"Hey no problem Mr. Glut!" said the retarded man, grinning stupidly 
like a dog at the compliment. Jason had been delivering papers for 
years and on this fine day when Ryan mowed his lawn and his 
neighbor, the gaunt Mr. Kynosiky chattered amiably but distractedly 
as he hosed his flowers, Ryan felt he deserved to have it mentioned. 
Deserved his loyalty to be remarked upon. 


Suddenly, a cold chill shot down his spine. It wasn't the fine mist of 
the hose that Mr. Kynosiky had accidentally aimed his way (god 


couldn't that man focus a little, he never seemed to have his head 
on straight) or the sudden gust of wind that made a couple of the 
papers in Jason's bag rustle away (he didn't bother chasing after 
them; the boy was really simple, he would have had a hell of time 
running after one little sheet and probably get hit by a truck, so why 
bother) but the thought that hit him in an instant. "Oh god, not him 
too." 


Ryan felt very dizzy and went inside. That night he loaded his 
revolver, although he didn't quite know why. 


When there was a crashing sound downstairs around 4:00 a.m, Glut 
jumped up immediately and grabbed the gun from under his pillow. 
He was ready for this; he wanted something. Something to rage at, 
something visible and tangible to fight, not this vague sense of 
creeping unease he had been dealing with. He ran downstairs, 
spinning the chamber aggressively, flicked the light, and exploded 
vengefully on his dew-wet lawn. It was only kids, and he lowered his 
gun disappointedly. He didn't even bother to shout them away. 


Three of them sprinted away, some laughing mischievously, some 
frightened out of their wits and afraid that they were going to go to 
jail forever for throwing a rock through his window, but one collapsed 
to the ground at the sight of him, framed in the porch glow, and 
began twitching, having a seizure. Glut shoved the pistol inside his 
pajama pants waistline and ran towards the boy. The little child was 
frothing at his mouth and his limbs were jerking spasmodically. Glut 
ran with him inside and laid him on a counter, the tiny body bouncing 
up and down dangerously. He reached to call an ambulance, and 
then it echoed in his mind: 


"If you ever think about what happened on September 15 again, you 
will fall to the ground. You will jerk and twitch. You will die. It hurts so 
much. It pains you to remember." 

The urge to to reach the hospital was gone. Instead he called Line 5. 


Doctor Glut meandered without reason in the center of the small 
shopping mall, bored and looking for something to do to pass the 


time while he was on leave. If a workaholic felt purpose and 
fulfillment only at his normal job, and was considered slightly 
disturbed or wrong because of this, what would that make him; he 
who was workaholic at an abnormal job, who only found fulfillment 
while operating racks and damaging minds. A sadist? Would he 
seem a complete monster in comparison? Or was it all the same, a 
driven man was a driven man regardless of his job; the difference in 
work had absolutely no bearing on the final viewpoint and judgment 
of him, at least in that respect. Everyone had to do something after 
all. Glut thought about this philosophical question as he browsed 
halfheartedly for a gift for his wife. He really had nothing better to 
think about... And maybe because of this lack of turbulence or 
occupying problem on his mind, maybe because of the relative 
dullness of the environment he was in, or maybe just because 
enough time had passed for it to click, he saw it. The pieces of the 
puzzle came together. And it drove him mad. 


"No," he whispered, realizing the terrible and unexplainable pattern. 


The man over there trying on coats; he had only to restrict food and 
keep him in solitary confinement before he developed Stockholm 
Syndrome and became easily pliable. The old lady by the decrepit 
mini-golf course, he had to break almost every bone in her body. 
She was a stubborn bitch, refusing to give up her beliefs. The 
younger chap down by the food court had been so disturbed when 
Glut walked in, showed him the report that proved what he saw was 
true, agreed with his story, and then shoved it in a small slot and 
burned it. It bothered Glut too, that control of what was real or not. 
He had got it from 1984 and instilled the mechanism that next day 
after reading it. It was one of his most effective techniques. The 
hunched broken looking lady with stringy hair... oh god... He had 
destroyed her slowly, formerly a proud sensual older woman, with 
insults and tricks and false compliments. Everyone in the mall, at 
one point in his life, was someone he had brainwashed. Oh god. Oh 
god! Everyone in the entire town too?! Could it be possible? He 
thought so... After all, he was a man at the top of his profession... 
He must have worked on thousands. More than enough to fill a 
small town in the middle of nowhere. Day in and day out, laboring 
endlessly. And no wonder he didn't realize it right away, with so 
many successes how could he remember each face? They trickled 


in anyways, one by one, blending in... It didn't spring on him all at 
once. 


