And I Must Scream / SCP Foundation

And I Must Scream is a very common situation for the really unlucky to get trapped in, in the world of the SCP Foundation. Here are some of the many examples:

---

General

• In the End-Of-Death canon^explanation Canons are self-contained settings that use elements from the SCPverse, which can be found under the wiki's "Universe" tab. all animal life has been rendered unable to die, but can still age, essentially leaving most of humanity examples of this trope unless they can afford to transfer their brain into a metal body (or someone else’s). Of course, being stuck in a geriatric body for hundreds of years sounds downright pleasant compared to those who fall victim to chunky salsa rule, doomed to unending pain in still conscious bodies.

SCPs

• SCP-000/SCP-3930 does not exist, and if you think it does it will scream until you don't exist either. Pattern Screamers are essentially tulpas created by the human mind's tendency to draw patterns that don't exist, resulting in those that encounter them literally seeing things that aren't there. The Screamers inhabit a Void Between the Worlds, consumed by hatred and despair at their helpless state of nonexistence, and constantly scream as it's the only thing they can physically do. They despise mankind for giving them form and if too many people become "aware" of them, they become powerful enough to enter the real world and ensure both you and they no longer exist in any sense of the word.
• According to the author, the main point behind SCP-135 is this and Who Wants to Live Forever?.
• SCP-138, The Ever-Living Man. A severely decayed, hideously decrepit corpse of a man who is at least 4000 years old, with dozens of unhealed mortal wounds all over his body, who for some reason cannot die... no matter how much he wants to. The Foundation are trying to euthanize him out of sympathy, but so far, their attempts have been ineffective.
• SCP-231-7 has to be restrained at all times, and attended by doctors who haven't taken the Hippocratic Oath. Once a day, she has to be subjected to Procedure 110-Montauk, which is so horrible that most of the details are classified and one researcher even commits suicide after knowing what it entails, or else she gives birth to something that will possibly end the world. Worse, the psychological trauma appears to be an important part of the process; after every fourth procedure, they erase her memory of the whole shebang so that she doesn't get used to it.
• SCP-256 is apparently a woman trapped inside a modified typewriter. She must and does scream in a way (the machine can't write, and the electric charge it emits is similar to a voice - getting more intense when "it's in pain").
• SCP-267 is a subspecies of naked mole rat that feeds on tumors. They acquire these by using poison to paralyze prey, then dragging them down to their burrows. There, they chew off its limbs and use carcinogenic venom to cause it to grow tumors, which are bitten off and eaten. They keep the larder creature there until it dies, which is why they prefer humans; they can last for decades.
• Anyone who's turned inside-out by SCP-309's effect cannot be changed back and are left in constant pain. Fortunately, some of them actually die.
• Victims of SCP-318 are imprisoned within paper scrolls, and they can only see and communicate with the outside world when unrolled (and the Foundation doesn't do that often.) If the paper is damaged enough, they stop responding... but it's unknown if they die, or just lose their only connection with the world.
• Each of the band members of SCP-332 seem to be aware of their surroundings, but something unseen controls their movement, making them stand still like a statue until they all play in unison, trampling over anyone nearby. For nearly 40 years, they have been in physical stasis, not aging, nor taking any wear and tear by standing in the same spot, and now the SCP Foundation has placed a tall concrete barrier around them. The agents, for some reason, chose to confiscate the whole band, members and all, rather than the instruments, which were hinted to be the source of that controlling force.
• SCP-373 allows one to talk to people who, apparently, are imprisoned in a black void where they perceive nothing but the voice of whoever is talking to them. Though it might all be a hoax on part of SCP-373.
• SCP-439 is a parasite that causes Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), and then turns the body into a hive. The Foundation stopped testing it when they discovered that the victim apparently remains conscious through all this.
• SCP-446 "Human Mannequin". From the hints given (e.g. eyes following the nearest person and trying to make eye contact, trying to speak while being vivisected, etc.), the mannequin was originally a human woman who was somehow changed into its current form. It can't communicate with the Foundation doctors studying it though it very much wants to.
• SCP-451 believes himself to be in this situation; he even goes as far as to reference the Trope Namer after finding it on someone's bookshelf.
• SCP-515 has to be restrained to the point of nigh-immobility, with his limb bones broken for good measure, because whenever 515 moves, a cluster of asteroids comes closer to Earth. The faster he moves (or, formerly, she, but the first 515 died and the current one popped up to replace her), the faster the rocks move.
