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_{by SuMontienne
read on AO3}

Subject: SST-736/003; Singh, Lisa
DOB: 05-08-1988
LOB: Hilo, Hawaii

Qualifications:

• PIED 3 psychic transience
• Cromley Test score of 84%
• UTP of 87.4%

[03:41:15] (verbal) "Collie." […] "Help… Collie." […]

[03:50:08] Increase in breathing pace. Psychokinetic Resonance Counter (PRC) displays higher yield in subject.

[04:23:55] (thoughtwave) "[…] when I walked over the hill. There had always been birds singing sweetly [unintelligible] Peppermint Ridge. I had always been a farm boy here. I had always been [unint.] farm boy here. Collins came by my side and teased me a little for always being a farm boy here. The earth was black under our feet as we approached the […]"

[04:25:10] (thoughtwave) Unknown voice, unint. 5s. High-pitched droning, 13s.

[04:34:38] Increase in breathing pace. Shifting in module.

[04:36:06] (thoughtwave) "He said it'd always been OK in his home. When I [unint.] about it, he didn't tell me anything more than that his old mom had always tested the water for the bloatflies when the river came down from [unint.] […] hills. I pressed him for more and he remembered being in the town square with his old mom, and the foreign soldiers had come in, tracking the black rotting earth all over the brick with their boots, a pale, stinking parade, and on tiny glass crucifixes they carried the eyes of small [unint.] […]"

[05:10:11] (verbal) Quote from source material: "[…] God was not willing to look inside the Earth the day […]"

[05:10:16] High-pitched droning, 13s.

[05:43:18] (thoughtwave) "[…] earth was black under our feet as we approached the house. […] We know the civilians who lived there had always been skittish about the army, either which side it was. We didn't care so much for their postulating. Collins kicked open the door with his boot and we heard a woman scream, a vase crashed somewhere close-by inside, and her son, by the sound of it, the same drone to their voices, started to cry. I didn't feel awful. I didn't […] went inside.

"When we […] to the mother as she was holding her baby we told her it was all right. I remember that look in her eyes like the fields were razed. Like the highwaymen had come, the bandits with their trucks strung up with the pieces of the people of the settlements they'd rolled through; I could sense the same sheep-look in her eyes. She did not believe us that it would be all right. And when I did not believe us that it would be all right. And when we went upstairs we didn't find anything, but it looked like her husband was there in bed.

"His skin was already in its bloating stage but by some miracle he'd stayed alive. The smell of methane, and the smell of methane, it was gorgeous on his body, like a glistening surface, purple and blooming and rashes-red and yellow. Collins stepped forward and told him it was going to be all right and we were only here to search. For the government we said. And the man smiled. He laughed. The smell of methane and.

"He said they had had no sightings of the Dyscommunians this side. He said it'd always been OK in his home. And when I asked about it, he didn't tell me anything more than that his old mom had always tested the water for the bloatflies when the river came down from the west-hills. I […] and […] and the foreign soldiers had come in, tracking the black rotting earth all over the brick with their boots, a pale, stinking parade, and on tiny glass crucifixes they carried the eyes of small creatures, all of the small creatures, where they had come from their houses in the forest where there were no flies, and they all had moved in synchronicity with each other for the remainder of the time before the war had come over the country, and when the flies had moved in it was a time when the war had come over the country, and the houses were alight in a flame of fire, and all of the animals watched the humans in their houses crouch in the train-yards for they had nowhere else to go, and the humans took their eyes […]"

[07:11:07] Subject awakens. Testing suspended.

Testimonial: "It was like I was trapped in a really sad, old Disney movie. Yeah, everything looked painted. The paint looked really pulpy, like some sort of tree sap, or an old kind of paint they'd have banned by now for being toxic, like it was a painted animation strip. I was walking aimlessly in a golden field, and the sky was this sickening green and yellow color. I walked for what felt like an hour with just this horrible, gut-wrenching feeling in my chest, this sadness that I can't really place. Gradually the flies started buzzing around my mouth and eyes. I had to swat them away. More and more came, and I got more and more terrified and sad. It felt like there was a syringe in my skull injecting the sadness-chemicals into my brain. And knowing that was just awful. Having that thought, of those chemicals being injected into me, was awful. And then the flies started gnawing at my flesh and my eyes."

