She only realized she was fully submerged when the 
roar suddenly quieted down, became nothing, but a 
distant hum. She didn't float though, as she chose not to. 


It was her creation. She didn't feel like breathing, so she 
didn't do that, she quieted her lungs which after some 
time started to burn and scream for air. She raised her 
hand and glowing silhouettes formed around her, all 
limited by what she thought and where the water was. 


It was her tiny bubble and not a single thing in this world 
could take it away. Her creation. 


Shapes and lights and shadows in the air were her tools 
and waters around her were her canvas. She moved and 
danced now not limited by gravity and laws of 
thermodynamics, swirling in the water, dancing as if she 
was a siren or a nymph and this were her kingdom, a 
true world she was born into. There were no rules or 
patterns here. Just sheer joy of freedom coming from 
nothing but access to one's own thoughts. 


She built worlds, landscapes, her body directing all the 
shapes, creating bones and meat and fur of hundreds of 
animals she never saw, but always remembered, rising 
buildings that had no right to exist in the world outside 
the dreamscape, spilling everything she saw inside her 
mind into currents, clean-cut edges between her mind 
and real world shattering into thousands of invisible 
pieces. 


Finally, she sank to the middle of the warehouse, 
shadows and lights disappearing before her very eyes. 
She looked around, wondering how to make it all 
disappear - in all honesty she wasn't really prepared for 
this to actually work this well, so she opted out of 
designing an exit. She swam around nervously, before 
stopping and taking a deep breath in. 


Water made it's way inside her nostrils and mouth, filling 
her lungs to the full capacity and pushing on, every 
single drop attempting to find the way inside her body, 
ripping her apart, liquid yearning to come back to where 
it came from, filling out her heart and replacing the red of 
her blood in her veins with fiery pain, all the acids from 


stomach washed away by pure water, purging everything 
from her bowels before getting rid of those systems 
entirely, all of organs and tissues replaced by water 


She stood in the same place she stopped in. Breathed 
out. Blinked. Breathed in and felt her dry lungs expand. 


She was entirely wet. Her clothes were soaked through 
and her hair was dripping, like then, when during a party 
on a dare she jumped fully-clothed into the swimming 
pool. She was prepared for that, though. Her sneakers 
were wet when she left the gym, after all. 


Yet again she climbed the ladder, now careful to not slip 
and went out to the roof. Her shoes and bag and hoodie 
were all here. They were a bit cold because of cooler air 
of the night, but they were wonderfully dry. She took all 
of it and went back inside. 


She undressed completely and used the towel she kept 
inside the bag. She wrung her hair and later her clothes, 
just to get rid of all of the liquid and put her hoodie on her 
naked body, then slightly drier panties and lamentably 
wet jeans. Shoes she put on naked feet, thankfully 
distance to home wasn't very long, so she hoped her feet 
won't get chafed too much. 


When standing in the line for some coffee in one of those 
places that were as if nonexistent during the day, but 
somehow incredibly popular when the last restaurant or 
bar in the area closed, she checked her phone. Her 
boyfriend had called about three times before 
surrendering and sending a text to call him when she 
could. A mobile operator sent her a new offer she did not 
care about. Some other spam. 


Coffee soon arrived and with a warm cup in her hand 
she resumed her way home. With a hoodie to protect wet 
hair from cold air she didn't dare to put her earbuds on, 
music always adding that slight bounce in her step. But 
then, she danced enough today and her feet had a bit of 


skin ripped off by now. 


She'll dance in her kitchen tomorrow, when she turns the 
radio on. She still wasn't sure if she wanted to return to 
warehouse any time soon. 


A corpse 


She nudged the dead body with her feet. Funny little 
fellow, jumped off a building. People had the weirdest 
ideas sometimes. 


It wasn't in a very bad state when it landed but as she 
moved him around and dragged it to the atelier, it started 
to mess up. Just more needless work. A lot of needles 
needed. Some string and maybe paint to make it work. 
All in all, needless. Needles. 


She put it on a sofa after covering it with a plastic sheet 
and set to work. Soft brushes of paint where skin broke 
into darker colours, brown and creme slowly drying and 
cracking under a soft and delicate interior. She resorted 
to clay, covering the body in filigrane layers of it, before 
working steel joints just underneath the skin, so it could 
move. Constructing a crude metal skeleton was a 
tiresome task and her other half was away, visiting 
parents. Some people needed that, contact with families, 
and it was fine, but she'd rather he helped her. 


