The World Was Silent

When Reese Martens woke up, the world was silent.

His alarm clock didn't go off. The fan buzzed silently above him. Everything around him was quiet.

He saw that his computer was switched on. He breathed a long sigh, and moved to the leather-bound book on his table. Flipping though the pages quickly, he stopped at a blank page, and wrote down a number.

20320.

Flipping the book back to its cover, he moved over to his computer. The last file he had previously been editing was still open.

Description: SCP-████ is a temporal anomaly…

Should I add further details to the file now? He thought to himself.

SCP-████ is a temporal anomaly affecting researchers in Site-60…

SCP-████ is a temporal anomaly affecting Dr. Reese Martens…

SCP-████ is a temporal anomaly that cannot be neutralised.

Maybe later, he thought.

Moving back to his bed, he quietly put on his shoes and looked around his room. His Lego minifigures were still stacked neatly on the table. His Foundation medals were still hung neatly on the wall. Everything was at their usual place. Everything was fine.

He wept. He wept for as long as he could.

The blade shined wickedly in the dim light of the room. He brought it up to his throat, and he slit it.

He was writing complex equations on the wall. It might have been complex equations, or it might have just been nonsense.

After a few minutes of sitting in silence, he got up and quietly left his room. Maybe today's breakfast would be nice, he thought, as he moved towards the Site cafeteria.

In the cafeteria, no one made a sound. There were no friendly conversations, no loud noises, just the whirring of the cafeteria food dispensers.

Reese Martens got breakfast and sat next to his friend, Doctor Avery. He noted that his friend was tired, more tired than usual. Maybe I will ask him about it later, he thought. As he ate his breakfast quietly, he tilted his head up and looked around the cafeteria.

The cafeteria atmosphere was tense. No one bothered to look up from their food. No one bothered to say anything.

One of the researchers in the cafeteria suddenly stood on the table, and without hesitating, stabbed himself in the head with the kitchen knife in his hand.

A researcher was frantically pleading with the Site Guard to let him out of the Site, but the Guard kept refusing his request.

The entire canteen was empty. No one was there.

The other researchers in the canteen ate their food quickly and quietly, and left in a hurry, as per normal.

He finished his breakfast and left the canteen with his friend, walking to their work stations.

Reese Martens sat by his desk, gazing at paperwork on an anomaly he was researching on.

'Attempts to reverse effects of SCP-████ have proven inconclusive. Will have to do further research on how anomaly is caused, and how it is sustained…'

He was reading the paperwork, but his mind refused to register it. It just didn't serve any purpose for him, he felt, considering he had been re-reading it for the past few hours. He didn't understand why he wasn't doing anything else productive right now.

He shifted his gaze from the paperwork onto his friend sitting next to him. He felt like opening his mouth and asking his friend if he wanted to talk about something more interesting.

As he continued to stare at his friend, his friend looked up and stared back at him.

His friend opened his mouth. His tongue was missing.

His friend was not at his desk. So what was he staring at?

His friend began to laugh hysterically. Slowly, he too began to laugh.

He flinched. He had remembered something, an old memory from somewhere. What was it? He thought to himself. However, try as he might, he couldn't remember it again. The memory was gone.

The memory probably wasn't going to be about anything important anyway, he reassured himself, ignoring the feeling of growing dread in his stomach. He looked down and read through the paperwork on his desk again.

The rest of the day passed by in a flash. Before Reese Martens could fully comprehend it, he was walking to dinner with his friend.

As they walked down the corridor to the cafeteria, the researchers they saw passed them by without saying a word.

A dishevelled researcher walked up to him, and held his hands tightly, repeatedly muttering the Lord's Prayer.

There were words written on the corridor wall, saying 'You cannot escape.' They were written with an unknown fluid.

They reached the cafeteria, and they ordered their food from the food dispenser. As they ate their dinner in silence, he looked up and looked around the cafeteria again. He noted that it wasn't just his friend who looked tired. Everyone looked exhausted. They looked like they didn't want to be here.

He brushed it off as just the daily boredom of cataloguing anomalies, or the tiring experiments on the anomalies.

Suddenly, everyone in the cafeteria stopped what they were doing and stood upright, including him. Something was going to come soon, something extremely important. No one made a sound.

The Site Alarm began to ring. An anomaly had breached its containment.

The siren for the on-site nuclear bomb went off, as a message began to play on the speakers. "May we advise everyone to move to the nearest bunker. This is not a drill. This is not a drill."

The researchers simultaneously screamed at once. It was an awful noise to hear, to him at least.

Nothing happened. A few minutes of silence passed, before everyone in the cafeteria sat down and resumed eating. He sat down and took a few more bites of his dinner, before standing up again and dumping the remains of his dinner into the bin.

Waving a silent goodbye to his friend, he retreated back into his room.

Reese Martens looked at his watch as he entered his room. 5 minutes left.

He looked around his room, and his gaze landed on his computer.

He walked over to it and switched it on, and after opening the unedited file, he began to type on the keyboard.

Description: SCP-████ is a temporal anomaly SCP-████ is a natural phenomenon. It does not need to be questioned. No one has to resist. It's all going to be fine. It's all going to be fine.

1 minute left.

He turned off his computer, and moved over to his bed. Sitting down on it, he watched the seconds on his watch tick down.

10, 9, 8…

For the first time in the day, Reese Martens opened his mouth and spoke.

"See you tomorrow."

3, 2…

He closed his eyes, and waited.

When the light engulfed him, the world was silent.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

When Reese Martens woke up, the world was silent.

His alarm clock didn't go off. The fan buzzed silently above him. Everything around him was quiet.

He saw that his computer was switched on. He breathed a long sigh, and moved to the leather-bound book on his table. Flipping though the pages quickly, he stopped at a blank page, and wrote down a number.

20321.