Subject: DLR-736/014; Doulay, Brian
DOB: 01-03-1978
LOB: Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico

Qualifications:

• PIED 4 psychic transience
• Cromley Test score of 95%

[02:05:24] (verbal) "Hello?" [pause 2m] "Hello [unint.]?"

[03:13:13] (verbal) Moaning and unintelligible speech for 62m 36s.

[05:05:18] (thoughtwave) "I found him sitting all by his lonesome on top of the mound far away from town. He was watching the smokestacks rise over the mountain ridge where the 17th Battalion was stationed, twisting like broken poles, and by his side he had always clutched his rifle. I asked him what was wrong. He said he was all right. I saw the light in his eyes then, and the sun was still high in its bright noon despite the smokestacks blotting out the sky, and the swarms wriggling in the dry yellow grass where his bare, naked feet rested. He said it was going to be all right. […] It was going to be alright […] he said."

[06:00:03] Distress module activated. Testing suspended. Subject awakened via electroshock.

Testimonial: "There was a big, bright shape, and then the world fell down. It was the flies. Why the fuck did you keep me in there? No. No, I don't have anything else to say."

Subject: SAR-736/565; Cheng, Miranda
DOB: 10-04-1983
LOB: San Jose, California

Qualifications:

• PIED 4 psychic transience
• Cromley Test score of 98%

[01:06:28] (thoughtwave) "I haven't been to […] the." […]

[03:05:17] (thoughtwave) "When I set foot on the black earth, I could feel the fluids peek through the spaces between my toes. The morning after we'd settled I was barefoot, after I'd dug my foxhole and found some space for the night, away from Rodger and Collins. I was awake early and everything was still red so I figured it was a good enough time to take a break from humping while I was still awake.

"The Dyscommunian camps were due east, somewhere, I never really kept track of where. We only knew where to find them by how the leaves in the trees near the swamps were rid of flies. I could always smell the sickle smell of methane far away from the camps, some of them in holes in the ground poked full of holes, which apparently they're making movies about back home, and I knew that if I could smell the stink and there were no flies that somehow the Dyscommunians were close.

"It was still rotting. And we found almost no rest. Barbarians had come and littered nickels and coins in the fresh, tender soil. I reached down and picked one up, a quarter. He had no face. I put it back down with his faceless side down on the earth. Where he could rest again. All of the presidents are resting. All of the presidents are resting.

"He had no face. He had laid down in the dirt where he had fallen like an angel with the way I saw him before the trees where the leaves brushed like the many-winged wings of the bloatflies and he had fallen in the earth from when he'd stepped on the mine and […]"

[03:56:04] High-pitched ringing, 2s. Distress module activated. Subject awakened via electroshock.

Testimonial: "I don't know what the old guy did. It wasn't my body anyway. And I don't know where I was or how I was there. Dream logic, I guess. I just knew, I had this feeling, that I'd been taken so far away from somewhere I really wanted to be. But a little piece of that place was there with me, in the jungle. And I saw it get destroyed. Like how you put the corpse of your dead dog underground and, even though you can't see him, he's rotting under there, silently rotting. I just couldn't imagine something like that, I guess; someone I love so much having their body violated like that. Violated by all the bugs."

Subject: DLL-736/047; Manriquez, Dawson
DOB: 04-10-1995
LOB: Muskegon, Michigan

Qualifications:

• PIED 3 psychic transience
• Cromley Test score of 98.5%
• Richard Mulligan PSi Exam score of 7

[01:30:11] Snoring, 32m.

[01:50:05] (thoughtwave) "I remember it. It was one of the last nights and it was on the night that he had departed. It was the night he had left us here, and I could do nothing, I could do nothing because the blasts had alerted them as to our position and they came to us and we had to leave under the scythes of gunfire tilling the fields over our heads, but he was still out there. And they didn't go for him. They left him there. And all throughout the night in my crump hole I heard him. He wanted to die. They didn't kill him. They left him there. They left him there. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up."

