Goliathbeetle

Sandbox

A place to securely contain my SCP ideas.

Triatoma timor

SCP-XXXX 1 (male) with ruler and coin for size comparison.

Item#: SCP-XXXX

Object class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-XXXX specimens are to be kept in a sealed room inside five (5) standard, 25 gallon glass aquariums. Fitted lids will have a single, hinged access point for feeding, cleaning and removal of specimens, as well as a water mist system to maintain a humid environment. Aquariums should be furnished with peat soil, two live plants, and an overturned piece of bark. When in transport, SCP-XXXX can be placed in a small (39 x 25 x 24.5 cm), sealed terrarium designated for this purpose.

To prevent reproduction, SCP-XXXX specimens cannot be placed together in the same container.

Each SCP-XXXX specimen is to be fed one (1) live, small mammal (rat, mouse, or guinea pig) on a biweekly basis. Aquariums must be cleaned of dead material each month.

All personnel involved in maintenance or handling of SCP-XXXX are required to wear Class C hazmat suits (vinyl thickness no less than 150mm) while aquarium lids are open. Due to the risk of contamination, suits should be inspected for breach before and after handling. SCP-XXXX should only be allowed to touch human skin under experimental scenarios. Any experiment involving SCP-XXXX must first be cleared with Level 2 staff.

Personnel experiencing numbness or marked increase in paranoia, fear, or anger after handling SCP-XXXX should report immediately for medical testing and observation.

Physical Description: SCP-XXXX is a collection containing five adult specimens (SCP-XXXX 1-5, three females and two males) of the novel species Triatoma timor.¹ They are 10cm long, flat bodied insects with elongated, cone-shaped heads bearing antennae and prominent proboscis. Their wide abdomens have a distinct gold/green banding pattern and paired wings. The insects appear to be related to other, more common Reduviidae, colloquially called “kissing bugs”, found throughout the world, though their method of feeding and large size are not consistent with the rest of the Family.

Behavior: SCP-XXXX, attracted to the bright lights of human dwellings, will wedge its flat body under doorjams or through cracks in walls and windows to access the interior of buildings. The insect will then hide itself beneath furniture or within crevices in the floor or walls. When night falls, SCP-XXXX will emerge from hiding and locate a sleeping prey item via body heat and CO₂ emissions.

The insect settles on exposed skin (showing preference for the face) and bites using piercing mouthparts. The bite injects a thread-like feeding organ and a measure of saliva.² Proprieties of SCP-XXXX saliva enhance natural sleep paralysis and induce a high level of abnormal brain activity. While asleep, this activity produces an intense and neurologically active dream state, upon which SCP-XXXX proceeds to feed.³ Test subjects describe negative dream experiences (nightmares) during an SCP-XXXX feeding, though memories of dream details remain unclear.

After one night of full feeding, subjects awaken and report feelings of exhaustion, anxiety and paranoia which linger throughout the day and increase as night approaches. If all exposure to SCP-XXXX is immediately halted, subjects return to baseline sleep patterns and psychological norms within three (3) days.

Repeated, nighty exposure to SCP-XXXX intensifies negative emotional response during the dream state, as indicated by increasingly erratic heart rate, distressed vocalizations, muscle tension, and heightened electrical activity in the amygdala and hypothalamus. These symptoms are accompanied by emotional aggravation during the day. Subjects grow increasingly paranoid, and many start experiencing hallucinations that cause them to lash out and harm others or themselves. Eventually (between 2-3 weeks), subjects become completely terrified of falling asleep, and will take any measures to prevent themselves from doing so. If, after four (4) weeks of exposure, the subject has not perished from cardiac arrest, malnutrition, or self-inflicted injury, he/she will enter a catatonic state where no higher brain activity can be recorded.

