The SCP Experience - Hellfire and Brimstone | SCP-1913

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

SCP Foundation EUCLID class object, SCP-1913 This story was derived from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1913 and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Listen without ads here: patreon.com/TheSCPExperience Author: Matt Doggett * * * DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #thescpexperience #scp #scpfoundation #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a certain calculus you learn to accept while working for the foundation. Even before I ever came face-to-face with interdimensional beings that wanted to reach into my mind and plunge my soul into eternal darkness, I always thought that the solution to the trolley problem was a no-brainer. Five people will die if you do nothing. But one person will die if you change the trolley from one track to another. No-brainer. You switch the trolley, and kill the one guy. I honestly don't understand how anyone could argue for the converse. Which is why, as we pull into the small town ahead of the convoy ten minutes behind us,

the trolley problem comes to mind again. I think of it every time we come into a small town. Because if something were to happen, if they were to find us, then it could mean some or all of the people in the small town might be killed. But that's better than keeping our skin. skip in a holding cell in some big city, or around other skips that could escape and cause even more damage. It happened before, and it wasn't pretty.

Plus, constantly moving around seems to confuse the other two, the hunters, as we call them. So that's why we keep our skip mobile in the good old Bible Belt, where big cities are few and far between, and where most of the people are good for a hello howdy-do. wonderful people, and I would hate for something to happen to any of them, which is why I take my job seriously. Even so, I'm stuck on one clue in the crossword puzzle I've been working on today. I turn to Huffman. What's a six-letter word for Atomic Number 16? Huffman shrugs his big shoulders. I don't know, man. Google it. That's his answer every time I ask him for help,

and my reply still remains the same. That's cheating. Well, so is asking me by that logic. I put the puzzle book in the glove compartment. Fair enough. Huffman guides the vehicle into the gas station parking lot as I glance around from the passenger seat, looking for any sign of the hunters. Everything looks normal.

The gas station is some mom-and-pop deal with a name that will leave my mind as soon as we pull away. Across the two-lane highway that bisects the town, is a little grocery store. An old couple leans on their cart as they wheel it out to their vehicle. A mom and her two young children head into the store. A teenager shoves a line of shopping carts through the parking lot, aiming for the storefront.

If I had my way, we'd keep going. Find another gas station in a less populated area. But the boss doesn't like it when the gas gauge on the transport vehicle gets down below a quarter tank. and according to the map, pushing on to the next gas station would be cutting it a little close. I glance ahead at the small strip mall

that's accessible from the gas station. There's a subway restaurant, a little pharmacy, and a barber shop. We'd passed a Walmart with a gas station a while back, but that place was humming. Probably more people on the Walmart property than in the square mile around this gas station. Now that we're parked at a pump,

Huffman gets up. gets out of the driver's seat and stretches his spine next to the open SUV door. It's his turn to check out the store while I pump gas and take a look around outside. Then it's my turn to drive until our shift is over around midnight, when we meet our replacements at the next fuel up. Right now, the afternoon sun shines through a thin sheet of clouds, making the buildings of this small town look as if they're desperately hanging on. Maybe they are.

I've never understood how small towns like this exist. Maybe they're all farmers. I don't know. I'm no economist. It's clear I'm no scientist either. Atomic number 16? Chlorine? No, that's eight letters.

Damn. As I get out of the SUV, I go around the back and pop the rear hatch open. Several rifles are locked and loaded under a thin blanket in the back cargo area. We don't want to cause a panic, walking around with huge guns. Although this is farm country, so they might be used to that. I pay for gas with the foundation card and get it pumping.

Then I walk out to the sidewalk and look around, studying the people and the buildings, looking for any sign that the hunters are here. My gaze lingers on a little house in the lot next to the grocery store. It's a run-down one-story house that still looks occupied. But nothing looks amiss from here. I shift, keeping my vision moving. A thick bellied guy and dusty clothes gets out of his truck at the next pump island

and waddles inside, hitching his pants up. I look over the truck and see Huffman through one of the plate glass windows in the store, chatting with the clerk. Everything looks good, but I wait for Huffman to get back so he can radio the convoy. That's standard operandi.

procedure. In the meantime, I keep my eyes peeled. Five minutes pass. Time to radio. Puffman comes hustling back out with a plastic bag of snacks and drinks. That guy could talk a statue to death. He leans into the SUV and grabs the radio from the dash, then gives the code for the all-clear. I put the gas nozzle back, but leave the rear hatch open as I lean in and start the engine. In another four minutes, I see the convoy coming down the road. The first vehicle in the three-vehicle group is an armored SUV, similar to the one Huffman and I drive.

