The SCP Experience - I’ve Created an Abomination | SCP-4059

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

SCP Foundation EUCLID class object, SCP-4059 This story was derived from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-4059 and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Author: Matt D. * * * 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

Eliza's racking sobs emanate from our lonely, cursed cabin. Between sobs, she screams out to me, demanding that I return the child to her. Victor, bring him back. Bring him back to me. I stand outside under the full moon, peering at the light speckled waves of the lake. I dare not look at the deformed thing writhing in my hands. It muse, its distorted limbs twitching feebly. Tears streamed down my cheeks and threw my beard onto the abomination in my hands. I know what I must do.

I know I must put the thing out of its misery. But I can't bear the thought. I've failed again. That's twice now. Eliza may not survive this one. The birth wasn't life-threatening. It's her mental state I worry about. She might try to take her own life.

It's my job to keep her alive, to convince her to try again. This is my purpose, our purpose. We must try again. Walking to the edge of the lake is much like trudging through a dream. Invisible muck weighs my legs down, and the world around me goes blurry and incoherent. Even the sound of the goats in their pen turns watery and barely audible. All I hear are my wife's sobs, and the infant's pained muse. Eliza curses my name as I drop to my knees, water soaks through my trousers.

The infant coughs, and something wet splatters my wrists. I finally look down, wincing at the sight of the thing. It's still covered in blood and fluids from birth. New blood covers the infant's deformed chest. The droplets on my wrists looking black in the moonlight. Just a minute underwater, that's all I have to do to end its misery. I tell myself it will be lucky because our misery will continue. Still, I can't make my arms work to lower the infant into the lake.

It is, after all, my son. Perhaps the gods are looking down on me with mercy tonight, because the task is taken out of my hands when the infant coughs again. again, spewing more blood out of its cleft mouth. A moment later, its breathing stops, and it goes limp in my hands. I cradle the dead infant to my chest, screaming at the moon and its indifference. I'm sorry. I finally manage in a whisper.

I'm so sorry. The crack of wood on wood rips my attention away from my bottomless sorrow. I look over my shoulder to see Eliza vaulting from our cabin. The white of her nightgown flashes bright over her summer-tanned legs. No! I scream, setting the infant down on the shore and getting to my feet. She disappeared into the trees by the time I got up to speed. Eliza!

She's just been in labor for six hours, so it doesn't take me long to spot her through the woods. Lurching and barefoot, she moves slowly, batting leafy branches out of her way. Thanks to the full moon, I can see the markings on a large pine. She's approaching the perimeter. My heart thrums in my chest. I work my way after her as fast as I can,

closing the distance, but not fast enough. She passes the markings on the tree, goes four steps, and then loses her balance, falling to her knees. Gritting my teeth, I rush past the two large Xs of pale tree flesh. Soon, I feel the change in my head. A sickness appears in my stomach, fully formed and threatening to make me vomit. My vision goes blurry, as if my eyes are vibrating in their sockets.

As I reach Eliza and wrap an arm around her waist, I peer out into the darkness, seeing nightmarish figures that bloom among the trees, waiting for us to get near. Gutteral clicking noises and manic hisses issue from these half-seen monstrosities. Their eyes glow green as they scamper around. in the dark. Their bodies, mostly hidden in shadows, except for when they want to show us sharp claws and gleaming teeth. My blurry vision only makes them seem more dastardly and dangerous, because I can't see them clearly, and I'm in no position to fight back if they attack.

Eliza puts up what fight she can as I drag her backwards, towards safety. As soon as we're back across the perimeter, my stomach calms and my vision clears. I drag a sobbing Eliza back to our cabin and get her back onto the straw bed. She soon passes out, but I sit and watch her for a time, making sure she isn't faking. When I'm confident she's really asleep, I head back outside to bury the abomination. He will go into a small hole next to his brother, a hole that won't be marked anywhere but in my memory. I want Eliza to forget about these failures and look forward to the future, because we must try again. It is our purpose.

