“Today’s code is B-thirty-five.” 
“Oh. Okay. B-thirty-five.” 


His mouth is a straight line while he finishes draining the syringe. 
When it’s empty, he pulls it out of you and says, “do you need me to 
stay here with you?” 


You’re not sure what he means by that. “Why?” 
"In case of panic or adverse reactions to-" 
"I'm fine, really.” 


He sighs. “Look, this is your third emergency amnesticization in the 
past two months. | know this department is taxing on your mental 
health, but if you want my advice as a coworker, I’d advise you to 
transfer. There’s no reason to keep doing this to yourself if you can’t 
handle the content of the work.” 


You laugh while you rub your arm. “I'll talk to Jones.” 
He opens his mouth, but closes it. “Alright. Are you good?” 
“’m always good.” 


He nods, says something under his breath, packs up his bag, and 
leaves. You hear him relock the door for you. 


“By the way, merry Christmas!” you call out with a smile before 
closing your eyes. 

How are you doing this morning? 

“Just fine.” 


Jones stares solemnly over his glasses at you. "What did you eat for 
dinner last night?” 


”C-cereal.” 


He nods and puts his papers down. You think you see him roll his 
eyes. “B-thirty-five.” 


“W-what?” 
“B-thirty-five.” 


Your eyes widen. “...Oh.” You clench your hand and look at your 
lap. 


“No one will hold anything against you if you transfer, you know. 
This position is not for everyone, even in this organization.” 


You pull your mind back from the fragmented memories of last night. 


| ” 


“I’m just saying that-” 


“It's so important, though. Arguably the most important department 
in each site. You heard what the O5s wrote about last month-” 


“Yes. Look, you're only allowed so many emergency procedures, 
you know.” 


“...E know.” 

“You’re really on the upper limit of them.” 
“| have- nightmares.” 

“Then transfer.” 


“B-but what’s the problem, logically speaking, if | don’t remember 
anything a day later?” 


“Sleeping. Paranoia issues. Depression and anxiety. Chemical 
addiction to amnes-” 


“Okay, look, | know the Foundation has my drug record, but that was 
a different part of my life-” 


“Calm down. This isn’t about you doing weed and shrooms in 
college, this is about well-known and widely documented 
biochemical obstacles in this work field,” he says in a more sarcastic 
tone than usual. “You're a good employee. But you’re not a good 
employee in the Redactions Department.” 


“Okay.” You let silence fall over the office. 
“Okay?” 


You nod and open your mouth once Jones starts cleaning up his 
desk. 


“What?” 
You look up at him. “...One more chance.” 


He stares past you for several seconds. You assume he’s staring at 
the wall clock. He always seemed to like staring at it. He was 
definitely the type to be obsessed with time, you thought. Always 
counting it, even though his job was dedicated to losing it. 


“One more chance,” he says quietly, without making eye contact. 
You stand up. “Okay. | mean- thank you.” 

“Have a good day, agent.” 

”You too. Happy holidays.” 

”...Happy holidays.” 


You close the door and start toward the break room. You look at 
your watch. It’s only 9:30 AM. Maybe, if you’re lucky, a few of the 
staff will already be setting up a Christmas Eve party in the break 
room, and you can snag one of those infamous pumpkin pies that 
Jane from Accounting and Finance always makes this time of year. 
You smile and walk down the hallway without looking back. 


To The Dreams He Is No Nobody 


On this side, he is referred to as Nobody. One can call that name a 
play on words. A joke of words. A slice of humor within words. But 
really, it is just a reminder that people make jokes when they're 
uncomfortable. Or perhaps, there is no accurate description of 
Nobody in this language. People default to humor in the face of 
something beyond their words. 


To the dreams, with different words and different comforts, Nobody 
bears another banner. What it is will not be discussed here, as the 
dreams have agreed to keep Nobody's secret and Nobody could not 
confess even if he were capable of desiring to. 


Suffice to say, Nobody and the dreams have something that humans 
may identify as a friendship. The dreams can grant Nobody a taste 
of the one thing incomprehensible to him. What Nobody gives in 
return? Well, Nobody is quite an excellent janitor. 


The night began like most nights do when Nobody decides to finally 
rest the mind and return to his old friends. The group known as the 
Oneiroi collective were there to greet him, though they had their own 
names for themselves. Nobody didn't have to say a word as he was 
held, swaddled in the peculiar insanity of dreams, and whisked away 
to work. 


Nobody was dropped off in a world entirely underwater, though he 
could breathe just fine. He found himself all fish below the belt, fins 
on his elbows and webbing between his fingers. Any surprise he felt 
was a nonissue; he was quite used to adopting all sorts of identities 
by now and so began to swim. 


