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Item #: SCP-#
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: As all civilians suspected of SCP-# capability have been contained, surveillance of global communication channels to identify novel cases of SCP-# is of a low priority.
The remaining SCP-#-affected individuals (with one exception – see below) must be contained at Site-92 under involuntary psychiatric commitment. Release from containment on a case-by-case basis, dependent on psychological factors and the effectiveness of amnestic treatment and other #-mitigating procedures, must be pursued as a long-term objective.
Description: SCP-# is a self-inflicted act whereby the cerebrum is replaced by—or transformed into—an inert polyurethane substitute of equivalent volume, mass, and structural complexity. The effect is instantaneous and the majority of biological mechanisms are unaffected by the change; furthermore, the anomaly can be reversed in a manner identical to its activation. Subjects express no knowledge of SCP-#’s mechanism but describe it as instinctual.
While under the effect of SCP-#, the body of the affected individual remains animate and indistinguishable from unaffected humans. Moreover, the body retains the personality and memories of the affected individual, with the exception of ignorance concerning SCP-#.
In a majority of cases, subjects report the effect of SCP-# as being comparable to a lucid dream-state, with an awareness of the passage of time expressed. Subjects also display normal memory recall of experiences that occurred during their #-induced absence.
SCP-# was first discovered in a test subject of [REDACTED], a Foundation research initiative. All #-affected civilians known to the Foundation were contained within a three-year timeframe following this incident. No meaningful connections between affected persons, beyond the anomaly itself, have been identified.
NOTE: The following is documentation relating to Subject RK0617, who currently resides in Foundation-sanctioned confinement at Prison de XXXXX, Belgium. RK0617 formerly participated in the now-discontinued Project ECEP3 between May and August 2005.
My legs have always felt unnatural to me.
Placing one foot in front of the other felt like a preposterous, stilted dance. There was a discomfort that followed me with every step, the almost unbearable phantom grind of bone on bone as I struggled against myself.
It was all in my head, like I was told. It was a ubiquitous dream – the constant complaints of a hypochondriac. Everyone was right, but I could never shake off the sense of misplacement, as if I was the result of a careless god’s butterfingers. Something didn’t click.
It was all the same on long commute home. The highlight of my urban pilgrimage was the final stretch, when I was left with nothing but these obstinate things to carry me through. A fleeting pang of ecstasy swept through my body upon turning the corner onto my street, and another when I pushed the key through the lock. I moved across the threshold, sighing through the tiny foyer and the modest living room, abating only upon collapsing on the sofa.
At first, I thought it was my bladder that roused me in the dead of the night, as it often did. But it was something else. A dull, unearthly ache had descended upon me. Somewhere just below the abdomen, something stirred. I followed the gentle pulsations with a finger, finding the source: a soft, slight bulge in the skin.
I got up, stumbling for the switch; with a flick, the room was bathed in light. I squinted at myself in the full-length mirror beside my bed, trained on the contorted patch of skin. I watched as the bump stretched and reddened and the skin acquiesced to the thing underneath. It poked out of the clean, bloodless hole: deep green and gleaming wet. As it forced itself to the surface, the strange pressure I had felt dissipated and I was left with an emptiness – a cerebral calm. I brushed the thing with a finger; it was slick, warm, and dead. For a brief moment, I considered pulling it out, but I dismissed the idea.
It’s too risky. What if it I bleed out? This is probably just a dream. I don’t want to deal with this right now.
I went back to bed. Tomorrow would be a normal day.
I sat in the kitchen as restless hours lurched by, eating with a ferocious diligence. When everything was gone, I still wasn’t satisfied – there was an itch deep inside, too far to reach. It would be a while before I was sated.
The only shop on my street was a small deli. It didn’t offer much in the way of variety, but at this point, I didn’t care. I reeled with hunger and a growing anxiety as I stepped outside, uncertain.