But it has a rack on the top with police lights. The last thing we need is to be caught behind some slow-moving farm equipment with no way around. The lights help with that. The middle vehicle in the convoy is also armored, but it's built on an RV body. Our skip sits snugly inside a nest of secure chambers. There's four containment officers aboard, not including the driver and the spotter in the front.

The last vehicle is identical to the armored SUV up front. I get behind the steering wheel of our SUV, Huffman already in the passenger seat. Then I pull forward so one of the other vehicles can take my spot at the gas pump. The RV pulls into the spot, taking up both pumps, while the other two SUVs maneuver to other bumps. Leaving the engine running, I get out and hover around the back of the SUV, near the rifles. Standard operating procedure.

One man in and one man out. The RV's engine cuts off, and the hairs on my neck stand up as the portly man from the pickup truck bursts through the gas station's doors. He moves as fast as his body can take him, getting up to a hopping run as he glances behind him. I follow his gaze and see the old clerk burst into gray-colored flames through the plate-glass window. Contact! I shout as I reach for a gun.

Three o'clock! In the gas station! I know from those gray flames that one of the hunters, known as Freddy, is in the gas station. The sound of glass shattering has me whipping my head the other way, looking across the sheet at the run-down house with a now broken front window. A dark figure that loosely resembles a woman is running across the lawn, nearly to the road already. From our intel, I immediately recognize the other hunter, known as Tully. As Huffman joins me at the back of the SUV, I raise my rifle and fire at Tully as she bounds across the street on skeletal dog feet.

The rest of the skips' body is made from a human skeleton, but she has a large skeletal dog's head in place of a human skull, and her hands also resemble skeletal dog paws. Most of her skeleton is covered in dark hair and ash, giving her the appearance of a demented female Sasquatch or some kind of werewolf. As I shout about this new development, still firing my rifle to no effect, I can just hear the RV's engine starting up behind me.

I've left enough room between the back of my SUV and the front of the RV so that the larger vehicle can pull out. That's the most important thing. If Freddie gets inside the RV and manages to touch our skip, it could be very bad for everyone in a square mile radius. Lasagne sur-gillet, puissance-moyance-moyerned for 15 minutes. We're saying that's the lojo.

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and the bullets aren't doing shit. Still, the RV's engine revs, and it starts pulling out. Then Tully is upon it, leaping toward the driver's side window. She smashes into the window, leading with her right hand, which damages the bullet-resistant glass.

I drop my empty magazine and grab another one from a cargo box. slapping it in place as the RV moves next to us. I kneel and take aim at Tully, who's still running beside the vehicle. Four trigger squeezes, four well-placed shots. Her reaction is one of minor annoyance, like the bullets are little more than flies to her. She leaps up and jams her hand into the window again, this time with enough force to break through.

When she yanks her hand out, she pulls the driver's head with it, ripping the man's face through the jagged shards of glass, of glass and then slamming his neck into them. The force of her downward thrust pulls his scalp off. Blood jets from the wounds on his neck from the jagged glass. The driver is a friend of mine, a man named Montez. I feel my anger multiplying. I yell for Huffman, who has also been firing at Tully to radio for backup. Tell them bullets aren't working. The RV keeps rolling forward, but Tully runs around the front to the other side, out of our view. I get up and run around, looking down the right side of the RV but not seeing her. The vehicle is heading for the

barber shop and the strip mall, but there are parked cars in the way. It crunches into a late model sedan and comes to a stop. Commotion behind me once again snags my attention, and I remember Freddie, who was in the station, setting the clerk on fire. A screen erupts as I turn to see two of my co-workers engulfed in those same strange gray flames. They drop to the ground and roll around, but I know it will be no use. They'll burn until there's nothing left to burn. That's how those flames work. That's something our intel was very clear on.

Before I can locate Freddy, the portly guy's truck rushes out of its spot, crunching over the two burning containment officers. The man is screaming in the driver's seat, and I only see why a moment later. Freddy, who looks like a deformed black dog, is in the bed of the truck. Freddy has no face,

Not like a normal dog. His face consists of ragged holes in an otherwise unmarred furry surface. The holes are arranged like a smiley face punched and a piece of paper with a pencil. It's from these holes that the gray flames come. Freddy bashes his head through the back window and slams his face into the back of the driver's right shoulder.

