As with most sandbox pages named after users, this is the place where the user in question, myself, stores the drafts, notes and ideas he has for SCPs and tales. To anyone who stumbles across this page, feel free to offer any comments or constructive criticism you may have.
Tabs are deliberately non-descriptive; titles or working titles might spoil twists. And on that note, try to avoid the tabs that are not tagged as "Draft" (those are full SCPs/tales and should be able to provide the intended effect when read normally), unless you enjoy spoilers, like the people whom I told about the characters going to die on Game of Thrones' Season 5 Finale :P
An olfactory cognitohazard. What if there was such a thing as an intrinsically creepy smell? One that conveyed knowledge of some eldritch horror?
A dagger that makes you a sneaky assassin murderer and a sword that makes you hunt the guy with the dagger.
A guy who sees Hell every time he closes his eyes.
F***ing stalkers.
- SCPper (as in captain)
- SCPping rope
- SCPping school
- SCPpy's Peanut Butter
- Oh there was a little SCP, and she sailed upon the sea, and the name of the SCP was the Golden Vanity…
- SCPping grades
A Knight Templar meets an Ethics Committee member.
Title: Secure Contain Protect
The newly widowered Agent Garrett Carter of the SCP Foundation dashed through the wooden frame that had formerly held the front door to his house, manoeuvred deftly around the steel gate, ripped from its hinges and now resting against his car, and raced down the road.
Is widowered even a word?, he wondered briefly to himself, before the harsh reality of the situation reasserted itself within his mind. He quickly found himself going from making ironic mental remarks to choking back a sob.
This was probably the objectively worst day of his life. He'd finally managed to finish an exhausting investigation into a skip that had resulted in him having less than 24 hours of sleep over the previous week, which ultimately revealed nothing but dead ends. Upon returning home frustrated, burnt out, but relieved that he was finally able to get a good night's rest, his wife Rachel, despite having accepted his near-complete absence from home over the past few weeks without protest, decided that day, of all possible days, to confront him about the hours he was spending on work (or "work", as she put it, complete with air quotes). And now…this. Not half a minute before he was desperately wishing his fight with his wife would just end. And now it had, in the worst possible way.
Rachel, he felt a hot tear running down his cheek. "Eternal rest grant unto her…", he mumbled under his breath. For all her flaws, he loved his wife with all his heart. She, and the beautiful children they had made and raised together, were what kept him going from day to day, as he had tried to explain to her. And it was true. All the sleep deprivation, all the time spent away from her and them, all the tedious frustration of going on wild goose chases over and over again snatching at whispers of rumours of odd goings-on…all of it was worth it, if it gave him the barest chance of winning a promotion, and a better life for his wife and children. But she'd refused to listen. Nothing he'd said would pacify her.
He was jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of an explosion. He glanced briefly over his shoulder to see the pieces of his car, a few of them on fire, skittering out through the space where his house's gate had once been.
He felt a knot forming in his stomach. He tried to reassure himself that there was no way that the…thing…could've known about his kids sleeping upstairs. It was little comfort, given the situation, but he knew the only thing he could possibly do was to try to lead it away from them before it found them. His thoughts then turned briefly to the matter of people waking up because of the explosion, but he dismissed those concerns; the skip would be incapable of harming them, and whatever they'd see would be easily dismissed as a trick of the light.
Sure enough, his plan worked. The next time he glanced back, he was lucky enough to catch a shadow breaking the circle of light under a streetlamp. But he could only hope and pray it had been led away before it had the chance to thoroughly search the house.
He rounded the corner onto the next street, glancing frantically about for anything that could help him but not daring to slow down. He had broken line-of-sight for maybe fifteen seconds, twenty at most. He'd best make them count.
He could feel his heart trying to punch a hole through his chest with every beat as the seconds slipped past. Nothing looked able to provide…
There! Someone had been foolish enough to use round bars, like those on metal railings, in the metal fence around his house! Even the top of the fence, which was typically covered with decorative spikes, had a round bar. The fact that the fence was mounted on a wall was no concern; Agent Carter kicked the wall, propelling himself up, and grabbed the lowest bar, climbing over the three-metre-tall obstacle in as many seconds. The bars provided easy handholds and footholds, and he moved with practiced agility, one foot following the other with swift precision.
He landed as lightly as possible on the garden on the other side, rolling as his feet impacted the ground to dissipate the momentum, and coming up in a crouch, quickly shuffling behind some ferns to provide more cover from his pursuer.
The brief respite he'd won for himself resulted, unfortunately, in him being able to divert his thoughts back to the events that had just transpired. As the fresh memories came into focus, an increasingly large part of him wanted to just sit down and bawl like a toddler. And honestly, he probably would have, were it not for the homicidal mass of shadows attempting to destroy everything he owned, murder his children, and decorate the pavement with his intestines.
He cursed himself for his stupidity. He cursed his wife for her unreasonable stubbornness. He cursed the Foundation for getting him tied up in this whole mess.
He still wasn't sure why he'd done it, but at the time it seemed like a good idea to come clean with her, maybe give her some amnestics after she'd calmed down, and take a bit of leave to sort things out. On hindsight it was probably judgement impairment from all the sleep deprivation. And the gallons of coffee that had sustained him wearing off.
