The SCP Experience - They Come When You're Asleep | SCP-439

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

SCP Foundation EUCLID class object, SCP-439: They Come When You're Asleep This story was derived from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-439, and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Author: Matt Doggett Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewDoggettAuthor/ Website/Newsletter sign up: matthewdoggettauthor.com New Book Releases: https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-G-Doggett/e/B08FD5378Z DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #thescpexperience #scp #scpfoundation #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories #scpexplained #whatisscp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The streetlights are broken. The dilapidated warehouse windows are shattered with a million jagged holes, like screaming mouths. In the time it takes us to traverse the three miles to the target address, I hear eight not-so-distant gunshots from at least three different guns. The headlights of our three-car convoy struggle to penetrate the darkness. Hypolysmic needles, cracked pipes, and shell casing, crunch and pop under our tires. Shadows slither into recesses as we approach. The only evidence of the people who call this part of the city home. Shelly, normally talkative, sits next to me in the

passenger's seat. Her jaw clenched as she holds her pistol down between her legs. Her auburn hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and her pants suit is as dark as the night outside. You all right? The last time she was in this part of town, she came. out with a bullet hole in her leg, leaving behind her dying patrol partner. It wasn't her fault. She'd be dead now too if she hadn't gotten out of there. Fine, she says without looking at me. That was a long time ago anyway. She's since been promoted. Detective. And it has fallen to me to train her. She's a good cop. She has two kids who she dotes on. Two boys, nine and twelve. Good kids.

I adjust my weapon, which is tucked under the outside of my right thigh. Turn right here, Shelley says. Someone called in a tip about a murder suspect. They had information that wasn't released to the public. So here we are. I make the turn. You smell that? Smoke, she says.

There, I point down the street. There's a building halfway down the block on the left with smoke pouring out of it. The demon glow of fire is visible through the... the bashed out windows. That's it, Shelly says. That's the fucking place. As I slow, pulling up next to the warehouse, the two metal doors open at the front. A tall man in a black ski mask, bulky black jacket, and black pants walks out and freezes

as he sees us. I hit the gas and yank the wheel. The tires bump up over the curb as the man books it away from us, turning into the alley beside the building. Go! I say to Shelley, who's already half-one. who's already halfway out of the car. She races after the guy as I slam the vehicle into part.

I jump out with my gun in one hand, my portable radio and the other. I shout into the radio as I run down the other side of the building, hoping to cut the guy off. Behind me, I hear the other two black and white patrol cars rev forward, each heading around the block, according to my directions. I come to the back of the building. The alley is crammed with debris.

No sign of Shelly or the masked man. Man. Something isn't right. I run, dodging around and jumping over piles of garbage. I check each door I come across, thinking the chase took a turn into one of the adjacent buildings. The doors are locked. Any sign of Detective Winters? I asked the patrol cars. Negative, they say. No sign of her or the perp. I tell one of them to make a big circle, see what they see. This isn't good. I call for air support, more backup, and the fire department. My gut is screaming at me. Before the place turns into a circus, I slip back into the Crown Vic and dump a little pile of powdery, crystalline speed out of the back of my hand. The drugs go up one nostril and send a jolt of euphoric electricity into my brain.

Unwilling to wait for backup, I start searching the structures immediately surrounding the burning building. The flames are licking at the windows now. The fire growing in its hellish intensity. Hours pass. Half the cops in the city turn up to look for Shelly. We don't find her. We don't find the burp. What we do find, after the fire has been put out, is evidence of a murder.

Not Shelly's murder. Someone else's. But it's not your run-of-the-mill homicide. It's something I've never seen before. As the sun struggles wearily into the storm. smog-laden sky. A firefighter leads me into the fire-scorged building. We step carefully around blackened debris until we come to the place where, according to the firefighter, the fire started. He points to the corner of the wide warehouse room. There's something that

vaguely resembles a human skeleton there. As I get closer, I realize it is a human skeleton. Only it has been changed, modified somehow. It's curled up in the corner. It's spined to the brick wall, but there are bone growths where there shouldn't be any. The skeleton's arms and legs are fixed to the rib cage in several different places with bone growths. To make sure, I prod some of these growths with my gloved finger. They hold steady. I've seen bodies retrieved from fires before. If the fire is hot enough, it can break the bones down, but it will never melt them together like this. As I brought them together like this, When I trod the bones, I noticed that the skeleton doesn't move at all, like it's stuck to the wall.