Again, more paint and then more clay, covering up all the 
damage made by fall instead or repairing it. She 
replaced his eyes with glass marbles. Covered blood on 
his skin in more clay. Filled it up from the inside with hay 
and needles, where it could fit in-between slowly rotting 
muscles and organs. Far cry from her usual, more 
traditional method, skinning the man and stuffing up what 
was left of skin before selling the rest. 


Instead of giving the corpse new albeit static life, she 
chose to keep everything that was old inside and cover 


in pristine form. One day she will break him open and 
look for those needles again, just for joy. 


She sewed it up with paint, tracing green and golden 
lines on skin where his veins would be visible. Every 
stroke of brush and then, later, fingers, brought it closer 
to her, filling up this colourful and beautiful corpse with 
sheer nothingness. 


It was a sacrilege, heresy. If you wanted to breathe life 
into your glory, you'd either create it first or allow 
whatever was left in chunks of flesh to take over. She did 
none of those things. Her critics would kill her violently 
with words, maybe even torture her a bit later on paper, 
unlike the one she killed for this body, with sweet 
whispers and following the corpse step by step until it 
jumped. 


People had the strangest ideas sometimes. 


She helped him get up, when she was done. His 
movements, she noted, were ungraceful, erratic. He 
grasped at her skirt clumsily, making a pained noise as 
his lungs attempted to expand, only to feel clay restrict 
him and needles shift inside. This isn't what she wanted. 
Every stumble made her hate him more. 


She desired to know the flow. Not a single creature knew 
what it was, what force was behind making human 
creativity bend the world in a simple act of creation. Her 
other half called it The Greatest Critic. Only he can judge 
what becomes real and what does not. The greatest 
work in his eyes will become reality. 


Except he wasn't an artist and all he knew came from her 
own stories. His sight was distorted, warped. He knew 
nothing. 


And that body, that dead moving body was supposed to 
answer her. She struggled to block out any stray 
consciousness from it during the act of creation but what 


she faced was... This. Stumbling thing, so much unlike 
what she imagined the flow itself to be. Where was that 
force she called upon? She appealed to it, the moving 
body was enough of a proof, she earned the approval. 


Was it mocking her? Did the life in the corpse was just 
that, a life? Where it came from then? 


She detached herself from her work, its clay-covered 
form dropping on the floor with a loud thud, surface 
cracking in few places. She severed the flow with a 
single thought angrily. She had never done that before. 
Her work infused with flow was always enough, no 
reason to destroy it. 


Except this one. 


As her faith into the flow, the god in her mind shattered, 
she dropped dead on the carpet, and body next to her's 
again started to move again. 


Dot. Spacebar. Shift and a letter and another and another... 


He had a clear construction in his head. Like a spider, he 
weaved a web of words, except he, unlike the spider, had a 
vision of how the entire finished piece would look like. There 
was an image, hidden behind his eyelids, shining like a crystal 
or a diamond and even more alluring than that. 


Every single thin, glistening line constructed around him was 
another sentence. A few backspaces, again a few words and 
the meaning of an entire paragraph changed the structure of 
the web around him. He wanted to smile at every single 
change, but his work still wasn’t finished, still wasn’t complete. 


Hours passed by. Days. The laptop he wrote the story on never 
changed its spot, always plugged into the charger, never turned 
off. Its white screen filled with text might have looked eerie for 

an outside observer, but at the moment the only one who could 


SCP-642: Hot Springs 


Item #: SCP-642 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: Both SCP-642-1 and 
SCP-642-2 have been fenced off and designated as sites of high 
radioactivity not currently suitable for remediation. Monitoring by 
Foundation personnel to prevent civilian access is ongoing. 


Under no circumstances are human males with functioning testicular 
tissue to come into contact with SCP-642-1 or samples taken from 
SCP-642-1. Females with functional ovarian tissue should observe 
strict Foundation pregnancy prevention protocols while monitoring or 
working with SCP-642-1, as well as refraining from ingestion of or 
immersion in the SCP's waters. It is recommended that intact males 
of any mammalian species not involved in Foundation experimental 
procedures be kept three (3) meters away from SCP-642-1 at all 
times, as should Foundation personnel with known thermal 
sensitivity issues. 


SCP-642-2 poses no hazard to male personnel beyond ambient 
temperatures, but pregnant female personnel who intend to remain 
pregnant must remain three (3) meters away from SCP-642-2's 
borders for the duration of their pregnancies. 