The shopkeeper gave me a disinterested look, unperturbed by my winter jacket in the late summer day. He was oblivious to the things lurking underneath. There were six of them now, all splayed out from my hips in different directions – thin, sharp, and spindly. I had no choice but to hide them away.
Avoiding all eye contact, I gathered a small mound of products in my arms, hobbling over to the till and spilling them onto the counter. The shopkeeper threw me another emotionless look.
“Sixty-eight pounds, forty-five pence” he exclaimed after swiping the last item. I rummaged around in my wallet, finding only a two-hundred pound note. With a tiny shrug, I placed the money on the counter.
“Haven’t got change for that, sorry” said the shopkeeper.
“Keep the change then. It’s fine by me.” He gave me a wide-eyed look that collapsed into a frown. But before he could say anything, someone behind me chimed in: “Excuse me?”
I turned my head, somewhat annoyed, in answer.
“Uh, you have… something. There, poking out of your jacket. Is that a—?”
I didn’t wait for the stranger to finish. Grabbing the stuff, I left the shop, muttering a thank you under my breath that no one heard. I tried breaking into a run, but my legs refused to oblige. What had once been confined to my thoughts became physical reality as I struggled to maintain balance, reducing my walking pace to a strange half-crawl. The grinding of bones turned into an obscene metallic wail, and it took every ounce of my strength to drive my stubborn, uncaring legs forward.
The shrill tones of the doorbell rang throughout the house, breaking the cool morning silence. As I stirred, my heart fluttered to a race pace and my head flooded with a series of half-thoughts.
Someone saw them on the street – last night? The night before? Last week? I should have been more careful. They know everything. They’re going to tear them out. They’re going to experiment on me. They’ll figure out what’s wrong. What’s wrong with me?
The doorbell rang again. Taking a deep breath, I walked to the foyer and looked through peephole, but I couldn’t recognise the woman standing on the other side. I hesitated for a moment, fighting to control the tremors, and opened the door, staring down the middle-aged, bespectacled lady before me.
“Hello. Sorry to bother you. I’m knew here, just moved in the house opposite.” She grinned sheepishly. “I know this seems a little odd, but I just wanted to say hi. Get a better idea of what this area’s like. I’m Matilda.”
I dragged my fingers across my hair, an impulsive act.
“Hi, uh, I’m Alex. It’s nice to meet you. I’m a bit busy now, but, maybe we can talk later. Sorry.” I imagined a dull thud emanating from somewhere behind me, but I didn’t look. I was too distracted by the unexpected openness of this complete stranger.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you.” The lady called Matilda nodded, smiled, and turned to cross the road. For a moment, I wanted nothing more than to call out, to tell her everything. I closed the door before she reached the other side; I wouldn’t let anyone see me like this again.
The chitinous growths continued their relentless expansion until they resembled the warped spokes of a giant rimless wheel. Brittle but un-breaking, they clattered against the surrounding furniture as I slouched through rooms and hallways, every journey accompanied by belaboured heaving and spluttering.
All the while, my legs withered away as if the life was being strangled out of them. Soon enough, they performed their swan song: a few tired, languorous twitches, before going limb. I couldn’t help but smile, even though I was afraid.
The doorbell rang and I crawled across floors littered with junk and ruined things. A mass of dead flesh and chitin followed me, subsuming books, trinkets, and broken glass. I clawed at the panels of the door to get myself upright, and stared through the peephole.
The woman called Matilda stood on the other side with a bag of something I couldn’t see and a cold smile. This fucking neighbour again? She rang once more before looking up and down the street, watching for something – or someone. Growing impatient, she launched a concerted attack on the doorbell button, and a torrent of sound filled my ears. She was testing me, but I had no intention of letting her in.
She gave up and turned to leave, muttering something that I couldn’t hear. She didn’t cross the road, instead keeping to the sidewalk before disappearing from my narrow field of vision.
“Hey, Alex. What’s up?”
I hesitated, closing my eyes as I struggled against a deep-seated desire to hang up. I could already tell how this conversation might go.
