The Hotel California Presents: Ecce Farcio - SCP Foundation

And so, at last, it had come to this.

He woke up to the Hotel California.

There were very few things in Junior's life which were straightforward. The Hotel California was one of them. Every now and again he'd wake up in Room 04 with no idea how he got there, no shirt, no shoes, a small ecru business card with room numbers and names, and a fucking shitton of weaponry in the bathroom.

The job was simple:

Kill every last one of the bastards.

Buck walked to the bathroom, put on a bath robe, took as much weaponry as he could handle, and left his soundproofed hotel room.

13

Thirteen was easiest. Mainly because Nathan was already dead. Buck peeked into the room, and sure enough, there was a little tombstone sitting on the bed, with the text:

RIP

Nathan [Lastname]

You did a good job on this one, Buck.

He shed a single tear. He knew.

12

11

10

God fucking dammit.

The fucking ducks got out.

Buck found rooms 12 and 11 wide open, both with bathtubs filled to the brim. He sighed and looked at his notecard. 12 was supposed to have Natasha and Tiny, and 11 was supposed to have Pinstripes and Blasty, but 12's door had oversized novelty lock-pick in its inner lock, and 11 had a sooty starburst where the handle should've been.

That meant that the whole gang had met up with The Boss to craft some sort of "whacky" plan to regroup and figure out why, exactly, they were were they were, and not in a containment chamberpot.

However, Buck had his own whacky plan. He stood back a bit from the door to room 10 and shot three times into the door, a resounding bang in pursuit. He figured there was a bomb on the door, and he knew he was right when the door flew outwards off its hinges into the parking lot.

He stepped into the open doorway and into the congregation, covered in soot, eyes white holes in the darkness. He'd hit Tiny with one of the shots through the door, a pitiful mangle of yellow plastic scraps all over the room. In the mouths of the ducks were lit cigarettes billowing smoke on top of the bomb's haze, two cigs for each.

"No smoking in the hotel rooms."

Buck fired once, twice, tearing through Blasty, ripping through Natasha with two bangs and two pops. The cigarettes flew forward from the shockwave, pelting Buck in the face, giving a brief opening for Pinstripes to come up with a plan.

Pinstripes thought. And thought. And thought. He shook the ash off from the explosion and manifested a frying pan.

Clef Jr. fired, hitting the frying pan square in the center and ricocheting off. Pinstripes charged him with the cooking utensil, swung back, and

WHAM

Pinstripes was stomped into a crude heap of yellow and orange.

The Boss spoke at last. "You 'n me, we ain't too unalike, ya know? You 'n me, we'se like two birds of a feather. You did some good fuckin' work here, betta then the buffoons you'se popped, eh? How 'bout you 'n me, we go and hit the world, do some business? How 'bout I make you an offer you can't refuse?"

Buck approached The Boss, picking him up with a wing, bringing him eye height.

"I'll make you refuse."

He took The Boss back into the bathroom, setting him on the toilet reservoir as he rummaged through his bath robes for just the right thing.

"You're makin' the worst mistake of your life, here, Mr. Fuckmeup. You 'n I, we could do big things, huge things. All you gotta do is-"

Buck drove the found stilleto through The Boss's open dress-shirt, retracting it and feeling a thin hiss slowly deflate the duck. He slid Boss further on the reservoir, letting it slip off and into the watery toilet bowl face-down, air bubbling under the surface as the water let in, the duck sinking slowly into the bowl as it drowned.

He flushed.

09

He always claimed this was the unluckiest room. Sometimes the number didn't come up for several visits, and the handle was always covered in a fair coating of dust. But, today, it was time. Buck opened the door.

The first thing that struck him was the sheer number of black tubes lying on the ground. Tubes? He didn't know. They were scattered all over the floor, bent at right angles, and-

Oh my God.

What the fuck is that.

