Because, | said, if we were strong enough, focused 
enough, hive-minded enough, then we could dream 
ourselves. We could never have left our families. We 
could return to the lives that were stolen, to the 
childhoods ripped away. We could feel the wind on our 
skin again. 


That convinced them. We may have our little pleasures 
down here, but when you're never sure where you begin 
and the darkness ends, when things like morning and 
afternoon and night are frail and arbitrary anchors we 


have invented, when your mothers are far away in an 
unknown place and time- when you live like that, you 
can't help but want to get out. 


8th Feburary 2013. 
They are. They were. They will be. 


We were born in England, Iran, America. We were raised 
in Texas, Beijing, the Midwest, the free steppes. We are 
Jacob, 'Abbas, Nick, Ai-Fan, Rose and Gulya. We are. 
We were. We will be. 


We see many things. No, | do. No, we all do. We see the 
others, their dreams, their fears. They are them. Then 
they are us. We are many and we act as many. 


We see dark. We see light. We create strange images. 
Of a deal with a devil in a frozen land. Of a faceless 
market stretching into endless night. Of another dying in 
another dark. Of elephants weeping for their lonely 
mother. 


It aches. Our substance aches, or what is left of it. It 
seethes with the pain of the many. All we want to do is 
curl up and be alone, and we never can. 


May we wake up from this infernal prison. 
19th March 2045. 
...Diary. 


We know of this diary. It was the product of the mind of 
one of our founding members, Jacob Montauk. This 
element still exists within us. We have decided to use it. 
To siphon off the thoughts of the hive. 


We are all voluntary members of a large collective 
organis- organ- monkey-grinder of some sort. It's getting 
harder to be ourselves, to be one. We've absorbed a 
large chunk of the total number of the missing, now. 


There are still many hundreds of thousands to go, but 
we're getting there. 


It's getting harder to ma- to think- to attach a meaning to 
words. We are, for the time being, but soon we may not 
be. Or rather, we will be, but can we attach a meaning to 
that when there's nothing outside it? If we are the 
universe, if we are the D- the Vo- the Bla- the Oblivion, 
then is there an oblivion at all? Do we only exist when 
defined against the other? 


Nothing is definite. Even our dreams are unseen now, 
and full of monstrous and forgotten thoughts. 


We'll have to ruminate on this further. Further. Further, 
into the void. 


19th March 3994. 
We are. We were. We will be. 


The crushing weight of all that ever was as the last child 
becomes part of the One. Let me tell you- no- let one 
part of me tell another part of me a story. There are new 
parts added all the time. We work like clockwork, an 
engine in the dark. 


| dreamt today of a man imprisoned. He betrayed his foe, 
so he stood suspended over the top of an idea blasted 
into space forever. A war of ideas. That went around and 
around forever. 


| dreamt today of a crown in red, of a fire in gold, of 
seven brides for an emperor. Imprisoned, he will be free. 
But he'll die like all the rest, screaming in his own 
pointlessness, the facade of his fiction scattered to the 
winds. 


| dreamt today of a vagabond, writer, artist. | dreamed he 
lived, breathed free, learned what life was, and that his 
thoughts echoed a thousand thousand miles hence. 


| dreamt today of an ancient tradition, of the little 
communities and frozen pleasures of the common folk, 
skating on the ice forever, pirouetting and twisting in one 
and many times and places. 


| dreamt today of a cemetery that did not belong. Ghosts 
of a future war that snarled and scraped and scrapped 
between the children of humanity and the children of the 
machine. 


Auntie was right about Jacob being "irritatingly 
pretentious." They could have been described so much 
better than that. 


One year after the death of reason. 


The winds would whistle over the waters, the hills, the 
oceans. It would fly free, kicking up sprat and dust, foam 
over sand. The beaches under the midnight sun were 
ever-changing, ever-present, where vagabonds and 
lovers would sit and think and kiss. Hops grew in wafting 
fields beneath the moors. 


Little clay huts scattered around the entrance to the 
walls. Little grey skies kissing little grey clouds. The rain, 
wetting the crops and soaking walkers, running through 
some wilderness of woodland in overcast weather. 


Marble columns in front of the libraries. The smell of 
paper in books, musty and welcoming. The lights of a 
train as it plunged through the tunnel, shaking all inside 
as they hugged up against the cold. The sights of an 
ancient bazaar. 


There isn't a world any more. There's just the Dark. 


It won. It took our dreams and it won. We are all that's 
left of what was- a memory engorged upon itself. The 
last scraps took themselves from time. We are the dark 
and we are suspended here. 


Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. It all goes into the dark. 
Some rough beast slouches towards Bethlehem, 
grinding rebar and freezing concrete. 


An unknown time in a sky of inky black. 


