"Mom, the heating's broken."
MEMORY-7469.30 mxsinister
WELCOME, MAJOR ROGER DUNN. YOUR REQUEST TO VIEW SCP-7469 MEMORY No.30 HAS BEEN APPROVED.
It has been determined that the following file is of operational significance to MTF Mu-3 (“Highest Bidders”).
MEMORY-7469.30
DATE OBTAINED: 03/10/2018
TEST SUBJECT: V-01017, a.k.a Lana Harper Sloan1
TESTIMONY: Everyone had left the house that morning believing the weatherman when he said the snow wouldn’t hit us until the middle of the night. Yet, by four in the afternoon, Brooklyn was an inch deep in white.
My boss is a hard-ass, but even he took one look out the window and had the common sense to tell me to close up and get myself home. The way things were looking, though, I had the sinking sense that might be easier said than done.
Before I could even get a word out about asking my boss for a ride, he apologized for us living in opposite directions of each other and ran out the door.
I locked up hurriedly, then tried to get a cab. It’s not something I’d usually consider—taxi fees add up, and I budget for a household of six. Usually, walking home from the pharmacy is fine by me, but a mile and change of pavement becomes a different beast in weather like that.
No dice on the ride, but I couldn't just stand around and wait. What’s usually a twenty-minute walk at most took me close to an hour, and by god, I felt every second of it. Halfway through, the snow was cutting at me sideways, and I braced myself for the kind of night we’d be in for.
God, that was assuming I even made it home. There was a point or two I thought I wouldn’t, but then, who would be telling this story now?
My fingers were stiff in my gloves, and I had trouble even turning the knob of my front door. When I managed to let myself inside, the first thing I heard was my middle child calling out—
“Mom? Mom, the heating’s broken.”
“Yes, dear, I can feel that.” My teeth were chattering almost too much to get the words out.
I made my way to the den, which had been recently refurnished as something closer to a field hospital. Over the past two weeks, all six of us had at one point or another come down with the same damn cold.
If nothing else, I managed to keep plenty of medicine around, but it was the stubborn kind of sickness that just needs toughing out. None of us, by this point, had recovered all our strength, but we were better off than my two youngest daughters—ten and eleven—who were both swaddled beside a small, grumbling space heater.
Saoirse was sitting upright and drinking tea, at least, but my youngest looked far worse than she had when I’d left that morning. The three of them, at least, had been home all day. Even if she hadn’t stuck around to take care of her little sisters, Aisling’s school had been called off out of an abundance of caution. I felt both guilty and grateful for my thirteen-year-old’s wonderful bedside manner, especially compared to my own lack thereof.
I stared at the sick ward for a moment, too numb with cold to feel anything but its bite. Before anything else, I knew I had to get out of my damp clothes. As I changed, I heard the door open and close again, and all I could think was god, let that be the twins.
Not twins, truly, but Irish twins, a year apart. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—I love them, but they give me grey hair like nothing else. Some of that just comes with being a mother, but what scared me worst of all was that they both worked in Manhattan. The thought of knowing my kids out in this weather was bad enough without a subway separating us.
When I’d at least put on two layers of the driest, warmest clothes I could find, I found my eldest daughter piling up damn near every piece of linen or clothing we had to our name. I couldn’t blame her. Fiona put on no less than three of her and her younger brother’s jackets, and the rest we’d bundled until they were a foot deep in blankets. I made sure each one of them was better insulated than I was.
I finally settled in and pulled up local news on my phone for some idea of the forecast. The worst of the storm hadn’t even hit us yet, but it had apparently been enough to warrant shutting down several subway lines.
I cannot describe the grief and horror of seeing that headline. I asked Fiona if she’d had trouble, but she told me she hadn’t even tried to fight the underground, that one of the other models had a car and lived in the Heights. She’d still done a few blocks of work on foot after being dropped off at a nearby crossing, but it was a fraction of the distance I’d had to trek, thank god.
