The hells of life on a sugar plantation are not known 
widely, but the danger is implied. A worker's life- 
expectancy is six-months, and the best death to be had 
is that of exhaustion. Many more will lose limbs to the 
machines than their breath to the soil. It is for this reason 
that an exception in general policy is made in these 
places. 


On a sugar plantation, it is custom to keep a machete on 
the wall, so that the expense of a new slave could, 
hopefully, be avoided completely. 


The Island of Antigua; English West Indies 
Darke Sugar Plantation 
June, 1633 


A scream in the processing room had stopped signaling curiosity. It 
inspired slaves and servants to act, because there was an unspoken 
— and perhaps not fully comprehended — agreement adhered to 


among the workers. All of them would do what they could to help the 
one caught in the red and orange folds of iron, because they could 
need the same help before the end of the season, and the difference 
of two seconds could mean losing not just a hand but an arm. 


But The Tarp stood in the room, and before any of them had fallen in 
their first steps to Keep from getting closer to it, it had pulled the 
machete from its hook on the wall and kicked out the feet of the 
negro screaming by the furnace. With a twist, The Tarp brought one 
elbow down on another, and a crack resounded. The arm broken 
between the wrist and the captured hand, The Tarp had a clean cut 
with the edge, and the negro's pain became much more acute. 


Bending over, it ripped a strip of burlap from a dirty bag, and padded 
the wound. Another strip, and with the iron stake hanging from its 
belt it twisted the cloth around the stump until the spurts turned to a 
trickle. No words were spoken while it worked with its strange 
diligence, except the sickly half-syllable of the mutilated slave's word 
for 'no'. 


The Tarp picked up the limp body, a few shades greyer than a 
moment earlier, and handed it to the manservant Brick, drawn to the 
shed by the initial panic. A neutral pat on Brick's head and The Tarp 
was gone, not a sliver of skin seen beneath its rough-hewn cloak. 


Brick, stout but not particularly muscular, started to labor down the 
dirt road and called back for help. When two of the larger slaves had 
taken the body from him, he held his knees and ordered them 
forward. 


“Bring him to one of the house girls! They'll... they'll.” He made to 
look like he hadn't tried to say anything else when they looked back, 
and waved them forward. When they had rounded the short dirt path 
and were behind the palmetto bushes that lined the right of the 
walkway, Brick bent over and retched, his eloows on his knees. His 
eyes started to cloud over and he fell to his hip, and then contented 
himself to lie down for a moment and let the faintness pass. 


When Brick had first enlisted as a servant for his trip to the 
Caribbean, he had been twenty-five, and bold in his strength as a 
man. Eager to prove his merit as a strongman, while earning what 


he believed to be an investment in his own plantation, he signed his 
service to work in the fields, and promptly died as one of the first 
indentured servants in the Caribbean. 


In truth, he had lapsed into a deep unconscious state from 
exhaustion, and his body was stolen by a medicine man. It was 
through this that Brick met Mr. Darke. 


The medicine man took Brick into his hut, where he was given a 
paste of food and water, and his blood was let as needed. He 
remained comatose for nearly three weeks, and by then his old 
master had assumed he had run out on his contract. Just as well, he 
would say, as there was no way | or anyone else could serve in such 
a Capacity. 


As it was, there was a people who could serve in the fields, but they 
came not from the metropolises of Europe, but the grasslands of 
Africa. Certainly not after Brick and his circumstantial peers had 
written with word of the work. In this fractional way, Brick had helped 
changed the world. Of course, his campaign to make wary his 
friends and family of the sugar plantations was secondary, his work 
for Mr. Darke taking up most of his time. 


Mr. T. Darke was a frequent visitor of the medicine man. The story 
as he told it was not unlike Brick's, although his rescue by the island 
priest was from Oriental merchants and their ‘tactical spices’. 


“Since then, I've had tea with the old niggah at least once a month, 
and he's shown me a whole ‘nother side of magic | couldn't of 
fathomed. Wouldn't recommend voodoo to men who haven't had 
their feet wetted in the waters, though.” During dinner one evening, 
Darke leaned forward and muttered through his grin “I've heard, 
their women can't forgive. | daresay they let the grudge ferment and 
try to poison your grandchildren with it!” Of no incident, Brick's 
employment had never been strictly addressed in conversational 
tones. His best guess was the medicine man's boredom, who had 
become increasingly disinterested in Brick the longer he stayed with 
him past his conscious return. This is debatably supported by Brick's 
initial acquaintance with Darke, when he woke up one morning on 
his plantation, and told that he was employed. 


