More vomit, more oddness. | don't remember eating any kind of jelly, 
especially cherry. It's starting to hurt, a deep spike each time. God, 
how much can a person throw up? When did | eat noodles that 
long...or that big? The goo in it is getting thicker too, and pink... 
starting to feel at least a little better. Ugh...when did | eat a balloon? 
My belly is feeling better now, really light. Jesus...whatever that was 
is floating still...almost looks like it's pulsing, or beating...going to 
have to move to the sink, toilet's almost full. Feeling better now... 
hungry, actually. Very hungry. Starving. Ravenous. 


| feel so empty. 


Meteor 


The oil smoke rose as if it would never stop. Boiling from the 
massive hole in both the earth and the pipeline, it had blotted out the 
sun hours ago, and still showed no sign of stopping. As Tyler suited 
up to go down and inspect the damage, he mused for the hundredth 
time since the accident that his was truly a blessed life. Not in the 
arctic for more then a month, and after a disastrous incident in 
Texas preceding that transfer, he suddenly gets reports of an 
explosion on the line. Then he's told that it's not just an explosion, 
but a meteor has impacted the line. His superiors were still trying to 
determine the exact probability of that event when he'd left to check 
the damage. 


Sucking on the canned, stale air and slowly easing his way down the 
safety line to the bottom of the hole, he shook his head. The 
goddamn pump control workman had been both drunk and asleep, 
and had let the line belch oil for nearly six minutes before someone 
had finally booted in the door and manually shut down the line. 
What's more, the crater hadn't overflown, which meant the hell-rock 
had popped into another line of some kind, or a natural cave...or 
god forbid, some kind of underground river. Tyler winced, already 
feeling the ax on his neck, made of lost profits, damages, bad press, 
and the need for a scapegoat. 


The heat steadily rose as he got closer to the bottom, and by the 
time he released the security cable and stood, he was sweating in 
his containment suit. The thick, sludgy oil was nearly up to his 
knees, a black pond with a huge, round bulge in its center. He 
stumbled forward, pulled by the vague current of the oil as it slowly 
oozed away in to...whatever it was under the big rock. He 
approached slowly, judging the rock to be nearly ten feet tall under 
its coat of oil and sludge. Oddly rounded, it looked like a massive, 
lumpy eight ball. That he was now positioned directly behind it was 
an irony that Tyler refused to appreciate. 


Leaning closer, the oil smoke oddly not as dense this close to the 
bottom, he tried to spot where the oil was flowing out. He put one 
suited arm down into the murk, careful to keep his mask clear of the 
ooze, and felt the unmistakable suction...but not down. The oil was 
being pulled up...into the meteor. He moved his hand a bit closer to 
the massive stone, thinking it was some vague trick of the current, 
when he finally noticed where most of the smoke was coming from. 
The billowing, black column of smoke wasn't issuing from the oil... 
but from the top of the stone. Four great holes were belching the 
fumes to the sky from inside the stony orb. As he watched, 
mystified, he saw one the holes quiver, then slowly flex shut for 
several seconds, before reopening with a fresh blast of smog and 
grime. 


“What in the name...” he started to whisper, before quickly changing 
to an inarticulate shriek of pain and surprise. His hand was trapped. 
Tyler's entire world was now defined by this fact. Something hard, 
and sharp, and crushing was clamped over his hand, and he could 
not get it free. There was a sudden pause in both the exhaust of 
smoke and the slurping of oil as the stony mass seemed to savor 
this new, more substantial feed. Then, it sucked. Hard. 


Tyler's last coherent thought vanished as he felt the flesh of his 
hand being pulled free like a used latex glove. 


Late Night 


It had been dark for hours, and it was starting to get to him. Sitting at 
the computer, he'd caught himself glancing more and more times at 
the nearby window, the space beyond so dark it acted like a weak 
mirror. He hated having big, black open spaces near him. Childish, 
he knew, but knowing that didn't lessen the fear of walking past an 
open, dark doorway in a dimly lit hall. Which was probably part of 
why he was still up. He clicked off the page he was on and rubbed 
his eyes. The worst was, as it got darker, every site he browsed 
seem to take on a slightly sinister edge. Even the bright, garish 
social network sites seemed to be tools to help illustrate that, even 
with 184 friends, you are still alone, in the dark. 


He leaned back in the chair, sighing as he noticed someone or 
something walk by the window. Instinctively, his eyes flicked to the 
computer screen, checking for any incriminating tabs. Probably a 
deer or something, they did live...he paused, suddenly looking 
around as if seeing the room for the first time, rocking to his feet 
hard enough to shake the computer desk. 

The thing had had a face. 

He was on the second floor. 

And the face was back. 