[03:02:06] Snoring ceases.

[03:10:47] (thoughtwave) "God was not willing to look inside the Earth the day He took him from me."

No activity for three hours. PRC shows high yield (≥62.5ψ) and high stimulation in the amygdala and thalamus. Distress module was not activated.

[06:27:03] Image formation in subconscious, received:

[06:27:04] Distress module activated ≈63 times in the span of 1 second, indicating a severe lag spike in equipment. Subject awakened via electroshock.

Testimonial: N/A; subject declined to comment.

BEGIN RECORDING

Interviewer: For the record, please.

Straussburg: My name is Agent Courtney Straussburg, age 56. Station is Site-19, Adelanto, California. My current assignment is with C&R Unit 37 and general anom cleanup duty. Field agent.

Interviewer: How are you feeling today, Courtney?

Straussburg: I'm good, [REDACTED]. I still need more of that stuff.

Interviewer: Sorry?

Straussburg: The… the ibuprofen, bu-propen, the…

Interviewer: Bupropion?

Straussburg: No, the other one.

Interviewer: You mean lurasidone.

Straussburg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Your request is still being processed. That's what I was told.

Straussburg: Well I need it soon.

Interviewer: Right, well, we appreciate your patience.

Straussburg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Anything else? Before we get started for real.

Straussburg: [REDACTED] asked, I dunno if your phone was on—[they] asked if you'd like to go for Korean barbecue later.

Interviewer: Uh—Please, uh, Courtney, don't use our real names.

Straussburg: Oh right, yeah, sorry.

Interviewer: It's alright. Let's get started with the briefing, okay?

Straussburg: Yeah.

Interviewer: Alright. Everything's already in check. We can start with your first experience with the SCP-736 assignment.

Straussburg: The book, yeah. I mean, we'd had some idea something was out there for a bit beforehand, what started at first as a string of sort-of-related freak incidents involving the flies. We originally thought they were just a new mutant strain of infovoric biologicals, and since the incidents never really left Cali we assumed they were native. I heard once that they were considering sending the MTF guys out to get them. I dunno what happened with that but I heard it.

I remember it was this lady in Anaheim. She hadn't left her house in, like, a few weeks, and the neighbors started complaining; it was an expensive neighborhood. Her house smelled. They knew something had died in there and a few of them were saying 'Oh, she's old, oh, she'd always had issues, she probably bit the dust.' Another one bit the dust. That's, uh, Michael Jackson. I'm quoting Michael Jackson there.

[…]

Yeah so, anyway, we were sent over. I should state for the record that C&R 37—that's Containment and Recovery—we've, uh, dealt with dead folks before. Before this we were on the [REDACTED] case where those guys in San Fran were trying to raise the dead. That was funny. I mean, it wasn't funny, I meant it was fun. Except it wasn't. You know. Everyone who's listening to this knows. Anyway we weren't having a good time because we'd just gotten off that case and we hadn't even been paid for it yet. [The C&R Unit 37 captain]'d just offloaded us with more B.S.—sorry, I'll try to keep it clean—but—

Interviewer: No, it's alright.

Straussburg: Yeah. Anyways, we didn't have a choice. You know. It's work. I mean, this is the best job I've had in my life. Like, pay-wise. Secrecy and stuff isn't really a benefit, I mean I always have my son asking me where the hell I've been all month and I can't tell him I've been shooting zombies, exorcizing the dead. And he's into that stuff too. He plays that game, the one with the zombies where you're shooting them, he plays that game all the time with his friends when he's home. Beyond that I never get to see him 'cause he goes to college in another city. So—

Interview: Courtney. Uh. Please, try to stay on track.

Straussburg: Right, yeah. We got going. To the job, I mean, in Anaheim. We got there and the house looked alright, it was one of those colonial buildings, rich neighborhood, except all of the neighbors were out and about on the street, no cars since we'd cordoned it off, the eggheads in Command bought us time with a cover story. I forgot which. But everyone was outside because, as we could smell, the stench had gotten really bad. That methane smell. Alcoholic. Like fruit. And it was everywhere in the air, everywhere, and, well, obviously gas masks don't mask smell, but I really wished they did. Couldn't breathe. I mean everywhere.

