Draven reenters the house, collapses on the couch, and starts to 
read. He reads for hours, mind swimming, not entirely into it but not 
entirely out of it, either. His father loved Stephen King. Stephen 
King, Mary Shelley, Mark Z. Danielewski... strange things, scary 
things, things that held emotion. He always thought that his father 
might get tired of all the fear, what with living in it and them coming 
home and binge reading horror novels all night, but he seemed to 
thrive on adrenaline, on barely escaping death, on wondering what 
else might be out there, around the corner, hiding while you slept. 


Everyone had their coping mechanisms, he supposed. 


And then he turns a page and hits it; it’s a passage highlighted in 
shaky yellow ink, aged a little, dog eared and marked with a tiny pen 
star: 


It was quick, Missy-my-dear, one minute he was there on 
the road and the next minute he was lying in it, but was 
down by the Ringers’ house. It hit him and killed him and 
then it dragged him and you better believe it was quick. 
A hundred yards or more all told, the length of a football 
field. | ran after him, Missy, | was screaming his name 
over and over again, almost as if | expected he would 


still be alive, me, a doctor. | ran ten yards and there was 
his baseball cap and | ran twenty yards and there was 
one of his Star Wars sneakers, | ran forty yards and by 
then the truck had run off the road and the box had 
jackknifed in that field beyond the Ringers’ barn. People 
were coming out of their houses and | went on 
screaming his name, Missy, and at the fifty-yard line 
there was his jumper, it was turned inside-out, and on 
the seventy-yard line there was his other sneaker, and 
then there was Gage. 


His heart pounds in his chest. He grips the yellowing book and 
rereads, slowly, the passage that his father had highlighted. 


It was quick, Missy-my-dear, one minute he was there on 
the road and the next minute he was lying in it 


Draven thinks of his father, and then he thinks of himself, and then 
he thinks of him opening the door on his father’s body— 


It hit him and killed him and then it dragged him and you 
better believe it was quick 


-you and James had found him drinking heavily- 


almost as if | expected he would still be alive, me, a 
doctor 


-You didn’t really think that, did you- 


One minute he was there on the road and the next minute he was 
lying in it. One minute and then the next minute, and that’s all it ever 
took for him, one swing and then the next swing, one mood and then 
the next mood, week to week, day to day, impulse to impulse, 
jumping from bottle to bottle to bottle, maybe he didn’t even think 
about it, maybe he didn’t even feel it, and then there was Gage— 


He feels panic rising in his throat and forces himself to put the book 
down over the side of the couch, to go stand up and walk, walk, he 
needs to walk. He paces around the living room hearing and then 
there was Gage, and then there was Gage, and then there was 


Gage, and it dawns on him all at once that that’s what his father had 
meant bursting through the hospital doors, that’s what he was 
worried about. 


lt was quick, Missy-my-dear, one minute he was there on 
the force and the next minute he was lying in it, but was 
down in the ditch away from the task force car, and then 
there was Draven. 


He swallows. 


Your father loved you and was always scared to lose you. Never 
scared to lose himself, but terrified of losing you, the only person he 
had, his little boy that played with his butterflies that he took pictures 
of who fell asleep in your lap while you did paperwork. 


That’s why he waited until you had James. 


And then, of course, as he paces around the dark house, he thinks 
about his dad in the graveyard, and his dad deep in the ground with 
a tombstone with his name on it, and his dad being dead just didn’t 
fit his dad. Call it what you’d like, but it wasn’t in his dad’s place to 
die. Draven’s thoughts are erratic, switching easily, overwhelmed 
and overdriven. He feels sick. He feels lightheaded. Part of him 
thinks about waking up James, who’s still sleeping soundly in the 
bedroom when you check on him, but you go back to the book 
instead because it’s easier to read and forget than cry and 
remember. 


And that’s when you reach it. 


The headstone was here now; it read simply GAGE 
WILLIAM CREED, followed by the two dates. Someone 
had been here today to pay his or her respects, he saw; 
there were fresh flowers. Who would that have been? 


Draven’s eyes open a little wider. He skips a few lines, and then 
keeps reading. 


The ground was soft, the digging easy. The grave’s 
shape was well defined, the dirt he was throwing out 


softer than the earth at the verge. 
Another few lines. 


He threw the dirt on the ground to the left of the grave, 
working into a steady rhythm that only became more 
difficult to maintain as the hole deepened. He stepped 
into the grave, smelling 


That’s all Draven needed to get an idea of what he wanted his dad’s 
final stunt to be. He grabs James’ keys from the table and a shovel 
from the garage and backs out of the driveway at 1am, feeling like 
Louis Creed. 


