They never intended to bury him as they eventually did, for they 
wanted him to be exposed in the wild for crows to come and 
maggots to grow, and his body to decay, so that the King would die 
humiliated. The crows did come, circling around him but never 
landed. They just laughed and laughed with their ugly voices as if 
mocking the crowd once more. And the lifeless look of the King was 
so resentful and disgusting that everyone wanted to cover this foul 
creature with earth, as if mere soil would help them escape from his 
hateful gaze. They did not make him a tomb, however, and they 
buried the King only shallowly as nobody was willing to stay long to 
dig a hole deep enough. Then the crowd left. They went back to the 
city, and indulged themselves in their newly gained treasure, trying 
to forget what they had witnessed. 


On the first day, nothing had really happened, except that a 
homeless reported that he had heard strange noises coming from 
the hill, where the King was hanged and buried. He also said that 
crows had gathered, their eyes fixed on the King’s grave, as if 
waiting for something to happen. But this was dismissed as a 
madman’s words. 


On the second day, however, many residents of the city found 
themselves badly ill. They coughed, bled, and trembled lying on the 
floor as if they were bound by heavy, rusted chains. The river that 
flowed across the city had turned red, and smelled of human blood. 
Those who enjoyed their new power and wealth found themselves 
helpless after merely one day, clutching at the gold they took from 
the palace and died beside it. 


On the third day, those who were still alive were able to move again. 
But they stood up only to put a knife against their throats or to 
scream while ripping their faces off. Their blood streamed out of 
their houses, staining the river with red even more. All animals had 
fled the city, except for the crows, which were now almost 
everywhere. They stood watching silently as the city spiraled down 
into madness. At the same time, the soil on top of the King’s burial 
rustled. The crows laughed with their harsh tone as the Hanged King 
climbed out of his grave, with chains around his hands and ankles 
and the rope around his neck. 


He was hanged as a king of men but he came out of that place 
something else. His body lifeless, but he was not dead as he 
refused to walk that path, and used souls he had and didn’t have to 
make the bargain. The chains hit the ground, clashing against each 
other as the Hanged King made his way back to the city. The very 
city now flooded with blood and watched by dark crows, where 
people kept screaming until they could scream no more. 


He moved past the streets where he was dragged along just a few 
days back, stepping on the blood of his former subjects. He walked 
slowly towards the ruins of the once magnificent palace he had built 
all those years ago. The treasures had been taken, and all that was 
left were dead bodies and broken weapons. The King moved past a 
broken mask, which was once worn by his favorite jester, but he 
paid no attention. He walked towards the dungeon where a throne 
covered by sharp, rusted spikes was placed. The ones who had 
taken the palace thought it was meant for torturing, and did not 
bother to move it. The King, leaving a blood trail behind, stepped 
upon to the throne, and placed his body through the cold metal 
spikes. 


As the spikes went through his dead body, the King trembled. He 
would have screamed, if the rope had not rendered him breathless, 
for the pain was in the soul rather than his body. He was there to 
suffer forever, but it had been done and it was then his one and only 
rightful throne. For a moment there, there was silence, but then the 
ruins of the palace began to shake, and the city started to tremble. 
The flames rose once more, but more of a phantom of the past, and 
the blood in the river started to boil. The skeleton of the lion stood 
up, and roared. 


The King’s dungeon, where the throne was placed, the center of all 
these, now became a hole, a hole that warped the whole kingdom 
inside. It turned everything inside out, making them twisted and 
inhuman. The space bent, time disoriented, and the city was in 
another place not quite there, but still where they all were. The 
whole city was transformed and remade. The crows had taken off 
and they circled the city, searching for those who were not yet dead, 
pecking them with their beaks until they bled out in horrifying forms. 


The Hanged King, who was now seated in the court of his new city, 
built upon the ruins of the old one, shall sit there forever and ever. 
The dead jester came up, once again wore his broken mask, and 
offered the King a silver cup filled with blood. 


He spoke words not quite his in an alien tone: “With this, our blood, 
it is the Hanged King’s.” 


The King took the cup, but his hand was broken and pierced by the 
sharp blades of the throne. The scarred hand trembled hard, and it 
was too weak to hold it. The cup then fell on the floor and the blood 
spilled on his new court. 