The leaves that had been clinging to the trees at the time of the last birth now crunch underfoot as I trudge back toward the cabin. My coat, made of animal hides pieced together by Eliza, struggles to keep out the winter cold. I can see my breath with each exhale, and I'm thankful it is only snobes. once so far this year. The first full moon is fast approaching, and by some miracle, I've convinced Eliza to try again when the time comes. I became very adept at mixing a concoction out of herbs and roots and certain mushrooms. It's a concoction that I slip into Eliza's meal every night, making her more docile and less likely to hurt herself. I had no such knowledge at the time of the last birth, of her own.

Of this, I'm absolutely sure. But that is the way of the gods. Ever since we've been here, the gods have provided. The concoction is just the latest example. It's as if they reach down from the heavens and jam the knowledge into my head. It always happens at night, and it's always accompanied by a horrible nightmare in which the green-eyed creatures come from the forest and attack me in the cabin. But after each time, I awake with something new in my head, something that I haven't learned, something that just appears there. I've considered that the creatures are instruments of the gods, meant to keep us in this patch of woods around the lake until we fulfill our purpose.

I pray that's the case. I pray every night that we will do it right this time when the next full moon comes. And I pray that, once we do, we do. we will be rewarded. I used to hope that our reward would be immortality or eternal bliss, but now I just hope that I can die a peaceful death. Because I know that if I die before we fulfill our purpose, I will be punished until all the stars in the sky disappear

and the moon crashes into the earth. I come into the clearing on the other side of the lake, looking across the water's surface to our cabin. It's one of six cabins, but ours is the only one habitable enough to live in. Four others have either been reclaimed by Mother Nature, burned down to skeletal components, or collapsed from neglect. The fifth cabin houses the goats. A rudimentary fence surrounds the cabin, keeping the goats in,

although I can't remember erecting the fence, or, for that matter, where the goats came from, I must have done it. Keeping them alive hasn't been easy, but the gods provide. More than once I've been off hunting in the woods only to discover a bale of hay that wasn't there the day before. The gods provide so we can fulfill our purpose. I'd look toward the goat pen, seeing that the five of them are still there, still looking healthy. Then I turn my attention to home. A pang of worry seizes my heart when I see no smoke.

when I see no smoke coming from our cabin's chimney. I hurry around the lake, glancing once at the place amid the trees on my right, where I buried my two sons, whose lives were measured in minutes instead of years. Eliza! I call when I'm three-quarters around the small lake. I've got rabbits! I hold up the two dead and gutted animals hanging from their rope, hoping she will come out to greet me like she often does. The cabin remains silent and stark,

the leafless trees. No smoke, no movement, no life. I hurry the rest of the way, dropping the two rabbits to the ground as I approach. I yanked the door open, peering inside the one-room structure to see that she's not there. I don't know whether to rejoice or worry at her absence. Eliza!

I shout into the clearing. The panic builds with every second that passes in silence, Looking wildly around, I search for any sign of her, thinking she may have tried to escape again. But then I see it. The nearest neglected cabin is about 50 yards away. The door, once kept closed by a branch fallen from a looming tree during a storm two years ago, is now partially open, the branch having been dragged out of the way. I can see nothing but darkness inside the cabin from where I am.

The waning afternoon sunlight breaks weekly. through the low clouds, providing little help. Rushing toward the door, I already know what I will find. I already know, and I'm afraid of what the gods will do. Will I be punished? Will I spend eternity and agony? But these thoughts are soon crowded out by a much more menacing one, and much more obvious.

What if I never get to see her again? As I near the partially open door, I see a pair of feet up to the mid-caves. A pair of feet I know almost as well as I know my own. Yanking the door open, I look into the cabin and see Eliza lying on the dirt-covered floor. A knife remains clutched in one bloody hand. Her sleeves pulled up to the elbows. Deep gashes run along the inside of her forearms.

Warped, blood-soaked boards support her fragile, lifeless body. I rush inside and fall to my knees next to her, knocking the knife away from her hand in an entirely futile gesture. Grabbing her by the shoulders, I pull her toward me, simultaneously bending over, placing my forehead on her breast as I cry. Then I tilt my head up, looking through the gaping holes in the cabin roof. Past the gnarled branches, I can see the ice-colored clouds. I scream at them, at the branches, at the world.

