Pockets - SCP Foundation

☦An old man's shadow. SCP-106.☦

Someplace, in a dirty, damp basement, there sat a figure in a rocking chair.

A hanging lantern swung directly over the figure's bald head, dimly reflecting itself on his sweat. An unbuttoned leather vest revealed his gray, distended belly.

He rocked back and forth anxiously with a wide, toothy grin on his wrinkled face.

He reached for his liquor, then began singing softly to nobody in the empty basement.

Clumsy bear is roaming about the woods

He picks up cones and sings his songs

He could smell what he would not be able to describe as ozone. There was muffled screaming, and he could hear the latch to the basement being rustled.

More screaming now, but he wasn't sure what was producing the noise. The old man shook his head and closed his eyes.

A cone sprang back in his face

And it hit him good

The old man took to the fallout better than most of his friends did. He watched everyone die. He watched himself die. Such things happened. You couldn't dwell too long on them.

A black puddle materialized on the ground in front of him.

This made the bear angry

So he stomped his foot!

The man sang with his smile intact, but there was confusion in his eyes. There was confusion enough to warrant another swig of the clear liquor. He saw the reflection of his face, smiling, rise up through the puddle of black.

The bear screamed, ow! ow!

He stepped again on this acorn.

"You don't want this," he said in his inquisitive drawl, turning his head slightly "go fuck yourself."

His reflection smiled at him, seeing that it was himself. He sank back into the bubbling black circle and the old man continued to rock in his chair.

The testing subject felt the tingle of his flesh being emancipated as he ran through the endless, acidic corridors of the pocket. He had an upset stomach, too.

Clumsy bear is roaming about the woods

He picks up cones and sings his songs

Where was that sound coming from? Finding it was the only thing to do here.

He turned a corner a bit too sharply and planted his hand on the dry frying pan walls. He took solace that the only limit to pain was greater pain, so he recovered and continued on toward a chained old wooden door in the distance.

His eyes began to burn to the nerve. This was difficult to ignore. He closed his eyes and charged into the door. Everything was rotten, so this wood would give.

No give.

A cone sprang back in his face

And it hit him good

He opened his eyes, and in the brief, white pain he could see that there was no old man lurking around the corners.

But his eyelids were beginning to burn off now, and his lack of skin meant covering them was going to cause more problems than it was worth.

This made the bear angry

So he stomped his foot!

The singing was just beyond that door, he could hear it so… no, he couldn't hear anything anymore. Something was wrong with his eardrums.

This whole situation was frying his brain.

The bear screamed, ow! ow!

He dragged the man through the walls, through time, deep into the maze.

He was now gliding, exceptionally still, watching the man run through the halls of the labyrinth. He approached the human like he approached everything: at roughly 4 kilometers an hour.

He sunk into the wall, and glided, hidden, alongside the man in the corridor. Absorbing the burning flesh caused him a sort of gratification that he couldn't really place. He didn't care though, he couldn't care, he didn't really have what you would call higher brain function.

He just did this one thing, and…

This made the bear angry

He didn't do anything else.

He poked his head up through the floor and looked stupidly at himself in the rocking chair.

"You don't want this," he said in his inquisitive drawl, turning his head slightly "go fuck yourself."

He sank back in the floor.

He laughed quietly to himself.

And he rocked in his chair in the isolated cell underneath a sprawling labyrinth of tight tunnels, underneath a large, decaying facility in a cold part of a dead world.