13 


A portrait of your father: 


They don’t see you, because no one at the Foundation cares about 
the dead unless they’re in containment. All told, your adventure is far 
easier than Creed’s was, because it’s way easier when you aren't 
planning on burying the person in an anomalous graveyard to raise 
them from the dead and equally easier when the person is cremated 
in an urn maybe two feet below the surface. You have to say that as 
much as you're grateful for the ease of the exposure itself — not 
getting caught and fired was a plus — you really felt like you were 
missing out on an integral part of the whole grave robbing 
experience. When you lift your father’s urn from the ground and set 
it aside, you’re kind of disappointed, because you really were under 
the impression up to that point that you would feel some kind of 
regret once you had it above ground, or at least any kind of feeling 
at all, but you think about all the times your dad complained about 
how strict the Overseers were about body disposal and erasing 
evidence and you don’t; you just fill the hole back in, grab the urn 
and shovel, and walk back out. Wasn't very exciting. Thought it 
would have been more interesting. 


But overall, dad would have been proud. 


14 


“...Holy fuck, Draven, What did you do?” 


It's still early dark out when Draven walks in the door calling loudly 
for James and hauls the steel box onto the table, scattering mud and 
soil. He was grinning from ear to ear. James looks at him from 
behind the kitchen counter with a look of abstract horror. 


“Draven,” he warns. “Please don’t tell me that’s what | think it is.” 
“It's dad.” 


“Fuck,” says James, with all his heart and soul. Draven knew he 
wouldn't be behind robbing his dad’s grave, which is why he did it 
his own damn self. 


“No no no! Not fuck. Like, hear me out here.” He knows that James 
loves him more than anything because he doesn’t immediately take 
out his phone and dial for Site Psychiatric and that means more than 
anything to him. He stands and crosses his arms across his chest, 
looking at the plain urn in front of them. 


“Draven,” he starts. “This is /iterally fucking—” 


“My dad hated the Foundation,” Draven says. “As in, he loved his 
job, but hated the organization, and you know something, they hated 
him right back. So why the fuck do they get to keep him?” 


James stutters half a reply, then falters, then halts. It’s clear by how 
he looks at him that he doesn’t approve, and a week ago Draven 
wouldn't have either. He raises an eyebrow as if to say you can’t 
think up a reason for me not to dig up my dead father’s urn from the 
site graveyard. 


“...You robbed his grave,” James says, finally. 


“Hell right, | did,” Draven smiles. “And | put the dirt right back where 
they had it and | brought him home. No one saw me. It’s like they'll 
never know he’s gone. | left the gravestone.” 


“What if they check?” 


“Oh, a vital hole in my plan! The annual Foundation grave check to 
make sure the Directors are still dead. Silly me.” 


“You're testing me, Draven.” 


“James, | just dug my dad up and brought him home because of 
something | read in a Stephen King novel, and you’re still here.” 


“| know, right?” James said, a little bite in his voice. “Looks like we’re 
all surprising ourselves this morning.” 


He paused. Draven could tell that James was starting to warm up to 
the idea; not hot to it, but no longer going to call site security. He 
smiled across the table, hands covered in mud. 


“I’m lucky I’m cute, huh?” Draven finally replies, trying to warm up 
the silence. He wasn’t quite out of the doghouse yet, and he got a 
big feeling that James was cutting him some significant slack 
because of the grieving process already. 


James smirked and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. 
“Oh, Draven, tonight? This? You are very lucky that you’re cute. Just 
one thing though.” James brought his hands down from his glasses 
and gestured broadly to the urn. “...What are your plans here, 
exactly?” 


Draven felt his heart drop and his smile waver, and James must 
have seen it, because he smiled ruefully and crossed his arms back 
across his Avengers t-shirt. “Ah. You don’t have one, do you?” 


“Well, | didn’t think | would get this far,” smoothed Draven. 
“Uh-huh.” 


“My general idea was to put him somewhere he would have liked. 
You know? Scatter the ashes somewhere.” He thinks for a moment 
and comes up with the first thing that comes to mind, a place his 
father would drive to on the rare weekends he had free, listening to 
Johnny Cash and NPR and whatever local Polish stations the 
battered Jeep could pick up. “...teba. On the shore of the Baltic.” 


James nodded silently. 


“Look,” Draven said. “You’ve...put up with a lot of my shit. And | 
know you don’t like it when | pull random stunts like this, but in my 
defense, | don’t do it often, and this one’s really, really important. So 
| was kind of thinking, since we have the next week off, we could 
like, take him and get rid of the ashes, and then just...you know.” He 
thought of his father’s words, whatever makes you happy. “...Go... 
just...do something, just you and me. Like, just go exploring for a 
while.” He wrings his hands and looks at the floor. “...l don’t know. | 
just...need to get out of here for a few days.” 


