There is a darkness inside of this house. And you. Here, come and see it.
This article contains CWs for: drug use, suicide, and homophobic slurs.
SCP-102: Property of Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd. by xexnoncores,
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The exterior of SCP-102.
The interior of SCP-102 when not in use.
Item #: SCP-102
Object Class: Argus1
Special Containment Procedures: Because SCP-102 is currently owned by GoI-0122 through a deed independent of eminent domain, containment efforts are to be focused towards minimizing public knowledge of it to reduce its profitability.
Description: SCP-102 is a mansion located at ██ █████ ████ ██████████, currently maintained by the shell corporation known as Ghieser Housing Associates. It is marketed as a "weeklong stay for those with tastes in the invisible adventures of privileged life", primarily through the use of online advertisements targeting impulsive high net-worth spenders.
Booking a stay at SCP-102 will cause a key to manifest in the pocket of the payor. When a person who is not the keyholder enters SCP-102, its interior appears as that of a severely dilapidated home damaged by rust, dry rot, and termites. However, when the keyholder enters via unlocking the front door, they will find themselves in a tidy, well-kept interior, decorated following suburban design trends from the 1960s.
One of the paintings perceptible to keyholders inside of SCP-102, Vacation's Over (Girl Returning from Summer Trip) by Norman Rockwell.
Remaining in SCP-102 as the keyholder for more than one hour causes said keyholder to become capable of at-will invisibility and intangibility, allowing them to move through objects unimpeded. This effect lasts for the duration of their stay or until they leave SCP-102 for more than a day, whether by their own choice or through being forcibly removed. Staying invisible for longer than the duration of their stay removes the effect of intangibility, an event detectable by the ██ thaumic sensors installed inside of SCP-102 by GoI-012.3
Addendum.102.01: On August 12th, 1989, an unusual radio signal was detected emanating from SCP-102. Upon analysis, the signal was determined to originate from SCP-102’s current resident, undetectable by the wider population due to being tuned to an impossible radio station.4 The signal transcripts have been provided below, as they give context into how a keyholder could interact with and utilize SCP-102’s capabilities.
TIMESTAMP: August 12th, 1989 10:38PM
Is this thing on? God, it's happening again. Losing my mind or whatever one wants to call it—and I shouldn’t be, not like this, not when the new Marshall and Carter heirs are coming into their own.
Where have my years gone? Coming here to get away from it all—what does that make me in their eyes? What will they think of when they hear my name, my position? Why can’t they understand my importance to this company? Will they see me the way Darke does, as some—some asset, accountant, a tool to be used, all with a few annoying drawbacks? I, I—
<Silence for seven seconds.>
…This house is far too empty, but it’s the only place where I can think. I know it’s all illusion, but I don’t care. I just need my head to be quiet, I need my thoughts to wear like my old clothes again. The clothes I had from way back then, under Chappell, under the Spirit, under…under…
<A deep and heavy sigh.>
I miss that bastard. I miss that enigmatic look in his eye, the devious ambition on his face when we had to get down to work. There was something about him. We brow-beat Capone back so many times and for what? For what? For us to go out with a whimper? A waffling sniffle? For our whole gang to fall apart, for me to end up a fucking—fucking—
Hogarth. Why do you stutter like you’re a kid? Get it together, you're not some…vermin. Not like the people who live in houses like this.
I think I’ll have my driver take me out to ██████████5 tomorrow. Perhaps I can have find something interesting there.
TIMESTAMP: August 13th, 1989 11:57PM
Slipping through walls makes me…think. About the house, about…it feels like being unreal. Sends chills through me, being nothing like that—I wonder if that’s included in the disclaimer people sign for the key. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s more side-effects the paperwork doesn’t mention.
██████████ is about as I expected. I stood there in the living rooms of rich HOA types, the sort of places with no life, only whitewashed pristine surfaces and smooth polish. Places of scandal hidden behind polished furniture that’s just there to brag about how much dough you got, no quality. It’s all overblown value and no craftsmanship. The sixties were better than this, I tell you.
