You and your friends exit a club and step
on to the darkened city street. Everyone is in a happy and joyful mood, it’s
been a great night, one that you’ll be reminiscing about with your friends for years. As you walk and laugh together, you don’t
notice the large man standing in front of you and almost run straight into him. You offer a quick apology and move to go around
the man, but he steps in front of you, blocking your path. All of your friends grow quiet, and you finally
take a good look at the man. The man towers over you. He is huge, with giant elaborate tattoos wrapped
around his bulging muscles, that it looks like he may have gotten to cover up the numerous
white patches of skin that are missing pigmentation. His face though, is bright red, and filled
with rage. The man begins screaming at you, asking why
you ran into him and calling you horrible names. Again you try to apologize but the man just
keeps yelling as if he can’t even hear you. He pushes you hard in the chest and you fall
back into one of your friends. Another steps forward in an attempt to diffuse
the situation, but the man punches him in the face, breaking his jaw. A melee ensues, though it could more accurately
be described as a massacre. The man has gone ballistic, and punches, kicks,
and bites your entire group of friends. His strength seems unreal, even for someone
as big and muscular as him. A large bouncer runs over in an attempt to
break up the fight, but even he is no match for this tattooed giant. You’ve been on the ground since he shoved
you, watching this insanity play out, but now with everyone else lying on the ground
bloodied and bruised, he turns his attention back on you. You try to scramble back to your feet but
he’s upon you in an instant. He picks you up over his head, and tosses
you into some trash cans, knocking you unconscious. You open your eyes to see the man standing
over you. You can feel the blood from numerous cuts
on your face running down into your eyes and mouth. The man picks you up with one hand and holds
you by the throat against the wall. He’s still in a rage, breathing hard through
clenched teeth, bits of white foaming in the corners of his mouth as he brings up his other
hand and curls his fingers into a fist. All you can think is “is this it? But then you notice something. The tattoo that snakes down the man’s arm
all the way to his hand… is moving. The long, serpentine dragon is writhing and
slithering as if it’s alive. Is this really happening? Or just a result of the concussive trauma
you’ve received? There’s no time to consider it further though,
as the man pulls back and throws a punch right into your face. You can feel your nose flatten and break from
the impact, which understandably distracts you from the bizarre occurrence that follows. Right as the man’s bloodied fist makes contact
with your face, the dragon on his arm seems to “swim” off of his skin and onto yours. Like a snake moving through water, it glides
off his fist onto your face before sliding down your neck onto your body. There is a searing pain as it moves, like
you’re being poked with needles over and over. You scream from the pain, blood from your
broken nose pouring out of your mouth. The man drops you to the ground and steps
back. He no longer looks to be in a rage and instead
looks confused. He looks down at his skin to find that the
tattoo… is completely gone. A look of unbridled joy comes over his face
and he turns and runs away into the night, laughing with glee as he does so. You are left whimpering in pain, curled up
in a ball in the pile of trash where he left you, the dragon tattoo now covering your entire
body. As you have probably already guessed, this
is no normal tattoo. No, this is an anomalous creature that is
known to the SCP Foundation as SCP-021, but it also has another name… The Skin Worm. SCP-021 is an obligate parasite that uses
the human body as a host. Its visual appearance is in the form of a
large, elaborate tattoo of an oriental style dragon, which covers roughly one square meter
of its host’s skin. What makes this tattoo truly unique, is that
it is fully animated, and moves on the host's body just as a real animal would, though in
2-D like a cartoon playing out in real time on their skin. The movement of the tattoo causes horrendous
pain for the host, and has been described as feeling like thousands of tiny needles
are stabbing at them all at once, as if a fresh image is being constantly tattooed on
their skin, while at the same time, a tattoo removal process is happening. While the tattoo organism is able to move,
it seems to prefer spending most of its time on its host’s torso, though it has been
seen to move around to other parts of the body on occasion. As SCP-021 moves around on the surface of
its host’s body, it appears to feed on the pigments in the skin. It’s favored meal seems to be other tattoos,
which it will seek out and devour, though if none are present or if it has eaten all
of the tattoos on its host, it will begin consuming the melanin from the skin instead. Melanin is a naturally occurring pigment found
