Written by Jonathan Wojcik
DECEMBER 19: More of Bogleech's Favorite SCP's!
If you're not familiar with the SCP foundation you should probably go read last week's review. There are a lot more that I'm fond of, and this still won't be the last time I run through some favorites!
SCP-955: "Mr. Sillybug"
To kick off round two with one of the more heartbreaking entries, SCP-955 are creatures resembling giant, crab-legged anglerfish which not only spray a deadly, corrosive slime, but can make themselves appear cuter and more welcoming to the perception of human children. It seems pretty obvious why these things need to be locked up, except that [they have the mentality of puppies and want nothing more than to be played with. Things only take a turn for the disastrous when an adult sees what the kids are running around with in the back yard.]
SCP-881: "Little People"
A whole city of people miniaturized to random degrees by a tightly classified paranormal incident seems off to an innocent enough start, but things go quickly downhill when the Foundation's impartial attempts at population control incite a revolution. Who could have known how many were of microscopic to subatomic scale, [multiplying exponentially into a lethal, thinking pathogen?]
SCP-197: "The Greenhouse"
More tragic than our last two combined, any plant life brought inside this mysterious nursery demonstrates sentience, mobility, fluent speech and an invariably friendly attitude, reverting completely to normal the moment they're brought outside. Seeing little potential for danger, the Foundation initially classifies this one as "safe" and even assigns staff to it as emotional therapy, until, as you may have expected, things take an unexpected turn for the dark side. The plants may mean no harm, but [the professor really looked like she could use some pruning and repotting, okay?]
SCP-1918: "Tic Tac Tow"
As you may have surmised, many SCP's are simply written around a strange or interesting image gleaned off the internet, though this one's writer has no idea where the picture came from. Spooky. Apparently some crude, toothy "head" atop a metal pole, SCP-1918 inhabits a strange, unkempt subterranean facility with exactly nine rooms, perfect for challenging intruders to its two favorite (only) games, "TIC TAC TOW" and "MEMOREE!" Naturally, it's a very sore loser. And winner. And player. It's pretty much a terrible friend all around.
SCP-455: "Cargo Ship"
Like the "facility" in our last list, the scariest part of this marooned, rusting vessel are the attached experiment and exploration logs; time and space aren't right inside it, and things get a lot stranger than you even expect that to entail. As recorded transmissions break down, we get such lovely dialog snippets as ["I don't want to feel the rust in me anymore"] and ["Oh god...make it stop crying."] I don't know what the hell was up with that tooth they talk about, either.
SCP-1196: "Chairopractors"
Oh my god. Chairopractors. How can you not love them already? Within this filthy, unfinished basement, anything that could be properly defined as a "chair" - any four-legged, inanimate object built for sitting in - comes to life and politely, squeakily criticizes human intruders for their posture. They care a lot about posture. They're chairs, after all. They care so much, they'll even try to fix it. [Brutally and lethally, but at least they always apologize.]
SCP-597: "Mother of Them All"
Eugh. You know we've got an unpleasant one when a rough analogy is the only work-safe image I can represent it with. This monstrous mound of mis-matched mammaries could have crawled straight from the darkest, dampest depths of the Internet's most awkward, most misaimed fetish art, its psychic and mutagenic properties as uncomfortably psychosexual as it gets. There are people out there who would find this one absolutely nothing but arousing, and those are people you probably don't really want to fall asleep under the same roof with.
SCP-735: "Insult Box"
You sort of can't help but feel a little sorry for the Insult Box, though maybe that's because you don't have to deal with it. Somehow, this talking metal case knows exactly what to say to make absolutely anyone it addresses lose their cool and break down into blind rage, without fail. Nobody, of any emotional capacity, of any level of discipline, can resist its impossibly personal verbal abuse for long, invariably doing their best to destroy the shiny metal asshole by any means necessary, which almost seems to be the little bastard's goal. Why, we can only guess, but unfortunately for everyone involved, nothing known to science can put so much as a scratch on its surface.
Call me crazy, but this one is seriously on my list of SCP's I'd like to meet. Who wouldn't be at least a little curious to know what it would say? And who wouldn't want to test its reaction to, say, gluing googly eyes to it, which is exactly the first thing I'd want to do?
SCP-097: "Old Fairgrounds"
The Halloweeniest SCP in the Foundation, the Old Fairgrounds have a more traditionally "supernatural" feel than a lot of other entries, but amped up enough to ingeniously weird extremes. I'd expect nothing less from an SCP; a mere "ghost" is hardly strange enough for the site, but [skeleton children hatching from pumpkin eggs, only to hang themselves?] Hell yes, and that's only one of its ghastly goings-on.
CANCER. Just cancer.
Many SCP's unsurprisingly feature hideous, unexplainable forms of cancer, and there are three in particular that I have a tough time picking between for a single review. Luckily, the wiki encourages us to interpret our own "canon" as we see fit, and I personally like to think these terrors are directly related. I suppose I'm cheating here, but I didn't really promise any particular length to these lists, now did I?
It all starts with SCP-329, A.K.A. the "Cancer Garden," a secret chamber where anyone suffering cancer will survive indefinitely, albeit [suffering unimaginably as their bodies are engulfed and dwarfed by elaborate, branching cancerous growth.] This one's biggest creep factor is the religious cult attached to it, a cult which speaks of the dreaded "C" as some sort of [divine, artistic freedom in the "rigid" and "tyrannical" city of the human body.]
Along a similar line is SCP-253, an intelligent, infectious parasitic cancer which appears to telepathically link its hosts. Its eerie Incident Report sounds suspiciously similar at certain points to 329, particularly the occult-like behavior and "life essence" speech.
Finally, we have the sad story of SCP-135, a little girl who generates malignant, exponential cell growth wherever she goes, and nothing within this invisible, carcinogenic aura seems to die - including herself, even with most of her body now dominated by cancer tissues. Where she was found is also easily one of the single worst details ever written into an SCP. [Entombed alive inside the womb of her mother, who had long become a massive, mindless ball of mutated flesh.]
With so much thematic crossover, it's hard to take these three as completely isolated incidents. It's all too easy to read into them as expressions of the same dark force; glimpses of the same hideous, secret will driving our most nefarious biological killer. Cancer is an SCP. All that the public knows and understands of it is only what cannot be contained and covered up so easily.
With another ten (alright, twelve) out the way, I'll once again end with a bonus link to an SCP that I wrote myself, only the second I've ever submitted. SCP-1904 is shorter, simpler and not as big a hit as my 726, but still got a decent reception and, in my opinion, may be slightly scarier. You be the judge. Maybe I'll write up another soon, if lightning can strike thrice.
HALLOWEEN 2012 ARCHIVE:
HALLOWEEN 2012 ROUND II:
