SCP Origins: The Concrete Man

Link to article: SCP Origins: The Concrete Man.
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+ | SCP ORIGINS |

+ ##grey|The Concrete Man##
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[[include :scp-wiki:info:start]]
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**SCP Origins**
**The Concrete Man**
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First installment of the **SCP Origins** series! More tales soon to come!
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**Author:** Doctor Scrappy
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//...//
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> //”Who’d look after her? She’d be alone up there. Her fire would go out. It’d be cold and damp like a grave. If you love someone, you don’t do that to them, even if you hate them.//
> 
> //”You understand, I don’t hate her.//
> 
> //”I hate what she has become.//
> //”I hate the illness.”//
> 
> [[>]]
> -- Norman Bates
> [[/>]]

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//...//
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**October 15th, 1914**

*
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Robert rushed through the densely populated streets, catching eyes and glimpses from passersby. He didn’t mind the stares, continuing on through the streets, by the people, to his home.

He held a bottle in his hand, a curious label adorning its side, the contents therein splashing against the walls of their glass container.

When he arrived at the street, his home just across, he sprinted full throttle from one side to the other. The //honk// of a gentleman’s car rang through the day, his bewildered words falling upon deaf ears.

The door swung open to awaken even the deepest of sleepy birds. But there was only his mother, resting in her bed upstairs.

He made his way through the corridor, the paint on the walls slowly withering away, the floorboards adorned with holes down to the basement, still wet from last week’s storm.

”Mother! Mother!” Robert yelled up the stairs. His footsteps echoed on the dilapitated walls, the stairs creaking under him. ”Mother!”

His hands firmly grasped the corroding brass handle of his mother’s bedroom, turned and opened it. In the corner of the room, there lied his mother, wrapped in blankets warm enough to boil an egg, on cushions softer than the thickest clouds. The shudders of the window were shut, only letting sparse rays of the sun shine through.

Robert simply stood at the door, the bottle firmly in his hands, as he stared at the brittle husk of his mother. She slowly moved her arm, so careful, one might’ve assumed she was one of those people cursed with their bones to be glass he had heard about. He quickly waved away the thought.

She raised her arm, but it quickly fell onto the blankets again. Robert made his way toward her.

”Mother. Rest,” he said in the calmest tone he could muster up with the bottle in his hands.

She looked up at him, barely able to turn her head. Her eyes were sunken in, almost hollowed-out looking, appearing like absolute blackness in the shadows. Her skin was raggedy, hanging over her bones like wet paper. She moved with the slowness of a snail, with the fear of an oyster with no shell, sitting on the coast.

Robert fought off a gulp, his voice brittle and little: ”Mother, I’ve brought you some medicine.” He held the bottle to her eyes, so that she might recognize it.

Her eyes strained at the thing in her son’s hands, her mind too weak to form coherent thoughts. Eventually, she moved her dry lips to speak, her teeth yellow and rotten.

”This... th--this...”

He laid his warm hand against his mother’s skin. ”Rest, mother. I’ll bring you a cup. You’ll--”

”... is... a f--fabrication...”

She watched as her son’s expression changed in an instant. That expression she had only seen on her son when he was still a little child changed to that of a man being confronted with the horrors of the real world.

He turned the bottle around to see the label so symmetrically plastered onto the front, his eyes widening upon inspecting the label closer.

The bottle fell to the floor, shattering into a thousand fragments. The contents spilled onto the wooden floor, he could hear the droplets seeping to the floor below them.

Tears ran down Robert’s face. He couldn’t even look at his own mother.

She raised her hand with all of the life she could well up, and lightly touched the cheek of her son. He looked up to meet his mother’s eyes, so lively in their eternal blueness, like the deepest blue of the seas.

”Robert... this is... our... //curse//.”

Robert’s mouth was agape, speechless. He wrapped his hands around his mother’s, knelt down, and looked onto her like a beggar would a man or woman in a fine suit.

”Mother, stop with this madness!”

She shushed him. ”Robert... liste--”

”No!” He erupted from his stance. He looked onto his mother, the tears welling up in his eyes, hands balled into fists. ”Stop with this //curse//!”

She could feel her son’s breathing, so heavy, so rapid. It pained her to see him angry, to see him sad, to see him crying.

Robert calmed down again. He hadn’t stepped through the door yet, so that meant he wasn’t too angry with her, that he was still willing to listen.

