Personnel assigned to containment of SCP- __ are to read this 
document in its entirety. In the situation that the diary is bees, a 
modified document will be provided. 


Footnotes 

1. Records do not indicate any unusual weather patterns in 
[REDACTED] on the date in question. 

2. No television was found in Mr. ‘'s apartment, although a 
remote control was found. 

3. While the remainder of the diary is written in pencil, this appears 
to have been scratched into the paper. 


Behind the Scenes 


Ah, hello there. 


No, don't get up. Put down the gun though, it won't do anything. I'm 
not real, how could you shoot me? There we go. See, isn't that 
much nicer? All friends. Face that window, please. Oh, and smile. 
There, that's good. 


You look surprised, doctor. You've been on a binge of me, haven't 
you? | like your style, you fall down and you just get back up! 
Shame, though, that's what let me in. Nice couch. Don't get up, I'll 
make myself at home. What are you talking about, doctor? Oh, no, 
I've not come here as some sort of vengeful retribution. | really don't 
mind you people watching me, although | do wish you'd share them. 
You're very selfish, taking me away from the children like that, you 
know. 


| admit | did lose my temper for a bit back there, didn't 1? Don't 
worry, I've come to terms with my new audience. You do let me at 
children quite often. Some people would call you monsters! Not me, 
| don't judge. I'm fair. 


Haha, what are you writing? I'm very sorry, doctor, but this isn't an 
interview. I'd put it in the trash. There we go. Everything goes in the 
trash eventually. You trash your precious interview, the children 
trash their little minds and even | had to trash some of my other 
gimmicks. Oh, yes. I've been making little savages for quite a while 
now, doctor. Put down the gun. 


| think | started off small, the idea of fire some stupid cavemen got 
into their skulls. Children didn't really have time for me back then, so 
| moved on. The skinwalker shtick though, that was a good idea. 
Children whispered about me in the dark, adults even painted me! | 
hardly had to do anything at all! 


But then you had to get clever, didn't you? Suddenly all those 


superstitions started to float away and | had no children to help, no 
parents to... well, you'll find out soon enough. And yet, there was 
one little form that | had left, one fun-loving character that could still 
reach inside those kids' heads and twist. I'm talking, of course, about 
Bobble the Clown. Oh, don't look so glum. 


Smile. You're on television! 


As of / /20 , it appears SCP-993 has ceased 
broadcasting. 


As of / /20 , SCP-993 has resumed its normal 
broadcasting. Re-classification to Euclid is being 


considered. 
Episode Title Contents 
‘Bobble's Back!’ Setting of episode appears 


tobe Dr. _ 's office. Bobble 
appears in the room and Dr. 
registers shock, then 
faces the viewer and smiles. 
Bobble and Dr. then 
appear to converse for 
fifteen minutes, although no 
dialogue is audible. Fifteen 
minutes in, Dr. raises a 
pistol and fires upon Bobble 
to no effect. Bobble then 
systematically dismembers 
and removes facial 
extremities from Dr. 
using a large butchers knife. 
Signs of movement are 
visible from Dr. for three 
minutes, after which the 
credits roll. Alarmingly, Dr. 
disappeared without a 
trace a day before the 
episode broadcasted. 


Being Cactusman 


Dreams have long been a point of contention for psychologists, full 
of vehement and loud opinions on what they mean. Some think that 
it's the brain going over the events of the day, while others postulate 
that it's the subconscious finally doing something useful and 
resolving issues. The smartest scientists are always identifiable by 
bedhead and coffee, because they prefer to experiment with sleep 
rather than theorise about it.1 


What few scientists bother to worry about is whether or not plants 
dream. They do. In the plant community, Venus Fly Traps are noted 
to have the most livid nightmares, which typically involve sunlight 
and arachnids. Creeping Vines rarely ever have dreams, being so 
exhausted from all the creeping. 


The dreams of flora relevant to this story, however, are cactus 
dreams. The layman would think that cacti dream about water. This 
is not so. Dreaming about water is incredibly boring. Water by itself 
doesn't do much, other than fail to have the common decency to 
hold a definitive shape. A cactus dreaming about water would be 
comparable to a person dreaming of an open field. It sounds very 
poetic, but begins to drag on once you realise there's not much to do 
in an open field. The very idea is silly, preposterous, and 
implausible. 


No, most cacti dream of finding a nice cactusette and settling down 
in that nice bit of sand just a block away from their good cactus 
friends. Cactusman, known to his friends as Daniel Macintyre, or 
urrgghjhggjdf2 to very pretty cactusettes, was dreaming of settling 
down on that fateful morning. In particular, of Carrie (RH) Ipsalsis, 
who was, while not a cactus, very pretty. Cactusman himself was 
not actually a cactus, but an upright member of his human 
community, dedicated to saving innocent lives and preventing 
dehydration. 


