| am humbled to hear you caught the final show. | almost 
thought you weren't coming. | know things have been 
difficult between us, and | wanted to say that | have 
improved since Mumbai. Really, both artistically and 
emotionally. | was an idiot, then. 


I've been trying to channel my anger into the 
choreography. To do something useful with it. But the 
truth is what happened was simply so outrageous that to 
convey these feelings we had to an audience is... 
difficult, to say the least. Every time | try to create a 


combination, they barely stir. They might privately rage a 
little, but there is nothing like the feelings | want to 
inspire. 


I've invited Suzette over. Probably as soon as | finish 
writing this, she'll have arrived. We're going to try 
something new with the anger combination. I've removed 
all the fragile furniture from the studio now. 


Callmeat -_ ,if you need to talk. Ask the operator to 
call long distance. 


Sincerely 
Abel. 
Abel 


| resent the fact you need to convey my anger. Not 
everything in your life needs to be experienced by an 
audience. What we had was special, | grant that. But it 
wasn't working. Both you and | recognized our driving 
apart. | wanted to take things further, and you 
desperately needed to stay behind. You obviously still 
aren't ready to commit. 


If you had gone with me, listened to me instead of 
blowing on past like a bull, perhaps you wouldn't have 
such difficulty with your choreography. Perhaps there 
would be no need to make a crowd rage and tear each 
other to pieces. God, do you even know how selfish that 
sounds, Abel? | counted 70 people at the performance, 
and that's seventy people who would know the rage of a 
spouse in fury. And it would kill them. 


I'm sorry | didn't call, my friend. | cut the phone cord a 
hour ago. Don't bother trying. Glad to hear Suzette's still 
your dance partner. 


Yours, Andre. 


Dear Andre. 


lam so sorry | strayed. | understand you're still upset. 
But listen, you've got someone new. You don't need to 
carry the torch for what we had. | should be the one who 
is carrying the torch. | should be feeling regret. 


Maybe you were right. Maybe the future is to go beyond 
modern dance. To create steps and movements that 
echo beyond pure dance and into some higher artistic 
medium. Maybe | can fill minds then. I've had difficult 
even making an audience see a storm at sea. 


| am coming to think the reason | cannot convey the 
anger in this combination, is because | feel none. Deep 
inside myself | do not feel regret for my actions those 
weeks. At that point in our relationship | no longer felt an 
equal to you. Artistically we began to conflict, physically 
nothing felt exciting, emotionally you were too absorbed 
in yourself. Even now, you insist | am making my piece 
about you! In every way you could not satisfy me. Sorry if 
this sounds maudlin or trite, but it's true. 


And it fucking pains me that you were oblivious until the 
last minute. | admit my regrets on that, at least. 


Sincerely 
Abel 
Abel 


Fuck you. You continue to disappoint, even to this day. | 
put aside my so called "self-absorption" to actually reach 
out to the man who broke my heart and say that he did 
something good. This despite the fact that he is still stuck 
in the old ways, limping his company along without me. 
Yeah, no shit that you cannot influence people anymore. 
All you do is put on a pretty show. 


Who are you, Abel? You constantly live behind a mask. 
Your dancers don't see who you really are. Your family 
never saw who you really are. | never saw who you really 


SCP-915: The Mechanotesseractic Computer 


Item #: SCP-915 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: All explorations of the interior of 
915 must be documented, with a complete manifest of all personnel 
and equipment to be taken into 915. 


Declarations of intent to explore the interior or experiment with the 
computational abilities of SCP-915 must be declared one (1) week in 
advance. No interior explorations can take place while the 
computational abilities of 915 are being tested. Also, no computation 
test can be initiated while exploration or maintenance is taking place 
within 915. 


All interior explorations are to be limited to a period of one (1) hour. 
Longer forays require special dispensation from the lead researcher, 
Dr. Foudray. All explorers are to be physically linked to a high 
density nylon cord which is anchored at a point outside 915. 


Standardized testing protocols of the specifications of 915 are to 
applied to both 915 and the block of computers which are 
considered experimental controls. These control computers are 
specified as model HP Slimline sS600F. 


Description: SCP-915 is a mechanical computation device with a 
highly non-Euclidean internal configuration. It was the result of 
experimentation involving the effect of - upon SCP-914. Despite 
appearing entirely mechanical, 915 completely replicates the 
capabilities of the input device, one (1) HP Slimline S8600F desktop 
computer. It appears that 915's exceptional topology makes these 
computational specifications possible. The current theory suggests 
that extensive outpocketing in space and time allows computations 
per second that would be associated with a mechanical device to be 
superseded. 


are. | lived with you, | cooked for you, | had sex with you, 
| loved you for nine years. You were always so 
charming, you never showed the hole beneath. 