She curled her lips once again: ”My father died in the War... my mother died when he never came back... Your father died when he went down an alley he shouldn’t have.”

Robert wiped away his tears. The sleeves were soaking.

”We are the Chetfords, Robert. //This// is our curse. //To die a young death.//”

He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. His head was trained to the floor where the remains of the bottle laid, sniffing silently. His mother slumped back into her bed, obscured by the darkness.

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Robert was an ordinary kid. Quiet. Smart.

He didn’t have a lot of friends. There were rumors prevailing of his father sinning, going out every night to meet another woman in dark alleyways.

When he died, the kids told to each other that God had punished him, to die alone in another one of his alleys, stabbed by some low-life criminal; when the authorities found him, they didn’t find anything stolen, or maybe he didn’t have anything on him.

Money got sparse after that.

As a kid, he was told stories of his grandfather. The hero, fighting for his country, dying on the battlefield as many men did during that time. But it was a death with honor, a death with pride. His grandmother died of a heart attack, regardless of how honorable it supposedly was.

And now his mother. Sometimes, when he returned late after midnight, he would peep into his mother’s room, to see if she was okay -- he could see the flies on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling, on her face. But when he turned the light on, there wasn’t anything. The buzzing of the flies would suddenly cease to be.

He loved his mother. He tried to save her. But without much money, he couldn’t afford a doctor, he couldn’t afford the medicine.

He cried for hours. He thinks his mother can’t hear him.

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Grey clouds cast oversky their thick shroud down upon the world, the sun darkened to the moon’s light. Only a few shines broke through, but they were miles away from where Robert was standing.

He was standing in front of a small headstone, the elements having corroded away whatever once stood on the granite block. A flower was in his hand, one he had plucked from the side of the road on his way here.

”Mother has been getting more sick lately,” Robert said to the headstone. He took a long pause. ”Not much more than that...”

His head tilted down. He realized he was wearing his suit. A smile formed on his face. ”Oh, and your suit fits me fine, father.” He gave off a light chuckle. It quieted down again.

Robert held back the tears. He wiped as many of them away as he could, but they kept on coming.

”I miss you, father. I wish when I come up here I had something better to say, but I--I...”

He fell silent again. ”Happy birthday, father. Hope you are doing well.”

He placed the flower on the top of his father’s headstone, looking at the petals move in the breeze. He turned to the exit, when suddenly there was a silhouette in the corner of his vision appearing and vanishing soon again.

His instincts told him to look, but when he did, he saw nothing there -- only a few green bushes.

Just as he was about to write it off as a figment of his imagination, the silhouette appeared again, and Robert turned his head faster now. Again, there was nothing there, but for a few tall-standing trees.

[[=]]
//##transparent|”Robert.”##//
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A shiver went down his spine. He could have sworn the wind had whispered his name.

The silhouette appeared for a final time, and Robert turned behind him to be met with the shape of his father, wearing the exact same suit he was wearing, multiple red stains and wounds adorning his chest and arms.

Robert stood there, unable to move, unable to breathe, as his eyes could not avert their gaze at the sight of his own father, //exactly// the way he had appeared on his death.

The shape retreated into the foliage, appearing to not even touch the ground, and muttering something incomprehensible. Robert felt his muscles tense up, as he sprinted after the figure, the leaves scraping against his skin.

He followed the figure for what felt like hours, the foliage and plant growth seeming to try to hold him back.

Eventually, the growths diminshed. An empty patch of grass revealed itself to him. His eyes darted all around, but he found no trace of the figure of his father.

Instead, what he found was a leather-bound book, looking new and pristine, as if just having come out of the press, its surface smooth, laced with an intricate zinc pattern, reflecting the little moonlight there was.

His curiosity piqued, he grasped the book and held it firmly in his hands. Despite its appearance, the book was practically weightless, no more than a chicken’s feather or a pebble.

Robert smelled the scent of some perfume emanating from the pages, reminding him of the ones his mother used to have.

When he turned back, he found himself back at where he had started, back at the cemetery, with no time having passed at all. Waving it off as just a figment of his imagination, Robert held onto the book and made his way back to the exit.

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Robert rushed back into his home, the book under his arm. He was soaking wet, as a storm had decided to give its gift of water from the grey clouds. Peculiar enough, though, the book didn’t seem to be wet at all, as dry as the desert. Robert was too annoyed to notice.