The scene began to play out in his head again.
"JUST HEAR ME OUT!" he shouted, silencing her.
"They have this story, in a village in England, about a man called Wandering Jack," he tried to explain. "They say he'd 'wandered' into each house in the village at least thrice in his life, taking everything of value that wasn't bolted down. One day, he stole from a strange old man who'd recently moved into the village. But the old man found out about it, and cursed him, so that he could never enter another home again without permission from a member of the household, or take or destroy anything that belonged to anyone unless they'd let him. So he spent the rest of his days an angry man, turned away from every house, unable to steal anything or rob anyone, because he couldn't take peoples' lives or health without their permission, forced to beg and scavenge for scraps. And when he died God didn't let him into heaven because of what he'd done, so he couldn't go there. And the devil didn't let him into hell because the devil's like that, so he couldn't go there either. And when his spirit came back to earth he couldn't go back into his body because it belonged to the earth now, and she wouldn't let him back in, so he also couldn't go there. So now he's cursed to wander the world, a spirit without a body, taking anything he can find that doesn't belong to anyone, and just waiting for someone to ask Wandering Jack to come in."
Rachel grew visibly more irate as the story proceeded. "What's that got to do with anything?" she snapped.
"I was investigating it. There were rumours that he might be real. Unexplained, gruesome murders and destructive ransackings. Being stuck like this for so long, I imagine he's bearing quite a grudge against the rest of humanity. And there was one survivor who reported that the destruction started when someone invited him in as part of a dare. They dismissed it as a child's fabrication for coping with what happened, but…okay, this is going to be a lot to take in, but I don't actually work for Simon-Carson Products. I actually work for the group behind it, the SCP Foundation, whose job is to investigate-"
"THAT'S ENOUGH!" she screamed. "Of all the *stupid* excuses you could have given, this is the WORST! I'm INSULTED that you thought you'd convince me with this! Your stupid Wandering Jack can come in here and take everything he wants for all I care!"
"NO!" Garret cried. He had no idea if the entity he had been tracking was nearby. Nobody here had even heard of Wandering Jack so it wasn't likely, but it was entirely possible that the creature was displeased about him trying to investigate it and decided to followed him back. In fact, he had occasionally felt as though someone was glaring at him while on the journey back. A deep, malicious glare, tinged with a sadistic, demented cruelty. He'd dismissed it as nothing at the point in time, but he didn't want to take any chances. He quickly attempted to rectify this. "As master of the house I for-"
Too late.
The crash of metal against metal. The splintering of wood. And Rachel's scream of pure terror, just before the horrific sound of bone and flesh being rent apart.
And then his feet striking the ground, carrying him out of the house, and the increasingly-faint crashes of the malevolent spirit tearing through his house, destroying as much of it as possible to spite him, probably only sparing him to let the sight of his wife being brutally murdered torment him for a bit longer.
And now here he was.
He was broken out of his reminiscing again, this time not by an explosion, but by the same sensation he'd experienced on the way home. A deep, piercing, malevolent glare, harsher and more vicious than the earlier ones. He stared across the street from where he was hiding, and sure enough, he managed to make a faint, shadowy mass standing just far away enough from the wall to be visible. He could feel the malevolence radiating from it, directed at him.
Agent Carter allowed himself a grim smile. The skip was clearly frustrated at being unable to get at his prey, who was located within someone else's property. He found it richly ironic that the sole way to stop the psychopathic trespasser was to engage in a spot of trespassing yourself.
He knew the creature would only try to wait him out a little longer before realising it still had the rest of his house to destroy, including his children. But that was all the time he needed.
"As master of the house I forbid you, Wandering Jack…"
The entity withdrew in surprise, but quickly realised what was going on and dashed back down Garrett's street, hoping to do as much damage as possible while it could.
"…from entry into my house, and the handling of my possessions. All invitations from members of my household that have been made are rescinded. All that shall be made in the future are to be disregarded. You shall never enter my house or take anything that belongs to me or mine no matter what the circumstances."
Agent Carter did not so much hear the frustrated "scream" of the monster as feel it, a lance of hatred and frustration straight from it to him, through the walls and houses in between.
He climbed back out over the fence, dropping nimbly to the pavement as his adversary returned. It hovered before him, a swirling mass of slashes of shadow, glaring at him with vicious malice and resentful impotence.
"I win," Agent Carter growled.
The entity continued radiating hatred towards him for a few more seconds, but, realising it was utterly defeated, withdrew into the shadows. He felt its glare for a little longer, and then it was gone.
As soon as it had dissolved into the night, Agent Carter's bravado evaporated.
The gravity of the situation impressed itself upon him as he walked slowly back to his now-ruined home. His wife, his Rachel, was dead. His house was destroyed. And his children…he shuddered. Part of him wanted to sprint back as quickly as possible, to see if they were alright. The rest of him wasn't sure if it wanted to find out.
