enough by regulation to back up your choice to bring him down, but 
your commander can tell that there’s more to it than that when you 
fill out the paperwork. He doesn’t ask what it is, and it’s best that he 
doesn’t, because when your dad wakes up and starts ranting on in 
the twisting way he does in a manic episode the only thing you can 
think of is you are so fucking lucky that | caught you early. You are 
so fucking lucky that we can pass this off as a failed 
decommissioning and not the failed attempt at something more, 
because they would put you in the psych ward in three minutes if 
they knew you did it because you were riding a bipolar high into 
oblivion, you hear me? If they knew you did it because you were 
impulsive and your thoughts were racing, and you just felt like you 
could do anything, anything at all, like you were invincible, but you’re 
not and you are so. Fucking. Lucky. That | didn’t let you go any 
farther. 


10 


His father would have fucking hated him for wearing a suit, but 
Draven does anyway, his dad in his head laughing at him with a 
bottle in his hand saying who do you think | am kid, the fuckin’ 
queen? You're gonna dress up to watch a piece of shit alcoholic get 
put in the dirt? And he does anyway, because there's no one in his 
life that Draven has ever respected more than his father. Didn’t have 
the appetite to eat, didn’t sleep well the night before. Eyes red and 
hair matted and he cleans himself up, tries to make himself look 
halfway presentable. The funeral is always the hardest, that’s what 
his dad had told him the first time someone in his task force died. 
You think you can handle yourself and you never can. 


James is in a suit too, and when he sees him he pulls a thin smile. 
“... hould wear a suit more often, Bond,” he mumbles, but his heart 
isn’t into flirting this morning. 


James smiles back at him for the effort anyways. 


“You don’t look too bad yourself.” 


Draven shakes his head slowly from where he’s sitting on the side of 
the bed. “James, | look like shit and you know it,” he sighs. 


His boyfriend rubs his shoulder sympathetically. “Fine. You don’t 
look too bad considering the circumstances, how about that?” 


Draven nods. “...Yeah. Okay.” 


“...You ready to go?” James asks, and Draven looks over and sees 
his partner with his car keys in hand and feels a hole open deep in 
his stomach, like an encroaching numbness. He doesn’t want to go. 
He wants to stay here and sleep and wake up and have his father 
still be there and still be fixable. Draven hasn’t interacted with 
anyone outside James and his mother and Iris since it happened, 
and it feels so fast, like he was expecting the world to stop turning if 
his father ever died. He thinks about seeing other people, about 
people asking him things and saying that they’re sorry, and it feels 
so damn unreal. 


He swallows. 
“ ..Yeah. | think so.” 


When he’s in the car, he feels a deeper kind of hollowness creep 
over him. He lets James drive because he’s in no shape to, because 
he feels drunk, unavailable, disconnected. When they get there he’s 
prepared himself for what he sees, which is his father’s body 
cremated in typical Foundation fashion in a sealed metal box that 
glimmers blankly on the church altar. James stays close to him. He 
lets him to the talking, even when people ask him things, even when 
people ask how he’s feeling, because he can barely get words out of 
his mouth and James can and he holds his hand and handles it 
because nothing Draven will do in his entire life will make him worthy 
of James. 


His father was raised Jewish, but was agnostic through most of his 
adult life; they give him a Jewish service because it wasn’t like his 
father would care one way or another, anyway. The Rabbi takes him 
aside at one point and sits him down and talks to him about god, or 
about faith, or about his father’s faith, and they pray just like his 
father had taught him how to in passing when he was young, and he 


can’t remember what he says to him or what they pray for at all, 
exactly, because he doesn’t register anything that he’s saying, just 
nods and thanks him at the end. Praying for...his father? Could his 
father be prayed to? Would his father hear him if he prayed, and if 
he did, would he listen or just laugh? Why would god care about his 
father, anyway? Why didn’t god save him? 


Draven carries his father’s body in the cold box, and they’ve dug a 
hole already for him in the ground in the graveyard outside, and 
James is there with him still, and his mom is crying and Draven isn’t, 
and James is crying and Draven isn’t, and a lot of people are crying 
and Draven doesn’t because he feels too numb to cry any more than 
the already has. They put his dad in the hole. They bury his dad. 
The Rabbi reads a passage from the Torah that Draven doesn’t 
hear, and his dad doesn’t hear it, either. He sees James crying while 
they’re standing there and Draven feels himself robotically switching 
into your boyfriend is crying, James is crying, you need to help 
James now, but there’s no emotion left in him and he just curls his 
fingers in between his and squeezes them tightly. Draven has never 
been more tired in his entire life then he is in this moment. 