All the while, I clutch Eliza's limp body. Time passes. The hurt I feel has turned from something muscular and feral into something more solid and timeless and stable. I can feel its dark roots inside me, spreading through me, never to leave again as long as I live. Eventually, I stumble out of the dilapidated cabin, realizing that it's nighttime now. The clouds have cleared to reveal the frigid and too large cosmos. I stare at the moon. It's almost full.

Two more days. So much for our purpose. There will be no ritual, no child, no eternal reward. I trudge toward our cabin. My cabin. My thoughts turning to practical things. The ground is too hard. I will bury Eliza in spring if I live that long.

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Depos minimum of 10 dollars. Veil to pay for They're responsible. The conditions apply. I open my eyes, staring up at the cabin's ceiling. The fire has gone out, and my breath plumes out, disappearing before my eyes.

For a long moment, it feels like Eliza is lying next to me. I can feel her presence or warmth. I shut my eyes, willing the cruel joke away. Eliza is dead. Confusion disorients me as I try to recall with certainty Eliza's death. But something inside tells me it was a dream, a nightmare. Terrible memories of the creatures flood my mind, hazy and incorporeal. My eyes still wrenched shut.

I try to separate reality from dream, finding it hard to do so. Panic invades the recesses of my brain as I grow sure I'm going insane. Did the creatures come last night? I seem to recall waking up to several figures looming over. me, one of them pricking me with a claw, while the other spoke in critter-like warbles and low grunts that sometimes sounded like words, but were not. The straw mattress next to me shifts, and a sleepy, feminine groan causes me to open my eyes and turn my head.

Eliza? I shout, sitting up and looking at the woman curled up on her side next to me. I grab her shoulder, feeling the warmth of her, the solidness of her. I pull her toward me. turning her so I can see her face. I'm momentarily confused, thinking, this woman is a stranger. Her eyes flutter open. They're green, like Eliza's, but not quite the same shade.

Her lips are fuller, her face rounder. My brow furrows as the woman blinks up at me in confusion. I try with some effort to hold Eliza's face in my mind, to compare it to this woman's. For a moment, I'm sure they're two different women. Pain settles behind my eyes. This can't be Eliza. This isn't Eliza. Who is this woman?

With each thought, tendrils of black pain stretch through my brain. Victor? Not Eliza asks. The painful thoughts in my head held there so tenuously, crumble, and then reform quickly. Of course this is Eliza. It has always been. The pain disappears. I pull her toward me, embracing her.

I had a dream that you died. Eliza hugs me back. I had a dream that I was... She trails off. That you were what? I don't know, she says. Someone else, living another life. It was so strange.

I'm so glad you're here, I say, still hugging her tight. It's almost the full moon. Eliza hesitates before answering. Yes, she says. This time, well, Get it right. The goat screams as I grip a horn in one hand, yanking its head back to expose its neck. On the other side of the clearing, the four other goats bleak and scream madly. I drag the knife across its throat. The blood, streaming as it pours out, much of it landing in the bowl I've placed underneath.

The goat writhes, trying to get to its feet. I tossed the knife down and use both my hands to hold it steady as the blood drains. The light of the full moon shines down, allowing me to see what I'm doing without the help of a fire. We'll get it right this time, I tell myself. We will. The goat stops struggling, the blood slowing to a trickle. Leaving the dead goat, I pick up the bowl of blood and the knife and hurry around the edge of the lake to where Eliza lies. She's naked and shivering inside a circle of 12 death-cap mushrooms I picked and placed meticulously around her. A ceramic pitcher sits nearby. I transfer the blood from the bowl to the pitcher, careful not to spill any.

With a steaming pitcher in hand, I move over to Eliza, who looks up into my eyes. Despite her naked body, I feel no urge for intercourse. A lump forms in my throat. What if I remain flaccid? All will have been for nothing. Hey, Eliza says. It's okay. You know what to do. It'll be okay.