Once inside, Robert hurried upstairs, his steps leaving wet stains on the floor and carpet, at least in the areas, which hadn’t been hit by the leaks.

Passing his mother’s bedroom, he peeped inside -- she was deep asleep within her bed, the shudders tightly shut on the far side. He quickly closed the door again.

The door to his bedroom made a quiet //click// as he closed it shut behind him. He placed the leather-bound book onto his desk, the little light there was just being barely enough. Robert didn’t even change his clothes, as he pushed a chair up toward the desk, its brittle legs scraping against the floorboards.

A combination of sweat and drops of water from his wet hair, accompanied by his rapid heartbeat, his arms shaking, and the light being dimmer than he remembered, prevented him from opening the book immediately.

There was a part of himself that whispered to him to not open the book, to toss it into the fire, bring it back to wherever he had found it. He didn’t know if it belonged to anyone -- somebody might be looking for it.

But it looked to be worth a lot. He might be able to sell it for whatever it was worth, and //might as well look what’s within, when he was going to sell it, right?//

His fingers rested lightly upon the book‘s edge, the odor of roses dissipating, overtaken by the sensation of dust filling his nose and lungs. He coughed loudly, but felt the sensation leaving his body soon after.

The book flung open. Whether it was because of his own movement or something else he couldn’t place during all his coughing.

The pages were just as pristine as they looked from the exterior. Black letters were written in such delicacy that Robert couldn’t help himself, but trace the outlines of them with his fingers.

His eyes were transfixed on the letters, the structures of sentences boring themselves into his mind.

They told of a //process//. A process beyond the laws of man, beyond the laws of nature, of even He Himself. A path for eternal youth, to be immune from all ailments, all injury, all wars and plagues, destruction and death itself.

Robert could feel himself being reinvigorated. New life in his body, his cells, his soul.

He quickly closed the book again, a large cloud of dust settling into his room. He stood up, stepped away, and began to feel dizzy from all the movement.

Rough shapes and outlines of his room spun around him, as he leaned up against the wall to steady himself. As time passed, he found himself back in his room again. He looked upon the book, its zinc outlines shining in the dim light, while the storm raged outside.

//I shall burn it, get a chest and sink it to the bottom of the sea. This book shall never see the light of day ever agai--//

Then the most agonizing scream a son could ever picture jolted him awake. It took a few seconds for him to start running to his mother’s bedroom. He nearly stumbled and fell to the floor on the short way there, his hand nearly missing the corroded brass door handle.

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Robert sprinted to his mother, his footsteps so loud that he thought that the very ground beneath him might come apart. He turned on the bedside lamp to see his mother’s face.

”Mother! Mother!”

His mother was coiling and twitching within her bed, her limbs spazzing out in all directions, her chest rummaging up and down, as if something was shaking her soul. Her eyes were closed, tears streaming through the lids, as she screamed from the bottom of her lungs.

Robert was looking all around, grasping his head, breathing heavily, while he went up and down. The soul-piercing screams of his mother nearly deafened him.

With no other resolve, Robert took his mother by the shoulders and shook her, ’til she awoke. He tried his best to be forceful, but not harm his mother’s frail body. ”MOTHER! It’s me, mother!”

The screaming ceased. She opened her eyes to stare at her son, who was still tense, but more at ease now. ”S--son...”

”It’s me, mother. Everything is fine again.” He hugged his mother with a tight grasp. They looked into each others’ eyes again.

”What happened?” Robert asked.

She stared absent-mindedly to the floor, unable, //no//, un//willing// to recount the events in her mind.

”Please, tell me, mother,” he begged.

She stared back into his eyes; what little life remained in them was completely overshadowed by the absolute terror reflecting in the darkness.

”I saw... death. Reaching... its hand out at me...” She looked at him with the most fearful eyes Robert had ever seen. Like a piglet before slaughter. ”And I saw your father, Robert. By all that is holy... I saw him.”

Now it was her who hugged her son. Robert just stood there, held his mother in his arms, //so weightless//, and stared into the darkness. Her sobs and sniffs permeated through the room, as his mind wandered. Wandered back to the book.

He knew what had to be done.

