Trapped in a perpetual darkness, the town of Sloth’s Pit was 
freezing over. It was for this reason that even if the sun (which 
Bellincioni’s superiors had designated SCP-3014, codename 
“Solar’) was not present at the bar, the Lion’s Head would have 
remained empty. Everyone kept inside, rugged up in blankets like 
eskimos and doing stereotypical things like sipping hot chocolate 
and cuddling by fireplaces. Most businesses were closed. The Lion’s 
Head, however, remained open, and Igor — the immigrant barman / 
proprietor — viciously beat anyone who claimed it was cold. “Bah!” 
he would exclaim, shooting out fat globs of saliva in disgust. “You 
think this is cold? In Siberia, we call this summer!” 


By the bar, another girl had already swooned. Solar was working 
fast tonight. Far, far, far too fast. He’d already outstripped the initial 
projections. 


Bellincioni swallowed down panic. “Reader,” he whispered, leaning 
forward across the table. Sitting opposite, Reader remained 
oblivious. A faint hint of urgency now. “Reader! 


No response. 


Reader was Bellincioni’s partner. At his insistence, they wore 
matching suits, despite Bellincioni’s objections that tuxedos are not 
attire suitable for a bar setting. “It’s a hotel,” Reader had rejoindered. 
“It’s right there in the name.” Reader’s figure and features, of course, 
lended themselves to suits; trim and tall, dark and handsome, suits 
were the name of Reader’s game. 


Yet something seemed... off, tonight. Under normal circumstances, 
Reader's features naturally assumed an expression of sly cockiness, 
the sort of easy, knowing arrogance of a man who knew he was 
attractive and made sure others did too. But Reader, in the place of 
that smug smirk which Bellincioni knew so well, had been positively 
glowing with admiration for the entire night, staring off towards the 
bar where Solar stood. 


The tinkling of ice and glass. 


"Christ!" Bellincioni exclaimed. Where an instant ago there was only 
empty space, there was now a tall, aproned man towering over 
Bellincioni, another two glasses of vodka on the rocks in his huge 
hands. 


"You wanted more vodka," Igor said. His eyebrows were thick and 
dark, like stormclouds. 


"You surprised me.” 


One of those stormclouds arced. "In Motherland, you move silently. 
That or starve." 


Bellincioni nodded, avoiding Igor's eyes. He pulled out a fistful of 
dollar notes from his pocket, and traded them for the glasses. "Keep 


the change,” he said. Igor eyed the currency suspiciously, eyed 
Bellincioni suspiciously, and then the currency again, before turning 
his back and stalking away. 


Bellincioni watched him go, and sighed with relief as he disappeared 
into one of the back rooms. He tipped the ice from the empty glass 
into his new vodka, and slid the other across the table toward 
Reader. Inexplicably, it escaped his notice. It simply did not register. 
Vacant as ever, his eyes looked only toward the bar, as they had the 
entire night. 


For fuck’s sake, thought Bellincioni. There was only one thing to do 
for it. It was time to take drastic action. Surreptitiously, he slinked his 
hand into his coat, and drew from the breastpocket his .44 Magnum. 


I’m sorry, Reader. 
He squeezed the trigger. 
Bang. 


“What the fuck, man?!” Reader cried, clutching his chest. The other 
patrons stared, frozen in horror. 


“Oh, quit fussing,” Bellincioni said dismissively, both to Reader and 
the now silent hotel. He took the knife — the crocodile skinner — 
from his hidden trouser sheath, and handed it to him. 


“This was a new suit,” Reader lamented. “I paid a lot of money for 
this suit. It was a good suit.” He took the knife and cut it open, 
slashing through the cashmere to reveal a silver bullet glinting inside 
an inch of kevlar. 


“You were catatonic.” 


“A bit higher and | would’ve been. Goddamnit, man. What the hell?” 
he said, dislodging the bullet with the tip of the knife and peering, 
shocked, into the quarter-sized hole where it had been buried. 


“What do you mean, ‘what the hell’? What's the hell with you? 


“What the fuck are you talking about?” 


Bellincioni gestured wildly, toward the bar, toward Solar and toward 
the congregation which worshipped him. “He’s stealing your thing, 
man! This is your turf! And you’re just going to sit here and take it? 
Man up! You've got a gun, I’ve got a gun, we can take him!” 


Reader frowned. “No.” 


“You used to be a lion, man! You ruled the jungle! What happened 
to you?” 


“Lions don’t live in the jungle. That’d be a tiger.” 


“Fine! You were a tiger! You were a king, with a whole pride of 
tigeresses! And you could have had any you wanted! What 
happened? You should be like, ‘grrrr’, you should be grrring!” 
Bellincioni spluttered helplessly. “Do you understand what I’m 
saying, here? Why aren’t you grring? This is unlike you, man. It’s 
weird.” 


Reader’s frown deepened. “Ahhhh,” he said, taking the glass of 
vodka and draining it. He paused, gathered his thoughts, and 
continued. “I couldn’t be upset, you know? It’s like... a painter being 
jealous of Van Gogh, or a composer being jealous of Mozart.” Again, 
he looked with awe toward the bar. “That man is my Mozart. He’s 
not just a pick-up artist; he’s a pick-up artist. 


