Ho - SCP Foundation

Ho

2021

25 December

"Is he pissed off?" Amelia Torosyan cocked her head to one side and considered the disembodied thing in the mirror. "Because he looks pissed off."

"I think he looks bemused." Her husband, Philip Deering, took a swig of apple cider and swished it around like mouthwash before swallowing. "I think you're getting a false positive because he's got 'pissed off' for a face."

Doug fluted his eye-scars, and spoke in a gravelly voice which only Phil could hear: "There will be a reckoning."

"Is he asking us to take the hat off? I know you got permission for this, but it still feels a little mean."

"Nah." Phil inhaled the hot, cinnamon scent of the cider, and closed his eyes. "He said 'Hark, the herald angels sing'."

Amelia guffawed, and held out her cup of cider. "Ho."

"Ho," he agreed, and clapped the cups together. They drank deeply, as the cafeteria rang with the unusual clamour of multiple semipublic Christmas cliques masquerading as a party.

"Here's to Doug," Amelia gargled. "It took nineteen years, but you broke him."

"There will be a breaking," Doug intoned quite matter-of-factly.

A NOTICE FROM THE SITE-43 ADMINISTRATION AND OVERSIGHT SECTION

The COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing. As the civilian population of the planet Earth is only indifferently engaging in vaccination, it will be impossible for the staff of Site-43 to visit their loved ones this holiday season. While we are aware you were unable to visit your loved ones during Christmas of 2020 due to an anartistic terrorist attack, we cannot allow empathy to outweigh the practical concerns of worldwide containment and protection. The advanced inoculations you have all received must not become general knowledge, as they could reveal the existence of the SCP Foundation to the public; furthermore, the risk of bringing the virus back with you in spite of said inoculations is too great to be ethically borne. For this reason, I am invoking my authority as Chief of Administration and Oversight to forbid any member of this facility's personnel below Clearance Level 5 to exit the Site except under authorized Foundation business.

I regret the inconvenience.

— Dr. K.T. Elstrom

"You know, you don't have to take credit for everything." Allan McInnis was eyeing her in that way he had; not predatory, not romantic, not even an expression of interest, just the calm consideration of a man made of cool calculations. "The buck is supposed to stop with the Director."

"I don't take credit for everything." Karen sipped primly at the cider she'd poured into her monogrammed mug. Her head was tilted sideways, so all the cider ran into her right cheek. It was a small price to pay to look sophisticated and thoughtful, she figured.

"That's true." The All-Sections Chief was her match for pose-striking, though he wasn't doing it on purpose. He was simply too tall and too well-dressed to look uncultured, even sitting at a cafeteria table next to an empty mirror with a pair of elf ears stuck to it. "You let Allan take credit for anything nice. Karen, if you're trying to make everyone hate you, you can stop now. You've won."

Karen twisted in her chair to look across the cafeteria. It wasn't crowded, precisely, because it was simply too big. It was certainly more occupied than usual, particularly by her — she normally wouldn't be caught dead in such a plebian space. She noticed that most of the assembled researchers, technicians and agents were pointedly not looking at her. "It's my Christmas gift to you," she said, turning back to face them again. "Happy nobody hating you."

McInnis sighed, and raised his cup. "Ho."

The All-Sections Chief raised his own cup. "Ho."

Karen sipped from her mug again, and ignored them. "I believe the term is 'bitch', actually."

"What's he doing in our mirror?"

"Closest to the buffet, I guess." William Wettle tapped the glass; the mirror monster ignored him, as it had ignored everyone except for Philip Deering since 2002. It was watching as the janitor and his boss-slash-wife picked out another tray of shortbread cookies and sugared gingerbread, the glow in their cheeks suggesting they'd found some way of augmenting their cups of cider.

"Why'd they take that one down?" Bastien LeBlanc pointed to the cafeteria table closest to the buffet, where four senior staff members were sitting in a convivial huddle. There was a mirror beside every table except for theirs.

"Because one of those four worthies is scared to death of our good friend Slitface here." Wettle picked up his cup of cider.

Bastien felt a sudden streak of vindictiveness, and since it was Christmas, he indulged himself. "Which one?"

"That one." Wettle pointed at the slight woman with the shocking white hair, managing to overturn his cup of cider onto himself in the process. "For fuck's sake!"

"Ho!" Bastien grinned. "Ho ho."

"Son of a bitch." Wettle wiped ineffectually at his soaked labcoat. He glanced at the mirror, then at his half-empty cup. "Think he'd notice me if I splashed him?"

"What would you even do if he did? Besides crap yourself?"

Wettle tipped the cup up to his lips at the precise moment that Doug disappeared from the mirror, and choked at the sudden peripheral movement. The apparition was following its prey back to his table.

"Guess we know luck anomalies don't take holidays off," Bastien said. "You'd definitely better not visit Sloth's Pit again."

Melissa Bradbury pretended not to stare at the thing in the mirror, all the way across the cafeteria. Harry Blank had his arm around her, and that was good; Lillian Lillihammer was roaring drunk and singing redacted-on-the-fly cognitohazardous Christmas carols, and that was better; Delfina Ibanez was cold sober, prepared to find a reflective surface and point it at Deering the moment his mirror monster came near their table, and that was best of all.

Ibanez had offered to ban Deering from the party while Bradbury was present. She had obviously not really wanted to, and Melissa hadn't wanted her to, either. Phil was good people. His pet anomaly, in fact, was probably good people too. It had saved her life once.

It had also cost her eighteen years of it.

