Description: On - - , City police department, Precinct , 
responded to reports of a man attacking and killing bystanders with 
a large chef's knife at a local mall. Upon responding, officers 
discovered fifteen casualties, most of whom had been ritually 
flensed in a manner described by witnesses as "horrific." Officers 
discovered the suspect (an escaped serial killer named ; 
henceforth referred to as "Suspect") in the child's daycare area in 
the process of filleting and consuming a 9-year old boy. Officers 
ordered Suspect to cease and desist. Suspect did not comply. 
Officers then attempted to fire upon Suspect, but discovered that 
they were unable to pull the trigger. Officers then attempted to flee, 
but found themselves unable to do so after Suspect declared his 
intention to "murder every last one of you motherf ing pigs." 
Suspect then proceeded to [DATA EXPUNGED] ending with Cynthia 
Wallis, a Foundation Operative embedded as an observer with the 

PD. Despite being under severe psychic assault, Officer Wallis (a 
pseudonym) managed to activate her emergency transponder 
located in her belt while complying with Suspect's orders to : 
alerting the Foundation of the situation. 


Mobile Task Force Pi-1 ("City Slickers") arrived on the scene 


a decision; these excerpts from the diary of hers would be the part 
you are reading right now. 


| guess it's important to note that by this point, 95% of my 
free time was now being spent working on this series. 
What defines free time? An excellent question, reader. 


Several of the things | do are... well, hobbies, but | hone 
my craft on them to try and make myself able to use said 
craft for cash. A lot of my time is spent doing that, if I'm 
not actually too depressed by my situation, that is. Aside 
from that, | try to fill out at least one to two job 
applications a week for various places to take me on. It'll 
have been almost three years since I’ve done this 
process, but hey, something’s gotta give eventually. 


5% of my free time is spent playing video games and 
watching various shows and movies that seem the least 
bit interesting. Entertainment is important, after all. All 
work and no play, etc. 


As for the rest, it’s a constant stream of writing and 
editing. Agonizing over whether the story is too personal, 
not personal enough, too surreal, not surreal enough, if 
the meanings of all the bits and pieces stuck in there 
make sense and if the purposefully nonsensical is just 
fine enough flavor otherwise. | hear it’s a tough job to 
edit stories. 


Refresh. 
Refresh. 
Refresh. 
Refresh? 


Well, someone's surely gotta read it at some point. 


November 28, 2017 


On IRC, friends were discussing producing art and content. Sunset 
didn't remember much about it (/ think | zoned out a /ot), but 
someone? brought up how they felt that maybe the suffering would 
be worth the art being put out. 


| didn't know how to tell them otherwise. But I'm sure 
they already knew that. 


November 29, 2017 


A funny thing about passport changes; if you want to change your 
name and gender on it, the process absolutely feels a lot more 
involved and a burden than just changing the name, or even just 
renewing it. Her mom had to help her out through the process, and 
yet it would still involve weeks waiting for a new passport to come so 
Sunset could finally feel like a real person in the eyes of the 
government again. At least being gay and trans in her part of the 
United States wasn't as bad as other parts; just only moderately 
unbearable. 


November 30, 2017 


Sunset and her therapist got to talk about a number of subjects in 
only an hour, a rare accomplishment. Her past relationships, future 
relationship prospects, mental health, suicidal ideation, manga, the 
works of Hirohiko Araki, and new possible new medicine. There's 
only so much you can cover in an hour, but there was something 
that stuck out most to her. It was hard to keep track of the dialogue 
exactly as it happened, but it echoed previous sessions. 


"Do you believe you feel justified in your paranoia all the time?" 


It was tricky. Intellectually, paranoia isn't always or even most often 
justified. People can believe so just because of past betrayals, or 
delusions, etc.. But then again... isn't it better to trust your instincts? 
What if you're wrong to not trust in it, and the one time you don't, 
you really will get murdered? The government really will try to 
silence you in the mid of night. 


Sunset didn't know how to respond, so it was something to sit on for 
the next week or two and see if there was a way to answer. 


"But try to answer honestly, or else you'll just be feeding into the 
same feedback cycle." Her therapist didn't say that, but it was 
certainly implied. 


On the way back home, she revised a scene from the tale to be 
posted that night. After Draven got the manila envelope from his 
father's desk, he would have then gone to call Dr. Simon Glass, 
asked if he thought Talloran would be okay. He'd then call Hikari 
Yamada to have her promise him that Talloran would be taken care 
of if he wasn't around. 


