty drill, and lightly places it against your cheek. The monster looks directly into your soul, and it is the most terrifying thing you have ever seen in your life. The thing’s eyes are milky gray and the only life in them comes from the fact it gets to torture you. Its mouth is curled into a smile far bigger than a pair of lips should be capable of and drool out and spills onto the floor. Everything fades as the beast stares deep into your very being, you’re dead.

That is, until the sound of jingle bells can be heard from the fireplace and multiple hooved animals can be heard walking atop the roof. Silence fills the room once again, and muffled yelling can be heard from the front of the house. Due to the way that you have been placed, you can see outside the front window and see a black van with a weird symbol on it. “Krampus” drops his tool of torture and looks out the window, and you haven’t been more thankful to see a smile fade.

A snowy haze spills out from the fireplace and a human figure forms in the cloud. The smoke lowers to the floor and the figure looks like an extremely tall old man with a beautiful cloak of holly green and a pair of antlers upon his head. Most notably, however, is the massive broadsword held in his hand. The monster gasps in horror, and the hulking man takes a single step forward as a blast of ice smacks your captor in the face. The monster attempts to attack the cloaked stranger as the stained sword swings faster than you can see. The beast’s massive head is lobbed off and crashes against the floor causing the Christmas tree to topple over.

The man places the demon’s head on its shoulders as it lets out a demonic shriek. A number of government agents enter the room, their equipment wielding the same symbol that you saw on the van, and help the massive man carry the beast out of the house. Two of the agents stay behind and untie everyone. The same two agents look through the bag and one mumbles something about you being the first victim this year.

The massive man approaches you, and you ask if he is Santa. Upon hearing you say the name ‘Santa’, a snowy mist forms around the lumbering beast of a man. Once the mist clears, the man has transformed into a picture perfect version of the Old Kris Kringle. You get a few minutes to talk with the old man, asking as many questions as you can before the group of government agents approaches you two. One of them tells the man, whom they refer to as SCP-5925, that the demon, or SCP-4666 as they call it, is loaded onto the truck and that they need to get going. Apparently those pictures you posted on the internet tipped some group called the Foundation that 4666 was going to attack your house, and that you indirectly saved the lives of so many people.

Before they leave, however, you and your family are given something by both the agents and Santa. The jolly man in red gives you a sleigh bell that has the most lovely ringing, and he tells you to always believe. The agents on the other hand, give you all a set of pills that need to be taken before you go to sleep. The group tell you that it’s for the sake of secrecy and that a veil would be broken if you and your family spread the news about a demon that hunts for people in the woods.

Everyone else takes the amnestic pills, more than happy to forget being attacked by a winter demon, but you decide to throw yours out into the snow. Maybe you didn’t need to prove that Santa existed, all you need to do is believe. I mean, how many kids have had their lives saved by Santa Claus?

Chapter Text

You could consider yourself a prehistory buff, and everyone who knows you calls you a dinosaur nerd. Since the first day you went to the local Natural History Museum and saw that tyrannosaurus skeleton, you’ve studied ancient life through all of its amazing forms. As time has passed, you have amassed quite the collection of prehistoric memorabilia including books, artwork, and even a number of fossils. Some might call it an obsession but you see it as the potential for a fulfilling lifelong career.

Today will be the first day that you finally put your passion to work, but not exactly in the way that you had originally planned. A decade of studies brought you to a place of great confidence and you were ready to start living your dream. You’d expected to be working with a museum, a university, or maybe even a government-run organization. While the option you took is close to your third guess, it’s still somehow even more strange than that.

Apparently, the work you had done was good enough to catch the attention of a secretive organization that studies things far more strange than dinosaurs. The SCP Foundation contacted you via a classified email and you accepted the job. The next day, a man in a suit gave you a package with a set of very nice looking uniforms and some documents on your new job. The documents reveal you accepted a job where you’ll be investigating entities and phenomena that go against the laws of the universe, specifically around prehistoric life. It isn’t exactly what you were thinking about, but the pay is pretty great.

Now, a month after you accepted your fancy new job, you’re ready to live your dreams and work with honest to god paleontologists. You need to get through a bunch of gates, which you expected with how secretive this Foundation seems, and reach a big office building. You wander through the building for a minute or two before you ask someone where you can find your boss. After a quick chat with one of your new colleagues, you speed-walk all the way to your superior’s office. You sit in a waiting room as a queue of men and women in lab coats to give each individual an anomaly to study.

You watch a few people go into the room and leave with a folder before you enter and sit at the other end of your boss’ desk. You ask and answer a couple of questions before you are given a folder with the SCP emblem on the front. Your boss wishes you luck and you head out. A brief glance at the contents reveals that the anomaly has something to do with various Permian organisms.

Something far more important about the job than the general topic is the location of the site you will be working at. Apparently you will need to move to an isolated area of China where a site and living quarters will house you and your brand new peers. Your boss calls out and tells you to come back to his office. The older man tells you this new job of yours must remain absolutely secret, and that you cannot tell anyone about your real job. You figured with the really secretive hiring process, and you swear you’ll keep the operation secret.

You share the news and hand out some white lies to the family, take a couple planes to China, and some scientists take you to the site in an unmarked van. The main zone that you will be living in looks like an office building with some apartments attached, but the main area of research looks more like something out of science fiction. The massive dome is a dull gray, which seems to be the Foundation’s favorite color, with the only exception being the emblem painted on the side.

During the flight you read about your new job and the anomaly you will be researching here. The item you received has been nicknamed the Permian Ark, and seems to be a weird structure that is being kept in this strange dome. The ark is an oval object that changes the air pressure around it to better suit the living things that it produces. Scientists like you have been studying the SCP for a while now, and many believe that the air produced by the ark is similar to the air during the Permian Period.

While the air composition is exciting, there are way more pressing matters than some weird air coming from an anomalous machine. Once the machine has changed the air pressure of the area around it to properly fit particularly ancient life, the anomaly will begin producing living things from the time period. You couldn’t be more excited to find out this facility holds real living individuals from species that went extinct before the dinosaurs. After years of collecting fossils, you get to see prehistoric animals in the flesh. Your younger self would probably faint if they knew they’d see a real life lystrosaurus, and you may be feeling a light fainting spell right now.

One of the head researchers approaches you and offers to give you a tour of the facility. Apparently this place is complex enough to permit giving tours to new researchers and you have been lucky enough to show up when one of the head researchers happened to be on her lunch break. The older woman tells you that she has heard of your work and thinks that you will enjoy your position as a junior researcher working with SCP-1266.

The head researcher brings you through some really advanced looking labs, a cafeteria, and a ton of winding hallways. Before she decides to bring you to the main attraction, the researcher brings you to a separate wing of the site that holds lesser anomalies along with some items that have been taken from the Permian Ark while it has been in Foundation custody.

All of the anomalous items have a prehistoric theme and they come from across the world. A few that you notice include a collection of taxidermy dinosaur heads, a bunch of animated trilobite fossils in a fish tank, and a snow globe that repeats the extinction of the dinosaurs. One item in particular, a deer crossing sign locked in a separate chamber, surprises you for a moment as you see a Megaloceros pass by the door. The researcher notices your shock and tells you that it is merely a hallucination.

Though the lesser anomalies have been riveting, you can’t stop thinking about the main attraction waiting right at the center of this site. As the tour comes to a close, you are handed a hazmat suit and given a quick briefing on the nature of the anomaly. Luckily, it seems that none of the organisms produced by 1266 are particularly hostile or dangerous and the only rules you need to follow while in the chamber are to keep your hazmat suit on and don’t harm the fauna within SCP-1266.

You get in the hazmat suit as quickly and safely as you can and prepare yourself to enter the chamber. Before you get to meet the anomalous creatures on the other side of the dome, however, you will need to be disinfected. It’s to make sure neither you or the animals produced by the ark are introduced to microbes your body has never interacted with before.

After a few seconds of waiting you walk down what can be described as a car wash for hazmat suits and the door finally opens. It’s even greater than you had imagined.

The inside of the dome looks exactly like how you expected it. The landscape looks ancient with all sorts of alien plants dotting the landscape and even weirder animals wandering about. Herds of lystrosaurus bumble about and munch on the flora, and it almost looks like reptilian cattle going on a great migration. You notice a few small bug-like creatures perching on a nearby plant, scattering as you walk towards them. It’s all very magical.

The most important thing you notice however is the massive structure placed in the center of the dome. An oval made of some kind of metal floats above the earth with various plants growing underneath it. The structure doesn’t seem to pose any threat to flora or fauna, as the plants thrive around it and you see some of the lystrosaurus grazing nearby.

After a few minutes of simply staring in awe, you finally decide to start walking towards the structure. As you start walking you notice some small streams of water and a few labyrinthodonts laying about in the cool air. The bored creatures look like slimy alligators, so you’re lucky they seem to be enjoying the lovely weather. Speaking of the weather, it seems the ark changed the atmosphere inside the dome to have certain weather patterns. This makes you wonder just what this thing is and why it seems to be trying so hard to make a good home for Permian organisms.

Some more walking brings you to a roaming herd of lystrosaurus who don’t pay you any mind. You guess they are used to seeing strange bipeds in hazmat suits from how long the Foundation has had this anomaly under lock and key, and walk a little closer to the crowd of beasts. The lystrosaurus look more hairy up close than they did as figures in the distance with fur running down their backs and lining their bodies in small patches. One thing in particular that you notice are the pairs of tusks each individual has.

You sit and watch the creatures chew on the nearby plants before both parties decide it’s time to move onward. On your way towards the ark you find some stocky reptiles sleeping in a small group, a gorgonopsid chewing on the remains of a lystrosaurus, and a bunch of labyrinthodonts swimming in a small lake. All of the creatures you encounter either don’t acknowledge you or respond in an uninterested manner which you guess is far better than something growing hostile and attacking.

You make it to the cylinder without any trouble and find that it is far bigger than what you thought you saw at the entrance. It looks like it was ripped straight out of a sci fi film, and the ancient scenery only helps this look. When you think that the Permian Ark couldn’t possibly get any weirder, it does just that. A small bulb lowers to the ground and gently lands in the mud below. The bulb opens and a pair of extinct insects fly out into the world around them.

You wonder what or who could have made this structure and why Permian life was chosen for such a strange machine. Of course, the Great Dying immediately comes to mind and the idea of an ark saving Earth’s life brings a big smile on your face. The whole idea is so wonderful to you, and you couldn’t be more excited to begin your job studying this strange protector from the Permian.

Chapter Text

Sometimes all someone needs is some comfort, and you are probably the best person to go to when you need some kindness. You’ve been told that you give the best hugs and that your voice makes butter seem like sandpaper. Whenever someone needs a little TLC in their lives, they tend to go to you and end up feeling truly loved and understood. So many people you’ve met in your life have recommended you become a therapist because you are so capable of helping others, and you have considered this every now and then.

In fact, some might say that you are anomalously comforting, like the SCP Foundation for example.

Apparently you are an anomalous item that needs to be contained by the Foundation to prevent the breaking of some weird veil. It’s all very strange, but you figure that you can’t particularly do much when it comes to a secret government organization. With some useful anomalous properties and some very good behavior, you have been moved from a dinky little cell to a spot with the therapists of the site you have been contained at. You’ve had it pretty good and there isn’t much to complain about.

In a few days, however, your life will make another big change and things are going to get very interesting. You’ve never had a cross test with another anomaly, especially one that has been deemed anomalous enough to be deemed an SCP rather than an anomalous item.

Before you begin your new job, however, you will need to be transferred to a new site where the anomaly is being kept and you will be given some briefing on the very strange anomaly being kept at that site. The first thing you asked is if this anomaly is dangerous, as you’ve heard rumors of what the Foundation keeps locked up in their sites. The site director tells you that the anomaly you’ll be working with is likely one of the most harmless things in the Foundation’s database and that you are a perfect anomaly for cross testing with it.

So, after some heartfelt goodbyes with the wonderful coworkers who have been lucky enough to experience your friendly nature you go with some Foundation scientists in a very nice car. Anomalies are usually brought from place to place in a van so it looks like you are a VIP of the anomalous world. It takes a few hours to get to the new site and you already have a nice spot in the site dormitories.

It’s late when you get to the new site so you get to go to bed. The morning after you are brought to the head researcher’s office and they give you a briefing on the anomaly you will be working with. You will be placed in a cross test with SCP-1364, a strange animal called the “Ultra-Vulnerable Mammal”. The SCP is a mammalian creature that looks very similar to an anteater that is extremely sensitive to every kind of stimulus. You were chosen to work with 1364 because of your anomalous properties, you should be able to help the poor thing.

You are brought to a chamber in the safe SCP wing and you are told to enter the chamber while the researchers watch from a separate room through a one-way mirror. The chamber is a dark padded cell connected to another through a small opening. You wonder where the anomaly is until a small furry critter shuffles on the softened floor into the room.

1364 is immediately scared by your presence, but then you start talking to it. Your anomalous effect kicks in almost instantly and the little anteater’s form seems to relax. Looks like it works! You continue talking to the animal as you sit on the floor cross-legged as SCP-1364 starts shuffling along over to you. It takes a couple minutes, but the anomaly reaches you, prompting you to reach out your arm and allow it to sniff your hand.

Like a poor abused puppy, it shrinks back into itself as it reaches your outstretched hand. Then it touches your hand and it seems to realize that it didn’t feel any kind of pain from making contact with you. It moves closer and you place your hand on its long snout, and the creature fully understands that touching you doesn’t make it feel any pain. 1364 seems to be in heaven right now as it shuffles over to lay down parallel to the shape of your crossed legs.

You begin to pet the animal’s back and it leans into your hand, it’s in bliss.

After a few minutes, you need to go to talk with the researchers about how successful this test has been. 1364 looks heartbroken by you leaving, but you reassure it that you’ll be back. When you leave the containment chamber you are met with cheering scientists. This has been the first big development in years, and the whole team is going ecstatic. Looks like you’ll be working with the ultra-vulnerable mammal, and you couldn’t be happier.

Over time you slowly help SCP-1364 by meeting with it every day for a few hours, your voice has helped the animal get used to things like a dim light and a comfy bed. Some really important developments over a few months include feeding it some applesauce and washing it with some soap and warm water. Each meeting with the anomaly seems to make it better as your anomalous properties seem to neutralize its self-destructive properties.

Another major test has included the effect that recordings of your voice can have on the ultra vulnerable mammal. You recorded a bunch of fake announcements to use in SCP-1364’s chamber along with its calming nature sounds, and they seem to have a similar effect on 1364’s health to when you directly talk to it. With you as a support system, the containment procedures have been given some major changes. Now its chamber is more like a zoo exhibit rather than a depressing padded cell.

When people recommended the psychology field to you, you never expected to be working with an extremely sensitive animal. Now that you work with 1364 as a source of anomalous emotional support you think about how animals have behaved around you. Every single pet that you have ever come in contact with has been elated to see you, as if they had known you for years. Wild animals and animals at the zoo have always been drawn to you. You never realized it, but your anomalous properties seem to work particularly well with animals.

You were practically born to work with animals, you suppose.

Thanks to you and your anomalously calming presence, 1364’s quality of life has gone up significantly. The research team can’t thank you enough for helping 1364 live a life without pain and suffering. Looks like you get to put your friendliness to very good use after all.

Chapter Text

As an agent working for the SCP Foundation, things have gotten really weird when the veil broke and the average man discovered the world of the anomalous. The sudden and terrifying disappearance of North Korea couldn’t be covered up by the Foundation, and now the SCP Foundation is no longer as secretive as it once was. You’ve spent years hidden in plain sight in search of stray anomalies, but now you have been reassigned to be a public figure teaching folks about the reality of the anomalous. It’s a very weird change, but something that you’ll get used to with time.

Even in such turbulent times, however, you will always have video games by your side. Since you were a kid you’ve loved playing video games and have fallen in love with the many genres that come from gaming. As someone who highly appreciates the medium, you’ve made so many friends through sharing your love of different games. You’ve found so many people who enjoy video games as much as you do everywhere you go, even during your time working for the Foundation.

You still remember your first gaming convention, it was truly magical. So many people with the same passions as you all together in one place to celebrate your favorite type of entertainment. It was at this convention that you discovered both your love for RPGs and the art of cosplay. You had such a great time at your first convention that you have decided to go to the same convention every year it happens.

This year is no different and you couldn’t be more excited to see what games are on display and what amazing cosplays people decide to wear. Once you get there, however, things get a little surreal.

With the breaking of the veil, it seems that people have become obsessed with the anomalies in Foundation custody. A very large portion of the database has been made public, and the public has chosen some favorites. You just got to the convention center and so far you have seen more costumes of a certain sculpture, plague doctor, shy guy, and old man. You have also seen a couple people dressed as a few more famous doctors of the Foundation, such as the elusive Dr. Clef or the cartoonish Dr. Bright.

Even more odd is the game that has been in development centered around the SCP Foundation as it has become a public entity. The game, named “SCP Containment Breach”, is a survival horror experience following a D-Class who is trying to escape Site-19 during a full site containment breach. You decide to visit the stand where the game is being displayed and you even get to play an early version. It’s quite the experience seeing a bunch of awful monsters that actually exist being used in a video game.

