The Roman horsemen were upon the chieftain now. Where their 
swords touched flesh lightning arced, and their spears were 
sheathed in fire. He fought hard, long after an ordinary man would 
be dead a dozen times over, but they took him apart. First his legs, 
and then his arms, and then head. 


Titus was overjoyed, and stood to shout to the rest of the legion, but 
he caught sight of one of the Roman horsemen's face, and he 
stopped. The man, moving the severed leg of the chieftain to the 
ornate golden box. He looked Titus straight in the eyes for a fraction 
of a second, then looked away in shame. 


Minutes after they arrived, the Roman horsemen took the boxed 

remains of the Gaul chief and rode away, and Titus was aware of 
another scream. Not the terrible scream of that horrible blade, but 
the scream of ten thousand angry men. “They weren't here for us. 


Steel yourself, child.” Gaius Marius Quartius said, readying his bow. 
The Gauls, cursed Gauls, rose up like a giant wave and crashed 
against the walls of the fort. Tonight would be the last night of the 
siege. 


Yellow Plumbers 


If Special Agent Eleonora Pauline knew she was going to be 
investigating the murder of her former boss, she'd believe she had 
taken too much cough medicine the other night. Only when she saw 
his body, head fully submerged into the clogged toilet filled with shit, 
piss, and vomit, did she know that this wasn't a sick twisted joke or 
hallucination. 


"Did he, um, suffer at all?" she asked. Her partner was examining 
the body with interest. It was as if Special Agent Derren Keaton had 
never seen a murder of this type before. 


"Yes, he did." Agent Derren stepped over the Director's body, 
staring into the dark, brownish-red toilet bowl. "Although, | can't tell if 
it's cause of the drowning or the broken bones. Probably both, 
although we'll have to wait for the coronary report for that." 


"How'd his bones break?" 


Agent Derren pointed toward the wall. Behind it, a cramped series of 
stairs lead up in a straight line. 


"Fell, broke both of his legs," he said matter of factly, tapping the 
director's legs with his foot. 


"Pushed?" 
"| don't know, probably. We cannot determine anything definitive." 


"Definitive my ass," Agent Eleonora grunted, turning away from the 
body and towards the stairs. "Foul play is written all over this." 


"We can't know anything for sure." 


"And what? He, mister ‘former boxer’, suddenly loses hand-eye 
coordination and falls down the steps, and, here's the real kicker 
here, he decides to get himself a clean drink of shit water instead of 


getting help, and then decides to take a little nap?" 
Agent Derren sighed and followed Eleonora towards the stairs. 


"I'm not saying he drowned himself intentionally. It's possible he 
couldn't get up, decided to use the toilet as support, and collapsed 
into the bowl and drowned himself by accident. Stranger things have 
happened, Eleonora." 


Agent Eleonora continues up the stairs, looking across the walls. No 
sign of damage. 


"Tapes." 
"What?" Agent Derren replies, a bit confused. 
"Did he have any tapes? Recorders, cameras, sensors, anything?" 


Derren shook his head. "I did a sweep of the area, | couldn't find any 
normal sized camera—" 


"Do you really think the director — the director mind you, the most 
paranoid man in existence — is just gonna let a bunch of cameras 
lay out in the open like that? Or recorders? or anything, really?" 


Derren thought about it for a moment, remembering the stories he 
heard about the director. Small little man, chubby pot belly hidden by 
a sleek gray and black suit, an American flag lapel pin on the 
outside. Gray hairs grew out of his formerly brown hair, what little 
was left of his hair, at any rate. Shy voice, Derren recalled. Was 
surprised to know that he was the director of the UIU when he first 
got transferred over — worst mistake of his life, he thought — and 
was sent there for the orientation. He talked and talked and talked 
and talked but he never said anything. A sock puppet speaking 
gibberish would have said more than the director ever could. He 
remembered how he had guards surrounding every exit to the 
building, covered in full riot gear and machine guns in their hands, 
locked and loaded. Derren could have sworn they had the safety off. 


"| suppose it wouldn't be...too, out of the question." 


"Exactly, exactly! Now, you wanna start busting down some walls?" 


"No, we can't do that." 
She looked at him, annoyed. 


"We can't disturb the house beyond what we need. Besides, we 
should probably just look in certain hiding spot — wait, does he have 
a computer?" 


Agent Eleonora looked from side to side, then rushed downstairs 
and rushed back up just as fast, carrying a personal laptop owned 
and operated by the director. She opened it up and tapped the 
words "PASSWORDS" into the section. It did not surprise Derren. 
The director was director long before the internet existed, that 
strange, mysterious time when things were typed up on typewriters. 


She began looking for any folder or file or anything whatsoever that 
could have been a security system related thing. Nothing. She tried 
audio. Nothing. She would have thrown the laptop across the room if 
it weren't for the investigation. 


