In, out, chew, swallow.
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ADULT CONTENT
This article contains adult content that may not be suitable for all readers.
Sexual References: Features sexual themes or language, without the depiction of sexual acts.
Sexually Explicit: Description of sexual acts.
Sexual Assault: Features non-consensual sexual acts.
Gore: Depiction of blood, gore or mutilation of body parts.
Child Abuse: Features severe mistreatment of children.
Self-Harm: Description of self-harm.
Suicide: Description of suicide.
Torture: Description of torture.
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You're in a field with a young woman. She's ratty and strange and smells like cheap deodorant. You don't recognize her, but you immediately understand that it's her. She tells you that you're her best friend ever. You don't think this is right, you haven't known each other very long, but you consider how low her standards must be. How long has it been for her? You wish you could help her. She breaks your focus by looking at you with red eyes, poorly hiding tears. She asks you if you'll keep being her friend. You don't know what to say. She tries to stifle a sob and awkwardly coughs. Her breath is cold and wet. It looks like the condensation from a sharp exhale in winter. You think of playing in the snow as a kid, pretending to be a dragon breathing fire. Your head swims.
The field falls away and you're laying on your back in a dark concrete room. She's in here with you. She's huge and red and sharp. Her claws dig into your arms to pin you down, though you doubt you could move anyway. She doesn't say a word before digging in. She extracts your flesh piece-by-piece, remarkably methodical for a starved animal. There's a clean rhythm to her biting and chewing. It would be soothing if it weren't for the pain. It's white-hot, fire spreading through your body from the tiny points of contact with her teeth. As each piece gets ripped out, the pain burns hotter, but there's less of you left to feel it. Her body looms above you, the raw bulk feeling suffocating. Her teeth have a faint glow to them, making them draw your eyes as they move in and out of your body. You focus on the rhythm again. In, out, chew, swallow. Each cycle leaves your chest emptier, but somehow you always have more left for her. Eventually she gives a deep exhale, gurgling through the blood and meat in her throat. A red-tinged cloud comes out of her mouth as your vision blurs. You're soon in the field again. It loops.
You wake up feeling like you didn't sleep at all. The memory of your nightmare still hurts a little to recall. You then see the time. 9 in the morning. You wince as you try to bolt up and your knee locks. After a bit of flailing, you manage to get out of bed. You check your phone.
Warm wishes from Human Resources! Enjoy your holiday and be sure to take a look at the HR-provided entertainment!
If you have not been given holiday leave today, please notify us so we can update our mailing lists.
Thank you all for your wonderful work,
Oh. It's a holiday. You check your schedule. You're in the holiday shift this year that gets Maundy Thursday. The Good Friday holiday is prioritized for Christian staff, and you've not been practicing for a long time. Now you need to find something to do. Your first instinct is to find work to get ahead on. Remarkably, all of your authorizations are up-to-date. Even more remarkably, your starred email folder is empty. You might actually have a holiday. You're lucky enough to get weekends off consistently, but usually you're still doing at least some amount of paperwork on your days off. You consider the less appealing options. You could just waste the time on your phone. You probably would, but you finally committed to turning on screen time limits recently. It's still too soon to abandon the attempt. You could also try sleeping through the day, but you have work tomorrow and you can't afford to mess up your sleep schedule. Your hope shrivels as you begin to contemplate the last options on your list. There are few things you'd like to do less than investigate the "HR-provided entertainment", but talking to your coworkers might be one of them. With a weary sigh, you resolve to at least take a look.
You open the door and creep out into the hallway, nervously scanning for coworkers. You don't understand how, but they always seem to appear when you're not looking. You look both ways several times before working up the courage to move towards the rec room. There'll be no avoiding them there, but you'd at least like to be unaccosted before then. You take a few steps forwards before hearing footsteps behind you. God damn it. Some guy you believe to be named Gerald or something appears behind you, smiling for no apparent reason. "Happy Easter" he exclaims. You don't understand how these people exist. They work in the same prison facing the same horrors as you, but about half of them respond to the nightmare by becoming living mascots. It baffles and terrifies you. You say "Happy Easter." back in your least convincing voice and successfully convince him that you're a curmudgeon, hurrying on your way before he can figure out what the Easter equivalent of a Grinch is and call you it.