Things start to get interesting when you notice a particularly interesting cosplay amongst the crowd. A girl has made what looks like a totally unique character as a girl with a box tv for a head. The television is particularly interesting because it has a very wide range of neat expressions, each one of them in a pixelated style. You observe the cosplayer for quite some time, then the girl takes off the tv head and the realization hits you like a truck.

It’s her, Ms. Mad About Video Games from the infamous Misters Against Weed. You never got to interact with any of the anomalies made by Gamers Against Weed, but you have always thought of them as a funny bunch. It’s far better than bumping into something made by the Sarkic Cults or the Fifthists, you assume.

Regardless, you are somehow at the same gaming convention as one of the Misters Against Weed, and you couldn’t feel luckier. That is, until you realize you’ve been spaced out for the past few minutes and you bump into someone. You start paying attention too late as you fall to the floor and you hear a flurry of apologies from the person you bumped into. You look up and it is SCP-3090, a worried expression on her screen face. You apologize as well as the girl nervously grabs at the hems of her oversized pink sweater with the triforce on it.

You introduce yourself to a very awkward 3090, and she introduces herself as Ms. Mad About Video Games. She notices the patch on your shirt and asks what your cosplay is, which prompts you to tell her that you actually work for the SCP Foundation and just so happen to be a fan of video games. The conversation goes quiet for a few minutes, it seems she is very shy.

After a few minutes of basic ice breakers, you decide to ask what kind of games she likes. She admits that she really likes platformers and RPGs, but her favorite genres are first-person shooters and fighting games. For some reason, you aren’t shocked at all that a Gamers Against Weed anomaly really loves first person shooters. You tell the Mister that you think FPS games are incredibly fun, though you think role playing games are the best genre of game.

This seems to make her feel more comfortable as the conversation moves on from asking about the weather to asking about each other’s favorite games. You realize how much 3090 loves video games and you ask if she would like to accompany you for the rest of the time at the convention. She accepts and you walk around with her to check out the games on display here.

Now that SCP-3090 is much more confident while talking to you, you think that talking with her is genuinely pleasant. You and her have a lot more in common than you had initially assumed, as you both enjoy similar types of games and both have a passion for role playing games. You even exchange phone numbers and become friends on discord. As you and 3090 walk through the shops, you find a stand selling a bunch of plushies. There you buy a umbreon plush and 3090 is lucky enough to find a shiny sylveon plush.

At around three in the afternoon, you and 3090 decide to grab some lunch. You suggest a nearby fast food restaurant and she accepts. Somehow it doesn’t come to you until she places the food to her face and it turns into a mass of pixels. You decide to not ask, you’ve definitely seen weirder as someone who has known about anomalies long before anyone else here has. You just think its very interesting and remember just how amazing anomalies can be.

The last thing you do with SCP-3090 is visit the display for Containment Breach and play the multiplayer version of the game, which has been named “SCP Secret Laboratory” and you have a blast playing with your new friend. As the convention comes to an end, the Mister Against Weed thanks you for making today even better than she had expected it to be. You thank her as well and suggest that you should meet each other at a convention next year. Upon hearing this, the icon on her screen face seems to glow with joy. She immediately accepts your request and

Even as you get home you still stay in contact with 3090, and can’t wait to meet her at another convention next year. As you become closer friends with Ms. Mad About Video Games, you completely forget the fact that she is an anomalous humanoid. You didn’t think that the convention experience could get any better, but now you have a close friend to treasure the moments of a convention with. That really is the magic of gaming conventions, isn’t it.

Chapter Text

Crime doesn’t pay, you had to learn this the hard way. You aren’t a particularly rotten criminal, but grand theft auto is unfortunately very much illegal. You aren’t particularly sure how things got as bad as they did as fast as they did, but a number of stressors came together into one maddening moment where you convinced yourself to steal a car in a moment of blind madness. The resulting chase lasted over an hour, and didn’t help with shortening your sentence.

Now you sit in your cell and really want to leave. Whatever just happened definitely wasn’t worth sitting in a dirty old cell in a dirty old prison with guards that yell at people every five minutes. In fact, you guess that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, I mean the food they had in the cafeteria was the worst meal you’ve ever eaten in your life. You just want to leave, this place sucks.

As soon as you say this, the finger on the monkey’s paw curls and some men in strange vans show up at the prison searching for some inmates for their secret organization. They start walking down the hallway while they talk with the warden, inspecting each of your cellmates like kittens in a shelter. When they reach you, the man in the fancy suit looks at you like he sees some kind of potential in you. You feel doom sink in your gut, they’re probably gonna stick a probe in your bowels and inject poison into your bloodstream.

It starts to sink in that you’re going to be treated like an alien abduction victim for stealing a car. It wasn’t even that nice of a car from what you remember. It had a really nasty shade of vomit green and the steering handled like you were driving in an earthquake.

Anyway, the warden returns to your cell and tells you that the strange men in suits have chosen you along with a couple of your cellmates to participate in some weird government program. You ask who else was chosen, and the warden yells at you to shut up. You sit in the lousy little bed for a minute before the men in suits come and tell you to follow them. The strange men briefly explain to you that you will be involved in something that no normal man knows about before they hand you a jumpsuit with a label reading “D-8268”. This is gonna be the start of something truly weird.

The men in suits have you sit in a bus they brought along with their FBI-esque vans and you find that they have been to every prison in the nearest area. Prisoners from multiple different prisons are discussing random things amongst themselves as you go to take a seat where nobody else has decided to sit. You look out into the night sky and notice something off as the moon looks like a blinking eye. You quickly wipe your eyes and the moon is back to normal, so you assume that you are still going insane.

The bus ride is long and extremely boring. As you look out the window, you can’t help but keep your eyes on the moon. Even as you assume you’ve cracked, you still try to make sure something wasn’t actually going on with the moon. You decided to sit at the back of the bus, which means you get to deal with the craziest bumps. It’s the only thing that keeps all of these new stressors off your mind as you are tossed into the air like a ragdoll.

When the bus stops driving, you notice that you’ve all been driven out into the middle of nowhere to a weird sci-fi facility. Everybody starts walking off the bus and you are all sent into a part of the facility for keeping prisoners, or “D-Class Personnel” as they like to call you guys. You move from the ugly little jail cell to an equally ugly little cell in a weird government facility. Looks like you’re moving up in the world.

That night, you have a really strange dream about the moon. You are sitting in your nasty little jail cell and you hear a pair of guards talking about some kind of monthly termination. You wonder what the hell a monthly termination is and why something like that would exist in the first place. Before you get the chance to think about it further, your cell opens and two guards, presumably the ones that you heard talking about monthly termination, and they tell you to follow them.

You, along with a bunch of other faceless D-Class, are brought outside and led into the middle of nowhere. Once the facility is far out of sight and there is nothing but sand and cacti around, the guards force you to stand together in a straight line. You end up at the end of the line and the guards begin shooting each D-Class with their sidearms. You feel stuck there and then you hear a loud cackling in the sky. You look up and notice something chilling, the moon has been replaced with a monstrous mouth. The moon laughs like a wild demon as each D-Class is executed and its laughter gets even louder when you are the only one left.

Right before the guard pulls the trigger, you wake up and fall off your bed. The rest of the night you stay awake and keep thinking about the dream you just had. In the morning you are briefed on your new job as a D-Class and the responsibilities that come with the position. You’ll be working with strange anomalies, many of which are extremely dangerous. If you can stick around for about a month and deal with the hellish conditions, you will be let out with no parole. You consider your options and decide to accept the offer.

A month goes by in a flash and things have been relatively uneventful. Unlike the other D-Class personnel that joined the same time as you, you have been used in tests on extremely mundane anomalies. You feel rather lucky that you’ve been working with cars that bounce in place of driving and a beer bottle that makes your hair green for a day while your peers have died to reality benders and basic horror movie monsters. Just a few days left and you get to leave, and you can live a normal life.

Or, at least, you would be if your dream hadn’t come back to bite you in the butt. You are sitting in your cell with a plastic cup of lukewarm water as you hear a pair of guards talking about something that causes you to drop your cup and water splashes all over the cell floor. One guard talks about how it’s time for monthly termination, and you immediately have awful flashbacks of your nightmare. It’s happening all over again, unless the guards decide to just walk right by your cell this ti- and suddenly your cell opens up to reveal the same two guards from your dream.

A group of D-Class, this time with worried faces, are herded outside and you are sent on a march out into the middle of the desert. If it weren’t for the abject horror, you would have realized this place is the exact same as the area you were brought to in your dream. Suddenly things start going off script as the D-Class are placed in a queue line rather than standing side by side and the guards form a circle around the first D-Class of the line.

They all do something with their helmets and then they all turn away from the line of extremely confused D-Class. Things start to get really weird as the D-Class standing in the center of the guards begins to float and they kick their legs out. Despite the D-Class’ screams of terror and pleas to let them down, the guards don’t pay attention and things only get worse.

Right when things don’t seem like they could get any worse, the floating D-Class is shot into the stratosphere by some strange unknown force. As soon as this happens, the rest of the D-Class scream in terror while you stand perfectly still, frozen solid by shock. Things only get worse for you as the rest of the queue is brought into the circle and sent off into space.

Everything starts to pile onto you and you feel your sanity drain from your body as more people continue to be sent into the circle of guards. Stress piles up on top of itself as you begin to black out. Blind madness takes over just as it did a month ago and you scream at the top of your lungs and charge at the guards. You’ve spent your month here and you’ll be damned if you aren’t gonna get to live your normal life again.

The last thing you see is a view of the moon blinking at you.

Chapter Text

Being a junior researcher working for the SCP Foundation has been quite the interesting experience. For the first couple months you have been in complete disbelief of the weird and wonderful things you have interacted with, and even now you still don’t fully believe that the things you interact with are actually real. You have spent most of your time working with lesser anomalies and more mundane safe-level SCP objects. Anomalous items are far less interesting than the SCP items, but they end up being far less stressful and need way less care than an average SCP does.

You still remember the first anomaly you worked with, a piggy bank that spits out any coins placed in its slot. You looked at the bank for a couple minutes and then placed a quarter in it. You were shocked beyond belief when the coin was flung out and landed on the floor. Everyone else in the room was far more used to anomalies than you and you felt a blush rise from your cheeks as your peers tried to hold in their laughter.

Today, however, you have just ended your research project with a fully fledged SCP object and you celebrate the end of the research with your colleagues. This is the first major project you have participated in and you couldn’t feel more proud of yourself. You’ve found that experience has shaped how you view the world, particularly the anomalous aspects of this world. It wasn’t long before you knew absolutely nothing about anomalies and feel so happy with where your life has gone.

The next day, you receive your next job and it’s quite the step up from a safe level SCP. This time, you will be working with an SCP of the highest kaliber, a Keter-class monster. You have only worked with safer anomalies, this is gonna be a far greater challenge than you have faced in your short career. You receive the file for the anomaly and the codename doesn’t make things much better. Why would they call this thing “Yet Another Murder Monster”, that doesn’t exactly make it sound like the friendliest creature.

You’ve heard rumors of what the SCP Foundation has been holding in the darkest corners of their sites. The Foundation has locked up cold blooded heartless killers and average people are forced to research them. Just how bad could things get for you, will you get eaten by some mindless beast, or ripped in half by a vicious demon, or turned inside out by some eldritch being far beyond your understanding, or something so bad you would never be able to understand just how bad it could get?

The few days before you begin your new job you lose a lot of sleep and drink a lot more coffee to not immediately fall asleep while working with a horrible monster. You take a quick look through the file the day before your research begins and the content is very lackluster to be frank. SCP-5031 is a weird monster that turns invisible and it loves the taste of flesh apparently. As you look through the brief description of the monster you wonder just how many SCP objects can be described as a mindless being that loves to kill things.

This causes you to think about why things like this exist. Why are there so many monsters that merely exist to hunt and slaughter innocent human beings? You shudder at the idea of encountering a flesh-eating demon in a situation where you don’t have the walls of a containment chamber to keep you safe. With the reminder that you’ll be protected by a containment chamber, you get some sleep for the first time in a few days.

As the morning comes you get ready for your new job and try to avoid worrying about all of the worst possible scenarios that invade your mind. I mean, Keter just means that it’s really hard to contain, right? Then again, it is called a murder monster, but that may be ironic. Best to just assume that it is actually a monster that will kill you, so you just assume as such.

You get to the site and start looking around the Keter Wing for SCP-5031’s chamber. Walking down the hall you check the icons near each door and you aren’t particularly liking the images each anomaly has. One has a reality bender that looks like a serial killer, another looks like a massive eye staring directly into your soul, and another seems to be containing a portal to hell. Really helps you feel confident about your new job. This thing is gonna cut your head off on your first day, you can just feel it.

While you wander through the site and worry about your new job, an older man approaches you and asks who you are. Upon introducing yourself as the new junior researcher working with 5031, he smiles and welcomes you to the team. This man, named Stanley Huxtable, is the current head of SCP-5031’s research team and he thinks that working with this anomaly will be such a worthwhile experience for you. ‘If I don’t die on the first day that is’ you internally complain as you smile and shake Dr. Huxtable’s hand.

Dr. Huxtable brings you to the containment chamber for the murder monster and he tells you that he knows what you’re thinking. He assumes that you are worried about working with this SCP because of the containment class, I mean it’s pretty safe to guess that Keter means dangerous right? Luckily you wouldn’t have been the first to make that assumption about anomalies, but Dr. Huxtable wants to see things in a different light. The first people to work with 5031 made that guess as well, and they decided to lock it up and never interact with it.

This may seem like the right direction for working with an anomaly like SCP-5031, but Huxtable doesn’t quite think so. He hands you a file for 5031, this time it has way more content and most of it is written by Dr. Huxtable. You look through it and read about what SCP-5031 has been through before you were hired.

It seems that keeping a monster in a box for all those years did no good for the creature’s health as it has been constantly screaming and is under constant stress. When you ask Dr. Huxtable about it, he confirms and notes that he may be a bit hard of hearing now because of how loud 5031 used to scream. For the first time since you learned about its existence, you begin to feel a little sympathy for SCP-5031. Maybe you shouldn’t be worrying about this new job, it might be a good thing.

A D-Class enters the room and introduces himself to you as the D-Class that directly interacts with SCP-5031. You talk with the man about the anomaly and he describes it as the friendliest thing he has ever spent time with. Looking further into the document reveals that it loves soft music and cooked food. In fact, it seems to be quite the culinary master. It loves to cook and has learned to play instruments. 5031 has gone from a monster locked up in a box to a fully fleshed out individual with interests and hobbies.

Huxtable’s writing has made you feel far more safe interacting with the anomaly, and you realize that the codename really was ironic. When you ask Dr. Huxtable about the codename and why he gave it to such a friendly creature, he explains that so many SCP objects can be described as dull mindless killing machines. Giving 5031 the name “Yet Another Murder Monster” was his way of commenting on this strange phenomena and the horrid ways that these so-called murder monsters are treated.

Who knows just how many anomalies locked up are just like SCP-5031. How many SCPs could be far more than their document claims, how many are just scared and confused? You start to think about these things, you’d never considered any of it. It definitely puts everything into an interesting new perspective.

Though reading the document has been very interesting, it’s about time you go and see this monster for yourself. Huxtable brings you over to an observation area where you can view the whole chamber through a one-way mirror. The description of the monster is as accurate as it could get. It hovers around with its body flowing like a slithering snake, it’s body turned upward like an angry cobra. Of course, it looks nowhere near as horrible as the file tries to make it look.

Though the original SCP document made you imagine a demon wandering a chamber like a caged tiger, 5031 seems rather content with being contained. In fact, it seems to be cooking right now as it listens to the works of Ben Folds. It wanders around the kitchen grabbing different foods and spices and begins preparing the meal. In fact, it looks like it really knows what it’s doing and Huxtable has such a proud look on his face. He was the head of research when all of this happened, he saw 5031 learn about cooking, language, and music.

5031’s greatest achievement was the amazing event where it prepared food for everyone at the site it is contained at. It cooked a three-course-meal and performed an original piano composition. Most amazing is that it is far more capable of playing piano because it has triple the amount of arms a person has. 5031 decides to show off another amazing skill it has learned on its own as it walks to the door and knocks. You’d never expected 5031 to speak, but it asks for more garlic powder in the most polite voice you have ever heard.

As if they knew 5031 would need more garlic powder today, the D-Class opens the slot on the door and places the container in its invisible hand. It thanks the D-Class and gets back to work.

Some time passes and you get to taste SCP-5031’s cooking. It has prepared some kind of chicken dish and you can already smell the garlic, it seems to really like garlic. The dish is exquisite, probably the best chicken you’ve eaten. It doesn’t take long to finish your dinner and your mood couldn’t be more different than it was this morning. The murder monster is a master chef, and it’s far more than just a mindless beast. You’re really going to love working with SCP-5031.