All those weeks you were with David, all those weeks 
lying to me and evading me. You actually think | was 
ignorant? You were the one dodging me every day, 
making up stories about late night choreography. What 
was | supposed to do? 


Who do you think you are? Literally all you know how to 
do is put on a pretty show, the only emotion you can 
instill in a crowd is awe. Awe isn't good enough anymore, 
Abel. Not when the painters can melt skulls and the 
sculptors can turn flesh into bone. Not when the young 
people so quickly consume the old like us. Not when the 
world of anart doesn't care about dance. We need to be 
better. A flick of the heel, a graceful roll, the right 
combination of jumps and leaps, they can influence the 
minds of people in ways nothing else can. We can instill 
whatever we want if we try. Pure anger, the sight of a 
summer day with a lover, intense sadness. 


It's not that hard. You did it with no problem. 


You want to let the world feel my rage? To dance the 
pain into everyone's mind? So be it. 


Andre 


Portraits Of Your Father 


FoldUnfold 
Table of Contents 


1 


Draven’s father was something breakable. 


He always tried to keep it on the down low, mostly because his 
father would throw a fit if he ever found out that Draven thought of 
him that way — but it was true. Benjamin Kondraki was already 
fracturing at the seams when Draven was born, already paranoid, 
already trigger happy, already waking up screaming in the night 
unconsolable, and many people looked at his father as someone 
who was stronger than them for these same reasons. They would 
say how he must be damn tough to keep working such a high stress 
job with such dysfunction, and Draven would nod but never really 
agree. He always had seen his father as someone close to the 
breaking point, and since his late teens had taken it upon himself to 
make sure he never hit that breaking point any more than was 


necessary, a constant mantra of take care of dad, take care of dad, 
you have to take care of dad. His father was loud laughter and and 
notebook after notebook of solid writing and was also the smell of 
vodka and staying up too late for his own good, dad, dad, please go 
to bed, and his father would laugh and say not yet. 


On a March Saturday when he was 15, Draven Kondraki woke up in 
his bedroom of his father’s Site apartment where he had lived all his 
life and realized that the sun was coming through the windows and 
ripped off the covers, ran out of the room, and threw open his 
father’s bedroom door where he found him slumped on the floor and 
for a second felt his stomach drop and terror seize him like he had 
never felt before in his life before noticing that he was breathing — 
just passed out, vodka in hand. 


Draven had been through these kinds of steps too many times to 
count. With as much strength as his 15-year-old body can muster, 
he pulls his unconscious father into a semi-sitting position just 
enough so that he wouldn't choke should he vomit, propping him 
against the footboard of his bed. So close yet so far, huh, dad? It 
was obvious he had at least made an attempt at getting from his 
desk to his bed — pen set aside from whatever thick manuscript he 
had been drunkenly scribbling, chair pushed back, one empty 
whisky bottle and a cigarette butt in an ashtray next to the battered 
lamp. Draven cast a bored glance at what his father had left in his 
hand, and was unsurprised that it was vodka, the hard, cheap kind 
with the grey label that always made him like this. His dad drank it 
when he wanted to pass out without dreaming. 


He’d had a hard night. Draven didn’t feel bad for him. They did this a 
lot, and sometimes his father wouldn’t awake in the morning and he 
would deliberately leave him there, wander around instead of 
rushing to his side, not wanting to see for sure if he’d lost his only 
family in the night to a bottle of booze. At least then, he could put it 
off, pretend he was just sleeping and not in a hard, fast grip of a 
dangerously high BAC level. Just sleeping harder than normal. 


Suddenly, his father’s chest lurches, and for a moment Draven 
shuffles back, expecting him to vomit; but instead Ben’s eyes fly 
open and he gasps sharply for air, reaching instinctively for the pistol 
he left loaded on his desk. Sometimes when they did this little dance 


the two of them did, his father would have it at his side and Draven’s 
only instinct — not being able to take on his bulky Polish father in 
the grips of a PTSD flashback — would simply run quickly and 
quietly from the room, let him get his bearings without his help. 
Ideal? No. Was it going to change soon? Also no. 


This time, his father sees him and immediately lurches towards him, 
hands drunkenly grasping for him, and Draven slides backwards 
slightly and watches his father ungracefully fall onto the floor. 


“Dad,” he says, just like he always says, at least a couple times a 
month. “You gotta stop binging like this.” 


