"| ain't got time for that shit! | came here to get answers!" He crossed 
his arms and put his foot down. 


"Calm down. You do, in fact, have all the time you need. And | will 
answer to the best of my ability. But first, | must weigh your heart." 


"Wait a minute.” Boris slowly put two and two together. "You're 
Anubis?" 


"The one and only." 
"And this is the Egyptian afterlife?" 


"We have made some modifications for the sake of modernity, but 
otherwise correct. And before you ask, | do not know why you were 


sent here instead of your preferred afterlife." 
"Alright, fine. Can | ask you a question?" 
"But of course. I'm here for that." 


"Can you use your authority to help me find the person who killed 
me?" 


Anubis gave a hearty chuckle. The chuckle slowly turned into howls 
of derisive laughter. 


"That's not how it works, my friend. Any requests like are reserved 
for after the deceased has passed the Weighing of the Heart." 


"Well, what are you waiting for?" 
Anubis conjured a clipboard and cleared his throat. 
"What have you never gotten in life?" asked the Egyptian god. 


Boris paused and wondered. "Respect and recognition, | suppose. 
People always overlooked me even when | did my very best to 
impress and please them, and it hurts. Even my folks treated me 
with indifference most of the time, it was awful. So | guess things 
stayed pretty much the same when | started working for the 
Foundation despite all the crazy shit. If only there was an anomaly 
that would make people actually notice me, you know? But no, it's 
always something that leaves a hideous mess." 


"What have you always gotten in life?" 


"Orders. Always being told exactly what to do, the way to do it, like 
I'm fucking stupid and don't know what 2 + 2 is. That hurts too 
sometimes, but not as much as not getting a simple thank you. What 
makes it worse is how some people feel entitled to boss you around 
because they're sooooo0o much better! But | bet my bottom dollar 
that these pussies wouldn't dare unclog a toilet if their lives 
depended on it. The important people depend on us but they don't 
wanna admit, see? It's why they throw a shitfit when we try and fight 
for our rights." 


"What did you give up to get what you most desire?" 


Boris realized with dawning horror that if he opened his mouth, he 
would be compelled to answer truthfully. The answer he could give 
would surely damn him to being devoured by Ammut, but the 
alternative was going and risk eternal imprisonment in the 
Foundation. Boris pondered and pondered, for a time beyond time, 
shaking and averting his gaze. Anubis' comforting smile did not 
falter for a single moment, and the Egyptian god eventually got up to 
hold Boris’ hand. 


"If it's any consolation, no one will know but me. And | don't judge, 
ok?" 


Boris swallowed hard, shoved his face into his hands and began to 
sob uncontrollably. Anubis just patted him on the back and offered 
him a glass of water. 


"| caused the containment breach! | did it, OK! | gave up orders to 
try and get respect and recognition! | just...1 thought | could maybe 
stop it after it begun if | planned carefully enough but...oh GOD, 
people are DEAD because of me! All because | wasn't satisfied with 
being a janitor and wanted to be a hero!" 


Boris pulled his thin hair and curled up into a fetal position, 
alternating between sobs and screams. After several minutes, 
Anubis managed to raise the janitor and give a big, reassuring hug. 


"Boris, people die working for the Foundation every single day. You 
made a mistake, we all do. That doesn't make us anomalies, that 
makes us human. You were very brave today, admitting your 
mistake. | can do nothing but congratulate you, and wish you a long 
and peaceful rest. Tell me, would you like one last meal and song?" 


Boris eventually swallowed his crying and chuckled. "Thank you. | 
always did love that vegetable soup my grandma did for me and my 
brothers. | saw it on one of your magazines back there, actually. As 
for a song...how about Kino's 'A Star Called The Sun'?" 


"As you wish. Do try to savor them, because...well, remember what 
it was like before you were born? Think of it as the closing of a 


cycle." 


"You don't have to use fancy words with me, Anubis. I'm gonna stop 
existing, | get it. But it's not like | ever existed very much in the first 
place. My biggest regret is never asking Cindy out on a date." 


"The lady in the cafeteria, | assume? I'll let her know if she comes. 
With your permission, of course." 


"Just tell her that she is beautiful just the way she is, and that age is 
just a number." 


"Wise words." 


The meal and the song were savored, and Boris felt ready to 
venture into his final destination. He was guided outside the clinic 
and into the labyrinthine depths by two workers with lamps, and on 
the walls he could see the marking in several languages of the 
people who had gone before him. Many grew increasingly more 
desperate as they neared the bottom, where there was a watery pit 
with something cthonic swimming inside. The workers nodded and 
left one lamp to light the chamber as they closed the massive 
circular stone door. 


