I Wake for Naught - SCP Foundation

☦Site-18 refit to house overflow of Safe objects.☦

On an unnamed island, an emaciated man wearing a dirty lab coat and cargo shorts sits alone underneath a palm tree. The sun's rays blinding him for a moment, before he looks down.

The man is holding a small notepad on his left hand, and a ballpoint pen with an almost faded sticker of a Tyrannosaurus Rex attached to it on his right. The man coughs up some blood onto the golden sands nearby; he sighs in mild annoyance, and then, he begins to write.

December 17th, 2100

To Mom, Dad, and Charlie

I miss you all so much. I never imagined that I would have to leave home for so long. The last time we were all together was Christmas in 2030. I knew what I was signing up for back then and signed my contract with full consent; I'm not sure if I would do it again now. I couldn't be there for you Mom, when you were laid off from your job. I couldn't be there for you Dad, when you had to be rushed to the hospital after passing out in the middle of the day. I couldn't even be there for you Charlie, when you cried because you failed your math test. I wasn't there for any of you. I'm sorry. Especially to you Charlie, you were one of the best things that happened in my life. When I first saw your tiny fingers try to grasp at me as mom cradled you, I knew that you were always going to have a special place in my heart. Speaking of which, I never did get to say thank you for that pen you gifted to me for my birthday. It still works well enough after all these years, I always kept ink cartridges on hand to make sure the pen would last. Sadly, Mr. T-Rex isn't quite as good looking as he used to be. I hope you can forgive me for this Charlie, I promise I'll take better care of the next gift you send me. Pinky promise.

Now that things are the way they are, I feel that I need to be honest with all of you. None of you quite understood what I was doing for a living after all. I worked for an organization known as the SCP Foundation. No, it's not some weird subdivision of the FBI or CIA, it's its own independent body. The Foundation's main motto is to "Secure, Contain, and Protect". From what you may ask? Anomalies, or their more formal designation, SCPs.

For example, I'm sure you all know about Bigfoot. Bigfoot or SCP-1000 as the Foundation called them, and many other anomalies are very much real, the Foundation just managed to keep it hidden for decades. They were a competent organization which helped protect normalcy for humanity and were the ones who put me through cryogenic stasis for the last several decades. For Charlie's sake, yes, I was essentially frozen for a really long time.

When I awoke, it felt surreal. First of all I didn't think I would actually wake up. Cryogenic stasis can do significant damage to human cells you see, though, the Foundation probably concealed their more advanced version of the technology from the world at large. Why they were bent on hiding something that could have saved thousands, if not millions of lives, is beyond me. That was always how they did things. At any rate, one thing I did know for certain was that I needed to get out of where I was. The walls were bleeding.

I left the small room I was in, and tried to find any personnel nearby, to no avail. It appeared that the entire site where I was once assigned to, was completely empty. No staff, no anomalies, not even dead bodies. The site itself was a mess though, I saw fires that never seemed to die out, various objects suspended mid-air, oh and did I mention the bleeding walls? I tried to ignore all of that, and make my way outside. It was a surprisingly easy task, I suspect some escaped anomalies helped pave my exit, judging by the gaping holes in the sites' steel reinforced doors.

Once I managed to make my way to the surface, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Jeep that was already running somehow. I didn't question it at first, but in hindsight, it was just a small taste of things to come. As I drove my way out of the site, I saw the outside world for the first time in literal decades. The great plains remained a thing of beauty I thought, its vast emptiness much more comforting than the abandoned site I left behind. My peace would not last, however. The further I drove, the more anomalies I saw.

I begun to notice that the sky had changed color to an emerald green, from its previous light blue. I kept driving, which meant I kept seeing anomalies, from these headless horses galloping like your normal mustangs, to tumbleweeds made out of glass. I also saw a group of what I had thought were people, until they turned their heads to me to reveal that none of them had faces. One of them was clearly injured, poor thing was missing its legs. I thought about stopping the jeep to try and help them. But something deep inside of me told me to keep going, so I did. I heard muffled screams behind me as I left, I didn't bother asking myself how those faceless things could scream at all.

After driving for God knows how long I found a gas station and decided to make a quick stop. It was oddly refreshing, seeing this run down gas station that appeared to not be affected by the anomalous. This long abandoned gas station - complete with its dirty toilets and chittering rats - was a prime example of what the Foundation strived to achieve in its hay day: normalcy. Sure it was absolutely disgusting, it smelled horrible, and all the shelves in the nearby mini-mart were long emptied. But somehow, it was the closest thing I saw that reminded me of what once was.

I remember going to a gas station like this once, with you three. It was one of our earliest family vacations. I needed to go to the bathroom, and there wasn't going to be a toilet in hundreds of miles, so Dad had to take a stop at the one gas station we could find. It wasn't the best, the toilets were still disgusting, but at least there were people running the place and the mini-mart nearby. God, I miss people. I miss home. I miss my family. So many missed Christmas celebrations, soccer games, Thanksgiving dinners, and for what? Nothing I did for the Foundation mattered in the end. Part of me wished I had just died all those years ago.

I'm sorry for sounding bitter, I probably shouldn't be considering my circumstances, since I don't have much time left, I'll try to finish this fast. I don't know how I got to this island where I am writing this piece at this very moment. I recall interacting with something I can't seem to describe at some point, and now I am here. Isolated, alone, not managing even a single hello with another human being since I awoke from cryostasis. I wonder if it would have been better to have just slept forever? There's so many questions that are swirling in my mind even now, yet, I don't know if I want them answered at this point.

I feel tired now, always did get worn out easily as a kid. Maybe it's for the best if I took a quick nap.

The man let go of his notebook and pen. He looks down at his torso, red, covered in blood. He puts a hand to wipe his nose, red. Why is everything so red? The man thought, but he had no time to think. A heavy weight fell on both his eyelids. So the man took a deep breath, and slept.

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