But it felt condescending; it echoed doubts and feelings of previous 
friendships and relationships, the distrust of friends and partners, the 
paranoia of what will happen to you and your loved one... it just 
wasn't fair to write something so happy and nice in that moment as 


something to be filled with doubt and sadness, as all gay 
relationships are inevitably supposed to be in the eyes of media. 
Why can't they just be happy? Even with the oxymoron of a series of 
Talloran facing the worst and [REDACTED}/4, it was still possible for 
them to be content with Draven and in love. 


So the scene was changed. Draven would just simply climb back 
into bed with Talloran and fall asleep with them, feeling nice and 
content. At the very least, safe in that moment. To trust and to feel 
safe in the arms of someone you care of, in any sense, is perhaps 
one of the best feelings in the world. This would do. 


Dinner was Mac and Cheese. Gross. It'd do. 


The word processing program was open, and Sunset stared at it for 
a couple hours, watching the cursor blink in and out. Some voice 
nagged in her head, and she only became aware of it after it 
continued to nag and nag. Ah well. Sleeping might be more 
productive. 


December 1, 2017 


Tomorrow's a brand new day, after all. 


There's no good way to end this story. No matter which 
excerpt | end with, how long | go (even up to today), 
there's nothing satisfying. Of course there isn't; life 
doesn't have story arcs that end on a satisfying note. 
This won't end on a satisfying note. But if my life feels 


enough like fiction, | may as well give the illusion of 
something, right? 


(And as for whether or not this is an intentional allusion/ 
mirror of the note at the end of 3999? Yes. Thank you.) 


One of the discussions | had with people before about 
storytelling and presenting narratives led me to be 
cautious of how much you can bare your heart. | always 
write from the heart. It's a weakness of mine. For me, it's 
incredibly difficult to write a story from something with 
which I have no personal experience because | feel 
there's nothing for me to put my own personal stake in, 
nothing to draw inspiration from. And if the writing 
doesn't contain any semblance of my own emotion and 
underlying expression, then who am | writing for? A 
distilled, focus-tested audience, certainly. 


When | first started this series, it was completely on a 
whim. The day | posted the first tale, | could not sleep. 
Bad memories, bad thoughts, and bad trauma plagued 
my head, and I was convinced | was being watched 
purely for amusement. Camera in the carpets, sensors 
on the walls, all showing exactly how miserable | felt. 
Unable to sleep, not even for me to be able to slip into 
nightmares. If you've read between the lines in this 
series and understand its relation to the metaphors and 
personal expression brought forth, then | don't need to 
go further. You already get it. 


Luckily, | had some semblance of self left to exert will 
over, with what little energy | had as | laid on the floor in 
a daze. What was | going to do? | was lost and confused. 
| needed some way to express how | felt. So | went to my 
computer and wrote. | wrote and | wrote and | wrote, 
spewing out the story beats that came to my head, and 
realized Talloran spoke through me. It's my belief that 
characters aren't something authors write; they already 
exist, and we just bring them out through writing and 
through creative endeavors. So when | wrote, Talloran 
told me their story. And then I realized there was more to 


the story than | could tell in that moment. So I| quickly 
edited previous details, and slapped navigation links in 
the bottom, not knowing what would come next. 


| had to keep writing, after all. There had to be something 
to work towards, or else I'd keep feeling lost and 
directionless, and Talloran's story wouldn't have been 
able to be fully told to its completion. | sat on it for a day, 
not knowing what to do next. And during a nap that day, 
in my dream, Talloran came to me and | heard it all. 
Every single story detail that | could remember after 
waking up, | sat down to write and | planned ahead. Oh, 
there was so much to learn how to do. 


| experienced Wikidot coding. | learned how playwriting 
worked. | hungered for the science behind dreams. | 
browsed through Wikipedia articles on heart conditions. | 
endeavored to better myself by absorbing literature and 
understanding how others wrote. | practiced. | verb. | 
verb. | verb. 


I. 


There were two things | did not know how to approach. It 
was impossible to tell what would have happened to 
Talloran in the fifth part of the story, for them to become 
stuck in an endless falling void. And | didn't know what to 
do for the sixth part. My original idea was more 
flashbacks, but flashbacks can only tell so much and 
advance the story in so many ways before they become 
trite, just like how you can only suffer so much before it 
becomes one more thing to suffer through. | thought 
through a lot of this, after all. | verb. 


