He had been defeated, torn, banished to the cage of the Dragon, but 
he would rise and fight again, as if none of the setback ever 
happened. Only seeing lon again with the relic on his chest would 
stir the slight emotions he had, and would remind him what he was 
fighting for. He had become an abomination with power he could not 
fathom. 


But it mattered little. He might have failed time and again, but he 
now stood triumphantly over the ruins of the Church, his slim hope 
becoming reality. The Archons had descended to this realm to 
witness the final moment. Bumaro looked once again down at his 
claws, as the clockwork was burning off his flesh, revealing bones 
underneath. 


Click. 


The Heart of the God fit perfectly into the grander machine. It was 
beautiful, as the gears all turned at an incredible rate and they 
emitted the loudest and most amazing sound. The next moment, 
they were no longer gears, no longer clockwork machines. A being 
of order looked down at him, one of glory long hidden and of power 
long lost. It was the God, his God. 


Bumaro could no longer perceive what was happening. Maybe he 
could have, as that young Mekhanite thousands or years ago. But 
now, the only thing he could sense is the laughter of the Archons 

and the roar of the Dragon far away. The light of the Mekhane was 
almost blinding, but Bumaro knew that something was happening. 


The cage broke. The cage, crafted from Mekhane himself to 
imprison Yaldabaoth, was now broken. There was a moment of 
silence, as the Dragon was now free and the God finally returned to 
its full form. The Archons cheered as the two reunited, as the great 
beast and the great machine announced their presence. Their 
powers and might clashed together, and their minds and forms 
mingled as one. 


maintaining close physical contact with them or handling them. The 
specimen depicted in the photograph, together with several other 
specimens, had been encountered by kindergarten pupils at 

Day School in Connecticut. The pupils designated the specimens as 
"Mr. Sillybug and his babies" and introduced them into the school 
facility where they remained for several days until they encountered 
a mixed group of pupils and adult faculty, with traumatic results. 


The diet of SCP-955 in its natural habitat is not known, but there are 
no indications that it is carnivorous. 


Footnotes 

1. Dr. Patel speculates that SCP-955 may have some effect that 
causes young children, as a class, to perceive the organism 
differently from older children or adults. 

2. This effect appears to be an inverse of similar effects seen 
inSCP-252andSCP-2662involving fear and ritualistic devotion 
respectively. 


« SCP-954 | SCP-955 | SCP-956 » 


The Grand Karcist Bumaro watched this silently as he felt something 
different, something he had not felt for a long time. He could feel 
Yaldabaoth take his power away from him and the glory from 
Mekhane burned down his rotten flesh. But what he really felt was a 
small bit of joy, that his sins were now placed in front of the great 
God no longer broken, that his debts were paid and his duties 
fulfilled and that he could finally let go. 


The Dragon and the God roared and their fight started once more. 


Bumaro got down on the ground and prayed softly: "My Lord." His 
voice soon died down and his body returned to ashes. 


The Day the Clown Cried 


Adrian's dream always started in the same way. He was walking 
down a street, a street he had never seen before. It was night-time, 
and it was kind of scary, but he had Freddy, and Freddy would make 
sure he was okay. Sometime when he was walking down the street, 
he would see a big carnival! No matter how far away it was, he could 
smell the treats and see the lights and hear the sounds. He would 
pick Freddy up and start hurrying towards it. He would run and run 
and run, but he couldn't catch up. But then sometimes he would see 
Mister Clown! That's what he called the clown he saw sometimes. It 
would run up from the fair and start talking at him real loud. He 
always said the funniest things, and Adrian always laughed so hard. 
Sometimes he would shake Adrian, but that only made him laugh 
harder. Sometimes the clown looked sad, but it was okay because 
he always cheered Adrian up! 


And then he woke up. Rubbing his eyes, Adrian saw he was at his 
front door. He was sure he had gone to his bed the night before... 
maybe Mommy had carried him here. Picking up Freddy, he 
dragged him back up to the bedroom to get dressed. 


Please let me go...don't make me hurt them anymore. 


The children love you, Laugh. You're the carnival's best draw in 
years. We have been in need of a man with your talents for quite 
some time now. 


No, please...! don't want to hurt them. 


Hurt them? What do you mean? All you do is help them laugh and 
enjoy a carnival. What's so awful about that? 


| hate you...let me go... 


Oh hush and go into the dark. You've got another big night 
tomorrow. 


Please... 


Dawn always liked the clown dreams. She had been having so 
many of them over the last month, they always made her feel happy 
inside. The clown always made her laugh so much! Sometimes she 
would be able to walk with him, but he always tried to make her go 
home. She didn't like home. Daddy yelled a lot and Mommy always 
sat at the kitchen table drinking juice and crying. Whenever Dawn 
went to talk to her she would slap her and yell in her scary voice. 
Dawn much preferred it with the clown. Sometimes the hazy orange 
sky grew dimmer as she walked, but it was okay because the clown 
was there. She would stop and listen to the clown. He told the 
funniest jokes about big pumpkins and carnivals. Dawn didn't know 
how his funny words were so funny, but she knew she liked smiling. 
She would skip through the autumn leaves to that just out of reach 
fairground, smiling all the way. 


