“Sir, |... wow. | just want to tell you... over our time 
together, you've taught me so much, just, everything, 
about family. | didn’t think it mattered before. But... it 
does. | don’t know just how to put it to words. | mean... 
the kids, and the wife. It’s all-” 


“Shhh. | know. | was the same way.” 
Mark swallowed. “Where will you go?” 


“| have a place to move on to. You'll find it too, when the 
time is right.” 


Placing his hand on Father’s chest, Mark felt himself 
tearing up. 


“Thank you, sir... | love you.” 
Father smiled. “Go play with your kids... Dad.” 


Mark walked out the door, taking only one brief moment 
to look back to the watching Father. Then, he opened the 
door, and stepped out into the eternally fresh snowfall. 


“Daddy!” 


Mark ran out, and embraced his new family for the first 
time. 


Surprise! Happy Birthday! Now, see here... 


|... Well. I've had quite enough of this. Do you know how 
long we've been visiting? How long we've been showing 
up here, spinning the tales for you? Well, I'll tell you. It's 
been years. Decades! The weavers have been coming 
here, year after year, giving you these stories, watching 
them worm their way into your ears and out your eyes 
and through your tongue, and you've yet to have the 
common decency to do... to just... Ugh! There is 
protocol in play here, and you are flaunting it, sir. You 
are flaunting the sacrifice, and the words, and the book. 
Flaunting it all. It's simply unacceptable. Unacceptable! 


You... You are still listening to them, though... aren't 
you? 


We have more. We always bring more for you. The story 
of the table who walked through the door. The one about 
the six children who nursed on the she bear. The tale of 
the burning irons, the pick of wonders, the second sun 
that hid its face, or the speaker of cold nights... Tales! 
Tales to remind you of a wine you never drank and make 
you nostalgic for a place that was never real... yet. Tales 
to weave you a lovely shroud, and tales to sing you to 
your sleep. Tales that tick like a clock, or a coffin nail. 
Tales that are waiting, still... 


Happy Birthday. We're waiting. 


Eight More by TroyL 


It's slow, isn't it? Feeling it start to pump through you, 
move with your arteries and veins. It takes a lot of getting 
used to, yes? Don't worry, though. It starts slow, then it 
speeds up, and soon, you won't even notice it. Yes, yes, 


sight onto the other side of the ruins. Camera 1's feed is restored 
and displays Camera 3's owner running briefly in the direction of the 
lost team member only to turn and run back as SCP-610 infected 
pour from between buildings. 


Combat ensues between the two members and the onrushing 
infected using assault rifles and personal flame units, successfully 
driving back enough of the horde to make an escape toward the 
buggy. Passing by a building, Camera 1's owner is ambushed by a 
figure resembling the figure who was in the church lighting candles, 
wielding a large crop scythe. Camera 3's owner continues without 
pause toward the buggy location, however the buggy is found half- 
absorbed by the SCP-610 mass covering the floor. While turning to 
find another way of escape, Camera 3's owner turns to find the 
same figure with the scythe approaching, weapon raised. Two shots 
are fired and camera feed ends. 


Five hours later, while final decisions were underway to decide how 
to contain or eradicate the SCP-610 threat, time delayed video feed 
from the lost team members who fell into the underground river 
currents was established and has been filed in SCP-610-L6. 


| know it's quite uncomfortable at first, but it's fine. 
Eventually, you won't notice. 


Well, yes, | suppose that's true. It does get louder, but by 
then, you'll be so used to hearing everything else that 
you can't tell. And you've got so much to look forward to! 
Right now, you get your nutrients through this system, 
but soon, you'll get to have it yourself. 


Yes, but not like that. Hah! Oh, if you could see. It's a 
marvelous setup we have. 


Now, don't you worry. | know this is very new to you, lots 
of meat and wetness, but it'll come to be quite 
comfortable. It's only eight more months until your 
insertion begins. You should enjoy this time. Lots of time 
to think and plan. It should be quite delightful. Just don't 
forget while you're here — you have a job to do. 


Don't fuck it up. 


Silliness by Tuomey 


You never believed in old superstitions. All nonsense - 
demons, ghosts? 


Silliness. 


You were, however, very eager to take centre stage in 
your friend's amateur horror movie, even looking up the 
kind of "rituals" a believer would use - mainly for a lack of 
imagination. 


Some of your more superstitious - or more religious - 
friends wouldn't stay for the ritual scene. 


Silliness. 


Just some ominous chanting, and pretending to spill your 
own blood in a weird drawing on the floor. 


Even those who stayed looked nervous. 
Silliness. 


You weren't counting on your knife hand slipping and 
cutting yourself to the bone. Amateur horror productions 
don't typically have a large prop budget. 


