Fvck, I hadn't worked on this in literally weeks.
So, you see, this started out as a story about things gradually disappearing, and gradually reality was blinking out one thing at a time. At first, Talloran would notice that no one around could remember certain researchers, then the country of Belgium, then a mug on his desk. Eventually the toes on his foot would vanish one by one, then Montana, and then the stars would start winking out. Windows would disappear before his eyes, Branches would disappear from trees. He would look down at his hands to find only two fingers and a thumb. Everything would vanish until he was a nearly limbless torso stuck in the last containment cell in the universe, typing the last of the article with a vanishing keyboard. Then his eyes, computer, and last remaining finger would vanish and he would be an eyeless, earless, noseless, mouthless, limbless, naked torso. Then the containment cell would vanish and the universe would wink out.
That only sort of happened.
I wasn't really sure how to pull the concept off.
So I turned to a new idea. Somebody suggested a twist on SIDS, so I did SIDS as an antimemetic birth defect that made parents perceive their kids were always facing backwards. And I also incorporated somebody else's idea of a computer program that was calculating ridiculously large primes that also made you develop a numerology-exhibitionism fetish. So, I combined the two. Maybe survivors of this birth defect also developed the fetish. Researcher Talloran was the lead researcher on the project.
I couldn't make it work.
So the next thing I had was a alternate, memetic version of a classical music album that made people who live in the Central Pennsylvania region hate and grow obsessed everything I had ever created for the Foundation, even the deleted things, and the things that never made it to the main list of objects. Researcher Talloran was the first staff member to be killed by the meme-ified maniacs.
It was really, really stupid.
But I couldn't get Researcher Talloran out of my head.
For weeks and weeks he just sort of stayed there, silently judging me. I would think about him during work, when I was supposed to be teaching small children to tap dance. I would think about him during school, and would spend psychology classes trying to think of a scenario to put him in.
I kept trying and trying.
I was fast running out of time for anything of note to happen.
Finally, something happened to me.
At 1:00 in the morning on March 24, 2017, something happened to me. I woke from a light slumber to find I couldn't move at all, I could barely even open my eyes. I couldn't even breathe and found myself struggling to get the muscles working that would keep me alive. I laid there on my bed for what felt like hours and hours of pain, as my muscles began to cramp and twitch.
Then James Martin Talloran, Level 3 Researcher, rose up like the devil at the foot of my bed. He was this incomprehensible dark shape, but somehow I recognized him instantly. He stared at me with these horrible glowing eyes and just laughed and laughed at my condition. I wet the bed at that point. Then, from his labcoat, he pulled out a giant, gleaming, curved dagger. It was glinting oddly in the moonlight. As I watched, he stuck the dagger in his mouth and sliced horizontally. His lower jaw fell to the floor, despite the impossibility of the cut being that powerful. What remained of his mouth dripped blood and his tongue flopped weirdly in the red waterfalls.
Like a whistle beckoning dogs, this was a cue for all the terrors of the world to come pouring out of every nook and cranny to join Talloran there. It was all the nightmares I had spent a better part of a year immersed in. Sliced presidents, unstoppable lizards, clockwork people, eye pods, deer gods, moving statues, old men both good and bad. All standing silently, a crowd of horror. They looked contemptuously at me lying, unmoving, in my piss and shit stained bed. "Why would you bother your time with us? In the grand scheme of things we are ultimately nothing. Idiotic horror creations. You have so much more you could be than a creator of garbage like us. Be somebody!", I seemed to hear them say.
As they stared, one of them, a rotting corpse thing, patted Talloran on the shoulder. He took the dagger stained in his own blood and leaned over me. His red eyes stared into my soul and saw each and every bad thing I had ever done. I gulped, and, summoning every ounce of will I could muster into my muscles, made my lips move.
"Do it."
He plunged the dagger into my stomach, and ripped it sideways. My intestines spilled out onto the wooden floor like wet sponges. Researcher Talloran's grotesque maw dripped and spattered blood on my face as he leered over me and the whole collective abortion of creatures watched smugly.
I woke up. It was a dream.
And this is where you come in. I sat down and wrote this whole thing then and there. Had to. It felt right. It's currently been about two days since that nightmare, and I'm only just finishing up. This is the ultimate end. This is the restoration of things. I don't know whether I can continue from here. I don't know whether I will.
The Eleven Day Empire melted me, and I submitted. You watched me submit from the moment I joined the Foundation community.
SCP-3999 has won.
SCP-3999 has lost.
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