Bolstered by her words, I nod and get to work, connecting the circle of death caps with the goat's blood. Once I have the circle drawn, I move on to the triangles and the runes. It's elaborate work, and most likely where I've messed up the last two times. By the time the pitcher is empty and the blood covers the ground around Eliza in ritualistic symbols, My back is sore, and my legs are shaking from all the crouching. I think I've done everything right this time. But there's still more to do.

I disrobe while staring down at Eliza, willing the blood to flow. It doesn't help that it's freezing out here. Now naked, I trade the pitcher for the knife, and then step cautiously into the middle of the blood runes. Eliza opens her legs, and I get to my knees between her thighs. She's shaking, her skin covered in goosebumps. Our breath creates vapor that glows in the moonlight before dissipating. She winces as I cut a slash around her left palm,

but she doesn't flinch as I cut one across her right. Then I lean over and position the knife under her right collarbone. I look into her eyes, and she gives me a nod. She bites her lip as I cut a diagonal slash down her chest. There's a moment of sickening, unreality when I realize she has no scars from the last two attempts. How does she have no scars? She's not Eliza, a voice says in my head. She's not Eliza. She's not.

A wave of pain crashes through my skull, destroying these doubting thoughts like sand castles at high tide. I come back to myself, looking down at Eliza, remembering what comes next. I cut across my left palm, pushing hard. to get through the scar tissue. Then I do the same with my right palm. Next, I raise the knife to my chest and cut a diagonal gash from under my left collarbone to just above my right nipple.

Miraculously, I realized the blood is flowing. Not only out of me, but down and into my manhood. I position myself over Eliza and begin. The movement and the warmth of our bodies help keep the cold at bay. As we have intercourse, the cuts on our chests mash together. I grab her hands in mine. We finish, breathless and sticky slick with blood.

I withdraw myself from Eliza and stand on my knees, looking up at the full moon. Only time will tell if we've done things right. Until we know for sure, we must act as if we have, because there's still more work to be done. Off in the distance, a goat screams. The summer is ending, and the day of birth is here. Eliza has fasted during each full moon since conception, eating only after the sun has set on those days.

Each meal she's eaten after fasting has contained my blood and goat blood. We've prayed before each meal, enunciating each word clearly, just as the book says to do. Not that we need the book anymore. We've studied it so many times we know every word, every symbol, every minor rip in every page. Even so, we won't know if it has worked until Eliza gives birth. And that time is coming quickly. I find myself terrified of delivering another monstrosity,

another abomination that only knows terror and pain before it inevitably dies. I sit at the edge of the lake, feeling the warm breeze that stirs the lush green leaves on the trees and creates ripples across the water's surf. surface. Fragments of reflected sunlight pierce my eyes, leaving behind little after images that float in my vision. Any second now, she will go into labor. Any second. I peer up at the blue sky, knowing the full moon won't emerge until after the sun sets. And I prayed to the gods that this time it works. Victor! Eliza calls from inside the cabin.

It started! I get to my feet and rush over to the cabin, looking inside of the cabin, looking inside where Eliza lies on the bed. Your water broke? She nods. Time to start praying. I've been praying all year, I say, but I know what she means. I take the book from its shelf next to the door

and then head back out of the cabin. When I reach the proper spot next to the lake, I open up the book and start reciting one of the acceptable prayers. Soon, Eliza's grunts and mounds come from the cabin. I keep praying. Time passes with all the haste of the geologic era. I pray and pray and pray.

