The Blue Key

(TW: brief mentions of multiple types of murder and a s-xual assault)

The guards came for Henryk at dawn, their boots echoing down the concrete corridor like a countdown to something terrible. He'd been on death row for three months, waiting for the chair, but this wasn't that day. This was something else.

"D-7777," the guard barked. "Step out."

Henryk shuffled from his cell, his orange jumpsuit hanging loose on his frame. He'd lost weight since the shooting—since that day he'd let every small frustration in his life explode into something unforgivable. The guards surrounded him, four of them, as if he might suddenly become the monster he'd been that one terrible afternoon.

They marched him through corridors he'd never seen before, deeper into the facility than death row inmates were meant to go. Other prisoners joined them along the way—a trembling woman with wild eyes who kept whispering "I didn't do it," and a man whose gaze made Henryk's skin crawl. Todd, they called that one. Henryk had heard the whispers about what Todd had done.

Then Henryk saw him. The fourth prisoner.

"Dad?" The word escaped before he could stop it.

Richard's face crumpled when he saw his son. They'd both ended up here, in this nightmare—Henryk for his rampage, Richard for trying to save him afterward. For killing a judge. For tampering with evidence. For throwing away everything to protect a son who couldn't be saved.

The Chief waited for them in a vast concrete room. In its center stood something that shouldn't exist: a simple wooden door in a frame, standing alone with nothing behind it. Just a door to nowhere.

"Welcome, D-Class," the Chief said, his voice like grinding stone. "You're going to help us with an experiment."

He held up a key. It was blue—not painted blue, but blue like the deep ocean, like it had been carved from a piece of the sky. It seemed to pulse with its own light.

"SCP-860," the Chief continued. "This key can open any door in the world. But when it does, you don't go where the door should lead. You go... somewhere else."

Julianna started sobbing. "Please, I'm innocent! My sister—it was my sister! She killed that deputy and made me take the blame!"

The guards raised their rifles. One struck her with the butt of his weapon, sending her stumbling into Todd.

"Your safety," the Chief said slowly, savoring each word, "is not guaranteed. Open the door."

Richard took the key. His hand shook as he approached the standing door. When he turned the key in the lock, the sound it made was wrong—like bones breaking underwater.

The door swung open.

Beyond should have been the concrete wall of the containment room. Instead, there was a forest. But calling it a forest was like calling a nightmare a dream. The trees were wrong, everything tinted blue as if seen through deep water. A dirt path wound between the trunks, splitting and branching into infinity. No birds sang. No insects buzzed. The silence was heavy as a burial shroud.

"Proceed," the Chief ordered.

They had no choice. The guns at their backs made that clear.

The moment they stepped through, the air changed. It was thick, almost syrupy, and tasted of copper and ozone. The door swung shut behind them with a soft click that sounded final.

"What the fuck is this?" Todd muttered.

"It's a forest," Henryk snapped. "Don't ask stupid questions."

Todd stepped toward him, fists clenched, but Richard intervened. "Both of you, stop."

That's when they heard it—a sound like purring, but wrong. Too deep. Too large. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, growing louder as they walked deeper into the blue twilight.

"Is that a cat?" Julianna whispered.

They followed the path because there was nothing else to do. The trees pressed closer with each step, their blue bark pulsing like veins. Julianna tried to fill the suffocating silence.

"What did you all do? To end up here?"

Todd's answer made Henryk's stomach turn. "I did things... to a girl..."

"Shut up," Henryk snarled. "Just shut up."

"I didn't mean—"

"I SAID SHUT UP!"

Richard spoke quietly. "I was in cybersecurity. When I heard what Henryk did, I tried to help him. I killed a judge. My own boss. I threw away everything."

"Why?" Henryk's voice cracked. "Why would you do that for me?"

"You're my son."

"I murdered innocent people, Dad. I let stupid, small things build up until I exploded. I destroyed families. Why would you—"

The purring sound suddenly became a roar. Close. Too close.

"Hide!" Henryk screamed.

They scattered in different directions, crashing through the blue undergrowth. Julianna ran blindly, her foot catching on a root. She tumbled down an embankment, her leg snapping with a sound like a branch breaking. She rolled into a cave filled with blue mist and glowing crystals.

And Todd's remains.

What was left of him had been torn apart, scattered across the cave floor like a child's broken toy. Something had eaten him—no, played with him first, then eaten him. His face was gone, but she could still recognize the orange jumpsuit, now dark with blood that looked black in the blue light.

Julianna's scream caught in her throat. She vomited, then dragged herself out of the cave on her broken leg, leaving a trail of blood on the blue moss.

Above, Henryk and Richard found each other again, but the path was gone. They were lost in an endless blue forest with something hunting them.

"We're going to die here," Henryk said, his voice hollow.

"Son—"

"No! We're going to die, and maybe that's right. Maybe I deserve this. All those people I killed... maybe this is justice."

Richard pulled his son into an embrace. "Remember when you were little? You used to slide headfirst down every slide because you saw people doing it on waterslides?"

Henryk laughed despite everything. "I thought all slides were the same."

"You were so stubborn. You'd argue with anyone who tried to tell you different."

That's when Julianna found them, dragging her broken leg, her face bright with desperate hope. "There's another door! A white door with a keyhole! We can get out!"

For a moment, hope flickered.

Then the forest exploded.

The thing that burst from the trees was wrong in every way something could be wrong. It had the shape of a cat, but it was the size of a truck, made of porcelain and wood and living vines all fused together in impossible ways. Its eyes were holes that went down forever, and when it opened its mouth, there were too many teeth in too many rows.

It took Julianna first. One moment she was there, the next she was in its jaws, her scream cut short. It shook her like a ragdoll, then flung her broken body at Richard, pinning him to the ground.

"Dad!" Henryk reached for him, but the thing was already on Richard, those impossible teeth closing around his chest. Richard's eyes met Henryk's one last time.

"Run," he mouthed, blood bubbling from his lips.

But Henryk didn't run. He fell to his knees in the blue moss, understanding finally washing over him.

"I deserve this," he said to the thing as it turned toward him, Julianna's and Richard's blood dripping from its porcelain jaws. "Every bit of it."

The thing tilted its head, almost curious. Then it lunged.

Back in the containment facility, the Chief reviewed the report without emotion.

"All four D-Class deceased," the technician reported. "The anomaly in SCP-860-1 killed them all. We still don't have enough data on what exactly it is."

The Chief nodded. "Prepare the next group."

"Sir, should we warn them about—"

"No. We need to see if different groups encounter the same entity. Besides..." He looked at the blue key, now back in its containment box, pulsing with that strange light. "They're death row inmates. Their lives were already forfeit."

The wooden door still stood in the center of the containment room, waiting. Tomorrow, four more D-Class would walk through it. And the day after that, four more. The Foundation would keep feeding people to whatever lurked in that blue forest until they understood it.

Or until they ran out of prisoners.

The blue key pulsed in its box like a heartbeat, patient as death itself, waiting for the next hand to turn it in a lock. Waiting to show them what waits behind every door—

The blue forest where even the mercy of death comes with teeth.