In the few seconds he watched, it was the absences that struck the 
strongest. No nose. No hair. No ears. No lower jaw. The additions 
were equally horrific, with the teeth, the too-long neck, the vertical 
mouth and yawning eyes, but it was the missing things that stuck the 
hardest. He sat, feeling drugged, hypnotized, even as the spidery, 
too-wide fist rose and pulled back. 


The glass exploded in, the sharp slashing pain breaking the spell, 
but the thing was already there. It grabbed, the skin feeling electric 
and slimy-cool like a reptile, the last coherent sensation he 
experienced. The rest were Impressionist: Pulling. Pressure. 
Tearing. Liquid sliding. Sudden numbness. He finally passed out as 


his ribs were being worked slowly and methodically free. Idly, he 
wondered why it was tossing them in to the hall. 


Organic Testing of SCP-622 to determine shelf life of 
chemical compound [DATA EXPUNGED] ina 
controlled environment. 


Procedure: Two D-Class Personnel were requested by 
Dr. Z . Subject D-254, Male Caucasian, 24 years old, 
87kg, 169cm, was given a canteen of water prior to 
entering hallway K- . Subject D-255, Male Caucasian, 
46 years old, 92kg, 172cm, was not given any water prior 
to entering hallway K- . As with Tests 622-1 and 622-2, 
hallway K-_ was isolated, applied with SCP-622, and 
viewed through remote monitoring devices. Moisture 
measured and monitored by electronic instruments. For 
a control, hallways K-06 and K-07 were also monitored 
for humidity content, averaging at 20% relative humidity. 


Results: Almost immediately after entering the affected 
area, both subjects complained of exhaustion. Subject 
D-254 immediately began drinking from his canteen. 
Subject D-255 attempted to struggle with D-254 over the 
canteen, but found himself too weak to fight. D-255 starts 
visibly hyperventilating around eight (8) minutes elapsed 
time. D-255 collapses at ten (10) minutes elapsed time 
and does not get up. Subject D-254 notices a visible mist 
coming off his canteen, reports his water is evaporating 
and needs more. Agent P _ sent into give him more 
water, reports on how dry the air is. Subject D-255’s 
flesh is visibly [REDACTED]. At fifteen (15) minutes 
elapsed time, Subject D-254 runs out of water, 
complains about being hungry. Agent P __ returns with 
multiple bottles of [REDACTED] brand sports drinks, a 
bucket of water, and several granola bars. Subject D-254 
seen dunking his head into the bucket of water before 
pouring it on himself and consuming sports drinks and 
granola bars. The water on D-254’s hair and clothes 
immediately dry up. At twenty-six (26) minutes elapsed 
time, Subject D-254 collapses from malnutrition. For the 
next ten (10) hours, the bodies of D-254 and D-255 
continued [REDACTED], finally reaching the skeletons. 
The clear salt-like crust from the evaporated moisture 


Peeled 


The TV was blaring sex and violence, but all she could think about 
was her damn bubbling arm. She picked at it idly, once again 
cursing herself for forgetting the sun screen over the weekend. It'd 
been such a good chance to get Adam to notice her, but she'd just 
ended up burned and humiliated. She'd been offered some 
sunblock, but Tammy had been there, snickering some comment 
involving the term “Casper the virgin ghost”, so she'd rejected it, 
saying she wanted to work on her tan. Now, if she were any more 
red, she'd be mistaken for a radish. She picked at the onion-skin 
flakes on her arms, trying to ignore the odd texture of the bubbled 
skin. 


She kept flipping between channels, trying to ignore the burning itch 
on her arms, face and body, all of which served to keep the memory 
of her humiliation crystal clear. She picked at her arm idly, trying to 
find a rerun of something she hadn't seen, all the while brushing off 
the liquid and peeled flesh from her arms 


wait...liquid? 


She looked at her arms, and felt her throat grow paralyzed around a 
scream. She was bathing in blood. It ran from great, flapping rents in 
her skin, the flesh peeled and pulled free in thin strips and shallow 
patches. As she tried to recoil, she saw a flash of bone. She skidded 
and fell from the couch, the jostling causing the peeled wounds to 
stretch more. Oddly numb, the rifts continued to ooze blood freely as 
she scrambled to her feet, starting to hyperventilate. She tried to 
press the peeled, red flesh back in to the wounds, but they just lolled 
free with a fresh splash of blood. 


She walked gingerly, trying to ease her way across the floor, but 
every motion seemed to cause the peeling to extend more. She 
brushed her arm, trying to see the bleeding rents more clearly, and 
strangled around a scream as a palm-sized patch of flesh pulled and 
flopped free, blood glistening on the newly freed muscle. She 


moaned, hands rising to her face...only to feel it shift like a cheap, 
ill-fitting mask, the burning, itching pain rising more and more as she 
started to peel... 


Hours later, she hooked a finger under her eyelid, mad pain 
compelling her to rid herself of the last, traitorous patch of skin. 


