Some People Call Me the Goose Cowboy - SCP Foundation

You can call yourself a joke

but that doesn't make you funny.

Do you know what you are?

Buck sat in front of the sheet of paper. The room he was in, incredibly humid. The chair squeaked whenever he moved. The desk was X grade plywood, with coffee stains all over it. The floor was the shittiest shag carpet he could ever imagine, and the walls were nothing more than drywall, and a single lightbulb hung without even a lampshade, illuminating the room.

The page had only three lines of English on it. A shitty joke about airline food, a cardboard box, an airplane bathroom sink, and three pounds of powdered milk.

SCP-3369.

Ehh, what's up, doc? Mister Joke at your service. Can I getcha anything? Water? A laugh?

No, thank you. I'm here to give you something, actually.

Aww, thanks! You're a peach. What've ya got for me?

I'm here to give you a punchline.

Punchline? The only punch line I know of is the spiked kind! For real, though, what do ya mean, Mr. Foghorn?

I mean I'm going to kill you.

Heh. You ever think about taking up comedy? You wanna kill me? You're beating a dead horse. Nobody gives a care about me, friend, 'cept you, I guess, and some nobodies in the slammer.

I know that. But I still want to kill you.

W-why are you so intent on this, bud?

It's because I know exactly what you are.

You're a joke nobody cares about. You're a joke that's afraid of dying.

You're a fucking loser who has to resort to injecting themselves into the minds of other people to

stay relevant. A fucking hack who can't stand under their own weight, who punches their own

footholds out to climb.

You're so afraid of being passed by but you only have one option to keep your head above

the water.

You reach relevance through violence.

Oooh, fancy formattin', huh? Lemme give it a try.

There once was a joke from a hack

which comedy from was in lack

so it cram'd it self in

to a brain hence wherein

it unfairly came under attack.

How was that?

Time to die.

"The millstones of Heaven grind exceedingly fine; but the Red Right Hand of our Lord doth break our skulls upon the rock."

Simple memetic kill agent for a simple memetic kill. PHYSICS division had immunized Buck, so it didn't leave as much as a scratch on his psyche.

But it's unpleasant to experience the death of a thoughtform in your head, and none of the training they make you go through, no natural resilience, can really prepare you for that.

What the $#@& did you do to me?

Buck smashed his head on the desk, breaking and bringing a chunk of the plywood with it, before kicking out and punching the back of his chair right into the drywall.

what the $#@&?

He rolled out of his chair and tried bashing his head against the thick carpet to no effect before he started punching himself in the face with one wing while he fended it off with the other.

No, no, no no no

He reached for his pistol-

But he expected that. Empty holster. He woozily got back up before he stepped halfway onto the table, grabbing the light and yanking on it, the cable snapping free easily. Fuck. He backed against the wall, and the bulb was broken against the wall before being brought up to his throat, his other arm struggling to keep it at distance.

And it faded…

and it faded…

and Buck was in control again.

He tossed the once-light away into the shag before sliding down the drywall into the soft embrace of carpet, falling on his side the way down.

He stayed there a while.

Fucking worthless.

This was written for the SCP Original Character Tournament. Make sure to readAleph-Null's entry for round one, A god, a joke, and some ducks.

The ACT

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