Fools of Us All - SCP Foundation

"NO! JUST NO! I QUIT!"

The entirety of Site-87 stopped what they were doing as the intercom system came to life and Director Nina Weiss was heard over the loudspeakers, cursing like a drunken Lord Voldemort having an argument with his father. It was quite a spectacle to hear a woman pushing sixty-five to be using words that were esoteric even to the linguistics department.

This string of curses ended with "—and fuck the spatula you rode in on!" followed by what was either a very quiet gunshot, or a very loud thump.

"Bound to happen one day." Tristan Bailey whistled as medics rolled Weiss, in a stretcher, past his office, where he was conferring with his superior. "Someone had a heart attack on April Fools day."

"Never thought it would be her," affirmed Claire Hennessy as she looked away from the report she had been handed. "The one day a year where the universe's cosmic prank is that nothing anomalous at all happens in this town, and lo an behold, our fearless leader keels over."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Claire looked at him oddly. "Where would we even get that much Antarctic Wine? Unless your brother's been sending you more than you claim."

"What?"

"What?"

"No," Tristan shook his head. "What I'm thinking is that we try to find out exactly what made Weiss just… explode."

"We have more serious matters to attend to. For instance," she pretended to flip a page of the report, "do you want to meet at the Black Garden or at Berry's in town this Saturday?"

"Berry's is undergoing renovations, and I don't want to find paint chips in my milkshake again."

A look of befuddlement crossed Claire's face. "…that implies it happened at least once."

"Twice."

"And you kept going back."

"They're damn good milkshakes, Claire."

"How many people in the site eat there?"

"…oh dear god." Tristan's eyes widened. "If half the site had lead poisoning from eating there, it would explain… so much, and yet so little."

It was true; Nina Weiss had had a heart attack. She was sturdier than anyone else her age — partially due to favorable genetics, partially due to emergency ingestion of an anomalous regenerative compound in the 1980s — so she would make it.

"God dammit," acting director Harold West grumbled. "This is supposed to be a quiet day. The only quiet day Sloth's Pit gets in a year." He gesticulated wildly, nearly hitting one of the medics in the face. "Literally the ONLY DAY ALL YEAR I can say 'what could possibly go wrong?' and have nothing bad happen."

Suddenly, something bad happened. Harold West's gesticulating finger collided with the wall, and he felt a crunch as the phalanges in it broke. Everyone stared at him. "…could be coincidence?" one of the younger medics offered.

"Don't," West growled as one of the other medical staff began bandaging his finger. "Don't tempt fate. I don't want you to say anything else that could tempt fate. None of that."

"…could be worse—" began a nearby member of security staff, entering with a paper cup of bean juice. Everyone in the room glared at him. "…it's April First! Give me a break!" He brought his cup of coffee to his lips- only to have the scalding liquid inside jump out, splash him in the face, and then turn into chunks of Kit-Kats.

Everyone ducked as the cup began flying around the room, spitting high-velocity Kit-Kats out and ricocheting about the medical bay, before someone had the foresight to open the door, and it flew out, down the hall, and embedded itself in the face of

Katherine Sinclair was knocked flat on her ass by a Kit-Kat Coffee Cup Cannonball, and had the sudden compulsion to say this five time fast, before she realized this would be an awful idea. She brushed her red hair from her eyes, and crawled along the floor to avoid any further collision with the Kit-Kat Coffee Cup Cannonball.

She crawled her way to the doors of the medical bay, and stood up, presenting her tablet to Acting Director West. "Here's the… preliminary report on what's going on from… Occult Studies."

West looked over the document, ears turning scarlet. "No… this is documentation of SCP-1893."

"Which iterat-" Katherine looked at the document, and barely resisted the temptation to scream and throw her tablet on the ground before repeatedly stamping on it and professing her normality. "Well, it's random, don't you know!" She quickly brought the proper document up. "Montgomery is currently under the hypothesis that… we've undergone some sort of CK-Class Restructuring Scenario."

"…the whole town?" West stared. "We need to evacuate immediately. Code Delaware."

"That's reserved for the 4th of July!" Katherine stared. "You honestly don't think—"

"I'm not risking a repeat of what happened last year, when Hamilton came out. I don't give a fuck who lives, who dies, who tells my story, so long as it doesn't involve us having to drop a neutron charge on the town."

"…yes director," she swallowed. "I'll deliver your orders to the SPPD," after I delete my browsing history and put my tablet in bleach.

"As for all of you, you should all —" this was interrupted by him banging his finger against the same wall as he gesticulated, "FUCKOFFANDDIESONOFASUBMARINER!"