It was with a grunt that he was awoken from his slumber. 


Specifically, a grunt that meant "Hey, Daniel, wake up!". Rubbing the 
sand from his eyes, Cactusman glared blearily at Carl from across 
the room. Carl was a handsome specimen, a strapping male in the 
prime of his youth, who had met Cactusman at their local home 
improvement store. Carl was also a cactus, which may raise the 
question of how he was currently speaking to Cactusman. 


Carl, as any reasonable person could assume, was not speaking in 
English, but in Cactese. Cactese is entirely incomprehensible to the 
human ear, who hear it mainly as a series of roars and grunts. It is 
actually a much more complicated language, with 13 specific grunts 
designed to obfuscate any humans who might be planning on 
pillaging innocent cacti and putting them up as trophies on their 
mantle. There are 73.5 words to describe a small amount of water in 
cactese, because cacti are predominately optimists, and not nearly 
as prickly about glasses being filled with water as humans. 


"Daniel, wake up man! Someone needs your help!" 


Like a slap in the face, or being stabbed by the spine of a cactus, 
Daniel jerked up, throwing off his sheets and rushing off to grab 
breakfast by the window. A hero can't be expected to save the day 
without energy, after all. Carl continued to speak, giving Cactusman 
the minutiae. 


"Her name is Lily, | met her at the plant nursery. She always made 
sure | had enough water and sunlight, great gal. Pretty, too, man, 
you should have seen her-" 


"Carl! Get to the point!" shouted Daniel, cutting Carl off in the middle 
of his diatribe. 


"Right, right, sorry. She was kidnapped, Dan! They stole her away! 
You gotta rescue her, she's a damsel in distress! They took her to 
5739 North Clark!" 


Spurred on by his heroic and solemn duty, Cactusman dashed to 
the door. His thought traveled faster, though, and he paused, turning 
to Carl. "Where'd you hear this from, anyways?" 


"Oh. | heard it from the grapevine." 


To describe how long Daniel stared at Carl would be an impractical 
waste of text, and would also imply that something other than staring 
happened in that timespan. Staring is a very dull thing to write about. 
There are only so many ways to describe a stare, and the majority of 
them are variations on "intense". To create a clearer picture of what 
happened, stand up, find a plant, and stare at it for ten minutes. This 
story will still be here. 


Welcome back. Yes, it was that boring. 


Daniel tore his stare away, muttering something about "that 
incorrigible gossip" before dashing out the door, spines drawn taut in 
preparation for the battle ahead. Today, evil would not stand. Today, 
the world would be bathed in light and righteousness. 


Cactusman trudged through the torrential downpour, peering up 
occasionally to look at the street numbers. The path of 
righteousness be damned, the weather had other plans. It had been 
behaving itself, sunny days and mild temperatures for too long. It 
had been saving itself for this day, which it had marked down on the 
calendar it stored up in the cloud. Useful thing, the cloud. 


By the time Cactusman found 5739 North Clark, he was wetter than 
any cactus had a right to be. Cacti tend to like the weather like they 
like their humour: dry, and preferably involving George Carlin. 
Taking a spine from his back, Cactusman quietly investigated the 
integrity of the keylock, then very legally and equally quietly entered 
the threshold. 


"I'm in the belly of the beast now..." thought Cactusman, as he 
surveyed the room. It was obvious that there was no one home, 
from the state of the apartment. The TV wasn't on, and he wasn't 
being angrily questioned about why in the hell a stranger is standing 
in our home and how did you get in I'm calling the bloody police Bob 
get over here and teach this hoodlum a lesson again. 


It wasn't really the wretched hive of villainy that Cactusman 
expected. The place was downright pleasant. They had obviously 
put work into the breakfast nook which was dotted with potted 
plants, and the couch went very well with the rug. The whole living 
room was so open and inviting- "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!?" 


The owner of the particularly angry vocalisation was an equally loud 
Hawaiian shirt, filled out by a rotund man, the kind who is usually 
accompanied by a beer and plastic pink flamingos. What he was 
doing here was unknown. Maybe he was lost. It would certainly 
explain why he was so angry. 


He greeted Cactusman with an enthusiastic fistoump to the jaw, his 
arm hurtling through the air like a porcine train car carrying 
sausages‘. Cactusman's world exploded with new colours (such as 
sillown), reeling back from the force of the blow, more than enough 
to ruin the day of any cactus. 


Cactusman caught himself on a nearby coffee table, as the 
Hawaiian shirt was busy marveling at the new cactus spines growing 
out of his hand. His revelations were loud and involved hopping and 
shaking his hand. Grasping blindly behind him, Cactusman found a 
friendly coffee mug, and brought it down hard over the Hawaiian 
shirt's head, in accordance with the celebration.5 


The Hawaiian shirt crumpled to the floor, and Cactusman stepped 
over the ne'er-do-weller gingerly, making a mental note to call the 
hospital, and maybe iron out some of the wrinkles. As he was idly 
wondering why Hawaiian shirts were acceptable fashion, a muffled 
shout brought him out of his reverie. 


