A young man and his girlfriend enter the apartment
they share. She tosses her keys on the entryway table
as the man checks the time on his phone, he reminds the young woman that they will need
to leave soon if they don’t want to miss the movie they have purchased tickets for. The woman agrees, but she wants to take a
quick shower before they leave. As she goes to freshen up, the man sits down
at his computer to get in a quick round or two of his favorite online squad-based first-person
shooter. He puts on his headset and jumps into a game. Before he knows it, he’s just finished his
third round. He checks the time on his phone again and
realizes that they are running late. He takes off his headphones and is confused
when he hears what sounds like the shower still running. He gets up and goes to the bathroom door and
listens, the shower is definitely still on. The man knocks on the door and asks if everything
is alright. He waits a moment but there’s no response. He knocks again and still nothing. She doesn’t usually take showers this long
and he immediately worries that she might have passed out or… well he doesn't even
want to think about it. “I’m coming in, okay?” he announces
as he opens the door to check on her The man immediately notices how steamy the
room is, the hot water must have been running for a while and he’s worried she really
did pass out from the heat. “What’s going on, are you okay?” he
asks and when there’s no response again he pulls open the shower curtain to find…
nothing. Just an empty tub. There’s no sign of his girlfriend anywhere. The man is beyond confused. He turns off the water and goes to the bedroom
but she isn’t in there either. He runs to the front door but it’s still
locked, and her keys are sitting on the table. He unlocks the door and sticks his head out
into the hallway anyway, but nothing is out there. What is going on?! He checks the bedroom again, then the bathroom,
but she hasn’t suddenly reappeared in either. He’s in complete shock, unsure of what could
be happening. He sits down on the toilet and puts his head
in his hands, his head is spinning as it feels like the world is suddenly falling down all
around him. The police are immediately suspicious of the
man’s story. His girlfriend simply vanished while taking
a shower? “You expect us to believe that?” the detective asks. The man has no answer though. It’s as if she simply blinked out of existence. He’s convinced she must still be in the
building somewhere, that she somehow slipped out without him noticing, but none of the
security footage from inside of the building shows anything abnormal. There’s footage from the cameras in the
lobby of them entering the building, but nothing after that of her leaving. Just as in every missing person case like
this, the boyfriend is the number one suspect, but without any evidence, they can’t hold
him any longer. After many long hours of interviews, they
finally allow him to leave, but not back to the apartment since it’s an active crime
scene. The man has no family to speak of and his
few friends seem to have the same suspicions as the police and want nothing to do with
him. His girlfriend was the only person he truly
had in the world and now she’s gone. He’s put up in a shabby motel and days pass,
then weeks, then months. But no evidence of the missing woman ever
turns up. The man replays the memory of that day over
and over in his head searching for some kind of answer, but try as he might he can’t
remember anything helpful, no clue as to what could have happened. The case is completely cold, and has been
from the very start. The police eventually have to move on to newer,
more solvable cases, and they finally allow the man to return home. He’s overwhelmed with emotion the first
time he enters the apartment. The place is a mess, it looks like the police
turned it inside out looking for clues. Not knowing what else to do, he starts the
long process of cleaning up the apartment. After hours of putting things away, he eventually
gathers the strength to go to the one room he’s been avoiding… the bathroom. He opens the door to the last place he’s
certain his girlfriend was. He enters to find that it looks like the rest
of the apartment, as if someone has looked at every single object. But just like him, the police never found
any trace of where she went. After straightening up this last room, he
decides that he should take a shower and go to bed. It fills him with dread to think about standing
in the last place he knows where she was, but he’s had months to grieve the loss of
his girlfriend and he’s decided that he needs to move on, whatever that means when
someone goes missing without a trace. He turns on the shower and lets the water
heat up before stepping in. Once he’s in, every thought he has is about
her. He wonders if she ever actually got in the
shower at all, or somehow used it as a diversion to slip out unseen. He just can’t figure out how. The day’s events race through his mind,
just as they have a thousand times before, but his thoughts are interrupted when he notices
that the water has started to pool around his feet. He looks down and sees that the drain cover
looks normal. Maybe there’s a clog though. Do showers clog when they’re not used? He has no idea. He bends down to get a closer look. The long, black creature emerges from the
drain in the blink of an eye and latches onto his mouth, muffling him before he even has
a chance to scream. He struggles and pulls down the curtain on
top of him as he falls back onto the shower floor, but it’s already too late, and in
a matter of minutes, he too will be gone without a trace. Is there anything more comforting after a