Eliza moans and sobs between periods of intense silence. The sun escapes below the horizon, and only when I see the entirety of the full moon visible in the sky, huge and orange, I stop praying. As I hurry over to the cabin, I realize that the two remaining goats have been utterly silent all day. Setting the book back on its shelf, I rush over to Eliza and grip her hand,

asking her what she wants me to do. Just stay here with me, she says. Just hold my hand. So that's what I do until the baby starts coming. I position myself near the bottom of the bed with a clean blanket ready, heart thudding, hoping the child will be normal. It takes all Eliza has, but she pushes the child's head out. And I see its features aren't distorting.

or deformed. Hope leaps into my heart. Eliza continues pushing in great pain, sweating and groaning. More of the child emerges, and more. Finally, the child is out, and I hold it in my arms in the blanket, seeing that it's a little girl. She is limp, though, her eyes closed. I'm not sure she's breathing. As I bring her up toward my head, she suddenly spasms and lets out a weak cry that's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. She soon finds full use of her tiny lungs, kicking and crying and looking around in terror. I study her. Everything looks normal. The joy I feel is like a second chance at life. I smile for the first time in well over a year. How is it? Liza gasps. Let me see. I shift, showing her the little girl. Eliza smiles and collapses back under the bed.

Thank the gods. I set the baby down and then grab my knife, using the blade to cut the umbilical cord. Then I grab the nearby pitcher of blood and toss it over the baby. She continues crying as I pick her up and hold her in the crook of one arm while I help Eliza to her feet with my other arm. Once Eliza is up and steady,

I transfer the blood-soaked baby into her arms. Eliza stares down at our little girl as I help her out of the cabin and to the side of the lake. We stop, ankle-deep in water. But Eliza just holds the baby, staring down at her. Please, I say. You have to. We can't stop now. She's so perfect.

Eliza says, tears dripping off her chin. That's exactly why you must do it. She will come back even better. She will be the most perfect thing to ever exist. and we will have made her. Eliza says nothing and just stares at the baby. Please, I say. Please do it now.

It says immediately in the book. Please, Eliza. I know what the fucking book says. Eliza snaps back. Racking with sobs, she extends her shaking arms, holding the baby out over the water, and she drops her. Our little girl creates a tiny splash.

The water muffling her cries. as she sinks beneath the surface. She kicks her little arms and feet. Bubbles escape from her mouth. Then she is lost from view in the murky water. No! Eliza shouts, lunging forward. I grab her by the shoulders and yank her back,

pulling her onto the shore as she fights feebly. We collapse into a heap, but I still have hold of her. Soon, she stops fighting, her body spasming from deep-sourced sobs. We both watch as the water of the lake calms. Silence settles over the land. We stare. Nothing happens.

Somewhere deep in the woods behind us, a branch breaks. But I'm too consumed with intense dread to turn and look. I keep expecting my daughter's body to float up to the surface, dead, murdered by us who were supposed to protect her. A sudden cry erupts from the goat pen. One of the two goats has come to the fence at the water's edge. It's looking toward us, staring with its yellow eyes and rectangular pupils. The second goat joins it. The water where we tossed our daughter begins to roil.

The bubbles shift, coming toward the shore, toward us. A figure breaks the surface. A child, naked, but much larger than the infant we threw so callously into the water. It crawls on all fours toward us. Stopping at the edge of the lake, its bald head down. Blinking, I see the figure changing, growing, distorting. The skin breaks at two spots on its forehead, and goat-like horns emerge. Rips form along its shoulder blades, and huge, bat-like wings unfurl,

creaking and groaning as they stretch toward the night sky. The thing, our daughter, rears back on her knees, showing her elongating face as she shrieks like a goat into the night. The two goats in the pen scream and answer, the three of them creating a cacophony that assails the ears. My daughter's eyes are yellow,

her pupils' horizontal black rectangles. Her face stretches, cracking, into a goat-like snout, complete with black fur jutting from the chin. Prominent incisors, fangs, stretch from her upper and lower jaws. She's growing, becoming the size of a large adult. Fully formed breasts appear, and her fingers shape into sharp claws.

Still shrieking, she gets to her feet, which have transformed into goat hooves, her legs sprouting wiry black hair. Eliza screams, I drag her away as our daughter lifts into the air, leathery wings beating the ground away. Behind us, the sound of branches break. Making makes me think that the forest creatures are coming forward, but I have no idea what they will do when they get here. The book told of salvation once the ritual was complete.

