The SCP Experience - Deadly Dirge | SCP-5266

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

A deadly SCP anomaly weaponizes the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”—and when an insectoid monster demands forbidden knowledge, a wounded researcher must survive long enough for the song to kill. This story was derived from ⁠⁠https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5266⁠ and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. ⁠⁠https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/⁠⁠ Author: Matt Doggett * * * CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content not limited to intense themes, strong language, and depictions of violence intended for adults. Parental guidance is strongly advised for children under the age of 17. Listener discretion is advised.  #thescpexperience #scp #scpfoundation #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's starting. Leonard said, darting up from his chair as the music began. The opening bars to village people's YMCA drifted from the testing chamber, muffled, but still clearly off. I sat back in my own chair and closed my eyes, thinking, God help me, that fucking song. Glancing at the screen that showed the feed from the testing chamber,

I saw the D-Class man in the orange jumpsuit becoming agitated as he whipped his head around, no doubt confused by the sudden music. Reaching forward, I turned off the screen so I wouldn't have to watch. You're not going to watch? Leonard asked. asked. The junior researcher's young, earnest face, pointed wonderingly in my direction where he stood nearby. No, I'm not, I said, pulling my phone out. But you're welcome to watch through the window. In fact, one of us needs to. And it's safe now that it has started. Tell me if you see anything odd. Leonard didn't even wait for me to finish speaking.

He darted toward the back of the room, where the blacked out window was. He slapped a button to the side of the window, and the blacked faded away, making the window transparent. On the other side was the testing chamber, which featured a desk with a computer and a comfortable chair in the middle. The orange jumpsuit wearing man sat in that chair, but he was growing more agitated as the song continued. There were a dozen other pieces of furniture in the room, but nothing that seemed like it belonged. Most of the furniture consisted of square chests about the size of a large cooler.

Some of them were clear, so you could see their comforts. contents. When they had contents, others were black, obscuring any view of the interior. They were all reinforced and locked with hefty padlocks. Muffled voices came from several of these crates, singing along to the music that was no longer just coming from the testing chambers computer. While Leonard stared through the window, I turned my chair so I was facing the other way. Reaching into one lab coat pocket, I retrieved my clamshell earbud case. I pulled both buds out and slipped them in, setting my phone in my lap to do so. When I had them in and connected, I went to Vimeo and scrolled to find something to watch,

anything to drown out the sound of that song. Although I'd been alive in 1978 when the YMCA song came out, I was just two years old. Still, the song had been deposited firmly into the zeitgeist, and I had absorbed it along with dozens of other songs and pop culture touch points as I came of age in the 80s and 90s. Of course, I had never associated the song with death like I did now. At this point, I wanted to figure out how to contain this SCP just so I would never have to hear the song again. Unfortunately, I had been working on this skip for over a year now, and I was no closer to containing it. As I tried to focus on the video playing on my phone,

I thought I could still hear the village people singing in my head. It turned up the volume, but it didn't help. Finally, unable to help myself, I spun in my chair and looked toward the testing chamber window. I could just see past Leonard as the D-class guy threw himself against the window and coughed up a great gout of blood, which splattered on the reinforced glass. I shut my eyes, cursing myself, turning around and not waiting until I knew the song was over. The subject slid down the glass,

coughing up more blood, and banging feebly on the window for help. Then he was gone from sight. A few seconds later, a pale Leonard turned to me, indicating that the anomaly was over. Sighing, I paused the video, took my earbuds off, and put them back into their case. Anything out of the ordinary? Leonard shook his head. But I'm starting to see why you don't like to watch. That one was pretty bad. I nodded, but something in Leonard's face prompted me to provide what little solace I could. Well, don't feel too bad.

That guy murdered a whole family in cold blood. If you saw his file and the reports on what he did to those people? A little color came back into my assistant's face, and he tried to smile, but it came off as a grimace. How many of the heads did he destroy? I asked. Just two, Leonard replied. The other ones manifested in the crates. I nodded.

Okay, good. Thanks for watching. One of the nearby computers pinged, and I felt a headache seat itself just behind my eyes. I knew what that sound meant, and it was the most dreaded part of my job. Well, almost the most dreaded part. Another one already?