And then because James is crying, now, Draven sits behind the 
wheel of his boyfriend’s Saturn and tries to comfort him but his 
movements are unfeeling, strange, alien. They drive home in 
silence. It’s only 1pm. When they get to James’ house they sit in the 
car in garage and turn off the ignition. James is whimpering still and 
they sit, reeling. After five minutes or so of hearing his partner’s 
muffled sobs and seeing his own blank expression in the windshield, 
Draven’s head pounds, and he opens the door, calmly walks inside, 
and vomits into the sink until he’s heaving up bile. 


11 


A portrait of your father: 
(this one is also a memory) 


You're 23 in the infirmary, with all your team either gone off to sleep 


or admitted in another room, and just as you start thinking huh, 
maybe Dad’s asleep, you hear the hallway doors crash open and 
you realize that your father was simply not informed. He slams open 
the door to your hospital room looking deranged with his work bag in 
one hand. He walks briskly right up to where you're laying hooked 
up to an IV and heart monitor, and he’s shaking, and he comes 
close enough to you until he can feel the heat of his breath. He puts 
one rough hand on one of your shoulders and grips it too hard and 
growls, “Draven Kondraki, don’t you. Ever. Scare me like that again.” 


And then he collapses in the chair at your bedside. 


“Dad,” you say, and your words are muffled because the gauze 
shoved in your mouth to stem the bleeding gets in the way of your 
talking. “I’m fine.” 


Your father puts his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. 


“Jeezus. Fucking...eight hours before they had you here and they 
didn’t tell us anything about how you were, you know that? We just 
didn’t know. For eight fucking hours.” 


He rubs his face, then runs his hands through his hair. He looks 
almost as bad as you do. 


“‘Dad—” 


“Jesus fucking shit, Draven, what were you thinking?! your father 
explodes. “You could have gotten hurt! You could have died? 


It's rare that your father gets genuinely angry at you; irritated, yes, 
but never angry, never furious. You tell yourself to keep calm but 
feel annoyance clip up inside your bandaged chest. 


“| didn’t, dad,” you mumble, because your father is on the verge of 
hysterics if not already there. “These things happen on the field. You 
know that.” 


Your dad’s knee is bouncing, but then again your dad’s knee is 
always bouncing. He looks at you with the dawning realization of the 
person shifting back from ‘anxious father’ to ‘site director who does, 
indeed, know of all the occupational hazard that accompany your 


Excerpts of the Personal Log of Research Assistant 
#915-9 


SCP involved: SCP-915 


09/12/2007 

The purpose of this first excursion is... well, to fix 915. Two weeks 
ago 915 reported a need to replace "Gasket Epsilon Drugge"” and 
printed a map of a portion of its interior in addition to necessary 
instructions to repair 915. 


The first impression | got of the interior of 915 is the noise. Voices, 
even when the source is within two feet, seemed deadened. 
Inflection is lost as though the air were somehow thicker. 


However, the operation of 915 produces a wide menagerie of 
sounds. Additionally, each sound seems strangely altered. It 
reminds of that clip | heard in college. Lucifer something. Annotation: 
I'm recalling Alvin Lucier's "| Am Sitting In A Room". Even the deep 
sounds that | think might come from large hydralic action have a 
distinct buzz. 


There's also a very high pitched hum that fades in and out. 
Mercifully it's never very loud. It does play havoc with understanding 
what some of the team says though. 


This excursion is considered a success. We followed the map 
precisely, and the "Gasket" was repaired. 


09/28/2007 

Now Dr. Foudray has us entering SCP-915 to "wander around". 
Technically, we've been mapping and cataloging portions of the 
interior of 915. We've used spray paint laced with a form of radio 
isotope to do the tagging. Foudray hopes that perhaps we can start 
to identify patterns in the geometry of 915. It's so relentlessly 
mechanical, perhaps the noneuclidan following reciprocating cycles 


son’s line of work’. For a second you think he’s about to explode 
again, but he doesn’t; he exhales slowly and wrings his hands 
together. 


And then he laughs. 
“...God...” He shakes his head. “...God, fuckin’...I’m sorry.” 


“Dad. Did something happen?” You can’t help but feel like there’s 
something you’re missing, and sure enough, your dad smiles widely 
and shakes his head. 


“No. No, nothing happened. Just. Your dad says that books don’t 
affect his life and then they do.” 


Everything is still hazy from the morphine, and for a second you feel 
as though again, you’re missing something, like you didn’t hear him 
right, and then he continues: 


“| was...damn it, Draven, | was reading that one Stephen King book 
Pet Sematary. Look, just, the next time your team accidentally walks 
in on a Gol raid, I’d like a few day’s notice so | can switch to a book 

less child-death-centered, okay?” 