hard day than a nice, long, hot shower? The answer to that is… no. There is nothing better. But that relaxing shower might just be the
last you ever take when, unbeknownst to you, your pipes are home to an instance of SCP-153,
also known as… Drain Worms. SCP-153 refers to a species that resembles
the common nematode or roundworm, consisting of a long, thin body with a large mouth on
one end. While some roundworms can grow to as large
as a meter long, which is in itself a disturbing thought, SCP-153 instances can be much, much
larger, and it is estimated that they can reach up to nearly 10 meters in length, though
it is hypothesized that some instances in the wild may grow even longer. These worm-like creatures will feed off of
any available organic material, however their favorite form of sustenance is fresh animal
tissue, and they appear to have an especially strong predilection towards human flesh. In order to satiate their desire to feed on
their preferred prey, SCP-153 has developed a rather unique predatory style that perfectly
suits its elongated body structure. While it is unknown just where they originate,
they are most often found in the pipes of sewer and drainage systems. 153 instances will swim up these pipes, seeking
out ones that lead to people’s homes, and especially those that connect to showers and
bathtubs. Once they reach the end of the pipe, SCP-153
will latch onto the drain cover and begin secreting an acidic substance. The acid quickly dissolves the drain cover
and SCP-153 will position its own mouth in its place, which it then is able to camouflage
as the missing drain cover almost perfectly. Once SCP-153 has taken this position, it is
virtually impossible to distinguish it from the original or discern that anything has
changed. SCP-153 will then lie in wait until it detects
that someone has entered the shower or bathtub. Once the unsuspecting person has begun to
bathe, it will very quickly emerge from the drain, latching onto the victim’s face,
most likely in order to prevent them from calling for help. It then begins to rapidly secrete more of
the same acid that it used to dissolve the drain cover. With how effectively it was able to dissolve
metal, it’s no surprise that SCP-153 is able to quickly produce the same effect on
its victim. Their skin, muscle, and bone will all be almost
immediately liquefied, allowing SCP-153 to feed on the slurry. And the Drain Worms feed extremely quickly
as well. After just several minutes, basically nothing
will remain of the person who stepped into the shower, and 153 will retreat back into
the drain, leaving no signs that it was ever there save for the missing drain cover. The SCP Foundation became aware of this anomaly
following multiple mysterious missing person cases that all had one key element in common,
each was reported as having disappeared after entering a bathroom to either shower or take
a bath. The Foundation soon discovered that large
populations of SCP-153 instances were living in the sewers beneath several major American
cities, and immediately began enacting containment procedures. The Foundation collected as many specimens
as they could find and brought them to Bio-Research Area-12 where they keep them contained in
10 by 10 by 5 meter tanks that are kept partially filled with sewage and other organic material
for them to feed on. Of course it is of the utmost importance that
these containers are never connected to any other plumbing systems, either internal or
external. With several specimens contained, the Foundation
began researching the creatures in order to hopefully better understand them and how they
were able to develop such complex hunting techniques. Research was also approved to find out whether
they could be used as a sort of waste disposal system in certain extreme circumstances, such
as with SCP-2717, a mass of living animal tissue that has grown to line nearly 4 kilometers
of sewer pipes beneath Amsterdam. A small number of SCP-153 instances were approved
for release into the wild in order to test whether they could stall the spread of 2717,
however this experiment was halted following some disturbing new reports. More missing person reports came to the Foundation’s
attention that bore the hallmarks of an SCP-153 attack, but these new reports were not limited
to people who vanished after bathing. It now appears that SCP-153 has further adapted,
and has begun to emerge not just from showers and bathtub drains but now also from sinks,
and yes, even toilets. The Foundation is unaware of just how many
instances of SCP-153 continue to exist in the wild, but there’s no doubt that many
continue to live and hunt undetected in sewers around the world. This anomaly, which has been classified as
Euclid, is taken very seriously by the Foundation, and any reports of people who go missing from
bathrooms are immediately investigated for signs of SCP-153. Field agents are to be equipped with infrared
and ultraviolet sensors which can bypass SCP-153’s camouflage, and if specimens are able to be
captured alive, then they are to be brought to Area-12 for further research. But don’t bother worrying too much the next
time you step into the tub. If you’ve been targeted by SCP-153, there’s
not much you’ll be able to do anyway, and your worries will soon be going down the drain,
along with whatever remains of you. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, like SCP-2385, for another anomaly that has a special way of getting inside you,
and make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications, so you don’t miss a single anomaly, as we
delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s classified archives.