You almost certainly weren't counting on an 
incomprehensible dark satire of the human form crawling 
out of the hole that wasn't there before your blood hit the 
ground, turning its irregular face on you and screaming 
from a hole in its cheek. 


It would be silly to count on that, after all. 


You weren't counting on the demon reading your mind 
and becoming insulted at the idea that it was "silly." 


You tried to run but your toes were caught on something, 
and your foot began to harden. You weren't able to move 
your legs and your arms froze in position as the demon 
encased you in stone. 


You had to watch your friends die slowly, their eyes 
pleading for mercy and their mouths screaming for 
death. Eventually, each of their dead bodies were 
absorbed into the demon, furthering the irregularity of its 
shape. 


You were not granted such release. Your friend's 
misplaced eyes mocked you from shoulders, arms, and 
legs as the demon fell back into its hole, pausing only to 
amicably say four words through its misshapen cheek- 
flap. 


"Not so silly now." 


"Found Written on the Side of a Napkin in a Paris Cafe, 1911", by Dm. 


Found written on the side of a napkin in a Paris Cafe, 


1911 


Ah, what jolly good times are in store for us! 
Ah, such wonderful new things for us to learn! 


Listen well, and you can almost hear the 
rattling of the machineguns already. Your nose 
is keen, do you find the whiff of rotten corpses 
as intoxicating as |? 


Not much longer to wait, and it will all be ours. 
In just a bit, we will be neck deep in the dead. 
Then we can sleep! Isn't that grand, my dear 
old friend? 


To walk among the weeping nations, and to 
feast? No. 


To stand among the kneeling mourners and 
sing? Close, but not quite. 


To dance to the rhythm of spent lives? Almost 
there, my friend. 


What is best than to dream nightmares of a 
dying century? 


City Cuts by Zyn 
The city’s more alive than most people think. 


Sometimes, those who know where to look can see 
manifestations of the urban heartbeat, the very veins and 
arteries of the streets and sidewalks, wriggling through 
the cracks and chipped pavement, reflected in the dust- 
caked flickering lights. 


Look to the black on light, look to the dusk-drenched 
corners, and you'll see the fragments of the city 
moaning, groaning, reaching for something, someone, 
anyone, written in the forgotten names that write 


themselves in the footsteps of the living and the 
struggling. 


Cuts, scrapes, cracks, tarnishings of the sky and sun and 
clouds and rain, these are where they stream from. The 
city’s heartache yearns through the lightning spiderwebs 
of the broken walls, the arduous rancor bursts through 
the blasted pipes and dripping, wasting, rust and grime 
that speaks of a muttering, but unvoiced, loneliness and 
resentment. 


It waits, it watches, it judges. Passerby may try to erase 
such things or simply make them routine, live with them, 
as it has always lived by them. Someday it will reach the 
living things, yes. First it will choke the life, siphon the 
brightness from that which is to fall to deterioration, 
though the shimmering skyscrapers are beyond its reach 
for now, yet now, the humans will only expedite this 
growing calamity hidden in the scars of their 
accomplishments. 


It judges, and it waits. 


Twins by Dr. Mann 
I'm sorry. | shouldn't have. | just got scared. 


| made a deal, right? | needed to get him back. | loved 
him, and they could do it. | didn't think they could, but 
they fucking showed me. | said yes and got seven more 
years with him. 


And it worked. It fucking well worked, and he was alive 
again. And since then, it's been wonderful. 


But seven years is coming up, and there's a secret | 
haven't told. | got scared when | signed the contract. | 
didn't want to go to hell. 


So | signed your name instead. 


"Emptiness" by Agent MacLeod 


If you ask a quantum physicist, they'll tell you that most 
of an atom is empty space (for a given definition of 
"empty," anyway). Between the nucleus of the atom and 
the electrons zipping around it, there is a comparatively 
vast field filled with absolutely nothing. The same applies 
to molecules; between the atoms that make them up, 
there is a vacuum that can't truly be breached. If you ask 
an astronomer, they'll tell you that it's similar in outer 
space. Most of the cosmos is vacuum, with bits that are 
heavier and hotter that we call "stars" and "planets." 


But I'm not an astronomer, or a quantum physicist, or 
any sort of scientist. | work the register at the local 
Wendy's. Every morning, | wake up in my shitty bed in 
my shitty apartment, get ready for my shitty job, drive to 
work in my shitty car, and stand behind a register for six 
hours, wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life. 
Then | drive home, neglect to call my mother because | 
can't stand to hear her disappointment in me for dropping 
out of college again, fuck around watching TV or 
smoking pot or masturbating or finding some more 
creative way to waste my time, eat a shitty dinner, and 
pass out way too late to start it all again. 


| can't help sometimes but think back to all the choices 
that have lead me here, back to the ways I've screwed 
up, and wonder if there's any way to fix it. Mostly, 
though, | look at all the wasted time, and see everyone 
else doing the same, living short, pointless lives that 
don't matter. 


| can't help but think that I'm just empty space, nothing 
but a void. 
Josie by minmin 


It's been ten hours since she went inside the walls. 


| tried to stop her, but it was like stepping into a hole, 
swoosh, and she was gone. | could hear her quite well at 
first, lightly scrabbling on the plaster, but the sound 
moved towards the floorboards into the grate around 10 
P.M. and | couldn't fit my head that far in anymore. 
There's still a corner behind the sink where | think I can 
hear something like whiskers, though. 