Nicholas "Nick" Holzinger was born in the Midwest. He 
was born to a loving family. In winters, he would skate on 
the ponds, and laugh with his friends. But he had another 
habit. On very cold and crisp and clear nights, he would 
go to the bridge in town, and stare out over the ponds, 
looking at the stars reflected in the water. 


Nobody was watching. So they took him. 


But after that, while he dreamt beneath the world, his 
family and friends and parents persisted. And they 
thought, in their minds, of a hundred thousand different 
ways he could have been killed. Every fantasy, every 
twisted paranoid dream and nightmare brought to the 
fore, on the cusp of their minds, dreaming of the ways he 
could have been taken. 


But they were all aspects of a greater whole. They 
weren't separate scenarios at all. They were darkness. 


One more strand for every child taken. An endless circle. 
The dark exists because it has to exist, in the minds of 
every frightened and demented parent scared for their 
childs' life. They already know what's happened to their 
children, because they can see it. They can see the dark. 


We never stood a chance. 


The heat death of the universe. 3 PM in the afternoon 
eastern standard time. 


Where am |? 
| float, lost in time. | awake, with all these voices in my 


head. Am | plural, or are we singular? | don't know any 
more. 


It's all dying. Matter itself. The rocks crumble into dust, 
the dust crumbles into atoms, the atoms crumble into 
waves of energy. Concepts role in on themselves. Even 
the Dark is dying, its purpose done, its crimes 
committed. A greater void awaits beyond it. 


It's coming now. Slowly. Achingly. That oblivion that ends 
me. Us. The Dark was just a memory of humans, a 
feeling, a fear that bound. But what awaits is more. What 
awaits is not a Thing, with a capital letter and an 
ominous feeling. 


People often fail to understand what it is to be blind. | 
know, for | have dreamt of a thousand thousand of the 
blind. Blind to so many things. People think that being 
blind is like having your eyes shut, but it's not. When 
your eyes are closed, you can still see blackness, the 
fires in your retina, the colours of your brain. To be blind 
is not to see that. To be blind is not to see nothing, but to 
be incapable of seeing. A void in your head where your 
eyes should be. 


To die is not to sleep. To die is not to dream. To die is 
not even to find oneself in an undiscovered country. To 
die is nothing. To die is to never have been, because all 
that was is erased. There is just an end. An oblivion. 


| was once so scared of the Dark that took me. But it 
doesn't matter now. The Dark is a thing like all other 
things, and it will die too. Soon there will be nothing but 
absence. 


| can't remember who | am. Let me do something, give 
something back. Let me give her back. Let her live. Or a 
memory of her, a shade, a vision in furs and skins, riding 
on horseback with the wind within her air. 


The last syllable of recorded time. 


This is how the world ends. 


This is how the world ends. 
This is how the world ends. 
Not with a bang but a whimper. 


It's coming now. The moments are shrinking, the area 
contracting. The Dark is fraying and ripping. | shall be 
brief, diary, my constant companion within infinity. 


| am Jacob Montauk. | did not merge with the others at 
all. | absorbed them. Ate them. | did not realise it until 
just now. At the end. | murdered them all to keep me 
alive. 


| failed. All the memories, minds and souls | took into me 
made me unable to think, or to remember. All is dust 
now. All is calamity. 


| should have dreamed us back centuries ago. Millenia. 
Eons. But | couldn't think. And then there was the dark, 
and there was nothing to be dreamed back into. Just an 
end. How could | let them go back to their lives, their little 
realities, when all will be dark? 


England. | shall dream of England. | shall dream of her 
fields, white with snow in winter, fresh with dew in spring. 
| shall dream of her hills, of her hedgerows and buses, 
her rose gardens, her marble columns and concrete 
abhorrences. | shall dream of England, so that she lives. 
Some small, twisted shadow of her. Some dying breath 
of my home. 


| can do something for the others, though. Maybe. | can 
take dream something back. Show them history. Show 
them all that will be. Show them how to fix things. 
Someone. Whoever is out there. Whoever understands 
what it is to die in the dark, so others can live in the light. 


It's coming now. It'll be over soon. And then | won't have 
to be alive any more. | won't have to be the stolen child, 


dreaming for millenia about a half-remembered reality 
that will waste to nothingness anyway. 


O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark. 