We already knew something wasn't right. Dead folks don't smell this bad. Maybe I got used to it but you usually have to kinda look for the smell when you're outside. It depends on how close you are. But when we pulled up, the truck stopped a block away. The house was marked with yellowtape a ways away, but we could smell the thing like we were right up against it.

Nobody'd opened the door yet, apparently. That's what they told us. Jack went first. He already got the stuff ready so we, uh, made him go first. The rest of us made everyone go back inside. Kid was crying. Not good. Jack opened the door, and, well, the smell got worse, but what really, uh, literally hit him was all the flies. Just everywhere. Like a cloud. A cloud of black smoke, except the cloud was moving, it was feeling around. Good thing is we came prepared, we knew about the flies, this was just the latest in a string of incidents and Jack already had the spray ready and wiped them out real quick.

So, uh, she was still alive in there. Dunno if I can say her name, but the old lady was on the floor in the living room. Catatonic. Eyes were still open. Miracle they hadn't eaten her eyes, since now we know how, uh, how much they like our eyes. The house had marble countertops, her glass coffee table was on its side, broken, but the walls were this artisanal wood stuff. This polished mahogany, I guess. Again, rich neighborhood. Well, I never saw flies do that to wood before, or I've never seen wood decay like that, because the walls were falling off into this black sludge, or more like tumors or cocoons, sloughing off the walls in gigantic purplish-black globs just absolutely teeming with flies. And the buzzing. Jesus, the buzzing.

The ER took forever to arrive, but they got her safe. We called in private magicians to, uh, deal with it with us. Help us. Did the paperwork later. We weren't gonna stick around anyway.

The old lady just confirmed a suspicion you guys had about this all being connected to an auction or something. The alchemist, uh, Robert, the professor, who'd auctioned a bunch of his magical stuff off. She was a participant in one of them since we'd tracked all his stuff from the records and they're all spread across the country. Only question was, what the hell could've caused this?

Interviewer: Have you or your unit had any experiences with Robert Green?

Straussburg: Yeah. Uh, he was tagged down after that job, actually. You know. For the record, I guess—He'd stopped teaching, like, a few years ago, tagged as a PoI ages before that for some other shenanigans abroad during a war, and from the records we gathered he'd pretty much been cooperative with the Foundation, even since the fly incidents started happening.

Cap told us he's catatonic, is why nobody's checked on him yet. Nobody from the Foundation, I mean. Well, catatonic, bedridden, I don't know the exact term but he'd pretty much been stuck in bed inside all day since he dropped out of USC one day, stopped teaching. His son is, uh, actually stationed at Site-19. Dunno if I can say that. Just redact it if it's classified, but I know that stuff, it's what I was told, hell I met the guy when we started going after the flies 'cause we'd already made the connection. He's, uh, not nice. Someone's gotta say it.

So basically Robert'd been getting spied on for a while now and it just so happened my team had got saddled up with checkup duty. He lives in Monterey, and he's a part of the local occult community there. I've heard it's got a pretty big scene, especially north of SoCal. Intel on Robert painted him as some kind of alchemist wizz. I asked Cap how he was allowed to do this stuff, and he told me that he'd always been licensed, did it with Foundation supervision. I don't know, it's confusing.

It wasn't my job to figure out. Jack and I pulled up to his place unannounced. His wife answered the door. Wasn't happy. When we flashed our ID she let us in, up the stairs, and the room was really nice, all these curtains. A humidifier. He was in the bed, looked asleep, so we each pulled up chairs and made his wife leave and sat quietly talking to him until he woke up. I noticed his cane, propped up next to the bed, was covered in cobwebs, dust, so I asked him about it. He was really incoherent. Dementia, y'know. He was mumbling a lot so Jack did most of the translating, I'm just not very good at interpreting that, and he basically just spilled a bunch of stuff about complications in his severed leg getting worse, needing to pay for surgery, medicine. So they auctioned off his collection. He said—no, he swore that most of it, if not all of it, wasn't magic, that it was all mundane, we had the wrong guy. We knew it wasn't true 'cause [REDACTED] had his name on it and that was clearly magic at play.