Leonard asked. He also knew what the sound meant. I moved my rolling chair toward the computer. I guess so. Staring at the pop-up window on the screen, I saw what I already knew to be true. The special program I had designed to search through YouTube had found another anomalous video. Sometimes we went weeks without finding one, but today we weren't so lucky. Which meant that if I didn't want some innocent person dying a horrible death soon, I would have to get another D-class person down here to view it.

The video would remain deadly until someone watched it. Better some murderer with no future than some kid messing around on his phone while he took a dump. As I reached for my radio to request another D-Class, a violent vibration ran through the room as a massive boom like a bomb going off sounded from elsewhere in the building. A moment later, alarm claxons blared. Shit! I shouted, gripping the edge of the desk. That's not a containment breach alarm.

That's an attack alarm. Someone or something is in the facility. We're under attack? Leonard shouted, his face even more colorless than it was before. I stood up. We need to get to the safe room. The floor was no longer shaking, but I could hear gunshots and shouts coming from down the hall.

Rushing to the door, I pulled it open and saw security officers running right and researchers sprinting left. As I stepped into the hall and started to go left, away from the confrontation, I realized Leonard wasn't behind me. Turning, I saw him frozen in place near the testing chamber window. Come on!

The only parts of him that moved were his eyes, which seemed to buzz in their sockets. The gunshots were getting closer. A man screamed in pain. Another shouted in anger. More gunshots and an explosion of a grenade going off. Fuck him, I thought. He can save his own ass. But instead of heading down the hall, I found myself rushing back into the lab.

grabbing Leonard by the collar of his striped button-up shirt and dragging him along behind me. As we stepped out into the hall, I glanced right to see a group of security officers rounding the corner about 30 yards away. They were dressed in full battle gear, complete with helmets and body armor. But they were all freaked out. I could see it in their wide eyes and fear-gaped mouths. Run! One of the guards shouted at me. I pulled Leonard along, happily heeding the man's suggestion.

As we went, I couldn't help but glance over my shoulder. What I saw in the hallway made the sight of the D-class man coughing blood on the testing chamber window seemed like a quaint, pleasant experience. Suddenly there was a new contender for the number one spot as the worst part of my job. The creature stood so tall it had to hunch to clear the ten-foot-high ceilings. I once saw a magnified view of some sort of caterpillar's head, and this creature had similarly ghastly features, but I didn't need a microscope to see them.

Its bulbous dirt-colored head featured stiff gray hairs sticking up all over, several black, bead-like eyes, and a horribly complicated mouth that had two sets of large mandibles and a hideous mouth, with teeth that looked more like the inner workings of a woodchipper. Its body continued the insect trend, but it no longer resembled a caterpillar. Instead, it resembled the bodies of two carpenter ants joined together side-by-side, like conjoined twins. Two pairs of thick, segmented arms stuck out from its body. In three of its four hands, if they could be called hands, held severed human body parts. In one was a head, blood still pouring from the ragged neck.

The other two held severed arms. Since one was free, I could see what it looked like. Instead of fingers, it had three hard-looking digits like crab claws that came seamlessly together to form a wedge that appeared heavy and dangerous. Two wide-set legs sprouted from the bottom of its abdomen, thick and powerful looking like a horse's, but insectile and dirt-brown like the rest of it. These legs propelled it swiftly down the hall until it was in the middle of the retreating throng of security officers. The men fired their weapons at the thing, but the bullets just deflected off the tough exoskeleton.

The creature swung the severed arms like nunchucks, bludgeoning the nearby officers. One man was knocked unconscious and fell to the floor. The creature stomped on his chest with one blunt-footed leg and collapsed his rib cage as if it was an empty gallon jug. It threw the severed head with such force at one guard's leg that the limb snapped the wrong way with the impact. The head, still wearing its helmet, bounced off the walls and skittered past Leonard and I,

leaving a trail of splattered blood behind it. I continued to pull Leonard down the hall, but I still couldn't take my eyes off the thing. And I noticed with my peripheral vision, neither could Leonard. His head was also turned. When the creature had dispatched all but one of the guards, either killing or incapacitating the others, it grabbed the last man and lifted him into the air.