The man erupts in flames. A moment later, his truck crashes into the back of the RV. As Freddy leaps back out of the cab and into the truck bed, I take a couple of shots at him. He whips his strange, hole-punched face toward me. I duck behind a gas pump, barely aware of the fuel still pumping into one of the armored foundation SUVs nearby. There's some sort of commotion in the RV, but I can't see what's going on. Huffman is nowhere to be seen, but gunshots continue from the other side of the big vehicle. My guess is that Telly is trying to get inside.

to get to Agatha, an anomalous ceramic cat designated SCP-13-1. Luckily, there are several more foundation officers between Telly and Agatha. Presumably, Puffman is over there as well, trying to stop the strange creature. But bullets aren't working. There's got to be another way. The gas pump clicks loudly, indicating that the SUV's tank is full. It's the sound of a light bulb going off in my head. Who knows if it will work, but it's better than nothing.

Holding my rifle up with my right hand, I use my left to yank the nozzle out of the SUV. I lean around the gas pump and look toward the crashed truck, glimpsing a flash of black fur running toward me. My skin goes two sizes too small as I realize how close the dog creature is. Backpedaling and acting on pure survival instinct, I bring the gas nozzle up and spray Freddy as he lunges at me. Simultaneously, I jab at him in mid-air. with my rifle barrel, knocking Freddy off course and causing him to crash into a support beam

of the gas station. Knowing what comes next, I dropped the nozzle and darted for the store, not daring to look behind me. The door chime sounds as I bang into the convenience store. The air conditioning hits me, along with the throat-constricting smell of cooking human flesh. I can hear the flames crackling as the clerk continues to burn behind the counter, but there's little smoke in the place. These flames aren't normal. Apparently, they don't put off smoke like normal flames. This gives me hope. Maybe I can light the gas-soaked Freddy on fire.

Maybe that will work better than bullets. As I turn down a random aisle, the door chime sounds again. I glance over my shoulder, tall enough to see over the row of overpriced canned goods, toilet paper, and packages of ramen. I see the door closing, but I can't see what opened it. Probably because it walks on four legs and is short enough that I can't see it from my angle. I crouch as I come to the end of the aisle, kneeling next to an end cap of boxed sodas and cases of shrink-wrapped bottled water. Breathing hard, I hope that Freddy won't be

able to see me as he walks along the other end of the store. But if he comes to this side, I better have a way to light that gas on fire. But I don't have a lighter on me, and firing a bullet at something soaked in gas won't cause it to ignite, no matter what Hollywood says. There's bound to be a display of lighters in here at the front counter, surely. What about matches? Again, the click of a light bulb coming on in my head. Matches? Did I see bags of charcoal on the aisle I was just in?

Holding my breath, I shift and stick the side of my face around the corner, peering with one eye down the aisle. Yes, there are bags of charcoal, and right above them, boxes of strike-on box matches, the nice wooden kind. But where's Freddy? The continuing gunshots from outside have made it impossible for me to hear where he is. I peer around,

looking for one of those round, bulging mirror things that allow shop employees to keep an eye on the whole store from the front. But there are none. Just strategically placed cameras. No help to me. I slowly come out of my crouch, standing up straight, peering around.

No sign of Freddy. But I can't see everywhere from here. Screw it, just do it! God damn do it! I start down the aisle in three quick steps, propping my rifle nearby, and yanking a box of cellophane wrapped matches off the shelf. As I ripped the cellophane off and pull the box halfway open, Freddy appears behind me. I sense him there and spin around with the half-opened box in one hand and a single match in the other.

I half expect him to dart at me, smashing his weird face into my leg or chest or arm to light me on fire. But he doesn't. He hesitates, eyes on the match in my hand. At least, that's what I assume he's looking at. It's hard to tell. He doesn't have any pupils in his hole punch eyes. They're just ragged circles, a smoldering gray glow within. Same as the series of holes that make up his smiling mouth.

Same with the single hole that's where a nose should be. It's now or never. I pressed the match to the strike strip on the side of the box and drag it along. The match head snaps and, and falls to the tile floor unlit, leaving me holding a useless piece of wood. Freddy's smile seems to get wider, although I'm pretty sure that's not possible.

He takes a step toward me. I take a step back, dropping the broken match and digging another one out of the box. I can smell the gasoline on him. I think I got some on me, but not much. This better work, or I'm dead. Kentucky fried Carson. Freddy steps forward, still hesitating,

still afraid I'll light him on fire. I take a step back and strike the match. It breaks. The words, Does everything have to get worse? Almost escape my throat. But Freddie darts toward me. There's no time to bitch about the economics of end-shiftication.