+ SCP-XXXX Experiment Notations

Experiment Note XXXX-1d
Added by Dr.█ on 23/██/20██ : While SCP-XXXX will feed on any mammal, it shows preference for items with higher cognitive functions. SCP-XXXX ignores non-mammalian organisms, including other insects, fish, birds and reptiles. Humans appear to be its preferred prey type and, if starving or provoked, it will boldly attack and attempt to feed, even when being observed.
I am currently planning experiments to determine if it will treat other mammalian SCPs in a similar fashion. Request for experimentation is pending approval.

Experiment Note XXXX-11b
Added by Dr.█ on 02/██/20██ : If attacking conscious prey, SCP-XXXX's bite will cause slow paralysis and rapid (30-60sec) onset of intense negative emotions including: terror, rage, anxiety, paranoia, and grief. This bite appears to be a defense mechanism rather than a feeding mechanism, though SCP-XXXX has been observed feeding after the administration of a bite to a conscious subject.
Recovery times from conscious bites varied from 1-3 days, though feelings of disquiet and anxiety lingered if psychological therapy was not administered. Exposure to multiple, simultaneous bites does not appear to increase recovery time or enhance the bite's effect.

Experiment Note XXXX-7a
Added by Dr.█ on 15/██/20██ : After some experimentation with small mammals, I have determined that SCP-XXXX's "feeding thread" is a mouthpart uniquely evolved to interfere with its prey's nervous system. If a prey item is dissected while SCP-XXXX is feeding, this "thread" can be observed wrapped along a nearby nerve root leading to the spinal column. When SCP-XXXX is removed from its prey, the mouthpart rapidly retracts into the proboscis.
Curiously, I also noted that SCP-XXXX seemed to benefit from the pain caused to its prey item during dissection, as it was able to feed much more robustly after the animal sustained injury. This bump in food intake may explain why SCP-XXXX's feeding strategy alters its prey's normal behavior so drastically. More experimentation is required to prove this hypothesis.

+ Incident Report# XXXX-01 --Level 2 Clearance required for access

Number of Civilian Casualties███
Number of Foundation Casualties: ██
Cover story: Catastrophic failure of [REDACTED] at ██████'s drill site ████████████.
Current threat: There is a possibility that instances of SCP-XXXX may still exist in the wild. Careful monitoring of deep rainforest sites is advised to ensure rapid detection and acquisition. Spread to heavily populated areas must be avoided at all costs.
Detail:The Foundation was alerted to the presence of SCP-XXXX after the interception of a communication between the Ecuadorian government and ██████. The correspondence detailed an exodus of ██ civilians following an apparent biological event at one of their worker villages operating near ████████████ drill site in the Amazon Rainforest. This report contains an interview with Corporal J. █████████,who was part of the initial team deployed to investigate and contain SCP-XXXX.

Audio log from Interview XXXX-01-A:
Interviewer: Dr. █
Interviewed: Corporal J. █████████
Retrieval Incident XXXX-01

<Begin Log>

Dr. █: Hello J███, glad to see you are up and walking around again.

Corporal J. : [Pause] Thank you.

Dr. █: I'm just going to ask you a few questions involving Incident XXXX-01. You aren't in trouble, just standard procedure. You know the drill.

Corporal J. : Of course.

Dr. █: Can you describe for me what happened? Try to be concise. Start with initial impressions.

Corporal J. : We arrived in █████████ at 0600 hours and began the investigation. Didn't have a lot of information to go on, but that isn't so unusual with out of the way places. The higher ups thought it was biological, so they had us in those combat NBC suits….you know, the big, grey ones with the tubes sticking out all over? 35 degrees with 98% humidity, full gear, and we're in these sealed, rubber suits. Ugh. Thought I was going to melt into biological soup inside that thing.

Dr. █: Relevant details only please.

Corporal J. : No, that's important. All of us wanted out as soon as possible, so when they gave us the all clear on airborne pathogens we took 'em off. Didn't think twice about it. Of course we kept the masks on, just in case, but those turned out to be pretty useless.

Dr. █: [Clears throat] So you took off the suits, then what?