• Anyone who looks at SCP-531 when the statue is not looking at another of its own kind will undergo a slow and painful transformation into another SCP-531. Once complete, their soul is forever trapped in the statue. The testing log suggests that they're more or less content in their new form as long as they have a partner to keep them company, but for those who don't, this trope is in full effect.
• SCP-682's containment procedures require it to be kept fully submerged in a tub of hydrochloric acid at all times, and don't allow it to move or speak at all (except for testing, which usually involves an attempt at terminating it). Given that 682 is an Omnicidal Maniac capable of regenerating From a Single Cell, this is probably justified.
  • In Roget's Proposa of SCP-001l, it is trapped inside SCP-296, a chamber of beings who determine whether or not those who enter are guilty and act out punishments they feel are appropriate. 682's punishment is that it's denied the opportunity to kill its captors, but also denied the ability to die.
• The physically-invulnerable SCP-723-D's initial fate—sealed within a massive block of concrete. Given how badly written he was, though, it wasn't undeserved. He did manage to escape one last time, but the two thankless personnel tasked with his decommission killed him by complete accident, after SCP-723 fell victim to a previously unknown peanut allergy while the three were getting drunk at a local bar. They then put SCP-723's body back in the concrete, just to be safe.
• SCP-747 is a group of ghostly children in animal masks that dance around any subject they take interest in, turning that subject into a doll over a period of time. During that period, the subject loses all five major senses until final transformation and it is implied that the dolls are still conscious.
• SCP-762 is an iron maiden that gives anyone inside of it a Healing Factor and immortality until they are released, but puts sharp spikes through their body. When it was recovered, it contained someone who was probably stuck inside for centuries.
• Anyone unlucky enough to come into contact with and pulled into SCP-830 are reduced to still-living faces in complete agony.
• SCP-835. Read the uncensored logs.
• Anyone who touches SCP-911 ends up floating in an infinite featureless void, unless they manage to escape through a portal that only opens rarely for a few seconds.
• SCP-1007-RU is a viral Agony Beam that floods every cell of the infected's body with unimaginable agony while altering their pain receptors to progressively increase their tolerance for the next stage, keeping them alive indefinitely. The victims are left to suffer pain beyond human comprehension that cannot be reduced in any way, shape, or form for 36 hours at a time with theoretically no upper limit.
• SCP-1034 traps the souls of its victims in their desiccated corpses and leaves them in horrible pain, and it is heavily implied that the owner of SCP-1034 was using the victims as sex toys. He gets what he deserves when The Foundation uses him as a test subject for SCP-1034.
• Subverted with SCP-1520, a centuries-old Japanese monk. He exists in a state as essentially a living mummy, a fate that would drive most people completely insane, but he did it to himself on purpose as part of a sokushinbutsu ritual, a form of ritualistic suicide to achieve Nirvana. SCP-1520 has been in this state since the 16th century, and hasn't particularly suffered for it, other than mild disappointment that he has not achieved enlightenment.
• SCP-1733 is a DVR tape of the 10/26/2010 TD Garden basketball game between the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat. After several replays of the tape, the audience and players realize that the game has been repeating over and over and they attempt to leave...only to find that they can't. It only gets worse from there.
• SCP-1922 reanimates an hour after dying of natural causes. During this period, he claims his consciousness is transferred to a human locus filled with body parts and waits there until he reanimates. His continuing peripheral vascular disease is making his limbs gangrenous and require amputation. He slowly went insane, screaming every time he reanimates now, and his requests to cremate his body are denied.
• SCP-1959 is a Soviet cosmonaut who's been trapped alone in Earth orbit since The '70s but is unable to die. According to one story, he's been possessed by an Eldritch Abomination and is constantly fighting to keep it in orbit with him rather than let it lay waste to Earth below.
• One possible future the Foundation discovered using SCP-2003 involved the Sun suddenly collapsing into a black hole in February 2026, and all humans on Earth left frozen in place yet fully conscious and unable to die for some reason.
• Played straight and then heartwarmingly subverted with SCP-2265-A; unlike his companion, 2265-A was completely aware of his surroundings, and nearly went insane. However, he managed to adapt and even accept his condition. Even more so when the anomaly stopped.
• The five, possibly six people melded with SCP-2535's HP printers. Played with for one of them:
  Wang is conscious but unable to respond coherently due to his near-constant screaming.