No time for anything but one last, desperate action that even I know won't work. But when you're facing certain death, you'll just try about anything to give yourself even the smallest chance of surviving. I yank the cardboard tray of matches out of the exterior sleeve and toss the whole thing at Freddy, thinking maybe two matches will strike each other

and light on fire in a miraculous act of God. But that doesn't happen. Something more miraculous happens. Freddy lets out a pained snarl as the unlit matches bounce off his head and back. He spins around, darting away and racing down the next aisle over. A moment later, the front door chimes as he goes outside. Looking over the rows, I can see him racing toward the RV,

where the battle continues between what's left of the security team and Telly. I distracted Freddy for a few minutes, but with both him and Telly working together at Agatha, my buddies won't stand a chance. I need to do something. My mind works furiously as I stare down at the matches, scattered all over the floor. I wonder if Telly has a similar aversion to matches,

or whatever is in matches that Freddy didn't like. Out of nowhere, I think back to my crossword puzzle, To the clue I was stuck on when we pulled into town. Atomic number 16. The imagined click of the light bulb coming on sounds loudly in my head. Could it be? That would be a coincidence. Or would it?

I stopped believing in coincidence a long time ago, around the time I joined the foundation. Mind racing, I grabbed my rifle and a couple more boxes of matches, and I race out the back door of the gas station. There's something else here now. now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King

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Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. When I get to the back door of the little pharmacy in the strip mall. I'm happy to see that it has been propped open with the cardboard box. I hear whimpering and look over toward a nearby dumpster, seeing a guy in a white lab coat peeking from behind it, a pharmacist. I run over to him, and he shouts, cowering behind the dumpster saying, don't hurt us! I loom over him, ignoring his pleas. Where do you keep the sulfur

cream? A confused look comes over his face. He's hugging a woman, also in a woman. Also in a a white lab coat. I figure it's a mom-and-pop operation. Sulfro cream! I repeat. What aisle? Isle! Isle 3! With all the other acne stuff! Stay here and don't move. This will be over soon. At least, I hope it will be. I dart into the pharmacy, finding a couple of people cowering in the store. With a locked door to the rear now open, I tell them to run out the back. They don't need to be told twice. Since the pharmacy is down from the crashed RV, where all the fighting is happening, I can't see how things are going from here,

but I can still hear the gunshots and the screaming. There's solid intelligence on what will happen if Freddy comes into contact with Agatha, because it happened once two years ago. When the foundation first learned about Agatha, they stored her at a containment site, despite Agatha's warnings that her siblings would be coming for her to address some family business. The site director ignored the warnings. A week later, he would be coming.

dead, along with all the other employees in the building. An explosion of that strange gray fire decimated the building in much of the surrounding area, which was luckily uninhabited and owned by the foundation. It also served to release several dangerous skips. Rounding them up again cost even more lives. It's unclear how Agatha managed to get away, since there's no intel that says she can actually move on her own. She's just a ceramic cat statue after all. But she can talk, and she's a master manipulator. So it's possible she convinced one of her fellow skips

to get her away from her siblings, as she called them. I don't even want to think what would happen if Freddy and Agatha continued to be in close proximity. For all I know, it could cause an XK-class end-of-the-world scenario. Last I checked, that would be a bad thing. So I make a B-line for the acne treatment section in the pharmacy, remembering how bad I had it as a teenager. I used anything I could get my hands on to treat my acne,

including sulfur cream. That's the only reason I know about it. Sulfur, six letters, atomic number 16. Coincidence that it's me who happens to be on this detail? Or is it some other force working through me to keep the world from blowing up? I don't know. And right now, I don't care. I'm not even sure this will work, but I have to try.

Setting my rifle and the matches down, I spin the lid off a plastic jar of sulfur cream and get to work. Two minutes later, I'm covered in the off-white goop, with several empty jars littering the floor around me. I leave my rifle, knowing it won't do any good. Instead, I have bunches of matches in both fists as I exit through the front door of the pharmacy and run toward the RV. The large vehicle rocks on its wheels. Men shout from inside. Gunshot sound. There are ragged holes in the exterior,

as though something has been hitting the walls from inside. But none of them give me a good view of what's happening in there. The side door has been ripped off, presumably by telly. I run along the sidewalk in front of the strip mall, bringing the passenger side of the vehicle into view. My legs slow involuntarily as I take the scene in. The first thing I focus on is the torn. off human leg on the asphalt between two parked cars. Somehow, the leg is flopping around,

kicking and twitching like a spider's leg recently removed from its body. I bring the man into view next, seeing that both his legs and one of his arms have been ripped off. He's shouting in pain, trying to crawl away from the RV. I know the man. His name is Valencia, and he has two adopted children at home. Anger boils inside me, although I feel naked with the car. I feel naked without my rifle. I run between parked cars toward the door of the RV, a low growl building in my throat. I jump into the vehicle and immediately see more carnage. Dismembered bodies scattered around, limbs still twitching, men screaming. I can't focus on that now. I need to stop this. Inside, there are layers of cages containing Agatha, each successive layer harder to get through than the last.

