Travis Brenton was always the one to help a damsel in distress, but 
this one took the cake. Walking alongside Highway 62 more than 
fifty miles out of town, and despite the triple digit heat, she was 
bundled up in a bright red coat. As he pulled up alongside her, she 
hardly turned to look at him, her coiffed blonde hair bouncing with 
each labored step she took. 


Travis rolled down the passenger window on his pickup truck and 
leaned across the vinyl bench seat, "Hey there, miss, do you need a 
lift somewhere? Are you hurt?" 


She stopped walking, wobbling slightly before she turned to look in 
the window. Her face was painted like porcelain, with a stark set of 
cherry red lips and little pink swirls painted on her cheeks like 
peppermint candies. The rest of her face was hidden under a wide 
brim straw hat and oversized sunglasses. But despite what must 
have been an inch of makeup on her cheeks and her heavy clothing, 
she didn't seem to have a bead of sweat on her. She judged him for 
a few moments before her face lit up with a bright, wide smile 
revealing a row of perfectly white Chiclet teeth. 


"Thank you, sir. A ride to the next town would be very nice." 


Travis pushed the pickup door open and she laboriously climbed 
into the cabin of the truck, one oversized sleeve completely 
obscuring her arm. She didn't grunt or wheeze a bit, but she seemed 
weak as a kitten. No surprise really, given how far she must have 
walked in this heat. Travis stretched out a hand to help pull her up, 
and she gripped him with a sticky white palm. 


Travis' fingers felt like they were covered with syrup. He worked his 
fingers together curiously before trying to rub them on his jeans, 
which only caused his sticky hand to be covered with a layer of dirt 
and lint. 


"Are you feeling alright, miss? You must be hot, let me turn up the 
air for you," he offered, leaving a sticky set of prints on the knob as 
he turned it. 


"I'm fine, really. It's very kind of you to share your truck with me. 
Sharing is very important," the mysterious woman cooed, removing 
her hat and glasses. She fanned herself as the air kicked in, looking 
straight ahead at the road. Travis tried to get another good look at 
her as he pulled back onto the road, but she didn't turn towards him 
again. 


"Well, | think it's important to lend out a helping hand to people who 
need it," Travis said with a smile. 


"Funny you should say that, dear," the woman said mirthlessly, 
working her coat buttons open with her single exposed hand, the 
sticky one. Beneath the costume she was wearing some kind of 
ridiculous lacy candy striper outfit that seemed to be torn and 
stained brown. A rich maple scent filled the cabin, "Oh, oh, I'm sorry. 
| think | might be leaking on your seat." 


Travis whirled to look at his passenger, and she turned to face him 
with blank, unblinking blue jawbreaker eyes. Her puffy red licorice 
lips pursed into a pout, "I truly am sorry, sir, | know you are doing 
me a kind deed by sharing your truck with me but | can't help the 
syrup. It just doesn't clot like blood does." 


The truck swerved back off the road, bumping wildly on the bare 
earth off the highway. A cloud of dust erupted on both sides, 
obscuring the windows from outside. The woman yelped and her 
hair became undone as Travis slammed on the brakes and stared at 
his passenger in horror. 


"| must look a mess, | Know. It's just that | tried to share with him, but 
he wanted to take so much. He simply took too much, more than his 
share, and now | need to get back to the kitchen you see. You don't 
have to take me all the way there, it would probably be best if you 
didn't." 


The woman had shrugged off the coat completely, and she was as 
white as her face from head to toe. She worked to pin her hair back 


up with a peppermint twist with her one good hand, as her other arm 
ended just before where her wrist should have been. Her flesh was 
cracked like a piece of hard candy, and two thickly rolled tubes of 
paper poked out where the bones should be, like the sticks ona 
half-eaten lollipop. Her outfit had been torn and chewed upon, and 
there was a large part of her perfectly shaped torso missing. 


"I'm sorry if | have frightened you, sir, but | really do need to get 
back on the road. Maybe if you shared with me a little bit more?" she 
scooted across the flat bench seat, leaning her face towards Travis 
as if to kiss him. 


What happened next was a bit of a blur, but Travis was suddenly 
aware of the dust all around him and the hard ground against his 
back. His hand hurt terribly from being twisted in his panicked 
attempt to open the door and flee the cabin before the strange 
confection woman could touch him. She looked down at him with a 
hint of regret in her mask-like visage, and thick coils of red vines 
spilled from the hole in her side down to the floor of the truck cabin 
as she reached out over him. 