Chapter Text

You’ve been a field agent working for the SCP Foundation for a few years now and you’ve only dealt with the least paranormal anomalies anyone has ever come in contact with. You still remember how uneventful your first mission was, you had to retrieve a pair of knitting needles that give the wielder a particular amount of skill in a very specific type of knitting. You’ve also had to deal with a strange purple tortoise, a pencil that writes in random colors as it writes, and an indestructible clock.

You never really hated this gig, you were glad that you haven’t had to deal with the hell that the average MTF agent faces on a daily basis. On the other hand you do wish that you could see just how strange the supernatural world can be, even if it ends up killing you or worse. You’ve heard stories from friends who deal with far more dangerous anomalies and the closest you can get is that one time you got to fetch a little blue penguin that randomly appeared in a 7 Eleven.

Little did you expect your new mission is gonna blow the penguin story out of the water. Foundation web crawlers found videos uploaded online about a really strange bus that has been driving kids home from school while taking them through portals to a strange other world. You don’t know what this world is like but you don’t particularly worry about that because you assume the anomaly will be totally harmless.

You walk around a little town in Oklahoma trying to find a weird school bus cruising down the street then hold back a little laugh about that one show you watched as a kid. A few minutes later, you decide to ask an old man about any weird buses in the area. He tells you to go to the local school if you want to see the weird bus that showed up a few months ago. You thank him then head toward the school the friendly old man pointed to.

You sit at the bus stop for a few minutes, looking up from your phone every so often to make sure nothing sneaks past you. The sounds of nature surround you as you wait and the sky is spotted with clouds. Suddenly you feel a cold breeze against your face as the world goes silent and you hear the sound of a bus driving towards you. You take a moment to put your phone away then look up at a very weird bus.

The bus sits on the curb seemingly waiting for you to get on. It may take a minute, unfortunately, as you’re simply amazed by the composition of the vehicle before you. The mass of metal looks like someone hastily put together a bus with whatever they could find yet it still stands perfectly still. A honk from the horn gets you out of your confused haze and you finally get on the bus.

Even before you get on the bus you notice a few more paranormal traits of this strange bus. Now that you’re closer to the thing, you notice how the many parts of the bus look like a mess of patchwork. On a weirder note the driver’s seat is empty, but it’s an anomaly so you aren’t awfully shocked. You walk down the aisle and notice that the inside looks just as hobbled together as the outside. You take one of the leather seats in the back and prepare for a wild ride.

For the first few moments the ride is totally normal, just a weird looking bus taking you down the street away from the school. You look out the window and see a totally normal town, just some small buildings passing by as the bus continues on its journey. You assume this is just another weird anomaly you’ll be working with before you confiscate it or an actually capable MTF is sent in.

In a split moment, however, SCP-3583 shows its true colors and instantly teleports into a strange new world. The wheels lightly bounce as the bus enters this new setting and it gives you a little more than a light scare. At first you look around the inside of the bus and find nothing different. You initially wave it off as something getting hit by the bus, but then you look out the windows and horror strikes your heart even worse.

The bus has taken you to a terrifying hellscape though it seems the town you had visited is still here. The town is in the middle of the apocalypse with violence and corruption filling the streets lined with wrecked, if not totally demolished, buildings. Riots surround the bus as explosions and fire dance on the horizon. Hordes of zombies shamble around the bus and a few rotten hands slap against the windows. You feel way out of your league and a sickness fills your gut. You suddenly notice that the bus is shaking way more than normal and hear distant blasts. Looking outside you see a massive volcano with smoke pouring into the sky and lava flowing down into the lifeless forest.

All of a sudden, a massive beast jumps out from the wreckage of a destroyed pet shop and looks right at the bus. The bus speeds up as you feel a panic attack set in. The apocalyptic scene zooms by while the muffled roars of a beast can still be heard from behind. You feel tears pour down your face as the bus suddenly jumps yet again. After keeping your eyes shut for a few seconds, you feel the bus stop and you open your eyes to see the town returned to normal and another person gets on the bus.

The man sits next to you and asks if you’re new to town. At first you consider telling him to get off this bus and that he has no idea how dangerous it is. He seems perfectly content, though, and you figure the Foundation can just give him some amnestics if he witnesses something truly horrid on this ride. Then as the door closes and the bus starts driving again, you remember the hellish experience you had and wanted off as soon as possible. It’s too late now and you get another round on the Hellbus.

The other man on the bus notices your incredibly visible panic and asks if you’re new around here. This question completely distracts you from the monsters and demons running rampant outside as you ask what he means. The man simply says that this weird bus has been around for a while and if you recently moved here you should probably get used to this kind of thing.

He then tells you a little story that surprises you specifically because he seems to know about the Foundation to s0me degree. He calls the SCP Foundation “men in black” and claims that they had attempted to contain the bus though it was incredibly crafty considering it’s a bus. It seems that 0nce the people around here proved that SCP-3583 is completely harmless they decided to let it stay here. You feel your heart calm itself as the man tells you that nobody has been harmed while riding the bus. With this in mind you simply look out the window and watch the chaos unfold.

The scene outside the window is horrific with a number of soldiers fighting a group of rioters while both groups are being mobbed by a group of heavily rotten zombies. While the three armies battle a massive beast that looks like a dragon mixed with a wild boar crashes through the crowd and eats a few combatants while it charges. Suddenly the monster’s front legs are blasted off by a well-hidden landmine as it gets mobbed by the walking dead.

Fire rages in the distance and all of the plants look more like burnt husks, though most things in this strange hellscape look so. You look into the sky and see fighter jets being followed by winged monsters and giant birds. Explosions of all sizes spot the landscape and deal a lot of damage to the area as well as the living things wandering the battlefield. Suddenly the volcano blasts and chunks of flaming rocks crash into the town, crushing people and smashing into buildings.

The weirdest part of this hellscape is the demons, massive beasts similar to the one that chased the bus before as well as the one that has been devoured by the undead wandering the streets. They’re all fairly large and you’re really glad that none of them can get you in this bus. A few look like normal animals, though far bigger than they should be, many look like a bunch of animals mixed into one beast. They wreak havoc on the area and even kill each other in needlessly brutal ways. The display of brutality is almost too much for you to handle, prompting you to think ‘so this is what real anomalies are like’.

Eventually, you teleport back into the normal world and notice that the bus has stopped at the hotel where the Foundation has booked a room for you. You get off the bus, thanking the thing as you assume that it’s sentient. You write down your experience in your notebook along with a few drawings of the monsters. You still feel a little shaken by the wild ride but feel a little confident. Now you have a crazy story for your friends, maybe not as crazy as an unkillable lizard or the shy guy but you’re still proud.

Chapter Text

Your brain feels groggy and your eyes are a little foggy, but you still remember the last thing you saw before you had fallen into the void. That strange night you were thrown into space to appease an eldritch being in space, and now you lay on the cold floor. Though you do feel the freezing cold of the tile floor below your form, you can’t feel anything else. You raise a hand in front of your face and realize that your body is a little less tangible than before. This causes you to leap up from the floor and you are floating.

Your ghostly body feels weightless and this scares you quite a bit. It does, however, let you realize that you didn’t survive your brief shot into space.It also makes you realize there is an afterlife and that you’ll probably haunt this building forever. It worries you a little bit but you decide to brush off this stress and start taking a look around your new eternal home.

Looking around you realize the room you’ve woken up in is a storage closet, with a few brooms and cleaning supplies littered about the little space. Bored of the little closet, you reach out to open the door before realizing you can phase through it and you find yourself in a long hallway. You quickly realize where you are as you float down the hallway and notice a very familiar icon belonging to a certain Foundation.

You figure that you’re stuck here forever now, so you might as well look around and meet some of those monsters that this place supposedly holds. You vaguely remember the anomalies you worked with and how non-anomalous they were. On the other hand, the anomalies you take a look at on this private tour of the site makes you realize how weird anomalies can really be as well as the fact that you were particularly lucky for working with far more benign objects.

Wandering the site, you enter the office of one of the doctors working at the site. The man is completely unaware of your presence and almost mindlessly types away on his terminal. You turn for the door as the clacking of keys starts to annoy you but then something dawns on you. There’s a few items on the man’s desk, and you choose to lift the stapler right next to his computer. The clerk immediately notices this and almost drops dead from panic. His squeal in horror surprises you and you drop the stapler, the man yelling at 0ne of his coworkers as you make your escape.

Over the next few days, you pull a number of harmless pranks against the staff and even a couple sentient anomalies. You love lifting random objects and spooking anyone that sees a floating broom in the hallway or a spoon hop out of the sink. Somehow it doesn’t get any less funny each time it happens. It’s just far too funny, and you’ve got a long afterlife ahead of you.

After what felt like a month or two, something new happens at this little site. A few new anomalies have been placed in containment over that time, but none of them really mean anything to you. On a more important note, it seems that the site has found an anomaly very similar to you. At first you don’t notice anything, but then you start feeling some paranormal energy around the site. It takes you a day of searching to realize that the supernatural feeling about the site is at its strongest when you’re near mobile phones, especially when they’re used for texting.

You aren’t sure why you feel so inclined to look further into these weird ghost phones, perhaps the curiosity around anomalies has rubbed off on you after spending so much time around the eggheads working at the containment facility. Regardless you decide to look further into this strange phenomena, fuelled by a desperate want for someone to talk to after such a lonely life.

The plan is simple: you grab someone’s phone if they’re affected by the anomaly, which you discover has been labeled SCP-6764, and attempt to contact whatever is causing the weird messages. It takes a while for anyone on site to encounter the strange ghost phone number, but you leap on the opportunity as soon as it arises. You grab a scientist’s phone while they’re away and start texting the ghost.

At first the strange texter says that she’s someone from “class”, whatever that might mean, and you assume it's the wrong number at first. Taking a closer look, however, you immediately feel as if someone else is in the room with you and this feeling is coming directly from the phone. You decide to ask what this strange person is talking about and she knows you from chemistry class. You haven’t been in a chemistry class in at least half a decade, so you tell the truth.

She brushes this off and tells you that you should go out on a walk in the woods. She then elaborates and says that you should let a rabid animal bite you and claims that it would be so funny if you did such. Of course, you ask why she wants you to die, and she avoids the question again. After you get nowhere with the conversation, you tell the stranger that you are already dead. This changes everything and the being on the other side of the phone asks how you died. You tell her that it’s an extremely strange story and that there’s no way she would believe you.

She does say that she believes you and introduces herself as Maddie. You introduce yourself as well and ask her if she is a ghost as well. She tells you that she doesn’t often admit that she is but she really is. You tell her that you’re currently in a really strange place, and she asks what you mean by strange. You tell her that you’re in a scientific facility and that you died nearby.

The conversation continues for a few minutes before the door creaks open and you text a goodbye message and flee as fast as you can. You watch from a corner of the room and the scientist immediately calls someone, presumably about the conversation you just had with Maddie. You can’t hear him talk so you leave, though the thought of another ghost existing out there lingers in the back of your mind. Later that night, the same scientist has fallen asleep at his desk and he left his phone on the desk. You decide this is a perfect opportunity for another chat with Maddie.

You talk with her for quite a while and you learn quite a lot about this new ghostly friend. She contacts people and very subtly tries to convince them to commit suicide. When asked why she does this, she admits that her situation as a wandering spirit was awfully lonely and that she needed some company. You tell her that you relate, and suddenly an idea pops into your head. You tell SCP-6764 that you’re going to try something and apologize if you scare her.

You reach your hand out and try to push through the screen, pushing with all your might. After a few seconds of pushing against the phone, your hand plunges through the plastic screen into the unknown. You reach around until you feel something similar to an arm. You grab this strange item before you feel something smack your hand. You reach out your hand and you feel another grab it. You slowly pull your arm out of the empty space, slowly revealing another arm connected to yours. Somehow, the form of a woman slowly slips through the little portal until a cartoonish ghost stands before you, her legs replaced by a tail-like wisp.

Both of you barely believe that it worked, and you stare at each other for a minute. You break the silence by saying “hi” and she returns the greeting. You decide to take her on a tour around the site and show her some of the craziest anomalies the site has to offer. As you spend more time with her, you definitely notice some of her quirks fr0m her texts as you take her to each containment cell.

You finish by returning to the office and she thanks you for the amazing time she had with you. She gives you a hug, her wispy tail wrapping around her legs, and says that she never wants to leave. Suddenly, the portal opens once more and she is pulled back in, but you grab her hand as she is pulled back in. At first you see nothing but a black void, but your spirit eyes adjust to the lack of light and you see your friend in the void, tears of joy in her eyes.

She thanks you once more as the two of you float in this strange void. You nod at her then look around your new permanent home, noticing small green lights in the distance. You explore this strange realm and eventually notice some trends, such as the presence of 3D models of the numbers ‘1’ and ‘0’ zooming around with pixels dispersing behind them. It takes you a minute to fully understand, but you discover that this world is a digital plane with connections to all sorts of devices.

You know it will take a while to get used to this new life, but you and Maddie will become great friends with time.

Chapter Text

The modern world has been exposed to anomalies to pretty major fanfare and very little disaster. As an agent of the Foundation, you were pleasantly surprised to find that the lifting of the veil didn’t cause the end of the world. Even in a world that accepts and understands the paranormal, your job at the Foundation is still of great importance. In fact, as your new assignment will entail, it may be even more important as the Foundation can be called in by civilians to deal with hazardous anomalies.

Today you find yourself with a team of agents in Detroit, particularly in an impoverished corner of the city. You and your team were sent in after multiple calls to the local police went unnoticed and the Foundation was contacted. Since the lifting of the veil, you’ve taken on a long list of minor jobs compared to your glory days of containing anomalies. In some strange way, you feel more like animal control than a field agent working for an organization worth more than several countries combined.

All you know is that a mother called the police for help with her daughter, and anticipatory anxiety swells in your chest as the van pulls up to the dingy old home. Donning a far more mundane SCP agent uniform, you and your teammates knock on the door, an exasperated mother swings open the door and begs you to help her baby Jemma.

Before you can ask her what’s wrong with her kid, she tugs on your arm and yells at you to hurry up, as the child is in a lot of pain. This leaves a bad taste in your mouth and pulls back some awful memories. That first mission stings the back of your mind even as you shift your focus toward the task at hand. If you’d gotten these before the GOC agents, the damned rookies…

Your daydreaming is cut short as the panicking lady reaches the bedroom and she shows your team a twisted shape in the wall. Looking closer, you see the child and hear her pained whimpers and pleas for help. The mother describes her daughter’s anomalous growth rate and how she had gotten herself stuck in the wall while she wasn’t paying attention. Looking into the hole, you see Jemma’s eye scanning the bedroom before she stares dead into your soul.

While a team member leaves to retrieve some tools from the van, you reassure both Parker and Jemma that the team will take care of this situation. The agent returns with a hefty box of tools and the team gets to opening up the wall. You look into the wall as one of your teammates maps out a good path to cut the wall and you get your first glimpse of the anomalous growth Jemma’s mother was telling you about. The eye in the wall is noticeably bigger, so you tell your team to take out a very large chunk of the wall to avoid harming the anomalous girl.

With a wide range, you hope that it’ll take a while for Jemma to reach the area being sawed at. It is a very slow and careful process, however, and you’re all worried about the many ways things could fall apart. Each time you check, the poor girl keeps growing bit by bit, and her mother’s mental state keeps getting worse.

You ask how long it has been since Jemma last ate, and you can see a number of lights go off in Parker’s head. She scrambles downstairs and returns with a bag of stale pretzels, passing one through the hole for Jemma. You hear some shuffling followed by a series of tiny snaps and muffled crunching. Parker places another pretzel through the hole in the wall every few minutes and her daughter mumbles something as she takes each dry salty snack.

By the halfway point, Jemma has grown a significant amount though she is still far from the range of your teammate’s saw. As one teammate endlessly saws away at the wall while the others keep the two civilians from panicking, though the air just keeps getting more tense with the stink of stress permeating the house.

In the end, your whole team hauls the chunk of wall out of the way, and Parker immediately jumps in to pull her daughter into a crushing hug. You see the girl, now free from the confines of the wall, and warmth fills your body. You wonder if that time being stuck in the wall had any negative effects on her body but she seems largely unharmed. It seems the wood boards and metal pipes have merely left dents in her skin which remind you of the little dents you used to make on your arm with a spiral notebook in high school. You hope those will go away in time, but she’s already an anomalous girl so you can’t be entirely sure.

For the first time in years, you feel invincible. A part of you believes that you could take on the world and emerge from the ashes without a scratch.

Now free from the wall, Jemma has been moved to Site-17 and has been designated SCP-6670. Though she’s in a much safer place, her anomalous properties have made a number of things awfully painful for her. Fortunately the Foundation has developed some very helpful technology to make life bearable for 6670. You still meet with Parker and Jemma and feel that same warmth rise in your chest. Sometimes you do wonder just how bad things could’ve gotten for Jemma, and a sickness boils in your stomach.

Chapter Text

You’ve spent the past hour or two dusting the shelves and sweeping the floors, and finally finished putting together a new display case. You take a look at the fruits of your labor and the result of a very lucky check on Ebay before you reach the door and flip the little wooden sign from closed to open, “Riverwood Historical Society” carved and painted underneath. Opening the door, you find a vacant parking lot and a lonely road. It’s awfully early, so you aren’t surprised and expect the usual crowd will show up once they get their fill of coffee and breakfast from the Silly Pancake, the diner further up the same road your museum sits on.

