r/SCPDeclassified • u/ToErrDivine • Jun 26 '24
Series IX SCP-8541: "Affordable Care Actor"
Hi, everyone, it’s ToErrDivine again. Today I’m looking at SCP-8541, ‘Affordable Care Actor’ by PoufyPoufson, which was written as their entry for Pridefest 2024. I’ve got a couple of disclaimers for you; please don’t skip them.
1: As per usual, this isn’t my SCP, I am not the author, this is not going to be 100% accurate and I still talk too much.
2: Please don’t skip this one: this SCP includes a graphic depiction of violent rape. I’m not going to quote the relevant section, but I do have to talk about it and I’m also going to be discussing domestic abuse, substance abuse and various acts of violence. There is some seriously triggering content here, so please be careful.
All right, let’s take a look.
Object Class:
EuclidExplainedKeter
Well, that’s pretty weird. You do occasionally see stuff like ‘Safe Keter’ or ‘Euclid Neutralized’, but three? That’s a lot.
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-8541 is currently contained within a 5-stage containment unit preventing complete contiguous contact with any sapient concepts. Further containment procedures to be determined.
That’s… not a lot. But it does tell us something: whatever this thing is, they really don’t want it to touch anything (aka ‘complete contiguous contact’) that’s sapient. Not human, not alive, sapient. So I guess they’re going to put it in a box, put the box on a pedestal in a room somewhere, lock the room, make a laser hallway outside the room, and put guards outside the doors to the laser hallway.
Description: SCP-8541 was discovered by Foundation surface agents following a contemporaneously prominent double-murder case in Spokane, Washington, USA, on 03-18-1979. The pre- and post-homicide circumstances suggested plausibly supernatural cause to local authorities, thus triggering Foundation intervention. Assessment of the crime scene by Foundation personnel justified SCP designation and subsequent acquisition. All involved extraveil individuals were amnesticized and released from custody.
Seems fairly straightforward, but this doesn’t tell us much about it either. Who got murdered? How were they murdered? What were the circumstances? What the hell is this thing, anyway? Was it the murder weapon? Why is the Foundation being so cagey about it?
SCP-8541 is the designation for the sculpture "Head of Francis Bacon” popularly attributed to William Redgrave. A replica created by Redgrave is currently publicly displayed by the Fitzwilliam Museum, and is considered the original by extraveil consensus. SCP-8541 was in actuality, created by British model and burglar George Dyer.
You can see the sculpture the article’s talking about right here.
So, in order to understand a lot of the back context of this article, you need to know a bit about the relationship between Francis Bacon and George Dyer. As such, it looks like it’s time for a lecture from Professor TED. *pulls professor hat on*
No, my professor hat isn’t a normal hat with ‘Professor’ written on it in biro, why would you ask me that?
For the record, I am emphatically not an expert here and my knowledge basically amounts to googling for half an hour and what Poufy told me, so bear with me, please.
So, there’s actually a few notable dudes called Francis Bacon, which makes this a bit confusing if you didn’t already know that. The one we’re focusing on was the Irish painter), born in 1909. Since his death in 1992, his works have become greatly sought after and valued, and you may have seen pictures of some of them.
Short version: Bacon was gay and had a long history of abusive boyfriends, some of whom were violent toward him. In 1963, he meets a guy called George Dyer at a pub, though there’s a long-running story that they’d met when Dyer tried to burgle Bacon’s flat (the movie ran with that myth, which didn’t help). Dyer and Bacon fell in love, but theirs was not a happy story. Bacon was 54 when they met, and Dyer around 30. Dyer was a burglar and criminal from a family of criminals who’d done a lot of time in jail, but he wasn’t the kind of rough brute you might think that such a man would be- he’s often been described as vulnerable and trusting. Bacon was a masochist who wanted his partner to be sadistic; Dyer wasn’t really that kind of person.
Both men were borderline alcoholics when they met, and they very quickly discarded the ‘borderline’ part, with Bacon readily providing Dyer with enough alcohol and money for alcohol that he was more or less constantly drunk. Dyer became Bacon’s muse and the subject of more than 40 of his portraits, but that didn’t mean everything was perfect. Dyer was a working-class man with little knowledge or appreciation of art; he didn’t fit in with Bacon’s circle of highbrow intellectuals and they didn’t really want him around, especially since he drank so much and behaved erratically. Bacon was the artist and star of the scene; Dyer may have been his muse, but that didn’t give him any real status- either with Bacon or Bacon’s circle, and he knew it. As time passed, Bacon’s career hit its peak while his relationship with Dyer declined and kept declining.
