Your Guard

Good day, kid. Sit down, I won't bite ya'. Could I getcha' anything to drink? Water? Milk? Sorry, I'm not allowed to keep beer in here. The Site Director doesn't want us drunk on duty.

I'll cut to the chase for ya'. I've seen what you've been doing with the vampire girl while you're supposed to be guarding her. That "camera disable" button doesn't really do anything. You're not the first one to try something like that, and the ending's always the same. You don't want to know.

Now, if I was a good Christian man like all those people out there think I am, I would've emailed the six gigabytes of footage I have of you and her straight to the Site Director, and it would be an open-and-shut case. And by "shut", I mean shut right on your fingers, kid. But I didn't. You know why? I've been in your exact position, and I've decided to turn this into a learning opportunity, sport.

I said to sit down. I can still report you to the Site Director, least you can do is actually listen.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was a lot like you, kid. I was an up-and-coming agent for the Foundation's Infiltration Divison. I was a transfer from the CIA, and I was the best of the best. I did the Overseer's dirty work quickly, effectively, and painlessly. I rose from the coffee-getter-boy to full-time agent to MTF commando. Honestly, I probably could've ended up directin' my own site, if I kept chugging along as well.

Eventually, I was put on Village Idiots and deployed to capture SCP-3845. I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't heard of it; it's a relatively minor one, not a lot of people need to contain it, so not a lot of people see it. Basically, it was a big ball thing with arms, legs, and a face. It ran around, played with the children, that kind of thing. We eventually snatched it up and locked it up in Site-88.

They gave us one job and one job only: clean up the island, remove any trace of SCP-3845. We had twelve men, so we split up in groups of three. Keith and Clyde swore they saw something, though, so they ran off while I combed the area.

As I was walking around in some gravel, I saw a pile shaking. I thought it was a raccoon, or a snake. Maybe if I just left it be, I would be a lot better off than I am now, kid. If I had just left it be. But, I cleared the gravel off, and there was something under it. It was a little baby SCP-3845.

Its head was about the size of a grape, and it fit pretty easily into the palm of my hand. But other than that, it looked just like the thing we'd locked up in Site-88. It cooed a little too, like an actual baby. If I'd had an iota of common sense, that would've been it. It would've been slapped into a cage, shipped to Site-88, and I'd have never seen it again. But my grizzled heart managed to crawl out of its dusty, gray coffin and convinced me that whatever Site-88 had in store for it would be worse off than me chucking it into the ocean.

Besides, the big one was nice to the kids, and all. Matthew might've liked to have one to play with.

So, despite my common sense, I kept it. Being the mission coordinator meant that I could sneak a lot of things past security. I managed to sneak the baby past the security, and I took it home with me in my work bag. Marie, my wife, couldn't know about it; she wasn't in on the whole "veil" thing, and she still thought I was a very busy businessman. We had a closet in our house where we only kept our brooms; it was easy to hide it in a bucket in there.

Took me a while to figure out what that thing ate. It ate leaves, but I eventually figured out that the little fucker loved to eat lunch meat. I'd eat a sandwich everyday, and when I came home I'd give him a little bit of it. Eventually, I ran into a problem. You know how I said he could fit into the palm of my hand? Well, the little fucker didn't stay little for long.

Eventually, it got as big as a baseball, then a basketball. It wasn't satisfied with just my crumbs anymore. I had to start feeding it entire slabs of lunch meat; otherwise, it would start to cry, and I didn't want Marie to find out about it. After a while, it got too big for the bucket, and I had to lock it in the basement. I'd leave a whole turkey down there every once in a while; by the time I'd come back to put another down, all that was left was the bones.

Between my work as an agent, taking care of the thing and taking care of Matthew, I was exhausted every day. The killing blow came when they cut my salary. I think it was because of Project Gigas. Spending half of the economies' money will probably take its toll on you. The way my supervisors phrased it, it was either take it or go chase UFOs with the UIU. Of course, I took the pay cut, kid. Working with the UIU is essentially a death blow here.

Unfortunately, with my reduced pay, I wasn't able to buy a turkey every couple of days for the thing. I tried leaving leaves for it again, but it wouldn't take 'em. I guess he got too accustomed to meat. I considered letting him out into the wild, but I didn't want somebody to stumble on him and report him to the Foundation, and then I might be in trouble. He was gettin' to be pretty big too; he was about as big as a cow at that point.

One day, I didn't leave any food down there for him. We'd bought Matthew a new crib, and I didn't want to keep sneaking money out of the budget for chicken every two days. He started screaming, down there in the basement. Luckily, it was muffled, so whenever Marie heard it, she thought it was Matthew crying upstairs. I ignored those cries. Between you and me, kid, I was hoping that it'd just starve down there.

It stopped screaming, after a while. I thought it was dead, until I heard thumps coming from the basement. I think it was trying to get out. I padlocked the door. Marie got suspicious. I told her that the pipes were acting up, and I'd padlocked it to prevent the house from flooding. She bought it, but some part of me wished that she'd get down there and see the monster I'd brought into the house.

This went on until, one night, I woke up and heard a crash downstairs. My first thought was "burglars", so I grabbed my duty pistol and creeped downstairs. I saw nothing out of place, but eventually, I saw the fridge turned over. All the shit was scattered across the floor, even the food in drawers. The drawer where I kept all the lunchmeat was empty.

I heard Matthew screaming upstairs.

I ran up there as fast as I could, but I was too late. The fucker— he wasn't little by any stretch anymore— he'd managed to get into the, the nursery, and he was bent over the crib, and— and…

Sorry, sport. It's been five fucking long years since that happened, and I still haven't gotten over it. Give me a moment to catch my breath.

…

…

…there, I think I'm good.

So, the thing was about as tall as I was. It had red shit all over its mouth, and it looked me straight on with those black, flat eyes. We just stood there, locked in place for a few good seconds. And then it started screaming. I can't tell you for sure— I was delirious as hell— but its scream sounded exactly like Matthew’s.

At that point, my shock turned to rage. I hated that creature, and what it had caused me to lose. My only thought was to see that thing destroyed. I took out my gun, and unloaded my entire magazine right into that thing's head. It started leaking— not leaking, squirting— some black shit, like it was a balloon full of it. After 10 shots, it slumped to the floor like a floppy piece of rubber, and stopped moving.

I'd woken up Marie— along with half the neighborhood— with that barrage, and once she saw the— the skeleton, she started screaming too.

At that point, I decided to own up to the music. I called up Cleanup Crew, and told them my situation. They got on it ASAP. They gave everybody a cover story, cleaned up the nursery, and gave Marie some amnestics. They told her burglars got into the house and kidnapped Matthew.

The overseers wanted to fire me, but they decided that it was a good idea to keep me around as agent emeritus, to teach the newbies and the such. They stuck me in a position where I couldn't do too much harm— this backwater site— and I haven't been able to move up since.

If I have one thing to be proud of, it's that I can still teach the new agents a thing or two. Like you, kid. I've deleted the footage, and you should be able to get off scot-free. Take this as a warning, if nothing else. Don't let your guard down, like I did mine.