The Scent of a Toaster - SCP Foundation

INCIDENT LOG

Following the success of Project Eisen-Simpson and the containment of SCP-4799-1, SCP-4799-1 breached containment by reverse engineering the refrigeration unit in its cell to create a multiversal travel device.

Before its departure, Containment Agent Riley managed to fatally wound SCP-4799-1. It is suspected that, even if SCP-4799-1 managed to travel to another dimension, it would expire shortly afterwards. Therefore, SCP-4799-1 is now considered neutralized.

For the first time in eternity, ToasterHead stepped out of his warehouse and into the outside world.

Normally, he would never leave the safe confines of his home. However, there hadn’t been any humans put into his domain for what seemed like forever, and he decided to find out for himself what was happening.

The sky and the moon had been turned a bright blue. A thousand men turned birds blotted out the sky like clouds, and made a squawking racket that could be compared to a jet engine. For all the way ToasterHead could see, all the buildings, including his beloved warehouse, were in borderline ruins.

ToasterHead took a deep, long breath to smell the world. He didn't have a nose, so he couldn't smell; however, he never questioned these kind of things, like how he could see without eyes. He smelled sulfur, ruin: thousands of televisions shattered, couches set to flames, and clocks unoiled and nonfunctional. It would've brought a tear to his eye.

As ToasterHead stood outside, feeling the wind for the first time in ages, he saw a red flash against the sky, and a human-looking figure fell through the layer of birdmen to the ground. A few detached from the flock, obviously suspicious of the new phenomena.

ToasterHead decided that it was worth investigating, at the very least. His appliance friends were getting impatient and, if nothing else, maybe he could just capture a birdman to show for it.

He picked up a lead pipe at the side of the road and moved towards his destination.

Despite the birdmen’s head start, ToasterHead moved swiftly and managed to reach the body before the birds did.

It didn’t look as much like a human as ToasterHead had hoped. In fact, the body reminded ToasterHead more of some canine creature than anything else. ToasterHead took a sniff of the body. Like one could smell burnt food, he could smell the abuse of appliances on the body; a strong scent that made ToasterHead sick. He wanted to crush the head, right there and then.

It would do quite nicely.

As ToasterHead slung the body over his shoulder, he was taken to the ground by a large body colliding into his back. As he turned and stood up, he saw three birdmen, menacingly floating in the air in preparation for an attack. They smelled of aggressive mint, intimidation, and of their hatred for the toaster that had just stole their potential feast.

The middle one assaulted ToasterHead first. Now aware of his attackers, he swung his lead pipe into the stomach of the offender. He let loose a distraught caw as he flew across the field.

The two other birdmen flew in for attack. ToasterHead brought his pipe back up in an arc, smashing one in the hip and the other one square in the chin. The one with its hip smashed began to caw in a frightened tone and flew away, while the one hit in the chin became unconscious.

In the wake of this small victory, ToasterHead slung the body back over his shoulder and went back home. However, he noticed that the flock was beginning to bend in his direction, and he smelled the distinct threat of confrontation, so he hastened his pace as to not be intercepted.

As he reentered the barnyard and locked the door, he met with SpiderHeater and showed him his spoils. ToasterHead always liked being around SpiderHeater; he had the scent of vanilla, of somebody who cared, somebody who ToasterHead wanted to be around.

Good, SpiderHeater replied in a hissing tone, but why so long?

ToasterHead explained the birds, and his encounter. He also explained how he feels that the warehouse may be under siege sometime soon.

A crisis, replied SpiderHeater, and— hmm, I think the body you brought us might be still alive.

ToasterHead hadn’t considered to check; he thought surviving such a great fall to be impossible. However, he took her pulse, and found the body to be alive.

Good, do what you want with it, said SpiderHeater in response, but I will help prepare this barn for defense. SpiderHeater skittered away.

