"What thing?" Aldon slid over to the window and looked to the sky. 
"You know you could have just friggin’ asked where | live." 


"| was busy! And nervous. And stuff. Look, it doesn't matter. This 
thing is almost done, and then I'll send The Janitor over to pick you 
up." 

"That doesn't sound like much of an artist name." 

"Well, no. She— it— is more of a... well, the cleaning crew. It's a 
long story. But don't worry, this triangle thing just finished so she— it 
— will be right over." 


Knock. Knock. Knock. 


"Shit, that was fast." She started for the door but a thought caught 
her midstep. "Did you know where | live this whole time and do this 
just for a cool setup?" 


Felix just laughed. "I'll see you in a bit." 


Aldon stared at the phone as it clicked and went back to the regular 
dial tone. "He so did." 


After pocketing the phone Aldon went to the door. She glanced over 
her shoulder to make sure the golems weren't in an immediate line 
of sight, then she unlocked the door and cracked it open. She took a 
small breath and looked out. 


Something looked back. Behind the lens of a gas mask, two tunnels 
bored into a skull that might not have actually been there. The 
resulting abyss drew Aldon in like a moth to a flame, despite the 
obvious dissimilarity due to an abyss being both dark and cold anda 
flame being... well, not those things. The being nodded in greeting 
but kept its gloved hands at its side. 


A voice like a dying loudspeaker emanated from somewhere in its 
general vicinity. "Sculptor. | am called The Janitor." 


"Sup," Aldon said with a smile. "Come in, before somebody notices 
you. You're... what, a demiurge? Full Urge? You're definitely 
something." 


The Janitor cocked its head as it entered. "You are more relaxed 
than most | meet." 


Aldon shut the door behind it. "I mean, don't get me wrong— you're 
still unnerving as fuck. Just, y'know, that doesn't mean | can't be 
polite. Besides, you're not the first god I've met." 


"lam not a god." 


Aldon shrugged. "Eh, whatever you are. So I'm guessing you have 
some teleporting thingamajig to get me to Felix, yeah?" 


The Janitor slowly began to unbutton its trenchcoat. "| have a Way." 


"Cool, cool. Well, uh, open 'er up and let's get going.” 


"Close your eyes. Cover your ears. | will guide you with my hand on 
one shoulder. When | release, you may open your eyes and ears." 


Aldon shut her eyes but had to make the remark, "This is gonna be 
some traumatic jaunt through your personal Way, isn't it." 


Before she covered her ears she heard the rush of fabric, as if the 
Janitor was opening its trenchcoat in a deliberately dramatic fashion. 
It was too bad nobody could see it. Or hear whatever followed, now 
that Aldon had covered her ears. 


The familiar sensation of being shoved through a hole in spacetime 
quickly enveloped Aldon. An overbearing sense of something she 
couldn't quite pin down pressed upon her from all directions. A large 
hand grasped her left shoulder and gave her a light push, and so 
she walked. The feeling never lessened, and was so alien that she 
couldn't even gather some semblance of resistance to it. So she 
walked, The Janitor's hand on her shoulder. Blind, deaf, and 
drowning in a sea of mystery. 


Then her body collapsed into a singularity for a brief moment, and 
when she regained her senses there was no hand on her shoulder. 
She cracked an eye open and saw Felix staring at a blank wall even 
more blankly. Next to him, Cassandra Paulson was glaring at an 
unknown third anartist who was painting the wall beige. They were 
inside a large, mostly empty warehouse. Anartists could be seen 
everywhere, most either cleaning or painting, though a few could be 
seen carrying around benches. 


Power crackled behind her. "| have brought The Sculptor. Is there 
anything else you need?" 


Felix snapped out of his daze. "Allie! Hi! Janitor! No, | don't think so. 
We should be good for today." 


The Janitor nodded and trudged away. Aldon watched it leave, half 
expecting it to disappear the moment she stopped looking. And then 
it was gone. 


"You okay?" Felix poked her shoulder and she snapped to attention. 
"Janitor didn't shake you up too much?" 


"Nah, he's a big sweetheart," Aldon said. "Or she. Or it. Whatever. 
Anyway, what's with the whole... warehouse thing? That just looks 
like normal paint." 


"It is normal paint. It's part of the piece." 


Aldon looked around. It wasn't all that large a warehouse, really. 
"The whole place is the piece?" 


"Yeah. C'mon, I'll show you around." 


Everyone seemed to work a little more earnestly when Felix was 
near, and worked near frantically whenever Paulson turned her gaze 
on them. Aldon watched a group of anartists almost drop the mosaic 
window they were lugging around just because their precious Critic 
was watching. With methodical effort they hefted the glass up to 
their peers standing on a pair of ladders, who then somehow affixed 
the window to the solid wall. Colored light immediately began to pour 
into the warehouse, bringing the image of a rectangular prism sitting 
on a table into sharp contrast with the dark warehouse wall. 