A handful of his neighbours who had been woken by the blast gathered around his ruined gate, pointing and whispering at the scorched ground his car was formerly over, pieces of said car and the gate that had been resting against it when it exploding, and the splintered door, the small pieces of wood about the metal hinges hanging lamely from the door frame. One was talking on his phone, presumably calling the emergency services.
"Mr Carter!" one of his neighbours noticed him and ran up. "Mr Carter! Something-"
Garrett held out a hand, and his neighbour fell silent. "I know."
He gently pushed aside another one of his neighbours who was in his way, and stepped carefully through the field of debris lying before him.
The interior of his home was exactly as expected: utterly destroyed. A leg of the dining table and the chunk of table it was attached to, a step from the staircase, and part of the TV had been compacted into one corner and covered with CDs, some whole, some broken. A sofa had been stuffed into a window. The fridge had smashed through the kitchen wall into the adjacent room, and its top half had been launched into the next room, scattering food between the two halves like a mock trail of blood. And of course, there was his wife, a mangled mess of flesh and bone on the dining room floor.
But no sign of any of his children.
Apprehension mounted within him. He felt his heartbeat accelerating once again as he moved through the wreckage. The fear that he would find his children in the same state as his wife around every corner gripped him as he searched the house.
Still no sign.
He turned back to the staircase, marginally more relieved. The stairs had been damaged, but the upper floors seemed relatively unmolested. More likely than not, he told himself, his children had stayed in their bedrooms and slept through the whole affair.
But even this did not do much to allay his anxiety. He had to see for himself if they were alright.
There was enough of the staircase left for him to climb up from the side and make his way up to his children's rooms, which he did, gingerly making his way up the broken steps. The image of his children dashed to bloody bits in their beds induced such dread, despite its implausibility, that he dared not move any faster.
He looked around. All doors intact. Good.
Wait. No. They were all slightly ajar.
He chewed his lip as desire to find out and fear of finding out tussled briefly within him. The desire won.
He charged through the first door. Empty. The second. Also empty.
Dread and apprehension tearing him apart, he shoved open the last door…and was never so delighted to hear his three children screaming in terror.
The screams turned to cries of relief as they realised who the intruder was.
"DADDY!" they shouted in unison, running into his arms.
"Jacob! Brendan! Mary!" he hugged them close. "I'm so glad you're alright…"
"Daddy, what's going on?"
"We heard crashes, and…and an explosion, and then everything downstairs breaking…"
"We didn't dare go outside to see what happened…"
He patted their backs. "Everything…"
He held them tighter. He wanted to tell them everything was alright…but then again they had just lost their mother.
Tears pricked at his eyes and anger welled within him. He'd never asked for any of this. All he'd ever wanted to do was take care of his wife and children. He cursed the Foundation again for dragging him into this. For taking his wife, the mother of his children. No. They deserved to know.
"Everything's…" he let go of them and stepped back, "…not alright. You see…I'm actually a…monster hunter. That's where I've been the past few weeks. Trying to catch a monster that's been killing people and destroying things in England. If I did catch it, then we'd be richer." He nodded to Jacob. "I could buy you that game you wanted. And that doll you wanted, Mary. And that painting, Brendan. I could take us all to a fancy hotel in Rome or Madrid or Vienna on holiday."
He massaged his nose bridge. "I didn't manage to catch it. But it followed me home. Now the monster can only come into your house and hurt you if you ask it to. And…when I tried to tell your mother, she didn't believe me, and…and she accidentally invited him in. So now…now…"
He blinked back tears.
"She's…gone. Dead. The monster killed her."
Jacob covered his mouth in shock. Brendan stared. Mary buried her face in Garrett's jacket and began to cry.
"Why?" Jacob finally found his voice after a few minutes of silence, tears streaming down his face. "Why did your work have to hurt Mummy?"
He gazed at his children, stunned, weeping and grieving. He wanted to blame the Foundation for putting him in this situation. He wanted to blame his wife, for starting the argument. He wanted to blame himself, for being an idiot and telling her about Wandering Jack.
But even as he worded the denunciations in his mind, he knew they weren't true. He'd chosen this line of work. His wife's being upset was justified, and though this might've been avoided if she'd raised concerns earlier, she'd made a commendable effort to bear with his frequent absences without complaint. And he had been caught completely off-guard by her, while sleep-deprived and exhausted.
"Jacob…it's difficult to explain now, but it wasn't my work which hurt her. It wasn't me. It wasn't her. It wasn't the people like me that I work for. It was the monster. And there are hundreds of other monsters like it running around in the world, killing people or waiting for the chance to do so, or doing things that could cause the world to end. We…I fight them, because no-one else will. It has to be done. Someone has to step up and put himself and the people he cares about in danger, so that these monsters don't run free."
He hugged his children close. "Believe me, it's hard even for me to say it…but even if I could have prevented all this by doing a different job, I wouldn't have. The things I've seen…the things that could have happened if I hadn't been there, or if I had messed up…we need every man we can get. And although what we do puts our lives and the lives of those close to us in danger, we know it must be done. The whole world is counting on us."
He sighed. "Jacob, Brendan, Mary…it's not what we do that kills people. We don't kill people. The monsters do. And we fight the monsters. We secure. We contain. We protect."