A Rather Unusual Day

 You look straight ahead as you lay down the fork that you’ve been using for the past 5 minutes to scoop macaroni into your mouth, you just ate a whole bowl of the cheesy pasta, and yet, you still feel hungry. You glance over to your right, shuddering a bit as you see it staring right at you. Prior to three days ago, you felt slight sense of fear just going about your normal routine, as to be expected when working at the Foundation. However now that feeling is amplified, as this tall, skull faced creature with a slightly oversized black robe just followed you around. The creature didn’t make a sound, nor did it interact with anything, it didn’t touch you, it didn’t speak to you, it just, stared at you.

 At first you were scared beyond belief of the thing, you hid for hours cramped up in the small closet in your Foundation issued room, you even fell asleep in there hoping, praying even, that it’d just disappear in the morning. That wish did not come true, much to your dismay. On the second day you tried everything you could’ve thought of to get rid of it, hiding from it some more, running from it, pleading with the beast to leave you alone, you even attempted to harm it, throwing books and knives, even going as far as to shooting at it with your Foundation issued pistol. None of what you tried worked, hell, the only things that came from that were noise complaints and the temporary revocation of your sidearm. Your head darts back to what’s in front of you, rows and rows of white lab coat wearing researchers, all sitting at twenty foot long, steel tables painted gray, in a brightly lit, white walled room.

You stay in this trance like state for a few seconds, quickly contemplating all of your life decisions in a matter of seconds, before you realize that you still crave something more to eat. You sigh and then scan the cafeteria, looking for something, what that is you don’t know yet. Your eyes hit a big black metal box, you eye it down for a second, and then you pivot in your seat, stand on your feet, and begin to trudge over to what seems like a vending machine. Just glancing to the side you can still see the creature, it’s sitting in place of where researchers should be sitting, it’s head tracks you, those pearly white eyes staring right through you. You focus back to the vending machine, the chattering of all the other researchers drowning out the squeaking sounds your rubber soled shoes made as they hit the white, ceramic tiled floor.

 You stop in your tracks in front of the machine, and begin to pull a bank note out of your pocket, before noticing the small sign that stood to the right of it, “SCP-261, Foundation employees should note that this machine only accepts yen.” There was a little arrow pointing to a smaller machine that was to the right of the sign, you look over to see, it was about two feet shorter than the vending machine, and only had two slots on the front. The slot closest to the sign had an American dollar symbol just above it, with an arrow pointing towards the slot, and the slot to the right of it had a Japanese yen symbol above, with an arrow pointing away from the slot, there was a bright green button on the side. You move over to the machine and take out the money you had in your pocket, a five dollar bill, and insert it into the American slot, folding your arms to yourself while tapping your feet against the floor as you listen to the whir of the machine working. After 5 seconds, you hear a beeping noise, the green button begins flashing, you reach your right hand to the bottom of the Japanese slot, the machine spits out nine coins right into your hand.

 You take the coins and count them up, you don’t understand the foreign language stamped onto them, but you do understand the numbers that were. The coins count up to five hundred and thirty nine yen, you walk back to the vending machine and begin to insert the coins into the machine, once done you see a number pad on the side. You can’t be bothered to care for what you’ll get, so you just push any number, after a second of nothing happening, you type in another number, wait, only for nothing to happen, and then depress yet another button, to which finally, the machine starts whirring. You step back a little to wait, and you can see the reflection of the creature on the shiny metal exterior of SCP-261, it stares at you again, only this time, it seems as though as it’s head is tilted. You shrug this off, as it’s not going to really hurt you, a thump can be heard from the machine.

 You snap your head down to the small door at the bottom of the machine, you kneel down and reach your hand inside grabbing at what feels like a box. You pull the box out of the machine and hold it with both hands as you trudge back to your seat, you didn’t care what you got, because at the very least it would be edible. As you walk back to your seat you take a look at where you were sitting, and of course the creature was still where it was positioned before you left, tracking you with those glassy white eyes. You sit down at your seat and place the box on the table, the creature suddenly laid it’s hands on the table, lowered its head down next to it. The creature took a few moments to thoroughly eye down the box, then it began to push the end of its bony snout against the side of the box, making a sniffly sort of sound, shifting the box slightly as it began its investigation.

 You’d never seen it do anything like this before, so this sudden turn of events caught you off guard, making you slightly tense up as the creature seemingly sniffed at the box. You let the beast snuffle at the box, the seconds feeling like minutes as it continued this behavior, then you decided to retrieve the box from the creature, as you had paid for it, not your new stalker. You shakily reach a hand up from your knee to pull the box closer to you, as soon as your fingertips touches the box, a black furred hand with rough textured pads on the bottom grabs your own by the wrist, holding on with a firm grip. Your head darts over to the creature as your heart begins racing, the creature starts to growl, albeit, it’s low, and crackly. The beast lets go of your hand, to which you almost immediately retreat it towards your chest, looking down at your hand you can see some noticeable marks on there.