"Neat," Aldon commented. 


"Oh man, neat doesn't begin to cover it," Felix said. "You have no 
idea how ambitious this whole thing is! | really think I'm making 
something great here." 


Aldon drew her mouth to the side but said nothing, and Felix was too 
enamored with his self-proclaimed handiwork to notice. Glances at 
Paulson only earned glares in return, so Aldon quickly gave that up. 
The odd thing, at least to Aldon, was that the anartists seemed to 
have taken an interest in her. She caught a fair few of them pointing 
at her when they thought she wasn't looking. 


If this was what it was like to be a celebrity, Aldon would gladly 
remain in anonymity. 


Yet the sheer number of them niggled at her. "So where are all 
these people from? This is way bigger than your group was before." 


Felix grinned. "People flock when word gets out that The Critic is 
looking for disciples. Everybody wants to be cool." He gave her a 
look she definitely didn't like. "Whether they'll admit it or not." 


Punching him would have been too easy. "Oh, don't you get started. 
You know why I'm here. After | get my new body I'm bugging the 
fuck out." 


"We'll see." 


All Aldon saw was an authority figure who had earned his title by 
virtue of failing to say "Not it" fast enough. When she looked to the 
mosaics she saw nothing but a mimicry of former arts without 
understanding their purpose. Craftsmen and artisans capable of 
bending reality over backwards and making spacetime their bitch 
had gathered in such numbers that they needed a warehouse to fit 
them all. Yet all they strove for was the attention of a man who used 
to clip newspaper articles. 


Surveying the scene around her was reminding her of something, 
though she couldn't quite place what. She watched groups pull in 
wooden benches and set them in rows. They all lined up and were 
facing in one direction, toward a podium with a large platform behind 
it. It seemed strangely vacant. Behind the poor, empty platform was 
an even larger mosiac of a man and a woman reaching upwards 
while the hand of what was likely God reached down. 


"Oh." Aldon looked at the benches, now recognizing them to be 
pews. "Oh." The beige walls and cascading light seemed to finally 
click into place. "Oh." She stared at the platform that had a distinct 
lack of statue on it. "Oh." 


"So, you figure it out?" Felix asked. 
They wanted her to sculpt a god. 
"Oh. Fuck." 


« Covert Cursing | Hub | Exasperated Efforts » 


Exasperated Efforts 


Jakeob Aldon glared at Felix Cori, and Felix smugged at her. 
Smugged is now a word, it is the past-tense of smug, which is also 
now a verb. It means "to be in a state of deserving a punch in your 
stupid, smug face." But Aldon did not give into the temptation, 
because she knew that Felix was her ticket to a new body. 


"Yeah, | think | figured it out," she said without a hint of venom. 
"Jeez, no need to be so hostile," he said for no real reason. 


A growling sigh escaped Aldon and dragged itself out into a long 
groan. She massaged her temples and surveyed the massive disc 
awaiting its future payload. It was just a statue, she told herself. This 
didn't have to be a big deal. In, make thing, out. Boy, thing, girl. 
Easy peasy. 


"Explain to me... exactly what it is you want me to do," she said to 
Felix. 


"We need you to make a statue of a person, that's it," he assured. 
The smug levels decreased, and for a moment Aldon could see the 
impressionable idiot she had befriended years ago. "Nothing anart 
about it, the entire point is that everything in here is not anomalous." 


Aldon looked at the windows. 


"Okay, most of the things. Some of them." Felix pondered for a 
moment before shaking his head. "Anyway, we're not asking you to 
make an actual deity or anything. Just a dude, like... | dunno, eight 
feet tall?" 

"And it's not magic,” she said. 

"Not magic." 


She eyed him warily. "And it won't hurt anyone?" 


He smiled and shook his head, unabashed by her gaze. "Nope!" 


Aldon stole a glance at Cassandra Paulson, who was busy being a 
bitch to the other anartists in the "church." Aldon watched the other 
artists hauling and painting and sweating and panting, and she had 
to wonder what the hell the point of it all was. These things usually 
had a point, AWCY? rarely made things just to make them. Because 
just making things for the sake of making things is cool, and aussies 
are anything but cool. 


"Fine." She whipped her gaze back to Felix. "Where's the clay?" 


Felix's shoulders sagged with relief, but Aldon caught a twitch of The 
Critic's smirk. She watched a man and his ego do battle for a 
moment before she leaned forward and flicked his nose. 


"Felix. Focus. Clay. Where?" 


He clutched at his stinging face. "Right, right. Sorry. Come on, I'll 
show you. We've kept it stored in this side room over here." 


He guided her through the rows of pews, offering hellos and 
dispensing orders to the anartists as he went. The more Aldon bored 
her gaze into his back the less he acted the mighty leader, and by 
the time he pushed open a heavy door at the edge of the room he 
was silent. 