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> [[=]]
> **__The Gift of Life__**
> [[/=]]
> ------
> 
> **12.1** //The Gift of Life is an ancient rite practiced by various civilizations to create only the strongest of warriors, people to carry on their legacy.//
> 
> //The horrors of inevitability and oblivion will be washed clean, for a new life with no such fears will be paved for the one fortunate.//
> 
> //To receive the gift, one must bring together the objects, and follow the tome **exactly**://
> 
> * //A cup of fresh water, taken from the nearest spring;//
> * //An ounce of herb, curing the body within;//
> * //Ragged cloth to be wrapped around;//
> * //Hundred eggs, freshly seperated;//
> * //Coins of value, to be taken as a kind gesture;//
> * //And finally, a slab of brick to be used to strengthen the bonds of these elements.//
> 
> //Bring these objects within the presence of the tome, and recite the name of the one fortunate, who may receive the Gift of Life; blue smoke will be carried to you in the winds.//

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The gathered objects necessary for the rite were strewn across his bedroom, laying idly on either the floor, his bed, or desk. It had been a tedious task to gather them, ’specially the herbs and the eggs, for which he spent two good meal’s worth.

//No matter, though,// Robert thought to himself, as he brought the objects into the middle of the room in a large circle. //Everything will be worth it...//

Once done, Robert slid open a drawer, in which the tome resided. He felt his heart beating in his throat, sweat rolling down his body, as he retrieved it from the drawer.

He placed the book in the middle of the circle, as he waited for his senses to calm down, closed his eyes, prayed a prayer, asked Him for forgiveness, and spoke his mother’s name:

”Amelia Chetford.”

The seconds passed, Robert tightly pressing his eyelids shut, feeling the sweat soak his father’s suit. Then he opened them again, and found nothing; no smoke, nothing.

Robert looked onto the tome lying in front of him on the wooden floor, and began to look about the pages, frantically moving through each one, his eyes darting all over.

The panic that seared within him was quickly overtaken by a boiling anger, a frustration so great it could even make the deepest bowels of Hell shiver.

Then he found the page again, where the necessities of the rite were detailed. They were unchanged, his mind having had the text memorized by now. And then his blood froze.

On the same page he had read weeks ago, there was inscribed another sentence, another necessity. He read it multiple times through to assure himself that his mind wasn’t making a fool of him, but it wasn’t.

He let the book clatter to the floor.

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> * //The life of a young one, so to energize the ethereal.//

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He retreated into a corner, his eyes wide at the tome, his body shivering, as his mind raced with thoughts.

//No, no, no... This can’t be. It cannot be! I couldn’t have missed it... No, I couldn’t have...//

Eventually, his thoughts calmed down. He had to do something. With each passing second, death laid its cold arms around his mother, slipping away more, due to the illness.

With all the courage within him, Robert stood up from his little hole and made his way toward the tome. He closed its covers and took a deep breath.

He pursed his lips, exhaled deeply, and said: ”Amelia Chetford.”

Nothing happened. He repeated it, louder than before: ”Amelia Chetford!”

There was a low thumping noise, but he paid no attention to it. //”Amelia Chetford. Amelia Chetford. **Amelia Chetford!**”//

There was silence for a little while. Then the book shot open again, as blue mist began to pour out at him like a waterfall, enveloping the room in its musky scent, his movement becoming heavy and stiff.

He heard voices from beyond the clouds, whispering to him...

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**//”LAMENT.”//**

**//”IDIOCY.”//**

**//”AMELIA.”//**

**//”REVERANCE.”//**
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He tried to shut them out, search for a safe corner, but the room seemed to go on in all directions forever, him getting lost in the mist.

After some time, the smoke dissipated into nothingness, as Robert stumbled to the floor, coughing his lungs out. He shut the book again, as it just laid there on the floor.

He stood up again, tossing the tome under his bed, and held his head in his hands. Then a thought blitzed into his mind:

//”Mother...”//

The time to make it to his mother’s bedroom were the slowest seconds Robert had ever experienced. Time seemingly went still, his movements slower and slower, as he placed his hand on the all too familiar doorknob and stepped through the door.

He stopped at the door -- there was a figure moving around in his mother’s bed. He backed away instinctually, the terror building up inside him, before it became unbearable; despite this, he couldn’t move a muscle, and could only remain to stare.

The figure held out its hand, he could see the silhouette, before a voice rang out through the room to his ears:

”Robert...?”

She switched the light on.

Robert just stood there, mouth agape, unable to speak, nor even think. In the bed was his mother, but her posture was upright, her skin no longer wrinkly, her movements smooth and alive. She didn’t seem to hurt anymore.