But then ToasterHead realized that he’d need help. Ever since OvenMan disappeared and FaucetSnake betrayed them for the Great Plumbing, it was really only ToasterHead, SpiderHeater, and CoffeeSpitter that were still here after the pilgrimage. If he wanted to save himself from the birdmen, as much as he hated to save someone who smelled of abuse, he’d need some assistance.

And so the disassembler became the surgeon.

The first thing ToasterHead noted, after cutting open her back, is that her spine shouldn’t look like that. ToasterHead had seen a lot of spines in his life, and he knew they were supposed to be curvy, but not that curvy.

After a frustrating few minutes of trying to rearrange it, ToasterHead decided to do away with the concept of a "spine" in the first place, yanking it out and replacing it with a few insulated wires and a metal pipe that ToasterHead hoped would be flexible enough.

Next, ToasterHead addressed her left arm, which he knew from experience couldn’t bend at that angle. He tried to arrange it at a more flattering angle, but it wouldn’t budge. When he applied force, it snapped right off. Surprised, ToasterHead simply sewed an eggbeater to the end of the elbow and hoped she wouldn’t notice.

The remainder of ToasterHead's modifications came in the forms of replacing some useless joints with spare door hinges, and sealing cuts and bruises with staples and dog teeth. There was a weird metal thing that ToasterHead assumed to be some kind of fashion statement blocking an artery, so he just moved it over to another artery to hopefully leave her intact.

Finally, ToasterHead took an electrical plug, plugged it into her new spine, and shocked the body back to life.

She awoke with a deep breath and a lurch up, immediately unplugging her from her lifebed. Immediately, she took on the scent of diaper powder; the scent of surprise. ToasterHead tried to plug her back in, but she turned to ToasterHead and her eyes lit up with fear. She backed away and screamed in a language ToasterHead did not know, but could tell was profanity.

ToasterHead waved his arms around in a gesture of innocence, then pointed to the door of the barnhouse as he walked to it. The dog-girl, expression turned from fright to confusion, followed. ToasterHead popped open the trapdoor and followed the ladder up to the warehouse. Though he tried to make it seem like his subjects were transported to an entirely different world, the two areas were actually connected by a simple hidden door. It amused ToasterHead in a way that his fellow pilgrims never really understood.

As the dog-girl emerged from the hidden door, ToasterHead pointed out the window of the warehouse. When the dog-girl saw the birds, she immediately averted her eyes and covered her ears. In a gesture of confusion and inquisition, ToasterHead cocked his toaster head to the side. The dog-girl pointed her finger towards the secret door, smelling of fresh mint, fear, and went running for the ladder.

The dog-girl had been pacing for an hour or two now, smelling of jerky, apprehension. SpiderHeater and CoffeeSpitter had both inquired about the dog-girl, mostly what was she doing walking about when we could be disassembling her, but ToasterHead dodged the question and told them to gather together the inert appliances to prepare for war.

The dog-girl seemed to get an idea and she emanated the scent of freshly cut rock, ingenuity. She ran over to ToasterHead and mimed a series of gestures that ToasterHead didn't really get. The dog-girl apparently recognized his confusion, because she decided to just go ahead and do it anyways.

She took a microwave and pulled the cover right off.

ToasterHead felt a wave of shock and burnt toast echo through his body. He had helped her recover, when she was on the floor, broken, and bleeding. To take one of his own apart like that…

He lunged at the dog-girl in anger.

Shock ducked out of the way of the odd toaster man's tackle. What the hell? she thought. For once, Shock wasn't thinking about herself; she wanted to help the toaster man too. But for now, she focused on running away while yanking the circuitry out of the microwave.

Though Shock could run pretty fast, whatever he'd put inside of her joints slowed her down, and the toaster man ran faster. Shock tried to turn around and slide through the toaster man's legs, but her left leg's joints locked out and she instead preformed an awkward roll that knock the toaster man over. She scrambled to her feet and ran back towards the appliance pile while still trying to use her now-useless eggbeater hand to pull the circuitry out of the microwave.

Suddenly, the weird spider thing came out of nowhere and stood facing Shock. She slowed to a halt, and faced its looming presence. She heard the toaster man coming from behind her. She lunged to grab a piece of copper piping from the pile.