He was now running, frantically, wildly, towards the entrance of the 
store. He burst out and tripped over a curb, falling to the ground, 
splayed out and moaning. They gathered around him but no one 
helped. He realized now why he could never connect with anyone, 
why he had no friends. They weren't really there, the people around 
him. He had shattered them. They were missing something, and he 
was the one who had stolen it. 


"No!" He gurgled and jumped up, sprinting to god-knows-where, just 
trying to outrun the thoughts that he knew deep down were true. But 
why? He asked in a shrieking voice. Why was this happening to 
him?! Some conspiracy, he thought, paranoia overwhelming him. 
The Foundation was trying to break him down, shun him out of his 
own department that he had helped create years ago. It was a 
power play, a gambit. But, no, that wasn't it. Impossible. It was too 
risky. Alter every single file so their cover stories all have them 
moving to his home town? Someone would notice that big of a 
change. And too dangerous. Their conditioning could break down. It 
was certainly already failing. The weird looks he got. The flashbacks 
he saw going on like movies behind their brows. The boy, oh god 
the boy. No, the Foundation wouldn't risk the possibility of having 
secrets escape, come to light, just to destroy him. 


lt was some cosmic joke, he decided, madly, uncomprehending and 
fully understanding at the same time, realizing the basic 
inexplicability of it all and giving in. Random occurrence that 
happens from time to time. Bad luck my friend. Maybe there was 
some karma involved, some punishment, retribution for his years of 
darkness, an ironic hell, but he thought, as much as he could think 
at that point, that it was just some scrapping away of reason and 
cause and effect and the chaos that was the true world had seeped 
in, fucking up his life for absolutely no reason. It came back to him: 
"Sometimes people just fall through the cracks of reality," he had 
said. 


And that's what he was sure had happened to him; the sane world 
just left him behind for no clear logical reason. 


The car screeched and hit him, sending him flying. He caught the 
eye of the driver - his body was probably still trying to deal with the 
massive amounts of hormones he had put in his bloodstream, and 
his arm looked bent and knobbly, had he broken it, he couldn't 
recall... And he saw it. He knew him. His pasty teenage face curdled 
in shock. 


He knew him. 


"He sees me!" Glut screamed in his head incoherently and began 
crawling, twisted leg behind him, snot and blood and tears running 
down his face. He finally realized where he was going. His home. 
His gorgeous, happy, peaceful tiny little home, with the kitchen 
where he and his wife read together and played games, the quiet 
study, seemingly entirely composed out of dark, supple, delicious- 
smelling leather, where dust became motes of light incarnate, the 
basketball court where he tried and tried again, a labor of love, to 
earn that suspicious boy's trust, the bedroom where he learned to 
be proud of his body as his aroused wife sprayed herself across 
him, erasing years of embarrassment and shame in one glorious 
moment, all the little niches and crannies, each one with an equal 
amount of comfort, safety and softness everywhere. 


He just wanted to go home. 


But there was a darker purpose as well. He had to see. He had to 
see if the last refuge, the sacred, had been infiltrated and sullied by 
the encroaching insanity. He stumbled through the door and 
collapsed onto the ground. His wife screamed and ran towards him, 
kneeling down and putting her arms around him frantically, asking in 
a panic, "Whats wrong, Ryan?! Jesus! Ryan!" Her voice was high 
and wavery. 


He turned his head away and buried it in her thick red locks, sobbing 
like a small child. He pushed his face further into the sweet smelling 
hair and clutched at her body in comfort. 


"Please let this at least be pure. Let it be true. True love. | have... | 
have nothing else. If this is all an illusion, this marriage, this 
relationship, | will have nothing left." 


Nothing came to him for a moment, and he almost breathed a sigh 
of relief. But then it came back. Sure it took him a little longer... she 
was his first after all, but eventually it resurfaced. 


It came back and he was lost. Of course she loved him! How could 
she not? He was an imposing figure in her mind, an authoritative 
father god in the background of her every thought. He was terrible 
and majestic. No wonder she was always so amorous and horny 
around him. No wonder she always agreed with him and took his 
word as law. He wasn't a human to her, he was an archetype! He 
had mastered her as a child... Reduced her... Diminished this 
brilliant, gorgeous human who could have done something for the 
world. Destroyed her. She had left college for him, studying to be a 
lawyer, the moment they bumped into each other. Like she had 
been waiting for him her whole life. And she had... He had came to 
her, all-knowing as a little girl, and thirty years later he had reaped 
what he had sown. 