The vet told me the other week that it happens all the 
time with her type, they just get up and leave for a bit, to 
stretch out the ol' instincts, you know? Except the 
stretching happened to my ceiling eight hours ago, you 
could hear the pop of bone beneath and everything, and 
when | climbed up to investigate | swear | could smell the 
food on her breath. | wanted to run down to the 
telephone to tell Dr. Kim, but the lines were stretched out 
too and the receiver was clogged with her matted hair. 
It's a good thing | propped the back door open before 
she left, otherwise she'd have gotten to it too, but | don't 
think the chair will hold for long. At least she hasn't gone 
into the furniture yet, which is nice. 


The postman came in around eight in the morning, but 
when he made it past the front porch the roof closed in 
on him with the wetness of her mouth. She had always 
liked to play with him like that. 


Biblio by DreamwalkerFae 


Listen to the sound of the empty speech. 
Of voices you are unable to read. 


Watch as your comrades forget their own names. 
Even their role is forgotten with time. 


Feel the blurred and wrinkled edges of these walls. 
They crumble and collapse under your touch. 


Catch the scent of the ancient bindings of your world. 
Worms will eat them apart. 


Know what happens to stories 
When the authors march off to war. 


Overheard in a Diner in Lemont by ProcyonLotor 


(It’s been several years, but this story has stuck with me. 
I’ve reproduced it as faithfully as | could, with the 
exception of changing it from ‘bar conversation in a dingy 
county route diner’ to a conventional narrative.) 


My older brother heard voices. 


We weren't a wealthy family, so my folks didn’t get him 
into some shrink in the city, or pump him full of pills. It 
was pretty much “shut up and act normal’. 


Eddie was a full eight years older than me, so we didn’t 
have much to do with each other. He was a pretty lonely 
kid, and didn’t talk much. So | really didn’t know what 
was happening, until | was a lot older, and he was 
already long gone. 


The only time he acted like a fucking loon around me 
was when | was about eight. Right after some massive 
screaming match with my mother, probably, about his 
voices, he asked me if | wanted to take a walk with him. 


| mean, | thought we were going down to get ice cream. 
We were living down in Romeoville at the time, and I’m 
sure you know that Dairy Queen down on the main drag. 
| used to walk there occasionally to get something when 
our family had enough money to give me a few dollars. 


Instead, Eddie takes me to this cemetery a few blocks 
from the house. He leads me all silentlike just right into 
the middle of all the markers, and stands there for a 
moment. Now, | knew even back then that Ed was a 
weird dude, so this wasn’t shocking or unexpected, but 
still, it was after dark, and | was eight, standing in 
graveyard. 


Then, Eddie peered at a grave marker for a bit, took a 
deep breath, turned around, and stared at me. 


“You can hear them, can’t you?” 


| couldn’t hear anything, and that question scared the 
piss out of me. | shook my head and told him | wanted to 
go home. 


He didn’t say anything, but it was obvious I'd 
disappointed him somehow. 


We walked back in silence, which didn’t help make the 
situation any less creepy. When we got back to the 
house, he went up to his room without another word, and 
we never spoke of it again. 


Now, things get messed up two years later. This was 
back in ninety-six, and a girl from Romeoville High 
School went missing, what was her name.... Meredith 
Parker, right? Yeah, that was it. 


Anyway, this Parker girl disappears without a trace, and 
town apparently flips itself over looking for her. | was only 
like ten or eleven, so | don’t really remember much, until 
Eddie got himself involved. 


Early fall sometime, Meredith had been missing for about 
three or four months. Eddie apparently calls the cops, 
and leads them down to some marshy spot off the I&M 
Canal, little bit past the Citgo refinery. Can't tell you 
exactly where it is, as they never told me. 


But, the cop and Eddie find an arm washed up in the 
reeds along the shore of the canal. Two guesses who it 
belonged to. 


And, well, that was all that was ever found of Meredith 
Parker. 


Now, Eddie had no reason to be there, ever. He had no 
reason to be walking there, no reason to have pulled 


over and gotten out of his car over there, no reason to 
just be wandering by. Pretty much no one had any 
reason to be in that area- apparently you couldn't see the 
arm from the street.