As Boris walked down the steps into the pit, he could see a pair of 
reptilian eyes and an impossible, all-devouring maw that was 
contorted into a confiding grin. The creature seemed at once 
incredibly familiar and yet totally unknown. Whatever it was, Boris 
knew its character in one simple phrase. 


"You...are NOT disgusting.” 


resting state, it has been noted as having black hair and dark skin. 
SCP-818 cannot speak and possesses no known direct ability to 
communicate. SCP-818 has shown no need for nutrition or waste 
removal, but it has been recorded breathing and, presumably, 
sleeping. SCP-818 does not appear to age, and has been known to 
shift between heights (ranging from 1.17 to 1.84 meters) and 
weights (65 to 80 kilograms), making any determination impossible. 
This, coupled with the incomplete state of the recovered medical 
records, leaves much of SCP-818's history blank. 


SCP-818 is potentially capable of changing the universe on a 
fundamental level, but its abilities are severely hampered by its 
disability. The changes it makes are presumably an attempt to make 
the world conform to how it perceives things: pigmentation in all 
objects has a tendency to shift and flow, utensils and tools take on 
strange shapes, and sounds will emanate from no discernible 
source. These effects have demonstrated a range of approximately 
ten meters. 


SCP-818 has also shown the ability to spontaneously generate 
matter. Nebulous objects have been noted to appear, particularly 
after sessions in which SCP-818 has been doing a creative activity, 
such as coloring or finger painting [See EXPERIMENT LOG 818-1]. 
Most of these objects remain for less than a few minutes before 
vanishing again, though some have been recorded as staying for 
several hours. Because of this, SCP-818's holding cell has been 
gradually stripped of all materials that may be used for these 
purposes. None of the created objects move further than SCP-818's 
line of sight, leading to Dr. 's hypothesis that SCP-818 is 
literally creating phosphenes, possibly caused by the contrast of the 
colors from the arts and crafts and the white walls of its cell. Further 
testing is required to determine if this is true. 


SCP-818 was recovered from what is believed to have been its 
grandparents' home in rural , where it had apparently been 
left since their deaths in 19 from a presumably unrelated accident. 
One local banker and two real estate agents were assessing the 
property when they encountered SCP-818; their failure to return 
prompted local police to investigate. After subsequent 
disappearances, the Foundation was alerted, and Special Task 


Cleaner 


Date was... Dunno, January, '05. Location's some nowhere town's 
edge in New York. Time around 6 o'clock A.M. 


Officer was writing up a ticket for the sixth illegally parked car ina 
row when they noticed a lotta footprints in the snow leading under a 
nearby bridge. Decided to take a look, found six kids. All of ‘em just 
limp along the slope down to the river. 


Backup arrived. Investigation started, a rookie detective happened 
to brush a kid. Witnesses report a snap, then down went the dick. 
Died instantly, snapped vertebrae. 


Picked up the radio activity, called it in and drove over. Told 'em | 
was with the FBI, everyone needed to evacuate the scene. Backup 
arrived shortly. Scooped up each object into a containment box. 


Standard procedure. Kids reported missing, detective KIA ina 
shooting accident, amnestics for the cops. Objects cataloged and 
shoved in storage. 


Day after, got a letter on my desk. Opened it. 
Told me they were the killer. 


Told me how they lured every kid under that bridge before snapping 
their necks. 


"Like candies." 
Closed it. 
Tossed it in my shredder. Nothin’ since. 


| clean messes up. | don't fuckin' solve 'em. 


Cleaning Larry 


They started giving us oxygen tanks after the fifth cleaning. We 
would vomit too much, and get Larry all dirty again. God forbid we 
have a dirty Larry. 


| remember when we didn't have the tanks and we had to clean out 
the suit. The smells that hit your nose all at once - encrusted shit, 
stagnant piss, aging vomit, liters of sweat. But the worst of all was 
the smell of rot and death that pervaded the air around the costume. 
| always remember a documentary | watched on the US invasion of 
Okinawa during World war II. There was one hill both sides were 
trying to secure, and rotting corpses littered either side. They said 
that if you charged down the hill, you'd throw up from the stench 
before you hit the bottom. It was a terrible, gut-wrenching smell that 
hit my nostrils every time | cleaned this thing. Of course, now | have 
a skin-tight scuba suit on, so hopefully I'll be fine. 


