Durbal 2 - This Time, It's Personal - SCP Foundation

At first, it was a lot of fun.

Durbal had endless things to say about the box he was put in. And he planned to say everything.

“Box is unsuited to contain a sexy beast such as Durbal.”

“Box is too dark, not allowing Durbal to see the box and criticize it further.”

“Box contains soundproof padding, which is uncomfortable and attempts to mute my criticism.”

“Soundproof padding does not realize that no force can stop Durbal’s criticism.”

Though Durbal was always right, he was wrong on that last part. There was one thing that could stop the criticism.

Durbal lost track of the time he’d spent inside his containment. Though it didn’t really matter. You don’t need to know what day of the week it is in order to call a small box a piece of shit. For all he knew, this could have gone on for days, weeks, months, years, even centuries.

No matter how long it had been, it always felt brand new. There was always a new tangent to follow and new swears to be invented and spoken. It was so much fun.

But Durbal stopped to think, every once in a while. What he was doing. He looked around the box. He realized what he was saying no longer related to the box.

Discussions on the box went to the padding, which led to comments on sound itself, which led to talking about air, which lead to chemistry, and then to fire, then cavemen, homo sapiens, bipedal organisms, monkeys, bananas…

That’s when he stopped himself.

What the fuck was he saying?

Why the fuck was he doing this?

For once, Durbal fell silent. The criticism stopped.

He thought.

“Why is Durbal doing this?”

He fell silent for longer than he expected, before it caught up to him.

The silence.

The silence, the lack of sound, of anything. It crushed at him. It was his way of keeping it away. To craft something from nothing.

The joy of what he was doing faded. The words he spoke were not his own. They didn’t come from passion of the craft, but more to keep the void at bay.

With lost passion came lost criticism. He fell silent more and more. The idea of what he was doing, why he was doing it kept coming back and halting his thought process.

These silences grew longer. He didn’t know how long, but they felt longer and longer.

He only spoke so he’d have something, but he soon found that he had a preference for nothing.

It just became too difficult to speak, to think of something to say. Everything he could have said was said.

The criticisms stopped for longer than they ever had. And they would never start up again.

Time passed.

Durbal was sat in the box. He was silent. He’d been silent for a while. How long remained a mystery to him.

He felt like trying something bold.

Something he’d never done before.

He looked to his left.

Durbal saw the realm he resided in. The realm of the sticky note. An infinite expanse of yellowish hue.

He saw a door. Crudely drawn from pen ink. Durbal had never noticed it, and yet it felt like it’d always been there. A new place to go.

He looked back to the dark room.

He’d miss it, but it was time to move on.

Durbal took a step forward, his thin, ink-marked leg taking its first step in eternity.

He approached the door, wrapping his three stick fingers around the knob, and turning it.

He didn’t know where it led, but it was somewhere new.

Durbal looked forward to it.

Incident 3556-20D

SCP Involved: SCP-3556

Date: December 20th, 2███

Location: Site-77 Containment Vault

Description: SCP-3556 has ceased any and all vocalizations, and no longer responds to stimuli. The creature depicted on SCP-3556 has vanished, replaced with writing saying “Gone fishing”. SCP-3556 is to be reclassified as a Neutralized anomaly until further notice.