This land slid silence into every crack and crevice of the ruins he 
wandered. There were no people, not even a dreamer. Light shone 
down into the city far deeper than a sun should stretch its rays, 


dappling everything in a dance of water and light. Perhaps Atlantis 
disappeared from reality when it sank, embraced by the ever shifting 
landscapes just beneath the surface of existence. But this was not 
Atlantis, or so Nobody was led to believe. 


Where there was light, there was bound to be shadow, though the 
same cannot be said in reverse. Nobody found what he was looking 
for in a church covered in coral and reef. He glided over the meadow 
of color, past the schools of neon fish and iridescent ribbon eels. 
The slash of inky black stood out in the light, unafraid and hungry. 
That was when he knew he had found his prey. 


The Oneiroi who brought dreams to reality could not do their work if 
the dreams were tainted with what is known as the eldritch, the old 
ones, and the elder gods. At the same time, they could not fight 
them or touch them. Instead, they were hapless to watch their 
precious herd of dreams be eaten by these wolves from the void 
beyond sleep. They needed people like Nobody, who were perhaps 
just a little bit eldritch themselves, to play the sheepdog. 


So Nobody swam to the voidling that had violated this sacred 
Oneiroi territory. A spear found itself in his hand, procuring from the 
dream spontaneously. It felt hefty with the desire to live in peace, a 
plea from the dream for success in Nobody's hunt. He gripped it 
harder than necessary in order to reassure his environment that he 
would not fail. 


From the pool of nothing spawned a massive serpent doused in oil, 
seeping the water with despair. With its five dozen eyes, the eldritch 
entity turned to Nobody the merman and opened its three hundred 
mouths to fill the dream with its shrieking. Nobody twirled the spear 
in one hand and beat the water with his tail as hard he could, 
steeling his nerves as he ran the monster through. 


He did it again and again, carving holes with his courage until the 
great serpent was slain. Then, he grasped the corpse and pushed it 
back into the pool of ink it had come from. The portal seeped away 
like water through one's hands, leaving only a dead white stretch of 
coral in its wake. 


Nobody lay himself in the coral, exhausted. The eels and fish swam 


above and around him, kissing the white and imbuing it with life 
once more. He sank into the color, drifting in the ocean of light. 


He stayed in dreamless rest until roused by an Oneiroi friend, a 
young woman right out of a noir film, black and white and all. She 
dried him off with a towel, silent in everything she did. The smell of 
color still clung to him even as the water was wiped off. He'd still 
reek of that color, even when he awoke. 


The next land he was tasked with was entirely upside down. Nobody 
shot across the night sky as a bright comet burning in atmospheric 
friction. It felt not unlike walking into a shower that was just a little 
too hot, but one didn't get used to this burning the same way one got 
used to the shower. He glided amongst stars close enough that he 
could taste their hydrogen. 


Nobody wondered, if only for a moment, why Oneiroi or anyone else 
would ever want to leave this place of impossibility and magic. He 
understood why logically, of course. But in the sky, one with the 
stars, he granted himself a temporary foray into emotional bout. He 
allowed himself to enjoy the present, gliding in his own emotional 
jubilation, riding the jetstream of the exhilaration of being a comet 
shooting across the night sky. 


Across the horizon of a faraway solar system, Nobody could smell 
the familiar stench of a wound. It reminded him of blood and 
infection, the smell of a hospital with too many occupants or a jail 
with too many inmates. The smell shattered his small reverie, 
bringing him back down to earth in a metaphorical sense. He rubbed 
his comet-face with impossible limbs, for comets had only tails to 
call extremities. 


He looped once, twice against the fabric of the night sky, then turned 
his trajectory towards the putrid scent. There as clear as day was a 
scar deep in the weaving of the stars. It glowed a painful red, 
seeping with acid-green pus that reeked so strongly of agony that 
Nobody wept comet tears upon gliding into its presence. 


This was not an injury that could be fought or defeated. It was an 
infected wound in a dream, spreading nightmare to some hapless 


dreamer far below this sky. Nobody drew towards the wound. He 
reached deep inwards of some long-lost emotions. In the face of this 
fear, he welled up what little scraps he had to combat it. Hope. Faith. 
Joy. He summoned the emotions he felt just moments ago, 
exhausted them with a single expression of forgiveness into the 
pain. 


Nobody was not an emotional creature, but it was enough. His light 
waned. The atmosphere chafed at him like a cheese grater to the 
skin. He was losing cohesion. He was falling apart. But it was 
enough. 


The silent woman woke Nobody with a chaste kiss. He pulled away 
from her as soon as he understood his situation. She tilted her head, 
one side of her dark grey lips tilting into a knowing smirk. Her left 
hand stretched itself towards him, each finger curling back like the 
petals of a flower. In the palm lay three tattered shards of what used 
to be people. This was what he came here for. All he had done 
tonight was for those shriveled fragments of people, memories of 
lifetimes long past. He snatched them and held the pieces to his 
chest. 