I shift my position and look to where the bones meet the brick wall. It looks like there are growths extending into the bricks. A wave of dizziness hits me. I stick a hand out against the wall to steady myself. Dark forms float across my open eyes, blotting out portions of my vision. I need to sleep. Not yet. More hours pass. I find myself back at the station, not remembering the drive back.

The sun beats down on a nearby window, making me sick. The little baggy in my jacket pocket is half empty. Shelly's out there somewhere. I remember the call I made to her husband when it was clear we weren't going to find her in the immediate vicinity. I promised him I'd get her back alive. Why the fuck did I do that? This time takes by. The likelihood of her rescue diminishes exponentially.

But then a package comes for me. It only has my name on it, nothing else. The desk clerk says a guy brought it in who looked and smelled homeless. It's a plain manila envelope with a cheap cell phone inside. The cell phone has a video on it. I play the video. My stomach twists and knots. At first, I don't know exactly what I'm seeing.

There's a grayish, almost translucent insect that looks like an earwig. It's a close-up of the insect at first. But then the camera pulls back to reveal that the insect is on Shelley's cheek. Only she doesn't know it. She's unconscious, a nasty gash on her forehead. The insect scuttles forward, approaching Shelley's half-open mouth. It stops near the edge of her lips. The camera vibrates as high-pitched insane laughter erupts from the camera on.

the camera operator. The earwig moves into Shelly's mouth, its abdominal pincer is disappearing last. The man filming laughs even harder. The footage cuts to reveal a new scene. This time, instead of just seeing Shelly's head, her whole body is in frame. She's in a dark room. The circle of light from the camera is the only source of illumination. She's dressed only in her underwear, curled up on the floor, groaning, arms hugging herself. It hurts. She keeps repeating, clearly delirious. The guy behind the camera chuckles.

His laughter crescendos until it suddenly cut off by the end of the footage. I watched the footage again and again, looking for any clues as to where she's being held. Then I give the phone to the tech guys, hoping they can glean something from it. There's nothing to help us on the phone. That would be too easy. Days pass on a flurry of dead ends and desperation. The little sleep I get bulges with nightmares. I've stopped picking up when Shelley's husband calls.

His voicemails have gone from desperate to hostile. I don't blame him. I show the insect footage to a specialist, but he tells me he's never seen an earwig like that. It's the wrong color, he says. He's never known an earwig to go into a person's mouth either. Despite their name, they're no more likely to crawl into an ear or another orifice than any other small insect.

I call exterminators all over the city to see if they've had any calls about gray earwigs. Most of them say no. Others tell me they'll ask their exterminator coworkers and contact me if they get a hit. On the fourth day, I get another package, another cheap cell phone, another video. The footage is of a dark room. The light from the camera is pointed at a black stretch of wall at four. First, then it shifts, bringing Shelly into view. I almost drop the phone as my stomach lurches and my pulse quickens.

She's curled into a corner. Her legs pulled up under her chin and her arms wrapped around them. Her skin is warped and bulging. I think of the skeleton in the burned out building. It's exactly what's happening to Shelly. Bone growths are developing. The video ends abruptly with insane laughter. Rummaging through the paperwork on my desk, I find the coroner's report on the skeleton.

I skim it, looking for the words I read two days ago. Hive-like structure, other words the coroner used. The skeleton had been turned into a hive-like formation, a reinforced cage around the abdominal structure. Striations on the inside of the ribcage bones could have been caused by insects, the report says. Highly unusual. God help us. Days turn into weeks, weeks into months. I sleep for an hour or two every other night.

My bank account dwindles as I spend more and more on speed. I've lost hope, but I haven't given up. Even if she's dead, we must find her. We investigate every low life in the city. I go through records of every criminal I've ever arrested, hoping to identify the perp. This is personal. The packages were addressed to me.

to me. Still, each lead turns to dust eventually. We make no progress. One of our own is gone, and we can't even find her body. The commissioner resigns. I contemplate putting a gun in my mouth, but I don't. Not yet. Then I hear from an exterminator. He says he just got a call about strange earwigs. He gives me the address. I tell him, I'll meet him there. The The place is in a nice part of town. It's a 10-story apartment building with a 24-hour doorman and monthly rent that I couldn't afford even off drugs. One of the first-floor residents complained to the manager about earwigs. The exterminator said they're likely in the basement. They like dark, moist areas. I can't help but think about the site of the earwig

crawling into Shelley's open mouth. The building is old and the basement is used for storage. After more than an hour of searching, I find a crawl space adjacent to boiler room that the manager didn't even know about. I crawl through the semi-hidden passageway and find myself in a 12-by-12 room with a low ceiling and unfinished concrete walls. There's something in the corner. I shine my flashlight on it. Shelley's skin looks like parchment paper. In the places where the bones of her legs and arms have grown together with the bones of a rip cage, there is no skin. There's no way she's alive. Her eyes are closed at least.