There was… There was this one thing he was doing. It really bothered me. He was just… itching, itching all over. The second we woke him up he was just itching, itching, itching his face, his chest, under his shirt. He couldn't keep still. I eventually couldn't take it anymore and asked him if he needed something, some lotion, water. 'Does your wife usually give you, uh, give you lotion? You're itching a lot, sweetheart.' But he said no. No, we wouldn't understand.

He said he'd, uh, 'tried to tell people' about… whatever they were. That's what he said. They.

So that was our bingo. And we just kept pressing and pressing until he, uh, he told us he was feeling them crawling all over him.

Interviewer: Feeling what crawl all over him?

Straussburg: Flies.

[…]

And nobody had believed him, is what he said.

And we knew we had a bingo card. We worked our magic and we narrowed it down to this book he'd written. He said he wanted to publish, that his son had encouraged him to take up an art form, so he wrote a book about his experiences. He told us this story, I don't know if I remember, but… He was in his room, and the book he'd written was on his desk, and he told us he just remembered seeing the flies squeezing out from between the pages. Like a hive of them.

After that he'd hid it somewhere. He forgot where. We eventually just figured after a few hours of blabbering that it'd gotten swept up with the auctioned stuff.

Interviewer: And what—

Straussburg: He said he put them in there, because nobody ever gave him anywhere else to put them.

[…]

The flies. He, uh, put them in there, so they'd stop eating him.

[…]

I remember what he said. Before we left, he turned to us, and for the first time I could see a kind of light in his eyes. Like he was all there again. Like he was… realizing. And we went back and we sat back down, and he said, and I'll never forget: 'They left me here. All they left me with was this woman. I don't know her. I… I don't know her. I'm an old man, my body is already broken, so they left me here. They won't shut up. They won't shut up. They won't, they won't, they won't…"

Sorry. We also got that out of him.

Interviewer: It's alright. Please give us a rundown on the events leading up to SCP-736's retrieval. Abridged accounts, please.

Straussburg: I can be abridged by dismissing most of these events outright. Detective Keay followed our tracks, and the old lady's, and figured out that the inciting object had been removed from the house by an unknown third party. The prime suspects ended up being the lady's maids, which didn't sit well with me personally, but that's what the guys at the top ended up going with. Well, I was right, because we found them really quickly, almost like they'd been doing nothing at all, and when we showed up at all their places individually we found nothing. Back to square one, basically.

This is still in early 2021. Then the case basically just froze over. I can't speak to whatever the heck you guys were doing up top, but me and the guys were busy with other stuff. Just a few reports here and there. You, listening—you can get more info by poking the Analysis goons, leave me alone for a change.

Interviewer: Courtney.

Straussburg: What?

Interviewer: Please stay professional.

[…]

Straussburg: You know, I don't like you when you're like this, [REDACTED]

Interviewer: Please don't use my—

Straussburg: It doesn't fit you. I said I needed more pills and you're the closest person I can get to an answer, but you just fed me bullshit back there.

Interviewer: Please, Courtney, I know, I find it odd too, but I'm just a messenger.

Straussburg: I find it odd that you think behaving like a lawyer on rec—

Interviewer: Is everything alright?

[…]

Straussburg: What's that mean?

Interviewer: We can stop the interview for now, pick it up at a later time. You're getting agitated.

Straussburg: Oh, god, please. Don't you use that word with me.

Interviewer: Court—

Straussburg: Anyways! Nothing happened for the better part of a year. Not my problem, again. Talk to Analysis. That's all I was saying.

This was all way before the incident in Delgado. I don't know what happened, how it happened, I haven't gotten an actual report 'cause I guess my personnel clearance isn't enough, but whoever'd snatched the book had taken it there. On the scene, about four miles out of town, they found just a whole load of these ruined containers in the mountains. Near this abandoned old gas lot. They found safes, plastic boxes, cardboard, they even found a, what was it, a—a lobster trap. One of those things they catch lobsters in, you know.