”Robert...” She said her son’s name livelier than she ever had in the last few years.

”Mother...” Tears welled up in his eyes. He let them flow freely -- he didn’t care anymore.

He rushed to his mother and embraced her in a tight hug. Their sobs echoed against the creaky floorboards and leaking ceiling, but Robert didn’t care -- she didn’t either.

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The past few months were the best Robert had gone through in all of his life. Not wanting to pass such an opportunity, //a gift from God//, the two had planned to visit the places they had always dreamed of visiting. When father was still alive.

Money was still tight, though, and with their work schedules, neither of them could find the time to set a right date. Still, they loved each other like any mother and son, and prevailed through the darkness.

One day, though, on a particularly cold spring Thursday, Robert returned home to find find his mother nowhere -- he knew Thursdays were her off-days, and he didn’t recall her ever mentioning being away on this particular date.

The thought concerned him, so he immediately rushed to his mother’s bedroom; surely enough, he would find his mother there, resting in her bed in that corner of hers.

But something seemed off about her. He went to check her, to see if the illness had reappeared, but looking down at her, she was completely fine.

He couldn’t shake off that feeling of uncertainty, though, so he spoke up: ”Mother... what are you doing?”

She turned her head to face her son, the shadows obscuring her emotions, as she slowly reached a hand out to him.

She moved her lips, but so slow and frail, Robert thought the illness had crept up again. But his mother’s voice was alive: ”Son, I...” She stuttered. Robert took her hand and pressed it lightly -- it felt colder than usual.

”I--I...” was the only thing she could get out.

His heart raced. He stammered for an answer, something to say, //anything// to help his mother with.

Then he looked down at her body. The sight made him freeze up. Her legs had turned grey as stone, her arms slowly turning as well. There were cracks on her skin, so unnatural it made Robert’s mind and stomach retch and coil.

Short of breath, the words were stuck in his throat, the breath in his lungs holed-up deep within.

She grabbed her son’s hands with her other arm, the movement erratic, jerky and stiff; cracks formed at her shoulders. He flinched slightly, as her hand was cold to the touch. ”Robert...” she gasped, ”I’m afraid...”

//”Everything will be all right...”// was what he meant to say, but Robert didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His heart had sunken deep within his chest, his voice as silent as a grave.

Robert simply turned around and walked out of the room.

Amelia wanted to say something, but her lips became dry.

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”YOU STUPID BOOK!”

Robert hurled the tome through the air, its pages fluttering haphazardly through the wind, the weight of the leather and zinc giving off a distinct //thud// from when it hit the wall and floor.

He clutched his head in his hands, dropping into his chair with such force, Robert flailed his arms around for the fall that never came.

Tears streamed through his fingers, the tears going down along his palms, arms, and then under the sleeves of the suit.

//”Why...?”//

His mother’s condition had worsened over the week. She barely moved anymore, lying in bed like a corpse in a grave; she didn’t eat, nor drink anymore, as her lips had dried, her teeth had turned to stone, and her mouth was greyer than any clouds overhead in the sky; he didn’t even hear her breathe anymore, no inhales or exhales of the musty air.

He didn’t look at her the way he did once. It was too unbearable to see one’s own mother like this.

”Mother...” he uttered, his voice a mere whisper, ”... I am sorry...” The rest of his words were drowned out by his sobs.

The tome snapped open, startling Robert. Its pages began to flutter, as if trapped in the greatest storm known to man, before they halted. Pitch black ink began to seep through the floorboards and move onto the pages with such delicacy, Robert caught himself mesmerized.

The ink settled on the pages to form into letters, individual words, sentences, which spoke directly to Robert:

> [[=]]
> **//”YOU IGNORED THE TOME.”//**
> [[/=]]

Robert crawled toward the book, keeping his head low. When his eyes laid rest on the black words, they began to reform again:

> [[=]]
> **//”A BOTCHED RITUAL; A MISSING SACRIFICE.”//**
> [[/=]]

Robert felt his breath becoming heavier, more stammering. It continued:

> [[=]]
> **//”YOUR LOVED ONE WILL PAY BY LIVING OUT ETERNITY.”//**
> [[/=]]

His heart skipped a beat. He held up the book in front of him, his hands shaking upon its weightlessness, that familiar scent creeping up his nostrils again.

”Leave my mother alone,” he said frail and brittle, like how his mother used to be, unsure whether the book could even hear him.