It was sunny out. It was morning time. Dawn sat up, rubbed her 
eyes, and looked around. She wasn't in bed. Where was she? She 
looked around. It was Missus Baty's front porch! Dawn got really 
scared, because Missus Baty was scary, so she got up and toddled 
away as fast as her legs would carry her. She went all the way 
home, and went in. Strange that the door was open. 


Please...even if you don't let me go...spare the children. They 
haven't done anything. 


Ah Laugh, sometimes we feel you really disappoint us. You finally 
have something to talk to, and you squander your time with pointless 
pleading. It has been this way for generations, and it shall stay this 
way for the next generation and every one after that. It is in our 
nature. Sure, some of the children were taken from us by your 
friend's blockade, but we have taken care of that quite effectively, 
haven't we? 


You're a killer. If | ever get out of this place, I'll kill you. | will make 
sure you can't hurt these kids. 


Don't we know it? And that just adds another reason to have you 
stick around. You ought to get some time in, it is always a burden to 
touch their little minds. 


I...no...let...me go... 


It was Jesse's favorite time of the day, sleep time! He especially 
liked sleep time now because of the happy man. He always went to 
bed early so he could see the happy man. The happy man always 
went to the love place with Jesse. Sometimes Jesse got scared, but 
it was okay because the happy man held him and made him smile 
with his nice sounds. Sometimes Jesse walked alone, and he saw 
the fair, but it wasn't as fun as when he was here. He wasn't here 
now. But then Jesse saw it! It was a big happy circus! And Mommy 
and Daddy were there! and Rusty was too! Tears brimmed in 
Jesse's eyes. Rusty was back with him now! Jesse began running 
as fast as his little legs would carry him. It felt warm. 


And then suddenly...it wasn't so warm. Jesse looked up around him. 
This wasn't a circus. It was all colors and changing and...talking? 
Jesse tried to focus and wake up. There was someone...singing...a 
song. Jesse opened his eyes and looked around. There were a 
bunch of kids going in a circle around him, spinning around and 
around. Why did they look so funny? Why were their arms so skinny 
and their movements so bad? He looked closer. Then he recoiled 
and screamed. 


They stopped moving around him. 
Laugh, are you crying? We thought you were over it. 


You fucking monster...they're just kids...how could you do this to 
kids? 


Laugh, we have to do it for the children. It's what happens. You 
cannot stop it in the same way a natural force cannot be stopped. 
We happen. 


What do you care about the children? All you ever do is take them 
away. 


Laugh, you know we love the children. We bring them together to be 
with us. 


It used to not hurt when they laughed... 


It's time to rest up, we have a big season coming up. 
No... 


Elizabeth's dream always started the same way... 


The Day The Clown Lived 


Gyaros, 1200-1000 BCE. A cold evening on a battlefield soaked in 
viscera and Greek fire. Gigantic metal statues walk toward a temple 
of flesh. 


In the deepest subterranean reaches of the temple, Sarkic 
thaumaturges prepare a vein-covered pod of combat-grade vermin. 
The creatures within the pod tear at each other's throats. "Under the 
right conditions," Karcist Nal had promised years ago, "this pod 
could turn an entire continent to ash and maggot-fodder." 


The pod is given to one of many Orin thralls - lose the Pike-Bearer. 
"Take this to be deployed on the surface," commands Vo6lutaar 
Dazh. "Be careful. It's very fragile." 


"| obey," says lose, taking the pod in his hands. 


lose trips. 


March 15th, 44 BCE. Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, finds 
himself increasingly paranoid of the Senate. He fears a plot on his 
life, and decides to cancel his scheduled appearance. 


Perhaps they know of the arcane text he had secured from the 
Daevite ruins. He couldn't die now, just days before the ascension 
ritual had been completed - before Caesar's glory could outshine 
Jupiter himself. 


Reclining in his private garden, the dictator spots his least favorite 
slave, Josephus, cleaning the fountain and the surrounding 
stonework. Josephus catches sight of a spider and bolts away from 
his work. He slips on the wet pavement. The back of his head lands 
on the fountain with a sickening crunching noise. The fountain's 
water turns reddish-brown. A handful of flies, as if on cue, begin to 
surround the fountain. 


Caesar cringes. Perhaps | will go to the Senate today, he says to 
himself, if only to get away from this disgusting scene. 


May 3rd, 1937. Adolf Hitler orders a massive weapon to be deployed 
to America using the cover of a passenger airship. The Marshall, 
Carter, and Dark representative had boasted of its destructive 
potential for hours on end to the strapping young fuhrer, but they 
had him at "millions within the first five minutes of activation." 