“| could learn a lot from that man,” he said, and sighed. 


Bellincioni almost choked on his vodka in alarm. “Reader! Man! He’s 
not a he, he’s an it; he’s an anomaly. You can’t idolize it! It 
endangers... everything!” He kneaded his eyes. “Look, | won’t tell 
King. | won't recc you for a psych eval or anything — as long as you 
drop it, OK?” 


Reader cocked an eyebrow. “You shot me.” 
“Shut up.” 


He did, and they sat in silence; Reader, meticulously analysing 
Solar’s every move, Bellincioni, sipping his vodka on the rocks as 
dejectedly as he had been all evening. Eventually, his second glass 
of vodka was drained and joined the first, and in time the two 


crystalline cups were joined by a third and then a fourth. Reader lost 
interest in alcohol, claiming it would impair his scientific pursuits in 
seduction, and by midnight Bellincioni was as drunk as he had been 
at his sister’s wedding, a night he did not remember and lead to him 
waking the next morning with a black eye and extensive bruising to 
his hands. His brother-in-law, too, sustained some spectacular 
injuries; the wedding photos were ruined. For some reason, he was 
never that friendly to Bellincioni after that night. 


| must be drunk, Bellincioni realized as his brain staggered clumsily 
from one train of thought to the next. 


He was, indeed, very drunk. 


On most nights, Claudia avoided bars; being awkwardly hit on by 
strangers was not her idea of a good time. But, she noted with glee, 
this night was decidedly unlike most nights; for a start, the only thing 
that distinguished night from day nowadays was the moon. And, she 
knew, most people had voluntarily imprisoned themselves inside 
their own homes, not going out for fear of frostbite. 


Secondly, Claudia needed a drink. It was a biological necessity; 
three stacks of paperwork, relating to the godforsaken Anomaly, had 
already clobbered her wits into submission. She needed to forget; 
forget about crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s, forget about 
stamping pointless forms demanding plutonium, ostensibly for 
“containment”, and forget about King’s ludicrous schemes to cut 
costs. 


To work a desk job at Site 87, Sloth’s Pit, was to receive twice the 
workload as any other site in the Foundation — guaranteed. There 
were two essential factors which doomed Claudia to working from 6 
to 8 each day, or longer: one, Sloth’s Pit was a Nexus. She did not 
know what a Nexus was, but she knew what it meant; Sloth’s Pit 
endured more anomalies than any other city in continental North 
America. And, she noted with a sour taste in her mouth, more 
anomalies meant more paperwork. At least, she reflected, the 
civilian population did not notice; they, apparently, were accustomed 
to it. 


Two, Site 87 functioned not only as a Foundation base; it, 
inexplicably, was also a plastics factory. For the sake of keeping up 
the appearance of being S & C Plastics’ biggest and only 
manufacturing plant, Site 87 made plastic. The stupidity of the entire 
affair was appalling. Underneath a fully operational plastics factory, 
which employed over 500 workers, hundreds of reality-threatening 
objects and entities were imprisoned; contained. What would 
happen in the case of a breach she hated to contemplate. All for the 
sake of keeping up a front company's appearance of existence. 


She’d brought up the galling idiocy of it with Dr. King, the Site 
Director. He dismissed her concerns. He did not care; to him, it was 
no longer about saving the world. He’d gone full plastic king. Under 
his patronage, S & C plastics kept more than half of the population 
of Sloth’s Pit employed, in one way or another. It was an 
achievement of which he was immensely proud; and it was not 
without its benefits. In the mindset of the townsfolk, he was not a 
mere plastic tycoon, he was a local celebrity on par with the Mayor, 
or Jackson Sloth’s penniless grandson. He soaked in their adulation 
with a modest nod and a tip of his hat, as he gave speeches 
opening new libraries and schoolbuildings, projects which he’d 
funded out of his own pocket. 


Hail King King of Sloth’s Pit!, she thought miserably, kicking a 
discarded can of soda off the curb, walking down Jackson Avenue. 
On all sides, closed shopfronts stared at dismally. She hugged 
herself tighter. Anead of her, she saw the dim outline of that regal 
hotel, silhouetted against the night. By the light of a flickering 
streetlamp, she could make out the sign which dangled above its 
doorway; the painted image of a golden, roaring lion, on a field of 
green. 


The Lion’s Head. 


She needed a drink. 


Reader sat in the booth in the farthest corner of the bar, alone. 
Bellincioni, perhaps a quarter of an hour ago, had staggered off to 
the restroom, never to return. It was, admittedly, somewhat 
concerning. He dismissed the mundane explanation of constipation; 


The remaining example of SCP-974 was captured and transported 
to Zoological Reserve Site 16, where it was installed in the 
containment zone of the original creature. It too was denied human 
prey and buried itself on 12/17/201 . The decision was made to 
leave the new instance of SCP-974 buried and see whether this 
represented a transient metamorphic stage. Constant GPR scanning 
revealed that SCP-974 grew in stature and size, apparently 
absorbing nutrients directly from the surrounding earth. 