He doesn’t look up, although he knows that James is looking at him, 
scanning him, trying to decide if this was an easy cop-out or a 
genuine proposition. For a stretching moment, Draven imagines 
himself doing this alone. It sounds fucking awful. 


He hears James sigh. 


“You know what? Fuck it.” James grabs his backpack and car keys. 
“Fuck it. Let’s go take care of your dad.” 


Draven smiles, holding back tears. 


15 


A portrait of your father: 


You pry the steel box open with a crowbar, and there’s your dad, 
ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There’s no Columbia coat, no 
scratched black frames or camera or worn paperback books, but he 
doesn't need all that to be your dad. James looks at him through his 
wire-framed glasses that are a little too big for his nose and Draven 
looks back up at him, and James says, “Ready?” and you toss him 
out to the open sea so the Foundation can never have him, never 
really. Maybe they never had him at all. 


A portrait of you: 


as well. 


10/01/2007 

We lost a member of the team. No one can quite explain how it 
happened. The team leader thinks we noticed it only a few seconds 
after it happened, but how can he be sure? 


At 13:45, when we set up the ideogram, he was there. At 13:52, 
#D-4605 reported that someone was missing. Her count wasn't 
correct. 


It was soon established that the missing party was #D-3354. The 
team leader immediately checked the nylon cord for cuts. There 
were none despite the fact that #D-3354's connection point was 
missing. 


This is very speculative, but it almost seems the cord was folded 
back on itself in extradimensional space so that the portion of the 
cord containing #D-3354's connection point was... guess the best 
way to put it would be "budded off". 


The team leader had us leave the interior of 915 once we 
established the nylon cord was intact. Surprisingly, it only took ten 
minutes of travel time to reach the entrance. 


Also, the system we put in place seemed to be subverted by 915's 
internal geometry. Each member of the team is equipped with 
transponders that constantly broadcast a IFOF tag and constantly 
keep track of each team member's IFF. The transponders of the 
team didn't stop receiving #D-3354's tag until 4:03. 


10/01/2007 

All experimentations probing the capabilities of SCP-915 have 
halted for the time being so rotating teams can conduct a 24 hour 
search of the interior of 915. 


That's all we get. Though the capabilites of 915 replicate in every 
respect a modest Hewlett-Packard personal computer, the 
Overseers wish to continue to test if 915 is capable of being coaxed 


You and James are in James’ battered Saturn as the sun rises. 
You're wearing a green Columbia jacket that’s worn and torn in 
places — it was your father’s, but now it’s yours. James is in the 
passenger's seat and you're driving, windows down, James laughing 
and telling you to stop it you giant dork because you find a 
roundabout and go in circles around it several times in the early 
Sunday morning light and put the pedal to the metal when an old 
woman comes out on her front porch to yell at you for it. You’ve 
been terrified and will be again, but right now James is losing his shit 
because there was a turtle on the side of the road and you slam the 
car in reverse to look at it. You’ve been sad and you will be again, 
but right now James is saying that you should go to McDonalds 
before hitting the highway and you say hell yeah, we’re going to 
McDonalds, because right now the Foundation doesn’t matter and 
nothing can hold you back. When the dawn grey dissipates, you 
head onto the highway. 


You're painting a portrait of something old and something new, and 
everything inbetween. 


Just like your father. 


Posology 


... Two (2) pills have been used for Experiment 217-_  - _. Number 
of pills is forty-seven (47) at the time of writing. 


Request to have SCP-500 investigated for mental compulsion 
leading to obsessive fixation denied for triviality. 


It was hard to be thrifty. 


The petitions for SCP-500 usage piled in daily, and every day, the 
O5 Council sent out a fresh round of DENIED stamps. There were 
dozens of cases of Foundation agents who got too close to the 
target, researchers who'd found out the hard way that their 
protective garments were insufficient, and Site Directors who'd been 
exposed to too much, and were all suffering for it. 


There were only 47 pills. Overwatch said no. 


Eventually, inevitably, they would cave. A sob story too gut- 
wrenching for them to deny, and with it another round of petitions, of 
more desperate people with hope waiting to be killed. For the 
answer to all their prayers. The Overwatch council heard every 
petition. The surveillance machines recorded every dying wish for 
clemency. Sometimes it was granted. 


Soon, there were only 40 pills. Overwatch clamped down, and said 
no. 


Of course, more exceptions had to be made, as they always are. 
The Foundation endured for decades, and centuries. Years might 
pass between moments of weakness, but time was irrelevant in the 
grand scheme of things. The more Overwatch tightened their grip, 
the more the bright red pills slipped through their fingers. 


The Foundation would endure for a thousand years. There was only 
one instance of SCP-500 remaining.