It said our Savior would rise from the lake waters on the wings of an angel and with the voice of a god. But this creature flying above us looks more like a demon. Our daughter, finished with her hideous transformation, stops screaming. She sets her goat's eyes on us. clear on her deformed face. I'm suddenly sure that she means to kill us. But a strange sound comes from behind me,

like a soft bang, and a small object hits our daughter in the chest. She looks down at the object as I look up at it. Small red feathers stick out of the end of the thing. My daughter knocks it out with one claw, and it falls to the ground. It's some kind of cylinder with a sharp point at one end. tranquilizer dart, some distant voice says from the blurry recesses of my mind.

I look over my shoulder and see several forest creatures rushing toward us. Their black legs are solid, their arms thick, and they each carry some kind of strange stick in their hands. Their eyes glow green. For a moment, I see them as I've glimpsed them in the forest. Tall, formidable creatures that stick to the shadows, covered in black hair, with dangerous bristling claws at the end of their arms. But as I watch them approach, that image flickers, and I realize they're men. Pain and confusion batter my brain at this realization.

The creature forms try to reassert themselves over these men, but I fight it off. I reach for the truth with every part of my mind, like fighting through quicksand to reach solid ground. They're men, I say in my head. Men clad in armor and carrying weapons. They wear night vision goggles. That's what they are. Men, that's what they've always been. My daughter shrieks from her spot in the sky.

Her wings, still creating powerful downdrafts as she keeps her considerable bulk airborne. One of the newly arrived man raises his weapon and shoots another tranquilizer dart at her. It only enrages her. I turn around just in time to see my daughter swoop down, sailing over her parents' heads as she barrels towards the man who just shot her.

The rest of the armored men, there's six of them total, fire more darts at the creature. It's no use. She swipes at her target's neck, and the man's helmet-clad head comes off, spinning slowly in the air as a fountain of blood shoots from his neck. When the severed head hits the ground, she's already attacking another man, yanking him into the air and throwing him into a nearby tree with unbelievable force. The man smashes through branches, limbs snapping along with the wood. By the time he falls down to the ground, he is surely dead. Chaos quickly engulfs the area as my daughter swoops here and there, attacking and retreating, toying with these soldiers.

Switch to live rounds! One man shouts. More armored soldiers appear out of the woods, firing bullets at the creature. A thick-headed, middle-aged man in a brown suit follows them. Shouting orders, these men ignore. Don't shoot it! He screams. We need it.

Driven by the persistent gunfire. The creature flies off into the trees across the small lake, but I know it's only a brief respite. She's not done. Eliza seems to have gone catatonic, but I managed to drag her to her feet and pull her along behind me as I weave through the troops toward the cabin. The men pay us little mind,

other than telling us to get out of the way. I settle Eliza in the cabin and look down at her. Now knowing for sure that she's not the same Eliza I was here with for two years. That Eliza killed herself. I know that now. It wasn't a dream. Picking up my knife from where I set it after cutting the umbilical cord, I move swiftly over to the door and peer out.

The man in the brown suit stands behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, peering around. The woods have gone silent. All the soldiers look around from behind their weapons, searching for my daughter. The two goats and the pen suddenly scream, and then my daughter shrieks from somewhere nearby. Gunfire sounds. Over there! Someone shouts. A man screams as he's attacked.

The gunfire continues, and the troops shift, firing, trying to take her down. I see my chance and dart out of the cabin, sprinting toward the man in the brown suit. He sees me coming as I'm closing in. His eyes go wide with fear. Help! He shouts, turning to run. But there's no one around to help. The soldiers are all preoccupied.

I catch up to him and crack him in the back of the head with the butt of the knife. He collapses to the ground, and I flip him over and put the blade to his throat. What the fuck is this? I say. What did you do to me? The man's unfocused gray eyes swim for a moment, probably from the hit on the head. But as I dig the blade into his skin, he comes around quickly.

Please stop, he says. Talk. Okay, okay. It's an experiment. We need to study one of them, but we needed one to be born first. Gunfire and screaming continue near the lake. I wrench my eyes shut, trying to remember. You messed with our heads, gave us false memories.

Why? Why did you have to find? fuck with us like that. Because... The man says. We found that a central ingredient is faith. The subjects must have faith. So we made it so you would.