And at age 25, he’s in his father’s office, and they’re doing the same 
dance they always do except now his father has more silver in his 
hair and seems a little frailer, a little more breakable, and it’s the 
bourbon with the red label instead of the vodka with the silver one 
and Draven is in his full task force tactical gear and he’s kneeling 
next to his father without fear only because he has a bulletproof vest 
on and he’s saying, again, “Dad. You gotta stop binging like this.” 


His father looks at him, bloodshot eyes and long dark hair matted 
and unwashed, and laughs. Draven does not laugh. The bourbon 
always puts his father in a good mood. 


“Oh, Jesus, Draven —” The elder Kondraki grunts as the only 
immediate family he has takes him under the armpits and sits him 
up with relative ease; his son’s primal fear of him choking on his own 
vomit has increased in recent years as his father’s drinking habits 
worsened, something that he never thought was possible. He’s still 
giggling slightly. It isn’t a sound Draven hears when he’s sober. He 
can feel bones poking out under his father’s worn Columbia 
sweatshirt and recalls something he once heard about alcohol hitting 
you harder if you weigh less, and can’t help but reflect on how his 
father is currently sustaining himself on half a meal a day and vodka 
has created what he fears is a vicious cycle. Draven winces. 


“It’s not funny.” He makes sure his father is somewhat stable with 
his back against the desk, then sits cross-legged on the hard tile 
solemnly. “Seriously. This is really bad for you.” 


“God, look at you!” Ben explodes into laughter. “Look at you! Look at 
that— shit, got a son in the fuckin’ marines—’” His father grabs a 
handful of Kevlar strapped onto his left shoulder for emphasis. 
Draven grabs his wrist and pushes him away, agitated. 


“Dad. | mean it.” 

More laughter. Draven rolls his eyes and pushes himself to his feet. 
“When was the last time you ate?” 

His father doesn’t respond, still laughing. 


“Dad!” Draven hates raising his voice at his father, but it’s hard not 
to. The man infuriates him to no end. 


The elder Kondraki wheezes, tears in his eyes. “...Fuckin...shit, kid, 
does it matter?” 


Draven leans down, hooks his arms under his armpits, and angrily 
yanks him upward; his father swears loudly and struggles to get his 
footing before his son half lifts, half drags him to the green vinyl cot 
sitting in the corner of the room and throws him down. He’s angry 
past words, and when his father starts laughing again he has to 
resist the urge to slap him, to shake him and scream /’m afraid that 
one day I'll find you like this and | won’t be able to wake you up, but 
thinks better of it and instead redirects his attention to removing his 
father’s shoes. 


“Yes,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. “Yes, | think it matters that 
you don't starve yourself.” 


His father falls back onto the cot, sides heaving in laughter, and the 
door clicks open. 


For a fraction of a second, Draven feels like he’s been caught in the 
act of something he wasn’t supposed to be doing — fearful of 
someone seeing his father in this state, maybe, which is ironic 
considering that many have most likely seen his father in varying 
stages of it — and has just dug his fingers under the knot in his 
father’s shoestrings just as he cries out “James!” in a drunken shout 
that startles Draven’s boyfriend in the doorway. “Damn! Just in time. 


He’s putting me to bed, because I’m an old little shit that apparently 
can’t take care of himself.” 


Draven removes his father’s left shoe and looks over. 


James is a man alittle shorter than himself, clean shaven with neat, 
short hair and an empathetic smile; it was this kind of dangerous 
attractiveness that had Draven waiting outside the lab for him, trying 
to get on B shift guard duty right at 3pm to get to stand outside the 
south wing chemical lab, where he could see him in his white coat 
with an electron microscope, pushing thick glasses up the bridge of 
his nose, publishing another paper, working in a hazmat suit. He 
rarely got his wish. Was his bar low? Some might say yes; James 
was a hopeless academic and deep introvert, and yet it was the first 
time he had ever gone to embarrassing lengths to get someone's 
attention. His father had noticed and teased him about it until he got 
up the balls to ask him out, and here they were, two years later. It 
was a miracle, in Draven’s opinion. Like asking someone way out of 
your league out and getting a surprised response because they 
thought you were handsome too the entire time. Which was an 
accurate description of their relationship. 


Draven makes eye contact with his boyfriend and communicates 
through a tight smile and the dramatic dropping of his father’s left 
shoe to the floor that the man on the bed is drunk, like he always is, 
and he could have died, like he always could, and that he’s tired and 
sick of having to do this every damn time and that he would be 
repeating this rant extensively to him later that night over their cold 
cafeteria food at 1am, James in his lab clothes watching Draven in 
his tactical vest rant animatedly about his father, how he needed 
help, how it feels like sometimes he’s just gonna hurt himself really 
badly or get sick in the night and no one will find him, what if he dies, 
James, what if he dies?