Addendum H-12/Incident 974-Phi: On 01/25/201 , SCP-974 dug 
itself free from the earth. The new form (hereby SCP-974-A) was 
highly aggressive, much more so than the initial form, and 
immediately ran towards the nearby monitoring station, where it 
ripped off the steel roof and attacked the monitoring crew. It fully 
dismembered all 6 members of the crew within 90 seconds and 
[REDACTED]. Less than 12% of the crews’ bodies were later 
recovered. 


Response teams quickly mobilized and, per containment protocols, 
arrived within 15 minutes. SCP-974-A mimicked the form of Georgia 
, one of the monitoring crew, and exited the monitoring station 
acting as if it was dazed or injured. It begged the teams for 
assistance, miming a serious wound, but did not appropriately 
respond to the response teams' password challenges. When the 
response teams refused to allow SCP-974-A to approach, it 
attacked. It demonstrated the same resistance to firearms and 
melee attacks as its initial form, but did not display a fear of flame 
and did not appear to be adversely affected by being set on fire. 


SCP-974-A was killed when Guard Emilio sacrificed his arm 
while shoving a live hand-grenade down SCP-974-A's throat. The 
resulting explosion did not rupture SCP-974-A's epidermis, but did 
cause sufficient internal damage such that the remainder of the 
teams were able to subdue it within 20 minutes. 


28 Commendations For Valor were awarded posthumously. 


Addendum H-25: In light of Incident 974-Phi, the original 
containment protocols have been re-instated. 


« SCP-973 | SCP-974 | SCP-975 » 


it was far more likely for Bellincioni to have fallen into the toilet bowl 
in his inebriation, and subsequently drowned. Or to have slipped on 
a piss-puddle and broken his head open on the floor tilings. But, 
Reader conceded, this was Sloth’s Pit; it was even likelier still a 
freak wormhole had opened up beneath Bellincioni’s feet and 
swallowed him whole. 


He would go and check on the poor fellow, but, alas, it would 
endanger his observations. Oh, what a cruel mistress fate was! 


Ding-a-ling-a-ling. 


The sudden ringing of the entry bell pierced Reader’s musings. He 
twisted in his seat, around to face the door. 


Oh, fate is a cruel mistress indeed, he thought with a twinge of 
sadness. 


Framed by the doorframe, sure enough, was the slim, delicate figure 
of Bellincioni’s fancy; Reader’s desk-jockey co-worker, Claudia. 


help me my (love for my) daughter was born too still 


In this world, memories are imparted on all things. A baby's room 
remembers every lullaby sung within its walls. Graveyards remain 
eternally wet from shed tears. Rain often falls on barren fields of war 
in an unsuccessful attempt to soothe the land. 


Dr. Rights' pregnancy had been among the easiest anyone at Site 
19 knew of. When she delivered, near half the site took the day off 
to support her. Reminding people to eat, commenting on sleepless 
eyes and overfull coffee mugs, the doctor felt right at home— the 
unwaveringly motherly Agatha Rights. Even Dr. Gears visited her on 
his lunch break. Everyone had the same things to say: you will be an 
excellent mother, you're already Team Mom. 


Whoever couldn't make it to her bedside sent e-mails. Many of them 
spoke to how much of an inspiration Agatha was— a single mother, 
a witness to all the darkness the Foundation hid, still choosing to 
welcome a life to love into the world. 


In the light of an evening sunset, her daughter fed from her breast, 
unnamed and innocent and beautiful. She felt like cradling it close. 
She felt like throwing it out of her room. She tried to coo and smile 
down to her bundle of joy. But Agatha could not feel much more 
than the gums against her nipple and a vague soreness. 


She handed her daughter to a nurse when the spit-up began, 
suddenly revolted at seeing her own body fluids partially vomited 
onto her sheets. 


Three weeks later, Dr. Rights was at work and taking up her mantle 
as Team Mom once more. Dr. Gears had lost weight. Agent Clef 
had forgotten proper weapon etiquette at the dining table. 


"Hey, Agatha, shouldn't you be at home longer?" 


Dr. Rights laughed, downed her coffee with lunch. "/ just missed you 
all too much to stay away too long. Besides, have you seen Jack 
lately? If no one keeps an eye on him, he'll be breaking rules on his 
List Of Things Not To Do again." 


She had missed feeling like a mother. She had tried to watch over 
the little bundle, listening to her daughter sleep and coo and cry and 
laugh, speaking to the baby softly and sweetly. Something had gone 
wrong. 


In the noon sunset, she spoke with Agent Lament outside, where the 
flowers bloomed in delicate hues and the breeze smelled sweet. His 
eyes watched the sky's soft pink and bright orange shift to eventual 
twilight, listening to Agatha's quiet worries. He smiled and offered 
hopeless advice. "/t's natural for a mother to worry she isn't doing 
enough at first, Agatha, especially because you're a single working 
mom. But you're the team’s mom. You already know how to mother. 
It shouldn't be hard to adapt, right?"