Huddled tight into the corner was a white sideways egg thing spattered in… ink? Buck took out his pistol and stepped carefully in the room. He took aim… and fired once. A black hole started spurting out arterial ink ichor, and the egg got up and slowly turned, turned, turned…

In its hands was a half-egg with an alien skull sticking out of it, a simple eye with a wet black trail running down it. The mobile egg's mouth was river of the same pitch fluid everywhere, a third eye spurting between two dot eyes.

Buck fired.

And fired. And fired, and fired, and again. He took out a second revolver and emptied that one too, and a third, a fourth. It'd fallen by the tenth bullet but Buck wasn't taking any fucking chances. This room was fucking cursed. It was fucking cursed. The egg was fucking splattered all over the place by this point, and Buck took a deep, deep breath, turned around, and left.

Christ.

08

Finally, a fucking normal person. Travis Kazmarek. "Gamma 1 Sagittarius." Buck knocked at the door in the ·— ··· pattern to lure him out.

The door opened wide. "Thank fuck someone's finally h-"

Buck already had his revolver leveled and fired square into Travis's open mouth, slicing a channel in his tongue and just barely missing his spine. He recoiled and gagged, grasping his throat and coughing heavily to try and get the constant flow of blood to break enough for him to breathe. He dropped to his knees and Buck aimed again, this time making his mark, punching through his skull and sending him twitching down in a pool of his blood.

Finally, a fucking normal kill.

07

The first thing Buck noticed when he entered the room was that it was empty aside from a document on the door.

Item #: SCP-3361

Classy Carlos. Doodle boy. Drawing based anomaly. Eh. Sure. He had enough training. He stepped into the bathroom.

To… nothing. There wasn't really anything there. He set to work. Taking out a simple sharpie he started running along the edges of the bathroom mirror, leaving a tiny gap along one side. He drew some dicks on the mirror, put a phone number, wrote a phrase in Greek, drew some more dicks, stickmen having a rudimentary conversation… the perfect storm of graffito to summon

Ah! There he is.

As Carlos slipped into the mirror view, Buck lifted his marker and closed the box.

"Hello, my most esteemed… avian. Hm. You are a goose, correct?"

"Got it in one."

"Ah! I've never had the pleasure of meeting a goose man before. It's a pleasure. Say, what're you up to?"

"Doodling. Drawing dicks."

"Well that's not very nice. How much have you thought about other people recently? I can see it in your eyes. That childlike glee. You think this's funny, yeah?"

"I think it's absolutely fuckin' hilarious."

"Well, different strokes I suppose. Say, you look like you've killed a lot of people, huh? How's that like? How does it feel for you when you see someone die? Do you ever feel any guilt about it? Do you sleep well at night? You look tired. Have you ever thought about what could've been that now will never be?"

Buck stopped doodling.

"Struck a nerve?"

Buck capped his marker.

"Ah, sorry! I'll move on friend. You don't seem like the talking type, huh? Short, terse? You don't want to let on you've got a brain, or a heart, or a soul, you just want people to see you as a force of nature, an unstoppable killing machine, Death personified. But I know you, you know yourself, right? You cry, you cry like, a lot! Almost every day actually! You fall in love incredibly easily even though you always end up killing anyone you meet. You want people to think you're the type to go in guns blazing, or one to take a baseball bat and bum-rush someone before turning their head into an oversized sausage casing. You really don't want anyone to see you, right?"

Buck took out his revolver and spun the cylinder.

"Ah! Sorry again, my feathery friend! I'll be taking my leave soon, don't worry. I'm just a drawing on a bathroom mirror surrounded by dicks. I can't hurt you. But, before I go, I want you to take a deep long look in this mirror, see yourself for once. Take a breath. Take a minute. Take a, well, use the toilet. You confront a lot of people. Have you ever tried confronting yourself?"

Buck walked up closer to the mirror and looked himself in the eyes.

"There you go, friend. You know, don't you think you deserve a vacation? Take a break from all the killing."

"I'm not too much a fan of hotels."

