He does not see his dad on his cot as he left him, and his first 
thought was hopeful sentiment that maybe he got to the bathroom in 
time to vomit, and if he should just go check on him there to make 
sure he didn’t fall, and then his second response is to fix it. He sees 
his father’s body and thinks, / can save you still. He does not turn on 
the light. His father’s head is blown out but he still checks for a 
pulse, second checks for a pulse, for anything at all, and when 
there’s nothing he starts fixing. He kneels in the little pool of blood 
and starts grabbing pieces of brain matter because now his brain is 
saying fix dad, fix dad, fix dad, put dad back together like you always 
do, and he doesn’t know what to do with the little pieces of bone and 
meat once he has them in his trembling hands and stupidly, 
drunkenly, tries to but them back in, presses it into to mess that is 
the back of his dad’s head and blinks down in the faint lamplight, fix 
dad, fix dad, you can always fix dad, none of the bone or meat fits 
right back in his father’s head like it should so he checks for a pulse 
again, thumb and forefinger leaving bloody prints on the cold body, 
fix dad, and there’s no pulse, he isn’t checking hard enough. He rolls 
him over and shakes him. He can’t remember how to do CPR, it 
feels like his brain is short circuiting, and eventually he just scoops 
his father’s torso out of the mess and holds him, fix dad, fix dad, and 
says please, even when stagnant blood from his father’s head runs 
over his arms and plasters his shirt to his body, dad, fix dad, fix dad, 
and he thinks that was what sent him to the phone, pressing in for 
medical, and they ask what’s wrong with him? and he said he shot 
himself, and they say where? and he said in the head, and he just 


says can you help him? Can you help him? and they tell him no over 
the phone and it doesn’t register, his bloody handprints are left on 
the phone and on the buttons, fix dad, fix dad, he'll get better. He'll 
get better. 


Dad always gets better, he thinks, sitting in the hospital waiting room 
at 2am covered in his father’s blood, dad always gets better. James 
sees him and there are tears running down his cheeks at the sight of 
him. Draven is not crying, but James is sobbing. Draven doesn’t feel 
anything at all. Dad always gets better. James sits next to him. The 
blood is drying on his skin and on his clothes. The nurse talks to 
James. James talks to him. James calms down enough to stop 
crying. They keep talking and Draven stares blankly at the door they 
wheeled his father through an hour ago. Dad always gets better. 


Two hours pass, and Draven feels shaky. James asks him if he’s 
okay and he can barely speak. James talks to the nurse, and then 
James asks him, honey, what’s in your hand, and he just says dad 
because he doesn’t know what else to say and is full of panic and 
numbness and grief, and James gags sharply, then composes 
himself, and then talks to the nurse again, and then James pulls a 
biohazard bag over to him. 


“What's this for?” he stammers out, and James sits down next to him 
and takes his left hand in both of his own and holds it out over the 
bag. Draven has had it in a fist for the past four hours not out of 
anger, but out of necessity, and he cannot remember why and feels 
too small to fight it. 


“Okay. We’re gonna do this together, yeah?” Draven looks at him, 
mortified and unsure, but before he can say anything in response his 
boyfriend continues, “On the count of three. One. Two. Three—” 


James buckles his fingers under Draven’s and pulls them back — 
index, pinkie, middle, ring, thumb, half moons cut and bleeding in his 
hands from having held them there so long and so tightly, and the 
clump of curly grey hair and scalp that he’s been clutching 
desperately to for the hours following his father killing himself sticks 
to his palm with congealed blood. Draven feels himself hit a point of 
overwhelming numbness at the grotesqueness of this scene and is 
not able to react; he lets his boyfriend, who — as it will occur to him 


later, when he’s able to recall with some amount of lucidity the 
events of the hospital — has done more for him then he could ever 
expect of someone, has done it out of love, has done it because of 
reasons that Draven could never imagine and can’t fathom the idea 
of, will carefully, lovingly peel it off Draven’s skin and let it drop into 
the translucent red bag as he sits numbly in horror, will then pull off 
the remaining strands of silver hair from where they've dried 
swimming in congealed blood on his partner’s palm, will pick the 
little shard of bone sitting pressed between Draven’s pointer and 
middle finger and remove it, will cast an eye towards the washroom 
and somehow through some force of god get Draven there and hold 
his bloodied hands under warm water and use his thumbnails to 
scrape his boyfriend’s father’s congealed film of blood from his 
hands, will try to get under the nails, between his fingers, but it’s 
soaked so deep it’s like a stain and even when Draven comes 
around and begins to stammer something, anything in response to 
seeing the sink go red, he cannot fathom at this moment to process 
the fact that he was holding his father’s scalp, his father’s hair, his 
father’s blood and bone, he cannot form words, and when James 
turns off the water he barely catches him when he faints. 