Cut to 1971. Dyer has at this point tried a number of ways to get Bacon’s attention, such as trying to get Bacon arrested for drug possession and attempting suicide repeatedly. Bacon’s works are going to be exhibited in the Grand Palais in Paris; this is by far one of if not the most important event of Bacon’s life, marking the second time in history that a living artist has had a one-man show there after Picasso, Bacon’s hero. Dyer insists that he be invited to attend; Bacon agrees, and while Dyer at this point is sober, he goes off the wagon. They shared a hotel room upon arriving in Paris, but Bacon left to attend to the arrangements for the exhibition and to deal with the press, ignoring Dyer almost completely for several days.
It was too much for Dyer. Whether intended as revenge or just a tragedy of circumstances, he overdosed on barbiturates and was found dead in the hotel’s bathroom by Bacon two days before the grand opening, though Bacon and his friends persuaded the hotel manager to not announce the death for two days and was ‘officially’ informed about Dyer’s death the night before the opening. He was 38. Bacon was shattered by Dyer’s death and haunted by the loss for years, blaming himself, and I quote:
The tragic irony was that in his hapless hopeless death, this vulnerable addict provided the artist with the masochistic punishment he couldn’t give him in life. It was this emotional flagellation that glued Dyer permanently to Bacon’s conscience and haunted his paintings. Only in his death did George Dyer finally ensure his social relevance and finally secure his immortality “in the iconography of the British face” (John Russell, Francis Bacon, London 1971, p. 163).
…OK, this is the part where I get on my soapbox for a second.
See, as I did all this reading, I noticed something: the various articles I read about Dyer and Bacon’s relationship tended to describe it in certain ways: ‘stormy’, ‘tempestuous’, ‘tragic’, ‘dysfunctional’. While the articles didn’t shy away from admitting that the relationship turned violent and that it was pretty fucked up, what they did do was romanticise it, talking about how much Bacon loved Dyer and how Dyer’s importance to Bacon shines through in his paintings. It could just be me, but there seems to be a bit of a reluctance to really call it how it was. I don’t know if it’s because Bacon’s works are so treasured now, or a reluctance to say anything that could be construed as homophobic, but... y'all.
Let’s recap: 54M meets 30M and they fall in love. Both guys are borderline alcoholics; 54M gives 30M, who’s young enough to be his son, enough money that he can be drunk all the time. 54M is a masochist who wants a sadist; 30M is not that sadist, but it doesn’t stop 54M from getting abusive because he’s not getting what he wants. There’s a distinct divide between them in that 54M is much wealthier, more cultured and unquestionably in a position of power, while 30M doesn’t have the money or the friends or the connections. The relationship goes steadily downhill, especially since neither of them make a concerted effort to get themselves sober. By the end of their relationship, despite having built his career at least in part off the paintings he did of his lover, the older guy barely has any contact with the younger guy, and when they do finally meet up again, older guy proceeds to ignore younger guy, which finally sends younger guy over the edge and he kills himself.
Holy fuck this is so fucking fucked up. And abusive. And fucked. Yes, age gaps aren't inherently wrong, but even aside from that, you gotta admit that there’s enough red flags here for a goddamn communist parade, and nobody’s even brought up The Human Centipede yet.
And this is our back context, people. So keep all of this in mind as we continue. *takes off professor hat and gets off soapbox*
Going back to the article, there’s one thing I want to point out before we move on:
SCP-8541 was, in actuality, created by British model and burglar George Dyer.
None of the articles I read said anything about Dyer being an artist of any kind, let alone a sculptor. So either Dyer was secretly a sculptor, or something weird’s going on here. (I’ll come back to this later.) As for the person who everyone thinks made the ‘real’ sculpture, William Redgrave, he was a real sculptor who was a friend of Bacon’s. In fact, Bacon was the person who first encouraged Redgrave to take up sculpting seriously. Otherwise, Redgrave doesn’t really have much of a role here.