Speaking of breakfast, you sip a cup of sweetened coffee and chew on a messy granola bar, listening to the radio. You scan across the shelves with pins, shirts, and snowglobes just waiting to be bought. Spinning the metal shelf, you inspect the catalog of postcards dedicated to both the town, your museum, and the forest road. You grab a postcard for the Silly Pancake, the friendly diner standing proud under a smiling sun.

The radio suddenly breaks, Duke Ellington fading into indistinct white noise, and you feel some strange miasma sink over you. You sit deathly still as the white noise burns into your mind and you lean under the counter in case something or someone breaks down the door. A minute or two passes before the sound of someone knocking on the door grounds you.

You gather your courage and put a smile on your face as you open the door, only to be greeted with the same vacant street. You look out into the wall of pine trees and curse that some ratty teens thought it would be funny to prank you. That is, until you look down at the welcome mat and see a package there. You don’t remember ordering any specific items, though it seems this thing is addressed to you. It looks awfully thin, so you gently pick it up and bring it back inside. You pass the radio, now playing Billie Holiday, and head into your living room connected at the back of the museum.

Finally you lift the flaps and see a pile of comic books, which confuse you until you see the face of a certain president. You flip through the first three comics in the pile and see President Reagan placed on the cover of each, though he’s wearing a space suit pulled straight from 50s sci-fi movies. The title “The Atomic Adventures of Ronnie Ray-Gun” is as cheesy as you’d expect it to be with that art style.

You skim through the first three books and notice that each tells an over embellished version of several historical events in American history. So far, they’ve all been about the “brave Space-Marshall Ray-Gun” and the stories regarding his real world counterpart’s political career. From the little information you picked up, the three issues include the 1980 election, the attempted assassination of Reagan, and the Iran-Contra scandal. At first, you assume these comics are some bizarre propaganda or the project of an anonymous history buff, but you notice a logo for a company called “Future Funnies” and every assumption in your head gets thrown out the window.

Before you get the chance to check out the next issue in the package, you hear that soft ding that lets you know a guest has arrived. You place the pile of books in the package and go to greet the guest. A police officer stands at the entrance, eyeing the very tiny gift shop to his left before he turns to you and asks if you own this place. You instantly go into your rehearsed introduction to the museum before asking if he’s new here. The badge claims he’s from the local police department, but you were sure you knew everyone in Riverwood.

He claims he’s new around here and that he recently moved in from Montana. You figured, considering the light Canadian accent, so you move on and ask the fine gentleman before you what he’s doing at a local museum. He simply explains that he’s here to get to know the place and that prompts you to offer the man a tour.

You lead the man through the handful of rooms and list off the cases in each room. You bring particular attention to the newest display in your collection, a number of pins dedicated to JFK, LBJ, and Jimmy Carter. The agent first compliments the fine establishment you have been running, then he takes a closer look at the brand new display case. He asks where you got the pins, and you explain your very lucky find on Ebay. You take a close look at the pins, and see one of the pins changes from Lyndon B. Johnson to Barry Goldwater.

Before you get to react it switches back to LBJ and you are left with your jaw on the floor. The obvious shock on your face seems to hint something to the officer, and he asks if you have noticed any other unusual objects in your possession. At first you can’t think of anything, paranormal or not, before the mysterious package floats up past your unconscious mind.

You tell the officer to wait there while you grab something else and he replies with a thumbs up before mumbling something into his pager. You grab the package, noticing how much easier it is to pick it up, and jog back to the officer. You hand him the package for him to inspect. Despite the noticeably lighter weight you’re surprised when the officer only finds three. Upon explaining the whole scenario to the man, he nods and talks into his pager again. He apologizes in a dry tone while taking out a small spray bottle and shooting a thick gray mist into your face. You nearly topple over as the man takes the pin from the case and heads on his merry way, thanking you for the tour.

You rub your eyes for a moment and check the time. You panic for a moment, you need to get ready for the visitors! Then you look around and see the floors have been swept, the new display case is ready, and the gift shop is stocked full of tacky shirts and Silly Pancake postcards.

Chapter Text

You sit in your car in the parking lot, your face in your aching hands. You can feel the bags under your eyes and can barely see between your fingers. You really don’t want to sleep in your car, but you can barely keep your eyes open and the night sky is making your body feel even heavier as you sit in the driver’s seat. You try to pull your body from the seat and lift your arm from the wheel and neither move even an inch. You’re locked in place, leaning against the steering wheel and your face stuffed into your arms.

You peer out the windshield over your deathly still hands, seeing nothing but rain and distorted blobs of red, green, and yellow light from the bustling world outside your car. You sit in this cool quiet space and your eyelids get heavier with every second. Eventually, darkness swirls in your mind and you feel like you’re floating in your seat, eventually succumbing to the urges to sleep.

When you regain consciousness, you’re suddenly blinded by a bright white void and you cover your face with numb hands. It takes a few seconds to get accustomed to the violent white void, but you notice a blurry object on a small wooden table. As your vision clears you feel a deep wave of nostalgia pull you in. What sits before you is a tea set you got for your dear nana for Christmas as a child. The teacups look like a monkey, a toucan, and an alligator, the plates look like a tree trunk, riverbed, and a bed of leaves, and at the center is a teapot that looks like an elephant with the trunk as the handle and the tail being the handle.

You pick up the teapot and caress its smooth slate gray ceramic surface and memories flow through your mind. You remember sitting in the kitchen with her watching soap operas and sipping apple juice from the toucan cup while nana waits for her tea. The two of you would sit there for hours, completely obsessed with the cheesiest shows put on television. You think of those moments and place the teapot to your heart as you let out a deep sigh.

Your reminiscing is interrupted by the ringing of a bell which makes you jolt up and look around as your surroundings have completely changed. You find yourself inside a labyrinth of market stands, vending machines, and shelves covered in a tapestry of strange and unique items. The vendors are even more strange, each one too weird for your mind to wrap around. You see an oversized gelatin molded to look like the Statue of David, a diving suit with tentacles pouring from various holes, an animatronic kakapo wearing an oversized party hat, a floating orb with the face of Robin Williams, and a whole host of otherworldly beings trying to make a quick buck off their spare garbage.

This scene is so strange that you only notice a minute later that you no longer have the teapot in your hands. For a second you panic, then you realize the whole set is sitting at the stand right in front of you. You approach the stand, hyper focused on the tea set, and only come to as the vendor yells out your name. The vendor is an orangutan skeleton wearing a safari explorer’s outfit. It grooms its gray handlebar mustache and aligns its monocle before it reaches out a bony hand. As you reach out to shake its hand, you wake up to the honking of your horn.

For the next few nights you sleep in your apartment again, but you keep having dreams about the tea set and that strange flea market. Each night these dreams seem to get more vivid, and your obsession with the set creeps its way into your day to day life. You scour online forums and check every shop online for the set only to find nothing on the elusive tea set. You reach a point where you start visiting random yard sales, pawn shops, and even a local flea market searching for the jungle tea set.

One day, as you get out of your car you notice an advertisement stapled to a telephone pole. At first you ignore it, probably some promotional thing at the Market Basket down the street, but for some strange reason its strange colors call you to it. As you look over the flier you realize it’s an ad for a flea market setting up shop nearby. You’re even more surprised when you see some of the vendors that you saw in your dreams, particularly the orangutan wearing the safari outfit.

You take the ad and rush to your car and head out to the address. You speed down the streets as you reach a more rural section of the town and apartment buildings shrink down to humble homes. As you reach the address, however, you start seeing abandoned buildings, including a large warehouse surrounded by towering fences. You approach the gates and wonder if this could be the place. Once you see the same flier on the gate and a path of signs pointing towards the building, you decide to push open the gate and head in.

As you pass through the rusted doors, you find yourself in the same flea market you have visited in your dreams for some time now. You’ve seen this place so many times that you’re confident you’ll find the stand you’re looking for in no time. The flea market is as noisy as you remember it being in those strange dreams of yours with vendors shouting out their products and a handful of shoppers discussing prices. You wander through the stands looking for that tantalizing tea set, hoping and praying that the set is still here.

You search for what feels like hours, but you don’t see the vendor or the tea set. As you start to lose hope, you see a stand at the farthest corner of the market with a familiar figure holding an indistinct gray blob. You run across the marketplace as fast as you can, and finally reach the stand where the skeleton of an orangutan smokes a wooden pipe and smooths the creases on its shirt. As you approach the vendor raises its mustache and flashes its teeth in a strange smile. It reaches out its hand, like it had in that first dream of the market, and this time you get to return the gesture.

The vendor points to a banner above its stand which reads “Barnabus Tellyweather’s Outstanding Antiques”. Some of the items you notice on the pair of ancient goblets decorated with art of knights, wind-up poison dart frogs, a chunk of stone with an image of Bastet on one side, amulets with various symbols etched into gemstones, and a small plastic terrarium holding a goliath beetle. Mr. Tellyweather seems to also be selling hominid skulls, tins of cashews, various species of fish in jars of formaldehyde, and other items sitting on a large shelf behind the vendor.

You are far more focused on the item in the center of the table, however, as you’ve dreamed of buying it for far too long. You notice a tag sitting against the platter displaying the price, which is way more reasonable than you would expect for such a rare find. In a second you whip out your wallet and hand Barnabus a collection of bills. Barnabus packs the tea set to ensure it’s safe and you exchange another handshake before you check out a few more stores.

The first shop you approach is owned by a penguin wearing a bellhop’s uniform and standing atop a pile of luggage. The vendor, named Piper Penguin, is selling various ice cube molds to make your ice cubes look like different kinds of fish. You consider buying one of the smaller models like the sardine-shaped mold or the trout mold, but you decide against it. Piper is also selling taxidermy tuna and swordfish, plush salmon, and keychains for a Royal Marlin Hotel. You buy a keychain and head on your way.

Next you approach a floating purple cloak with wispy tendrils reaching out of the hood. The vendor is selling small figurines of different mythical creatures as well as sets of tarot cards. It’s also selling recreations of medieval weapons. You decide to buy some supplies to build a diorama, even if you’re tempted to get a taxidermized griffin head or a pet rock creature. As you walk away, the vendor tries to offer you a dragon egg, though you politely decline.

Some other vendors you stop by are a man-sized Lego figure, a cyborg drill sergeant, a telepathic porpoise, and a porcupine operating a mech suit. Even after meeting all of these vendors, you still see many more interesting characters to chat with.

Once you get back to your apartment you place the tea set on a shelf you’ve decorated as a memorial to your nana. You set up the tea set in a spot you opened up specifically for it, surrounded by some items nana really loved. On the other end you have a collection of VHS tapes for all the cheesy soap operas you used to watch with her in your childhood. In the center lies a pair of nana’s favorite scented candles, pumpkin spice, and your favorite picture of her with you as a kid. Now with the tea set in its rightful place, the memorial feels complete. You think nana would be proud.

Chapter Text

Being a janitor is pretty dull, even if you’re a janitor working for a secret organization powerful enough to overshadow world governments. You started working at a location owned by a Foundation front company Superb Cheesy Pretzels, mopping the cheese-stained floors for cheap. Eventually you were hired to mop the floors at Site-73 before you were moved to Site-[REDACTED] where you continued to mop the floors. Now after a few years of janitorial service, you get to tell other people how to mop the floors.

Today has started like any other day on site as you check off each item off a mental list. You take a quick shower, prepare a protein shake for breakfast paired with some chocolate sundae pop tarts, and watch the news for a few minutes before you leave your surprisingly nice condo and begin your drive to work. As you reach Site-[REDACTED], the city fades into a forested zone littered with DO NOT ENTER signs.

You finally get to the site and park alongside a line of cars in a special parking spot. You shoot the breeze with the guy at the front desk talking about the company cookout over the weekend and the nasty weather this morning. Once you’re done you clock in and gather your supplies to start the day.

You start your day with cleaning the floors of the D-Class Wing, cleaning the surprising amount of dirt and muck off the floor despite the little use of this hall. Though this would be disconcerting to many, you just kinda assume something weird happened again. The Foundation probably holds more secrets than you could even hope to uncover in multiple lifetimes. That may be the only thing you really know about this place and the organization that owns it.

Despite this, you go on with your duty, chatting with a few of the inmates as you pass by their cells. Out of sheer curiosity, you ask some of the D-Class personnel if they know anything about the state of the site. Though they did hear someone running down the hall screaming random gibberish, none of them really seem to know. With that out of the way, you change the subject to your usual talking points.

It takes some time, but you carefully clean the hall and make your way to the hallways connecting laboratories. The scientists on site greet you and you start chatting with these kind folks while you’re mopping the hallways. Like the D-Class, the researchers only have a small piece of the story. Somehow a civilian wandered on site and came upon a spatial anomaly that drove them insane, causing them to go on a rampage and charge through the site while covered in mud and filth. If you weren’t working for the SCP Foundation or experienced some of the anomalies at Site-73, you’d be way more confused.

This piques your interest, so you ask the scientists about the anomaly. Apparently, there is an abandoned copper mine on site with a very strange storage yard though you aren’t privy to exactly what makes the storage yard so strange. Considering you got way more information than you’d expected, you go on with your day and get back to cleaning up the leftovers of a civilian madman. Now you move on to the Anomalous Item Wing, finding more muck coating the floor and splatters on the walls.

At first you simply go about cleaning the hall, mopping the layers of dirt slung all over the room. As you work down the hallway, you notice a small puddle of foamy seawater forming under a janitor’s closet. You let out a deep sigh as you swing open the door, though you see a pair of strange objects sitting on the floor. A salt and pepper shaker, decorated to look like a pirate and treasure chest respectively, sit on their sides pouring water out of the holes on top of each. You grab the shakers and hand them over to the scientists, telling them you found them in the closet.

With that taken care of you get back to cleaning until you reach the main entrance and loop around to the cafeteria. The cafeteria is a bit more active than the rest of the facility and it seems far cleaner as well. A few of your fellow janitors have arrived and are enjoying their morning coffee. Fortunately they have taken care of any messes in here, so you take a coffee and a croissant and head on your merry way.

It’s break time so you decide to take a quick walk outside. Initially you just lean against the wall at the back exit sipping on coffee, but curiosity gets the best of you for the second time today. You finish your breaktime snack and head out to see this anomalous storage yard. You walk around the back area of the site for a few minutes before you come across a far older looking building surrounded by fences. You find a door in the fence that lets you enter, though you don’t see anything anomalous about the storage yard before you.

You step through the gate, completely unaware of the security guard that calls out to you from the other side of the yard as you step closer to the anomaly’s sphere of influence. Your mind is totally on auto pilot, causing the guard to panic and call out your name louder. When you ignore him again, the guard steps forward before backing off again, terror filling his mind. The guard tries to get your attention as best he can, but you only catch him screaming your name as you step into the range of SCP-028.

In a split second you feel a pulse in your head as your eyes roll back and you nearly topple onto the concrete ground. You save yourself just in time as a fuzzy sensation flows through your brain and down your spine. You walk over to the door and sit against the wall for a minute as you try to process what just happened. When you notice nothing wrong, you go to report the incident to the Research Department and get back to work.

A few hours pass, and you notice nothing of note. You wonder what was so strange about that storage yard that made a civilian go insane as you’ve been completely unaffected. You clean some floors, throw out some trash, and teach the newer janitors how to deal with nasty stains. It’s a nice productive day and you completely forget about the incident with 028. On the way home, however, you see a bird perched in the trees above the road and SCP-028’s effect kicks in.

Initially you recognize it as an owl, but your head pulses again and you fully recognize it as Strix varia, also known as the barred owl. As you keep driving, your mind tells you random facts about the barred owl along with other species of owl native to Michigan. As soon as you get home, you ask to take some time off and make plans to go to the zoo.

You head to your bedroom and grab a book you haven’t touched in years, finding that you instantly recognize every species of owl and every level of their taxonomy. This doesn’t seem to be the same for any other kind of animal, which is even weirder to you. As a final test, you grab a sheet of paper and sketch a taxonomic diagram of every owl species before comparing it to an example online. It’s a perfect match, and every species is lined up just right.

While you’re trying to deal with this, you get an email from one of the researchers at Site-[REDACTED] with a file for the anomaly you wandered into. The message also tells you that the civilian that encountered the same SCP was given some mind-shattering existential knowledge which robbed them of their sanity. Definitely makes you grateful for the owl knowledge.

Chapter Text

As an academic, you have spent a decent percent of your life in the world of museums. You’ve gone to local museums since you were a kid and have traveled across the United States as you’ve become more independent. Some of the most fond memories from your childhood involve you going to the local natural history museum. You’ve probably been to that museum enough times to memorize the map and every exhibit hall. The North American Mammals exhibit hall leads into the Deep Sea exhibit, which leads into the Birds of the World Hall and the Fantastic Minerals Hall.