The crows, who had been watching, laughed again with their harsh 
voices and left. They left the city as the dead stood up again, 
bending their broken body to resemble human form. They walked 
the new twisted streets, putting on masks to cover their bloodied 
faces, and started to cheer as they did when they were alive on the 
day they took the palace. They paraded in the new city and started a 
carnival, as if the tragedy was a grand masquerade all along. They 
laughed and laughed until the King started to cry and scream, but 


SCP-784: Christmas Cheer 


Item #: SCP-784 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-784 has been disguised 
as a gated community and is currently surrounded by a 3.5-meter- 
high, 0.8-meter-thick concrete wall to deter intrusion. The top of the 
wall is lined with electrified steel cable, and the gate is to be locked. 
Any non-Foundation personnel attempting to enter SCP-784 are not 
to be interfered with, due to the possibility of provoking a violent 
reaction from the occupants of SCP-784. Non-Foundation personnel 
exiting SCP-784 are to be detained, questioned, and released 
following administration of a Class-B amnestic. Foundation 
personnel entering SCP-784 are to be dressed in traditional 
Christmas wear prior to entering SCP-784. 


The area composing SCP-784 is to be monitored remotely by a 
Foundation-controlled weather balloon. In the event that personnel 
are required to enter SCP-784, all involved personnel must have 
memorized the entire contents of the A P ‘Beginners Guide to 
Christmas Carols’. They are to be checked for precision prior to 
entering SCP-784. Due to SCP-784's proximity to suburban housing 
developments, as well as the ramifications of provoking SCP-784-1, 
patrols within SCP-784 are to be unarmed except during a Noel 
event. In the case of an unexpected Noel event, members of 
SCP-784-1 are to be restrained as non-violently as possible while 
Foundation personnel prepare procedure 784-C. 


Description: SCP-784 is a neighborhood in the town of __, Texas. 
Currently SCP-784 is made up of twenty-four houses and two 
apartment buildings, all of which are decorated with -brand 
Christmas lights at a density of approximately fifteen lights per 
square meter of housing. SCP-784 will always be covered by 
between 12 and 33 centimeters of snow, though no unseasonable 
weather will occur above SCP-784. 


his throat could not make a single sound, so he merely wept in 
silence. 


So the city was ruled forever by the Hanged King, with the masked 
dead celebrating and parading until they too rot. But even those who 
had fled the city when the King was hanged found no peace. They 
were haunted in waking moments and in dreams, for whispers from 
the twisted city had found their hidings. They dreamt of a 
masquerade of corrupted souls, through the long hallways of a 
labyrinth down to the Hanged King’s grand court. And when they 
woke up, they would shake in fear. But they could not forget what 
they had seen, as if the city of decay and rapture had taken roots in 
their minds. So they wrote dramas and poems about the cursed city, 
composed songs and paintings of the damned king. Some of them 
lost and forgotten, but those survived the long history will bring their 
viewers to the Hanged King’s reach. 


And outside the twisted alleys of the kingdom, beyond the spiked 
throne of the Hanged King, the crows all laugh and fly away, but 
their eyes shall always be watching. 


"And Then | Died" Archive 


Below are the previous entries for the game. Read and 
enjoy! The answer are in links at the end of each one. 


Round 1: TroyL 
| never really cared much for my brother. 


We had at best a strained relationship. Our parents just muttered 
“boys” and went about their business, but it was different. It wasn’t 
sibling rivalry. It wasn’t even rivalry. We just... didn’t want to be 
around each other. Ever. We were like the same end of a magnet, 
always pushing away from each other, always bowing to the 
invisible force that kept us surely separated. And, in a way, we were 
happy like that. 


| went into the military; he went to college. | got out and started 
working with computers; he finished his degree and started 
designing them. | eventually managed a private companies IT 
department; he worked at development in a rival company. From my 
graduation on, | never saw him for more than an hour at most. Since 
our mother’s funeral—the official cessation of all family gatherings— 
| hadn’t seen him at all. 


It made his sudden appearance, haggard, carrying a briefcase anda 
shotgun, that so surprised me. It was early in the morning, and when 
| opened the door, the light was carrying blinded me. He talked for a 
few moments at the door, still holding the light aloft, before he turned 
it off, apologizing. He came in, apologizing for the late hour, and 
asked for a cup of coffee. | agreed, sitting with him at the table 
silently. He didn’t speak. | didn’t ask. 


As he was about to leave, he looked at me, tilting his head sideways 
for a moment. “Do you have any shells for a 20 gauge?” 


| nodded somewhat, fetching them from my study at the end of the 
hall and handing them to him. He thanked me and left the building. | 


should have wondered what he’d gotten himself into, what sort of 
espionage he’d managed, but | didn’t. | just didn’t care. 


The next morning, | found myself unable to think. Everything looked 
like a gray haze, and even when | tried to concentrate, | couldn't. | 
remember turning the knob, and the bullet hitting my chest, but after 
that, everything starting shifting—going from gray to black. 


And then | died. 