"It's probably better this way. Thank you for sharing with me. | will 
repay your favor when | am back from the kitchen, | promise. You 
are very, very sweet," the candy woman grasped the open truck 
door and pulled it shut, leaving Travis scrambling away on his hands 
and knees as she started the truck back up again and drove away, 
stranding him on Highway 62 in triple digit heat. 


Travis slowly pulled himself to his feet and stood in the swirling dust 
with a stupid look on his face. Had that really just happened? Was 
he really just carjacked by a half-eaten candy woman? 


Something squirmed against his boot, and he looked down to see a 
few strands of the candy woman's innards writhing and pulsing on 
the ground where they had been pinched off by the slamming of the 
truck door. 


He turned on his heels and ran. 


Capone 


"| was scared when | first saw him. It happened just as you told me: 
the messages, the pictures, seeing him around every corner 
afterwards. | was so young; who wouldn't have lost it?” William 
sighed. By then, he was over the creature following him. It wasn't 
like it was going to go away, no matter how much he begged, or 
pleaded, or attempted to bribe. He knew that the best and only 
solution would be to just get used to Capone being there. At least he 
had the solace of knowing he wasn't going insane. 


“Believe me William; | Know many people have reacted the same 
way. Fear is a more common reaction to the unknown than you’d 
think.” Dr. Laura Breynz consoled him. These cases weren't exactly 
common, but they were commonly known. 


“It’s not even that I'm afraid of him anymore. | mean, he makes me 
jump when | see him in the morning, | don't think I'll ever get used to 
that; It's the just the bad connotations he has.” William rebutted. 


"| know that he does, but it happened two years ago. | know it's hard 
for you, especially with your shadow, but you need to carry on." Dr. 
Breynz stated. William just sighed as she continued. "Our session is 
almost up. We made some real progress, William. | want you to do 
something for me when you get home. Do you have any homework 
or anything?" 


"| did it all on my break." 

"Good. When you get home, | want you to think back to your first 
experience, and write as much as you feel comfortable sharing. Is 
that alright?" 


"Yeah. Thanks for seeing me." 


It wasn't too long a drive from the doctor's office to home. Five, 


possibly ten minutes if there was a train. He always saw the creature 
through the rear view mirror when he drove, riding in the back seat. 
It looked innocent, in its own, alien way, waving to William as he saw 
it. 


Despite everything, William found himself talking to it, like one would 
talk to a dog or cat about their day when they're alone. It seemed to 
listen when he talked, and after a while, he could swear that it 
understood. It's hard to tell with a face like that, so all there were to 
go by were various head tilts and waves, and even then, he had to 
teach it how to wave. 


"At least | know you're interested." 


Drop the backpack near the door, go to the patio, wave to Capone 
from the mirror, fridge, drink, chair, crash. William's afternoon 
routine was more clockwork than it should be. He thought back to 
his session with Dr. Breynz. "She wanted me to try and recapture 
the experience when | first saw him, huh?" William mumbled as he 
grabbed a few sheets of paper and a pen. Bit by bit, he pieced 
together the sequence of events that lead up to this point. 


I've had Capone with me ever since | was fifteen years 
old. | remember that my twenty-year old sister, Sara, 
brought up an app that she downloaded earlier at the 
dinner table one night. She had no idea how it does it, 
but hazarded a guess that it tracks you through your 
phone's GPS, and sends you pictures of the places 
you've been with a 'really cute' monster placed in the 
photo to make it look like it's following you. 


It didn't seem that weird. | recall that Google maps could 
get a decent ground photo at the time, so just add 
Photoshop to that, and you'd have a gimmick. Plus, we 
knew it couldn't be a virus. The app store checks every 
app for things like that before peddling it. The only thing | 
found legitimately off about it at the time was that it was 
both free, and ad-less. 


Her explanation of it sounded pretty cool to me, so | 


asked Sara to help me download it on my phone. She 
told me that while my old, hand-me-downed, flip-phone 
did have something like an app store, it most likely didn't 
have MalO. Didn't stop her from looking though. 


Sara was a good sister. She really could have told me to 
just get out of her hair, but she always took time out of 
her day for me, packing my lunch, playing with me, 
bringing me to 'R' rated movies that | was clearly too 
young for. | was lucky to have her as a legal guardian 
when our parents went away. 


| was too young to process it all when it happened, but 
mom and dad died from a head-on collision with a drunk 
driver. Sara took care of me as my legal guardian up 
until | moved out for college. God knows where I'd be if 
she didn't. After some prodding, she found the app, 
which was a surprise to the both of us. It was obvious 
that my phone didn't have any kind of GPS, but neither of 
us had even thought about it until much, much later. 
Soon enough, | received my first picture. 