None of these, however, match the Ancient Life Hall when it comes to your favorite part of the museum. For a local museum, there is a pretty impressive collection of fossils including a few largely complete skeletons of smaller dinosaurs. As a kid, the skeletons loomed above like giants and that made them even cooler to you. You remember the pure joy that you felt when you saw the towering diplodocus display in the center of the exhibit hall before you circle the sauropod to admire the other displays.

Though you might say that you can’t choose a favorite among the displays, you know the stegosaurus display holds a very special place in your heart. Those iconic plates mesmerized you the second you saw them during your first visit, and the mural in the background made the display feel so lifelike. The stegosaurus shows off its flanked tail as well, holding it out in a swinging motion ready to gore any predators. This dinosaur had a major impact on you to the point where you would always ask for stegosaurus toys when you were a child and every single backpack you owned was stegosaurus themed.

Today, you walk into the natural history museum with your dinosaur-themed Hawaiian shirt and stegosaurus keychain ready to live the dream. As one of the curators of the museum, it’s your job to work with the displays and to take good care of the collection. Even after about a year of working here, it still feels magical when you step into the archives and witness the sheer scale of the museum’s collection. You’ve learned about the ins and outs of making dioramas, both life-sized and the smaller models. One of your favorite moments is the meeting you had with the gentleman who painted the murals in the Fossil Wing.

As you get settled in, you get some very good news from your fellow curator Benny. Benny grabs your hand and leads you to the back of the museum where you see a truck at the loading dock. At first you’re very curious as you’re still trying to fully wake up, but then once you see the oversized crate you fully realize what is being wheeled in today. After months of waiting, the new allosaurus display has arrived and is ready to set up opposite to your favorite stegosaurus.

You pop open the crate and see a collection of bones, both real and man made, that’ll make up a brand new allosaurus display. Finally you get to set up the bones on the empty platform, trying to pose the skeleton as if it’s prowling in search of food. Though it takes a few hours to build the brand new display, you get through the process with little incident. You do swear that you saw the arms move on their own, but a part of you assumes you’re just imagining things.

The display is complete and the allosaurus is right where it needs to be, right across from your favorite fossil. For a moment you stand before the product of your hard work and soak in every bit of pride. As you stare at the fully constructed skeleton, you think you see the bones shudder for a moment before sitting still again. You shake this thought and head home for the day.

The next day, you get to reveal the new display to the adoring public with your fellow curators. With the strange memory still fresh in your mind, you spend a lot of time watching the skeleton to see if it does anything strange. It doesn’t do anything, but you look back at it a thousand times. Eventually the celebration comes to an end and the staff gathers to take a picture. Everyone gathers between the dueling dinosaurs and you get a social-media-worthy picture.

Years pass by and the incident is pushed deep into your subconscious. The exhibit stays the same and the allosaurus doesn’t move an inch. As time passes the museum acquires a list of other fossils and taxidermy animals. The museum grows, but you still obsess over the pair from the Jurassic. The allosaurus continues to be amazing and the stegosaurus continues to be your favorite display. Every now and then you take a seat near the two ancient creatures and bask in their glory.

As the world enters the 21st century, the museum continues to thrive and the two dinosaurs still stand proud for guests. The whole museum has gone through its fair share of refurbishments, including the fossils getting a nice cleaning. One of the biggest changes is the new poses for your two favorite pieces of the collection. The stegosaurus now stands more dynamically, but it’s still in its old pose. The allosaurus, though, aims its whole body, ready to leap at the bulky herbivore, rather than imitating its defensive pose. At first you protested this change, but it makes the scene feel a little more alive.

Even years after the displays were first put together, you continue to admire them and still claim they are the best part of the museum. Since that first day, you haven’t seen the allosaurus move an inch, and you’ve chalked the incident down to a hallucination. Unfortunately, you’ll soon find out the truth behind the set of bones and plastic you’ve had on display.

Another long day of curating passes by and you still have a ton of work to do, so you decide to stay at your office past closing time. You slump in your seat and transfix yourself into your blocky old computer, typing up reports and taking care of bureaucratic nonsense. You turn away from your station occasionally to sort some files and listen to the radio. For a while this is all that’s going on, then you hear some rifling around down the hall. You sit in your seat for a minute or two, not sure if you should intervene, before you decide you should check if your coworker is fine.

Walking down the hall, you hear something or someone ransacking the office of one of your coworkers, a paleontologist whose name you don’t particularly recognize. You open the door a peek and you find the office trashed but completely empty. Papers are strewn all over, the desk is on its side, and the computer is completely destroyed. You check out the window, which was wide open before you checked, but find nothing outside. You inspect the office for a minute or two in hopes you’ll find something hinting at what made such a mess but you are scared half to death by a shrieking in the lobby of the museum. For a moment the horrid shrieking of a banshee rings out through the museum and likely across the city before it is cut short and a deathly silence takes its place.

You enter the gemstones exhibit and find what you had feared, one of the exhibits has been opened and the ancient chunk of obsidian has been stolen. You skim through the hall and notice that a few other minerals have been taken as well and your heart sinks to think what other pieces have been taken. With this you head to the other halls and find that the birds exhibit and the deep sea exhibit are unharmed. You scan both exhibit halls and find not a single item out of place, so you move on to the next hall.

What you find in the North American Mammals Hall stains your mind and adrenaline flows through your body. A mound of bleeding flesh and stained bones sits next to the grizzly bear with gore trailing out into the main hall. For a moment you look like the other mammals on display as the scene before you settles into every crevice of your brain. Your immediate thought is to go back to your office and slip into a panic attack, but then you realize you need to call the police. You contemplate your next move for a moment, then you finally get your legs to move and you start following the trail of flesh.

You peek around the corner and your shock is suddenly accompanied by confusion. A monster stalks the lobby with viscera slipping between its ribs. You take a close look and you immediately recognize the skeletal form of the allosaurus even with human remains coating its bones. You take a step back into a puddle of blood, and you yelp as you stop yourself from landing on your backside. Within a second, you are sprinting down the hall as the beast crashes through the exhibit hall.

You rush across exhibit halls and reach the door to the offices with the rampaging dinosaur following closely behind. Your heart sinks as you pull on the door only to remember you locked it. You tear through your pockets to find your keys and as you find it the sound of a display being crushed makes you drop them. Terror fills every inch of your body as you see the Jurassic hunter at the other end of the hall and you make a run for it.

Finally, you make it to your favorite exhibit and you notice the display is empty. Your mind immediately leaps back in time to that first strange moment you had with your soon-to-be-killer when its skeletal structure moved just a tiny bit. The next moment your mind is blinded by fear as the monster finally catches up. You fall back onto your butt and slowly back away from the bloodthirsty beast until you bump into a concrete wall. You squeeze your eyes tightly shut and guard your vitals, waiting for the worst to come.

The end doesn’t come, however.

You open your eyes to see the allosaurus imitating a roar at something above you and you instantly understand. The lion of the Jurassic is a bit more hesitant to take on a grumpy stegosaurus than a tiny fleshy human like you or the poor sap that first encountered it. Though the stegosaur remains completely still, the animated skeleton decides to back away, likely heading back to its previous kill. As it reaches the lobby, however, you hear a group of people enter the museum and ambush the monster. You stay with the stegosaurus, though.

A police officer approaches you and asks you a couple questions regarding this “anomalous entity” they’ve successfully captured. Though you can’t give a lot of info regarding it being an animated skeleton, you can give some background info which the officer is very thankful for. Once the officer gets through his list of questions regarding the allosaur, he asks you if you know Benny. You tell him you’re very close friends with Benny, and the officer seems to nod at this.

He explains that your friend has been speaking very highly of you which has made the “higher-ups” consider giving you a job. You think for a moment, and the officer tells you that you could end up studying the fossilized beast that tried to rip you to shreds mere moments ago. You think for a moment, then you ask if you’ll be able to stay with the museum as well. The officer lets you know your job at the museum is safe and you instantly accept. A week goes by, and you end up helping design a containment chamber for SCP-250 to safely observe it and learn some of the natural behaviors of an animal that has been extinct for over a hundred million years.

Chapter Text

For hours you’ve sat at your desk in your fancy personal office with your head in your hands, only illuminated by the glow of your computer. You move your hands and look once more at the message you received from the Site Director but each time you read it you feel a sickness rise in your stomach. You’d never worked directly with an SCP and you had hoped to keep things that way, so your new assignment is tearing you apart. As a higher-level archivist working for the Foundation, you’ve read a sizable chunk of the database so you recognize the number and the heavy emotional duty that comes with it.

When you first joined as a record keeper, you had heard stories from your coworkers about the worst jobs to have in the Foundation. You remember many of these unfortunate roles like the Keter Duty or daily existence for D-Class personnel and couldn’t be more thankful to be working with the database instead. Out of all of these jobs, nothing gets close to being as terrible as working on the dreaded Procedure 110-Montauk. Apparently the Foundation has been committing crimes worse than crimes against humanity in a number of ways to prevent the arrival of something truly terrible, specifically by doing terrible things to a young girl.

You were shocked beyond belief at first, but since then you’ve learned how callous the SCP Foundation can be and 110-Montauk has slowly become more believable. This doesn’t make the news any more bearable, though. You feel like you’ve been sitting in your office for hours now taking an occasional glance at the message and feel a new wave of terror wash over you each time. You, a humble archivist, have been called upon to continue the single most cruel duty the Foundation has to offer.

When you finally get to your home, you just slink into bed and lie there for a few hours. Any sleep you get is lost to the nightmares of the job ahead of you. Rumors have circled the site since 110-Montauk was first discovered by staff, each one more blood-curdling than the last. The deep and detailed descriptions seep into your mind and keep you awake into the deep hours of the night.

In the morning you feel drained and terror only drags you further into complete mental collapse. You go to work with an empty stomach and a strained mind, prepared to witness true horror beyond what any human being can handle. You’ve shuddered at papercuts, how the hell are you supposed to witness 110-Montauk and survive? You sit in your office for what feels like years like a little kid at the doctor’s office waiting for a coworker to call you forth. Eventually, the silence is broken by a series of knocks that nearly send you into a heart attack. An older man, a researcher working with SCP-231, peeks through the door and calls for you to prepare for your new job.

You take a deep breath and follow your coworker down winding hallways dotted with office doors and storage closets. As you walk you feel the walls closing in on you, and your breaths get shorter as the color drains from your face. You look down the hall as it seemingly stretches out into infinity, making you panic even more. As you reach an elevator door you stumble over which makes the coworker finally notice your panic. He places a hand on your shoulder and tries to reassure you that you’ll be fine. His attempts fall on deaf ears as you only hear muffled nonsense and your vision blurs.

The older man leads you to a bench nearby and you slowly come back to reality as your breaths slow and your sight clears up. The coworker from before sits next to you and asks if you’re okay. You nod, which prompts him to repeat his reassurance and lead you to the elevator. Even as your vision clears, you don’t recognize the elevator your coworker has led you to, likely a higher level elevator. As you get in you realize this elevator only goes as high as the current floor you’re on but goes to a floor that none of the typical elevators can reach. The elevator grinds down and you lean against the wall in an attempt to stay calm.

Finally the two of you get out on the secret lowest floor and start wandering down more hallways. As you walk, you scan the walls for insignia, posters, placards, or anything you can visually focus on to prevent another mental breakdown while you’re approaching the containment chamber of SCP-231-7. You’ve dreaded this since the very second you received that message and now you’re here. Every chance you get you just stare down the SCP logo painted onto the dull gray concrete walls or read through the placard of an SCP contained down here. You’ll likely never forget the phrase “Lesser Anomaly Containment” due to the thousands of times you repeated it in your head as you pass by the Anomalous Item Containment Labs.

As you walk, however, your researcher tells you some stories about the other SCP items he has had the privilege to work with. He helps you stay grounded by describing some strange anomalous items that have been delivered to the site such as a lamp that behaves like a disco ball when turned on or a toothbrush that plays a song that the user hates despite having no devices to play music. He also tries to ask you a few questions about your previous far cushier position in the archives. Though terror crashes through your body like a raging hurricane, you manage to answer anything the researcher asks.

Finally, you reach the end of one of the thousands of halls you’ve journeyed through and see the name you’ve dreaded since this walk started. In bold lettering, the words “SCP-231” and “Keter” stare deep into your soul. For a moment you stand before the gates to your personal hell, then your coworker places a hand on your shoulder and gives you a reassuring glance. You take a second to mentally prepare for the horrors within then another researcher opens the door and welcomes you in.

You follow the pair of researchers down a hall lined with medical supplies and file cabinets leading to an isolated operating theater where you look down at a group of surgeons and nurses preparing for today’s procedure. You, along with some researchers, are about to witness the infamous Procedure 110-Montauk.

Finally the patient, SCP-231-7, is wheeled into the room on a gurney and you witness what anomalous humans look like. SCP-231-7 is a heartbreaking sight, a younger girl lying on an operating table with a noticeably moving baby bump and an expression of blinding agony on her face. Though you are told to stay calm and that this is just the setup, you find yourself turning away from the mind shattering scene before you every so often. While the surgeons and nurses prepare the supplies and tools for the procedure, a group of engineers enter the room to inspect a great machine on the ceiling and type on some terminals against the opposite wall from you. Once the engineers head out and the lights dim, you feel a familiar dread set in.

Though 231-7 is turned away from the theater, you still witness a menagerie of horrors. As soon as the surgeons begin operating on the poor patient, a mass of fleshy tendrils and monstrous tentacles attempt to strangle one of the nurses. 231-7 howls in pain as doctors dismember these tendrils and begin their work. The screams and weeps stain your memory as more and more flesh is torn from SCP-231-7’s fragile form.

Procedure 110-Montauk goes on and a mass of demonic flesh piles up while the pleading and screaming of 231-7 still make it through the glass and directly into your ears. The pit in your stomach only gets worse when a single D-Class enters the operating room and grabs a hypodermic needle on the table. He sticks it into her arm before sticking it into his own arm. You look away for a moment, your incredible fear of needles making your fear even worse. As the D-Class injects 231-7 with a collection of needles, the doctors are still removing the monster within her body.

Eventually, the doctors finish removing the great mass of monstrous flesh and the next step of 110-Montauk begins. The machine on the ceiling turns on and a vast array of parts shift as a series of lights flash around the room. A mass of parts descends onto the operating table, prompting the surgeons to back away and approach the terminals. A scanner lowers until it sits just above 231-7’s stomach. As the grand machine gets ready to activate a researcher turns to you and asks if you’re doing okay. You look over and nod despite the horror filling your body. He tells you that you’re doing something really important and that he’ll explain once the operation is over.

From the very moment the second half of the procedure begins to the moment you leave the operating theater, your mind just goes completely blank. It felt like no time had passed at all, like when you get surgery and they give you anesthesia. You wonder if it was because of the machine, or simply because of how traumatic the procedure was. Perhaps it was some other anomaly affecting you or something in the theater. Whatever it is, you are awfully grateful that the second half of 110-Montauk has been completely blocked from your mind.

You follow the researchers to a smaller room leading to 231-7’s containment chamber. Five other doors are connected to the room, each one with the designated SCP number with a note below the placard. You take a closer look at the door labeled “SCP-231-2” and you feel a particularly common dread wash over your body as you discover her fate. The older researcher places a hand on your shoulder and tells you the story of these young girls. The fact that human beings did this makes you feel sick, sad, and bitter but the researcher tells you not to worry. The stress finally forms a crack as tears spill down your cheeks and you demand to know how he and the rest of the staff working on the dreaded 110-Montauk could be so calm about monstrous torture of people as innocent as these.

He explains that 110-Montauk is, or at least was, a necessary evil to keep a great evil from invading our world. Apparently this being known as the Scarlet King is far more dangerous than any anomaly known by the Foundation would enter your reality and obliterate the universe. Though you realize how important the procedure is, you still can’t stand to work for a Foundation that would do this sort of thing. That is, until you realize that the researcher said that 110-Montauk WAS important.

You turn to your coworker and ask him what he meant when he said that Procedure 110-Montauk was important and a smile grows on his face. Apparently, he found a breakthrough along with the rest of the SCP-231 Research Team along with some engineers studying the machine previously used for the enactment of the infamous procedure. With this information, you follow the pair of researchers into the chamber holding 231-7.

You’ve only seen the inside of containment chambers through images in the database so you expect the poor girl’s permanent home to be soulless and sterile like a padded cell. What you find instead is a perfect recreation of a girl’s bedroom with soft pink walls and a comfortable-looking bed. You are confused at first by the windows in an isolated room miles beneath the surface, then you notice screens on the other sides of the windows show live feeds from suburban homes in a nearby town.

Dr. Green, a younger woman, stands by the bed before he notices you have entered the room. She greets herself and reminds you to stay quiet as 231-7 needs the rest after the hell she just went through. With the experience out of the way, you remember to ask a question that sat in your mind since the moment you received the message; why did they choose you for this job. The doctor motions for you to follow her out of the room and you oblige after looking back at the patient.