She smiled again with only one side of her lips. Her voice 
reverberated out of her, warm and rich. "Oneiroi thanks you." That 
voice slicked fire into Nobody's veins but he did not approach; he 
was used to her and her presence. He tried to open his mouth to 
speak, but his throat felt dry with the sudden heat. Perhaps he was 
not as used to her as he thought. 


The woman laughed and spoke again. "You're free to go wherever 
you may please, now. | assume you know the way back. A pleasure 
doing business." Was it his imagination or did she emphasize that 
word, pleasure? Nobody tried to find the words, but she had already 
blown him a kiss and was gone, like a memory or an idle daydream. 


With her presence gone, Nobody could focus again. He stood and 
shimmied in between the spaces of the dreams. He squeezed into 
the silence between one's thoughts. He scuttled into the silence 

between inhale and exhale. In short, Nobody went nowhere, to the 


land of in-between, where everything was not quite anything. 


There, he opened his clutched palm and stared at the scraps he did 
so much for. They were shriveled, dried, old. But they were exactly 
as he so wanted them, the moments of knowing oneself. The 
moments of lives of people who had identity, identifying themselves. 
He took one of the scraps and popped it into his mouth. The 
memory melted on his tongue, sweet as nostalgia. 


The first memory was that of an old man looking at his wife as she 
was cooking. They had both aged over the years, but the bond 
between them was strong and young. Her body had shriveled and 
wrinkled with time's scars, but to him she was still radiant as 
sunlight. He drank his coffee, smiling to himself at the warmth he felt 

He wondered what he 


The moment disappeared in the time of a thought. It wasn't enough. 
It simply was not enough. Nobody took the second memory and 
popped it into his mouth, swallowing it down, parched for something 
he could not name. 


That one faded faster than the first. Nobody sucked in an inhale, 
desperately chasing the wisps of thought as they dissipated into 
memory. He closed his eyes and tried to still the trembling of his 
body to little success. The last one. He still had one last one. It 
found itself coated against the back of his throat. He tried to hold on 
to even a small part as it filled him with warmth, praying for 


Photographed Activity: Sitting in its garage after having been 
washed. 

Photo Result: Sitting under trees in a meadow, with birds perched 
on its main gun, and flowers growing all over its chassis. 


Subject: SCP-519 
Photographed Activity: Mounted on its wall. 
Photo Result: No change. 


Subject: SCP-524 
Photographed Activity: Gnawing on a steel girder in its habitat. 
Photo Result: Gnawing on a block of granite in its habitat. 


Subject: SCP-529 

Photographed Activity: Grooming herself. 

Photo Result: Grooming herself in a different position; SCP-529 is 
shown as whole rather than bisected. 


Subject: SCP-537 

Photographed Activity: Playing its record. 

Photo Result: Seated on a log in a swamp, opposite Kermit the 
Frog; Kermit is holding a banjo as in the opening musical sequence 
in The Muppet Movie. 


Subject: SCP-542 

Photographed Activity: Doing a crossword puzzle. 

Photo Result: [DATA EXPUNGED] with several individuals 
recognizable as Foundation personnel. 


Subject: SCP-548 
Photographed Activity: Drinking water out of a dish in its terrarium. 
Photo Result: Eating an anole lizard. 


Subject: SCP-549 

Photographed Activity: Rubbing its hindquarters against a tree in 
its terrarium. 

Photo Result: Mating. 


Subject: SCP-573 
Photographed Activity: Laying in its container. 
Photo Result: [DATA EXPUNGED] 


something he couldn't understand to things he didn't believe in. 


He planted it for him. 
So he could remember forever the man 


But it was gone like smoke in a high wind before he could taste it. 
Nobody reached into his own empty palm, looking for fragments of 
the fragments. He looked up into the world he stood in, the land of 
things that were not quite anything yet. The in-between place. 


Nobody looked around him in the land of almost-things, alone. 


They Who Find Darkness Loving 


Doctor Avery Solace woke up, got dressed, and pretended not to 
notice the black, slime-coated humanoid in the shadowy corner of 
their room. 


The entity only began to speak once the psychologist had begun 
collecting their stationery and papers for the coming day. The 
warbled voice of Agent Troy Lament, corrupted to become as slimy 
as his flesh, echoed off the plain white walls. 


"Hey Avery. Morning Joke? A neutron walked into a bar and asked, 
'How much for a drink?' The bartender replied, 'For you, no charge." 
Dr. Solace paused. They turned to stare at Lament, so shadowy that 
it was hard to tell him apart from the darkness he thrived in. Perhaps 
there was no difference. Their eyes narrowed, then they nodded and 
mumbled in response. "...Yes. You're right. | should have some 
water with my Advil today." 


"| used to work under a man with your sense of humor, Avery. A guy 
people like to call Dr. Gears. You've probably heard of him."