The SCP Experience - Before Life Slips Away Forever | SCP-1498

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

SCP Foundation EUCLID class object, SCP-1498: Before Life Slips Away Forever This story was derived from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1498, and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Author: Matt Doggett Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewDoggettAuthor/ Website/Newsletter sign up: matthewdoggettauthor.com New Book Releases: https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-G-Doggett/e/B08FD5378Z DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #drscp #scp #scpfoundation #doctorscp #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories #scpexplained #whatisscp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And enjoy. And enjoy. Viarai. The voice that we love. I can't move my body. A searing and ever-present pain clouds my mind. Something is broken. Something important.

I just can't tell what. I try to move my mouth. To speak, to call out for help. But all that escapes me is a pained moan. I can hear footsteps behind me. Someone coming down the stairs. Someone to help me. To call the police.

To get me out of this hellish house. This nightmare place where nothing makes sense. My mind recoils at the memories of the last several minutes. Best not to think about it. Just focus on getting help from the person who is now stepping up next to me. I manage in a raspy voice. Help! The house is dark.

All the shades are drawn to keep out the noontime sunshine. It smells musty and sour, with a chemical tinge of mothballs. The air is heavy with silence. There's no one in the living room, kitchen, or dining room in the three-story house. And no one answered my calls when I first came in. So I head up the stairs to the second floor. It's Deputy Patrick! I call out once again, thinking someone will hear me.

I know that several older folks live in the house. Maybe they don't have their hearing aids in. The first door I come to is open slightly, so I push it gently, glancing in at a bedroom. There's a man on the bed, sleeping with his mouth open, snoring lightly. He's probably in his 80s, given the sparse hair on his head, the liver spots on his arms, and his wrinkled skin. He wears pajamas that look like they need a good washing, or maybe a good burning. The room is pungent, with the sour smell of body odor emanating from a man that is, in all likelihood, not long for this world.

I catch movement in my peripheral vision. Turning, I think I'll see a cat. But what I see is an animal of a very different sort. It's a sheep. Only, it's not a real sheep. It's life-sized, but in place of its head, there's an old baby blue rotary phone. The kind of phone where you had to poke your finger into the hole for the number you wanted and spin it all the way around.

Then you had to repeat the process for all the numbers to make a call. The sheep's body looks as if it's made entirely of curly phone cord. It's clearly a strange piece of art, so there's no way it moved. It must have been a trick of the light or something. there is a muted television set to a news channel atop a dresser. Maybe the picture changed, making me think I saw movement where there was none. I stepped toward the sheep and inspect it, looking at its feet. They're made of old black phone handsets. It's one way to recycle outdated technology, I guess. Looking around the room, I see that this is the only piece of art the guy has.

The rest of the room looks pretty normal. family pictures, medicine bottles, a humidifier, and a collection of furniture probably older than the guy on the bed. Anyway, I'm not here to judge a man for his strange modern art. Maybe a grandkid gave it to him. I exit the room, pulling the door back into place just the way I found it. I'm here because my girlfriend is worried about her grandmother, who lives here with several other seniors. Apparently, she refused to move into a nursing home, so this place was an acceptable compromise. The old folks here look out for each other. Sandra, my girlfriend, said that her grandmother Mariah's bedroom is on the second floor, so I moved down the hallway

to the next door, knocking lightly. I get no response, so I try the knob. It turns, so I push the door open and move inside. It's another bedroom. The bed is to my left, but empty. In the middle of the room is a chair facing away from me at a television, which is off. I can see a cloud of white hair over the top of the chair. Hello? Mrs. Hampton? I say, moving closer. No answer. I move into the center of the room, bringing the woman into full view. It's Mariah. She looks just like the picture Sandra sent me, fluffy white hair, a round face, and a small nose. Her eyes are closed, and I can see that she's breathing, which is a relief.