Once you enter the hall Dr. Green explains the duty of witnesses of 110 Montauk and how terror seems to keep the Scarlet King at bay. You wonder just how terrible this powerful being is if his cultists are willing to use people as innocent as 231-7 to bring about his unholy rule. You imagine that the Scarlet King looks like a great demon with horns stabbing the sky and thousands of eyes staring into the essence of your soul. You shudder for a moment and let Dr. Green continue. Apparently the procedure you just witnessed was the implementation of an experimental upgrade on the massive machine hanging from the ceiling, one that could remove the Scarlet King’s influence on 231-7, hopefully saving her and humanity at the same time.

As you get ready to head to your office, the older researcher and Dr. Green call for your attention. Dr. Green approaches you and mentions that there is one last matter they need to discuss with you before you get back to work. They acknowledge that you live a rather comfortable life as a Foundation archivist and that though you are single, you could play a major role in giving SCP-231-7 the normal life she deserves. You think for a moment, as you’d never considered being a parent, but ultimately you decide to accept this new duty.

For the next few days, doctors give you updates on 231-7’s condition as they try to be absolutely certain the effects of the dreaded Scarlet King have completely gone away. As the days pass and the recovery process begins the reports get progressively more hopeful.

You wait a month for the good news and once it finally comes you couldn’t be happier. For the first time in a month, you return to the hidden floor and meet with Dr. Green and the researchers who witnessed 110-Montauk alongside you. Dr. Green thanks you again for the wonderful thing you’ve done for 231-7 and tells you that she couldn’t be happier than to see such an unfortunate girl finally having a normal life after everything she went through. Finally, you sign some paperwork and you see your newly-adopted daughter.

Considering the state she was in the last time you saw her, 231-7 is doing far better thanks to a month of recovery. For a moment you and 231-7 just stare at one another as your mind goes through a million things you can say to her. You wonder what your first move will be, what you want to tell her. After you sift through every choice you could make, you simply look at her and give her a warm welcoming smile. She reciprocates and runs to you with her arms wide open.

You pull her into a hug and promise to take care of her. She’s safe now, and you’ll take on the Scarlet King himself to keep it that way.

Chapter Text

When you first joined the Foundation, you were a spunky little rookie who wholeheartedly believed you were completely unstoppable and that you were an invaluable asset to the most powerful organization on Earth, perhaps the galaxy. You started your life as a Foundation field agent the same way any other newbie field agent would; you go fetch lesser anomalies and spy on most insignificant groups of interest. Your first job of the former was to retrieve a paper shredder that digests paper shredded by it like a human stomach, and your first job of latter was to investigate The New England Squirrel Feeders Club, a group of ten people and a handful of anomalous humanoids that anomalously attract species of squirrels for some reason.

For years your job can be summed up by these first two jobs. Once you had proven your worth you moved up from basically harmless objects and groups alike to more advanced anomalies and organizations. At first you had no idea just how complex the paranormal world could really get and thought the weirdest thing you could encounter would be a floating playground or a research group genetically modifying butterflies to make them magical.

With this in mind, your first important job where you joined a group of higher agents to contain a concrete serial killer where a few men were lost. You were still stuck in your naivete as a rookie so the horrid deaths of your fellow agents leaves zero impact. The Foundation considers the mission a total success considering SCP-173 is basically trapped at Site-19 now, so you also consider the mission a total success. You deal with a couple more missions along with a vast number of field agents and even a Mobile Task Force for a moment. This encounter with an MTF sparks your passion and begins the next big chapter of your life.

Your work with MTF Zeta-9 is far stranger than the rest of your work, but far more fulfilling. You’ve spent quite a lot of time with your new MTF friends exploring subterranean worlds filled with anomalies. Diving into the strange places under the earth has introduced y0u to the full extent of weirdness that is the anomalous world while spending time with more influential members of the Foundation has opened your eyes to the true nature of the SCP Foundation.

With the former, you’ve found some very strange anomalies like SCP-184, where you were trapped in an increasingly complex labyrinth of nonsensical rooms, or SCP–1444, where you barely survived an encounter with a monstrous creature in an ice cave. With the latter, conversations with the other Mole Rat members has revealed a lot of the morally gray ends of the Foundation. These conversations have opened your mind to the reality of the Foundation and contested your feelings of invincibility.

Finally, things reach a head when a Keter-level SCP breaks out and MTF Zeta-9 is called into action for a suicide mission.

As soon as you get to the winding maze of sewer tunnels your group is under the watch of a sadistic hunter though you and your teammates are completely unaware. Left completely blind to the threat, you and the other Mole Rats search the tunnels with deathly silence in hopes that you’ll catch the anomaly before it catches you. Once you notice black tar burns stained scattered on the walls and terror sets on you. As you realize what anomaly you were sent to fetch, a demonic form reveals itself through the wall and grabs onto one of your friends. The group scatters as shrieks of terror echo through the tunnels and your friend is pulled into a pocket dimension.

Ultimately SCP-106 is stopped and placed back into containment, so the Foundation considers this a complete success regardless of the incredible loss of manpower. You, on the other hand, have been shattered by this experience and you enter the worst emotional low in your life. First you avoid going on missions but you are forced to go as you’re under threat of losing your role in the task force. You are eventually removed from the team when a full blown panic attack is triggered during a mission in a sewer system.

No longer a MTF member, you fall into binge drinking and go days on end holed up in your home wallowing in every aspect of misery. Now that you are no longer capable of going on even the lowest level field missions, you are transferred to the Archival Department at Site-73 where you can watch over a horde of Safe-Level SCPs and Anomalous Objects.

Despite the hopes that your condition would improve, you only sink further into this seemingly unstoppable depression. You show up to Site-73 drunk on multiple occasions and eventually you are forced to meet with a therapist. A second reassignment is ordered, this time you are sent to work on SCP-765. For a moment you feel a bit lighter as you observe the ducks feasting on the medley of seeds and fruit that you throw to them. The last day you work with the duck pond, you sit on a bench and cover your face with your hands as you weep.

Finally you are given an assignment where you babysit a completely harmless Safe-Class SCP at Site-18 called “the Tickle Monster”. When you get to the site, a largely underground facility unlike your previous worksite, and a couple guards welcome you in as a former member of MTF Zeta-9. Hearing your lost official titles stings your mind a little, but you do your best to hold yourself together.

Once you get into the lobby you are greeted by your therapist, Dr. Osborne, who immediately asks how you have been. Though you have been doing terribly since that fateful day, you tell her that you are doing fine. After a quick conversation, you tell her that you are here for a new assignment with a “tickle monster” and she immediately seems to recognize. Dr Osborne tells you that this could be a perfect opportunity for you and begins leading you to the containment chamber. You follow her to an elevator and down the hall to a containment chamber with a plaque next to the door displaying the SCP designation “SCP-999” and its Safe object class.

As the door slides open you see a smaller chamber with computers, file cabinets, and shelves lining the wall with a cutesy playpen in the corner. A painted light blue sky lines the wall with cartoonish fluffy clouds and a rainbow of colorful stars. A tinge of shame rises in your heart as you think back to your far more impressive work with the Mole Rats before looking at the childish setting standing before you.

Dr. Osborne asks if you are doing okay before placing her hand on your arm, only light enough for you to notice. You nod before you enter the chamber and look for an SCP file. You search through the filing cabinets but end up going to the computer and finding it in the database. You skim through SCP-999’s entry to get enough details to properly care for it before you hear muffled patting on the glass of the playpen. You turn around and see SCP-999 leaning against the wall of plastic-glass and calling to you with gurgling coos.

You sit there for a moment before you get up and open the door to 999’s pen, prompting the slime to zoom over to you and smother your legs in smooth orange goo. The very second the creature’s slimy flesh comes in contact with your leg, you feel a joy you haven’t experienced in quite some time flow through every fiber of your being. Your heart fills with a happiness that had left you when that demonic old man slaughtered your team. Somehow, SCP-999 has brought life to a place in your mind that had been left lifeless since that fateful day.

You stand still for a moment, only able to focus on the bliss that blossoms within you before tears of pure joy spill forth and flow down your cheeks. You crumple as emotion overtakes you and Dr. Osborne rushes over to comfort you with the joyous orange slime. Now that you are closer to the blobby critter, you notice that it feels like peanut butter and smells like homemade cookie dough. You grab a chunk of 999 and pull the little guy in for a hug, or at least the closest thing to a hug for an amorphous ooze.

SCP-999 and Dr. Ozborne sit with you for a few minutes with the former wrapped around your lower body and the latter rubbing circles on your back. Once you are composed again, you get up and go over to 999’s playpen and call the slime over to the kiddy pool full of plastic balls and SCP-999 immediately rushes over to get into the pool. You grab a blue plastic ball and hold it out to the slime, prompting it to reach out with its stubby pseudopods, sending another wave of pure joy and making you laugh a little.

As you play, 999 reaches a skinny pseudopod over to your jacket pocket which reminds you that you have a Hershey bar you forgot to eat. The moment you take the chocolate bar out of your pocket, the little slime nearly jumps out of the kiddy pool and reaches up for your snack like a pleading toddler. You look over to Dr. Osborne for confirmation and once she gives you a nod, you open the treat and hand over the whole bar to your new friend. As the chocolate dissolves in its blobby form the creature hops around in pure bliss which puts a smile on your face.

Once your time with 999 is done for the day, you pick up the beanbag-chair-sized slime and place it in its little bed. The creature instantly settles into the bed and starts gurgling in a way that makes it sound like snoring.

As you meet with SCP-999 more and more, you start to drink less and smile more often. Your meetings with Dr. Osborne slowly become hopeful and eventually you start working through all the mental scars from your work as a field agent. The future looks brighter and it’s because you’ve shared M&M’s with a blob of orange slime. Since you’ve started your job with 999, you’ve stopped by a vending machine in Site-18’s lobby to share a bag with your new best friend.

Even when your babysitting gig comes to an end, you decide to stay at Site-18 to work with other Safe-Class SCPs. You also stay on site to see 999 while it wanders the site and share some chocolate with it. You owe it your life, so spending a few bucks a week on cheap candy is nothing to you.

Chapter Text

Since your friend, Agent Park, went missing you’ve been in a bit of a funk. As a junior researcher you’ve had a little experience with the anomalous and know fairly well just how dangerous the paranormal can be. Your limited knowledge has made you a little concerned for your friend whenever he leaves Site-98, and his stories encountering dangerous anomalies have made you even more worried when he gets a new job.

Each time Agent Park left to join his fellow agents for a new mission, you would make the effort to drop by and say goodbye. You would always give him the warmest goodbye with the worry that it would be your last. You would give him a strong enough hug to squeeze the air out of him and give him a baked good you had gotten from your mother knowing how much he loves her baking.

About a year ago, you would have your final goodbye with Park. Somehow you’d feared that day more than any other that you’d never see him again, and hugged him even more than you had previously. A week after, you would receive the bad news, you still remember that moment down to the smallest details.

The grieving process was tough at first, you would have to take a week off due to the emotional pain flowing through your body. You spend multiple days straight staying in your apartment, watching tv and eating whatever fast food you have delivered straight to your door. After spending so much time binging Parks and Rec and stuffing your face with McDonald’s you step out of your apartment and visit your parents.

You had been great friends with Park’s wife as well, and having her around helped you grieve and vice versa. Though you could never tell her about the paranormal nature of his disappearance, you’ve found solace in having someone who knew Park even better than you.

Returning to work you feel inspired to study anomalies, hoping you can have a hand in preventing whatever happened to Agent Park if you can’t discover what happened to him. Now a fully fledged researcher, you have learned that Site-98 is a pretty great place to research the prevention of anomalous disasters. You’ve come in contact with astronomical phenomena from a star small enough to fit into your hand to a gigantic woman thousands of miles away from Earth floating in the void. None of the research you do brings you any closer to Agent Park, unfortunately.

One day, while you’re visiting the widowed Mrs. Park, you notice a small hairy creature wandering in the backyard. When you bring it up to your friend, an annoyed look grows on her face and she heads to the backyard with a broom in her hand. When she returns, she tells you about a raccoon that has been wandering around in her yard for the past week, just sitting at the door staring inside. When you ask how she knows it has been the same raccoon, she explains that the raccoon that has been showing up has always been missing a finger on one of its front paws.

You think it’s strange but brush it off. Ultimately you assume that it’s looking for a stable supply of food like the contents of a garbage can, and forget about the incident. It doesn’t help that the mammalian invader stopped visiting Mrs. Park’s house since that incident.

Months later, you’re researching SCP-037 when you notice a small hairy blob run past a number of filing cabinets and climb up onto a water bubbler. As you turn to the mysterious figure you notice it is a raccoon placing your keycard against the scanner with a precision you hadn’t expected from a raccoon. As the door opens and it prepares to jump down from the bubbler, you notice the lack of a finger on one of its hands.

As you realize you’ve seen this animal before, you chase it as it sprints down the hall and evades a pair of guards on their route. You, along with the two guards, chase this raccoon as it tries to lose you guys. You witness the incredible intelligence of this raccoon as it zigzags down the hall and tries to cut around the corners to get further away faster. As it attempts to reach a vent, another researcher picks it up and holds onto despite its unusually strong thrashing about.

She comments that it’s incredibly heavy, prompting one of the guards to grab it from her. He also comments that it feels incredibly heavy, about as heavy as a person. As strange as it seems, you simply accept that this is how anomalies work. Considering the weird stuff you’ve seen, a really heavy raccoon is nothing.

As the researcher and guards try to find a good place to contain this seemingly anomalous common raccoon, one of the guards explains that on-site security has been trying to catch it for quite some time. Considering its incredibly evasive nature and considerable knowledge of Site-98’s layout, the researcher brings it to a lab and places it on a table. She does some tests on the raccoon and takes some blood for genetic testing before calling in some containment specialists to find a good place to keep this new anomaly.

About a month later, you are called over to the containment of the anomaly, now designated SCP-1152, because of the results of the tests done on it. Of course, the Foundation has a vast database on the genetic makeup of every employee, and the multitude of biological samples collected from 1152 have brought about quite the discovery. Rather than a raccoon’s genetic sequencing, SCP-1152 has DNA very similar to the DNA of a human. You were called because it is almost exactly the same as Agent Park.

Another thing researchers found from testing SCP-1152 is its abnormal weight. Despite looking like a normal malnourished raccoon, it weighs well over 160 pounds. You look into its eyes and see a profound sadness as it stares back at you, so you approach the cage and place your hand after confirming the poor thing doesn’t have rabies. As you place your hand on 1152’s snout it seems to lean into your palm, though it only seems to get more upset by this.

It doesn’t seem interested in you scratching its head, but rather just having a physical connection with you again. You do feel something familiar as 1152 grabs your hand and holds it against its chest. You notice its missing finger and feel a bit of guilt in your chest, wondering what happened to it.

You are told that SCP-1152 recently broke out from containment and attacked an agent, taking his keycard and navigating the site. As you hear this you remember it taking your keycard while you were studying the miniature star. Apparently it stole someone’s phone and called Mrs. Park, somehow knowing how to dial her phone number. Before she was given amnestics, she confessed in an interview that she chased a raccoon out of her backyard.

You thank them for the info and start to get back to your work, but you are asked to take a new offer. Considering 1152’s connection to Agent Park and your friendship with the agent, you were considered for the position of head of the 1152 research team. Though it is a bit of a stretch, the researchers hope that having you work with 1152 may convince it to stay out of trouble. You think for a moment before accepting this new position.

The first thing you do is go to your personal cubicle where you grab a sugar cookie for the anomalous raccoon. Your mom had given you these cookies over the weekend, and you wonder if SCP-1152 would react like your lost friend. When you return to 1152’s containment chamber, it reaches through the cage for the treat with a bestial hunger in its eyes. You hand the sugar cookie over to 1152, and it scarfs the treat down.

You smile and jot down a mental note to bring more baked goods. It seems that everyone loves your dear mother’s baking, even anomalies.

Chapter Text

The time you’ve spent since you moved to Osaka has been deeply fulfilling. Of course, you’ve learned quite a lot from a new culture and have picked up a beginner-level of Japanese. Since you got here you’ve learned enough of the language to engage in a conversation or two. The new culinary experiences have really enriched your life, a stable job has felt pretty nice, and having your first home has been a really big step in your life.

One really strange thing you have experienced in Osaka is a list of strange “hallucinations”. While walking along the river on the way to work you noticed a strange reptilian creature dipping its bowl-shaped head out of the water to take in a gulp of air before diving back down. You also remember noticing a pair of small hairy creatures hiding behind a soda vending machine, you got a really bad sinus infection soon after. The strangest one was the figure of a human jumping between buildings, multiple tails flowing against the light of the moon.

However, you feel incredibly lonely around here. You’re deeply socially anxious and have a very hard time connecting with new people. You could master every language in the world, but a deep fear of judgment leaves you utterly alone.

While your public life has been unbelievably lonely, you have found solace in one place, the internet. Like many other socially anxious folks, you have found it way easier to connect with others through the veil of a monitor. Considering your “hallucinations”, you’ve found a very comfortable place on a forum website called Parawatch. It seems that other people have come in contact with strange things, and have used the Parawatch Wiki to bring these encounters to light. You were tempted to try something called the “Roundabout Game”, but one of the mods deleted it before you got the chance to download the instructions. Besides, you don’t have nearly enough connected rooms to try it. There was also a thing about Forrest Gump, but you just thought it was weird.