The first thing | remove is the head. Underneath, your typical d- 
class. His lips are rasped and puffy, and his chin is covered in dried- 
up vomit. The inside of the costume's mouth is caked over in barf. 
They say the d-class almost immediately start tossing their cookies 
when they get in the suit, because of the smell. It's horrible, because 
Larry tries to talk to you even while they're vomiting, and all you hear 
is a garbled mess of spit and choking. A quarter of the people who 
wear the suit die in the first 5 minutes from this. 


| start removing the rest of the front half. The torso's always the 
easiest, just a bunch of sweat and some vomit that's dribbled down. 
It's funny when you look at the corpses afterwards, everything else 
is absolutely disgusting, but the torso is always in pristine condition. 
Sometimes right before the d-class expires they take him out of the 
costume and remove his organs, which they donate to hospitals. | 
mean, we have to be at least somewhat humane, right? 


| start getting to the waist and pelvis. Typically the smell makes you 
barf right away. We always throw out the jumpsuits from Larry's 


testers after the test. | can't help but feel bad for whatever pedophile 
murderer rapist they've put in the back. Can you imagine having 
somebody fart in your face for 3 days until you die? They did one 
test where the d-class were completely naked. The guy in the back 
choked to death after one day. When they opened up the costume 
they found the guy in the front had shit all over the guy in the back's 
face, and it was encrusted over in the stuff. Apparently he had 
choked to death on the other guy's shit. 


However, this time they were both wearing jumpsuits. The jumpsuit 
was stained in the front with urine and in the back with shit. Nothing 
too bad, but the rashes that form after the first day always make me 
cringe when | get a good look at them. Typically the guy's nuts are 
pussy and swollen, and his ass is bleeding and cracked. We had a 
few cases where women had their periods while inside the suit. | 
gag whenever | think about those. 


The worst part is the boots. When we first did testing, researchers 
noticed a slish-slosh noise after the first day. It took them a moment 
to realize that it was the boots. You see, Larry's boots are rubber, 
and so do not absorb but only collect fluids. All the piss and shit and 
vomit and sweat and blood running off the people wearing the suit 
drains into Larry's boots. It collects into this viscous fluid, mostly 
brown and yellow, with the occasional flecking of period blood. The 
person's feet becomes caked in this fluid, which slowly turns into a 
muck. And when you have to remove their feet from the boots, it 
makes this loud sucking noise like pulling a flip-flop out of mud. 


And that's only the first guy. 


Clef And Dimitri Hit The Road 


"A sabbatical?" 


"At least one month," Dr. Glass said, nervously fingering the panic 
button under his clipboard. The figure sitting in the chair across from 
him slowly blinked its uncannily colorful eyes (damn it, he could 
never figure out what color they were supposed to be) and carefully 
read the pink slip of paper in his hand. "Your psychological 
evaluation indicates that it's been years since you last took a break. 
You need to let off some steam." 


"| did have a break. | took a very nice trip to Italy," Clef said levelly. 
"| went to bar. Was fun. Met new friends," Strelnikov insisted. 


"A covert mission with six MTF operatives to eliminate a target is not 
a vacation, and nor are the five weeks in the hospital spent 
recovering from that nasty gut wound either." Dr. Glass sighed. 
"Look. Just take the damn vacation. | don't care where you go, or 
what you do, just spend at least one week where you're not worrying 
about the fate of the world." 


"That would be... difficult," Clef said, folding the piece of paper into 
precise thirds. "Might as well ask me to stop breathing." 


"Is stupid," said the other man sitting across from the psychologist, 
as he glared at his own pink slip of paper. "Is not like Chechens will 
stop being Chechens because I'm fatigued. War is not nine-to-five 

job." 


"Then... at least make saving the world a secondary priority. Think 
of it as... periodic maintenance. You take your car in for a tune-up 
every ten thousand miles. This is your time to get a tune-up.” Dr. 
Glass sighed. 


"Can't | get a tune-up in the shop? Perhaps | could spend some time 


at the training facility instead, or in the field..." Clef muttered. 
"Can spend time drinking vodka. That is proper Russian vacation." 


"No. No field operations, no training, no paperwork, nothing. Just... 
get some rest. You've certainly earned it. Enjoy your vacations, 
gentlemen." 


The door closed with a kind of epic finality, leaving two of the most 
dangerous men in the Foundation standing in the hallway, clutching 
pink slips like a pair of delinquent teenagers sent to the principal's 
office. The entire support staff of the Human Resources and 
Training division sat in their cubicles studiously staring at their 
monitors. One of them, a young lady wearing a very nice pantsuit, 
was desperately typing the Lord's Prayer over and over into 
Notepad. Another was whispering a Buddhist sutra under his breath. 


The tension was finally broken by a sigh from Clef, who rubbed the 
back of his neck with the pink slip of paper. "So," he said, "I hear 
Brazil is nice this time of year."