Virgil the Goldfish's Big Day Out 


(a/n - this fanfic is set in a parallel universe where everyone in the 
devil may cry universe is a different type of fish! i like fishies, so it's 
just what i'd like! virgil is a really really hot girl in this universe too!!!! 
she's a goldfish to be precise. also in this universe dante was never 
born because he's an asshole and i don't like him fuck you dante. 
instead davsto (oc don't steal) is virgil's brother, and they are bestest 
bestest friends of all time, and they're also married (don't worry, it's 
not illegal, this is set in my home state of texas). also this story has 
some wet (hehe get it because fish) s*x scenes so if you don't like 
that then get out. there's no need to leave crticisism because i know 
it's perfect - DON'T LIKE DON'T READ THAT MEANS YOU FRED | 
KNOW YOU'RE READING THIS JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK IT'S 
COOL TO BULLY ME AT SCHOOL ABOUT IT I'M GOING TO GET 
THE POLICE INVOLVED SERIOUSLY STOP IT YOU M**NIE) 


"lol" laughed virgil, her golden fins shining in the sun. she always 
laughed at davsto's jokes - he's f*cking hilarious after all, the 
funniest guy in his school (hehe get it because fish). she was 
beautiful, but he was more - his scales were striped red, blue, purple 
and white like hair dye kinda colors, because he's a cool emo (NOT 
GOTH) fish. he looked at her and smiled, reaching forwards his 
mouth to kiss her lips, tongues swirling in and out of each others' 
mouths (a/n i think this is how you do it? that's how it looks in the 
movies, idk i've never kissed anyone lol). "oh yeah" she said as they 
pulled away, both smiling. 


"so" davsto said, "wanna go back to mine for some hot s*x??" "i 
thought you'd never ask" she replied and we swimmed off to our 
house. on the way we met jim the fish (you know from doctor who 
the best tv program) and he laughed at them. he's a bit of a d*ck 
though to be honest. "hey virgil" he said, with a really creepy glowing 
look in his eyes. "f*ck off you wet (hehe get it because fish) assh***". 


davsto got his fin and yelled "HADUKEN" and punched jim right in 


SCP-943: Repayment in Kind 


Item #: SCP-943 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-943 is to be stored ina 
secure lockbox in a High Security Containment Vault, accessible 
only to Level 2 or higher personnel. For purposes of interrogation, 
Level 1 personnel may request access to SCP-943, but the request 
must be approved by Level 2 personnel, and the individual signing 
SCP-943 out must record a date, time, location of use, and 
appropriate protective measures taken to preserve SCP-943's 
integrity. Failure to do so will result in all personnel involved having 
their service records subject to immediate review and penalties of 
demotion or termination for those found negligent. 


Description: SCP-943 is a band of unidentified metal, adjustable 
through a sliding mechanism to become anywhere from 5cm in 
diameter, to 38cm in diameter. The band bears inscribings along its 
outside surface reading in English: "That Justice may flow like 
water". When placed onto a human subject's arm, the device 
appears to induce visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations in a 
staggered pattern. In all cases, the hallucinations appear to be of an 
event that is connected to the subject in some way. Invariably, the 
subject is connected in a way that makes them the aggressor, and in 
the induced hallucinations, the subject assumes the role of victim. 
All recorded hallucinations have been of conflict, and are 
documented in Experiment Log 943-1 through Experiment Log 
943-3. 


Addendum: In each experiment, the subject was prepared by 
repeatedly reminding them of the crime that caused their 
incarceration, causing it to be foremost in their minds prior to the 
beginning of the recording. 


Experiment Recording 943-1 


his little p**pyface and he flew off crying "wow davsto you really are 
the best fighter!" and virgil kissed him because he was a strong fish 
who is super cool and loved by everyone including his dad (see not 
a self-insert). 


"oh yeah davsto" whispered virgil into my ear "you are so strong and 
handsome i want to do the s*x with you alllll night" "oh yeah" i 
replied and they started swimming back to my house but suddenly a 
big black shape wibbled into the water 


"oh no it's the big scary monster of the sea" davsto screamed 
because he hated the colour black and it terrified him (see there's a 
flaw he's not a mary sue stop pming me fred). suddenly, virgil 
grabbed my hand "it's okay davsio, /'ll kill this shith**d" she said to 
me and she made a big ball of fire and fired it at the big scary 
monster of the sea "arrrgh" it yelled as it fell into the bottom of the 
sea. 


"your so s*xy baby" i moaned into virgil's ear "come on" she said, 
"gladly, on which part of you? ;)" i replied. "stop it you" she giggled 
and then we swimmed back for some hot fish s*x. 


(a/n s*x scene coming up please don't read if you're not into that 
sorry) 


i took off her fish bra and the sight of her b**bs really turned me on. 
my fish stick (hehe get it because fish) started to stiffen as we made 
out moaning at each other, it grew and grew to 8 inches (my real 
size lol girls ;)). i put it in her wet, fishy (fishy because she's a fish, 
not because she stinks) v*gina and pumped in and out, making her 
moan and scream and tilt her head back as i put my mouth on her 
neck and kissed and man it felt so good so much better than 
touching myself. i started to lick her n*pples and she moaned louder 
and screamed "put it right there in my cunt" so | put it in her v*gina 
deeper until she screamed and squirted and c*me everywhere 


(a/n that's the s*x scene over really hot it evaporated the water 
ahahaha) 


"well that was fun" said virgil, i smiled and said "yeah", until we 
heard a knocking on the door.....