It wasn't the actual containers they found holes in. It was just the stuff that had ruined the insides. Jack told me that the runoff from the book was starting to get corrosive, or some equivalent of corrosive, what with all the flies spawning. The only reason the Foundation even knew about this was because some park rangers or police officers found it. They thought it was a dead body. They could smell it. I don't know how we didn't—probably because the town, uh, well…

You get the picture. We were preoccupied.

Interviewer: The prevailing theory is that those containers were left by the thieves who had taken the object the year before.

Straussburg: Yeah, thanks. I know. We're lucky the investigation stopped after Delgado, I think. Not just because of all the other averted incidents, y'know, like I know we're grateful more people weren't harmed. At least no more than [FIGURE CLASSIFIED]. But also because I'm pretty sure the smell would've taken another whole year to wash out. Out of my skin, my clothes, my equipment. I'm pretty sure it's still in my underwear it went so deep. Even… Even right now, y'know? I feel disgusting. No matter how much I shower. Probably would've helped if you guys would stock up my pills again but, eh, don't shoot the messenger, right?

Interviewer: You feel disgusting?

[…]

Can you please elaborate on that, Courtney?

[…]

[…]

It's okay if—

Straussburg: The worst part about this job is that it never leaves you alone.

Like, I'm not even just talking about the constant check-ins and check-ups, the guys you send to make sure we aren't talking. Even leaving the facility is a privilege according to you. That's the, uh, the vibe I get, anyway. Like you don't say it, but I know it, I know that's what you're saying.

I remember someone saying something about the Foundation, us, being the largest cult in the world. We conduct the largest, most systematic magical rituals out of any group of people in recorded history. We don't kill monsters—not all the time, not like the GOC, but instead we appease them. Like you'd appease God. Living in fear under God. Except we have millions of tiny gods in little boxes and we do everything we can, every little ritual our court mages can dream up, to keep them from exacting their terrible vengeance.

There are stories. The only reason I can think of why I even still remember these is that they're just false rumors. There's one that says Site-19's official Development Area secretly expands over all of LA because of a deal between the Foundation and the US government. So the entire city, all these people, are our test subjects. There are stories that some research projects still use D-Class prisoners even after 1997, up to this day. Someone said that the Foundation is the largest human organ buyer, producer, and trafficker in the world. All these stories. Redact them if they're true, I guess, but… don't shoot the messenger.

[…]

I… never had… dreams, before. I dreamed as much as a regular person. But they started happening more after Anaheim. After we saved the old lady. I just started dreaming more, remembering them. Like, I know you're supposed to forget dreams after they happen, but I remember a whole bunch and I know with some weird certainty that they're from around this time. Ever since I heard the buzzing. Because that's always there, in the dreams: the buzzing.

I'm underwater. Or in some kind of liquid. Just stagnating. Alone. Darkness. And there are these people I can't see tickling my ears, my mouth, my nose, under my eyelids. But eventually I figured they weren't people. Obviously.

I knew it was the book when you gave us pills. Not just me, Jack and the other guys too. Everyone with a history with the book got these special pills, and the dreams suddenly stopped. We had to take them in the morning, and it first it really sucked, because they made me feel sleepy all day. The nightmares didn't even really bother me. I just hate feeling sleepy. I don't know.

I don't really even know if I could call them nightmares. I wasn't scared. I wasn't annoyed. I was just waiting for it to be over while the flies ate me alive.

[…]

I feel disgusting. I feel it in my hair. I feel it under my nails. I feel it pooling up in my shoes, like I'm stepping in crud everywhere I walk. I feel it singing my nostrils, I feel it licking my eyeballs, I feel it—… I feel it everywhere. The stench. That, that ozone. Not just like BO, not even just a rotting corpse, no, it's a state of being almost. Like your flesh is necrotic.

That's what bothered me. Still bothers me, I mean. And I've gone to HR multiple times for it. They kept assigning that special pill, though, and I had to take it along with my other prescriptions. And it made me feel like such… such shit.

[…]

A few months ago, I went home. You gave me a month off, so I went to see my family. I finally got to be home with my husband and my son for a while. Be a mom for once. Ricky, my husband, he always took care of things, had his own job in the hospital, and my son went to school, so when I came back to the house it was empty. I'd texted them both and they were on their way. But I missed their arrival. Because the first thing I did after I texted them was get in the bath.