A shout! The damsel in distress! Cactusman dashed to the source of 
the noise, bursting in the room next over. And there she was. 


A sight like Lily was one that a man would never forget. Even in their 
old age, as they ramble on about lawns, hills biting their ankles as 
they climbed up wolves on their way to school, they would 
remember that moment. She had a flower, tucked in on her head, 
accenting the soft colour of her body. The light streamed into the 
room, highlighting her pretty face as she implored Cactusman to 
save her from the bindings that constrained the curves of her body, 
a price tag poking out of the soil in her pot. 


All things considered, she was a very pretty cactus. 


Footnotes 
1. Most theoretical discussions about dream meaning usually end up 


799-1a). Although well-insulated, they are apparently cold-blooded, 
hence their adaptation for use by intelligent homeotherms. Instances 
of SCP-799 are usually torpid and incapable of movement, requiring 
little nutrition: what they do need, they draw from the organic detritus 
present in household dust. One specimen is believed to have 
survived for years on end stored in a damp, ill-maintained attic, living 
on heat from the house below and detritus from the wooden rafters 
above. Excretion is minimal; excreta resemble tiny, very dry [DATA 
EXPUNGED]. 


If forced to survive for long periods without sufficient nutrition, 
though, SCP-799 is capable of metamorphosing into a predatory 
form. The resultant structural changes are invisible to the casual 
observer. They consist of modifications to the digestive tract and 
feeding orifices; the latter shift from minute, dispersed filter-feeding 
mouths into a single large mouth, lined with [DATA EXPUNGED]. 
The organism also develops contractile tissue similar to animal 
muscle. Once this metamorphosis is complete, the SCP-799 
individual waits for a large animal to wrap up in it and become 
quiescent (sleep is common) before opening its mouth, tearing off a 
few kilograms of biomass, and consuming it. The biomass is 
apparently reduced to thin slurry almost immediately, as even 
seconds after feeding there is no visible bulge in the blanket. The 
mouth is completely resorbed ten minutes after feeding; at this point, 
no evidence of the blanket’s nature is available except by X-ray or 
by observing the sudden increase in mass. By forty minutes after 
feeding, the entire carnivorous digestive system is resorbed and the 
organism returned to filter-feeding phase. 


In carnivorous phase, the organism will not feed on inanimate 
objects or cold-blooded animals. Dr. hypothesizes that its 
senses are entirely limited to touch and heat, and that it does not 
recognize cooler objects as organic. 


SCP-799 reproduces by budding. When an individual's mass 
reaches a certain minimum (very slowly except in case of carnivory), 
it takes on a more "quilt-like" appearance. Gradually, over the 
course of several weeks, the "quilt squares" along one margin puff 
up and slough off to become several small doilies or throw pillows. 
The offspring are clones of the individual, identical to it in every way, 


in a group double blind sleep experiment, so the point becomes 
moot by the thirtieth sheep. 

2. Imagine a noise very similar to gargling kidney stones 

3. Woe betide those who try to give a cactus Leslie Nielsen though. 
4. Or the fist of an angry fat man, if you don't enjoy similes. 

5. Cacti rarely party, but when they do, they lose several friends, 
wake up with terrible hangovers, and often find most of their 
glassware shattered. It's why they're so often found in the desert. It's 
dry, miserably hot, and there's not a drop to drink anywhere. Not 
conducive to parties at all. 


Bending Over Backwards 


The office was neat. It clearly belonged to someone who had too 
much time on their hands. Every piece of paper on the desk was 
stacked neatly into three vertical piles, each the same height. There 
was a small pot of pens, and about ten cheap biros in it. They all 
looked brand new; the owner had never needed to replace them. 
Next to it was a name plate, with the words “Dr. W. A. Hamilton” 
engraved on it. At the centre of it all was a balding, middle-aged 
man named Hamilton. He sat at his desk, staring at the door, and 
watched silently as it opened. 


In stepped Sanchez, a young, nervous research assistant. He 
pushed his glasses up, as they were beginning to slip down his 
sweat-covered face. Hamilton stood to greet him, and they shook 
hands. 


“Please, take a seat,” said Hamilton. Sanchez complied. 

“So, Sanchez, what is it that you wanted to talk about?” 

“Well, sir, | was browsing through some old newspapers, and found 
this.” 

Sanchez retrieved a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, 
unfolded it, and pressed it onto the table. 

“It says that, two days ago, a Mr. Walter Copper died due to a 
broken spine. Reasons unknown.” 

“And?” 

“Well, according to his wife, he was just eating breakfast. She came 
back in the room, and he was dead.”