They decided to just search the house instead. 


"Find anything yet?" 
"No, not yet, still looking through stupid shit." 


Agent Derren looked around the mantel in the living room, various 
dead animals hung up on the walls and stuffed animals lay 
everywhere. They looked like they were staring at him, like some 
messed up Mona Lisa. 


He walked across the living room to search through the movies 
section one more time to see if there was a camera hiding in his 


He stopped, looking at the mantel one more time. He moved back to 
where he was and then moved side to side to replicate the glisten. 
Sure enough, he could tell where it was coming from. 


On the top of the mantel there was a red fox. If the director was still 
alive, he probably would have bragged about killing the fox himself 
in the dead of night in the summer of '94. Of course, in reality, he 


containment failure. 


Log 1000-ad065-x1: The following is a rough translation of recent 
SCP-1000 attempt at communication with Foundation personnel on 
/ / (see attached documentation). 


we forgive you; 
given choice for now, not forever; 
let us back in 


« SCP-999 | SCP-1000 | SCP-1001 » 


never hunted in the summer of '94. He hadn't even gotten a hunters 
license or even had a hunting rifle. 


Inside the red fox's mouth he could see a tiny, but seeable, video 
camera. Of course, one had to angle their head just the right way in 
order to even see its outline — and even then it was barely existent 
— but he could tell it was there. He moved towards the mantel, 
grabbed the fox and shoved his fist into the throat. 


"| didn't know you had a thing for getting eaten." 


He ignored her and continued looking through the mouth — which 
was surprisingly bigger on the inside than out — and finally, with one 
strong pull, took the thing out. 


The camera was surprisingly large — much larger than what Derren 
or Eleonora had expected — and had a VHS slot. 


Eleonora snorted. 


"Leader of the largest organization on the planet, doesn't know how 
to use an iPhone." 


The Director walks through the doors, carrying a bag filled with 
various groceries. Chips, sodas, etc. fill the bag. He walks towards 
the cabinets and places them inside. He moves out of frame, and, 
based on the various other VHS tapes, upstairs. 10 minutes pass 
and nothing happens. 


The camera vibrates slightly, showing the director fall flat on his 
face, his legs bent and twisted into unnatural directions. Coming 
down are a pair of men dressed in all black, covering every possible 
part of their body. 


They scream — at least, so far as the two Agent could tell, the 
cameras didn't record audio — and grab hold of the director's throat, 
dragging him across the wooden floor as he struggles and grasps 
and attempts to resist, all of it useless as the men enter into the 
bathroom. 


On other tape, the camera — this time hidden inside a monkey- 


shaped trash can — catches a better view of both men. They're 
taller than the door frame, and have to duck their heads in order to 
enter the bathroom. Pistols are seen hidden in their pockets as the 
fatter of the two dunk the director's head inside the toilet bowl. 


Later, when reviewing the footage, Agent Derren would attempt to 
not gag — torture always made him squeamish. He always saw 
himself there, and feeling the same dread and fear wash over his 
body as the person on camera. Agent Eleonora would watch 
passively. 


They removed his head from the bowl, yelled at him. Despite the 
camera's generally horrible quality, it was able to catch every single 
centimeter of the director's face. It was doused in water, what little 
hair left drenched in shit-water and him gasping for breath. He was 
probably praying for a shower, Agent Eleonora would say after it 
was all said and done. They captured his eyes opening, and they 
were filled with something she had not expected: relief, the same 
type of relief that a child experiences after finding out that getting 
their shots weren't as bad as they thought it was. For him, maybe it 
was the same as death — maybe it didn't seem so bad when it 
actually happened to you. 


Or, maybe it was just piss-soaking fear. One couldn't really tell. 


The men yelled at the director, who screamed back. One could not 
tell what they were saying, but whatever it was, was not pleasant. 


This continued for five minutes before the men decide to just kill the 
director. The director must have realized he was down for far longer 
than they had before and began pushing and attempting to pull 
himself out. Every second he came close to the top of the bowl he 
was pushed back down, splashes of disgusting, vomit and shit filled 
water. 


Finally, he goes limp. 
One of them pisses on his corpse. 


They leave the bathroom. 


Later, on the other tapes, it's found that they destroyed all the audio 
recorders in the house. Took them with after leaving the house. 
There was no camera footage upstairs, so the two could not 
determine how the two entered. 


When the two were done, they stood in the middle of the living room. 
They opened up their pockets, revealing long, thick syringes. 
Syringes the size of dimes, maybe pennies. Agent Derren would 
later close his eyes to avoid seeing what happened next. 