But Telly, who has managed to rip through two of the three layers, is not. nearly done with the third. There's one last security officer, a guy named Finley, inside this last tiny cage. He fires through a rip in the thick metal wall at Telly, but it does no good. Meanwhile, Freddy sits nearby, tail wagging, waiting to get at Agatha. But as soon as I set foot in the RV, the dog creature turns and looks at me. On some wordless signal, Telly stops what she's doing and turns to stare. Her empty canine eye sockets fixing on me.

Come on! I scream, feeling silly, covered in off-white sulfur cream and gripping handfuls of matches. Telly rushes at me, moving so fast my heart lurches into my throat. I put my left arm out to block her attack, whipping my right hand up toward her face.

I want to stuff the matches into her mouth, hoping I'll get the same reaction as I did with Freddy. Just as I jammed the matches into Telly's mouth, I feel a shockingly painful rip at my left arm, and I'm sure she has dislocated my shoulder. But, to my utter surprise, the matches do the trick. Tully screams and whips her head back and forth, even as she darts toward the RV door.

She leaps outside. Matches spill out of her maw, but she keeps running, heading God knows where. Now it's just me and Freddie. Good thing I still have plenty of matches in my left hand. I step forward and try to raise my left hand, but nothing happens. I look down and see an arm lying on the floor.

matches scattered around it. The hand opens and closes, the limb bending at the elbow. That's strange. I don't remember seeing a severed arm there when I came into the RV. I take a closer look at my left side, seeing blood spurred out of the place where my arm used to be attached to my body. Realization hits me like a rabid dog, and with it comes the pain.

But they're still Freddy. He steps closer to me, little gray flames looking out of his eyes, mouth and nose. I'm losing too much blood. I have to act quickly, but I can only think of one thing to do. I throw myself at Freddy, hoping the sulfur cream I rubbed all over will have the desired effect. I crash into a man, with my one remaining arm, hug the dog creature tightly. A pained snarl escapes the creature, but there's more pain in it this time than there was with the matches in the gas station.

It wrestles free from me and darts out of the RV, yelping and snarling. It's dark fur covered in sulfur cream. I collapse onto my back, feeling more than a little woozy. Finley comes out of his cage and kneels next to me, a radio in one hand. How did you do that? What was it? Sulfur, I say. Tell them to come with sulfur.

Finley does just that, spreading the news to our incoming backup. Then he sets the radio down and looks at my wound. Let's stop that bleeding. What do you think? I nod and give him a thumbs up with my right hand. A few feet away, my severed left hand does the same. SCP 1913 is the collective team for three separate entities. 1913-1 is a sapient, life-sized ceramic statue depicting a cat, known as Agatha. It is decorated with white gloss paint on the nose, ears, and forehead.

and a black, ink-like substance around the object's eyes, mouth, and paws. Under no circumstances should any personnel come into contact with this black anomalous substance. 1913-2 is an animate humanoid skeleton known as Tully. It is covered in dark hair and ash, which gives it the physical shape of a female humanoid. Its skeleton is human in structure, with the exception of its skull and digits, which appear to belong to a large canine. Tully will attack its victims when provoked, typically through clawing at the victim.

However, despite major organ damage and blood loss, it is not capable of killing a subject. If an organ or limb has been separated from the subject by this entity, then that organ will continue to live independently from the subject. 1913-3 appears to be an adolescent male black Labrador retriever, lacking a mouth, nose, and eyes. This entity is sapient, refers to itself as Freddie,

and refuses to elaborate on its reasons for its pursuit of Agatha beyond family matters. When Freddy collides with an object or subject, the entity will emit a burst of gray-colored flames from the holes in its face. Flames produced in this manner reach temperatures of up to 2,192 degrees Fahrenheit. SCP 1913 instances do not show signs of mortality, and small arms fire has proven ineffective at stopping or slowing them.