Looking at him with its collection of eyes, it reached up with one hand and messed with some contraption around its lumpy neck that I hadn't noticed before. The creature made sounds with its buzzsaw of a mouth. It was like a series of wet clicks, accompanied by a symphony of crunching noises. A moment later, the contraption produced sounds of its own.

Words. Reveal. Scriptures forbidden. Although choking, the guard managed to... Fuck you! As he pulled the pin on a grenade and jammed it into the creature's mouth, and all. A fountain of blood shot out from around the guard's wrist

as those implements inside the creature's mouth decimated his hand. He pulled his arm back, now without a hand, and then the creature spit the grenade out, It fell to the floor with a hearty clunk, and then it exploded. I threw myself down, pulling Leonard with me, in hopes that we wouldn't be riddled with shrapnel. Covering my head, I cowered for a few long moments as pieces of debris rained down on me. I didn't feel any real pain, but that could have been the adrenaline. There seemed to be no noise in the hallway, but I quickly realized it was because the blast had caused my ears to ring.

The first noise that managed to penetrate my damaged hearing was a scream. and it was coming from Leonard. I flipped over and looked up to see the creature, seemingly unharmed, standing over me with Leonard held by his neck with one strange hand. Reveal, scriptures, forbidden. The words from the contraption barely made it through the ringing. But I might as well not have heard them, because I didn't know what it was talking about. I shook my head. I don't know what you're saying. Lying.

No, I'm not lying. I don't know. Just put him down. The creature turned its grotesque head and lest. looked at Leonard. Its claw-like appendage was under his neck, holding him up, but not using enough pressure to break the skin. Please, I said. Just put him down and I'll help you. The creature snapped the digits shut, cutting through Leonard's throat nearly to his spine. My assistant dropped to the floor, blood spewing from the massive injury. Before I could cry out, the creature brought one leg up and slammed it down onto my right shin, shattering the bone. Now I did scream, but not for Leonard.

I screamed at the sea of pain I was suddenly drowning in, the immense pressure of it pushing down on me until I could breathe no more, and all was blackness. Consciousness came back to me with all of the subtlety of a train wreck. I saw it through the pulsing pain, clouding my vision that I was in a room where the junior researchers had their desks. The creature was still here, standing over me. But from what I could see for my place on the floor, the room was empty of other people. They had all gotten out while the getting was good. The middle of the long room, I knew from previous experience, was lined with a series of workstation separated by low cubicle walls.

The creature had apparently dragged me in here to the computer nearest the door. The screen was awake, a spreadsheet gleaming benignly at us. The alarm was still going off, but I barely heard it over the pain that took 90% of my awareness. The creature pointed at the computer with two. of its insectile arms. Reveal, scriptures, forbidden. Title is... The creature's translation device struggled with the last word of his sentence,

and he came out as a series of guttural syllables. The words didn't compute for me. My vision swept down to my ruined leg. My foot rested limply at the end of my blood-stained pant leg, like it wasn't even connected to the rest of me. It's not my foot, I thought. It can't be. But the pain said otherwise.

The creature's foot suddenly came into view, slamming down on my already shattered shin. The agony ripped through me so fast I couldn't even gather the breath to scream. For one second, as my eyes bulged and my teeth clamped together hard enough to crack one of my molars, I felt certain my heart would give out. I welcomed the notion, anything to end the pain. Then the climax was over, and the pain was just a horrific reminder that I was a human with a DNA deep instinct to live. Okay! I screamed as the creature pointed at the computer again.

Okay, put me in the chair! I pointed. The creature yanked me up and tossed me into the chair, jostling my leg again and making me wish for death before my survival instinct came back online and prompted me to do whatever the creature said if it meant another minute of life. The problem was, I didn't know what the hell I was looking for. This creature wasn't a born communicator, so the important bits were lost in translation. Then, like a gift from heaven, the answer came to me in a flash, accompanied by the song I hated most in the world.