“Hi, dad. It’s… it’s about my legs.” I braced myself for the tidal wave of emotion that would hit me as all the things that happened in the past few weeks welled up in the clarity of reflection. But it never came.
“Alright.” A hint of irritation was almost masked by his friendly inflections. “What’s wrong with your legs this time?”
Again I thought about everything that happened to me, but I was struck by an epiphany instead. I was taken aback by the obviousness of it. It was something I should’ve known all along.
“Nothing. My legs are gonna be just fine.”
Somewhere in the mess of the house, my old legs lay buried and useless. I sat in a corner of the living room, quivering with anticipation and the effort to goad my new ones into action. My heart was racing and the stench of fresh sweat began to overpower the aged smell of uncleanliness. The doorbell rang, but it barely registered in my mind.
I gasped as the first, small twitches of life appeared. I pushed harder, and a confident rhythm emerged. The cacophony of chitin wasn’t enough to drown out a thunderous clap of something heavy breaking. Nor did it overshadow the distinct stamp of boots on a wooden floor. Before I could react, something clicked inside me and I ballooned with ecstasy.
The rattling of my new legs stopped as they lifted me up, moving in unison as was my want. I stumbled from one end of the room to another. Each step rung out with the clip clop of a horse’s hooves, but sharper and brighter.
The sound of boots reached the closed living room door and grew silent for the moment, but I didn’t care. I was drowning in the rapture of self-discovery.
It felt good.
1
These aren’t my legs.
I pleaded as the procession of doctors marched onwards into the past, but the echo of their steps silenced my cries. Scans, tests, and long-winded conversations ended without a diagnosis, and warm words of reassurance hung on the backs of the receding figures.
Before long, friends and family joined the line. I tried to follow, but the phantom grind of bone on bone rattled my thoughts with every step I took. The legs beneath me shattered and I fell, fighting the pain with hot tears streaming from my imagination. This was meant to be easy, but I couldn’t help it. These legs were not my own.
I looked up, perplexed by the footprints and the settling dust. Didn’t anyone else stay?
2
Somewhere along the way, I crossed back into wakefulness. The engine grumbled on in the background and the windows were now mirrors to the fluorescent glow of the bus’s interior. I couldn’t recall the sun going down.
My stomach ached – was it Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis? It was amorphous, dancing here and there – ever present but difficult to pin down. I thought of the legs. They hurt like that too, but with an unshakeable familiarity. That pain was a living, breathing creature, scratching and sniffing without end or direction, trapped in a tiny box at the bottom of a lake that I couldn’t ever hope to find but knew would always be there.
I closed my eyes and suppressed a yawn. It was going to be a long night, but at least I could spend most of it like this. I was good at waiting things through. Years spent sitting in hospitals and GP’s offices had that effect. Counting down the minutes didn’t get easier, but I perfected a balancing act between restless discomfort and an outright breakdown.
I leaned my head against the window, feeling for the motion of the earth. When I opened my eyes, I was outside in the cold again. Pulling my jacket closer, I rushed through the glass doors of the terminal and into a throng of travellers. People, elegant and absentminded in their movements, flanked me on all sides. I couldn’t tell how much my stilted choreography stood out, if at all – were the stares and sneers nothing more than resting faces?
I disappeared within myself, the legs dragging me to my destination. This was normal. An airport was a hospital in a different form and I was right at home. Both were great stone chasms, complicated and opaque on the surface but ruled by structure and routine. Everything and everyone had its place, including me. The stage was set, the paths carved deep and paved with concrete – I couldn’t imagine getting lost in this labyrinth.
I felt a sharp jab in my abdomen, a reminder of unresolved ache. It was easier to follow now, emanating in waves from my diaphragm. Something was gnawing away from within – alive and desperate, scrambling for air. It was about to break the surface.
I stumbled into the nearest bathroom and fell into a free stall. Shaking, I pulled up layer after layer until I hit bare skin and traced the pain with a finger, finding one, two, many bulging masses – great dome-shaped stretches of hot red skin around my waist. They were all writhing. Before my eyes, one after another, the boils burst open, revealing dark gleaming things that were lodged deep. They felt as much a part of me as my bones and memories.