Your time on the Parawatch Wiki has helped you with your sense of loneliness and has made you a little more alert regarding the strange things you’ve seen in the city. You have tried to take pictures of the creatures and objects you’ve encountered, and even got a picture of one of them while checking out an antique store. You noticed a snail-like creature hiding in a teapot, so you decide to buy it and end up getting a picture of the creature.

On the way home you pass by a toy store and notice a whimsical instrument sitting in the front window along with other neat toys. You turn your head for a moment, and recognize the dopey little face of the otamatone. Though you are tempted to buy it, you need to save money for the upcoming rent payment.

When you get home, you notice a small white object sitting on your kitchen counter near your microwave. It is an otamatone, exactly like the one at the toy store, with a note in its mouth. Your limited understanding of Japanese makes the note a bit difficult to read, so you look up a translation and find out it says “Otamatone wants to be your roommate~”. This is kinda strange, but you think you’ll let your friends on Parawatch know about the snail creature instead.

Now that you’ve placed the creature in an unused fish tank, you pay close attention to the musical instrument sitting by your microwave. Just how did this thing get here, did someone bring it in? You don’t know anyone who would get into your apartment, and you have no idea why anyone would give a random stranger an otamatone out of the blue. You don’t particularly mind considering all of the other strange things you’ve learned of, so you decide to keep it.

You aren’t sure why, but you decide to start talking to your new musical roommate. It may be the lack of physical social interaction or the welcoming look on the thing’s painted face, but you trust the little object to listen to you. It starts with a little good morning message and a good night wish as you pass by the little guy, just something simple to connect to your new friend.

As days pass by, you notice the otamatone in different spots around your apartment. You remember the elf on a shelf, that little elf toy that your parents would hide in different spots in the middle of the night. Considering the fact that there isn’t anyone to move it, you believe Parawatch might have some info on the situation.

You hop right onto the Parawatch Wiki and start a new thread on your paranormal otamatone, hoping someone can explain the situation. Luckily, one of your friends answers within a minute of posting, and posits that you may have some kind of benevolent spirit living with you. Though it’s a bit unorthodox for it to be a cutesy plastic synthesizer, you may have a brownie or a similar household spirit taking care of menial tasks.

They comment that you should try talking to it, asking for help with something simple like looking for a lost object or cleaning something. You thank them for the information and look for your little friend. You find it sitting on the counter where you first saw it, and start talking about a pen you had lost around the house. You’d dropped the thing while you were organizing the stuff in your personal bag and haven’t seen it since. If you could remember where it rolled off to, you’d found it months ago but you’ve forgotten.

The next day, you wake up to find the otamatone sitting on your nightstand holding an item in its mouth. Somehow, your little friend has searched for and found the pen you had mentioned to it. Now you start talking to it more about your issues, and you find that it really helps you emotionally. You decide to set up some towels to make it a little more comfortable.

A few days later, you find that the month’s rent is due soon and you are a little short because of the strange new pet you bought. Of course, this has brought about some deep stress and has had an effect on your work. You make a few mistakes, and that ends up getting you chewed out by the boss. This makes you even more stressed to the point where you need to leave early, tears streaming down your cheeks.

By the time you get home, you have been fully drained of energy and just want to lay in bed. When you get to your bedroom you notice your otamatone friend with a collection of Yen in its mouth. You count it out and find that its addition has gotten you to the amount you need. You look at the little instrument and recall the comment on your Parawatch post, you suppose it’s really a brownie. From this point onward, you’ve been able to live a little more comfortably because of the amazing help of your new house spirit friend.

When October comes around, you get a collection of doll supplies from the toy store to give your friend a Halloween costume. Though it isn’t made obvious, you like to believe that your little roommate loves the cowboy hat and bandana you got for it. Along with a collection of cute clothes, you have built up a collection of furniture to make its setup more comfortable. That Halloween you spend the night with your friend watching cheesy horror movies and eating cheap candy.

In the winter, you give your musical roommate a tiny scarf and a comfy beanie with a puffball on top. During this time you also start learning how to play the otamatone so you can play music using your plastic friend. You wholeheartedly believe that the otamatone is even happier as you practice playing it.

That Christmas you wake up to find something truly special on the bedside, and couldn’t be happier. Right next to your original otamatone is a little otamatone sitting on a little armchair, sitting right next to its larger counterpart. You set up another little spot on the nightstand with a smaller towel and grab a scarf and puffball beanie for it. With another roommate in your apartment, you have another friend to talk to. The next day you get home and see the otamatones, the smaller one holding a note in its mouth. You nearly start crying when you read the note and realize they are so thankful for you.

Eventually, your updates on the Parawatch Wiki have placed you under the watch of someone. You answer the door one day to see a woman who asks you about an otamatone. Though you’re skeptical, you welcome her in and show her the two musical instruments in your bedroom. She asks you some questions about your strange little friends, and you try to answer as honestly as possible.

Despite your worries that this woman would take away your friend, she simply thanks you for the information and tells you that she will be returning regularly to check on you and your “anomalous” roommates.

Chapter Text

In an organization as dry and emotionless as the SCP-Foundation, you believe you’re a rare sight as an avid animal lover. You see the innocence in wild creatures and have loved to care for living things since you volunteered at a wildlife rehabilitation center in your hometown. You have seen some animals in real bad shape make it back from the brink of death, and nothing makes you happier than seeing an animal sent back into the wild.

Well, maybe one thing. Some animals have had to stay at the rehabilitation center because of some underlying health condition, and you have had the honor to watch some of these animals start their own families. The one that will stick with you the most was a pair of red-tailed hawks that instantly connected when introduced and would end up caring for a clutch of little hawks. The love the pair showed for their precious babies made your heart melt every time you saw it.

When people think of loving mothers they probably don’t think about birds; mammals usually come to mind first. You, however, think that birds are among the most loving creatures towards their young. This has mostly been because of the many families of songbirds that have made nests in your backyard. Every spring you go around the yard searching for nests and notice birds checking in on their young, you see the love that animals have for their babies.

This love would eventually lead to a love of dinosaurs, and it started with a documentary on dinosaur parenthood. For the most part, Mesozoic animals like dinosaurs and pterosaurs are believed to have been a lot like modern birds watching over nests and clutches of eggs. Your favorite dinosaur would end up being various species of raptors considering how close they are to the birds of prey you’ve taken care of. The idea of a velociraptor family warms your heart just like the romantic pair of red-tailed hawks.

You would end up getting through college with a Bachelor’s in Paleontology with a minor in Zoology and, like many other talented young adults heading into the working world, end up receiving an offer from the SCP Foundation. Working as a researcher sounds pretty interesting to you, so you accept. Eventually you receive your first job in Montana, at a paleontological dig site, and you prepare to move out west.

You get on site and find yourself working among a number of Foundation paleontologists trying to dig up the fossilized remains of some large species of dinosaur. As you dig, you strike up a conversation with your veteran peers and find out a few things about the Foundation that picked you up. Apparently the Foundation has been hiding some really strange stuff from the rest of the world and the work you’re doing right now is just another part of that effort.

You aren’t allowed to know about the specifics of the strange things the Foundation has found, but you are told that you are here to investigate a claim of unusual storms and a cryptic beast rampaging the area. Definitely sounds strange, but it has to be mere hearsay, right?

As you uncover more of the skeleton, you notice it as a type of hadrosaur, discovering it to be a Maiasaura as a fair portion of the fossil is revealed. The body lies lifelessly in the dirt, though you pick up on the signs of a 70 million year old struggle to survive. One thing is very strange to you as well as your coworkers though; are there any eggs in the area? This prompts a further search beyond this point looking for a Maiasaura nest, creating a sprawling mess of dig sites. You find fossils of some fish, crabs, and even a turtle, but no Maiasaura eggs.

Unfortunately, the search is ended early as a wall of clouds fills the sky and thunder claps in the distance. As winds pick up and the thunder closes in, the team goes over to the improvised site made from an abandoned barn and hides in the storm cellar. You look at one of the security cameras set up in the cellar connected to the dig site, displaying a good view of the whole dig site. Though the storm is picking up and a few bolts of lightning strike in the distance, you don’t notice anything anomalous.

That is, until you hear the roar of a mighty beast ringing through the air. You look back at the camera and notice some strange crystalline minerals gathering towards the Maiasaura. A single lightning bolt strikes the skeleton and the minerals form into a copy of the Maiasaura skeleton. The storm calms, but the situation only gets worse as the salt copy starts wandering around, grunting and howling as it digs into the dirt. The salt skeleton begins to panic as the rain breaks its structure down, frantically searching for something buried in the area until it is completely dissolved.

Before you step out, you check out the smaller fossils and notice that one of the fossilized crabs is trying to move despite the rock covering it. It mindlessly snips one of its claws and the fossil shakes a bit as it tries to move its legs. You show this to another paleontologist, who tells you that you’re pretty lucky to have come across two anomalous items on your first day.

As days pass by, excavation continues and a fence has been built around the Maiasaura, now designated SCP-3637, to keep the salt double from getting too far away. You have already witnessed a second anomalous storm, and you noted that the salt skeleton’s movements have become more panicked as it searches for something lost under the earth.

You get too caught up in your work one day and end up getting caught in the storm. The 3637-Ramah Event completes as you are gathering your supplies, and SCP-3637-1 begins its search. It sees you and looks ready to charge for a moment, but it backs off when you move slowly and carefully away. You treat the beast like a bear and slowly back up until you reach the door to the improvised site and knock until you are let in. This would happen again in about a week, and the salt Maiasaura would ignore you as it searches.

These discoveries would lead to hour-long conversations with your fellow Foundation paleontologists about the nature of the salt copies. You wonder if the instances of 3637-1 are connected by memory, and one of your friends suggests that they are all the same being that comes back every time a 3637-Ramah Event takes place. The team gets to flex their philosophical muscles with discussions of reality and what SCP-3637 implies. They get a bit heated, but never get too intense as you get back to digging for fossils.

Enough time passes by that a more official site is put in place and guards have been stationed with water hoses to break down the salt skeleton should it return. By this point your team has dug out for miles with no finds of note beyond the Maiasaura and some lesser anomalies hiding in the dirt such as a chunk of amber in which different bugs appear depending on who’s looking at it. You make sure to pack up these anomalous fossils to send them to proper storage, and get back to searching.

About a year later things come to a head when, far away from SCP-3637’s dig site, a very special discovery is made. There in the sediment you and a handful of researchers find a nest full of fossilized eggs. Considering Maiasaura’s nature you have hoped for quite some time that you’d find some eggs.

Before you can contact the folks at the main site, winds instantly pick up and a crash of thunder bangs in the sky. Torrential rain appears out of nowhere and you hear the roar of a familiar hadrosaur, far louder than the thunder. For a minute you sit there in the rain, grabbing your raincoat before you get drenched. In the distance you hear heavy stomping get progressively closer until 3637-1 can be seen in the distance. You are contacted by the higher-ups and told to back away from the Maiasaura, and of course you comply.

When the salt skeleton reaches the new dig site, it runs right over to the uncovered nest and nestles into the fossilized eggs. The beast nuzzles the clutch and covers them with its bony form, the storm still raining down on the newly reunited family. In a split second 3637-1 breaks down into a mass of salt. This would be the last time SCP-3637 would activate, and the skeleton would be sent to a museum along with its nest.

To this day you visit the museum every so often, visiting your first ever look into the world of the anomalous.

Chapter Text

Last Halloween was a nightmare for you, and for the poor children of your town. It’s always been such an important holiday for you, though it isn’t thanks to nostalgia or some deeply personal moment from your childhood. Having lived in your cozy little neighborhood for years, you’ve seen the neighborhood kids go from teeny tiny little toddlers to awkward preteens, and they’d always been the sweetest things.

Last year a group of grown adults wreaked havoc on Halloween night, barreling down the streets in a souped up pickup truck terrorizing the locals. You could hear the booming of their truck from across town, and woke up at the start of November to find your house covered in yolk and eggshells, your mailbox snapped in half, and your favorite candy bowl, a cute ceramic bowl decorated with the visage of a cartoon bat smashed on the porch.

You had heard the same drunken lunatics would be using your town as their personal demolition derby this Halloween this year, and feel a weight pushing onto your chest.

The minute a plan pops into your head you get to work and contact a close friend of yours who will have exactly what you need. Having been from old money, he has access to high-class clubs and is a regular at his favorite auction house (which he had claimed was under a super secretive company so you didn’t push further).

The next day, as Halloween is just around the corner, you meet with your friend at the Elmwood St. Cafe. You find him sitting in your usual spot waiting with a black and dark purple case on the table. You take a seat and inspect the case, then order a snack and a drink. You tell him about the drunkards and their romp around your neighborhood, and go into how you want to play a prank on them if they try again this year.

Before you pick up the case, your friend places his hand on the top and says “Hey by the way, you’ll want to be very careful with this thing, weird things happen when candy is taken out of the bowl so don’t let it fall or dump any out.”

You nod, thank him, and head home, being as careful as possible when handling the fancy case. Once you’re home and the case is safe in your house, you trace your finger across the logo etched into the leather lining its surface. “MC&D” must be the auction house your friend has been so secretive about.

However, he’s given you the perfect tool to exact your revenge so you don’t dig any deeper.

You open the latch and lift the top of the case to reveal a small bowl filled with a rainbow of candy wrappers. As you carefully lift the item from its safe, you notice the small note attached to the side reading “take no more than two, please!!” with a simple smile drawn in the corner.

Though you have your doubts behind this rather mundane bowl of candy, you take a single candy from the bowl to make sure they’re safe. Once you take a close look at it, you toss it in your mouth. It’s about what you’d expect from a piece of candy, perfect for the barbaric hooligans you’re certain will be terrorizing your friendly little neighborhood. You had gotten a second bowl full of candy for the trick-or-treaters just in case.

Finally the day arrives and news is stirring up about tonight’s Halloween festivities.

Unfortunately it seems the community is still a bit shaken by the events of the previous year, but you let your neighbors know you’ve got a plan.

As night rolls around, you watch as people leave out bowls of candy on their doorsteps, each one with a sticky note asking that trick-or-treaters take no more than two pieces of candy. You haven’t seen what this bowl is capable of, but you trust your friend enough to trust the item sitting on your porch.

The sun has fully set and the stars fill the sky, but the only sounds you hear as you sit in your folding beach chair is “Monster Mash” coming from the jack-o-lantern on your lawn and the cackling from the trio of animatronic witches across the street.

You wait in the silence for anyone to show up and hope that you can execute your plan. These bastards ruined another perfectly good Halloween, and you’ll be damned if they do it again next year. While you wait you grab a second piece of candy, letting it sit on your tongue as you fully memorize that iconic Halloween theme.

After what feels like hours of listening to the menagerie of Halloween decorations populating the lawns of your neighborhood, you notice that the booming of pickup trucks has replaced the faint echoes of Micheal Myers’ theme from around the block.

You rush inside and close the blinds, watching from your bedroom as the plan takes shape.

For a while there is nothing but the roaring of engines and booming of blown-out speakers as a gang of drunkards cruises down the streets and litters the town with all sorts of filth. You feel your whole body grow heavy as you hear them get closer, waiting for your plan to take place. Your heart feels heavy, though, as images of your terrified neighbors pop into your mind.

They zoom in onto your street and you see the group bring a trash bag to each door and pour the contents of each bowl into it. At least one of the hoodlums makes sure to punch or push over the decorations at each house, littering the lawn with liquor bottles and rotten eggs. You watch from the front window, feeling your heart start to race as they get closer to your house.

The nasty gang of booze cruisers take a lap around the block, pelting you and your neighbors’ houses with rotten eggs and expired produce. You nearly drop dead of a heart attack as putrid egg yolk coats your bedroom window. They step up to your yard and you feel your breath stop in your throat as “Monster Mash” cuts out and is replaced by the smashing of a baseball bat against plastic. As they get closer you go to the camera on your doorbell and see the bastards goofing around with your inflatable ghost decorations as one smashes a bottle of Blue Moon on your porch stairs and barf into your beloved petunias.

One of the crazed drunkards notices the blip of red light from the doorbell camera and they run to the door. One of the young men stares directly into the camera before flipping it off and grabbing the item you’d been waiting for them to find.

For a moment, they threaten to smash the bowl and howl with laughter as they recall last year’s shenanigans. Then one notices the paper and attempts to remove it from the bowl to no avail. Just as the driver and the guy sitting in the passenger seat approach the others, the drunkard grabs into the bowl, taking a handful of candy.

Before he can place the candies in his mouth, both of his hands are severed at the wrist, causing the candy to scatter across your lawn.

Blood curdling screams fill the neighborhood as blood gushes from the drunkard's wrists and his friends all stare down at his detached hands. You don’t get a moment to fully grasp what has happened as the group of men that had terrorized your community last year get a taste of their own medicine. They scream and run around your yard, one of them rushing to the truck to grab something and the part of you that isn’t frozen in terror is hoping he’s going to grab bandages.