May 6th, 1937. As the airship is lowered into New Jersey, a 
technician named Josef begins to feel cold. Using his uneaten 
rations and a blowtorch, he builds a makeshift campfire next to a 
large supply of hydrogen. 


November 5th, 1980. The Svyatogor, a Golf-class ballistic 
submarine under the Indian Ocean, receives the command from 
Moscow. The man in the Kremlin emphasizes that this isn't a drill. 
The captain draws a long sigh as he unpockets his launch key. / 
suppose it was only a matter of time, he says to himself. 


At the same time: losif, Petty Officer Second Class, realizes he left 
his aspirin in Novgorod. "I'll be back in just a second," he says, as he 
opens a heavy doorway on the upper deck. 


The Svyatogor remains on the sea floor to this day. 


March 15th, 2006. The Village Pointe Mall in Omaha welcomes 
President George W. Bush for the debut of a new Iraq War 
memorial. 


Mitch Stevens, 53, "Aryan-American," pats the worn copy of The 
Turner Diaries in his pocket as he watches the crowd from the 
parking lot. To him, Bush had done a lot of work to advance white 
supremacy. But he hadn't done enough. 


His baggy jeans jacket, the one from before his time in San Quentin, 
hides a vest of homemade explosives and rusty nails. As the 
President comes to the stage, Mitch breaks into a run— 


And trips. 


As he pries his face from the asphalt, Mitch can hear a drunken, 
high-pitched laugh from a man behind him. "Dude, check your 
shoelaces," says the man, his voice slurred from alcohol. 


Mitch flies into a blind rage as he draws the bowie knife from his 
boot. At the end of the day, Mitch only kills one person - some 
homeless jagoff named Joe Grunderson-Pike - before he's arrested. 


April 23rd, 2018. A Global Occult Coalition barge in the Southern 
Atlantic ocean carries out its shipment of esoteric military chemicals 
- particularly Substance-Tango-491, called "Ambien From Hell" by 
its nihilistic inventor - to Argentina without incident. 


Corporal Joseph "Big Joe" Pike is nowhere near the Substance- 
Charlie-499 tank to light a cigarette. 


The Substance-Charlie-499 tank doesn't go up in flames. 
The Substance-Tango-491 tank doesn't leak into the ocean. 


The Leviathan does not ingest enough Substance-Tango-491 to 
keep it sleeping a while longer. 


Joe, "SCP-2416-21," is in Foundation Site-59, under a medically- 
induced coma. 
May 5th, 2049. The Leviathan awakens. 


When the tidal wave hits Site-59, the failsafe dies in his sleep. 


The Death Of Alto Clef, aka Agent Ukulele, aka Adam 
ben Yahweh, aka Lucifer, First of the Fallen, aka That 
Bastard, etc. 


And then the sun went out. 


The Decoy 


Clef felt a little regretful, he would have to admit. He’d always found 
Rights very agreeable, if not the brightest bulb on the chandelier. At 
the very least, he felt sorry enough to sit at her bedside with a small 
sigh and take his time prepping the weapon. It really was regretful, 
he sighed, that it would come to this. Of all the people to ever get 
out of the foundation, Rights seemed like a good candidate to be 
able to stay out. 


She had chutzpah. 


Hell, anybody who left the Foundation without the Foundation’s 
express approval or a full memory wipe had chutzpah to spare. 


And very good friends to smuggle herself out. 


He absently hummed to himself as he screwed the suppressor onto 
the barrel of the gun, checking it over and re-checking it, before 
glancing back at Rights. She was still asleep, brow furrowed in fitful 
dreams. He paused, and wondered what life must have been like for 
her outside of the foundation, raising her little monster. 


The years had taken their toll on both of them, it seemed. In forms of 
grey hair and deep lines and arthritic hands. He mused over what 
sort of strange traits the years and years of exposure to SCPs had 
awakened in her. 


He had to do this quietly. 


After all, even he wasn’t bullheaded enough to consider going up 
against even a low-level reality bender head-on anymore, if there 
was a choice. Especially one that knew him. He was getting far too 
old for that. 


For too old indeed, he thought as he stood, feeling his joints creak a 
little. 


SCP-956: The Child-Breaker 


Item #: SCP-956 
Object Class: Safe Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-956 is to be kept at the 
approximate center of a 18 by 18 by 4 meter concrete room at all 
times. The door is to be locked, with an armed guard posted to 
prevent unauthorized access. Entrance by research personnel into 
the room is only permitted once SCP-956 has entered a dormant 
state. Permission to bring a subject into the room must be cleared 
by O5 approval to decrease the occurrence of SCP-956-1 as well as 
[DATA REDACTED]. Unless for testing, individuals fulfilling 
SCP-956's activation requirement are not to be brought within 200 
meters of SCP-956's containment area. Surveillance is to be 
maintained through security footage at all times.