These types have existed for as long as wealth has been a thing. I certainly haven't seen them change in the… over a century I've been around. And I’m one of them, but I didn’t ask to be here. I didn’t ask Darke for employment, he took me, took me when I—when I was at my—
<A long, shaky sigh, followed by the sound of something being chopped into powder.>
What’s more dishonest than these homes and appearances, is them thinking they’re good. Holy. Good Christian men and women. I saw a family today, a stay at home wife, couple of kids…the husband wasn’t away at work, though. He was away at the hospital. At least, that’s what makes most sense, based on the letters of condolences and good wishes on the living room table, and the wife leading her kids in prayer for dear old dad.
I’m not gonna speculate on what’s ailing him. Probably something bad, probably something the company could cure. It’s the prayer that’s getting to me, crawling into my head like mice in a rotting wall.
<A short, bitter laugh. >
To think that God cares. Fucking foolish idea. God doesn’t give a fuck, if he exists at all. I wish I knew whether he was somewhere up there, or maybe down here in this pigsty with us, or whether he ever existed at all. Maybe we killed him. Maybe Percival killed and ate him long before I was born. Either way, God abandons everyone when things get bad.
The God I prayed to in the trenches never did a thing about the Great War. Not the starvation, the famines, not the endless hours of waiting for Hell to come, not the gas that clung to your uniform and burned you long after you’d fled. Nor did He step in when the politicians decided they hadn't had enough and the second war came around. He hasn’t taken me or any of my ilk down from the top of the ladder, either. That mistake's probably going to cause some other war, isn't it? Europe has supposedly made peace with itself, but I don’t believe in those idiots for a second, personally.
To think I almost took vows for Him. I get he's not one to intervene much, past the Old Testament, but as time goes on, it feels more and more like it's just His faithful covering for Him. If I was covering for Him.
And yet for all of the thorns in my heart…I…
…The kids…
<Nine seconds of silence. Soon, the sounds of soft crying begin.>
…Why am I…?
Stop. Just…stop. A stained suit is the last thing I need.
Why won’t this—this—
<Silence for ten seconds.>
…Fuck it.
<Loud inhaling and snorting sounds.>
I always come back to you, don't I? And to think some powder is the only one who cares…
TIMESTAMP: August 14th, 1989 09:17AM
This house feels like it’s watching me. Every window into my soul, every closet into my heart. I haven’t touched most of it yet—do I deserve to?
In, and out, in, and out. They don’t know I’m in their living room, a ghost in the walls like their machines’ circuitry snaking through their house.
It should amuse me, make me feel more, but it doesn’t. And this sort of thing used to, it used to back when Chappell was installing refrigerators in his home, when the dock boys were experimenting with new ways to keep their catch fresher longer for restaurants. I watched every new home-machine pop up and excite the masses, excite even rugged old men like us. Finally, we could keep ice without needing a cantrip on our person or a spell glad to freeze your hand off if the ink rubbed you the wrong way—
I’ve lived too long. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t know if I can wish myself dead—but this contract, Darke’s contract—it bleeds me into myself, into the cracks and corners of my brain. Where death should have come but hasn't. The years are beginning to slur silently as silt does on a sandbed, and it just…makes me wonder. It makes me wonder if I’ll be a person by the time my extra time is up, by the time the spell has come and gone…
Why did I say yes? Darke, tell me. Why did I say yes to you? You remember better than I do; unlike me, you were sober. My work is all that keeps me together, now, but the employees view me as one does a mangy coyote. A squirrel electrocuting itself on a power line—I can’t help but wonder if they’re waiting on me to encounter the same fate. If they see my body as naught but dust, trickling down over account receivables and margin equity.
How much time do I have left? You gave me the exact number, but how much longer can my soul keep up?
Will you mourn me when I am gone?
Will anyone?
TIMESTAMP: August 15th, 1989 12:35PM
Your dirty little habits you think when nobody is watching…
It’s funny, isn't it? People get messy when the eyes leave, at least in their mind—it entertained me when I was younger, but now, it only reminds me of how empty the world is. Has become. Reality isn't much better. This house I'm in looks like any other in a neighborhood, lets me do something others already do halfway with ephemeral gossip and proper positioning. Something I used to do, better than I do now.