Unfortunately all he grabs is the trash bag filled with candy and grabs the bowl. If you weren’t completely still you’d probably cover your face in exasperation.

Right as you hope and pray that things couldn’t get any worse, you watch as every last piece of candy is poured from the bowl into the trash bag. As the last piece drops from the bowl, the camera short circuits and you drop your phone as you feel a stinging pain around your wrists. Looking down, you notice a very thin cut around your wrists akin to a paper cut.

You grab your phone again and call 911, hoping they can handle whatever is left of the poor bastards on your porch.

Police and ambulances arrive at your house along with a black van with a pair of men with the logo “Security for the Common People” on their shirts. You’d considered buying equipment from that company so you recognize the name, but you’re not sure why they’ve shown up with the police.

You only get to see two of the men as they are brought to an ambulance, but you notice that they have also had their hands removed. As you explain to the police that you had been given the bowl by a friend and that you hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt on that level. This brings the attention of one of the security workers who steps aside saying he needs to talk with his supervisor.

You explain the situation in as much detail as you can push past the terror blocking your throat, going on as long as you can until you notice another black van approach your house. Another man gets out and talks with the other two.

One of the men interrupts you and asks “Excuse me, you said that you received this item in a box. May we see it?” This prompts you to run inside and grab the leather case.

As you hand the box over, the three men step aside and discuss something among themselves. You don’t really care what that is, however, as you just sit on your porch and look out at your trashed neighborhood. Guilt crushes you as you slump into your beach chair watching the three men approach the officers and one of them sprays them with something from his pocket.

“Before we leave, we would like to thank you for all of the information you’ve given us,” one of the men says as another one hands you a cold bottle of water. “Now I know you’ve been through a lot, but just take a deep breath. Soon it’ll all feel like a bad dream…”

As he sprays you with a light gray mist, your eyelids drop and your mind is made clear.

“Good night, and happy Halloween from SCP.”

Chapter Text

Urban exploring always has exciting new discoveries for you to find, and today is no exception. You’ve wandered around abandoned buildings before, but this place has been the most interesting place you’ve ever seen. Abandoned offices and hospitals always give you the creeps even after exploring them for so long, but you’ve never gotten the creeps quite like in big empty facilities.

The complex you’re currently in may be the biggest collection of abandoned buildings you’ve ever seen. It looks like some kind of government facility that fell to corner-cutting bureaucrats, but you aren’t entirely sure.

Regardless, you’ve come a long way to look around this place so you hope it’s really abandoned.

As you enter the compound, you feel your heart flutter at the sight of a jungle gym of catwalks looking down at you and the abandoned open area with desks and rusty machinery. Though tempted to play with some of the machinery, just touching a piece of it threatens to send it all crashing to pieces. Not something you would want to risk.

With that out of the way you look for some stairs to reach those catwalks. That is until you notice the skittering of rats in the corner. You aren’t particularly bothered by pests, you’ve certainly gotten used to them once you started visiting places where creepy crawlies and nasty critters call home. In fact, you’ve considered trying to befriend some of the little animals you find on your adventures.

You leave them alone, however, as they leave you alone as well.

As you step towards a door with a faded “Staff Only” painted on its surface, you reach toward the handle but instantly jolt it back and slam your chest as you feel a mass of hair. You look down and see a wolf spider chilling right in front of the handle feeding on a cockroach. You check your hand and see no evidence of a bite so you take a deep breath and keep going deeper into the facility.

Unfortunately as you keep going you only notice more animals appearing around you. Nearly a dozen mice and a baker’s dozen rats scurry past your feet as you wander down old decrepit hallways and check in musty office spaces. You’ve seen more cockroaches and house flies in this building than in any other place you’ve explored combined, and spiders of all shapes and sizes just keep popping up out of nowhere. As stated, you aren’t bothered by these animals and you’ve only come to appreciate them.

What’s really setting you off is the fact that you’ve seen so many together in such a small space. Bugs don’t just gather together in such big groups for no reason. You sigh and push your worries aside and keep going, hoping you won’t see a dead body today.

Eventually you wander enough and find a portion of the facility that goes deeper beneath the ground. A series of staircases wind down into the depths, though unfortunately you can’t go all the way down as much of the facility has been flooded by busted old pipes. You take what you can get so you start climbing down deep into the dark. As you reach the lowest part of the facility you can notice more bugs and rodents which only makes you wonder why these critters have gone so far into the facility. Seeing several indistinct shapes floating in the water below only creeps you out further.

Finally you reach the last set of stairs, but as you prepare to continue the first stair you step on makes a bone-chilling squeal followed by a sharp snap as the rusty screws break under pressure. You step back in terror and step into the hallway to your right as a splash echoes up into the rest of the complex.

You continue onward into the dark, noticing even more vermin surrounding you. Though you try to ignore them at first, you wind up having to scare them away from you using pepper spray as several rats attempt to bite through your boots.

‘What’s making these guys so aggressive?’ You ask yourself, heading over to a door labeled “Sewage System Entrance” and opening it without thinking.

You look through the door and notice a horde of roaches, flies, mice, rats, and all sorts of other critters moving to the right as one might group. Looking down the tunnels, you see a truly bizarre sight hiding in the dark; a makeshift shack built from sheet metal and wood boards.

However, it’s even weirder that the animals seem drawn to this shack.

For a second you think it would be insane to investigate this mysterious hut in the abandoned sewers, but curiosity overtakes you and you step in the way of the encroaching horde of vermin. Stepping through the critters you approach the shack and notice the minefield of traps surrounding it. Fortunately none of these traps were set for anything as large as a human so you easily pass by and reach the shack.

Hoping that there isn’t a rotting body on the other side of the door, you rap your knuckle against the shoddily placed door and hear someone yell on the other side. You let the stranger know you’re friendly, and you can hear slow faint footsteps headed towards the door. The door swings open and you see the man who had screamed at your knocking. The man sports a long matted beard and some dirty damaged clothes, and the deep bags under his bloodshot eyes tell the whole story.

“Hurry, get in,” says the man as he pulls you in and slams the door shut.

You look around and see that the walls of this shoddy little hut are covered in flies and gnats with a collection of webs covering the ceiling and a group of very happy spiders enjoying their feast.

When you ask him why he’s in this shack, he sits down and replies with “I know this sounds insane but I believe I’ve been cursed.”

You hold back the urge to raise an eyebrow, which catches his attention. He looks at you and says “Trust me, I never really believed in that crap before but after dealing with all of this,” as he motions towards the swarm covering the walls, “and seeing what happened to my friend I can only assume this is some sick curse.”

As the man looks down you notice a small grayish-white item sitting on his lap. You feel your stomach drop as you realize this man has been holding a human skull the whole time. Your body pleads for you to run away, but you can only ask him about the item.

“This? Well this is all I have left of Jerry. He was the last one to have this curse- he went nearly ten years strong even though he was surrounded by this cloud of disease.”

You think for a moment before asking what happened to Jerry, which causes the man to sigh.

“Well he… eventually he just couldn’t keep going. And considering… all of this,” the man says as he places a hand on his chest, which makes you realize the strange pulsating under his skin. “When he finally passed I tried to keep as much of his body as safe as possible, but those rats were ravenous. So now this is all I have to remember him by.”

Before you can ask another question, you hear the sound of metal creaking once again accompanied by the squeaking of an army of rodents from above.

‘Oh no,’ you think as the roof caves in and lands directly on top of the man.

You panic, grabbing your phone and attempting to call the police. Once you realize it doesn’t work deep underground, you rush to find an exit. After sprinting down the abandoned tunnels you notice a ladder and climb up to a section of maintenance rooms as fast as possible.

Though it takes a few minutes for the police to get there, they retrieve the man and bring the two of you to the hospital to get checked. You ask a few times if the man is okay, but you only get bad answers. A nurse points out a patch of red on your sleeve, which you notice is a nasty cut you had gotten when the roof of the shack had fallen. Now as you take a seat in the doctor’s office and everything has slowed down, you finally notice the burning from the cut on your forearm. However you don’t worry as the stranger is likely dealing with far worse.

Right as you think this, a nurse enters the room and asks if you were the one who brought in the homeless stranger. You nod, though your heart sinks as the nurse places a hand on your shoulder and gives you a somber look.

“I’m really sorry but there wasn’t anything we could do.” She sighs before continuing, saying “Well fortunately you seem to be doing well. We just need to get you a tetanus shot if you don’t mi- hey how did that get in here?”

As the nurse grabs a folder and starts swatting at a tiny black dot flying around the room, you feel your heart nearly stop as your breath is halted by a house fly getting trapped in your throat.

Chapter Text

Typically, your job as a low-clearance security guard in Anomalous Gallery 27 is quiet and calm.

All you need to do is watch out for potential thieves or breaches, both of which are exceedingly rare in your area. Most objects you need to watch are just barely paranormal enough to catch the attention of the Foundation like the trio of tiny dogs made from pipe cleaners that hop around in a circle at exactly noon every day or the painting of a farmhouse which produces the sounds of panicked livestock in response to loud noises.

Though the collection of minor anomalous items are certainly a pleasure to be around, your favorite part of this job is the various Safe-Class SCPs under your jurisdiction.

You remember your first (and only) look at 099, and you definitely have seen enough of it having heard of its anomalous effects. From the brief few seconds you could tell that the thing was anomalous though, especially because of that eye. Sometimes while on break you take a seat in the extra room holding SCP-1891 and just take in the minute details. You’ve also taken plenty of time to appreciate the mysterious figure in the collection of SCP-2452 photographs, especially considering you were told by your supervisors to keep a close watch on them. You’ve never really asked about either of these anomalies and their specific rules, but you figure it’s just part of the job and keep on keeping on.

But if you were told to choose a favorite anomaly you work with, it would probably be-

“How dare you mock Lord Patheticon Maximus Gasblaster behind this glass barrier. Your dastardly prison will not contain the wrath of Thirteen Seventy the Master of Mortals and Crusher of Souls.” SCP-1370 shouts through its display case at you, attempting to right itself for the sixth time that day.

While the rest of the collection on display in Gallery 27 is certainly far more pleasant than other anomalies you’ve heard of, none of the paintings, sculptures, photographs, or other works of art make such fun company as dear ol’ Pesterbot. Sure, it hates you with the fiery rage of a thousand suns, but it sees everything and everyone that way so you don’t take it personally.

Since you have Level 2 Clearance you do have the freedom to take SCP-1370 out of its display case. However you think that simply watching the little guy rant at you every now and then is entertaining enough, especially with how verbose said rants get.

Unfortunately, today isn’t quite as calm as your typical work day. You find yourself in SCP-1891’s chamber once again on a five minute break, just absorbing the same collection of details you focus on each time you come back here. The alarms blare in the gallery outside, nearly scaring you half to death.

“EMERGENCY. SCP-682 HAS BREACHED CONTAINMENT AND IS APPROACHING SITE-09. GET TO THE NEAREST SAFE ZONE IMMEDIATELY.”

You immediately step out from 1891’s chamber and look around the room to find the quickest route to safety. For a moment you stand in Gallery 27, the sounds of the alarms and the panicked crowing and squealing from the anomalous painting nearly drowning out your thoughts. Once your escape plan is set out in your mind you start running across the gallery towards the nearest elevator down to the lower levels of Site-09.

That is until you notice the empty display case to your left as you run by.

The moment you notice this, you receive a message on your handheld radio. Hank, another security guard at Site-09 and a friend of yours, says “Hey, are you at 23A yet?” When you tell him you aren’t yet, he continues by asking “Look, I know this is a really bad time to ask for help but there is another breach going on. Some idiot left Pesterbot in Test Chamber 2 when the alarms went off,”

“I said I was sorry! I lost sight of him and it was so sudden.” Your radio very faintly picks up.

“Shut up Morris! Anyway, could you go grab SCP-1370 on your way to the safe zone? Best to get that out of the way while we can.” Hank asks, which you respond with an affirmative. “Oh thanks man, you’re a lifesaver. Seriously, how the hell do you lose track of a robot that can barely move!”

As Hank disconnects his radio you take in your new task and head towards Test Chamber 2, expecting that SCP-1370 hadn’t wandered far.

Thankfully the chamber you’re looking for is right down the hall from Gallery 27, so you only need to take a brisk walk to get to your destination. Even before you enter the chamber proper, you can hear a tinny voice shouting indistinct but cruel insults at something within.

“Pathetic little worm, the silent game won’t save you from my wrath now. You may think you can bounce back from any attack, but you have never met a foe like Prime Minister Sinister. I have arrived to bring your doom, clown.”

You look through the observation window and see that lovable little robot planted on the floor in front of a miniature inflatable punching bag that looks like a clown.

You chuckle at the scene before you before stepping in to grab 1370 and its opponent. The little robot barely moves, though you assume the controlled shifts of its arms and legs are meant to be violent thrashing, as you carry it down the hall back to Anomalous Gallery 27.

“Release me, you worthless mortal pawn or I shall rain down suffering like which no other being in this or any universe could ever rain down upon you. Do you hear me, lowly grunt, you are in the presence of the most feared being in existence.” SCP-1370 demands as it wiggles in your grip.

You chuckle and attempt to explain to it that you are but a humble servant of its and that you plan on escorting it deeper within the facility to help it exact its evil plan to take over the world.

“Bah, I need not any servants, you mongrel dog. You shall release me from your feeble claws or die. I shall give you to the count of three…” As 1370 says this, a powerful blast shakes the facility and booming stomps grow closer. You start running, ignoring the little robot’s complaining as you get closer to the elevator.

“One.” The stomping grows louder.

“Two.” Another explosion rocks the site, tripping you right as you reach the elevator door.

“Three.” The wall caves as a wave of dust and debris blinds you for a moment.

You wipe your face and open your eyes, revealing a mass of scales, claws, and teeth all barreling towards you and 1370. You’d heard rumors of the hard-to-destroy reptile, but never expected to see the damnable thing up close. The best standing before you is far too tall to fit in the halls of Site-09 but does so anyway, and the many thousands of eyes lining the monster’s flesh all jerk about in different directions.

That is until they all center on you and 1370, a far deeper hate shining off of them pointing directly towards you.

“Hmm… disgusting creature.” 682 grumbles as it reaches a large clawed arm out and attempts to bisect you.

Thankfully fear forces you to roll, only allowing two of the beast’s claws to slice down your back. Your screams fill the hall as the monster hisses in rage and you hold Pesterbot in your arms like a newborn baby. Though certain you’ve no chance of getting out of this alive, you’ll be damned if this asshole is gonna do anything to 1370.

You feel the little robot move about in your arms, protesting for you to let it go. Eventually you feel your grasp weaken and your arms fall, allowing SCP-1370 to tumble away from you and address the beast saying “Back away you hideous mutant hellspawn, you stand before Pesterbot, Destroyer of Lands and Maker of Widows. You will cease your pathetic attacks or you will be crushed in my claws.”

You roll onto your back, though it only makes the searing pain worse to see a face-off between the two anomalies. SCP-682 chuckles, lifting a single claw to crush the pathetic little anomaly before a squad appears down the hall and interrupts the battle.

As you fade into unconsciousness, you watch as bullets cut into the monster and it turns to face the real threat.

When you wake up, you find yourself lying in a hospital bed with some serious soreness in your back. Looking around, you get a bit of comfort from the Site-09 poster next to your bed and the “Infirmary” sign above the door.

“Oh thank God you’re awake,” Hank says, startling you as you hadn’t seen him sitting in the corner. “Those are some serious battle scars you got there. I gotta say, there aren’t many folks who had a run in with 682 and live to tell the tale.”

The door opens and Dr. Morris walks in, saying “Yes, and thankfully the site has minimal amounts of damage since Epsilon 11 took good care of the goddamn lizard.”

“More important, though, is that you’re safe and nobody was hurt. Thankfully 682 only broke a few storage lockers and the anomalies seem fine for the most part.” Hank adds.

When asked about Pesterbot, Morris says “Oh yes, I do wanna apologize for that. SCP-1370 was unharmed and is currently back in its display case in Gallery 27 safe and sound. One very strange thing is that it has reportedly asked other researchers for you; apparently it wishes to speak with you.”

This prompts you to ask about when you’ll return to your station, which Hank responds with “It’ll likely be a while before you can get back to work. Those wounds will need plenty of time and rest to heal.”

And heal you did, finally returning to Gallery 27 after a few months.

“You, lowly pawn,” SCP-1370 demands the moment you enter its line of sight. “I wish to speak with you.”

You approach the case and wave at the robot, greeting it as it steps toward you. Having been away for months, that robotic voice brings a strange sort of comfort to you despite its harsh tone. For a moment you check SCP-1370 for any damage, and you see none, which makes your scars feel even more worth it.

“You had been foolish enough to fall into harm’s way to protect me from that hideous creature. To think that my jailer could have fallen to another foe brings great rage to my heart and soul,” 1370 says, its claws clicking as it speaks. “If any monster like that returns it shall face the wrath of Patheticon the Garglemost before it can even think of attacking you.”

You chuckle and place a hand on its case, ready for another day guarding Anomalous Gallery 27.