SCP-193: The Tissue Snail

SCP-193: The Tissue Snail SCP-193 is a creature that looks like a box of tissues, makes you need more tissues, and then collects the ones you've used so it can eat what you left on them. The whole thing depends on somebody doing exactly what they would normally do when their nose won't stop running. The box is its shell. The tissues are pieces of its body. The Foundation found an unknown soft-bodied invertebrate tucked into the unusually complicated folds underneath the box. Its genetics place it among the mollusks, but researchers haven't been able to classify it more precisely. It looks enough like an ordinary branded tissue box that a person wouldn't have much reason to question it. What looks like cardboard is a specialized shell the organism produces and maintains. It's tougher and harder to burn than actual cardboard, although it can still be damaged or destroyed. Given the opportunity, the animal gradually repairs it. The tissues are thin body segments that it sheds into the main cavity of that shell. It produces roughly one to five a day, depending on how much food and room it has. They dry almost immediately and look and feel like normal facial tissues. Both the box and the tissues contain biological materials, including chitin and fibroin, rather than the paper products you would expect. The feeding process begins when one of those tissues touches a mammal's mucous membranes. It releases a colorless, odorless gas. Inhaling the gas increases mucus production by five hundred to eight hundred percent. So you use a tissue, your nose gets worse, and you reach for another. The additional exposure makes you produce even more mucus. The animal gets you to keep supplying the food it wants while you're trying to get some relief. The researchers eventually discovered what happens to the used tissues. Once a segment has absorbed at least ten cubic centimeters of mucus and is left alone, it starts trying to get back to the box. It moves by flexing its body and propelling itself with controlled releases of the same gas. It also seems to know when somebody is watching. Heat appears to be the cue. The segments will move around observers who are thoroughly insulated, but a large artificial heat source can keep them still. That supports the idea that they're detecting body heat rather than somehow understanding what a person can see. When a tissue reaches the box, it works its way through the folds underneath and rejoins the animal. What somebody thought they had thrown away was still a functioning part of a living creature, carrying a meal home. That behavior was discovered because a researcher left several used tissues unattended during an experiment. When he came back, they had gathered around the locker containing the main organism. They couldn't get through the containment. He was reprimanded for leaving a known organic anomaly unsupervised, but the mistake revealed a part of its feeding behavior the Foundation had missed. The effect on the person using the tissues can last much longer than the encounter. Repeated exposure causes permanent problems with mucus production in roughly seventy percent of cases. The reported complications include respiratory trouble, prolonged pneumonia and, in extreme cases, suffocation. About ten percent of repeatedly exposed subjects develop the opposite problem. Their mucus glands are damaged so badly that they can no longer produce mucus. That leaves them more vulnerable to inflammation, infection and damage from particles entering their lungs. The article doesn't explain how those two groups overlap, so the percentages shouldn't be treated as a complete breakdown of every possible outcome. SCP-193 is classified Safe and kept in a biohazard locker at Bio Site 42. Staff remove and incinerate the tissues every twenty-four hours, with an exception for its weekly feeding. On that day, one segment is given thirty cubic centimeters of human mucus and left with the main organism. Direct contact without the required protective gear is strongly discouraged, and anybody who thinks they've inhaled the gas is supposed to get medical help immediately. The Foundation still doesn't know how the creature produces enough material to maintain its shell and keep making tissues. Its digestion and unusual adaptations are still being studied. This is a particularly nasty use of camouflage because the disguise does more than get the animal close to you. It gives you a reason to handle it, and then its own effect gives you a reason to keep handling it. By the time you realize the tissues are making the problem worse, you may already have permanent damage. Meanwhile, the used tissue is waiting for you to leave so it can crawl back into the box. https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-193