Taking a breath, I shrugged. There was a flight to catch – this madness had to wait.
3
The cabin was icy but I felt warm inside.
I was burning up, my gut subsumed in a ball of fire; heat belched out as if deep from the maws of the earth. I was small in the face of the bubbling abyss. All I could do was wait it out.
Across a vast field of smoke and ashes, a pair of eyes stared back at me, concerned. They were cold and sterile – at home on the flight. A doctor’s eyes. They were searchlights cutting through the smog, forceps and a scalpel hard at work. I was stripped down, skin and flesh melting away to reveal bone and old faults.
I reached down past my burning waist, gripping the legs. They were numb. The pain had left – the box was silent and the lake was still.
Had there ever been a lake at all?
The pain was real, but maybe it had never been the legs. It must have stemmed from a place far deeper, so deep even the doctors couldn’t reach it. The pain carved its own labyrinth, and now it was finally free.
It was free.
The haze cleared and I found my breath. The burning was relentless, but manageable; and the doctor’s eyes were lost, swallowed by the abyss. There was an end in sight and I couldn’t have imagined it any better than this.
4
The plane landed and I stepped onto the concrete path.
I built my little cocoon and watched them grow. They charged into this world steaming and glistening. Inflamed skin was stretched and peeled away, falling around in great red flakes. Bulbous stumps became majestic black chitin bathed in the fats and oils of my gut, slick and placental.
They ached with a hunger and turned to the legs, lapping up the placid flesh with glee. As they expanded, the legs withered away, reduced to paper strands of desiccated skin and tattered muscle. Bone and nails clattered as I plucked and threw them to the wind. I already forgot how they felt.
As the dew cleared, they carried me. Every step rang out like a horse’s hooves, but sharper, richer. We reached the edge of the grass, the edge of the asphalt, the edge of the concrete. The path the doctors had made was long and winding, but for once, I felt good.
Interior of the Palmengarten Schönbrunn, with an individual affected by SCP-# visible
Item #: SCP-#
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Foundation personnel must be embedded in the staff at the Palmenhaus Schönbrunn. Human visitors exhibiting early symptoms of SCP-# must be escorted off the premises. If this is not possible, then said individuals must be subject to in-situ containment at Provisional Site-67 in the Palmenhaus. Unless engaged in testing, affected individuals should not be given basic provisions in the interests of reducing the duration of SCP-#. Upon the cessation of SCP-#, individuals must be interviewed regarding their experiences before amnesticization and release.
Description: SCP-# is a phenomenon affecting 0.3% of human visitors to the Palmenhaus Schönbrunn in Vienna. SCP-# typically manifests within five to ten minutes of entering the Palmenhaus and will persist for a period of time that varies between individuals.
In a majority of cases, individuals affected by SCP-# initially report symptoms of heat exhaustion and dehydration, although such symptoms are rarely observed. This is followed by complaints of disorientation. Around this stage, individuals are physically incapable of egress from the Palmenhaus, although mobility is otherwise unaffected.
One hour following the emergence of SCP-#, affected persons avoid designated walking paths, confining themselves to areas of high floral density. Individuals will scavenge for and consume edible material, particularly food left by other visitors (if available). Individuals will also construct rudimentary shelters out of plant material. Occasionally, attempts to produce distress signals are made, although individuals almost never make a concerted effort to contact and interact with others. Rarely, cooperation between affected persons is observed.
SCP-# has been observed persisting for periods of between two hours and eight weeks. SCP-# ends when affected persons cease abnormal behaviour and express a desire to exit the Palmenhaus. There is a strong correlation between the physiological decline of affected individuals (typically via dehydration) and the probability of SCP-#’s cessation. However, a majority of individuals cite a personal loss of interest in activities engaged on the premises and a desire to pursue more fulfilling endeavours as the primary reason behind SCP-#’s end.