Corporal J. : We started doing our door to door. The village was quiet. No people anywhere. Just chickens and flies. Ugh! Flies everywhere! [Laughs] That's always a bad sign. It didn't take us too long to find the first one; we could smell them, even with the masks on.

Dr. █: The first what?

Corporal J. : Corpse. A donkey. Poor thing was all wrapped up in its lead rope, still tied to a post in front of the house. Something had eaten its legs down to the bone, presumably while it was still alive, since the rest of it wasn't in such a bad state. [Pauses] Then, inside the house, a woman. Looked like she'd just sorta curled up and died on the floor. The rest of her family were in a similar state— in corners, under the beds. The weird thing is, there where these deep scratch marks on the walls and floor, like they'd tried to claw their way out, even though the door was right there…The other homes all had bodies in 'em too, both human and animal. It was clear that some of the people had killed each other. Machetes, guns, shovels; even a bow and arrow. There was a baby— [long pause].

Dr. █: Continue please.

Corporal J.: Yeah, sorry. Ah…yeah… so it looked like most of them had hurt themselves too. Others were kinda peaceful, just lying in bed, rotting away, covered in flies and all sorts of weird bugs. They were alright. The worst were the ones who were alive.

Dr. █: Alive?

Corporal J. : Yeah. Some of them were still alive. That's how we took our first causality. One of the civilians was hiding under a bunch of dead ones and we didn't see him.

Dr. █: What happened?

Corporal J. : A boy. Nine? Ten years old? One second he was playing dead; the next he was screaming and swinging a machete, completely out of control. He got Private █████ right in the leg. Nicked the femoral. Poor guy bled out in front of me. You bet your ass we were all on our toes after that. Of course, not all the live ones were violent; some just sat, moaning and rocking and screaming if you tried to touch them. They'd clearly been there awhile. The state of them! There was this one guy…he…he'd pulled his own eyelids off with a pair of wire strippers. His eyes were all messed up but he kept looking at us. He was trying to scream but his throat was jacked up so he just sounded like [Corporal J. mimics the sound of a rasping wheeze]. No words, just this endless [Corporal J. repeats the noise]. That sound is gunna haunt me.

Dr. █: So what went wrong?

Corporal J. : Hmmm, yeah, things went to hell pretty quick. Not sure what triggered them. Maybe all the noise we were causing?

Dr. █: SCP-XXXX?

Corporal J. :[Grunt] Damn things came out of the f█████████ walls!

Dr. █: How many attacked you?

Corporal J. : Not sure? Felt like hundreds at the time but, in hindsight, not that many. Maybe fifteen? They were pretty effin' big.

Dr. █: Then what?

Corporal J. : [Laughs] What do you mean, "then what?". Then they jumped all over us and started biting. Must have been starving since all their people were dead. We managed to squish a couple but there were just too many. The guys in the other buildings were being attacked too, so they didn't come to help. Obviously, someone managed to get the warning out to the back-up team, else I wouldn't be here talking to you now.

Dr. █: You were infected then?

Corporal J. : Yeah [pause] me and a good third of the crew were. The things I saw…[audible swallow].

Dr. █: You are aware of what you and your squad mates did to the others before being restrained?

Corporal J. : We— [long pause]. All I can say is that I understand why that one guy tried to tear his own eyes out. [long silence]

Dr. █: Okay then, can you tell me anything else?

Corporal J. : Well, I wasn't around for the clean-up, but I heard they only managed to collect a few of the things before [REDACTED] the whole area. The science types spent a long while searching the forest for more of them, but they couldn't find any. Must have all died in the [REDACTED]. I really hope so.

End Log

Footnotes

1. See Incident Report XXXX-01 for detail of initial SCP-XXXX acquisition.

2. Saliva toxin is currently undergoing experimentation to determine if it can be used as [REDACTED] or for medical use as a paralytic agent. -Dr.█

3. Precisely how this feeding is accomplished is still unknown, though SCP-XXXX bloats as it feeds, indicating that it is gaining some sort of physical nutrition. See SCP-XXXX Experiment Notations for more detail.