#scifi

Hello, Mother, I feel like tonight may be my last in these trenches, for better or worse. Last night the enemy pushed us back to the perimeter of the town we’ve been defending for the past three months. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how much longer we can hold out for. Reinforcements and supplies are two to three days out, I have two insta-chow syringes left and three and a half magazines to hold me through the next few nights. We have about two more hours of sunlight left. I’ll be sure to give…

This story is inspired by SCP-096 created by Dr Dan, and takes place in the SCP Foundation universe. The cover image was created by dekades8 on DeviantArt and edited by me. Yeah, hey, I don’t know where this will go. If this goes through anywhere, then I guess I got lucky. one. Last. TIME. If you’re reading this, don’t go looking for what I saw. I mean that. Don't look at its face, and this means no photo will be attached.

Chapter One: 14 US Their journey began at the end of everything. The world had ended, but theirs had only just begun. They had lived their lives in complete solitude, confined and alone for as long as they could remember. That was about to change. In a dark basic living quarter, a mass lay on the bottom bunk of a bunkbed built into the wall. Multiple blankets lay on him to sheild him from the cold, as the temperature in the bunker had been stuck on 62 degres for some time.

The howls of aberrant mutants filled the night sky, low and ominous. Their disgusting skittering could be heard all around me. Inhuman forms swam in the dark, never allowing my eyes to pin down their true shapes. At once, I saw a dog, a feline, a bird, and a man. Dread filled my bowels as I watched from my perch. I checked my weapon again; the magazine was still empty. I sighed and checked my sidearm: one full-charge magazine, not nearly enough. That left my blade, a sixteen-inch, heat-sheathed…

Hi, my name is Paul Lipson. People used to call me Henry. As a child, I was born with a Siamese twin. My twin could not see me, but sometimes… sometimes he controlled my body or whispered thoughts into my mind. At first, it was subtle—a hand I didn’t want to move, a voice I didn’t speak—but as I grew older, the whispers became screams.

I opened the messenger app. I hadn’t done much. It was my day off as I had submitted my assignment on the Duke of Wellington’s strategy at the Battle of Waterloo the day before. I was bored and in a bad mood. John had called me but missed. He had also left a message on my desktop. I read it:

Good day. My name is not important. What matters is what I found… and what I was never supposed to find. This document comes from archived police records dated back to the late 1980s. I discovered it by accident while going through old, partially damaged files. At first, I thought it was just another closed case, something routine, something forgotten for a reason.

Our lost, loitering kind paced in infinite death spirals within the confines of our grotty, ghetto pens. Enrichment was sorely that, as well as mumbling our mantras of madness to our audience of one. The BMs anchored to our decayed craniums were garbled with feedback and distortion, their tones bland, colorless, no soul backing them up. A blinding ruby radiance flashed from their cores every second on the second. It was the only manner to determine if we had succumbed to the glorious embrace of…

The human race breathed a sigh of relief when we finally colonized Mars. Years of overpopulation and resource shortages left our first planet stressed. Mars was seen as a pressure valve. A new planet for us to build up and eventually ruin. But we all knew it wasn’t a permanent solution. With the way our population grows, it would only give us a finite amount of time before we were in the same boat as before. We needed more planets. Planets that are farther away and host a greater abundance of…

I saw them. My family’s cows, floating up into the pale white light. I was looking out my window at the time, it was night and I was the only one awake. Father had claimed he had locked the barn, but again more of the poor creatures where taken. They had been going missing, one by one, for a while now. My family had installed camera’s, but nothing was ever caught, just another cow disappearing into thin air every night.

Something changed after the first broadcast, but not in a way people could easily name, and that was what made it dangerous, because without a clear shape, fear has space to grow into anything, and anything is always worse than something defined. The world did not stopnot collapse, did not react in any unified or immediate way, and that absence of visible consequence created a fragile illusion that whatever had happened during the night had been insignificant, forgettable, something that could…

Part I

To sell your dream. Dreamselling Sold dreams Someone decides their dreams impossible and sells them to someone without dreams "I've had it!" I yell: "Mine is just simply unachievable!" My colleague laughs: "Some dreams just are that way, many people here sell them, here there's no need for them anyway. Dreams just get in the way of getting finished." We're sitting inside the grey lunch room of our workplace. I turn to him and lean back: "Did you sell yours?"

For three days after I found the rabbit, nothing else had happened. That frightened me more than the noises had. The woods had gone quiet. Not truly quiet. The birds still called in the mornings. Cicadas screamed from the trees in the afternoon. At night, the frogs took over the creek. But the other sounds stopped. No howls. Not footsteps beneath my window. No knocking against the walls. Nothing watched from the pasture either. Nothing moved in the tree line.

I don’t remember the exact moment it began, which is strange, because people always say you remember the worst thing that ever happened to you with perfect clarity. I remember the grass under my shoes, slightly wet, bending with a quiet sound every time I shifted my weight. I remember thinking about nothing important, just counting steps like it mattered. I remember the air being cold enough to make my fingers stiff. And then there’s a gap. Not darkness, not even fear at first—just a gap, like…

When you own and run a gas station out in the middle of nowhere, you’ll often meet more than your fair share of oddballs. Nobody ever travels to little towns like mine, just through them, our paths only crossing out of sheer necessity and circumstance. For most folk, my gas station is what the internet likes to call a ‘liminal space’; a transitional zone that becomes creepy when you dwell in it for too long. But for me, it’s the exact opposite. My gas station’s an anchor against the backdrop of…

It was just past midnight as I walked down the road. I might have been a bit tipsy as I had been drinking since about 6. We had just closed a deal on the Tanner account and were celebrating. I was not drunk enough to hinder my walking, though. I had gotten a bit cold even though it was still early autumn. I walked quietly along thinking of my day ahead and how I shouldn’t have stayed so late. There was a light mist covering my way. As I approached the woods I noticed a figure up ahead about…

Before I start this story, I should point out that I believe in the paranormal. I have seen ghosts throughout my lifetime, and I even believe in aliens—I mean, I’ve seen UFOs flying around. My belief in them only grew stronger after hearing a story my dad shared with me. Let me just jump into this; I don’t want to ramble on.

The year was 3042, and in the coastal town of Aethelburg, the morning of the Ceremony of Bonds dawned cold and golden. Mike Ashgrove had barely slept. He'd lain awake in his narrow bed, staring at the ceiling of his family's modest clifftop home, listening to the distant crash of waves against the harbor wall. Today was the day. The day every fifteen-year-old in Aethelburg had dreamed about since they were old enough to understand words. Today, he would receive his Circlet.

A cold snowflake greets the warm skin of my face, melting immediately. I ignore the sensation and look forward instead, just like the rest of my group. “Holy shit! The legends did have some truth in them!” Jess yells over the howling wind. David shakes his head: “I’ve been telling you this a thousand times! This is the whole reason for this expedition.” He can’t contain his excitement. I look at the snow-covered ruins.