You smile lightly at him, feeling woozy from the drugs and the blood 
loss, but he’s there, just like he always is. He heard you were hurt 
and came running, just like he always does. And he was reading, 
because he’s your dad, and your dad is always reading or writing for 
one thing or another. 


“...Okay. | promise,” you say, and your dad laughs at himself again 
for thinking that his son might have died a slow and painful death at 
the hands of some anomaly. He laughs like that isn’t an option for 
either of them, like that danger isn’t there and never was. 


And for the moment, you drift off, and your dad stays and reads. 


12 


“Easy.” 


Everything is in a thick haze when Draven comes around, dressed 
once again in James’ clothes in James’ bed with James there next 
to him, James being James with his nose in a copy of The Hobbit for 
the millionth time. It’s dark outside. His head throbs painfully and he 
groans. 


“Easy,” repeats James softly, not looking up from his book. “You 
were having a nightmare again.” 


Draven released a breath of tired frustration. 
“Don’t tell my mom, will you?” 


“Nah, | won't.” James flips the page. “The past few days have been 
pretty rough on you. I’m not surprised.” 


Draven nods slightly; he’s exhausted, but can’t sleep anymore just 
like he can’t cry anymore than he already has. 


“You should just. Try to relax, okay?” 

“...What time is it?” 

James glances up from his book at the clock on his nightstand. 
“Around ten.” 

“At night?” 

James nods, eyes back in his book. He looks so tired. 


“Mm,” Draven mumbles in confirmation, and pushes himself up. 
“Didn’t we get back from the funeral at like, one?” 


“Yeah.” James flips another page. He'll never know how he can 
manage to talk and read at the same time, but it was just one of 
many things that he'll always love about James. “You came home, 
threw up, changed and fell asleep.” 


“Jesus,” Draven sighs. He sits up and rubs his face, trying to 


alleviate some of the feverish discomfort crawling through his skin, 
but all it does is make him dizzy. 


“| know. Scared the fuckin’ crap out of me. | think the funeral might 
have been a bit much for you,” James says, and Draven hates it 
when he’s right about these things and chooses to swing his legs off 
the bed instead of responding. His boyfriend glances at him 
expectantly once his feet are on the floor. 


“Babe. You should sleep,” says James, noting the purple circles 
under his eyes. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping well, and the 
dreaming probably didn’t help with that. 


“No, you should sleep,” Draven asserts, grabbing his phone from the 
bedside table. “You’ve done...fucking everything for me today, 
James. | don’t think | could have made it through that shit if you 
weren't there.” The last few words catch in his throat a little, and he 
swallows, remembering the weight of his father’s ashes in a steel 
box in his arms. He wished Foundation regulation allowed for him to 
do something other with the ashes than bury them. Scatter them to 
the wind somewhere over the ocean, maybe, do something his dad 
would have liked, but he also knew that that graveyard was where 
his father belonged, with all the other Level 4s and Directors that 
killed themselves off, or fell to some horrible fate, or just keeled over 
at their desks from the strain. He should feel lucky he got to bury a 
box with something in it at all, Draven thinks. Getting buried on 
Foundation ground was a conventional honor, and some 
nondescript part of his fever-ridden brain pulls out an image of his 
father as a ghost in the Site-17 graveyard saying, Are you fucking 
kidding me? I’m still here? and he smiles to himself pessimistically. It 
didn’t feel like an honor. 


James reaches across the bed to touch his hand. Draven twitches 
his fingers in response. 


“...?m gonna go read for a bit,” he says. “I don’t think | can go back 
to sleep right now.” 


James nods wearily. “Don’t read any scary shit,” he says, and 
Draven knows he’s only half-joking, with their jobs being the way 
they are. He leaves the room and turns off the light on James as he 


goes, extinguishing his partner’s reading light and receiving a soft 
swear in return. No choice but to sleep now. There’s the shuffling of 
blankets and the soft tap of James’ glasses hitting the nightstand, 
and it's these cues that send Draven from the bedroom door to the 
garage, and he sets to work. 


He knows exactly the book he wants to find. 


His father’s copy of Pet Sematary is a black hardcover with no book 
jacket and red lettering on spine. Like all Benjamin Kondraki’s 
reading material, it’s dogeared many times over, written and drawn 
in, notes taken in the margins from everything from meeting 
reminders to reflections on the text, Polish scribblings, things he 
heard others say, the visual imitation of his father’s racing thoughts. 
There’s dirt and mud from field missions and even a few droplets of 
blood here and there, but as his father used to say a little blood loss 
never hurt anybody. It feels comfortable and sturdy in his hands.