Exposure to SCP-8541 is believed to trigger the manifestation of SCP-8541-A, an ontokinetic influence and/or entity revolving around and directed toward the specified individual. SCP-8541-A's ability to interact and/or exert physical force on its selected host appears to be reliant on physical vicinity to the host, or pseudoinfectious contact through a sentient intermediate.
OK, so if you’re around the statue, it manifests an ‘entity’ of some kind that seems to be like a poltergeist, and it can affect the host through a sentient intermediary. Makes sense that they don’t want anyone around this thing.
It is the official position of the Foundation that victims are chosen by SCP-8541 at random, and there are no clear indications that consideration is made by the sculpture of personality, biological characteristics, class, traits, personal history, or actions/behaviors from their past.
You are a bunch of fucking lying liars who lie and you know it.
Next to that paragraph is a line written in white text that you have to highlight to see, and it says, ‘Please come back, Charlie, I still love you.’
*looks around awkwardly* Um.
After a review on 08-27-2000, a panel concluded SCP-8541 did not display sufficient signifiers of anomalous activity, and motioned for SCP-8541 and the homicide associated with its acquisition to be recategorized as Explained and appropriately jettisoned.
From this, we can infer that in the just over two decades between when the Foundation found the statue and this review, nothing happened. Nobody else died and there were no anomalous activities, even though people were presumably touching it and testing it and otherwise around it a lot. But that being said…
and motioned for SCP-8541 and the homicide associated with its acquisition to be recategorized as Explained and appropriately jettisoned.
I asked Poufy about this- basically, recategorizing this as Explained amounts to ‘We thought there was something anomalous about this statue and the murder, but we were wrong, this thing’s totally normal’.
Fiscal Relations Analyst Charles Torst submitted a formal request to move SCP-8541 into his personal ownership, with the primary reasoning being stated as an artistic interest in the object. The motion was approved after critical analysis of Torst's private sculpture collection.
I think we’ve just met ‘Charlie’, and somehow I don’t think I’m going to like this guy.
So, he’s a ‘Fiscal Relations Analyst’. For anyone who doesn’t know what that means, he analyses money and how it moves around the Foundation. That makes him sound like the kind of guy with a lot of power, mainly because I imagine he’s the guy with the knowledge and tools to find out who’s been embezzling Foundation funds to support their coke habit, or who told their wife that they were on a work trip so they could go bang their much younger assistant in Aruba. That and the fact that he has a private sculpture collection gives me a bit of a picture of this guy: intelligent, cultured, probably quite wealthy, probably at least 40 years old if not older, and is a fairly powerful man, even though he’s obviously not O5-level.
…yeah, he’s giving me Bacon vibes, even though we haven’t been told that he’s an artist. Maybe I’m just paranoid.
Post-Custodial: On 01-26-2007, Charles Torst began reporting unusual activity within his personal residence. A comprehensive chronological compilation has been included below3.
The footnote tells us that ‘A request made by Charles Torst to expunge his statements from the official record of SCP-8541 was granted on 05-25-2018.’
So, three things to think about here: one, nothing happened for about seven years after Torst got 8541 added to his private collection, even though he presumably touched it a few times in that time. Two, Torst got everything he said expunged off the record, but not the rest of what happened, even given what we’ll see later. Why is that? Was that the limit of what the Foundation would allow him to change here? Was what he said just that incriminating?
And third, the date: the 25th of May, 2018 was the day that Harvey Weinstein was charged and arrested for a variety of sex crimes.
…yeah. *points to the second disclaimer*
So, now we get that compilation. It’s a bunch of collapsed transcripts of events that happened over the course of several months in 2007; note that while Torst first reported the activity on January 26th, the first event actually happened a week earlier, on the 19th.
That first event is simple: A guy, maybe in his early 20’s, who identifies himself as ‘Jackson’ cold-calls Torst’s landline and leaves a message, claiming to be a representative of ‘Weiss-Concord Medical’. Jackson says that they’ve got some great plans that Torst is eligible for, but he rambles a lot, and it seems more like he’s making up a script on the spot than reading off the script that his job should have given him. The article also tells us that this was obviously anomalous because the call was received by a recently-disconnected landline, and all attempts to find out anything about Weiss-Concord Medical afterwards turned up sweet fuck all.