in human’s skin, and after SCP-021 sucks it from its host, it will leave them with
permanent skin damage and patches of unpigmented skin that appear similar to that of skin condition
vitiligo. The feeding itself does not appear to cause
the host any pain, and the pigments, whether they are from another tattoo or the natural
ones in the skin, will simply disappear as 021 “eats” them. The pace at which SCP-021 feeds will vary,
but it has been observed as being able to clear over half a square meter of skin in
roughly one hour. One way to prevent SCP-021 from eating all
of the melanin present on a human is to quickly add new tattoos of fruits or small animals,
as a way to continually distract it from turning to the melanin. Thus far, outside of motion, the organism
has displayed no elevated intelligence or the ability to communicate. It simply moves… and feeds. SCP-021 is not permanently affixed to the
skin of any one host, and in fact can be transferred back and forth between hosts multiple times. The only way to transfer the organism is through
physical contact, though skin to skin contact does not guarantee that the organism will
take to a new host. In the event that it does, the dragon tattoo
appears to “swim” across the touching skin and will affix itself to the new human
host. Skin to skin contact in the… erm… romantic
sense, has been shown to be the most reliable method of transfer from one host to another,
with a 93 percent rate of successful transmission. However, as you can imagine, the tattooing
sensation that comes along with any movement of SCP-021 means that this particular transfer
is extremely painful for all parties involved, and the Foundation has deemed that despite
its high success rate, it should only be used when absolutely necessary. Contact between two open wounds has been shown
to be an only slightly less effective method, and has become the default means transferring
when the SCP Foundation wants to move SCP-021 from one host to another. Transferring the organism from a deceased
host to a living one is possible, though more complicated. SCP-021 appears not to mind when its host
organism is no longer alive, continuing to feed on whatever pigments are available to
it, and does not seem to suffer any ill effect from the condition of its host. It is as yet unknown whether SCP-021 could
be transferred to another species. So far, the organism has only been willing
to move from human to human, though research into the question is ongoing. It’s theorized that if SCP-021 is able to
exist on a non-human animal, that it would only occur in the rarest of circumstances. Unlike most parasites, SCP-021 does offer
some small, but tangible benefits to its host human. In addition to hosts of the organism appearing
to have an improved immune system, research has also shown that the presence of 021 will
increase its host’s release and reuptake of epinephrine, better known as adrenaline. It will also decrease the buildup of lactic
acid, which is what builds up in the muscles during activity and causes burning sensations
and soreness. Combined, these benefits from SCP-021 provide
its host with increased strength and confidence, as well as give a heightened pain tolerance
during stressful situations. Not surprisingly, the host of SCP-021 also
displays a high level of aggression, though whether this comes from their elevated hormone
levels or simply because the organism causes them to be in constant pain is still an unanswered
question. The amount of time that this symbiotic relationship
can be sustained is typically limited to how long the host can tolerate the unceasing pain
of the tattoo moving about their body. The persistent agony that a host of SCP-021
endures has led to multiple hosts having taken their own lives, and in a few rare cases,
they have also succumbed to fatal skin infections. Though these were likely the result of open
wounds caused by the host scratching at their own skin, rather than anything directly attributable
to the organism. SCP-021 is currently contained on the body
of a D-Class personnel, D-139, who is housed in standard detention cell 217-A, and the
relative ease with which it can be kept on a human subject’s body has led to it receiving
the Safe classification. Only D-Class personnel are eligible to be
a host to SCP-021, and currently operating procedure is to allow the organism to live
on the same host’s body until they expire. The exact nature of what SCP-021 is as well
as its origins remain a mystery to the Foundation. Attempts have been made to trace the path
of its transmission from before its time in containment, and it is hypothesized that the
organism could be many hundreds of years old, if not older. As evidenced by its low SCP number, 021 is
one of the oldest SCPs that the Foundation keeps contained, and it has proven to be a
very useful educational tool for new and upcoming researchers, as they study this bizarre creature
and its existence that occurs entirely within two dimensions. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, and be sure to subscribe as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s
classified archives.
