There was a flash of light and SCP-173 was sitting at a table. He had hands. Real hands with long fingers, perfect for playing piano. Across the table in natural light was a redhead wearing a button up shirt he was pretty sure was his. She smiled and looked away when he caught her eyes.
The sun was just now rising, but he could tell already that her face was about as perfect as you could expect. Her perfect face was framed in auburn hair that had no right to look that good this early in the morning. He looked down. A bowl of brown cinnamon squared cereal in milk sat in front of him, the spoon was already in his hand.
Another few seconds and he forgot whatever had come before. He remembered who he was. He had an hour before work. He had to finish his breakfast, see his new friend out, and get ready.
"Carver?" The woman across the table said with a slight southern accent.
"Yeah."
"I can't believe you still eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch. My mom used to buy this for us when we were kids."
Carver chuckled. "I'm full of surprises."
"Fair." She rubbed at some red marks around her neck that only just now were visible in the increasing morning light. "I figured you were pretty vanilla when you bought me that drink. Glad I was wrong."
"I didn't hurt you did I?"
The woman shrugged and smiled widely. "Not any more than I wanted you to."
"You know I never did get your number."
She leveled her emerald eyes at him. "It's on your nightstand."
Carver looked at her exposed left shoulder, where his shirt hung off her. He followed the bone structure to her clavical and then up to her neck. Such a slender delicate neck. The marks his fingers had left the night before were becoming more and more visible as the sun rose. She stood up with her empty bowl and spun to take it to the sink. He watched her bounce as she went and he was pretty sure he was going to be late to work.
His boss was a squat fellow with a blood pressure problem. He was pointing a single finger at Carver while he spoke in a raised voice about punctuality. Or whatever. Carver wasn't really listening. Sure he was late, but he could *see* the man's blood pressure rising as a pulsing quickened on the left side of the man's neck. He wasn't entirely sure he could get his fingers wrapped all the way around that neck, but he would love to try. The man seemed to've noticed that Carver was distracted and leaned in closer. Just in arms reach.
"Do you understand what crunch time means?" The fat man literally spat out at him.
"Yes."
"Then you understand how important it is to our clients that you keep your appointments. Do you know how much our clients pay us so they won't ever have to wait in a lobby again? New clients are more important than you getting another half hour of sleep!"
Carver shrugged and stood up. The fat man moved around the desk. "Where the fuck are you going?"
"I have appointments now too. If they're important enough for you to yell at me over, then I probably shouldn't miss them."
The angry fat man sneered and sat down. The pulsing in his neck began to subside.
Carver closed the door to his office and leaned against the door. He flexed his fingers. He shook his head as they flashed to brown concrete with bits of rebar steel sticking out the ends.
He blinked. They were still concrete. He blinked again. Still. Blink. Flesh and bone. He finally breathed. What the fuck was that?
It didn't matter. He pressed a button on his phone and a older woman's cheery voice filled the room. "Yes?"
"Hold my calls and appointments for 20 more minutes."
"Yes sir." The phone clicked.
Carver started his morning workout with 100 crunches.
This would do. He pulled up to the window and the perfect redhead from this morning handed him his order. "One gordita crunch wrap, one bean burrito with extra red sauce and a water"
He cocked his head to the side. "Becca?"
"Oh holy shit." She said before covering her mouth and looking around. "What are you doing here?"
"Getting lunch. I come here all the time cause it's right next to work. How long have you been working here?"
"I just started."
"Well now I have another reason to come here."
Becca smiled and touched her hair slightly. "So…"
"Right. You wanna go out again tonight?"
"I'd like that."
"I'll pick you up at 7?"
"You know where I live?"
"Not yet, but you're gonna text me your address."
Her smile was broken by the sound of a horn honking directly behind Carver. She handed him a straw. "Sorry. Gotta move the line. I'll text you after work."
"Looking forward to it."
A half moon peaked out from behind the clouds only occasionally as the soft crunch of sticks and leaves underneath his feat broke the silence of the night. He carried a shovel in one hand and had a redheaded woman slung over his other shoulder. He finally stopped, a few hundred feet into the woods, and threw the woman to the ground like a bag of potatoes. She thumped hard and then rolled onto her back from the force.
Her bloodshot and glassy green eyes stared up at the sky as Carver started to dig a hole. The bruising around her neck was catastrophic. A slight trickle of blood from her mouth ran into her hair, which was still mostly perfect, except for where the blood had begun to gather and mat it together. She hardly looked like the same person he'd seen this morning.
Getting below the frost line in southern california was a lot easier than in almost anywhere else in the country. And frankly there was never ending supply of aspiring actresses that went to make it big and never were heard from again. Good looks and money was all he really needed to make sure that he got what he wanted out of them.
No one else was supposed to be out here, but it took too long to dig the hole. It had always been a matter of time before someone saw him. An anomymous call to the police led them right to where Becca was buried. Surveillance footage and cell phone records worked out the rest. The dozen bodies that were buried in the woods sealed his fate.
And then…
A flash of light and he was back in the room with SCP-343. Wait. He. It. SCP-173 was confused again but he couldn't really articulate why. Because he couldn't speak at all.
SCP-343 frowned. "Every time. You just can't help yourself."
SCP-343 didn't blink. He just stared at SCP-173. "Fine. I've tried to set you free. I've tried to make you normal. I've tried everything. Go back to your cell."
A finger snap later, SCP-173 was in a darkened room. The containment breach alarms were still going off but the door was shut. He also still couldn't move. There in the corner was a man in an orange jumpsuit.
He was tall, handsome, with long fingers, perfect for playing the piano. But it was dark. And the man didn't know what he was looking at. He blinked like they always do eventually. His neck made a satisfying crunch.