But now, as the tune played in my head, it was just about the sweetest thing I'd ever heard. My fingers flying over the keys, I logged into the program I'd designed and found exactly what I was looking for. I left the mouse hovering over the link and then stood up from the chair on my good leg, grunting as pain shot up my other one with the movement. I turned to the creature. It's right here. You just have to press that link. I pointed at the mouse on the desk. Just press that, and what you want will come up. Obeyed. Satisfactory.

The creature threw the chair out of the way and then leaned down, face very close to the mouse, with one pincer-like digit. It left-clicked on the link. I turned away immediately making sure not to see the video playing, praying this would work. A moment later, the drums and guitar sounded as the song began. This was followed soon by the horns. No, the creature said.

Incorrect. Now that it had started, and it was safe for me to turn around, I hopped to a water cooler nearby and leaned against the five-gallon jug placed upside down in the dispenser, watching the creature's reaction. The vocals kicked in next as the members of the village people started to sing about how young men could have had a good time at the YMCA. I felt the water cooler vibrate as the singing started, and I turned to see one of the songs.

severed and shrunken heads inside the cooler. It was the construction worker, complete with the white hard hat, sunglasses, and mustache. His leathery skin stretched as his mouth worked even though he was at the bottom of the half-empty water jug. Bubbles came from his mouth as he sang along with the other five heads that it appeared in random places around the room. Looking around, I spotted the American Indian shrunken head on top of a copy machine, but I didn't notice any others immediately. Before I could look much more, the creature grew angry and smashed the computer. The screen shattered, but the music continued to play because it wasn't coming from the computer, not anymore. At the end of the line of cubicles on this side of the room, the cop's shrunken head

sat on a keyboard. But as he sang, the movement of his jaw caused him to topple off and fall to the floor with a thud. It was just over a minute into the nearly five-minute song. The creature rushed over to the cop's head and smashed it to bits with its foot. Next, it rushed over to the copy machine and smashed the American Indian head. All my hope for this little trick was fading. I wasn't sure if the creature instinctively knew that the only way to stop the toxin from completely entering its system was to smash all the heads, or if it was just going after the things making noise.

It didn't matter. At this rate, it would find and destroy all the heads, and it would live to kill me and probably dozens more than it had already. I looked down at the construction worker's head in the water jug. The second chorus of the song had started, which meant it wasn't half over yet. Two minutes and 40 seconds had never seemed so long. I pulled the jug out of the dispenser and flipped it right side up,

only spilling a little water. With a glance over my shoulder, I started out of the room, hopping on my good leg while holding the jug in both hands. As I reached the door, already breathing. heavy. The creature smashed something else, which I had to assume was another head. Three down, three left. I hopped as fast as I could into the hall, but the heavy water sloshing around in the jug made things difficult. Another smash sounded from the room. Four down, two left. I flipped the water jug over and hopped backward down the hall as water poured out around the

singing shrunken head inside. I thought about the creature's odd feet and how they looked more like hooves than insect feet. Maybe the water will slow it down, make it slip. One thing I hadn't been able to figure out was how the toxin got into the subject's bloodstream. It just seemed to appear there, at first in small doses as the song started. But then building up as the song continued, the only way to stop it was to destroy all the heads and hope that you did it before too much toxin built up in your bloodstream. That was why we had all the locked crates in the testing chamber. We were in the phase of the experiment where we didn't want the subject to survive. It was sick stuff, but I told myself I was doing the world a favor.

The toxin differed too, depending on certain factors. One guy who was allergic to peanuts died during the experiment. When we tested his body afterward, we found a huge concentration of peanut proteins. So if there was a toxin out there that could kill this creature, I was confident my skip would somehow deliver it into its body. These thoughts rushed through my mind as the jug finally emptied, but I had become distracted. As I hopped in place, trying to turn around so I could jump away down the hall, I slipped in the spilled water and fell to the floor, screaming against the pain of my jostled leg.

As I fell on my stomach, the jug slipped out of my hands and bounced a few feet down the hall. The song had a minute and a half left. 90 seconds. All I needed was 90 seconds, but I could no longer hear anything from the room. Still lying on the floor in the hallway, I looked back to see the creatures stagger out of the room. Although I hadn't heard the fifth smash, I had to assume that the thing had destroyed five of the six severed heads. Only one was left, singing in the empty water jug. The toxin attacking the creature's inner workings seemed to be taking effect. It no longer moved with a surety it had possessed before.

