The Clock Stopped Ticking Forever Ago - SCP Foundation

The Clock Stopped Ticking Forever Ago

6:22.

She can always tell it's happening when the window starts to fog. It's a subtle sign, but it's the first sign that the changes are coming. The twenty-fourth hour in the 8th's wake, preparing to ring.

The outside hall is temperature controlled, the glass is often cleaned. If it's fogged, something's wrong. There's been some break or falter in the system and it's started it's started. She doesn't even have to see the ghosts to know that it's starting.

Ilse Reynders feels her heartbeat rise in her throat, then drop back down to the same rate it'd been the day she stepped foot in here, only to rise again. Rise, fall, rise, fall, rise, fall — the sudden start and stopping feels like palpitations in her chest. It awkwardly forces stale air out of lungs that aren't even processing the oxygen in ragged gasps.

She can't tell if she wants to stumble away and tuck herself into the corner between the incinerator's piping and the wall, or desperately shove herself against the glass as though that'll dispel the awful fog. That calm before the storm.

6:23.

Reynders wheezes and nearly falls, bracing a hand against the smooth wall and sliding down it to the ground. She curls up against that wall, slamming her eyes shut. Rise and fall, rise and fall goes her heart. There's no other noise, the timeless state of the incinerator lets not even sound permeate within. It leaves only an awful, pulsing nothingness in her ears that's only broken by failed attempts to gasp for air that doesn't exist, and that horrible, discordant beating.

And both are far more deafening than any silence ever could be.

She digs her nails into her arms, faintly feels the painful tearing of skin beneath her nails and the warmth of blood against her fingertips. It'll close in minutes. The blood will rewind up her arm and back into her veins and back into the rise and fall of her heart. Rise and fall, rise and fall.

"Why can't you just get it over with?" she cries out, voice crackling, "I don't… I can't wait like this. For-for the shoe to drop." There's no one to respond. Just those same four walls as always, deaf and uncaring to the pleas that bounce off the old plaster and pipes. She's grown far too comfortable talking to empty air, but what else is she to do?

There's no clock inside here, and if there was it would be useless. Reynders raises her head from her arms and stares at the window. There's still fog. It's still going to happen.

6:24.

Reynders crawls to her feet, and drags herself to the window. The hall is empty, no ghosts, no men, no beasts. She leans against the glass; in comparison to the maddeningly temperate feel of the rest of the room, it's cold.

6:25.

For a moment, she stays just pressed against the glass. Forever her lifeline. Through the fogged window, she can see the clock that's been mounted there. Reynders' eyes trace the hands, the Roman numerals upon the old thing as the red hand ticks.

6:26.

Ah.

It's close. It's horribly, yet tantalizingly close.

Reynders finds herself just staring at the hands of the clock, tracing the second hand with her eyes. There's nothing else to stare at, in this moment. Not the hall, not whatever ghosts may be starting to gather, not the fogged window, not the haggard face reflected in the glass.

6:27.

The only thing she can hear is a faint static from the speaker meant to project her voice, a quiet and low hum of feedback. She latches onto that humming, mind grasps at every odd little dip in the frequency. Every minute change in that droning tone makes Reynders tense, like she's prepared for a blow that will not come.

6:28.

She's not breathing. It doesn't matter. It creates a tightness in her chest nonetheless. As that thin, red line draws onward across the clock's face she breaks eye contact with it. Reynders puts her forehead against the window. Should she close her eyes? Would that even do anything? Anything at all?

There's a sound, down the hall.

6:29.

Her head rises.

The shoe falls.

It feels like the world is exploding, crumbling, reforming — over, and over, and over again. There's no way to be prepared for the feeling of the timeline branching, no way to get used to the sensation. Her legs give out beneath her and she's only still upright via her hands and head pressed against the glass.

A nausea rolls over her in waves, a pulsing, writhing, squirming feeling behind her eyes. Like something kicking and screaming. Reynders dares to open her eyes and is struck by a worsened sense of sickness — the wall of the hall is covered in a myriad of colors and shapes and head-hurting fractals that are there one moment and gone the next. Strobing between the plain concrete and whatever sort of graffiti has been splattered onto it.

It's splattered on the glass, too. There's someone in the hall. She can't tell which of the two halls they're in. Wait. No. It's the painted hall. They're painting on the wall, cackling like a madman. Some of the paint is on the glass. No, no there's no paint on the glass it's clean it's fogged it's paint filling the hall it's a trick of the light there's a god damn cognitohazard on the wall—

CRACK.

She doesn't know why she does it. She doesn't like that she's made a habit of it. Reynders feels blood trickle down her nose, raises a hand to wipe it away as if it won't vanish on its own. Where is the blood? Here? There? Which is here and where is there? Both places? How many? One two, one two, one two, five, one two. Two. Two places. There's a small smear of red paint on the glass. There's a small smear of blood on the glass. It's hers. It's her blood. She'd struck the glass with her head. She doesn't like that she's made a habit of it.

Reynders wheezes out a breath, it comes out a strained, manic sort of sound. The person in the paint-hall pauses but does not stop their task. There are people in the grey-hall now too. They're watching her. She doesn't look at them. She looks past the ghosts and stares at the patterns on the wall. It hurts, it makes her feel sick. She wonders what would happen if she threw up in here. Would it reverse? Have to climb up her neck and back down her throat?

Ilse Reynders pushes herself back and away from the glass. She stops herself from nearly slamming her skull back against it for a second time. She can still feel that trickle of blood down her face. The stale air of the incinerator is briefly tainted by the smell of wet iron.

The ghosts are still there. The painting-ghost and the grey-ghosts. The painting-ghost does not seem to notice nor care that she's there, why would they? From their point of view, she's probably been yowling for hours or days or weeks on end. They just keep painting on the walls, over and over again, overlapping layers of shapes and colors and patterns. She doesn't know where the paint is.

The grey-ghosts. The grey-hall-ghosts. They're the ones looking at her. There's one— two? Three? Five? No it's two. Two. The painting-ghost is the third but they're not in the grey hall they're in the painted hall so there's two, it's two.

Reynders can tell she's being spoken to. Her outburst has drawn the two over. She doesn't recognize their faces, but her vision spins between so many things and she can't even tell if they have faces. She can feel the vibration of their voices through the glass, but the words fall off her ears like water through a drain.

"I'm sorry," she whispers to the glass, "bit indisposed right now. Can't help," the woman in the incinerator manages to choke out. The grey-ghosts behind the glass reply with something, worried? Sad? Confused? Something's wrong. She knows what's wrong. They may not — but most don't.

She wants nothing more than to be able to reach through the glass and cling to someone out there to ground herself. To feel the warmth of a person but there's nothing but this empty air and glass and paint and ghosts and there's nothing but her inside the incinerator. The people out there couldn't do anything to help her, even if they wanted to.

It's just her. Just her against this madness. Her and this madness for god knows how long. Well no, no she knows how long. A year, a year until time collapses and condenses and her vision falls back to one. A year. She can make a year. She can do nothing else but make it through the year.

Reality feels like it's fraying at the edges, and all that's left in the torn between pieces is her. How many times before has this happened? One, one two. One, two, three. Five. It's four. This is the fourth time. Will there be a fifth? A sixth? Could she handle that? Could reality handle that?

A year. It will be a year. A year that will feel longer than all the others in the past few decades.

"Please fix this," Reynders whispers, voice hoarse. She doesn't know if she's been saying other things — mind out of place and out of time. The grey-ghosts are confused, she's not addressing them, the painting-ghost doesn't look, she's not addressing them.

"I don't know how much more I can take."