The rec room is coated in a layer of tacky Easter decorations. The tables are adorned with fake grass, for some reason, and a variety of bunny figurines leer at you. You hate this place so much. You are surrounded by a thin mixture of about 30% respectable misanthropes and 70% Chefs Boyardee. The mascot-type coworker is generally more likely to appear in the rec room, but some other people must be having the same problem as you. It seems like some kind of Easter egg hunt is occurring, indoors for some reason. There are plastic eggs hidden behind various furnishings. The dozen or so cheery freaks in the room are hunting them down with surgical focus. Several of them approach you, but you are mercifully less interesting to them than the eggs. Logically, you know that these are fully-formed people with hopes and dreams and PhDs. Emotionally, you would kill one of them for their meat if you could get away with it. You decide not to interrogate that thought and instead turn your attention back to the search for entertainment.
Then you spot it. That explains why so many real people are here. They set up the temporary bar this year. Alcohol is normally discouraged at the site for obvious reasons, but they open the bar on special occasions to cheer up staff that won't be working anyway. A table of pros and cons appears in your mind. On one hand, getting drunk would make the day less boring. On the other hand, drinking this early would probably make your coworkers respect you less. This is not a very difficult decision for you.
A few drinks later you remember that they let you buy bottles for some reason. You hastily acquire the goods and carefully walk back to your quarters. You'll still need something to entertain you, but that's a much lower bar when you're drunk. You check your phone again and see another email notification. You should probably at least read it.
Good day, Dr. Garter.
Apologies for intruding upon your holiday, but I have just updated your credentials. You should now be able to access the SCP-939-268 audio archive.
Hope all goes smoothly,
Oh, they finally got that sorted out. In your tipsy state you decide this is a great thing to look at while drinking. You boot up your Foundation laptop, plug in your cheap headphones, and get to work.
The archive is massive, thousands of conversations over the course of nearly two years. You're not sure what you're actually looking for in here, but surely there's something. It shouldn't be hard to find information relevant to her containment. You decide to work your way backwards. She's got a few other containment specialists on her. Maybe you can learn something from how they interact with her. You take a drink and click on a recording from yesterday.
Hey.
Hello, SCP-939-268.
Aww, what's with the cold shoulder?
She abruptly changes her voice into an exaggerated falsetto. You haven't heard her do it much, but she sometimes plays around with other voices. You have a sudden idea and pause the recording. Did she always have that "default" voice? You scroll back a few months.
Hey, Carmilla!
Oh, it's you. What is it?
She sounds hoarse and tired. You think of your grandfather.
…Just wanted to let you know that you're gonna be getting a new specialist soon!
Great. Are they gonna get me something to eat?
You know we've tried to help you, Carmilla.
Was she just having a bad day or was she in a slump for a while? You take a drink and look at a recording from the next day.
SCP-939-268.
Ugh.
She sounds whiny and juvenile. You think of working at a summer camp as a teen.
Use my name, please.
Fine, fine. Carmilla.
You're no fun at all.
A strange dread creeps into you. You take a drink and keep looking.
Just let me out!
Tearful.
What, too chicken to say my name?
Mocking.
Come on, there's more where that came from…
…Seductive?
You keep scrolling through the archive, slowly draining your bottle. Eventually, you decide to look at the oldest available recording. You want to see what she used to be like.
SCP-939-268, I have been instructed to inform you that the speaker system is complete. You may converse with our containment specialists at any time.
Please. I'm hungry.
I-
I'm hungry…
…
I'm hungry.
I-I-I'm-a-I-
Her voice cuts like a skipping record. She's clearly inexperienced with the mimicry at this point. Her words fully dissolve and a cacophony of choppy voices bubbles for a few seconds, like a crowded subway platform. Then it rises into a scream. The specialist in the audio screams too, but it's barely audible below hers. It's all-consuming. It feels like all the pain in the world focused to a single point. You wince as the microphone peaks and just barely remember you can pause the recording to make the noise stop. Your head spins. Now that your focus is broken, you realize how much you've had to drink. You also realize that you're crying. Your first thought is that she's been lying to you, in a way. She was taking a different demeanor with each person she talked to. What do you actually know about her? You suppose you know that she's hungry. You know she didn't make up her life story, either: you cross-referenced some of it with the files and it all checks out. Alex Avon was a real person living in the same town SCP-939-268 was recovered from. You think for a second. There's something else: she always acts the part. The part of the monster, that is. Sometimes she's more of a ghostly child or grumpy dragon or… other things, but she never moves away from that basic role. Even in her most vulnerable moment, she's trying to put on a show. Like she's fluffing out her feathers to look bigger.
The tears still stream down your face. Your heart races and your stomach tightens. Her scream echoes in your mind. You've got to do something, but you don't know what. You feel several instincts try to assert themselves at once. You feel like a mother bear facing a hunter and a deer in headlights and a songbird hearing another. You try to wipe away your tears, but it's pointless.
You look at the time. It's 3 in the afternoon. You've got more drinking ahead of you.