That makes it a little easier. The bones in her back have grown outward and attached to the concrete wall, just like the skeleton in the burned building. I don't see any evidence of insects, so I prod the side of her body gently. The skin there yields like leather. Suddenly, a swarm of angry earwigs bursts through where I prodded. Some of them fly at me while others crawl frantically around.

round, coating Shelley's body. I scramble away, swatting at them. Pain erupts on my bare hands, my neck, and my face as they use their pincers. I swipe them away and crunch them under my feet. When I'm sure I've got them all off me, I shine the light back on Shelly. The insects are crawling back into their nest. I step closer to watch, unable to accept what I'm seeing. After several long moments, I shine the light on her face. I'm sorry, Shelly. eyes open. I jump back, my heart hammering irregularly in my chest. She stares up at me. Nothing but pain in her eyes. Pain and terror. And a yearning for death. I pull out my gun to end her misery, but something is wrong. I can't breathe. My left arm hurts. I collapsed to the floor.

Managing to bring my radio to my mouth, I call for help. Somehow, I managed to stay conscious until the medics arrive. It was a heart attack. A mild one. I slept for a few hours in the hospital. Other detectives came in and told me what was going on. They told me about how the insects had been feeding off of Shelley's organs. They'd made a nice little home for themselves inside her. Through some processes that I still don't understand,

she stayed alive for all that time. Over two months. There was still no sign of the perp, they told me. No idea who he was, even. They interviewed everyone who lived in the building, but they all checked out. No one had moved out or in recently. I go straight from the hospital back to work, but LT sends me home. Tells me I'm on medical leave for another week.

At least I'm off the speed. No more of that shit. I can finally get some decent sleep. It's exactly what I need. The thoughts I've been having. Let's just say I desperately need sleep. I can feel myself teetering on. the brink of insanity. As I make it home, I see a plain Manila envelope propped against my front door.

There's no address on it, only my name. There's no phone inside. That much I can tell from the weight of it. I open the package and look inside. I drop it and scramble away. A dozen gray earwigs crawl out of the package and disperse in my front yard. There's a piece of paper sticking halfway out of the envelope. I use a pen for my jacket and move it out so I can read read the writing on it. They come when you're asleep, the note says. Underneath, there's a smiley face with exes for eyes. You son of a bitch, I whisper.

I'm going to find you. And I will. No matter what it takes, I will find him. But until I do, I can forget about getting a decent night's rest. SCP 439 is an insect of unknown origin, somewhat resembling a common earwig. only gray in color. Individual specimens are relatively harmless under most circumstances, aside from the ability to deliver a firm, painful pinch with its abdominal forceps.

The true hazard this creature possesses lies in its habitat construction and reproduction, which is initiated when the specimen enters the mouth of a sleeping human. Upon entering the mouth of the new host, SCP 439 will travel down the trachea and take up resident, in one of the victim's lungs. In approximately four to eight hours after awakening, the host will complain of chest pains and shortness of breath, followed shortly by abdominal cramping.

The tightness in the chest will increase, as well as a fever until the host is incapacitated. It is around this time that the onset of fibrodisplasia osificens progressiva occurs, a disorder that is normally genetic in nature that promotes the growth of bone into muscle tissue. Since the production of new bone growth is so rapid, the procedure is also quite painful for the subject, with new bone spurs occasionally protruding through the flesh. While this is happening, the host will become compelled to seek shelter in a darkened, enclosed space.

Within three days, the subject's body will begin the final stage of transformation into a bone hive. New bone protrusions will continue to grow and, if possible, anchor the body permanently. to its new location. The skeletal structure converts to a round cage to protect the internal organs and colony. At this point, the original queen that entered the host will have produced 20,000 to 30,000 offspring that function as workers, drones, and warriors in a typical insect hive hierarchy. The interior of the original host is nearly unrecognizable as a human body. Certain organs are removed and used as food, while others are modified by the worker insects to serve as egg incubation chambers.

An ingenious method exists of using the host's own digestive system to process pieces of organic materials collected by the warriors into a nutritive slurry that feeds both the colony and sustains the host hive structure.