Then the trapdoor threw itself open as dozens, if not hundreds, of bird-men flew into the room. The spider and the toaster man froze, and Shock took the opportunity to dive behind a table. The dive drove some nail into her hip, and she audibly winced as she tried to suppress the pain. She dropped the circuitry and put her hand to her hip in a small attempt to suppress the pain. Behind her, she heard the hissing of the spider and the combined squeaking and squawking of the birds.

Looking over the table, she saw the toaster man, brandishing a lead pipe. With a swing, he cleared three bird-men and brought a brutal fist into another's face. Five bird-men took their place and slammed into the toaster man's body, knocking him to the ground. They began to peck at his mannequin body, taking bits and pieces off.

Turned back around, she picked up the microwave and further disassembled it, all the while covering her ears with her shoulders to avoid exposure to the birds. Despite the protection, she still heard the incessant squawking of the bird-men and the bonk of their attacks.

Eventually, she found out that her eggbeater-hand was useful in coiling the circuitry of the microwave around the dimension-hopping device that she'd brought with her. After she'd coiled it to an acceptable degree, she began to shove it into the copper pipe, which was hard to do with just the eggbeater.

A bird-man flew above her and began to squawk at her. Looking up, she took her eggbeater hand and used it to punch the bird-man's skull. Using her free hand, she delivered another punch to his chin before throwing him across the room. The situation was even more dire; the toaster man was pinned against the wall, and one of the bird-men had taken his leg clean off. The spider was surrounded on all sides and struggled to keep the birds from stealing its piping.

Shock made the final modifications necessary; she shoved the circuitry into the piping, and attached it to her eggbeater. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do.

"Hey, toaster man!" she yelled over the cawing.

The toaster man turned towards her. She knew that he probably didn't understand English, but she would try her best to get it across. She exaggerated putting her free hand on the edge of the table and grabbing it hard.

"Hold on!" she yelled, activating the eggbeater. It glowed blue for a second, and everything seemed to float for a while, like under anti-gravity. Then the barnhouse seemed to tear itself away from Earth as the entrance transformed into somewhat of a portal to the space between universes.

The vacuum created was intense. The birdmen let out defeated cacks as they were sucked out through the door into the infinite void. The toaster man clung onto the workdesk, while the spider had slung a rope around a door handle, and her table was lodged in between two file cabinets. The last of the birdmen were flushed out the door, and everything looked like it was going to work.

Then the appliance pile started to drift the way of the birdmen. The toaster man immediately let go of his hold to save the pile.

"No!" yelled Shock. She kicked the table from its lodged spot, making it block the doorway. She tried to cling onto the file cabinet, but her one hand wasn't enough to hold on. The vacuum tore her from her hold and sucked her towards the opening.

Normally, she'd be able to land softly; however, her odd legs and the extra twenty pounds from her modifications didn't make any of this easier, and instead of landing softly like she planned, she crashed through the wall and found herself shooting through the wild, black void.

After the vacuum had subsided, ToasterHead looked out into the void and saw the dog-girl in the distance, still floating there. She'd not only saved him and his fellow pilgrims from the birds, but she'd sacrificed herself to save his appliances. Was it because she had been saved by him? Or was it…

ToasterHead couldn't smell her, not at this distance. But of himself, he smelled mildew, regret. He pivoted on his one leg towards SpiderHeater, who was missing a few pipes and eyeballs. He gave a quiet nod.

After the moment of regret faded, ToasterHead began to ponder where his barnhouse now was. They were shooting through some kind of void, was there some kind of intended destination?

He felt a lurch as his home crashed into some large object. It took him to the ground, requiring help from SpiderHeater to stand up. He heard some creaking from the other side of the barnhouse. He went to investigate, and found a hallway crashed into his barnhouse.

There was text written in blood that ToasterHead couldn't read, but if he could read it, he would know his fate:

WHAT HAPPENED TO SITE-13?

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