But while I let the old guy down the hall keep sleeping, I need to wake Mariah up. Sandra wants to hear from her. So I lean forward and touch her on the shoulder. Her eyes and mouth shoot open at the same time. Her faded blue eyes are filled with fear, and the sound that comes out of her mouth is a strange scream that hurts my ears. No, it's not a scream. It's a high-pitched dial tone. unmistakably mechanical, somehow coming out of this old woman's mouth.

I stumble back, scared by the strange sound, unsure what to do. I yell over the dial tone, asking her if she's okay. Suddenly, the noise stops. Mariah's expression hasn't changed. Her mouth and eyes are still wide. She still looks scared. The silence roars for a long moment. I take a hesitant step toward her, trying to think what could cause her to make such a noise.

Maybe it's some kind of hearing aid interference, and I just thought it was coming out of her mouth. Mariah gags, her upper body jerking forward, and her neck convulsing as if she's choking on something. Oh, God, I say, rushing toward her and leaning over to pick her up. I need to get her to her feet to perform the heimlich. She weighs much more than I anticipated for such a small woman, but I get her up out of the chair, maneuvering behind her and clasping my hands in front of her just under her rib cage. She's still gagging and choking. I pull my fists in and up, trying to force whatever is in her throat out with a rush of air from her lungs.

She's still making the awful choking noises. I do it again. The noise changes. I move her body one way and mind the other so I can look over her shoulder at her face. What I see coming out of her mouth is impossible. Completely impossible. It's the handset to an old phone, like the one on the monitor. like the one on the modern artwork in the guy's room down the hall.

Only this one is cream-colored instead of baby blue. The earpiece is sticking out of her mouth. I put her back down in the chair and grab the earpiece, pulling on it. Mariah gags again, and I feel the mouthpiece come loose from her throat. I pull it out, but encounter resistance before it's completely out of her mouth. I realize there's a twisted cord attached to it, a cord that's running down her throat. There's nothing else for me to do but keep pulling while Mariah keeps gagging.

An impossibly long cream-colored phone cord comes out of her body. For a moment, I think there will be a rotary phone base coming up next, but the cord finally ends. As soon as it's out of her mouth, Mariah's eyes close again, and she slumps in the chair. My eyes move from Mariah down to the handset and the attached cord on the floor. The cord must be at least 15 feet. long, longer when stretched to its fullest.

I reached toward my belt for my portable radio, but quickly realized I left it down in the cruiser. So I reach into my pocket for my phone to call 911. As I pull the phone out, it starts to vibrate with a call from an unknown number. I decline the call and navigate to the phone app so I can call for an ambulance. I managed to press the 9, but then another call comes in, another unknown number. Swiping to decline the call, I try again, but again I'm interrupted by an incoming call. Stepping back over to the chair, I put two fingers of my right hand to Mariah's neck.

Her pulse is strong. I shake her gently and call her name, but she doesn't wake up. In my left hand, my phone continues to vibrate with constant calls. I need to get to my radio. I rushed through the bedroom doorway and into the hall, freezing as I see two phone sheep standing there, blocking my way to the stairs. They don't have any eyes, but I still get the feeling they're staring at me. Don't be crazy, I tell myself. They're inanimate objects. Someone put them in the hallway. Someone is messing with you, messing with these old folks. I press on, moving to the

edge of the hallway to get past these strange figures. But as I get close, they both move, aggressively jumping to block my way. The little bells inside the telephones jingle faintly in a strange parody of a sheep buying. The movement is too much for my addled mind. My fight or flight response doesn't know what to do with the information it has been given. My adrenaline sky rockets and I turn to run. More scared of these moving bunches of phone parts than I have ever been of criminals, wife beaters, or murderers. I hear the jingling of the phone bells as the things follow me down the hallway. I open the last door at the end of the hall and slam it behind me.

Turning around, I see it's another bedroom, dark, just like the others. From the decor, it looks like an old woman's room. There's a figure in the bed, covered in a blanket. From where I am, her head is blocked from view by a lamp on the bedside table. Ma'am? I say, searching the room for a phone, an actual phone I can use. I still have my phone in my hand, and it's still vibrating. I get no response from the woman. My heart goes cold.