He bit a piece of his tongue off when he shouted in dismay. He 
pushed her away in disgust, but at himself or her he did not know. 
He staggered drunkenly, eyes huge and bloodshot, froth like a mad 
dog running down his face as he mumbled and screamed at himself, 
and he groped at his last chance for salvation. Or was he just 
uncovering the final revelation as soon as possible to make the 
destruction of his mind faster? Either way he had to know, empty 
cold curiosity overwhelmed him. He opened the safe and took out 
his son's adoption records. He had to know if he had raped his own 
child. 


Glut, wearing an open throat shirt that flapped around him gently 
and a hat, stared into the rice fields as the ship glided across the top 
of the river. The long wooden vessel stopped rowing near a patch of 
mud and Glut got out, walking between reeds in the exotic locale. 
The agent nodded at him respectfully and said, "I'm glad you could 
come." 


"It's not a problem. | was in the neighborhood. What seems to be the 
situation?" 


"Over here." 


They walked for a little bit through the tiny village and the agent said, 
"A bunch of schoolchildren. In that school house over there. They 
saw something they weren't suppose to. For the last couple weeks, 
their teacher has been showing them... Well... They call it magic." 


A scientist with goggles and a charred sleeve on his lab coat 
standing by a totem in the town square walked up to them. "Why 
can't we just use a Class A Amnestic? | know we don't have any on 
us, but why did you cancel my order for a boxful to be delivered 
here, Kramar?" 


"Amnestics are notoriously unreliable," Agent Kramar said, sharing a 
private smirk with Doctor Glut. 


Doctor Glut attempted a more diplomatic approach, and rested his 
hand on the man's arm. "It's unsafe to use Class A Amnestics on 
children. Too large an amount is needed. It could be deadly. So 
alternative methods are required." He said all this in a perfectly calm 
and reasonable voice. 


"So what are you going to do then?" 
"Don't worry Hans, he's an expert." 


The researcher looked confused. "Like what? He's a SCP that's 
working for us or something? Does he have powers... Or hypnosis 
eyes..." He trailed off as they both left him behind. 


"| hope this is all ethical!" Hans said, calling after them. 


"Goddammit," whispered the agent in a sneering voice, "now 
because of him we're going to need to find a soundproof room." 


"She was a witch. And she could conjure fireballs. And juggle them. 
It was amazing," said the boy, a shaven head rascal who looked like 
a miniature monk in his robes, unaware anything was wrong. 


"Now, little one... Children... Children have active imaginations. You 
fantasize about things. You're notoriously unreliable. You can't trust 
yourself, okay. You have to only believe in what | say." 


"| know what | saw, | say-" 


Glut slapped him across the face. "Who's the adult here? Children 
are stupid! Children are silly. You are a baby. You make up games 
and they become too real and then you start believing in them. You 
were playing and it got out of hand. Don't trust yourself. Never trust 
your own mind. Question your thoughts, because they're always 
wrong! You're always wrong!" 


It had begun. 


When he came to from the blackout, his worried and frightened wife 
holding onto him tightly, cradling up his torso as he laid sprawled on 
the tiles, he was still laughing. A few seconds later he realized he 
couldn't stop. 


A Matter Of Faith 


Barely visible in the cold dark before sunrise, rain fell softly onto the 
streets as dawn threatened to break on this abandoned 
neighborhood. The burnt-out streetlights once shone brightly in this 
place once full of families and friends, but only vermin and those 
who are regarded poorer than the vermin reside here now. In this 
bleak hour between day and night, a pale man staggered into a 
nearby building, a ratty tarp loosely hung over his thin frame as 
protection from the storm. To the casual observer, it would look as 
nothing more than a homeless vagrant stopping for a place to rest 
(or perhaps engage in less savory activities, depending on the 
observer's cynicism). But this building was not chosen at random. 
This stranger had purpose. 


The heavy wooden door creaked loudly as the man entered and 
slumped to the ground, completely exhausted from his journey. He 
lifted his head and surveyed his environment. This decrepit old 
building was once a library, a proud institution of learning for all. But 
time and vandals had taken their toll on this place: books were 
scattered all over, torn to pieces; shelves were knocked over and 
walls either spray-painted or destroyed. A faint flickering glow 
illuminated a room to the back of the building, the only sign of civility 
in this otherwise emaciated husk of society. The man sighed a sigh 
of relief as he shakily stood up and cast off his makeshift coat, 
revealing a body near starved of care. Unkempt black hair fell wildly 
onto a gaunt, unshaven face, and his wire-thin body clothed only in 
a wife-beater tank top and dirty jeans appeared weak and feeble 
with the exception of his right arm, which appeared to be a richly 
intricate mechanism of gears and cogs made to resemble an arm 
that extended just beyond the shoulder. Steadying himself, the man 
slowly made his way to the back room and entered.