This man I watched today—he lives about fifteen miles from here—he’s keeping this awful little thing from his wife. Doing coke because his performance in bed and at work is lacking. He takes his boss yelling at him and then comes home to the most ungrateful ingrate of a house—
<Snorting noises.>
Nghh… If only he’d stop and think. Realize that’s only going to make things worse, going send you spiralling down a drain you’ll never crawl out of. Heroin or anything else would be better than cocaine. The shivers, the shakes, the way the mind races—“salaryman’s drug” my ass. Were we created to work, work, work all the time?
<Deep breaths.>
Whatever. The bill will come for him eventually. It’ll cut him on the money he burns, against the house equity he’s borrowing to fuel that lifestyle. Everyone's got something fucked up in them, that we've got to live with; I wonder what it'll look like when his implodes on him.
Better to be alone. Better to be alone, rely on no one, because what good is family if it’s destined to fall apart?
No lovers, no God, no nothing.
TIMESTAMP: August 16th, 1989 03:54AM
I know I shouldn’t. Every addict knows it’s a bad thing. Those that don’t won’t stay like that for long, or if they do, they end up dead.
All that progress…I was clean for eleven months, no heroin, no other opiates, nothing. But this house’s emptiness just…makes my head spin. Teetering over, at the edge of the cliff I've been on for Lord knows how long. There's a sick, sticky foam on the sand below me. I hope it won't affect the fall—the landing, I suppose.
But I can’t help myself. I just had to be here. I needed to be here…I needed to grasp…something to get away from the ghosts in my head. Nothing else has worked, not even the new things Percival has me on; the medications, the therapists, the doctors.
That’s the part they don't tell you. Nothing works to get rid of that hollow nothing in you. You can get clean, tidy up your suit, slick back your hair, but in the end it all won’t matter. You’ll just ache to be out like a light every day, yearning for the high where you can’t give a shit about anything and who you are doesn’t really matter.
<Deep, contemplative sigh.>
So why do I even try?
Who am I doing this for?
Chappell? A bunch of dead gang members? These therapists have done nothing like they did for me. I was clean. I was clean, for more than just a couple months at a time, I'd been so for years by the time Percival got to us, got to me. And that's despite all the opium dens we had—it feels ironic to say aloud, but Chappell gave me things to do. People to talk to. Meaningful work to keep up with, not the useless numbers game Darke cares about. Always numbers going up, and up, and up, that's all he makes me do, all he wants me to care about. I've seen gamblers healthier than the heads of this company.
…I’m reminded of something else now, looking at how high and clean this house’s ceiling is.
Rat Park. Experiment from the 70s. A lot of fear going around at that time of what drugs would do to people, so when that experiment came around, word spread.
Scientists at the time were testing the addictive effects of drugs by shoving rats, alone, into cages with nothing but themselves and two water bottles; one clean, and another laced with a drug. Almost always, the rats would favour the drugged water, drinking themselves to overdose.
But, if you've ever had rats in your walls, you'd know they're social animals. They need other rats, it's how they live in the wild. So this other scientist makes an alternate version of the old experiment, putting rats in a larger enclosure. Chew toys, hiding places, tunnels to scamper around in, other rats to socialise with, fight with, fuck. And the same two bottles of water.
And almost no rat drinks from the drugged water, this time around. Some take a taste, and decide they prefer clean water. Even when the drugged water got sweetened to mask the bitterness, the rats avoided it in favour of the clean.
<A moment of silence, followed by a bitter laugh.>
The office parties. They always remind me of how little I have, like those empty cars in the concrete driveways. And they call this excess, they call this living the life? Exchanging formalities and polite smiles. Even the vice doesn't feel real here. Money can't buy what I once knew, what I once had—it can't buy me anything but a box with a drug-laced water bottle.
Darke. Please. Let me leave. Let this house rest; it whispers, it seethes, we both know what we see in here is not what really is. Let my contract lapse, I'm through. I need to find the rats again, I need vice that's real, I need what your money can't get me. These walls are meant to fall, so let them. Time has a job to do.