Eventually, this was settled on, after another IRC 
discussion about being emotional and barehearted in 
stories. And even writing this went through about twenty 
revisions. SCP-3999 has impacted the site and chat in 
so many ways, many of them positive. A lot of people 
have connected with it, but it's more than a story about 
LordStonefish and Researcher James Talloran®. It's 


about... well. | can't tell you what it's about for you. All 
that matters is what it means for me. Really, if this wasn't 
about me in some sense, why even bother? Writing 
should be for the self, and my writing is for me alone. | 
just share this privilege with others when | feel proud of 
myself for it. 


Detractors could make a case for this being a call for 
help, but it's not. Right now, | feel pretty stabilized and 
okay with my current psyche. Or that I'm doing this for 
attention. Well yeah. If | wasn't writing for attention, | 
wouldn't be posting it on the site. Maybe I'm too 
emotional. Sure. Or being too personal. 


You thought a sidebar in an SCP about the author was 
too meta? I'm smashing the walls between the author 
and reader, because when it comes to form, sometimes 
you have to test how far you can break lines before 
progress can be made. So I'm paving the way for myself, 
because that's all that matters; my progress. Here's a 
whole tale about me, because you can't understand 
Talloran (in this setting anyway) without understanding 
the author, and you can't understand the narrative 
without understanding the influence behind it. It's the 
only correct way to do it, and | don't half-ass anything | 
put my heart into. 


| guess so, anyway. 


December 6, 2017 


She feels like she can pull through. 


Now that we're all caught up on the important and 
relevant information, why don't we check in on 
Researcher Talloran and see how they're doing. | think 
we've earned some reprieve from ourselves for now, 
don't you? 


« Only Once Away My Son| You think the worst of all is left behind. | 
I'll Try Living Like This » 
Hub 


Footnotes 

1. Portuguese word for "grandmother", this variant is used to more 
clearly indicate affection. 

2. Yes, legally. 

3. Name removed to not out someone else's personal feelings like 
that. 

4. Can't give away our ending here, now. 

5. Who was always going to be non-binary; hence one of a few 
reasons why | referred to Talloran as myself especially in the first 
part, and why Talloran had no pronouns in the second part. 


I'll Try Living Like This 


« The Vampyre of Time and Memory | I'11 Try Living Like This | Like 
Clockwork (Finale) » 
Hub 


Year 2,999,763 


"Ah, if only it were that simple though." / heard that voice again, 
speak into the nothingness where | floated. It came when there was 
nothing else to harm me, just like the time before that. 


Oh, it's you again. What do you want? 
"So | guess you've put two and two together yourself." 
Yeah. | uh, | got it when | saw you. Why are you doing this to me? 


"I'm not trying to do anything to intentionally hurt you." She lied. "| 
just had something to tell people. And you were the —" 


| don't have any actual right now. How do | know that what I'm 
saying is what | want to say? For all | know, I'm just [REDACTED]. 


"Like | said, you came to me. I'm just relaying what information you 
shared to me." 


Did that include this? 
"Yes," 


Fuck. | floated away from the voice, trying to find a way out. There 
weren't too many options | had. Well, do | even bother doing 
anything? You'll just drag me along for the ride. How does this end? 


"What do you mean?" 


Will | just die a cruel and deserving death? Do you want me to hold 
onto insanity? Will it just be one of us jacking off about life's cruel 
machinations for us, you goddamned... fucking... fuck. / floated 
even faster, searching for an end to this void. | so desperately 
wanted to cry, but that wouldn't do good in a place with no one to 
latch onto. 


"Truth be told, | don't know. | have an idea but never any solid 
plans." 


Right. 


"It's been hours on my end." 
Time flies, huh. 


"Yeah." 


minutes later, disguised as an "FBI Special Antiterrorist Task Force." 
Pi-1 breached the perimeter at : : , corresponding with the 
moment that Officer Wallis' vital signs telemetry ceased transmitting. 
Task Force members discovered Suspect standing outside the 

department store on the third floor of the mall. The police 
officers' bodies were found suspended from the third floor railing, 
skin flensed and arranged in the form of wings, entrails removed and 
trailing to the floor. Officer Wallis' body was found [DATA 
EXPUNGED]. SCP Operatives then attempted to terminate Suspect, 
only to discover that they too were unable to fire their weapons. 
Team Leader transmitted a Class 1, Type 73 Memetic Attack 
Alert to Command and ordered the team to withdraw; this order 
failed when Suspect stated his intention to "find out what all your 
insides look like," rendering them helpless to escape. Involved Task 
Force members were subsequently remote-terminated using 
surgically installed cranial detonators according to standard field 
protocol following psychic compromise in a field agent.