Anecdotes did abound at the table of Darke, and all of them, 
outlandish or close to home, would ring with an energetic truth that it 
made his various circles (very few of which overlapped at all) 
curious as to how a man as young as he could be so cleverly, 
damnably, experienced. Even after a pint or three, Darke would give 
the same answer to anyone who brought up his age. A furrowed 
brow, and then he would look into a polished mug, or spoon, or 
serving plate. After checking both sides of his face, he gave a 
tentative estimate. “A fortnight past thirty, | should think.” And that 
was that. 


Brick's employment on Darke's plantation was humbling, but 
comforting. “A boy's chores for a man's meal.” His only bane was 
The Tarp, who both terrified and infuriated him. There were no 
assumptions that could be made about The Tarp, as Darke would 
say nothing on the subject, and the information gleaned from his 
actions only supported the conclusion that The Tarp was either 
insane or well past human. Brick opted to the latter. 


Standing somewhere between six and seven feet, it towered over 
Brick's stout figure. There was little else to be discerned. Its cloak it 
wore in layers, the outermost tied with a belt, from which hung a few 
pouches, and one side an iron barb that was rarely touched. It 
smelled of leather and earth. Its gloves went past the cuff of its 
sleeve, and the top of its boots had never been seen. Both were a 
deep brown hide that looked comfortably worn. All of this, in any 
weather. Even the summers, when humidity was heavier than 
anywhere, and it was not uncommon to reach a point beyond a 
hundred and twenty degrees. 


Its face had never been seen. Two white circles on a deep leather 
mask, wide that would cover its cheeks, on top of a small circular 
screen that, for whatever function, covered its mouth. Not much else 
was defined by anyone about The Tarp, because it was impossible 
to search for the details in its mask when its eyes had been caught. 
The only part of The Tarp that wasn't mechanical was the look it 
gave, striking an ice into the chords of a person's heart, and still this 
wasn't human. It surpassed any human capacity into the realm of 
devilry. Brick was sure that Hell was the only place The Tarp would 
call home. 


Darke said that it was employed for the purpose of slave 
management. Its presence could accomplish this a dozen times 
over, and yet Brick had to know it was around every damned day. Its 
obviously inhuman strength further humiliated Brick, who once 
believed himself to be a demigod, although that had always had a 
youthful context. This constant reminder (if irregularly reinforced 
one), served to aggravate Brick, always and forever, although never 
to a degree that exceeded the amount of fear that he held for The 
Tarp, and consequently, never to a degree that would bring him to 
actually do anything about the creature. 


And it had the habit of arriving at the most off-putting moments. 
Brick would go days without seeing it, but when it resurfaced, it was 
always sudden. I've never seen him from across a field, no. Always 
bloody behind me. Once, after a week without any such incidents, 
Brick had tentatively concluded that The Tarp had somehow come 
to understand the particular effect it had on him, and that they would 
stay away from each other from then out. That evening, he had 
opened a guest bedroom to begin cleaning, and struck a match to 
light a candle. The flare of sulfur illuminated the orbs of The Tarp's 
eyes a foot away from Brick, who alerted the entire household to the 
circumstances, and also broke Mr. Darke's cow-lamp. 


Brick was hardly one to conspire. Getting rid of The Tarp was not an 
aspiration, but a pipe-dream to be nurtured spitefully until Brick 
became jaded and unfeeling enough to be legitimately apathetic, 
and probably die. 


Any day now... 


A night later, Darke sat across from a bleary eyed, dark looking 
young fellow, sitting in a tavern nursing a very dirty pint of beer, 
staring anxiously into his drink, in the way that only a man who owed 
somebody else more money than they themselves personally owned 
can. With a keen eye and a small smile, Darke engaged him in 
conversation, opening with a joke. 


“BLLAAAARRRRR, YE BLIMEY FUCKIN' ARSE, STAND THE 
FUCK UP AND BE A MAN BEFORE SOME FUCKARD CUTS YER 
BALLS OFF.” When the younger man didn't laugh Darke clapped a 


hand down on his neck and giggled for several seconds. 


“Nah, nah! I'm fine, | swear | SWEAR,” he teetered on one foot for a 
moment. “Now, listen up, because | can tell you right now that you 
don't solver any o' those problems by pissin’ around with your drinks. 
Now listen up, because I'm eight, HUN- no, wait, wait,” He bent over 
the counter and stared at his candlelit reflection in a bottle. The 
publican looked down at him from three yards away, decidedly 
nonbemused. 


“I'm... THIRTY... years. Give or take. Old. See? You don't, you don't 
know. | don't know. Bu' tha's alright. Here, have a drink.” Before the 
fellow had said a word, his new friend had spilled half a glass of 
whiskey on his lap, and was whispering ‘eight hundred’ into his ear 
incessantly. As he drank, the younger man grew bolder, and 
explained his situation to Darke, and anyone else who was listening. 
It was a crowded tavern full of bawlers and drunks, and Darke 
bought a few rounds to create a sympathetic ring of listeners. 