• SCP-2669 is a space probe developed by the Foundation in 2004 for the purpose of finding life on exoplanets. It contains the consciousness of one Dr. Asma Tareen, an exobiologist who volunteered for the project. Turns out spending approx. 760 years in FTL flying around the galaxy alone in a box with nothing but the soul-crushing realisation that there's no other life out there drove the poor doctor mad, and now she's taken control of the probe and is flying it back to Earth to get back to her body... at 5 times the speed of light.
• Anyone who is locked inside SCP-2701 will be trapped in a state of complete sensory deprivation, not even able to feel their own body, while remaining fully conscious, essentially living as a disembodied soul in a void until reaching their release date. Even worse, the subject will also perceive time a lot slower (a few minutes in the real world translates into weeks)... and one prisoner has a release date in the 34th century even without this. People emerging from that are left with extremely severe psychological damage from the prolonged sensory deprivation. It was created from a Deal with the Devil by a prison warden who felt that his prisoners were not suffering enough punishment for their crimes.
• SCP-2718 is the afterlife, where a consciousness experiences nothing but their decaying physical body's pains, forever. At least, that's what the Unreliable Narrator says. Thankfully, other entries indicate that it's only one possible afterlife awaiting mankind.
  • The tale "Disgusting" manages to elevate it to the level of the "End of Death" canon above. Not only do people feel nothing but the suffering from their body decaying, but cremation makes it even worse. Once the body is completely gone, the pain is only amplified with fragmented souls blanketing the Earth. All of this was caused by the entity behind SCP-5000, and is the reason why SCP-682 hates humanity so much as he can sense all of the rotting souls.
• SCP-2774 is a sloth-costumed entity that anomalously appears on non-live media. For anyone unlucky enough to witness it while not being colorblind, there's a 40% chance that after 40-100 hours, they begin to lose cognitive function and decision-making abilities. These victims only get a 150-second period of lucidity every 24 hours, the rest of the time they're under the thrall of the Slow-Burn Sloth. It gets so bad that one victim in his lucidity period intentionally gets himself killed by attacking a Foundation Guard.
• SCP-3001, where a reality-stabilizing device ends up transporting Dr. Robert Scranton to an endless black void. Because the place has a low Hume field, he doesn't die, instead forced to endure six years of slowly losing his mind, believing the device to be a sentient being he calls "Red". At the end of the story, the device makes it out, along with what's left of Robert, which has melted during the restabilization. The article's author later clarified that not all of Robert made it out, and if he is still alive, there's almost nothing left to save.
  • Then, somehow, This tale manages to make it worse for him. Dr. Scranton survived part of his body returning to our reality. And five years, eleven months, and twenty one days was just the beginning. He spends another 25 years trapped in there, eventually learning to control the red reality similarly to a powerful type green in our world. Then he figures out how to generate his own wormholes between the red reality and ours. But after twenty-five years, he's been left an elderly humanoid, with a general appearance of advanced decomposition. And he's covered in a black, mucus-like substance that corrodes any material it touches. As if that weren't bad enough, more than thirty years of that hell have driven him quite insane, fixated entirely on returning to his wife Anna Lang. Then, after he kills her with his corrosion, he's just insane, predatory, and has a specific set of powers. Powers that ring a bell when you consider that he's now an old man.
• SCP-3359 is a cursed Ancient Tomb that transforms whoever eats the food within it into a walking mummified corpse that instinctively seeks out the blood of the living in order to return to their former state. If victims aren't able to absorb the necessary fluids regularly, they age rapidly over the course of a month before reappearing in the tomb as a desiccated corpse once more. The only way to end the cycle of undeath is to have someone else take your place in the tomb, and according to the second recorded victim the entire process is incredibly traumatic as you "feel the pain of dying" month after month.
• SCP-3420 was inadvertently created by one of the leaders of the anomalous artist group "Gamers Against Weed" when he "dreamt some people in pain". The result was a Pocket Dimension in the form of interconnected torture chambers filled with humanoid Energy Beings in constant pain and compelled to use torture devices on themselves. Thankfully the Foundation was able to mitigate their pain using fentanyl and amnestics, as well as persuading them to stop mutilating themselves.
• SCP-3663 was once a young child who has become forever stuck in a game of make-believe. While playing a game with another kid, 3663 somehow became trapped in the cardboard costume he was wearing and the imaginary abilities he had became real, allowing him to transport people between random tunnels. He now wanders random tunnels, never aging or dying. It's established that he's been stuck like this since 1979, and he has at least some awareness of his past life, enough that he was thrown into a fit of rage when the kid he was originally playing with died of old age.