I'll never understand the way Sara saw the world, if that 
was her idea of 'cute'. The photo was taken in my 
school's courtyard, with the creature I'd soon call Capone 
sitting on one of the benches. You could barely see him, 
but there he was, covered in his black, matted fur, with 
his knife-like claws, a set of blank, pure-white eyes, and 
that face, which was merely a skull belonging to some 
kind of large beast, looking directly at us with that large, 
wolfish grin. 


| gave the phone back to Sara, telling her how terrifying it 
was, and that | didn't want the messages anymore. She 
just jokingly punched my shoulder, saying "Oh don't be 
such a baby. It is too cute! Look how happy he is to meet 
you!" | looked back at his face; his wide grin 
specifically... | have to admit, | laughed at that. It was 
just the sheer wrongness of that statement that made me 
listen to the next. 


"I'm sure he'll grow on you eventually... Tell you what, if 
you can put up with him for one whole week, we'll go see 
that movie you've wanted to see. If he still gives you 
nightmares, we'll delete it. If you end up liking it, we'll 
laugh about it later; Deal?" | looked at the picture again. 
It appeared that getting a photo every now and then was 
the extent this was going to go to, and looking at it in 
hindsight, | probably would've kept it on for next to 
nothing if she really wanted me to; so | agreed. 


Sara was ecstatic after that, and assured me that | 
wouldn't regret it while showing me some of her own 
pictures. She only had three so far: one at her office, one 
at the park, and another on the road we lived on, each 
picture containing her own clearly visible entity. | must 
have looked nervous or something, because she 
suggested that | name mine like she did with her 
‘Cassandra’. | thought about it for a bit. 


Let me make something clear though, because it seems 
to come up whenever | tell people this: | did not name my 
MalO 'Capone' because of the incident with my parents; | 
didn't even know that mom and dad's arrest involved 
alcohol at the time. | named him after a history lesson | 
found amusing in school where people's fear got the best 
of them, and as my teacher put it, it ended up doing 
more harm than good. It was intended as a reminder that 
| shouldn't be making the same mistake. 


| saw a bit of light in this whole thing after giving it a 
mock-title and thought it wasn't going to be that bad. | 
went to bed, and my normal life went on for just a little 
while longer. 


| continued to get pictures of Capone for a while, 
following me at school, the bus stop, my street, virtually 
everywhere | went. It wasn't until the third or fourth day 
when | got called in from class. | was thinking that | was 
in trouble for something, even if | didn't know what, but 
as soon as | saw Sara, that feeling was stifled. She 
looked very shaken. The instant she saw me, she 


immediately yanked my arm, and brought me to the car. 


Sara was not looking good at all. She kept asking 
questions about Capone, things like if | saw him, or if | 
received any photos from him with me in the images. | 
haven't checked anything from today, but when | 
checked, there were two. | remembered exactly when 
and where those messages were taken, because during 
them, | made a mental note that | got some texts from 
Capone. They've been sent as soon as they've been 
taken. 


Sara knew that we were being pursued by something, 
she probably had no idea by what they were, and | knew 
she had no idea how they were doing it, but she knew 
that they knew where we lived. She couldn't figure out 
how to delete it. She said she tried everything, but 
couldn't find a way to get it off. She couldn't even find 
where the app went. 


I'm not even sure what we were planning to do, but 
before we could even fully plan a course of action, | got 
another text. Sara froze and stared at me, as if to say 
‘don't look at it’. If | didn't, | could have had a semi- 
normal life right now. It would have been over the news 
within the week, and we would have known... 


But | did it. | opened the phone... And there we were, 
just sitting there, with that fear stricken look on our face. 
The photo was clearly taken from the hood of the moving 
car, giving us a clear view of what was behind us. He 
took up most of the backseat, and towered over me. We 
both turned around, preparing to scream at the 
monstrosity behind us, but when we did, the seat was 
empty. We didn't know what was happening, or what to 
make of it, but we felt that the only thing to do is run 
away, abandoning the car. 


We hastily ditched the car, ran the rest of the way to the 
apartment, and locked the door behind us. We locked 
ourselves in the bathroom, and waited. We just stayed 


SCP-807: Heart Attack on a Plate 


Item #: SCP-807 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-807 is to be kept ina 
locked safe deposit box at Site 19's High Value Item Storage 
Facility. Standard positive-action defenses (explosive, chemical, 
biological, and memetic) are to be in place at all times, according to 
standard operating procedure. 


SCP-807 may be removed from its storage container with proper 
authorization for experimentation. All personnel working around 
SCP-807 must be well-fed, and should wear oral restraints to 
prevent accidental ingestion. 


Description: SCP-807 is a salmon-colored ceramic dinner plate