Not again, I think. As I step closer, the woman's head comes into view. Where hair should be coming out of her head, long, curly lengths of phone cord are protruding. Her left ear has been replaced by a handset mouthpiece, and her right ear by an earpiece. This isn't real, I say, staring at her. It's a nightmare. It can't be real. This doesn't happen.

This doesn't. Her eyelids shoot open. But she has no eyeball. there. Where her left eye should be, there's only a flat plastic disc with a red number five and three black letters above it, JKL. Her right eye is a red number two with the black letters ABC over it, just where they would be on a rotary phone dial. She sits up in bed, smiling. She opens her mouth as if to laugh, and the sound of a ringing telephone escapes. Dropping my phone out of fear, I run out of the room, surprised to find

the hallway empty. My only thought is to get out of this house, hoping this hellish nightmare will end soon. I sprint down the hallway, slowing only when I get to the stairs. And as I take the first step down, I hear a faint, jingling sound behind me. I'm rammed in the back, the feeling accompanied by the sudden sound of a jostled bell, like the sound of an old rotary phone makes when you slam the handset down on it in anger. My footing goes out from under me, and I tumble down the stairs, smacking my head first on the railing and then on the hardwood floor as I reach the bottom. I can't move my body. A searing and ever-present pain clouds my mind. Something is broken, something important. I just can't tell what. I try to move my mouth, to speak, to call out for help,

but all that escapes me is a pained moan. But I can hear footsteps behind me, someone coming down the stairs. Hope flares inside me like a gasoline-doused fire. Someone's coming to help me, to get me out of this house. Help, I manage in a raspy voice. Help. My right cheek is against the floor, allowing me to see a small slice of the hallway. In that slice, a sheep appears, seeming to look down at me with pity. Sock-clad feet come into view below pajama-shrouted legs. I recognize the pajamas, It's the old man whose room I first went into. You took quite the fall there, the man says, his voice gravely with age. Help me. I'll see what I can do, he says, but he doesn't move.

I can see that the sheep is still there. And I watch as the man's hand reaches down and lifts the handset off the rotary phone, where a real sheep's head would be. He crouches down in front of me and puts the handset to my. ear. I try to move my head away, but I can't. I can do nothing but listen as three rings come out of the earpiece. Then a voice comes on, a woman's voice. Thank you for calling the Honor Roy Collective, as pleasant as possible. We're sorry for any inconvenience your impending doom has caused you. Stay on the line for instructions on how to enjoy your last dream before

life slips away from you forever. It's never too early to plan your summer story in your with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. SCP 1498 is a collection of 30 autonomous bundles of phone cords and handsets, assembled in such a way that they resemble sheep. Instances of SCP 1498 are fully ambulatory and will wander their containment chambers aimlessly.

If a sapient organism attempts to use one of the phone handsets present on SCP 1498, they will hear three rings, followed by a voice identifying themselves as an operator for the Honoroy Collective. This voice will instruct the subject on various options they have for dreaming, and make suggestions for enhanced dreaming experiences. Following the completion of this call, the subject will lose consciousness for nine hours. As subjects are repeatedly exposed to SCP 1498, they may experience changes to their body and mental state. Subjects affected by this SCP will express a desire to sleep as frequently as possible,

preferring the use of SCP 1498 if they can. While asleep, portions of the subject's cranium and skull will be replaced with portions of telephones similar to those found on SCP 1498. This is manifested in a variety of ways, including subjects coughing up telephones, with cords extending into their esophagus. Telephone wires growing in place of hair. Ringing devices found on rotary telephones found within the subject's ears, which may ring continuously. Vocalizations were placed with dial tones. Eventually, a rotary phone will assemble itself on the subject's head

out of all the components that have been grown within and on their bodies. Subjects will display the same intelligence as instances of SCP 1498, and are to be classified as instances of SCP 1498-1. Thus far, no attempt to restore the intelligence of an SCP 1498-1 instance has succeeded.