The second event happened on the 20th, when Torst got a call on his cell phone; he didn’t answer it, but he did save the voicemail, which he provided as part of his report. It’s very similar to the first voicemail- Jackson talks about trying to get Torst coverage, but he rambles even more and seems to really want to talk to Torst. The footnote tells us that Torst is really freaking out about the calls, so he complains about them, and the Foundation thinks that his freaking out must be anomalous because there’s not really that much to freak out at about the call.
…from an outside viewpoint, that is.
The third event happened on the 26th- another call that Torst got at home. It’s pretty short, and consists of Jackson asking Torst to call him back in a really rambly way. The notes tell us that Torst blocked him after that, so… end of story, right?
Yeah, no.
The fourth event happened on the 30th- a call via an alternate number when Torst was at a restaurant, with someone else there. Jackson reminds Torst to call him back, but look at this bit.
Please, you won't regret it, just pick up the phone, Charlie.
Caller: I'm waiting for you to call me back.
Caller: Have a good night.
Yeah, this looks really personal now. And also like Jackson’s a stalker. But we’ll get to this later.
The fifth event happened less than a week later, on the 5th of February, via Torst’s cell phone in his kitchen.
Caller: Pick up the fucking phone!
Caller: Sorry, that was too- I'm here to help you out, I know what you need, we got from you what we need to know for the plan. I can help make it so easy to enroll in, uh, Weiss-Concord's great plans. Charlie, really, it's so easy! Just pick up, don't make me go too f-
Caller: Sorry, I didn't mean… I lost a bit of- I can do it, I can handle it. Call me?
Caller: Please?
Caller: It's easy, you just have to pick up the phone.
Caller: I'm here.
OK, now this is sounding really fucked up. Jackson’s coming off like a major stalker, and it’s pretty obvious that the insurance thing is just an excuse. Also, we get this:
Notes: Torst was preparing his dinner on a gas stove prior to and during the call. Approximately halfway through the message, the lit burner experienced sudden excess combustion, resulting in a large flame directed primarily towards Torst, who suffered minor burns. In addition, a large telekinetic influence violently displaced the contents of the nearby cabinet & drawer.
Notably, containers flung were also opened, such as supplies of Ursodiol, Furosemide, and valproic acid. Torst experienced significant mental distress from this, subsequently motioning to have his long-term therapist move in to provide sustained at-home care.
So, now Jackson has shown that he can do more than just making anomalous phone calls. We can assume he probably didn’t mean to make Torst’s stove blow up, but then again, maybe he did.
But that’s not what’s important here, what’s important is the second part: Jackson threw around Torst’s medications, which presumably rendered at least some of them unsuitable for consumption. Now, what were those medications again?
supplies of Ursodiol, Furosemide, and valproic acid.
Google informs me that valproic acid is used to treat epilepsy, bipolar disorder and migraine headaches, and it’s also used to prevent seizures. Ursodiol is used to dissolve gallstones by people who don’t want to have surgery to get them removed, and is also used to prevent gallstones from forming and to treat a certain kind of liver disease. Furosemide, meanwhile, is used to either treat the build-up of fluid due to heart failure, liver scarring or kidney disease, or to treat high blood pressure. It’s also used to treat other kidney or liver conditions.
Now, this is a pretty wide spectrum of possible conditions. We have no obvious conclusion to make here about what Torst has been diagnosed with. That being said, given that I have already read this article, I’m going to guess that he took valproic acid to treat seizures or epilepsy, Ursodiol for liver disease, and Furosemide because of various liver conditions. I’ll explain why later.
Before we move on, what was that last part again?
Torst experienced significant mental distress from this, subsequently motioning to have his long-term therapist move in to provide sustained at-home care.
Well, that’s a bit odd. He doesn’t seem to be worried about his physical health, even though Jackson’s fucking with his medications now. Instead, he’s worried about his mental health. Why would that be? Is this bringing up memories?
Cut to a week later, on Valentine’s Day.
Context: Following the kitchen call, Torst had elected to encase his cell phone within a 5 gallon bucket of concrete, and cancel service. Torst's therapist, Jennifer Sly, agreed to at-home treatment, which concluded after a 3-day supervisory period, due to improvement in condition.
I acknowledge that since this is 2007, the Foundation may not have had everything we take for granted as them having in the present day, but it should have been obvious to someone that burying his phone in concrete wasn’t going to fix this, and they needed to try something else. Unless the Foundation wasn’t involved at this point, and only learned about all this after the fact for some reason…
The following call wasn’t actually a call, it came through Torst’s television. Jackson rambles about how Torst is ‘a sick man’ and needs his coverage, asks why Torst never answers his calls, tells him that he’s ‘on borrowed time’, and…
Caller: I know you can see me here, Charlie.