(Solved) 


Round 2: Dexanote 


I’ve always had a pretty decent life. | was an only child, growing up 
in upstate New York with my mother and father. Mom was a real 
estate agent, Dad was an engineer. They both had emigrated from 
England before | was born, and we still had family back there. We 
visited sometimes, in the summers. | never liked English Summers. 
It would always rain. 


| always got good grades in school, played sports, did my chores, 
and so on. Never caused any trouble, but never really looked for 
any. | was a model, if fairly average, teenager. 


When | was 24 | decided to go travel abroad in Europe. Mom and 
Dad had retired together the year before, and didn’t seem to mind. | 
wish they had stopped me. 


| went to Italy first, then Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France... It 
was wonderful. | slept in hostels and under the stars, | loved this 
freedom. It was... beautiful. The countries, the places, the cities, the 
people, the art. It was all breathtaking. 


One day, a few months into my travels, | called home to see how 
everyone was doing. | found that my widowed Aunt Helen back in 
England had passed, and left everything to me, her only nephew. | 
was told to make my way to Britain and find her lawyers, who would 
sort everything out in the mean time. 


When | arrived, the lawyers had already sorted out the transfer of 


ownership and related documentation. | now owned my Aunt’s entire 
estate. 


| went “home” to my new domain. 


It was June, and the sky was grey. The estate was a large house in 
the countryside, with a greenhouse and a large garden out back. 
The entire building was covered in a purplish ivy, and an entire wing 
of the place contained a collection of strange, curious gadgets - a 
chessboard, an ugly green statue, a bunch of freakish dolls, a 
fortune-teller machine, records, phonographs, a wardrobe, a 
dartboard... Nothing in the rooms seemed to have any coherent 
theme. | just shrugged; I'd sort through all the bullshit when | had 
time. 


| had decided to sleep on a sofa in the living room until | was more 
comfortable with the house. The huge conservatory window behind 
me let in a bit of light, the rain plit plit plitting off the panes. It hadn’t 
stopped raining since | arrived. 


| left one of the lower windows open to let in a nice breeze. At least | 
wasn’t sweating, | thought. If | was back in New York I’d be quite 
uncomfortable. 


It wasn’t so bad here. The rain was relaxing, the ivy shivered quietly 
in the breeze. | guess | could get used to this... 


| felt something brush against my arm. | became very still. 
Something burned. | screamed. 
And then | died. 


(Solved) 


Round 3: Ragazzo 
In a Miami apartment's bathroom. 


Ahhhhhh...damn...this...this is a really shitty hangover...fuck, man, 
what did | have last night...l'm here in my god damn apartment 


throwing up in my fucking apartment while that bastard Jode must 
be waking up next to some hot piece of a-ah f-fuck... The sounds of 
vomiting echo off the bile, and blood splattered linoleum of the 
bathroom floor, interspersed with the odd dry heave here and there. 
"Wait...fuckin' hang on...! partied with Jode last week, the fuck...is 
that my fuckin’ hair?! The hell am | sitting in? Shit, fuck, my hands... 
what happened to my fuckin' hands?!" And then | passed out. 


Several hours later... 


"F-fuck...oh...g-god...| feel like...fuckin' shit...what'd I...drink last 
night...fuck, it must have been that old ass boo-" A heave, a 
retching sound. A thin stream of bile dribbles out of my mouth, 
around the sickly pale orb of flesh that has swollen up from the roof 
of my mouth. | fall forward, and my face splashes into the toilet bowl, 
breaking through the thin crusty shell of bodily fluids into the rancid 
slop below. 


And then | died. 


(Solved) 


Round 4: RhettSarlin 


Almost ready. We've been waiting for this excursion for a while now. 
Just us and the desert, looking up at the stars, snuggled close. 
Sophie smiles at me as she finishes packing food into the cooler. | 
smile back and take our sleeping bags out to the truck. | love her 
more than she knows. We've been going on random playful 
excursions for nearly 2 years now, and ever since that day at the 
camel farm where she came out soaked but laughing I've known she 
was the one for me. 


| may propose to her soon. 


But not this trip. Watching the Perseids and looking at cacti are the 
order of the weekend this time. We've got everything packed up 
now. House is locked up, dogs have food and water, alarm's on. We 
already made sure things were good with her apartment, so she 
gives me a quick peck on the cheek and we're on our way. 


Country music blaring from the radio as we head down I-8. | shake 
my head internally at her for that one, but hey, nobody's perfect. Exit 
coming up. Heading south now. She's chattering about her plans for 
a painting of the meteor shower. | love her art. | tend to appreciate 
the realistic more than the abstract, and her stuff from a distance 
looks almost like a photograph. ..at first glance anyway.