Soon enough, the letters changed again:

> [[=]]
> **//”GIVE US WHAT WE DESIRE.”//**
> [[/=]]

He nearly whispered his sentence: ”And what would that be?”

The answer came swiftly:

> [[=]]
> **//”GIVE US __YOU__.”//**
> [[/=]]

Robert said nothing for a while; he just looked onto the book’s pages, the pitch black lettering engraving their shapes into his mind.

> [[=]]
> **//”SO THAT YOU MAY PAY FOR YOUR MISCONDUCT OF THE TOME.”//**
> [[/=]]

The minutes passed away in silence. There was a conflict within him, stewing up inside him, wanting to be released. He felt fearful, the very words of the book shaking him down to his soul, as the letters remained in the page.

//I can’t do it... I can’t... To become like my mother, a statue, unmovable, yet in all defiance of the Lord, still// alive//... I... I cannot--//

Then he thought back to his mother’s eyes -- such lively eyes. Lush, bluer than any part of the great seas, than even the sky or heavens themselves.

And then he remembered his mother’s eyes as they were now -- grey, cold, dead. Deader than any corpse Robert could ever picture, greyer than any rock or boulder, colder than the most frozen of waters.

He thought about them for a while, and said:

”W--what do I need to do?”

There was an excruciating silence:

> [[=]]
> **//”SAY YOUR NAME.”//**
> [[/=]]

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Amelia awoke from a deep sleep. It was the only way to alleviate the pains.

She couldn’t move her head, only her eyes. Even then, it pained to move them, to even look, as her eyeballs grinded against the tendons and muscles, hard as stone. It was dark and the figure at the door was a mere silhouette.

The figure stepped forward -- it was Robert. She hadn’t seen her son for... she didn’t know how long. Time passed by differently when one was confined to lay in a bed for so long, enveloped in the darkness, with no one, but only oneself to talk to.

She could see that something was pressed under his arm, but she couldn’t make it out, as Robert knelt before her.

He clutched her hand, so cold to the touch, unmoving; she didn’t even notice it.

Then, she heard her son speak: ”I’m sorry. You won’t understand this, but... I’m so sorry.”

Those sobs and sniffs of his filled her ears. She wanted to say something, but her mouth remained shut.

”I will make things right.” There was a long sob. ”Goodbye, mother.”

She tried to say something, //anything//, but she remained as silent as the statue she had become. She tried to yell through her lips, yell at her son to stop whatever he was planning on doing -- to no avail.

Robert looked onto his mother for what might very well be the final time, shed some tears, smiled, and uttered:

//”R--robert Chetford.”//

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Amelia awoke from a deep sleep. It was the only way to alleviate the pains.

She tried to stand up, but it was as if her whole body collapsed onto itself, falling onto the blankets and cushions. She wanted to try again, but then saw her arms; they were wrinkly, hanging over her light bones.

Every breath she took hurt her deep within her chest, her form sagging deeper into the bed.

Despite the pain, however, a smile lurked at the edges of her face, as she stared up the ceiling, while she felt... at peace.

She curled her lips, her tongue clicking, and muttered: ”Robert...” Her heart was beginning to beat slower now.

”Good night, mother...” was all he could say from the darkness of the room.

She tried to look at him, but felt her body becoming ever-so-heavier. She closed her eyes...

//And then her heart stopped.//

Robert stood there in silence.

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**July 26th, 1916**
**Norwich Asylum**

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”... and here resides our most peculiar patient!”

He heard footsteps clatter against the floor, dozens of them. The large metal door was heavy standing between him inside and the doctors outside. The footsteps stopped in front of the door, as the shadows of the people stretched out from underneath the door.

The head doctor spoke: ”Mr. Robert Chetford, a man who believes he has been cursed to become concrete, and is immortal in the process. Ain’t that dazzling?”

A few snickers from the crowd. Robert paid them no mind.

”Mr. Chetford?” it suddenly rang out in his ears. He looked up again, his neck stiff, his eyes trained to the barren floor.

”I can hear you.”

The doctor chuckled. ”Well, I’m glad to know your ear wax hasn’t turned into concrete slurry.”

There was a brief pause. Robert just ignored the doctor’s words.

”I swear, if it weren’t for his delusion, he’d be a great mime! The greatest around, even!”

Even more snickers this time. Robert wondered if they genuinely found the doctor funny or if they were just trying to get on his good side.