The men shoved the needles into their bodies, one after the other. 
Nothing happened for a moment, and then the transformations 
began. Their clothes begin to morph and shift and weave into their 
skin, sinking and losing any all all structure that they once had. They 
shrink, their once humanoid bodies now looked more similar to blobs 
of flesh than actual human beings. Goop drips from their bodies. It 
trails across the floor and back into their flesh rolls. 


They shifted through the ground and began their journey back to the 
bathroom. The bathroom camera revealed nothing. 

They turned the TV off and looked at one another. 

Sarkics. 

Or at the very least drugs made by them. 

That was the only explanation. 

But....why would they kill the director? 


"What should we do?" Agent Derren asked, his voice ever so slightly 
quivering. 


"We get some guys down here to do a sweep of the plumbing of this 
house — we aren't leaving until we get some DNA from these 
cunts." 


Along the corridors of the sewer, a large man stumbles and fumbles 
across the long darkness. He grabs his arm, dozens of dime sized 


holes line from his wrist all the way to his shoulder blade. They 
bleed, but he doesn't feel them. He hasn't felt anything in a long long 
time, and the drugs — 


He screams, his head feeling like it was split open with a rock and 
lemonade spilled into it. It hurts — it hurts to think about them. He 
doesn't even remember how the hell he got down here— 


He stops, seeing a light down one of the tunnels. Rescue! He jots 
into a limping jog, his breathing increases. The holes start to hurt 
more now, but that's okay, he'll get to a hospital. They'll patch him 
up. A rescue team will help him. It is a rescue team right? 


He rounds the corner, coming face to face with the light and — 


He sees a woman, her brown hair put into a small bun on her head 
and a younger man with a short military buzz cut. They have pistols, 
and he sees a small eagle across an emblem on them bot— 


Oh. Oh God. 


Every single cell in his body tells him to move, tells him to run away 
and hide. Or maybe even jump into the water, possibly even drown 
yourself. Do anything to stay away from these two. 


A voice tells him they want to hurt him. They want to hurt him in the 
worst way imaginable. 


They both notice the dime sized hole in the man's arm, their eyes 
widening. The man attempts to tackle him, but he dodges, his body 
slamming into the side of the wall. It hits his arm, a large sting goes 
across his entire body. He feels blood squeeze out of his body, like 
water being squeezed out of a sponge. 


The woman kicks him and he falls over. He coughs up some blood, 
and starts seeing stars. He thinks he'll die down here. 


He would not. 


Agent Eleonora and Agent Derren look through the one way glass 
window, staring at the heavily bandaged man they found in the 


sewers. Based off DNA tests, he was exactly like the one they found 
in the house. Bartender of a local Alabama bar, The Typhoon, as it 
was called. Three kids, divorced, descendant of Swedish 
immigrants, member of the United States Pirate Party, and addict of 
the Sarkic made drug Snakepeel, which makes the user's physical 
structure weak, allowing for the user to take any form that they wish. 
Of course, it destroyed the pre-frontal cortex over time, along with 
your veins, but something that felt that good couldn't be bad for you, 
right? 


Agent Eleonora pressed a button and spoke into the microphone. 
"Mister Kennedy?" 


The man jumped at the sound of the voice, nearly tipping the table 
over in surprise. 


"Mister Kennedy, don't panic. We are not here to hurt you, we are 
here you help you." 


"PLEASE DON'T HURT ME! I'LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT, 
JUST PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!" Kennedy screamed, attempting 
to claw through the handcuffs attached to the table. 


"Please stop attempting to resist, we only want to ask questions and 
get you hel—" 


"OH GOD! I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'LL DO WHATEVER YOU 
WANT, JUST DON'T HURT ME," he screamed, his yelling turning 
into sobbing. 


"We will hurt you if you don't stop yelling.” 
Kennedy stopped yelling, his cries becoming mere sniffles. 
"Alright, what do you know about a man named Carl Taylor?" 


"| — I've never heard of the man," he said softly, attempting to not 
burst into tears. He heard of these people — these fuckers, these 
‘G-men' his father used to tell him. They would take children away 
from their parents and put them in these places called ‘foster 
homes’, where the ‘fake mom' and ‘fake dad' would hurt them — lock 


them in closest, punch them, beat them, kill them. Every day he was 
told this, he never questioned it. It wasn't okay for other people to hit 
their kids — but his parents were different, right? 


"We have evidence to suggest that you, Kennedy, have killed Mr. 
Taylor." 


Kennedy's internal temperature plummeted to below freezing when 
he heard those words. Like hot water being poured over him — 
water so hot that it felt cold. 


"But we also have evidence to suggest that you were under the 
influence of certain drugs — drugs manufactured by a religious 
group for their own benefits. We are willing to limit any potential 
legal consequences this may cause as long as you tell us 
everything."