Meanwhile, it would be downright impossible to walk the commute from Manhattan. My son would die if he tried, and while fifteen-year-old boys are not renowned for their common sense, I hoped he’d have enough of it to realize that the cold cares about nothing and no one.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wallow in that particular well of worry for much longer. The door opened, and the first thing I heard was Dorian calling out: “Christ, it's some real beach weather out there!”
We heard a car speed off through the snow outside the house, and I was grateful he’d at least found a ride. Just the walk from the street to the door had been enough to cover him in frost.
He entered the den, carrying in his arms what might as well have been liquid gold.
“Is the gas on the stove working?” He asked as he set down a paper bag containing almost a gallon of the finest lobster bisque in the city.
It wasn’t as if he stole it or blew his pocket money—he works at a very nice restaurant, and though he was rarely allowed to bring back food, it was clear they’d cooked far too much for what had turned out to be such a dead day for business. They’d made an exception this time, according to him.
He spoke in a rambling, rapid tone, which seemed emphasized by the fact that the rest of us were without words, just trying not to chatter our teeth.
Dorian knelt down between Saoirse and Daphne. He asked Aisling about when they were next due for medicine, and she answered that it would still be another hour. I thought he might just crumble when he looked at how bad things had gotten, the same way I almost had when I saw my baby half-conscious with fever.
I got up and took the soup into the kitchen, setting out five bowls and methodically spooning the bisque into them. I microwaved each individually, as tedious as it was, just to avoid losing any of the liquid in a transfer to a saucepan.
Dorian walked in right as the second serving finished. I turned and simply told him to take them to his sick sisters. He said he would, but first, he reached into his coat and removed a flat pint of whiskey.
Now this, I am certain, his employers had not sent him home with. My guess is that he flashed them a smile every bit as sweet and disarming as the one he was giving me now, although probably with less mischief. I couldn’t be mad at him, and hopefully, neither could they.
“Take this too,” he said, as if just remembering something. He began to shrug off his coat, telling me how he’d learned just that morning from one of the chefs that, apparently, liquor didn’t actually raise your body temperature, just made you feel warmer. He shrugged and said it might be bullshit, because the chef liked tall tales, but that I ought to take his overcoat just in case. I didn’t even think about resisting until I felt it around my shoulders.
“No, no. You keep that on, young man. You need to stay warm.”
“Mom, I was outside for two minutes, aggregate.”
“Well, Daphne’s in there shivering.”
He said: “She might as well be in a Dutch oven already. Besides, if I give it to her, she’ll get her germs on it, and I won’t be able to wear it until we do laundry.”
“Give it to Fiona, then. Thin as she is—”
“Mom,” he told me. “Take the fucking coat.”
For the past few months, he’d been saving up for a good coat, only for me to surprise him with it this Christmas. Well, giving him some extra money and sending him to pick it out himself—he’s so particular with those things, but the pickiness had paid off. Quality wool’s not just fashionable, it’s warm.
I relented, and he looked almost smug enough for me to take it off out of spite, though the timer on the microwave went off before I could go through with it. Reminded suddenly of the food, I watched him count the bowls before pouring a sixth.
“Now you have to eat one, or else you’re wasting food,” he told me. Satisfied enough with his own cleverness, he set the ready bowls of soup on a simple platter and left to take them to his sisters.
I just smiled and put the sixth bowl into the fridge, along with what was left of the original container. He’d have to live with not winning every argument.
It wasn’t a good night by any means. We couldn’t get our central heating fixed until the next morning, and the smell from one of the space heaters was so bad that around three in the morning, I fully unplugged it.
We made it through, though. The food was just what the doctor ordered for the sick girls, though they still spent the next day bundled up with books, tea, and bisque.
As for my older batch, they’d all been saved from work and school for the day by order of the state. So, naturally, they went outside and threw snowballs at each other.
It was the nicest thing I’d heard in a while, the sound of them laughing like that. It made me wish for the millionth time that I could have given them more of a childhood.
DEPTH OF SNOW SUMMONED: 37.5cm