Item #: SCP-4462
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-4462 is to be stored in a standard containment room at Site-17. SCP-4462 should be checked weekly for letters that may have appeared inside it to avoid damage to the letters.
Description: SCP-4462 is a typical aluminum mailbox which displays no unusual physical properties. The mailbox has some light damage, with a few dents and light water corrosion visible on the exterior. The mailbox has a slightly water damaged piece of paper taped to the top of interior, with the words "fan mail" written in black ink.
SCP-4462's only anomalous property occurs after the death of a prominent American author. Minutes after the first reports of the author's death, an envelope containing a letter addressed to the now deceased author will appear within SCP-4462. These letters are attributed to various individuals.
These individuals, when interviewed by Foundation personnel, have been found to have recently attempted to publish a work of literature, and in all cases have been rejected by a publisher. These individuals have no memory of writing the letter in question, although interviews seem to show that the letters do accurately convey the feelings of the subject about the now deceased author. Handwriting analysis shows a match with the named subject in all known instances. As the subjects have no recollection of the letter's existence, this function of SCP-4462 poses no risk to Foundation operations.
SCP-4462 was discovered attached to an abandoned property in Cross Plains, Texas. SCP-4462 contained several dozen letters in it at the time of its discovery. A Foundation member embedded in the local government intercepted the object after its contents were discovered.
Sample Recovered Documents:
- Access Granted
Mr. Hunter S. Thompson,
Silence…. It was a moment of clarity, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction and yet at the same time the kind of happiness you'd feel with a head full of acid and a bottle half full of rum. That was the feeling when I finished Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Dissatisfaction not in the contents of the story, but the fact that its end felt like an errant friend walking away, unsure of when… or if… he'd ever return. I found comfort in the fact that you went on to write quite a bit more, and I hold similar feelings about Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. I'm glad you have not ever changed your behavior. A half deranged, detached man in a haze of drugs and alcohol is sometimes the perfect window into the quietly depraved… and disoriented state of affairs we call American culture. You said it perfectly yourself: "We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out". I don't truly believe we've ever touched the bottom, we've only sunk down deeper into a nation of feuding subcultures, on occasion reunited by a major tragedy or triumph.
I find your prescription of drugs, alcohol, and madness to be the only way to escape what you call "terminal despair". Your take on the maddening era of the seventies still holds true to me today in what people shamefully call our collective culture. A facade…. a largely soulless enterprise of lies and poor finances. The way you made the story of Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo… their time in the desert…. … your other stories, covering everything from our gibberish spewing, death obsessed politicians to the amoral and self serving spectators of a horse race… it brings that soul back, the soul America seems to have lost. I personally had thought the eighties were the rock bottom for the loss of American's spirit, but then the nineties happened and now we are where we are today.
To watch an actor treat the oval office like a studio for him to monologue in front of America. To watch our own government fund thugs and monsters and call it freedom fighting. To watch two politicians with the same worldview bicker against a confused millionaire. To watch musicians, rebelling against the weirdly dressed music of their decade, taking music inspired by black artists and the heavy droning rock music that came from overseas two decades before, forced to make ballads for teenage girls, mimicking the very thing they were rebelling against due to some simple, common law contract. To see the same damn thing happen a few years later when Seattle bands on powerful drugs were driven out by a cleaner alternative that stole their style but not their soul. To see a film industry constantly plunder its own past when it has run out of ideas for the future, retelling the same damn story worse and expecting money for it.
And everyone acts likes this is normalcy… that this is how it should be. I understand your living in a perpetual haze. Alcohol… cussing… firearms… I've heard some call you a communist but to me you may very well have fit in with our founding fathers. I'm glad that you have given this nation so much… perhaps more than people would think it deserves but you and I know better… nothing is enough until people are able to see the world around them for what it is… that a group of power people are perverting the American dream, turning us all into a nation of used car salesmen. I wish you well, perhaps one day the rich kids of the world will, in some perverse irony, fall in love with your works and inadvertently recreate the American dream.
Your fan,
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- Access Granted
Mr. John Berryman,
Poetry is loud and frantic. From the writer's mind onto ink.
I am the man who puts words on the paper.