3 


James. 


James is holding his hand in the exam room, and then James is 
talking with the doctor, and then James is taking him home and it is 
storming and he’s wearing James’ jacket over his bloodied clothing 
and sticky arms in the passenger’s seat of James’ clunky green 
Saturn and feels bad because this is James’ favorite jacket and 
there’s something on him there’s something still on his body, and 
then he’s in James’ house, and in James’ shower, and he thinks it 
must have been in James’ shower with James helping him wash the 
blood from his bare shoulders that it hits him because this is when 
he starts screaming. He stands in James’ arms in James’ house in 
James’ shower and screams, and he isn’t sure why he’s screaming, 
and James is there saying something in that soft way James says 
things and he wants to shake James and say James, something 


happened, James, James and he does, and James says something 
in that way that James does and he screams James, my dad, and 
he says something else and Draven says James, James, my dad, 
and his chest compresses inward because something happened to 
him that’s out of his mind’s ability to grasp, James, something 
happened to dad, and James has him sit down in the shower and 
James turns off the water and James, James, James, everything is 
James and the thing he can’t quite reach and my dad, my dad, 
James squeezes some water out of his hair and says / know, it’s 
okay, it'll be okay. James says, I’m here. James says, it’s okay. 
James says, /et's get you into some clean clothes, and he’s wearing 
James’ clothes and is in James’ bed, and he sits and falls uselessly 
into James because there is nowhere else to fall to. 


He'll take good care of you. 


James rubs his back between the shoulder blades and mumbles 
words; the meanings are lost on him. He feels numb now, like all the 
energy has been taken from him in the past six hours since he found 
his father on the floor. The rain patters gently on the window panes, 
and just as the morning begins Draven drifts off into a numb and 
distant sleep. 


4 


A portrait of your father: 
(It's a memory from when you are very, very young) 


It's him — it’s your father. He’s standing behind a desk in his office 
but is facing away from you, talking on a landline with a spiral cord 
that tethers him down as he paces; he’s walking back and forth, 
back and forth, twirling it around his fingers as he talks in Polish, 
then English, then Polish again. He’s the smartest man you've ever 
met because the books he reads are thick. He takes lots of pictures 
of you when you're little because you’re too young to tell him dad, 
that’s embarrassing, and you're his best subject, and his favorite, 
and you think he has the coolest job in the world, his dad and his 


mom. They always come home at night and they always tell him 
they love him. His dad doesn't drink. He takes two white-pink 
capsules a day with food. They come from an orange bottle with a 
white top that he keeps in his work bag and the prescription is 
written in both Polish and English; you Know because you take it out 
and read it aloud to him to impress him, but you aren’t allowed to 
open it or touch the things inside, not that you could get it open 
anyway. Dad is amazing. Dad swears sometimes but makes you 
promise not to tell mom. Dad likes reading and writing and reads to 
you every night. Dad takes you to see the butterflies that call you 
things like “PROGENY” and “CHILD” with their wings even though 
you've told them your name before. Dad. Dad. Dad. Everything is 
Dad, and everything is fine, and the desk he stands behind when 
you are five is the same desk he'll die behind when you are twenty- 
five. 


Dad talks on the phone and takes his medicine. 


) 


James does not sleep. 


He watches his boyfriend sleep, yes; chest rising and falling in the 
muted light from outside, raindrops casting shadows across his skin. 
He can’t sleep. He calls them both in from work because suddenly 
nothing like that matters as much as it did 24 hours ago, and more 
importantly because he feels like it’s too soon to leave Draven 
alone. And James had loved Draven’s dad just like he would his 
own, despite the challenges. James cried on and off for a few hours, 
shifting between distress and confusion and anxiety for his partner; 
there were a few times when he was afraid he would wake Draven, 
but he was too far into dreamless sleep to be bothered because 
James had crushed up a dose of the sleeping pills the doctor had 
given him for Draven in the ER and mixed it in with some water and 
had his boyfriend drink all of it, and Draven, who would have noticed 
himself being drugged in an instant had he not been too deep in 
shock and horror to function, drank it with trembling hands and tear 
streaks down his pale face, sitting on the side of his bed wearing 


James’ Pink Floyd shirt and sweatpants, looking smaller than he’d 
ever seen him before at 3am with blood under his nails. 


So it’s James — up at 6am watching the rain hit the kitchen window 
with a cup of black coffee — who answers Draven’s mother’s phone 
call, because his boyfriend is still passed out in his bed in the other 
room when his iPhone starts buzzing on the kitchen counter, thrown 
to the side in the haze of hard, cold grief of the night before. He’s 
never answered a phone call for his boyfriend before, and considers 
not answering until he turns it over and sees “Mom” written on the 
screen, and imagines how worried she must be, how Draven might 
not be in a mental state to call her back for another couple days. 


