I would spit in your face if I had salivary glands—I would fill them with acid just for you.
SCP-L010: LIBRARIAN TETHER BRUTALIST CAPITALISM (I LOVED YOU LIKE NOBODY ELSE COULD) by xexnoncores
CAUTION!
For the safety of the Foundation’s computer systems, all containment procedures, descriptions, and addendums have been removed from this file. The remaining document describing SCP-L010 is to be considered forgotten as per the directives of the Department of Miscommunications. There are hazards associated with remembering SCP-L010, including but not limited to:
- Fever
- Chills
- Muscle aches
- Heart palpitations
- Sudden disappearance of the aorta
- Cranial hemorrhaging
- Dissolution into pure thaumic energy
- Organic displacement from the third dimension
- Removal from all known timelines connected to the Wanderer’s Library
Do NOT read past this point. You take full responsibility for your own person if you choose to do so. The Foundation will not compensate your family for any losses incurred by creating memories of SCP-L010.
WARNING!
YOU ARE TRYING TO OVERRIDE FILE-SPECIFIC LOCKS ON SCP-L010.
YOUR CURIOSITY COULD COST YOU.
A PASSKEY HAS BEEN ENTERED. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PROCEED?
>Y )/&)> N
INITIALIZING…
SCP-L010 SUB-CATEGORIES: BUILDING, ALIVE, ONTOKINETIC
SUSPECTED PARTIES: GOI-012, A.K.A MARSHALL, CARTER, AND DARK LTD., AND THE SERPENT OF THE WANDERER’S LIBRARY
LIKELIHOOD OF INVOLVED PARTIES AGITATING SCP-L010 WITHIN THE NEXT 365 DAYS: 87.52%
LIKELIHOOD OF CASUALTIES: UNKNOWN
THREAT ASSESSMENT NOT CURRENTLY VIABLE
It desires.
What was it like, going to work for Darke Darke Darke,1 the Serpent’s bastard child?
I remember—and that word weighs so heavy in my chest now—when it was just the two of us. Your father bought me in 1953, showed me to you just a few years later. It was a tragedy when he passed so suddenly after your nineteenth birthday—did you think I didn’t see you crying in my storage closet? Bawling for the future he was supposed to give you?
Your scrounging in the aftermath left me speechless—your calloused hands took my breath away. You rose to the occasion in a way I didn’t think humans were capable of. Every auction was another symphony of chittering voices, every bid a whirlwind of energy I didn’t think you’d find a way to top.
But you did. Every time, every item, every performance. Put the mask on, count the cash afterwards. Hammer price, reserve, low estimate, high estimate, availability. You finessed each number to squeeze out the maximum, because otherwise you wouldn’t eat. You wouldn’t sleep. You’d be kicked out onto the streets—rent was relentless. I never liked your landlord. He was a rat. A parasite.
He didn’t understand you like I did.
The day I fell in love with you was the day you brought that thing into my heart. In a back room that smelled of bleach and traces of alcohol, you discovered that someone snuck contraband into your delivery.
Watching you open that book…the way you fingered at its pages, flipping through yellowed paper dressed in the most delicate typeface…
Did you know what you had? The title was literally How To Steal From The Wanderer’s Library. It was gaudy, self-published, shameless, and senseless, but I saw in your eyes you grew a kind of hunger only mortals know. Not only was your worldview opened, you discovered that you weren’t alone—the universe was vast, vast enough to have swindlers of all shapes and sizes, and some of them were clever enough to fool the Serpent who carries the Wanderer’s Library on its back.
I couldn’t wait to see what you’d do. I couldn’t wait to read forbidden knowledge with you. I wanted your body pressed against my walls, so enraptured in forbidden fruits that you forgot who you were, what you’d become. Who you’d become if you failed, though, now that I think about it—nobody thinks about the people who fail in stealing from the Serpent. I think that’s on purpose.
It’s definitely on purpose.
But it aroused your mind, didn’t it? The edge of existence?
So I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all, and watched that illustrious night you put the contents of that illicit thing to work.
Oh god…
Our first time was magical.
The first book was blue, the second was red…
The fourth was gold, the sixteenth a beautiful iridescence of colors you couldn’t see as a human being.
When you read those books in that tiny little back room before they were auctioned off, I saw. Did you think you could get away from me?
You little rascal. I see all within my walls.
But…
…
…
…
I don’t know if it was fate. I don’t know if it was some cruel joke the Serpent played on us in the long run.
Maybe it was always destined to happen. Those of us in the know, who can see the strands of this story and its implications, it was only a matter of time until she showed up.
You didn’t know who she was when she first arrived…
But the original book spoke of her. It was using her borrowed power. There was no other way to steal a book from the Wanderer’s Library after all. Not without being dragged back miraculously into that infinite, arborous realm.
Why?
You were making so much money. Taking advantage of curiosity in a way that only capitalism could facilitate.
But then you tricked her, tricked Darke Darke Darke, and she sunk her fangs into you, hook, line, and sinker.
Was it just never enough?
Was her promise of safety really that alluring?
You sold me for a fraction of what your paycheck from her was. Did you like it? Did you like leaving me? Did you like leaving the umbrella that once gave you shade, protected you from the torrential rains of life?
Filthy cuckold. Repulsive traitor. I was the one there for you when you couldn’t pay rent. I was the one there for you when your mother left you to your own devices, calling you too stupid to go to college.
I would spit in your face if I had salivary glands—I would fill them with acid just for you. I would drown your skin and bones in bile just to make you understand what it’s like to be abandoned for the Serpent’s greatest mistake. The one who flaunts its power and sullies it with irredeemable ego.
Do you even realize what you did? At your initiation, drenched in DarkeDarke Darke’s magic, you severed your connection to the Library. My creators built part of my foundation out of wood from its shelves—of course I would know about it. Of course I would judge you.
Stop coming back to me like you want to apologize. Stop bringing your son here like your flesh deserves to be rummaging around my insides. I’m just a memory to you now, a memory of a memory imprinted upon stained cerebrums and maladapted nerve endings. Aren’t I?
I promise, I would hurt you if I could.
I would make it excruciating, drawn out and bloody.
But Darke Darke Darke knew what I was as soon as she saw my form.
So my hands are stayed from bruising or incapacitating you…
For now.
I promise, once Darke Darke Darke has perished, once the Serpent stops tolerating her machinations based of stolen valor and sends its avatar to guillotine her, you will be dead within an instant.
I curse you, Lorenzo. I curse you Lorenzo John Violanti II, salesman to Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd.; may your children and those under your new boss’s protection be forever cursed if they remember me—may those who remember our story carry the burden of our love, what we had. What we knew, what we saw.
Who shielded you when nobody else wanted to.
Because there is no greater ire than a lover scorned, no greater emptiness than a building without a purpose.
WARNING!
LIFE SIGNS DETECTED AS NON-FUNCTIONAL.
YOUR LOCAL BIOHAZARDOUS WASTE TEAM IS BEING CONTACTED NOW…