His name was Percival Cretum, and when he had driven his father's 
business into the ground (for business reasons, presumably; this 
was not addressed), he had found promise in the heralded western 
colonies. With no direction or any desire to continue his life in 
Britain, he got involved with a small company of merchants, and 
within four months was aboard an argosy to Antigua. His hopes to 
travel to the New England colonies, where he might start a new, 
profitable life, were suspended so that he could break away from the 
men whose ultimate goal was to create a stranglehold on slaving 
within the Windward Islands (so name for their position relative to 
the Caribbean trade winds) by laying a foundation in the surrounding 
islands, until such a time as the Windward Islands were available to 
be colonized. Percival Cretum had little faith in this plan of action, 
and certainly wasn't about to take an arduous path of growth and 
return, so he bid his compatriots farewell and relieved them of 
enough resources to carry himself to Boston by way of Nevis. 


“Where I'd really like to be now, because they're probably going to 
kill me.” At this point everyone, including Percival, laughed heartily, 
because most of them hadn't been listening and laughing seemed 
appropriate. He wasn't entirely sure why, but at one point he knew 
that he hadn't wanted to share the information he had just given to a 


Item: 1 steel rod 

Result: Item bisected and reassembled, one half at 180°. The 
bisected area joined seamlessly. Interestingly, SCP-568 could be 
removed even when both halves ended up misaligned in this 
experiment. 


Item: 2 steel rods 
Result: SCP-568 wrapped around both items, care taken not to 
leave air pockets in the edges. Bisection failed. SCP-568 removed. 


Item: 2 steel rectangular prisms 
Result: SCP-568 wrapped around both items. Bisection failed. 
SCP-568 removed. 


Item: 1 glass container, filled with water 

Result: Item bisected and the lid removed. The white surface on the 
bisected region was not visible when one looked through the 
cylinder; instead, one saw whatever the other half of the cylinder 
was pointing towards. Tilting either half showed water draining out of 
the container. Similarly, refilling the container showed a stream of 
water entering the bottom half. Item reassembled. 


Application of SCP-568 as a "portal window" under consideration. 


Item: 1 hollow plastic cylinder 

Result: Item bisected. When placed through the cylinder, objects 
(including water, a steel rod, a HB pencil, Dr. Weiss' arm, anda 
glass marble) were observed to smoothly pass through. Item 
reassembled. 


Item: Subject D-1617 

Result: SCP-568 wrapped around D-1617's lower left arm and 
bisected. Subject reported no pain and was fully capable of 
manipulating his hand, even from a distance of 20m. Subject's arm 
reassembled. 


Item: Subject D-1618 

Result: SCP-568 wrapped around D-1618's lower left arm and 
bisected. Subject's arm reassembled at 180°. When SCP-568 was 
removed, the subject lost all sensation in his hand,and complained 
of a sharp stinging in the bisected area. While the subject's arm had 


public house filled with people he didn't know. Figuring that any 
damage was done, he decided to enjoy the rest of his evening, and 
promptly blacked out. 


The drinking continued, and soon the tavern emptied out, with Darke 
cradling his new friend in his arms and up a dirt road, only dropping 
him six times before falling asleep on top of him, a mile from his 
home. 


The next morning was an alarming one for Percival, who awoke to 
Brick lightly shaking him. 


“Mister Darke cares to speak with you as soon as you're able. He 
also suggests you rub some of the brown paste in your washroom 
along your gums, and that it ought to help bring you out of any 
stupor.” 


When the stout man had left, Percival stumbled out of the very 
tightly tucked sheet, nearly falling on his face, and into the first 
private washroom he had ever been inside. Footsteps from the floor 
below resounded in his skull like gunshots. He saw a small green 
bowl filled with a substance that looked thoroughly whipped, evenly 
light brown and smooth as an eggshell. Another time, he might have 
hesitated to put it into his mouth, but without skipping a beat, he 
curled his finger into the cream-like mush and stuck it into his cheek. 


Before he had started to spread it along the inside of his lip, his body 
slipped into a euphoric sense of acuity. His pupils dilated, and the 
deathly headache evaporated with an inaudible sigh. 


Feeling very sharp and prepared to fight his way through any 
consequences of whatever he might have done the night before, he 
strode out of the bedroom and observed his surroundings. 


Ornate woodwork, oil paintings, and down the hall, a pedestal 
holding two massive barbs of ivory intersecting each other. It was a 
testament to affluence, and Percival had only seen the portion of the 
house outside of his bedroom. As he made his way down the 
staircase, envy and admiration upon him, and knowing nothing else 
about Darke, he knew he wanted to be him.