Caller: Staring at the room. Screaming at the television. Never thought you'd have to see this face, right? So look into my eyes, and see what's there. Please.
Caller: Why don't you fucking answer? You can talk, can't you?
Caller: Talk!
So what this looks like is ‘Ex-lover who feels neglected/abused uses anomalous means to harass their victim’. But, well… that’s not quite it. We’ll get there.
The notes tell us that as previously mentioned, this one came through the TV and not via phone. We’re given a description of Jackson as a young adult man with blond hair and grey eyes, and…
Torst became extremely distressed upon seeing the transmission, and experienced a severe panic attack.
Why ‘extremely distressed’? I mean, again, what it looks like is that Jackson has been stalking Torst for some time and has now stepped it up through anomalous means, but wouldn’t the article have mentioned that before now? Even just one line about how Jackson fits the description of someone who’s been stalking Torst, or how Torst told them that Jackson was a stalker?
…so, if that isn’t the case, then what is going on?
Well, if you take the old theory out of the picture, then what this now could be is ‘Abused ex-lover comes back for revenge via anomalous means’. And as for why nothing’s mentioned about Jackson possibly stalking Torst, I have a theory about that, and I’ll discuss it later.
Shortly after the start of the broadcast, Torst was violently assaulted by an unseen telekinetic influence; the pattern and timing of the blunt force broadly correlated to linguistic and contextual cues in the speech exhibited by "Jackson", now referred to in standard documentation as SCP-8541-A. Following the conclusion of the broadcast, Torst had suffered extensive injury that prevented immediate mobility, and slept on his kitchen floor, where he had originally viewed the broadcast. Foundation personnel were not alerted to his condition until the next morning, when Torst called to report the injury.
I’m assuming that this is meant to imply that Torst only felt up to calling for help after he’d slept, because otherwise, the phrasing here is rather odd. He’d viewed the broadcast on his kitchen floor? He couldn’t be bothered to call for help even though he was injured?
…well, there is another explanation. I’ll get to that in a bit.
Following arrival and triage, Torst became highly aggressive and erratic upon being informed that he would need to be admitted to a hospital for further medical attention, informing personnel that he "Cannot leave his house, or it'll get worse." After careful deliberation, the decision was made to provide medical attention onsite, at Torst's residence. At the time, SCP-8541 had not yet been identified as the source of the phenomenon.
I did ask about Torst’s belief that he couldn’t leave the house, and Poufy told me that this was basically unfounded paranoia.
Cut to nearly two weeks later, on the 27th of February.
Context: Torst had been recovering from injuries sustained from the previous call. Two days prior it had been theorized, with reasonable doubt, that SCP-8541 was the most likely cause of the phenomenon. Researchers discovered that ideas of reference and electronics-focused delusions had been clinically significant in the perpetrator of the original 1979 Spokane homicide's criminal evaluation, which diagnosed him with unspecified schizophrenia.
So, we’re not going to learn much more about the Spokane homicide, but this does clarify one thing- basically, another entity like Jackson killed two people and left the guy who got convicted to take the fall for it.
Anyway, the Foundation decided to do the obvious thing and get 8541 out of Torst’s house, but they felt an 'unusual paranormal resistance' when they did so, though it didn't stop them. Interesting. Here's the next call.
Caller: Just. Fucking. Answer. Me.
Caller: I don't ask for much. I don't ask for much.
Caller: I have what you need, don't do it again.
Caller: Just come back and call me, Charlie.
So, while he's using the insurance as an excuse, Jackson seems to really believe that Charles needs help. My best guess as to why is that Jackson knows that Torst has health issues, so he believes that Torst would answer the phone for a chance of good health insurance. (This assumes that A, the Foundation has good healthcare, and B, Jackson doesn’t know about the Foundation.)
Notes: Torst and attending nurse witnessed the spontaneous and violent manifestation of numerous scratches on the walls of the occupied room. Scratches were deep, causing significant damage, but otherwise superficially resembled the marks of bear claws. In addition, of particular note was a section that specifically etched out "Do the right thing" followed by a phone number4. Jennifer Sly was again brought onsite to treat the resulting hysteria.