"I speak fluent 'in great amounts of pain'," sighed one of the doctors, Peter Beach. "I think he said 'get to the bunker with Director Weiss."

"Yesssss," West winced. Sinclair pulled out a flask of mandrake oil and dipped a birch wand onto it, trying to gingerly tap the finger with the solution.

"Painkiller," she tried to explain, "Though if your finger starts turning green, I'd suggest amputation."

"Great," West groaned. "Could this day get any worse?"

Suddenly, the day got worse.

There was a reason that Post-Mortem Assurance Specialists existed in the Foundation, and Sigma-10 was just seeing one of those reasons firsthand. The cult of Satyr's Reign, responsible for the resurrection of countless psychopaths within the town limits of Sloth's Pit some one year, three-hundred and fifty-eight days earlier, had spontaneously risen once more at the corner of Main and Bray Road, due to being exposed to a great amount of narrative irony— or, as the official report would read (assuming anyone would get out of this alive):

"You just had to try fixing your cat with magic!" Seren Pryce growled over her earpiece as she, for the second time in her life, shot a zombified Josef Stalin in the apricot. "God DAMN it, Williams!"

"It was Blake's idea!" Ruby Williams asserted as she hacked the arm off of a cultist that was reaching for her brother. "Watch your six, goddammit!"

"Watch yours!" Blake retorted, firing a hollow point into the brain of a zombified Charles Manson— "Wait, isn't he alive?"

"Who fucking cares?!" Nicholas Ewell had turned bright yellow out of sheer frustration. "None of this should be happening! It is April goddamn first! This is our. One. Fucking. Day. OFF!" He screamed this as he made someone who he thought was the Torso Murderer fellate a shotgun, and then made it climax. "I ain't about to have our day ruined by a bunch of zombie psychos and zombie psycho cultists!"

"Preach, Nick!" Seren cackled, sending an incendiary round into the torso of a reanimated cultist. "Seriously though, Williams, both of you are so getting discharged when we're done."

"Later, Pryce," Ruby growled as she drove a knife into the soft palate of yet another Charles Manson. "…what the fuck."

"It's like there's an extra day in March or something!" their medic, Raymond February, said this as he took a pot shot at another cultist; he had elected to hide in the doorway of the Wal-Greens sitting at this corner.

"Impossible," Pryce frowned. "Thirty days hath September, April, June, March, and November. That's how the rhyme goes —" her eyes went wider than the plot holes in a bad smut novel. "Now hold up a minute."

"…that's not possible." Harold West swallowed as he heard the reason why Director Weiss had had a heart attack. "March only has thirty days."

"It's March 31st," she groaned through a morphine drip. "The entirety of the town seems to have forgotten that March has thirty-one days." She rubbed her face. "I attribute it, in part, due to the amount of chemicals in the food from that one restaurant downtown- Benny's?"

"Berry's," West grunted through a face full of palm. "Bailey mentioned finding paint in his milkshake at one point. Lead poisoning made the entire town forget a whole day existed?!"

"Not lead," Weiss breathed, slowly. "L.E.A.D. Leukocytic Erroneous Amnestic Derivative. There's been abnormal amounts of it in the paint all around town."

"Director, please," Dr. Beach groaned. "If any of us hit our foreheads any more, we're going to have concussions." He looked her over. "So, the reason for your heart attack was… stress induced by the discovery that March had thirty-one days, and that today was not, in fact, April 1st."

"That's correct, I think." Weiss sighed. "…I think I need a break. Some vacation somewhere. Hawaii is supposed to be nice. Or there's the Jersey Shore."

West wondered why anyone would want to go to New Jersey willingly. "…well. We just have to stay down here until the craziness outside subsides."

Seventy-Million Dollars in property damage, a razed local landmark, five-hundred dead zombies, cultists and zombie cultists, four colly birds, three french hens, several dozen doses of headache medication, and a hastily bought plane ticket to Hawaii later…

April 1st

Claire Hennessy and Tristan Bailey shared a chocolate milkshake mixed with rum in the Black Garden pub in Sloth's Pit. Tristan had elected to just have some chips (in the British sense), while Claire had a burger with chips (in the American sense). They looked at each other through the haze of alcohol, chocolate flavoring, and fat.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Claire asked, stealing one of Tristan's chips.

"I've given it up for Lent," Tristan nodded. "But I can't say the same for handcuffs." A grin that only formed on the face of people who were going to ruin someone else's night formed on his face.