TIMESTAMP: August 17th, 1989 11:59PM
<Angry mutterings and the sounds of a bag rustling. Items being laid out on a table.>
There was—it was a quiet home. Curtains drawn, lights dim, everything understated. I figured there might be an interesting secret or two hidden there, maybe an unfaithful spouse or something, right? Maybe even a filthy threesome?
Fuck me, did I find something. I found—I found—
<A bitter, scornful laugh.>
Mayor of the town. Handsome, upstanding, black hair, clean-cut. Father of three, gives half of his disposable income to food banks and charity, loving relationship with his high-school sweetheart of ten years.
I found him fucking his boyfriend while she was off at the country club.
His boyfriend. Pretty lithe thing, with a head of red curls. Meeting in the secrecy of the other’s home, with black and white silks on, garterbelts… God, I wondered for a second if they were going to go all the way, bring out the leather and whips. Would have been fitting. Perhaps more honest, and a better show.
So what did they do instead? Just murmured sweet nothings to each other hoping nobody would hear. Call me 'nobody' then, because I’m sure the company would agree with you the moment they don’t have to work with me. Sickly fucking sweet, the way they talked, the way those hands touched and touched and touched.
That look in the eyes of his—the mayor. God. Absolutely smitten, so much so he wouldn’t have seen me even if they could. Too enraptured to see anything else but him, weren’t you? Must think you’re the luckiest man in the world. Must think this’ll last forever. Must think your God can’t see you.
<The slam of a hand hitting the table. Some glass rolls and shatters.>
What are you going to do? When he leaves you, when he’s gone, when the neighbours see you and rat to the cops? When they take him away? You’ll be alone. Best hope your family doesn’t hear, or you won’t have a shoulder to lean on. Best hope your kids don’t see, or else they’ll shun you when you’re old for being a faggot. What’ll you do when you’re humiliated, not a soul out there who gives a fuck about you?
I—
What will—you do without him?
<Silence for five seconds.>
You look like you love him, a lot. The way you cradled his face in your hands, spoke to him soft, toyed with his curls to make him laugh.
<A trembling breath, and a sound indiscernible between a laugh or a sob.>
Why couldn’t I do that, Charles?6 Was there something wrong with me? You just wanted to be a man, didn’t want to carry another secret alongside that, but… I could have helped. My job was to keep your secrets. Keep the damn secrets of everyone in the Spirit. Make sure that nothing but dust found you, that our enemies were blind to the big surprise. You wouldn’t be hiding us—what we were—on your own. If you’d just— If you’d just—
If only I’d—
<Silence for seven seconds, broken by the sounds of crying.>
Would we have become something, if you’d gotten to live a bit longer? Would you have dared love a man? We'd have had to hide, but I could help—
If only I’d died with you. In the Spirit, before Darke got to sink his claws into me. You’d hate me for betraying you but I—I was terrified in the moment, high off my ass, I didn't want to feel death again. But I’d gladly take that despair of that now over—over this.
<A shaky sob forces him to pause.>
Fuck— I… What am I meant to do, Charles?
What am I meant to do without you? You’ve been gone for decades.
I’m talking to a ghost of you.
No, do I even get that?
I…I…
<The crying quiets, but persists for the rest of the recording, interrupted by indiscernible murmurs.>
Please.
Just come back, please.
Come back, even if it’s to kill me.
TIMESTAMP: August 18th, 1989 07:37AM
<A loud crashing of glass. Indiscernible cursing follows, echoed by sobbing and the repetition of the word “Charles”.>
<Everything quiets after twenty-seven seconds of altercation. A small plastic bag rustles as something soft hits a flat surface. Something is crushed into powder, and the sounds of inhaling follow. A long sigh.>
Come find me if you can, Darke. Last chance, like old times.
<The rest of the eleven minute and twenty-seven second broadcast is punctuated by snorting, faint laughter, and coughing until something falls off a chair and breaks more glass, triggering the thaumic sensors inside.>
Ten minutes after the final radio signal ended, ██ armored cars appeared at the scene identified as belonging to GoI-012. PoI-012-017 stepped out of the frontmost vehicle, proceeding inside SCP-102 while recorded by onsite surveillance saying only a single sentence.
Troublesome little thing, aren’t you Mr. Cartwright?
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