Before them sat a miniature mountain of gray-brown clay. Aldon 
scooped a handful of the stuff and played with it in her hands. It was 
difficult to pull apart and she could see in several places the 
mountain was beginning to harden and crack. 


"There a problem?" Felix asked, now edging into nervousness. 
Aldon would have laughed at how easy it was to break The Critic's 
faux confidence, if she wasn't so frustrated. 


"Yes. You idiots literally just left it stored out in the open. It can 
probably still be salvaged, but I'm gonna need a bucket of water." 


"I'll get right on it," he said, preemptively breathless from all the 
running he was about to do. 


Aldon watched him dash out of the room with a sadistically satisfied 
smile. She traipsed after him, and found herself taking way too much 
enjoyment from watching The Critic actually doing something 
himself. Soon he came lumbering back into the main room with a 
bucket in both hands, water occasionally sloshing out as he went. 
Sweat dripped from his brow by the time he arrived back at the clay 
mountain. 


A ferret looked up at her from inside the bucket. 


The surprise kind of ruined her whole venomous persona. "Why is 
there a ferret?" 


"It came out of the faucet." 


Aldon took the bucket from him and stared at the animal within. "The 
ferret... came out of the faucet?" 


"Yes. | dunno if it's a ferret, exactly, but it... watch. Ooga boogal" 


As he screamed and waved his arms around, the ferret twitched and 
melted into a thin brown sludge inside the bucket. After a few 
seconds passed it slowly gathered itself and protruded from the 
bucket again. It hissed at Felix. 


"Okay," Aldon said. "That... happened. Uh. Thanks for the water, 
Felix." 


"Mhmm." He backed away from the hissing creature. "Good luck on 
the statue." 


She set the bucket down by the clay, then glanced over her shoulder 
at the retreating Felix. "Does it have to be a dude?" 


"| guess not?" he said between pants. "It's just what | pictured, 
initially." 


"Eh, alright, why not." She had gotten enough enjoyment out of his 
effort, might as well indulge him. "Do | have a deadline?" 


Felix leaned against the door frame. "Soon?" 


Aldon laughed. "I can work with that." 


Progress was slow, and at first just a tad agonizing. She knew that 
she had to get this done, not just for herself, but for the people 
waiting for it. It was not a particularly large audience, but it was 
larger than what she'd get in her living room. Even if she didn't know 
most of them, even if she didn't like a few of them, they were her 
audience. 


It helped that the audience happened to be a magic-wielding group 
of artists promising to give her a new body to play with. 


So she threw together globs of half-dried clay and splashed some 
water on it before slamming down some more. Digging deeper into 
the mountain yielded softer clay, so she burned a good hour 
excavating for better material. Once that was finished she went 
about molding together the clay to form some semblance of a 
person, pinching and smoothing the clumps into a single whole. 


It was ugly, but it was a start. From atop his mountainhome of 
Dryclay, Everett McWaterFerret watched Aldon slave away at 
making the sculpture look less like ass. Except for the ass, which 
was made significantly more ass-like. Clothes were not included, as 
gods did not cater to human concepts like clothing, warmth, or basic 
modesty. Not that this particular god had much to be modest about, 
since Aldon did not particularly savor the idea of sculpting a giant 
dong. 


Seconds dripped into minutes which poured into hours which 
flooded Aldon's mind with a torrent of anxiety. Was this really it? 
One statue and then that was it? Quest completed? No regal knights 
or fair princesses, just an idiot Critic and his bitchy accomplice? Not 
a dragon in sight, just a big fire-breathing metaphor for self-loathing 
and cynicism. 


It couldn't be this easy. They wouldn't like the statue. Yeah, that was 
it. With each accented muscle and every smoothed surface, Aldon 
came to the realization that she was absolutely awful at sculpting. 
When she stepped back she questioned the proportions, when she 
leaned in she hated the detailing. 


SCP-566 Contents Database 


To facilitate keeping an unified knowledge base of SCP-566 
contents, all entries considered anomalous (as per Table 1 in 
SCP-566) are to be logged with the following format to facilitate 
computer processing: 


SCP-566 Instance Number 
Calendar Date: 

Word or Idiom: 

Definition: 


Researcher Eisenberg 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 13/1/2009 

Word or Idiom: hellenious (adj) 

Definition: Portmanteau of "hellenic" and "odious". In a remarkably 
bad economic situation, coined by Nikos , after Greek economic 
collapse caused by the 20 olive plague. 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 15/1/2009 

Word or Idiom: scabbard, Able's (n) 

Definition: An arse. After Able, a [REDACTED] said to have been 
bound by the , who could materialize swords out of nowhere. 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 11/2/2009 

Word or Idiom: to boscovise (v)