He spent most of his evenings wrapped in the dim warmth of his bedroom, a small sanctuary where darkness felt less like a threat and more like a comfortable friend that allowed imagination to stretch far beyond the limits that daylight tried to impose. His parents believed he was asleep, resting for another ordinary school day where nothing extraordinary ever happened, yet instead he was quietly discovering a universe of anomalies, mysteries, and secrets that existed in hidden corners of the digital world. The gentle hum of the ceiling fan and occasional distant sounds from the street below blended into a soft background noise that made the glowing screen in front of him feel like a portal, almost sacred in the silence.
He delved into pages filled with strange numbers and clinical documentation, each file presenting itself like a locked door waiting for someone curious enough to turn the handle. The SCP Foundation database had become his personal library of nightmares and wonders, a place where he could roam freely without leaving his chair, and where every entry he encountered reminded him that fear could hold far more meaning than a simple emotional reaction. He did not seek jumpscares or cheap thrills that other kids enjoyed, because those things gave him only a shallow form of excitement that vanished quickly, leaving nothing but boredom in its wake.
Instead, he wanted to feel the weight of possibilities, the kind that lingered long after the screen went dark, whispering that reality might not be as safe or structured as everyone pretended. He read about creatures that defied anatomy, artifacts that bent human will like soft metal, and places where time twisted into loops that swallowed reason whole. Each report was written with that stark, professional tone the Foundation used, which made the content feel uncomfortably genuine, as if the truth had been stripped of drama to make space only for cold facts.
He would sometimes pause in his scrolling, imagining sterile containment cells buried beneath countless layers of reinforced walls, guarded by agents trained to stare into the abyss and not flinch when it stared back with hungry intelligence. A part of him, a bold and restless part, wondered how exhilarating it would feel to walk those halls and witness that hidden world firsthand, to know that life could be much larger and more dangerous than anyone around him was willing to admit.
His favorite entries were never the popular ones that everyone online discussed, because those felt diluted by memes and exaggeration, stripped of their mystery and atmosphere. Instead, he gravitated toward anomalies that felt forgotten or misunderstood, ones that lurked in the cracks of the Foundation's attention. SCP-4975, labeled with the deceptively harmless nickname Times Up, was one such anomaly. The document described a creature that hunted through certainty and inevitability, stalking people not with claws or speed but with tension, dread, and a bone-deep understanding of fear that turned waiting into torment.
Something about that fascinated him more than he cared to admit.
He reread the file so many times that he could almost recite parts of it from memory: the clicking and clacking that always came first, the way ribs and vertebrae twisted unnaturally, and the chilling rule that once targeted, the victim was doomed even if they tried to ignore the sounds. It wasn't a creature that burst through windows or chased people down corridors with roaring aggression. Instead, it was patient. It listened. It waited for terror to ripen.
That kind of horror dug deeper under the skin.
Sometimes, after shutting down his device, he would lie awake with his hands tucked beneath his head and his eyes fixed on the faint crack beneath his bedroom door, watching the soft glow of the hallway's night light stretch across the floor like a quiet reminder that something could be standing on the other side, deciding whether to enter. His imagination would take the clicking described in the file and — with unsettling ease — place those sounds into the stillness around him, as if the creature might be pacing somewhere just beyond sight, aligning the rhythm of its bones with the beat of his heart.
He always convinced himself he was being dramatic, and that nothing supernatural or anomalous had any reason to notice a boy who spent more time daydreaming than doing anything meaningful or noteworthy. Yet no matter how many times he reassured himself, there remained a cold tremor of curiosity at the base of his neck, suggesting that perhaps his fascination with the SCP world was not entirely one-sided. It was a ridiculous thought — completely irrational — but irrational ideas could sometimes feel more honest than logical ones. He would roll onto his side and close his eyes, letting that mixture of fear and excitement keep him awake for a little while longer before sleep finally pulled him away from the screen's afterimage.
He told no one about his habit, knowing that friends would laugh and adults would worry that he was filling his head with darkness when the world already offered enough real problems. But he did not read because he was scared of reality; he read because he feared reality was too simple. The entries gave him hope that there might be a crack in the mundane structure of the universe, one that could open into something extraordinary if he just paid enough attention.
There were nights when he imagined meeting an SCP, not in a cheesy fictional way but in a moment that would rewrite who he was and who he could be. He wondered whether he would scream or run or stand frozen like a statue carved out of instinct and disbelief. Part of him hoped that he would be brave enough to face the unknown without hesitation, because courage felt more achievable when the danger was still imaginary.
However, the longer he read, the more he realized that bravery in those files was never the loud, heroic kind he saw in movies. It was quiet. It was the kind of bravery that happened when someone continued breathing even though fear made every inhale feel like a countdown to something terrible. He admired that kind of courage, and he secretly hoped he possessed at least a small spark of it somewhere inside.
On one particular night, as rain tapped against his window in uneven patterns, he found himself scrolling back to 4975 again, drawn to its merciless simplicity. It didn't need complex abilities or brilliant schemes. It only needed time, and fear did the rest. The idea that something could kill not through force but through inevitability terrified him more deeply than any grotesque monster ever could.
He leaned closer to the screen, eyes scanning every word as if searching for something new hidden between lines he had already studied countless times. He imagined the creature out there somewhere, perhaps crouched in a forgotten alley or lurking beneath the floorboards of a house that looked perfectly normal from the outside. Maybe it was waiting for someone who unknowingly fit its criteria, someone who paid attention to its existence.
Someone like him.
He exhaled slowly, pulling a blanket over his legs, trying to shake off the thought that he had somehow made eye contact with a story that should have remained fiction. He shut the laptop a little faster than he normally did, forcing himself to break away before the imaginative fear could solidify into something harder to ignore.
Still, when he turned off the room's last light and allowed the shadows to settle, the silence carried a faint tension that refused to disappear. The clock on his wall continued its ordinary ticking, but sometimes — only sometimes — he thought he heard a similar sound from somewhere else in the room, following its own rhythm instead of matching the clock's steady pace.
He closed his eyes anyway, telling himself he was perfectly safe, because that was what the world expected him to believe. Yet the last thought drifting through his mind before sleep claimed him was not a comforting one. It was a question that made his pulse quicken ever so slightly.
What if some SCPs do not need to break into our world at all?
What if they have always been here, simply waiting for someone brave or foolish enough to notice them?
And he, more than anyone else he knew, had noticed them.