I am the man who shares the anguish and pain.
I am the bottom of the river, where the light
seldom reaches.
People are cruel, and lost in their own
desires.
Fiery words from elevated voices, as loud as
poetry.
Your words, your pain, your answers in the trees and buildings and the other
high up things.
To make my pain something that in words can be described.
That which can be described can be killed. It can die.
It will die, die. With me or by its own self.
I wish to see all willing to share their pain.
Their mouths not sewn, but free to run. To pour. To flow like the river
where the light
seldom reaches.
I hope your pain may flow forever into ink.
So others can read and treat themselves
in the same manner.
Your words though to some strange
and morbid.
The way you write outside the rules, conventions,
the words spill onto the page as water.
To borrow a line of verse,
"However things hurt, men hurt worse."
So when the fall comes. The fall of
our lives.
We may know that our pain
is often shared
but that knowledge
seldom reaches.
Your fan,
██████ ██████
- Access Granted
Mr. Ernest Hemingway,
In the late summer of a year of poor weather, I took a trip from Princeton to New Orleans. The train passed through the hills of Pennsylvania. Plants hung from the cliffs, still wet from the evening rain. The train created intense noise. The passengers were silent. When I switched trains in Chicago, the station was full of conversations. I did not speak to anyone until my train arrived in New Orleans a day later.
The buildings of the French Quarter were stone and wood worn down by age. When I found a bar where I could sit outdoors, I sat alone on a patio with a man wearing a suit. The man was pale, with a round face and a long forehead. He was staring into his book with an intense gaze. He seemed unaware of the world around him.
"It is very hot today." I said. I had begun to take my wallet from my pocket.
"The weather is alright." The man said. He was reading a book that he was careful to keep at a distance from his beer.
"This bar is quiet." I said. "I had heard that this city was lively."
"The band hasn't arrived yet." The man said. "I'm waiting for their show. I've been following them around for months."
"Do they play jazz?" I asked. There was a small jazz scene in Princeton.
"Yes." He said. "I arrive early to get a good seat."
"Do you always wear a suit?" I asked.
"I was in class earlier. I did not bother to change." The man said.
I peaked over his shoulder to look at his book. "What book are you reading?"
"The Old Man and the Sea." The man said. "I find the works of Hemingway interesting, even if I find his writing style a bit dry."
I had never read a book of yours before. The sentences in the book were short. The ideas were to the point. It was different than the writing I had read in college. I walked over to the bar with my wallet still in hand.
"I'd like one glass of whatever beer that gentlemen with the book is drinking." I said to the bartender, who was slouching with a bored look.
"Of course." the bartender said. He poured the beer from the tap and handed me the glass. I walked back to the man reading at the table.
"What inspired you to read that book?" I asked.
"I teach at a university, I write newspapers, and I write novels myself. I need a frequent intake of written word."
He had impressed me. "You are a novelist?" I said. "I've always wanted to write novels."
"Yes." He said. "Well, in a way. I wrote a novel when I was sixteen but could never find a publisher, and I tried. I'm working on a comedy now. A farce of sorts, set here in New Orleans."
"Well, I wish you the best of luck in finding a publisher." I said to him.
I stayed for the band who had a upbeat and brass-heavy sound. The man in the suit kept his eyes focused on the band all night. There was a look in his eyes, a hunger for success.
I bought the same novel the next morning at a bookstore in the Garden Distract. I found it simple but captivating. I read all your novels that fall. The beauty and power of nature. The horrors of war. The fragile nature of romance. I found all these ideas merged together in perfect balance in your novels. Simple words can convey complex ideas. Ideas that all people should consider. Your writing hits a nerve in the reader. Many of your words are still with me. You speak many truths, of the world breaking men. Of the sincere lack of people willing to listen to their fellow man. But one quotation of yours sticks with me still, memorized word for word. “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self.” I hope that I will improve myself. I will become a better person. I will become a better writer. There are many who think themselves superior, but few willing to improve themselves. I hope you are still striving to become an even better person and writer, since your works are already great. Your honesty as an author I greatly admire and there are many other people that you clearly have inspired. I hope you continue to write more, you may be the greatest novelist in this nation's history.
Your fan,
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