"Have you heard of 'bed and breakfast's?"

"Yeah. Don't like breakfast."

"Understandable. So… Enough about you. I'm guessing you can tell me why I'm stuck in here, huh?"

"Yup."

"Are you gonna tell me? Or are you just going to let me say that it's sigil magic?"

"Worst fucking sigil magic I've ever done."

"The sigil doesn't need dicks, right? Ah, it doesn't matter. I would've stayed here anyway. I guess I'll ask you now to look inside yourself, take a deep look into your heart, and think: Does killing a doodle who wants people to become their best selves help you feel more like a person? Does killing a drawing help you escape the role placed onto you, and help you become the navigator of your own story? Does killing do anything for you?

Do you like hurting other people?"

Buck shot at the mirror. A crack ran through Classy Carlos right through his midsection before shattering off the surface.

06

The Moon Champion.

Buck sighed. He knocked on the door.

A space suit answered.

"Greetings, Uncle Samuel. I am the Moon Champion, Champion of our lady the Moon, bulwark against space crime and destroyer of the unrighteous. It appears I have found myself in a box. Do you happen to know the way out?"

"Yeah. It's inside somewhere. I'll help you try and find it, alright?"

"Thank you, Uncle Sam. You are a true ally to space justice."

Buck entered and closed the door behind him. "I know."

"Say, Uncle Sam, what brings you to this particular box, at this particular time? Do you wish to ally yourself more closely with my campaign to protect the Moon People? Do you endeavor to aid me in my quest?"

"Moon Champion, I'm going to be honest here. I'm here to kill you."

"Kill me? On what grounds, Uncle Sam?"

"There are… laws. Of the world. Of… the universe. There are times when things must come to an end. I do not make the laws. I don't think about why the laws are there. I don't think about why I'm sent. I'm just the arbiter. And to put it simply, the laws of existence are all screaming at me that your time has come."

"Justice is never done. I cannot die. My people need me."

"You are a speck. You're a cell in the organ of justice. You're insignificant. Without people like you the organ would die, but I need you to understand that cells die. Cells are replaced. You will die. And you will be replaced."

"But who will protect the Moon People if I die?"

"… I'll… I have a successor for you. I'll make sure. It might be your time. It's not theirs. I promise you this."

"…"

"Oh shit look out Moon Champion there's a fucking poison cloud in your helmet!"

The Moon Champion's hands dashed up to his helmet, grasping around desperately before getting into a crouching position, trying to force the helmet off.

"Moon Champion look out! You gotta open your visor! You have to let the poison cloud out!"

"Thank you Uncle Sam! I could've died!" The Moon Champion lowered his visor at last, turned around, and was shot square in the fucking face by Buck.

05

If Alexei were able to tell Buck his final thoughts, they would be:

I have lived long. I have seen much. I have finished the race.

But there was no radio static.

There was only a gunshot

and then silence.

03

The GOC had been preparing for this moment for a long, long time. So it's no surprise that the question of "how do you kill a god?" was answered long, long ago.

It started with the squirrels.

Twenty years worth of effort. Biologically and robotically engineered squirrels implanted within the squirrel populations to search, destroy, and replace. Plagues to turn squirrels into hive-mind simple animals. Hunting permits and bounties. Increased deforestation. Everything they could to destroy the squirrels.

Admittedly, this was primarily to prevent the war of the squirrels. But it had an important side effect.

Do you know what happens when gods lose all their worship?

They die.

Not always literally. Some gods exist outside their worship. But to lose one's godhood, to lose one's myth, is as good as to die.

But a gun works too.

A gun worked. it definitely worked.

DEATh COMeS FOr YoU SOON

God, what? This isn't a room. Whose idea was this? There was some writing here before, but it all became absolute garbage at this point. All the names were replaced by [vacant]. It addressed Jr. himself.

Clef Jr. kicked in the door to room number two and found it completely empty. Literally nothing. He didn't know what was in there and honestly? One less body.

So it goes.