Knives 


He'd never really understood knives and the odd obsession some 
people had with them. Just little scraps of metal, sharpened and 
placed in a handle, a knife wasn't all that amazing. He admitted that, 
yes, for the most part they were given a somewhat overlooked 
position in life, but placed in the hands of someone with a violent 
disposition, or faced with an unhappy and carnivorous creature, they 
could take on near mythic qualities. What's more, they often weren't 
all that useful in those situations...truly an overrated and 
undeserving tool. 


Take, for example, this young woman. Even in the dark of the 
basement, where a flashlight or even a match would be much more 
useful, she brandished the knife as if it could somehow make up for 
her blindness. Crawling and sobbing, she held the knife out, waving 
it like a feeler as she pawed for the stairs. He chuckled, watching. 
Truly an overrated tool. Even if she'd seen a target, what could she 
do with it really? She shrieked briefly, almost tumbling in to the hole 
he'd bored in to the basement with. 


She'd even come down the stairs with the skinny little blade, the silly 
thing. He'd tried to be quiet, but the cat had raised a yowling that 
summoned the girl a bit early. She'd found the body about the same 
moment he'd bitten out the light bulb, quickly skittering to slam the 
door before she'd made it up, the sudden darkness tumbling her 
silly, ill-equipped head back down to the floor. He watched, hooked 
in to the ceiling, as she flailed about helplessly. His eyes started to 
glaze with anticipation, the vertical slit of a maw trembling with 
amusement as he slowly started to lower down, hook by hook. 


He'd show her the folly of such inadequate little tools such as 
knives. He fell beside her, the lower eyepads recording her shock. 
He'd show her how much better a natural tool is. He readied the 
knives he was born with. 


All six of them. 


Jaywalk 


There is a way to live well beyond your appointed time. You need a 
car, preferably something late-model, with a strong body. Newer 
cars tend to be too light and not do enough damage. Next, you need 
to find a candidate. It has to be a pedestrian, and it's best to pick 
younger people, as they have more time left, but not always. You'll 
have to watch then, if it's late just drive slow and pretend to be lost, 
but if you have to, make a second sweep by going around the block. 
You have to do this on a black asphalt road with a clear yellow line. 
You can ONLY hit a candidate that does at least one of the 
following,: 


Crosses directly across the road at a run, without looking around. 
Walks for more than eight feet on the road itself without touching the 
sidewalk or curb. 

Stops walking or sits on the yellow line for more than three seconds. 
Trips or falls on any pothole or uneven surface in the road and 
bleeds because of the fall. 

Drops a personal item (key chain, phone, etc.) that shatters, with all 
the pieces remaining between the yellow line and the sidewalk. 


If a candidate does any of these, it's an indicator that they are 
temporally detached from their “time”. If you hit and kill them with 
your car before they reach the next cross street, you can swap your 
time for theirs. If you were going to die tomorrow, but hit a valid 
candidate who won't die for eight years, you now have their 
remaining time instead of yours. It's unclear what happens to the 
candidate's soul, but it's probably not good. 


There's a group, mostly old folks, who do this all the time. The 
founder says he's over two hundred years old, and he looks it. The 
name is like White Sunrise or something similar. They had a web 
page for a while, but it appears to be gone now. | remember 
browsing the forums once, and the name George Russell Weller 
was being discussed. He apparently screwed up an attempt, and 


was being kicked out. 


Just be careful out there. I've noticed a lot of older folks skimming 
around suburbs lately, watching kids rather closely. Stay on the 
sidewalk, and keep your head down. 


Devotion 


Your love is cheap. No, really, it is. You say you love, and that you 
are devoted, that you'd do anything...but what do you do, actually? 
Candy, flowers, nights out, those are general actions, not 
expressions of true, devotional love. Look to the Church for real 
love. The giving of the self, the sacrifice of the physical for the 
eternal ethereal of love. Sex is just an analog, a tease for that final, 
eternal leap. That's how | show my love. | show it by taking that 
which | love with me. 


What? 


You are just a cut-and-dried little bureaucrat, aren't you? She was 
not a “target of opportunity” or anything of the sort, and I'll thank you 
not to speak about Carol that way. Yes, we didn't know each other 
long, but tell me you haven't fallen in love after a couple days too? | 
wasn't really expecting to fall for her, it just...happened. Very 
organic, really. So | invited her over, everything was going great, we 
were kissing, and | asked to wait a minute while | got something. 
Everyone gets a little nervous on the cusp of a expression of love, 
but her hysterics when she saw the knife were a little over the top, | 
think. 


...No, no | don't see anything wrong. She expressed her love for me, 
with her words, actions...how could | express anything less? How 
could | do less than express the fullest extent of my love for her? It's 
not as if | killed her, or anyone, for God's sake! 


What do you mean?