We gave you Purpose. Who was I before? I ask him. I can't remember. And who was she? Who was Eliza, the first one? The man shakes his head slightly. Nobody's.

You were nobody's. That's all. But that's not what you want to hear, is it? Clenching my fist around the knife, I open my mouth to speak. But before I can, the man's eyes dart from my face to some spot above and behind me. Over my shoulder, the fear is unmistakable. It's only then that I realized the gunfire has halted. But I can hear something, a sound that's getting closer.

The beating of leathery wings. Moving quickly and with little thought, I throw myself over. rolling onto the ground and pulling the man in the brown suit up and on top of me like a shield. The creature's claws sink into his back, and the man spasms, his face twisted in pain and terror. Those great wings beat harder as my daughter lifts the man up into the sky. I waste no time, jumping to my feet and sprinting back toward the cabin, slowing only to grab a rifle from the ground. We need to go, I say to Eliza, who's simply staring at the floor.

I pull her up and we go running out of the cabin into the woods. I look over my shoulder for our daughter every few steps, but I don't see her anywhere. As we pass the perimeter of X's carved into the trees, that sudden sickness settles in my stomach. My vision blurs, fears blossom in my head, but I see no creatures among the trees this time. Eliza groans and doubles over, but I keep dragging her along. We keep going, even though I can hardly see anything with my vision so blurry. I feel as though I'm going to pass out, but I concentrate putting one foot in front of the other. I'm vaguely aware of screams coming from up ahead, screams, and more gunshots.

Then, as quickly as it came, the sickness and blurry vision and fear are gone. We're at the edge of the woods, looking at a large metal fence with barbed wire on the top. There's a gate standing open nearby. I pull Eliza toward it, slowing when I see a couple of dead and mutilated bodies near the gate. The blood still pumps from the horrid wound in one man's neck. This just happened. Peering around for the creature, we keep going, stepping through the gate.

There's a collection of buildings off to the side. A transport vehicle sits nearby. The keys still inside. But there's no one around. No one alive anyway. I get Eliza into the vehicle. Things are starting to come back to me. Like how to drive.

I get into the driver's seat and start the truck up. We drive away, leaving the lake and the goats and the dead men behind. We follow a dirt road, and it soon turns, allowing us to see the moon sitting up in the sky ahead, smaller than it was before, but still large and imposing. The creature suddenly swoops down, backlit by the moon. For a moment, I think she's coming directly toward the truck, but I soon relax, seeing that she's flying away from us.

It seems we've all escaped. While I drive, I reach over, taking Eliza's hand in mine again. I know she's not Eliza. I don't know her name. But maybe she doesn't either. Eliza is as good as any other name for now. If we look at each other through the gloom, Eliza smiles sadly. I smile back.

She squeezes my hand, and we keep on driving. SCP 4059 is the collective designation for a series of anomalies centered around the Pineland's National Reserve in New Jersey, USA. SCP 459-1 is a small freshwater lake, located west of the town of Leeds Point, New Jersey. Around the lake are six abandoned single-room cabins. SCP-459-2 are bipedal, persene creatures that exhibit numerous deviations from non-anomalous goats. Notably, these entities are approximately six feet tall on average, with functional bat-like wings protruding from the shoulder blades, anthropoid forelimbs terminating in hooked claws, prominent incisors, and vestigial anthropomorphic

mammary glands on the chest. Like many species of non-anomalous goat, instances have a pair of large, cartaneous horns protruding from the top of their head and have a small, bearded waddle dangling from the base of the chin. SCP 4059-2 are adept predators, stalking and incapacitating prey with relative ease. Instances have been reported to be able to move its speeds

upwards of 55 miles an hour for brief periods. Instances typically avoid human contact, but can become aggressive when trapped or provoked, and instances have been known to stalk and kill humans. Little is known of these creatures, besides the fact that they can only be created after two participants perform a specific ritual named Procedure 459 Camash. Testing is currently underway to see if SCP-459-2 instances could be used by the foundation, to further its mission.