Description: SCP-642-1 and SCP-642-2 are a pair of geothermal 
hot springs located in the - region of northern Iceland, 
approximately six kilometers apart. Characterized by extremely high 
flow rate (160 liters/second at SCP-642-1, 165 liters/second at 
SCP-642-2), water emerges at both sites at temperatures varying 
between 45 and 57 °C depending on the time of year. The sites are 
geographically remote and inconveniently situated relative to the 
majority of the island's population centers. They came to Foundation 
attention in 20 during the mass genomic decoding project. 
Foundation agents were dispatched to the valley to 


look at the room was him. And all he saw was web, spanning 
the entire room. Every time he came back from work he sat 
down in front of it and wrote. Then he ate, slept. Woke up, went 
to work, returned home, wrote, slept, woke up, went to work, 
returned, wrote... 


It was a pattern he easily followed — he was proud of his 
monotony — but the only thing that started to bother him was 
the still incomplete web in his living room. Still unfinished. The 
construction was beautiful and a soothing image for his eyes, 
delicate webbing wrapped around every single thing inside, 
sofa covered in silver layer like a cape, a few strands hanging 
from the lamp, thin patterns turning lines into sharp edges, 
intricate chains, all tangling together into one to form a pattern. 
Yet unfinished. 


Lines after lines of text, the structure of every single sentence 
analysed over and over again. He paid no attention to meaning, 
he knew it was gibberish - he never wrote much during his life 
except what was expected of him during his time in school. As 
he followed the plan in his hand, though, he swapped words 
and all constructions he never heard of or thought of with 
childish ease. Maybe this is what he was born for, he was born 
to write, he just never realized that. An alluring vision, almost 
seductive, but he decided it would be best if he finished this 
work of his first and wonder about that later. 


He wrote, went to work, returned, wrote, ate, went to work, 
returned, wrote, wrote, wrote. 


He never saw that silver lines at one point started to climb not 
only his furniture, but also his body, wrapping around his arms 
and torso and face and neck. When he did notice, though, he 

realized he couldn’t move anymore. 


A tiny hand-made book that lay next to remote to the TV was 
the only object not touching the webs. 


The art 


The old man looked at the painting hanging in the 
gallery. His eyebrows were furrowed, as if in anger, his 
hands nervously rubbing against each other. 


The painting was acrylic, probably - the old man didn't 
bother checking the description thoroughly - and pictured 
a hellish landscape of an icy apocalyptic world. If the 
picture wasn't made with thousands of tiny strokes of a 
brush, it would look as if someone was rather heavily 
inspired by Beksinski's work. As he stared at the way the 
paint formed shapes on canvas, he could feel something 
probing his mind, looking for the way in. For any other 
person, the force would drill straight into their skull. 


So cliché. 


The fact that this painting was the only one that occupied 
the wall almost offended him. The title was even worse: 
"The Coolest". The old man allowed himself to groan in 
the lifeless gallery. 


All those kids thinking that that was the way to do it. 
Throw in the word "cool", bastardize some dead artists 
and drive someone insane. Admittedly, most started this 
way, but hanging it out in public, for everybody to see? 
That was just embarrassing. 


The painting smelt of nothing, the air around it clear and 
the old men came closer, his nose almost touching the 
painted surface. Needles of the artwork again tried to dig 
into his cranium. He rubbed a finger against it and then 
wiped it against his coat in disgust. Nothing. The painting 
was empty, void. A stolen work. 


An uncommon practice in artist community but on 
anomalous side of it, artists who couldn't force their work 
to differ from dead pieces made of anomalous art 
supplies, stole unfinished and unsigned paintings from 
other. This "Kutch", as signature in the left corner 
announced, was a liar and a thief and the old man in 
anger ripped a tiny plastic description from next to the 
painting and threw it away. That explained everything, 
the cliche, the disgusting simplemindness of this piece of 
"art". Steal someone's work in progress? Oh, this was 
rich. 


The smell of wooden frame and canvas and paint filled 
his nostrils, so he took few steps back. A small and frail 
trickle of smoke appeared in the very center of the 
painting. A small burnt-out hole in the canvas slowly 
grew larger and larger, everything it consumed turned 
into black, viscous liquid that trickled down, to the frame 
and then slid on the floor. 


Soon the dirty frame was empty, slightly burnt on the 
edges. There was nothing left of the canvas but a black 
puddle, glistening in sharp lights of the gallery. The old 
man glanced at it and saw his own reflection in the 
darkness, distorted by anything the original artists 
poured into the original piece. This felt so much better. 


The old artist put on his blue sunglasses, stepped over 
the corpses and continued his visit. 


A document