A Rather Unusual Day

The Day In Particular

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.