There's no shortage of graffiti in most downtowns,
from simple tags to intricate murals. It can be found in almost any alley, underpass, and subway
tunnel. To most people who live and work there, it all blends into the background. But one
piece of street art isn't so easy to ignore, since unlike most graffiti, this one is animate. John Freeman, an unassuming man in his mid
twenties, was out late one night in April of 2004. It was a Saturday, so he'd let loose a little more
than he originally intended and he was starting to feel the effects so he went out back for some
fresh air. This wasn’t the most popular bar in the city, so when he opened up the door and
stepped out, he found himself completely alone. Despite that fact, he couldn't shake the sense
that he was being watched. He looked around, squinting and trying his best to focus his eyes.
Just then John thought he spotted someone behind the dumpster, so he decided to investigate.
When he looked behind the dumpster, there was no one to be found though. Instead, painted
on the wall was a piece of street art. It was a strange piece of art too. A half-human, half-owl
creature, rendered in highly realistic detail. The figure was crouched over, and its eyes faced
outwards. Eyes that looked far too real - like they were staring at him right out of the wall,
following him as he swayed from side to side. There was something so wrong about it. Its intense
gaze, its sharp beak, its grasping claws. How could anyone paint something like this? It looked
like it could crawl right out of the bricks. Something about the painting made him nervous,
but he couldn't look away. It was drawing him in. Beckoning him. There was something
about it that John just couldn’t resist. He stepped closer, until he was
close enough to reach out and touch it. What John didn’t know was that he was also
close enough for it to reach out and touch him. Before he could react he saw the
painting come to life. The feathers ruffle. The hands prepare to grab. The beak
opens up. For John, it was already too late. From inside the bar, the other patrons heard
a loud scream from the alley. The bartender ran outside to see what was going on, but
when he got there, all he found was a blood stain on the concrete. There was no sign of John
Freeman, and there was no graffiti on the wall. This is just one of the dozens of recorded
attacks attributed to what the SCP Foundation has designated SCP-1155, or the Predatory
Street Art. It can appear on any wall in any major metropolitan area, but it prefers
ones that are out of the way and isolated, such as back alleys, lonely parking structures,
subway tunnels, and underpasses. The creature depicted in the street art has the long,
sinewy arms of a human, with the head and feathery body of a large owl, and though its pose
changes often, it's always facing out… watching. The Foundation is no stranger to deadly
works of art. Such as the infamous SCP - 173, the living sculpture who’ll snap your neck
if you stop looking at it. Or SCP-1074, the abstract art capable of psychologically
enthralling the viewer and leading them into a state of catatonia if exposed for too
long. However, what sets SCP - 1155 apart from these other two is the fact that it’s incredibly
hard to contain and its methods are particularly violent and gruesome. But more on that later.
If you spot this odd painting while you're out walking with friends, you probably wouldn’t
give it a second thought. But if you're alone, it’s a different story. This SCP has an almost
hypnotic effect when viewed by a lone person. If you spot it, you'll be overwhelmed by curiosity,
and you'll feel compelled to get a closer look. You can potentially resist this hypnotic effect
with some effort, especially if you're aware of its anomalous properties - meaning knowledge
really is power when it comes to SCP - 1155. Once you get within 2 meters of SCP-1155 though,
the creature will jump out of the wall and strike, with attacks usually following the
same pattern. First, the victim will be restrained to prevent struggle or escape,
the eyes and tongue will then be removed, followed by the amputation of the hands and
feet. The victim will then be disemboweled and the intestines and stomach removed. All in as
little as 6 seconds. But not all of these attacks result in death. Some have actually managed to
survive attacks by the Predatory Street Art, with those lucky few being eligible for Class
A amnestic therapy, courtesy of the Foundation In most cases though, there’s no survivors
to find and often not even a body at all. Once SCP-1155 has begun its attack and if it
remains unspotted, it will snatch up its prey and vanish before appearing on a wall somewhere
else. The Foundation has made attempts to discover where the bodies end up by equipping D-class
test subjects with GPS trackers, but the results of these tests have been inconclusive. Recorded
relocation events have covered distances as small as 15 meters, or as far as 800 kilometers, but the
true range of this creature's movement is unknown. If caught in the act of feeding though, SCP-1155
will disappear, leaving its victim behind. Usually in these cases, the victim will bleed
out and die, but some have survived. Two such survivors were D-class personnel, who were used
for tests to see what happened when the attacks were interrupted. Both were incoherent
and badly wounded following the attacks. Their eyes were gone, and one of them had
also had his tongue, hands, and feet removed. Though neither could adequately communicate
what had happened to them, the one who still had a tongue claimed to still be able to see, in