I needed to be in my own bath for once. The dorm in the facility is fine, I guess, I mean it's not exactly a bath, but showers are still nice. But I just needed to be home. Be home, and just stare up at a ceiling that I knew best.

Ricky caught me in the bath. I hadn't even heard him pull in. I was too busy scrubbing. By now my scrubbing had become lazy, I'd been doing it for so long. We hugged. The only thing I could tell him—was allowed to tell him—is that I just felt gross from being in my uniform all the time. I still got out. We needed to catch up, anyway.

Don't get the impression I was depressed or anything. This isn't depressing, okay? This isn't some compulsion effect where the anom makes you feel like you hate yourself or anything. It was something being forced on me from the outside. I knew I was fine, it was just the invisible filth that had suddenly started to accost me. But when my son came home, I still made damn sure we had a nice dinner.

[…]

The next week was his birthday. We threw a party. His friends came. I got to meet his boyfriend for the first time. Sweet guy. They work well together.

It hadn't gotten better or worse since then. I popped an extra pill that morning to make sure it didn't get in the way, though. I know you're not supposed to do that, but… well, I know now.

I had to get something out of the car. I don't remember what. It doesn't matter. I excused myself from the party, which was dying down by then anyway, and went to go get whatever I was going to go get. I slid in the back seats and checked the pouches. Oh—it was my sunglasses. Expensive, you know. I remembered putting them in the back. I checked around and, eventually, I guess I went all the way inside. And the door closed behind me.

I forgot to bring the keys.

I tried opening the door handle. It was locked, so I started yelling for Ricky, but the music was too loud. I could hear it from outside. No problem, I had my phone, so I could just call him. He always picks up. One of the reasons I love him.

So I got out my phone, opened the app, saw his name, and I called. And it ringed. And there was nothing. I kept calling, but he didn't pick up. I called Brian, my son, I called other people I knew at the party. No one was answering. I really didn't want to phone the police, but since none of my calls were being picked up and my battery was low, I had no other option.

I dialed 911 and waited. It was so dark outside, not even the neighbors' lights were on for some reason. At least, that's what it looked like. This nothingness outside. I wasn't letting myself get scared, but for some reason my skin started really itching as the phone was ringing. I just focused on pressing the phone up to my ear since I know scratching itches only makes them worse. It rang and rang and rang, but nobody picked up. I started screaming again; nothing. Now I was getting scared.

Then, I heard something. I turned on my phone's flashlight, and it attracted it: the fly. There was a fly in the car. It landed on the flashlight and stayed there. I… I don't know what it was, why that's what did it, but when I saw it I started crying.

Because I remembered.

Now it was happening for real, I thought.

Somehow the book had found me. Somehow the flies were here, the anomaly had breached containment, it was at my house and it was going to eat everyone alive. Suddenly I heard more buzzing around me and more flies started landing on the flashlight, more and more until the flashlight was completely covered, there was no more light, and I'd dropped my phone in the ground and all the bugs went after it, and, and in the darkness all I could make out was this faint outline, this pulsing mass of bugs, their wings beating out of order from each other, a terrible bush that had rooted itself in my car with leaves that twitched and broke in the air, growing and growing until its branches snagged my legs and made my skin raw, that they were breaking me down, I was necrotic, and I'd spent too long in the bath that day and my skin had pruned, my skin had loosened, and they were burrowing under the loose white skin where I'd spent too long in the water, and…

I guess I passed out. I woke up in the hospital. My son wasn't there, but Ricky was, and some Foundation agents were there with him.

I'd taken too many of the pills. That's why it could see me.

[…]

Straussburg: That's it. I have nothing else to say.

[…]

Interviewer: Have you felt alright since then?

Straussburg: I've been fine. I got off the special pills two years ago. The book isn't latched onto me anymore, apparently.

[…]

Interviewer: Alright. If that's all, then we can wrap up.

Straussburg: I need new medicine, [REDACTED]

Interviewer: Your request is still being processed, Mrs. Straussburg.

Straussburg: Fuck you.

END RECORDING