• SCP-3675 is similar to 2718. The afterlife is nothing but pain for the souls of the dead and they all want to wipe out humanity because they are unable to rest as long as living humans exist and so they are trying to drive humanity insane.
• Poor Researcher Talloran gets this in SCP-3999, where he singlehandedly combats a Reality Warper entity obsessed with Cruel And Unusual Deaths that always brings Talloran back to life. Talloran fights this thing for millions of years, it's stated, and still doesn't quit. He gets out of it by dying, thankfully, but it included such tortures as being melted and suggesting that Talloran's sister be raped.
• Several victims of SCP-4319 are fully aware that they're being forcibly brainwashed and converted into hyperfeminine parodies of themselves, and it's made pretty clear that the experience is not a pleasant or enjoyable one. This even includes one of the researchers assigned to the SCP, as she even includes a coded cry for help in some of her observations before resigning herself to her fate and leaving one last warning to the Foundation.
• "SCP-5031 is to be contained in an airtight iron cell in Bio-Site 59. The structure must be inspected for imperfections on a bi-weekly basis. No other interaction necessary". And that was that for a sentient creature whose jailer decided he had no need to pry further into, never figuring out if it had been entirely necessary, let alone ethical. For ten years. Thankfully, later researchers found a better way, and now it can be at least presumed more content, but it spent most of those ten years screaming.
  Senior Researcher Huxtable: I have no idea who wrote this, but there's a lot I'd like to say to them. I'm not a fan of abandoning a living creature inside a metal box for ten years, no matter how pragmatic it may be. It's difficult to fathom that such things were considered the norm a decade ago. Have you ever heard something scream from behind ten inches of iron for hours on end?
• SCP-5172 is a species of Humanoid Abominations that haunts, of all things, hotel ice machines. They inflict sleep paralysis on anyone who uses them before cutting their flesh into cubes and harvesting their entire bodies while they're still fully awake, leaving behind a still-living central nervous system.
• SCP-6373 is a group of marionettes possessed by the spirits of an Evil Puppeteer from the 19th century and his wife who ruined his livelihood in retaliation for his unfaithfulness, with him trapping the two of them in a Self-Inflicted Hell as an act of revenge. Initially the plays the puppets put on were innocuous enough, but their souls began to wither the longer they stayed on Earth and devolved into senseless acts of violence against the female puppet with his wife's consciousness (and occasionally the audience) or Straw Nihilist rants on the nature of death until they finally gave out. This was on a daily basis for 98 years.
• SCP-6502 is a cemetery where anyone who gets Buried Alive is left incapable of death for as long as they stay buried there (their mind and consciousness remain intact even as their body rots away). One of the victims has been trapped there, fully conscious, six feet underground, and unable to move, since 1951. The Foundation uses 6502 to keep a bunch of important personnel (and a few prisoners from rival GoIs) around to consult/interrogate, as we get to see firsthand in loving detail (complete with plenty of sobbing, screaming, and Sanity Slippage) when a senior research specialist is buried there to keep her from dying to a lethal infohazard.
• SCP-6969 takes a lazy sex joke and turns it into a goddamn Cosmic Horror Story. Basically, every time a person climaxes, they become trapped in a two-second "Groundhog Day" Loop, one that lasts (from their perspective) anywhere from two weeks to quintillions of years. Thankfully, once the loop finally ends they lose their memory of the experience.
• SCP-6697 features an anomalous iteration of the show Seinfeld that continues long beyond its concluding episode unto infinity... and George Constanza becomes aware of it, finding himself at the mercy of a heartless sitcom narrative that won't leave him alone and won't let him die, even when he's lost his mind and killed almost every other character on the show. Once he realizes the truth, he's reduced to being as deliberately obscene as possible in a desperate attempt to get the show cancelled, totally unaware that nothing will work - but he's still trying after more than hundred episodes worth of consecutive attempts.
• SCP-7179 is another version of the afterlife. In this one, the deceased arrive on what appears to be an idyllic tropical island, where everything is available, there are fruits that mimic any recreational substance you want, and three people specifically tailored to your sexual preferences will do anything you wish. And it goes on...and on...and on. There is no way to leave the island, no one to talk to (those three people are basically non-sapient sex toys), and no end in sight. The individual whose afterlife they record starts to snap after 2,000 years, goes completely psychotic by 11,000 years, and eventually stops moving or interacting with his surroundings at all by the trillionth year. Uncountable numbers of years pass. The island is still there. He is still on it.

Tales

• This tale uses the Trope Namer's source material, wherein the protagonist becomes SCP-173 (and AM becomes SCP-682).

---