PREPARE YOURSELF MR. FUCKMEUP

"You and I are going to watch the sun come up."

Alto Clef Jr. wrapped a steel noose on a pole around D-7294's neck and drug the heap over the carpet, over the steel bottomrail to the door, over the concrete landing, and into the gravel and sand, all the way trailing curdled blood and screams into the California night, detritus being dragged up into the gutshot wounds.

He pulled the noose skin-tight, slightly indenting D-7294's flesh, and let the pole attached to it drop before taking a seat in the sand.

And they stayed there, in the silence, overlooking the Pacific waves cresting and breaking under the purple sky.

"I've killed a lot of bastards, Mr. Don. Or, Zeke? Zeke. I've killed a lot of bastards. A lot of fuckers just like you. I think that's ultimately the difference between the two of us."

D-7294 was still yelling from the pain. "F-fuck y, fuck y-you, you f-fucking psychopath, God, God fucking dammit."

"Funny, coming from you."

"Fuck you."

"Y'know, I'm not so sure I'm like you, though. Sure, I enjoy killing. But I think everyone does, a little. Everyone loves blood. Everyone loves revenge. Everyone for the longest fucking time, 'cept not as much today, loved the guillotine. Folks went fucking bananas for drawing and quartering.

But, what's revenge but a flimsy justification to bash another person's brains in?

Hell, you could probably think of what I'm doing to you right now as some sickening form of revenge. But, thing is, your victims are all dead, Zeke. They're all fucking dead. There's nobody to want revenge. Nobody's left to take revenge. I can call what I'm about to do to you revenge but it doesn't change the fact that I'm getting off on this shit, that I'm doing it for my own sense of karma."

"Wha-what the fuck?"

"I'm going to bash your fucking brains in because I know what you did and it fucking sickens me. I know how you killed all those women and children, how you did so much worse to them before they died. I'm going to kill you slowly and painfully because the symmetry rhymes to me. I want you to feel something for once in your fucking life."

Buck got up, walking over to D-7294 before he brought his foot down on his left hand.

He took out his knife and crouched down. With one hand he pulled out the middle finger slightly, the joint popping as it expanded. He pressed his knife between the knuckle and finger, and pressed down sharply, breaking the flesh before starting to saw through the sinew and muscle, eggy synovial fluid and blood leaking out pathetically before the muscle and tendon finally gave a sickening snap and the finger came loose. Buck pulled it off carefully, making sure to rip off the remaining flesh, and tossed it to the seagulls, and set to work on the index as 7294 screamed harder.

"Mutilation first, right? No, no, the gunshot was first, lacerations second. Forgot that part. Well, I gutshot you, so I guess I didn't. Whatever."

All the fingers fingerfood for birds now, he started to just draw straight cuts across the forearm, up the upper arm, finally going to the back before stabbing and leaving the knife in his shoulder.

"God, I'm fucking tired of this shit. You thought this was fun? It's fucking tedious." Buck reached into his bloodsoaked bathrobe and retrieved his bat, at last, as the sky warmed upon the waves.

"Australian Buloke, white stain. Hardest fuckin' wood in the world, as far as I know. Blunt trauma's next."

Buck brought the bat above his head and brought it smashing down onto Zeke's forearm, repeating until he heard the clean break. The sun was rising already, cresting upon the water.

"Well damn. I thought I had more time. Guess you get an early break."

"G-God! God! Please!"

Buck scraped the ground in front of him, pointing his bat to the sun,

wound up,

and swung right into Zeke Don's worthless skull

once,

twice,

the skull breaking in, head caving,

three times,

four,

brain and blood squishing out and backspattering from the newbroken scalp,

five,

six times,

splattering outwards, sticking onto the baseball bat's shaft, spilling onto the beach, like a semicongealed pudding.

And the sun shone upon the Hotel California.

This was written for the SCP Original Character Tournament. Click those links for the source SCPs and tales, as there were no entries from these folks.

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