And so he picks it up. 
“Hello?” 


“Draven?” He'd only met Draven’s mother once the year before, and 
hoped she’d remember him. “Are you there?” 


“It’s James,” he says stupidly, then works to correct himself. “Uh, 
sorry. Draven’s boyfriend.” 


“Is he okay?” Her voice is thick with worry. “Is he there? Can | talk to 
him?” 


“He’s okay. He’s sleeping in the other room right now, | took him 
home and got him cleaned up. They checked him over at the 
hospital.” 


“Is he— how is he doing? How is he taking it? | heard he found him 


” 


“He did. He’s...not taking it very well, but he’s resting. | think he’s 
toughing on through it okay.” James swallows, remembering walking 
into the ER to find his boyfriend sitting, soaked in his father’s blood, 
clutching to a piece of his father’s scalp. 


“Please let me talk to him.” 


“Mrs. Kondraki-” he says, then trails off, realizing that he’s not sure 
of Draven’s mom’s formal name. “Uh, Alice—” 


“James,” she says, seriously. “Please.” 
“He’s asleep—” 
“James. Let me talk to my son.” 


James sets down the coffee cup on the counter and runs one hand 
through his hair. 


“Okay. I'll...l’ll so see if | can wake him up, but the doctor gave him 
some sleeping pills, so he might be kind of out of it.” 


“That’s fine,” she says. “I won’t keep him awake long. He’s not going 
to work, is he?” 


“God, no,” replies James, walking to the bedroom door that he’s left 
open a crack. It’s dark inside. “No. | called both of us in for a few 
days, and then just thought I’d see how he was doing. I’m thinking a 
couple weeks before he’s ready, but we'll just take it one step ata 
time and cross that bridge when we get to it.” 


He hears Alice sigh on the other end of the line. “Okay. That’s... 
that’s fine. He just— you know how he can be—’” 


“| Know exactly how he can be. I’m the same way,” he says, 
lingering in the doorway. “Here, give me a sec, I’m gonna see if | 
can wake him up.” 


He hears Alice reply over the phone, but has already pressed it 
against his chest as he creeps into the room. 


Draven is curled up in a fetal position on the far end of the bed, hair 
mussed against the pillows, sides making the blankets rise and fall 
evenly with his breathing. James walks softly — mostly out of habit 
of coming to bed second than anything else — to the other side of 
the bed and shakes his arm gently. 


“Draven,” he whispers. “Draven. Hon. Wake up.” 
Draven continues sleeping soundly. James sighs and places the 


hand not holding the cell phone on his upper back, rubbing his way 
up his neck and into his thick black curls. 


The interior is often unsettling to subjects and investigators. Many 
cases of disorientation, nausea, and fainting have been reported 
within 915. It is indeterminate how much of these symptoms are a 
result of the sensory corruption due to the non-Euclidian nature of 
915, and how much is the direct effect on humanity of exposure to 
locally nonflat spacetime. 


The internal configuration of 915 appears to be related to 
computations performed by the device, with more extensive 
computations requiring a larger degree of internal reorganization. 


The power source of 915 seems to be infalling air from the exterior 
environment. The source of this pressure gradient, and the ultimate 
disposition of the infalling gas, is indeterminate at this time. See 
Appendix 915a. 


Addenda: 

915a: Team 915-/5 found the edge of the interior of 915. They 
described it as a great wall of blackness. They said it swallowed the 
light from their flashlights, but it seems more probable that there 
simply wasn't anything for the lights to reflect off of. Further, the 
team described an eerie whistling as a wind from the interior of 915 
blew out to the void. Is this a possible power source? Is the interior 
of 915 suspended in a large void and it derives power from the 
pressure gradient between our atmosphere and this vacuum? 
Further investigation is warranted, assuming we can find the edge 
again of course. 


-Dr. Foudray 


915b: Dr. Snorlison was recently lost within the interior of SCP-915 
for over a month. Despite this, his body showed no signs of 
dehydration or malnutrition. However, other ancillary factors, such 
as hair growth, indicated he experienced several months of 
subjective time while within 915. Further investigation is warranted, 
however Dr. Snorlison is being reassigned and will not be available 
to experimenters for comment. 


915c: I've decided to release some of my assistant's research notes 
in light of recent events involving Researcher #915-c. -Dr. Foudray 


“Draven.” 


He sees his partner's eyes twitch slightly under their lids. He shakes 
his shoulder again. 


“Draven. Hey.” 


6 


A portrait of your father: