"We're going to have to move away, now, Molly and me. We'll be 
telling everyone about you. Everyone's going to know your face, 
Tan, and when they see it they'll keep their lips shut and walk away. 
| thought you were one of us, but... you aren't. There's no half- 
assing it. My sister, man, | don't even remember her existing. | don't 
remember a damn thing." 


Joey pushed Tangerine's body to the side carelessly. 
"You fucked us over, Tan, and you fucked me over." 
Joey kicked Tangerine in the stomach. 

"| THOUGHT YOU WERE ONE OF US!" 

Joey kicked again. 

"| THOUGHT YOU WERE AN ARTIST!" 

Joey kicked higher, expelling the breath from his lungs. 
"| THOUGHT YOU WERE COOL" 

Joey went to kick again, but Overgang grabbed his arm. 


"We're done here, Joey. Everything they've got on us is gone, 
everything's deleted." 


"The records, yeah. But he remembers." 


They looked at Tangerine's immobile body, hawaiian shirt crumpled 
from the impacts. 


"Fuck it, it doesn't matter. Let's get out of here, Joey. We're done.” 


Overgang walked Joey to the stairwell, leaving the body lying still in 
the dimly lit room. 


Tangerine cried a single tear before passing out from pain. 


the second of first starts at the end 
The second of second trifurcates. 
The Above Is Split In Seven 
LESSERS LIKE THE WHOLE 
« Empty Unmarked Grave | Hub | Disposal And Discourse » 


Disposal And Discourse 


"Sorry, Carol; forgot something." 
"Hm?" 


"You know, had to throw a blanket over a dead body. Wouldn't want 
people to see it and panic." 


"Ah, of course. That's understandable." 


Ruiz took his coffee back from the bemused barista, sipped it once 
to check the taste, then downed the cup in one gulp. He moved to 
his regular seat, pulling out his phone and checking for new 
messages. 


From: Felix 
Be there in ten. 


Ruiz sighed, typing a response. 


To: Felix 
im in the coffee shop down the street 


He tapped his chin pensively with the phone. 
"So what are you up to today, Ruiz?" 
Carol sat across from Ruiz, the counter unmanned. 


"Well, I'll have to dispose of that body, of course. Can't just keep a 
blanket over it forever. Then | need to somehow track down my 
brother. He knows where | am, so he's got the upper hand at the 
moment. He likes to play games, though; | imagine he'll send me 
some kind of formal invitation to some kind of stupid ‘secret lair’. 
He's always had a flair for the dramatic. Then | need to get him to 
start taking his meds again, since he's almost certainly off them at 
the moment... After that, I'll need to scare off a couple of scragglers, 


and then I'll have saved the city. A true artistic community can be 
established, free from the judgement of old farts and everymen. 
We'll be able to do something different; | don't know what, but 
anything's better than this. We're sitting in squalor and stagnation, 
some too stupid or senile to see the sensibility of severing ties with 
shittier artists. We need someone to slice away the shit, shear off 
the silliness; perhaps all we need is someone to snip-" 


"Alright, | get it, business as usual, mad artistry ahoy. Hang on, I've 
got a customer." 


Carol stood back up and walked to the counter, taking an order and 
preparing a fresh drink. Ruiz sunk into his thoughts. His streams of 
consciousness twirled within his mind like ethereal dancers, 
threading innumerable ideas in complex combinations. Like most 
anartists, his thought processes were not entirely coherent, not 
entirely logical, and not entirely sane. It is said that some have a 
tenuous grasp on reality. Anartists cannot be said to have a grasp 
on it at all. If we were to use the metaphor of reality as a stick, most 
anartists throw it away, or snap it into pieces, or set fire to it, or hit 
things with it, or do anything other than just hold the stick. The 
mindset was almost childish, and yet, it was perhaps the most 
coherent, logical, and sane reaction to the world. Why would you 
settle for just holding a stick? Why not make the stick a sword, jump 
into the world of make-believe? Leap gloriously into escapism, run 
headfirst into danger, live without reverence for your own life or that 
of others. If all the world's a stage, then murder's but removing a 
side character. The plot is more important than the people, the 
storyline goes beyond any player. Let the masses die. Let the show 
go on. Ruiz tapped a small note into his phone. 


never hold sticks 
"Ruiz." 
Ruiz looked up at Felix, smiling. 
"Felix! Know anyone who can get rid of a corpse?" 


Felix frowned. 


"Yes, | do, | suppose. You killed him, then?" 
"Oh, no, | didn't kill him." 
"That's right, he was supposed to kill himself, | forgot." 


"Oh, no no no, that didn't end up happening at all. My brother killed 
him, bullet to the head." 


Felix frowned harder, taking a seat across from Ruiz. He pulled out 
his phone and started composing a new message. 


"Your brother was busy last night. Made quite a show at the 
exhibition." 


"What did he do?" 


"Something that got the suits called in, they mind-wipe gassed half 
the city. Can't remember it myself, unfortunately, but my friend had 
the foresight to wear a gas mask. Filled me in after the fact." 


"Hmmm." 


Felix kept tapping his phone, Ruiz descended into thought. Pico had 
attracted the attention of the suits. Perhaps he was attempting to 
orchestrate a crackdown? But what was his endgame? What was 
the reason for killing The Critic? To spite Ruiz, perhaps. Ruiz 
wanted him dead to shatter his control, to swing society into a state 
of flux. Payback for Redd was also a factor. Perhaps Pico was 
driven by the same thing? If there was method to the madness, he 
could be reasoned with. 


"So how was he supposed to die?" 

"What?" 

"The Critic. How were you going to have him kill himself?" 
"Oh, a stupid little thing. An electric chair." 


"And how did you intend to get him to pull the switch?" 


"I told him that the exhibit was a doomsday machine." 
"You said it wasn't anomalous." 


"No | didn't. | said it didn't break reality. You'd be surprised at what 
can be done without exploiting, Felix, if you just put a bit of ingenuity 
behind it." 


"So how did you make a non-anomalous doomsday machine?" 
"| didn't." 

"You didn't?" 

"| didn't." 

"But you said-" 


"| said | told him that it was a doomsday machine. He then 
investigated it and believed me. | didn't have to break reality, | just 
had to convince him that | did." 


"Interesting." 
Ruiz took a coin from his pocket and spun it on the top of his finger. 


"Consider this, Felix: for hundreds, even thousands of years, 
mankind has been enamoured with the idea of magic, of violating 
the laws of physics, of bending the world to their will and whimsy. 
Here we are, able to do the impossible, breaking the rules that god 
or happenstance forced upon us, flipping the finger to the magic 
man in the sky. That's not how they did it in the old days, Felix. 
Artistic exploiting is a new fad, comparatively. Do you know how it 
started?" 


"No." 


"Warhol. Most modern exploiting tools can be traced back to his 
studios. He was a good salesman, filled his places with 
demonstrations, played off his popularity. Then, of course, The Club 
shut him down, and he's been underground ever since." 


"What, so he's still alive?" 


"Probably, but | digress. That's not how they did it in the old days, 
Felix. Magic's been around a lot longer than exploiting has. Not 
shooting lightning from your hands, of course. Just simple 
illusionism." 


Ruiz let the coin drop from his finger into his palm, clenched it, then 
showed Felix his empty hands. 


"See, illusionists purport to perform the impossible, but do it ina 
mundane way. And people believe it, they eat it up, and that's 
something that | respect more than the stuff that most artists pump 
out. They do the impossible with nothing more than smoke and 
mirrors." 


Ruiz pulled the coin from behind Felix's ear. 


"It's more interesting, to me. Actually performing the impossible, 
when you're someone like us, is boring. Just putting something 
together that breaks reality is the work of a hack. But if you can get 
the same effect without doing anything impossible, that's much more 
impressive. See, | could have sent this coin into a little pocket 
dimension, pushed it in and out of our world, and you couldn't tell 
the difference between palming it. This is the point that I'm trying to 
make, and this is where we need to go: the impossible is more 
interesting when it's all mundane. Stage magic, street magic, these 
are the roots we need to return to. None of it was anomalous, Felix. 
It was all just smoke and mirrors." 


"Smoke and mirrors?" 


"Carefully orchestrated triggers. It's the same sort of stuff that 
hypnotists do, and it's brilliant because it's the last thing you'd 
expect. The Critic would fight the impossible, he'd fight drugging, or 
infohazards, or memetic bullshit. The last thing that he would expect, 
the only thing he couldn't possibly be anticipating, was the 

mundane. The second he entered that room, the second | 
approached him, and turned around him, and spun those blades, the 
tone of that whirring resonated perfectly, the sawblade | gave him 
was weighted off-centre, and his sensation of gravity moved, and | 


SCP-726: Reconstructive Maggots 


Item #: SCP-726 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: A single pair of human 
SCP-726 samples are to be contained at Site-17 in a padded cell for 
their own safety, cleaned of any waste matter at 24-hour intervals. A 
diet of mixed vegetable slurry is adequate for their nutritional needs. 
A jar of smooth peanut butter may be provided to pacify subjects 
during cleaning and examinations. On a quarterly basis, subjects 
shall be provided a pair of mixed sex cadavers, and terminated after 
successful reproduction. Absolutely no other animal tissues of any 
kind are permitted in the enclosure at any time. 


Description: SCP-726 are physiologically and genetically identical 
to the eggs and larvae of Lucilia sericata, a species of blowfly 
common worldwide in warm climates. When larvae hatch on 
decomposing animal matter, they begin to consume nonliving 
tissues as normal until none remain, at which point they collect at a 
central point and begin to regurgitate a continuous stream of 
healthy, living cellular matter, and will multiply in number by 
unknown means as volume increases. If uninterrupted, SCP-726 will 
"reconstruct" a complete body matching that of the original tissue 
source. The reconstruction process occurs at high speed, 
resembling footage of maggot activity in reverse, and ends with the 
full restoration of life functions as all larvae abruptly drop off and 
appear to disintegrate. 


While otherwise restored to optimum physical health, any organism 
reconstituted by SCP-726 exhibits only the mental processes of a 
mature blowfly. Instances instinctively follow the wafting odors of 
decaying organic materials and attempt to consume them via licking 
and sucking actions. Instances of all species move clumsily and 
periodically spasm in an apparent attempt to beat nonexistent insect 
wings, with avian and chiropteran examples failing to achieve flight 


turned the lights on, and they flickered to life in a set order, guiding 
his eyes so they'd dart from side to side, which reflexively caused a 
primal fight or flight instinct, flooding his body involuntarily with 
chemicals, imbalancing him, disorienting him, and then all | needed 
to do was tell him what he wanted to hear, and he was putty in my 
hands. He deferred to my guidance like a lamb, and he didn't notice 
it at all. The triumph wasn't in driving him to suicide. It was in 
controlling him as an audience so completely, so utterly entrancing 
him, that he'd be so entirely under my control, that he'd risk his life 
on the truth of my words. Wowwee is not an installation, it was 
performance art for an audience of one. It was making reality seem 
unreal to a man who dealt in the impossible. An anti-anart anartist's 
art." 


Ruiz opened his fists above the table, clattering hundreds of coins 
onto the floor. 


"Molly! We've gotta go!" 

"Hang on, I'm still packing my hats!" 
"Forget the hats! We need to leave!" 
Overgang tapped Joey on the shoulder. 


"I've told people to tell other people. FTF's continuing their tour, so 
they were leaving town anyway. Albeit with three new members. 
Nibman only came through because we called him up, the Brit's 
gone back home, and everyone else seems to be disappearing too. 
They're switching numbers so Tan can't track them. Except 
Arsehole, of course, she doesn't seem to care." 


"She never really does. You're still coming with us, yeah?" 


"Yeah. Sick of living with my parents anyway. Dad's glad to see me 
gone." 


"Right. Great. Damn, we're finally going nomad." 


Rita walked through Joey's front door, trundling a wheelie bag 
behind her. She was wearing a schoolgirl outfit with a plaid green 


skirt. 

"All packed and ready to go, guys." 

Joey patted her on the head. 

"You look like a real schoolgirl." 

"lam areal schoolgirl, Joey." 

"Of course you are. Figured it all out with your folks?" 


"Yup. I'm just going over to my friends’ house for the night. They'll 
panic, but they'll get over it. Probably." 


Joey and Overgang shared a concerned look. 
"You sure you want to do this, Rita?" 


"You think sticking with mummy and daddy's going to stop them 
from stealing me away in the middle of the night?" 


"Fair point. We've gotta go, Molly, hurry up!" 
"Still packing hats!" 
Overgang snorted. 


"Seriously, how many hats does she need? She's only got the one 
head. Rita, how many hats have you packed?" 


"Four. Well, seven if you count tiny decorative hats." 

"Damn. What's with girls and hats?" 

"How many pairs of those sunglasses have you packed, OG?" 
Overgang awkwardly re-adjusted his signature shades. 
"Twelve." 


"Twelve pairs of sunglasses. | haven't even packed one pair." 


"Yeah, well | haven't packed a hat!" 
Joey interjected. 


"Well, the two of you can borrow hats or shades or panties from 
each other once we GET A MOVE ON" 


"Alright, I'm coming!" 


Molly ran down the stairwell, heaving two bulging suitcases in her 
arms. A long red feather boa was draped around her floral dress, 
braided hair making her a perfect mix of hippie and bohemian. Joey 
took one of the suitcases from her as she reached the ground. 


"You must be Rita, right?" 

"Yup. Molly?" 

"Yup! Nice to meet you." 

The pair shook hands, then Molly turned to Joey and Overgang. 
"You boys need to learn some patience. Never rush a lady." 
Overgang rubbed his neck guiltily. 

"Alright, alright..." 

"Who's driving?" 

"Joey." 

"Ha, no he's not. Give me the keys." 


Rita smiled as the four of them walked outside to the waiting van. 
Leaving school, moving away, going out into the great big world for 
the first time. Making things that meant something, enacting change 
where change could be enacted. Finding people who really 
understood them; constantly on the run from heavily armed men in 
black. It would be just like all her family road trips, only interesting. 
Oh yes, Rita thought as she hopped in the back seat. This was 
going to be fun. 


"Your friend's taking a while." 

"Probably just busy. Nothing stopping us from just waiting." 
Felix sat watching Ruiz solve a Rubik's cube. 

"So where exactly is the body?" 


Ruiz carelessly gestured to the blanket-covered corpse on the other 
end of the room. Felix stood up and walked over to it, carefully 
pulling down the top to reveal The Critic's still-shocked face, eyes 
still wide in shock. Felix closed the body's eyelids, then looked up at 
the broken skylight. 


"So he shot from up there?" 
"Yup." 
"Where's the glass? The floor should be covered."