spite of his missing eyes, and that he was still looking through his stolen eyes. He described
what he could see: A kind of grisly pantry, where it appeared SCP-1155 had stashed the remains
of its previous victims, perhaps to feed on later. This D-Class managed to escape from on-site
quarters during an unrelated containment breach, running back to where he'd been attacked by
SCP-1155. He was pursued by law enforcement, who had been told by the SCP Foundation that
he was an escaped mental patient suffering from serious delusions. The police chased him for
several blocks before he disappeared down an alleyway. Officers at the scene reported hearing
a scream, but when they got to where it came from there was no sign of the D-class. Just
a dead end alley with a blank wall. The other D-class, the one with no tongue, was successfully relocated to an undisclosed
location. While the patient was being moved though, Foundation surveillance noticed an
increased level of movement from SCP-1155. The painting was appearing and disappearing,
and in each relocation its posture suggested hunting and tracking behaviour - as if
it was pursuing the one who got away. The places it was manifesting
also became more and more public. At one point it appeared on the side
of a building right in the middle of town, though it was too high up to be reached by any
of the hundreds of witnesses. While all of this was happening, the D-class being held for medical
treatment was becoming increasingly distressed. The Foundation theorized that the entity
may have been frustrated at losing its prey, and that it would likely continue to
relocate in and out of highly visible areas until the D-class was returned to it.
Because of this, the executive decision was made to take the D-Class to the outskirts of
the city. SCP-1155 manifested in the area, and the team left both it
and the D-class unobserved. Both the creature and the
D-class soon disappeared, and SCP-1155 resumed its more
manageable hunting behaviour. Due to this SCP's ability to jump from place to
place, it has proven difficult if not impossible to contain, and has a well-earned Keter Class
designation as a result. At first, the Foundation tried physically removing the wall on which the
SCP had manifested, but this only caused it to relocate. A similar result happened following
attempts to paint over or damage the painting. Current containment procedures involve closely
monitoring the disused shopping mall lot where SCP-1155 currently seems to 'live', for
lack of a better term. The mall has been marked as 'condemned', and Foundation
agents continually monitor the area, posing as security guards to dissuade any
civilian traffic from entering the danger zone. Mobile Task Force Pi-1 - nicknamed “The City
Slickers” - tried to obscure any surface on which the creature appeared, but this didn’t end well.
First, the team leader ordered that a vending machine be placed in front of the graffiti while
it was located in an alley that transients were known to frequent. This was supposed to only
be a temporary stop-gap, intended to stop any unsuspecting person from falling under SCP-1155's
hypnotic spell. In time, a proper containment zone would be established, with more agents
forming a security perimeter around the area. But, by the time the extra resources
arrived and the vending machine was moved, the painting had disappeared. It had
responded to the obstruction by relocating, and reappeared on a wall at a nearby children's
playground. The Foundation quickly mobilized, interrupting SCP-1155 in the middle of
an attack in order to trigger another relocation - but sadly, several lives were
already lost by the time they arrived. The entire ordeal was a tragic and
costly mistake on the Foundation’s part. It seems that when SCP-1155 is obstructed, it
gets angry. Instances where it relocated after being obstructed more often than not resulted in
it moving to a much more public place that would be harder to contain for the Foundation. While
it previously appeared in low traffic areas, it now seemed emboldened following containment
attempts and was readily appearing in public spaces. It was argued that all of humanity
would be better off allowing a few people to be taken by SCP-1155 every couple of years, than
risk it ending up in a heavily populated area where it could endanger who knows how
many people before it was noticed. The Foundation continued to research
possible containment procedures though, and eventually figured out the perfect minimum
distance at which they could create a barrier so that it wouldn't be noticed by the
SCP itself. This was one of their more expensive containment protocols, as it required
purchasing an entire mall, only to shut it down and condemn it under the pretense of there
being a dangerous sinkhole underneath it. The expense seems to have been worth it though,
as SCP-1155 is currently still inside the parking structure connected to the mall. The mall and
the parking structure are under round-the-clock surveillance via motion capture security cameras
and while there have been no other relocations, there’s no telling what might trigger
one again. So if you live in a big city, and you find yourself walking alone at
night, keep an eye on the street art. If you spot a painting of half-human, half-owl
that you could swear wasn't there before, resist the urge to check it out,
and just cross the street instead. Now go check out another tale of a man eating
monster, “SCP - 082 - Fernand the Cannibal” or “SCP - 3001 - Red Reality” for one of the
scariest anomalous locations known to man!