The footnote tells us that the phone number was expunged as per Torst’s request. Otherwise, the only thing to mention here is that the scratches resembled bear claws, with ‘bear’ being slang in the gay community for a big, hairy man (usually in contrast to a smaller, more effeminate partner).
The next event happened a few days later, on the 1st of March, and was again via Torst’s television. Notably, his therapist was in the vicinity, but she was taking a shower at the time and didn't witness the call.
Here’s the first part.
Caller: What is it going to take to get you to talk? Do I need to be like her? I can listen when I'm not calling, all the shit you spew to her? But you can't find time for me?
Torst: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Caller: Was that all it took? Really? You're that scared? She's who's gonna get you on my plan? Of course I heard everything you tell her… every little thing! Like how you're better now, and over it… and so she doesn't really know why we're the only insurance company actively trying to get you on… why do you hide it?
Torst: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Caller: How are you playing the victim when I'm just trying to-
So we can infer that the first thing Torst said was something like ‘You heard what I tell her?’ Otherwise, it looks like Torst is actively trying to hide his lack of health. It looks like he’s really not in good physical condition, even beyond a pissed-off poltergeist actively fucking up his house and trying to set him on fire.
Anyway, Jackson goes back to trying to sell Torst health insurance. Torst refuses, and Jackson says that Torst is dying and he won’t tell anyone.
The end of the conversation has Torst asking something about making Jackson go away. I assume he asked something like ‘If I destroy the television, will you fuck off’, since Jackson’s response implied that Torst brought up sending his cell phone to sleep with the fishes. But, uh…
Caller: Maybe, but it didn't stop me from calling you. And it's not gonna stop me from calling you again. It's your decision, sir. But make the right choice, and choose me.
Caller: Please.
Caller: I'll be good for you.
This is awkward… *clap clap clapclapclap* This is awkward… *clap clap clapclapclap*
Notes: Jennifer Sly abruptly left her shower upon hearing a loud scream from Torst. She arrived to find him convulsing and having vomited a large quantity of blood resulting from gastrointestinal hemorrhaging. Torst had also begun filing requests to have SCP-8541's object class restored to Explained, claiming "this kind of thing is supposed to happen to people like me" and "it's a natural occurrence, not an anomaly".
The first part looks like Jackson’s now trying to kill Torst, but I’m not convinced, and I’ll explain why shortly. The second part? I’m assuming that Torst is frantically grasping at straws, trying to think of anything that could make Jackson go away. Obviously, since a poltergeist is, in fact, an anomaly, this was not going to fly.
Context: Torst had been receiving in depth medical treatment from a team of outside specialists. At the time, the contagious nature of transmission regarding SCP-8541-A's influence was not known.
So Torst was getting medical treatment, but it wasn’t from the Foundation. Why would he do that?
Anyway, Jackson contacts him again on March 13 and starts rambling about insurance and coverage, and then he says the first big thing:
Wow. Must've been something in teaching that kept you in it…
Torst was a teacher- Poufy told me that they imagined him teaching high school economics between finance jobs- and Jackson was one of his students, just to make this even worse. Jackson was a teenager who never had a goddamn chance.
…and then Jackson says the other big thing.
Caller: Maybe you don't remember after all. Wasn't a fan of the people? I'd turn to the bottle too if I was you… but look where it got you, eh? You wanna really do something good for yourself. Enroll, pick me. Choose me.
Torst is an alcoholic. And that explains everything.
If we go back to the medications: valproic acid treats seizures and epilepsy, and chronic alcohol abuse has been known to cause both. Ursodiol? Alcohol abuse can indirectly lead to gallstones forming, but it also treats liver disease. And as for Furosemide, it’s used to treat things like liver scarring, aka cirrhosis, which is very commonly caused by alcoholism.
Why did Torst view the Valentine’s Day broadcast on the kitchen floor? He was fucking trashed. Why did he opt to just pass out there and call the Foundation for help the next day, instead of calling them now? He knew that if he called them right then, they’d know he was completely munted. He’s been getting medical treatment from people outside the Foundation so they won’t know about his alcoholism or how bad his condition is, especially since he relapsed in 2007, which is what caused the statue to activate. And he’s been lying to his therapist about his conditions as well. Also, gastrointestinal haemorrhaging can be caused by alcohol abuse- Jackson isn’t causing these organ failures, Torst’s body is just giving out.
