Sometimes - SCP Foundation

In a blank, sterile room, roughly five meters wide, sixteen long, and eight tall, a table sits in the center. On it lays a single piece of A2 standard printer paper. It does not appear aged or damaged, as if it could have been printed yesterday, or even mere moments ago. Yet it is cool to the touch, the same temperature as the room it is in.

The paper seems mundane. And, truth be told, it is. The information atop it, harmless when thought about literally- just ink heated to thermally harden and jettisoned out of a printer nozzle, or electrons dancing in a data storage matrix, is harmless, merely information. Even when the brain absorbs it and begins to modify it.

Next to the paper is a pen. Generic. Filled with black, oddly floral-smelling ink. A cheap rollerball, unbranded, with an SCP Foundation logo on it. It has no complex mechanisms, simply a friction-fit cap with an incorporated pocket-grasping surface that covers the exposed stylus. The class-D is always told to write. They never know why.

"Relax," the researcher coos through the speaker below the CCTV camera, "just write whatever comes to mind."

Sometimes, the paper would be defiled with filth. Debased thought, sullied with profanity or hatred. Vitriol. Crude doodles. Other times, it was sanctified with holy words or praise. Sometimes, it became a surface for great emotion- art, poetry, ranging from mediocre to masterclass- to be poured on. Music filled the room. Art. Joy. Anger. Wrath. Indignant defiance. Most times, the pure white was disrupted by childlike, sprawling scribbles.

In the end, why? Why? The Class-D would be evicted from the cell and they would shred then incinerate the paper.

The paper lays dormant. Microtrenches and dents marring its surface, those blemishes filled with the ink. Fresh and wet enough to smudge. The pen rests on the top, above the writing, haphazardly and randomly set down with varying degrees of force and violence. Sometimes, it would have been used to stab the paper. Cut the paper. Sometimes, it was ripped.

This time, it was unhurt but for the scratches from writing. Perhaps it was prose. Poems. A diagram, an artwork.

Perhaps it was violence steeped into words. Hate and harm put to physical form with vitriolic ink shapes on a row of thin lines of bleached carbon.

Sometimes, it would bring a person to tears.

Sometimes joy.

Sometimes anger.

Sometimes jealousy.

Sometimes.