But it was still moving. That was the concerning part. It staggered down the hallway toward me. but its many black eyes were fixed on the head in the jug. A minute and 15 seconds remained in the song. I peered around for something to use, anything to slow the creature down. Seeing nothing, I clamped my teeth together, pressed my fingers against the wet floor, and started crawling toward the jug.

Each movement dragged and jostled my shattered leg, sending waves of sickening pain through my body. Pulses of black encroached on my vision as I went. Some small part of me wanted to give up, But I refused to listen to that voice, no matter how sultry and seductive it was. I was so close, and this was the most important minute of my life. It was a minute that would determine whether I lived or died. The creature continued down the hall behind me, weaving drunkenly and bashing into the walls,

allowing me to track its progress without looking. But it was moving faster than me. There was no doubt about that. So far, I had only been using my arms and one good leg. I had let my shattered leg drag along. The thought of using it was too painful to bear. But now, as the creature grew closer, I knew I had to try. It was my shin that was shattered after all.

I could still use my upper leg. I could still press the inside of that knee against the floor to help me along, even if it would be the most painful thing I could do. As I pulled my right thigh up to use it, the pain ripped my breath away and caused the black pulses to narrow my vision to pinpoints. There was 42 seconds left. I kept going, biting back the pain, pushing myself harder than I ever thought possible.

The jug grew closer, even if it seemed like I was looking at it through a pair of binoculars turned the wrong way. The creature was almost upon me now. I thought it might break my other leg or even kill me rather than go for the head in the jug. It was entirely possible, probable even. I used that knowledge to propel myself along the floor. Thirty seconds. The jug was right there, just beyond my reach. As I pulled myself close enough to touch it, the creature fell to its knees next to me, reaching out for the container. I lurched ahead and punched the jug as hard as I could,

sending it skittering down the hall, the still-singing, shrunken head bouncing around inside. The creature's hands came down where the jug had been a moment before. It released its version of a growl and then turned its head toward me. 20 seconds. I flipped onto my back and smiled at the thing as the song started to fade out, just like it did on the original 1978 album. It pivoted towards me on its knees, raised all four of its arms, and then bent down to smash me into the floor.

I got my arms up as the creature came down, sure that my limbs would snap and my ribcage would shatter as it followed through. But that didn't happen. The creature collapsed onto me, which knocked my breath out and hurt my arms. But it was only dead weight. The last notes of the song faded away to nothing. I tried to push the dead creature off of me. It smelled of mold and rotten asparagus, but I didn't have the strength.

It was hard to breathe with all that weight on me, but not impossible. So I lay there, waiting for someone to come help me. A minute or two later, several people showed up and pulled the creature off me. came and, after some painkillers and careful work stabilizing my leg, they got me on a gurney. As they carted me off toward the on-site medical facility, the drugs were taking effect. I smiled and started humming the tune to a song. You know the one. SCP 5266 is the collective designation for a series of anomalous YouTube videos and the phenomenon resulting from viewing them. New anomalous videos are uploaded on an estimated

average of once every two weeks. Each video is three to four minutes long. Only the first occurrence of each individual video can trigger the major anomalous properties of SCP 5266, and videos can be safely viewed and saved after the initial event has concluded. Each video is a recording of a previous SCP 526 event, featuring a single subject, suffering the effects of such, while accompanied by a song written and performed by American Disco Group Village People. Upon opening a video, a toxic substance immediately begins entering the viewer's bloodstream through anomalous means, at a rate ensuring that a fatal dose is reached exactly as the video ends. Video instances are unable to be paused, and will continue playing even if no power source

is present. Upon the music in the video beginning to play, six human shrunkers, drunken heads, genetically identical to past or present members of the aforementioned village people, will manifest in the immediate area. Instances will continue to sing the song until damaged enough to make vocalization impossible. If all instances are destroyed before the song ends, the toxin will immediately vanish from the subject's body, and the heads will lose all anomalous properties aside from origin.