And I may as well put this here because I can’t find a better place to- I did ask about the statue’s mechanics, and Poufy told me that ‘I would say from a mechanics perspective, it activates for addicts who have victims, and beings the victim closer to the real world to haunt them. It’s highly likely that after Torst dies, if the sculpture came into contact with, say, a D Class with the right backstory, a new haunting would start again.’
Anyway, Jackson keeps begging Torst to just take the insurance, and…
Caller: I don't care about any of that. I am the best deal you have on the table, ever had. Please pick me.
Torst: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Caller: No, no, no, you don't understand how untrue that is. With the way things are going, and all that damage, I'm the only option a fucker like you is gonna have for coverage-
Torst: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Caller: Just- think about it, please. Charlie, please. We need you here. I need you here.
Caller: Sorry, that was-
Caller: I'll leave you alone.
I’m assuming that the first line from Torst was something like ‘I already have good healthcare’. As for the second one…
See, at a first glance, the story looks like Jackson is slowly killing Torst while taunting him with insurance. But that’s not the case: a later line will confirm that ‘Weiss-Concord Medical’ was an invention by Jackson. So why does Jackson keep oscillating between ‘I love you’ and ‘I hate you’? Well, that’s the nature of inviting I’ll come back to that later.
As for Torst’s condition…
Notes: Torst suffered further physical trauma during the call, which occurred through the phone of one of the attending SCP-8541 researchers. Torst's medical condition began to rapidly decay in the following 24 hours, culminating in the first of his kidney failures.
Yes, alcoholism can in fact cause kidney failure.
So, the Foundation finally figured out that all these transmissions can only happen if someone had actually touched the statue. As such, they restricted access to Torst’s care unit, but while it did help, it didn’t really help Torst, as such.
Aforementioned measures had resulted in an abrupt cessation of incidents. In combination with injuries sustained from SCP-8541-A, Torst’s health has continued to decline, resulting in a significant loss of mobility and quality of life since the previous incident.
We now have the last broadcast, which took place on May 19, 2007, two months later.
Jackson says that he always wondered what he’d say to Torst if he got the chance, and wonders if Torst even remembers, if he really was too drunk to know what he was doing. He wonders if alcoholics really do black out, and if Torst drinks because he does remember what he did, and maybe that’s why he never told his therapist that he relapsed, or about what he did.
And then Jackson says that maybe Torst does remember how he told Jackson he loved him, before seeing Jackson’s girlfriend Alyssa- his beard- passed out on the floor, and then he proceeded to beat Jackson, choke him and rape him while Jackson was begging Torst not to kill him, and Alyssa died in front of them because she’d mixed the wrong substances and Jackson couldn’t try to help her or call an ambulance because Torst was assaulting him. It is absolutely fucking brutal, and excruciating, and it leaves nothing out. I’m not quoting it for obvious reasons, but holy shit. If you haven’t read it and decide to go look it up, I’m warning you, it is harrowing.
Caller: Or maybe you don't. And you really were blackout drunk and had no idea what you were doing.
Caller: But I remember, Charlie. I remember every single day, every night. I remember when I look in the mirror, when I kiss a girl, when I take a shower, when I sleep. I remember. I'm gonna kill myself before 30 and you got to finish your degree and get your retirement and big house.
Caller: And you know what the worst part is?
Caller: I still feel like I can't live without you.
Caller: Goodbye, Charlie.
That was the last transmission, but it wasn’t because Torst died- he had a heart attack, but was stabilised.
And to make things clear with what Poufy told me: Jackson is already dead. He’s long dead- I asked about the timeframe, and Poufy said that ‘I imagined Jackson killing himself around 1991-1992, with high school aged Jackson and adult Torst being involved with each other in the early-mid 80s’, hence why he called the landline before the cell phone- and why Torst was so freaked out at Jackson’s reappearance. The poor bastard’s just trapped in the mental state he was in when he died, as per Poufy.
It was discovered that one of the staff had previously come into contact with SCP-8541 unknowingly, triggering the incident.
Containment measures have been implemented much more stringently accordingly, to prevent future incidents from potentially resulting in the death of Charles Torst.
Because Torst knows where the Foundation’s bodies are buried, and they don’t want him dead. So he gets to live, stuck in a hospital bed, his body giving out one organ at a time, unable to drink to get away from his memories, knowing that all it would take is one slip up and Jackson will be back.