 You had light cuts from how rough the creatures hand pads were, your hands got a little bit dusty from all of the dirt and filth on the creature and there were small indents on your skin from where the creatures claws had been. You place your hand back down against your knee, and watch as the creature grabs the box off of the table, slowly pulling it closer to its bony face. The beast began to claw at the box, at most making a few light scratches on the exterior. The creature lowered the end of its head down in defeat, it didn’t know how to open the box, it slowly placed the box back on the table, once done the creature cupped its head in its hands, propping itself up with its elbows against its knees. You take a few moments to process what just happened, you bought a snack for yourself, and the big monster that won’t stop following you tried to steal it for themselves, sounds crazy for a normal person, but it’s just a rather mundane day in the eyes of someone who works at the Foundation.

 After you went over what just happened with yourself, you take a look at the lightly damaged box, and you contemplate picking it up and having it to yourself, screw it, what’s the worst that could happen? You touch the top of the box and slide it towards you with the unopened tab facing you. Once it’s within both arms reach you grab onto it with both hands and bring it closer towards your face. You push your fingernails under the end of the tab and pull it open, to which the sound gets the attention of the creature, its head now pointed at you, you could almost see the excitement in its glassy eyes as you opened the box. The creature crossed its arms on the table, resting its head on its arms as it watched you rummage around through the box, you prop the tabs on the side up and plunge your hand into the box, only to be met with air.

Your hand touches the bottom of the box, you can only feel a few crumbs as you sweep your hand across the base of cardboard, but as you reach the middle, your fingertips hit something, your attention has been grabbed. You push the object to the wall of the box so that it’ll land in your hand, once you can feel the mysterious object in the palm of your hand, you pull it up and out of the box, and hold it close to you so that you can closely inspect what exactly it is that you found. You sigh at realization that the box was deceiving, and that you’ve been duped, for you only pulled a single light brown cracker out of the box. You place the box face down on the tabletop and lightly toss the disappointment of a snack onto the table, to which the creature sits up at, holding its arms at its side as it looked down upon the cracker. The creature’s head was pointed downwards as it eyed down what the researcher had placed on the metal table, it suddenly outstretched it’s arm towards the object on the table, gently picking the cracker up between the claws on its thumb and forefinger.

 The creature drew the object that it had picked up closer to its ivory face, taking a closer look at what it had picked up. The whole time this was happening you just sat in your seat watching your black furred stalker, you were perplexed as to why it chose now of all times to finally do something other than stare at you. The creature brought the cracker to the empty space where it’s nose would have been if it had skin on its face, you could hear the sound of sniffing coming from the general direction of the creature. Almost immediately after you heard the creature sniffing the cracker it reared it’s head back and then flung it forward, emitting a sneeze similar to that of a dog and then snorting afterwards, it must have gotten a noseful of salt when it decided to sniff the foreign object. The creature stared at the cracker for a few moments, before slightly opening up its maw.

 The sound of wet flesh moving was audible as a long, black and slimy tentacle like appendage emerged from the depths of the creatures skull. The beast pressed its tongue against the cracker and dragged it across the entire thing, getting a good taste of the foreign object. The creature retreated it’s tongue back into its mouth, sitting there for a few moments while staring at the cracker, seeming to process its salty taste. After a few moments of silence, the creature opened up its maw, maneuvering its hand towards its open mouth. The creature laid the cracker on its tongue, it’s jaw shut closed with a loud clack, and then it just sat there, staring off into the distance.

 The creature suddenly shifted its head in your direction, it kept its eyes on you for a few seconds, before focusing on the box that was face down on the table. The creature grabbed the box and drew it closer to itself, it plunged its hand into the cardboard box, rummaging around for more crackers, only to be met with the same disappointment you had met not to long ago. The creature seemed to be perplexed as to why there was no more snacks in the box, tilting its head in confusion at the cardboard constructed box. You cup your head in your hands and prop yourself up with your elbows against the table as the creature turns the box upside down and begins to shake it, wondering why you had to be a biology major in college, instead of going for something that wouldn’t get you placed into a super secretive researching facility where on top of being at extreme risk of a gruesome and painful death every second of every day, there was also a tall and black furred beast following you around. As you continue to rethink your life choices, the PA system suddenly blares to life, it was time to get back to work.

 You sit up and push your hands against the table, pushing yourself up as your legs extend. Once you are standing up you look at the creature, who was now in the process of getting out of their seat exactly as you had done just seconds before. This behavior was odd, as you’d never seen this thing move, it just teleported everywhere in either a standing or sitting position. You pick up the box that your stalker had left on the table and hold in one hand as you begin to walk to the cafeteria exit, tossing it into a nearby trash bin on your way out. As you continue your journey back to your office, you look to your side and see that the creature is actually walking, right beside you.

Its arms were stiff at its side as the bottom part of its robe moved as if there were a pair of legs underneath. You focus your head back to the forward position, you didn’t want to look completely crazy just staring off into what seems like nothing. As you finally stepped out of the cafeteria and into the sterile white hallway with grey tiled floors, you reflect upon the events proceeding today. You just knew that this was a start to something, what that something was, you weren’t quite sure about, yet.