”Moving right along...” it echoed down the corridor, the footsteps getting quieter [[span style="opacity: .3;"]] and quieter... [[/span]]

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*
[[/=]]
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[[=]]
**February 20th, 1942**
**Site-██**

*
[[/=]]

> @@ @@
> [[span style="opacity: .15;"]] **█████:** ... and you can attest to your statements to be fully accurate, Mr. Chetford? [[/span]]
> 
> [[span style="opacity: .3;"]] //<No response from subject.>//
> 
> **█████:** Anything else you want to disclose? [[/span]]
> 
> **Subject:** ... No.
> 
> **█████:** When we investigated your former residence, we found no book matching your descriptions present. Anywhere.
> 
> //<No response from subject.>//
> 
> **█████:** Mr. Chetford?
> 
> **Subject:** ... You are just like the last ones.
> 
> **█████:** Pardon me?
> 
> **Subject:** You wouldn’t understand... I don’t even understand it myself. This curse...
> 
> //<Subject falls silent. There is no response for a while.>//
> 
> **█████:** Mr. Chetford?
> 
> //<No response from subject.>//
> 
> **█████:** //(sighs; into hidden microphone)// Subject unresponsive and uncooperative. Request to end interview.
> 
> ------
> [[=]]
> **[END RECORDING]**
> [[/=]]
> ------
> **Note:** //Subject highly uncooperative upon further questioning, and the information it has been willing to divulge has been questionable at best.//
> 
> //[[span style="opacity: .2;"]]Due to app[[/span]][[span style="opacity: .3;"]]arent anomalous properties, request immediate classification of Mr. Robert Chetford as an SCP object.// [[/span]]
> [[span style="opacity: .15;"]]
> //- Signed, Dr.// █████ [[/span]]
> ------

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*
[[/=]]
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[[=]]
**Site-██**
**Present Day**

*
[[/=]]

Robert sat in his chair, overlooking the dried, yellow-orange leaves being hurled up into the sky. The tree branches bristled in the autumn breeze, but what it felt like, he couldn’t place his mind on.

Many things had happened since that night in 1915 -- his insitutionalization, his capture by this //’Foundation’//, this room he found himself in, a mere imitation. There were metal birds flying through the sky, marking their path with white trails; iron horses so foreign from the ones he knew that he thought them alien. But the clouds and the sky had remained the same over all these decades.

He gave off a long exhale, but couldn’t feel his lungs move -- he put no mind to the matter. His exhale slowly turned into a light chuckle, one he had not felt in decades.

His chuckle was due to the book, and whatever inherited it, controlled it, or caused it to behave the way it did -- such an otherwordly being, an entity from the great beyond, older than the universe itself, even defying the great Lord’s rules, had come to curse such a lowly man like him.

He thought that whatever it was had altered the curse to make it act slower, to spite him, to punish him longer than it did his mother; that such an entity would be about such madness of a single act of defiance of a man like him made him chuckle.

His chuckle quieted down.

He’d like to think that, //maybe//, when it was all done, that he could look out the window one final time, before these old eyes finally dried and set like the rest of him. //Maybe//, when the last words left his lips, he’d be concrete all over, and break away like he should’ve so long ago.

If he waited long enough. For the Chetford curse to finally set in.

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//...//
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//He thought about his mother.//

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[[=]]
*
[[/=]]
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> ------
> [[=]]
> **INCIDENT REPORT 014-α**
> ------
> On 10/15/2040, at 0903 hours, [[[SCP-014]]] had completely transmutated into non-anomalous concrete.
> 
> No movement was detected from the subject and all life functions had ceased at that time.
> 
> Reclassification of SCP-014 to //Neutralized// pending after confirmation of cessation of brain activity via MRI scans.
> ------
> **END OF FILE**
> [[/=]]
> ------

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*
[[/=]]
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[[=]]
//...//
[[/=]]

> //”Sometimes... we deliberately step into those traps.”//
> 
> [[>]]
> -- Marion Crane
> [[/>]]

[[=]]
//...//

//...//

//...//
[[/=]]

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*
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[[=]]
//##transparent|SCP-014 - The Concrete Man##//
[[/=]]

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[[=]]
**» [[[SCP ORIGINS HUB|HUB]]] «**
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[[/=]]
------

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[[=]]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]
[[/=]]
SCP Origins: The Concrete Man

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