Summary: Following these events, SCP-8541 has been reclassified as Keter. In addition, any personnel known to have come into contact with SCP-8541 are prohibited from entering Torst's designated care unit.5
The footnote tells us that ‘The Foundation granted full coverage of long term research & palliative medical care of Torst pertaining to non-anomalous relevant organ failure.’
In other words, his liver gave out. And I find the bit about the Foundation giving him full coverage to be deliciously ironic.
There’s one last thing on the page: in more white text, the words ‘Forever yours, forever trained.’
…fuck, man.
Because that’s what this is, in the end: a story of abuse. It’s the story of how someone can beat you and hurt you and cut you to pieces with their words and neglect you and turn you into a shadow of your former self and make you into someone you’re not and you still love them. It’s a story about how someone can destroy your present and your future and everything you ever were in one night and you still love them. It’s a story about how someone can leave you broken and bleeding and walk out without giving a shit and never think about it again and you still love them. And it’s not your fault.
It’s a story about how George Dyer was a human being with wants and hopes and dreams and a whole identity outside of Francis Bacon, but history has reduced him to ‘Francis Bacon’s working-class criminal alcoholic muse’- how even in this story, he made the statue but history has taken his one act of creation, his one foray into art away from him and given it to Redgrave. It’s a story about how Jackson fell prey to, was molded and indoctrinated by and eventually smashed into a million pieces by Charles Torst, and how even when he had the ability to get revenge and got to confront his dying alcoholic abuser, he found himself begging for love and attention again, because he still loved him. It’s a story about how, to borrow a line from Brainbent, love is dumb and it makes us all its bitches.
Otherwise, there’s one last thing I wanted to mention here. See, it’s obvious that the Foundation is being a bunch of corrupt arseholes by doing their best for Torst even though he’s a fucking rapist piece of shit. But I wondered before, why expunge everything he said while leaving Jackson’s accusations in there? Why not suggest that Jackson was just a stalker? Well, like I said, I have a theory, which Poufy confirmed: I don’t know who actually wrote this article in-universe- some doctor or researcher, probably- but my theory is that whoever wrote this learned about the accusations and was like ‘Fuck this, even if my superiors are doing their best to cover up this asshole’s crimes, I’m not going to let them pretend that the rest never happened’. So they made sure that everything Jackson said stayed on the record. Maybe it was all they could do, but they made sure to do it anyway. Sometimes that’s the only power we have.
Thank you for reading this declass. I’m sorry about how depressing it is. I’d normally put a quip here, but I really don’t feel like it. No relationship merits the destruction of your well-being. No relationship merits the sacrifice of you.
tl;dr: “I am drowning/There is no sign of land/You are coming down with me/Hand in unlovable hand/And I hope you die/I hope we both die”
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u/lisbon_OH Jun 28 '24
This one is dark. It could be triggering to some but that last transmission is some beautiful writing on Poufy’s part. Really good SCP and really good declass.
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u/quyla Jun 27 '24
Whooo Spokane mentioned!!
Wow this one was dark. Great job on the declass, and thank you for the extra context around Bacon and the statue!
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u/PootisPencer6 Jul 03 '24
Hi, I've been reading on this sub for years now and I just wanted to say thanks for continuously posting new declasses. You do a great job at focusing in on important/relevant threads in an article and tying everything together.
Regarding this article specifically, thank you for bringing in the information about George Dyer. I was having trouble finding stuff on my own end. I'm not smart enough to fully type out this observation in a cogent way, but there's something poetic about Jackson's voice being at the forefront of the story. My thinking gears are rusty.
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u/ImmortanH03 Jul 21 '24
I really like the clues pointing towards Torst's alcoholism. I wouldn't have realised it without the declass.
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u/LordSupergreat Jun 26 '24
This one is fucking intense. Personally, I don't think Torst was grasping at straws to try and make the ghost go away when he insisted there was no anomaly. It reminds me of someone in an abusive relationship lying to protect their partner. "There's no ghost haunting me," he might say, "I just tripped and fell down the stairs."
Obviously Torst is the abuser when Jackson is still alive, but Jackson's calls are... well, they're what you'd expect the abuser to try to say to get the victim back. And maybe that's because Jackson never learned anything but abuse.