She forced herself to look away as Lillian finished her slurred performance and hiccoughed. It didn't do to dwell on ancient history; she thought she might as well try something more recent. "Hey, where'd this 'ho' business start, anyway?"

Lillian and Ibanez both pointed at Harry. Harry smiled. "This seems like a one-ho Christmas, you know?"

Melissa poked him in the ribs, more or less; he could stand to lose some weight, not that the plate of shortbread in front of him was helping any. "Don't call m—"

"THEN HOW COME YOU GOT THREE HOS WITH YOU RIGHT NOW?" Lillian shouted, at the top of her lungs.

They stared at her, open-mouthed, for several seconds. As usual, Harry was the first to laugh.

"What's with the Jughead look?"

Max Vroom pointed at the mirror beside the Christmas tree, where Doug and Amelia were observing the slim present pickings with exaggerated enthusiasm.

Hachiro Kuroki shrugged. "Same as that 'ho' nonsense. Blank. Bought Christmas crackers for everybody, then couldn't actually use them because Bradbury hits the roof every time there's a loud noise. Apparently all the crackers have paper hats in them." He pointed at Blank, who was still wearing his. It didn't quite fit his big, bushy head, so it sat on top more like a yarmulke than a crown.

"Huh," Vroom began. "OOOOF." Ilse Reynders had been off throwing out her cider cup, and had announced her return to their little group by plowing directly into him with an outrageously tight hug.

She pulled back, and smiled apologetically. "Merry Christmas."

He tried not to laugh. "You've said that like, ten times."

"I know. Merry Christmas." She reached for Kuroki, who deftly ducked beneath her arms despite being taller than her. "Nope," he said. "Nope."

"I'll take his," Vroom offered. "If OOOOF."

Ilse Reynders had not experienced a proper Christmas in nearly seven decades, and she'd only started experiencing physical contact again in March. Before that, her last hug had been during the middle of the Second World War. This was how she was, now.

When she released him again, he resumed his pointing. "How come you let them screw with containment apparatus, anyway?"

Kuroki checked his duty tablet before responding. He was, after all, the new Chief of Security and Containment. He had priorities. "That thing hasn't hurt anyone we like in almost twenty years. It's no different from the Eye Pods at 19."

"Except it made a guy claw his eye out, one time." Vroom noticed that Ilse was eyeing the buffet table. She'd already wolfed down enough gingerbread to build a house.

"That's only point five of a full person," Kuroki smiled. "Let me know when it's statistically significant."

Ilse suddenly jolted towards the assembled holiday goodies. Vroom felt only a little guilty about dodging into her path, and receiving yet another impulsive bear hug in return.

Udo Okorie blinked on the wall-mounted television screen. "Funny hats. You're serious."

"Ayup!" Polyxeni Mataxas bounced cheerfully on her heels. "Harry's doing sketches of them to show you when you get back."

Okorie frowned. "Why not just take photographs?"

The Chair of Spectrometry and Spectremetry glanced at Xinyi Du, the Chair of Quantum Supermechanics, who was standing beside her. They both turned back to the monitor, eyes raised.

Okorie winced. "I forgot it manifests on lenses." She looked offscreen for a moment, smiled — a little sadly — then nodded at them. "Gotta go for a bit. Tell Del to call me in an hour?"

"Will do." Du flicked the monitor off. They regarded it in silence for a moment; Okorie didn't usually spend Christmas off-Site, but she'd lost her father in April and was presently on leave at Site-91 in England.

Mataxas felt the mood could use a little lightening, so she sang: "Will do." She giggled. "Du do."

"Shut up."

She grinned. "Careful with the attitude, bud, or you're gonna get a visit from some ghosts tonight."

Du scoffed. "A day late? The ghosts have COVID too?"

Mataxas nodded sagely. She was, after all, the resident ghost expert. "How do you think they became ghosts?" He groaned, and she punched him in the shoulder. "Ho!"

"Okay, now he looks pissed off." Phil had only rarely seen the scars shut so tight. "You want me to take them down, Doug?"

"It all comes down soon enough, Philip," the spectre remarked philosophically.

Amelia was snuggled up against him, not asleep, merely content. He glanced around the room at the assembled staff: Dr. Reynders was trying, and failing, not to pull everyone she met into a hug; Dr. Bremmel and Dr. Sokolsky were standing in the kitchenette, making snide remarks at all their colleagues for the audacity of making the best of a bad situation; Dr. Lillihammer was lying on the floor under the buffet table, bawling into her cellphone at Placeholder McDoctorate from Site-87; five different instances of Dr. Zlatá were seated together, staring at theirself with hollow eyes and murmuring; Dr. Ngo was sitting at a table in the middle of the room, fast asleep with a big smile on her face; Dr. Nass was sitting across from her, scrolling on his phone and looking miserable. His best friend had flown the coop with a real life dragon nearly a year ago, now.

"We're lucky, do you know that?" Amelia murmured into his chest.

"I do know that." Phil caught Melissa Bradbury staring at them from across the room, and raised his cup to her strategically. At this angle, he figured, it probably blocked the mirror monster out entirely.

Bradbury flashed him a big, big smile and returned the salute. He waited until she finished her drink and returned to her conversation to down his own.

"We survived another year in the exploding dungeon." Amelia was yawning now. "While the world coughs above."

"Gasps," Doug corrected, though Amelia couldn't hear. "Last gasps."

"Alright." Phil closed his eyes, and nuzzled his wife's hair. "Just for that, I'm leaving the antlers up."

In the coming days, he would only be able to convince Amelia of what happened next.

Doug narrowed his eye-slits even further, furrowed his trifurcated brow, and sneered: "Ho."

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