Interior of the Syrian Desert facility. Point of manifestation for SCP-3366 subjects circled in red.

Item #: SCP-3366

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: No new instances of SCP-3366 have been reported since 2010. Active containment is not required beyond existing disinformation protocols conducted during initial investigation.

Observation Post 3366/001 has been established over the Syrian Desert facility located at coordinates 33°33′15.2″N 38°83′37.56″E. The post is to be staffed with at least 2 trained medical personnel at all times, who will attend to any subjects manifesting inside the facility and prepare them for immediate transport to Site-52. Following questioning, subjects should then be amnesticised and returned to their families as per standard bereavement protocols.

Description: SCP-3366 is a phenomenon that occured between 2008 to 2010 in which 37 individuals disappeared in Baghdad, Iraq under identical circumstances. Individuals who were affected by SCP-3366 had reported experiencing fatigue and lightheadedness prior to their disappearance, dry mouths, as well as a sharp cutting pain in their throats which made it difficult to eat or speak. All subjects disappeared leaving behind their personal effects and clothing.

Since 2012, 9 of the 37 individuals have reappeared in an abandoned underground facility located in the Syrian Desert. The facility is accessed by a single steel trapdoor in a concrete bed sunk into the sand, through which a series of steep stairs down a 47-metre deep vertical shaft leads to a small room. Set in the southern wall of the room is a nondescript alcove, facing the direction of Mecca. Upon discovery, the room was empty save for two dessicated corpses, later identified as two of the missing individuals.

Subsequent monitoring of the facility led to 7 more of the missing individuals being recovered alive. All of them showed signs of heavy muscle atrophy and dehydration, but otherwise did not appear to have aged since their disappearances. All of them continued to exhibit pre-disappearance symptoms as well as aphasia and mental dissociation. Accounts of their time since their disappearance seem to point towards a single shared extrauniversal or extraparadigmatic experience (see attached Department of Memetics report).

Pinning this at the top as a warning — I think it's worth reading the whole thing through before we come to any conclusions. Already we've discharged three of the patients before Analytics got back to us about the tome's significance, and I fear it's too late for the rest of them.

We've all read the Alf-Layla as children. If there's one thing it's taught me, it's that stories have power. May God grant us mercy from this one.

— Dr. Sufian M., Site-52 Medical Department

Addendum: Recorded testimony of subjects (truncated)

Subject designation: 3366/003

Date of disappearance: 11/09/2008

Date of recovery: 06/10/2013

Subject brief: Dr. Shapoor Arjmand, aged 37. General practitioner in the Al-Waziria private hospital in the Hay Al-Maghrib district. In 1992, Arjmand was involved in a near-fatal motorcycle accident which resulted in the loss of his left eye. He was last seen on camera walking towards his car in the hospital's basement; his car was found in his usual lot with the engine running and doors locked with his clothes in the driver's seat.

[06:53:02] Time. Lost. Throat pain. Hurt. Trapdoor. Fell. Trapped here. Help. Prince.

[06:53:56] She beat him inside of the bottom of the sheer goat pain bottom of the well. My mouth is open but I cannot speak. She'll come back but not now. Soft lips into heavy wounds the shape of little curved whips.

[06:55:16] Floor on the rotting cold. There's no meat left. I see a throne, a deep pyramid with little pyramids growing on them. He's been cut so much, it's dark and warm with his blood. He's trapped there. You have to help me.

[06:57:26] Help me. Floor is cold. His legs have been turned into stone.

[06:59:12] I can't see. Let me out from the hole.

Subject designation: 3366/007

Date of disappearance: 15/10/2008

Date of recovery: 17/09/2014

Subject brief: Sadeq Dehghan, aged 37. Herbal medicine vendor in Sadr City, Baghdad. Dehghan is blind in his left eye due to early-onset glaucoma. A police report was filed when he failed to return home one night and his pushcart was found at the bottom of a Sadr City septic tank; foul play was initially suspected, then ruled out when no plausible perpetrator could be found.

[10:48:32] Little barb in his flesh is not human. The spine curls, recoiling under her lash. She is still wrapped around me. She is everywhere. She is quicksilver and ice.

[10:51:28] She presses onto my magic and drinks in shriveled flesh seed water. It stings. It hurts. She lashes again. Fire and ice and the chafing of fish scales on bare back. He can't do a thing, it keeps on hurting. Skin and bones decompose that no one dare touch. Tomorrow same new hell.

[10:53:17] She's burning him because of love. She loves me. She took the skin from the back of his fingernails yesterday. He's still screaming from the day before. She'll be back tomorrow.

[10:59:14] Throat pain. Cannot continue. I'll try again tomorrow.

Subject: 3366/008

Date of disappearance: 22/08/2009

Date of recovery: 12/10/2014

Subject brief: Hashem Rastkar, aged 37. Factory foreman in Iraqi Pharmaceutical Industry Co., in Al-Jadeeda, Baghdad. Rastkar was a former member of a Sunni militia during the Iraqi insurgency of 2003 and was discharged the following year following a shrapnel injury to his left eye. Prior to his disappearance, Rastkar was last seen by a neighbour descending into the basement laundry room of his apartment block at around 0300 hours.

[02:33:27] Let him know she's done when she's done. He used to give her presents from another. His eyes are like my daughter's. Can I see my bride again? She cannot let me move even though I could move mountains and dreams. My hands black, the knuckles cannot hold meat. Bottom of the trapdoor. Help me.

[02:34:03] Even though I am half-dead she fucks me. She whips again and she takes more of it off and he cannot even ejaculate anymore or talk or do anything but scream.

[02:35:49] Am I in a hospital? He whispers to her to break his neck with her claws but she cannot bear to do it without breaking every bone in his body. His legs are like burnt matchsticks. Stone can bleed, too, if you hurt it enough.

[02:38:33] Break the bride, break the groom.

[02:39:10] Break the bride, break the groom.

[02:39:45] Break the bride, break the groom.

[02:41:00] (inaudible)

[02:41:55] As below, so above.

Addendum: Excerpt from meta-analysis of testimonies from Subjects-3366/01 through 05, Department of Memetics, Site-52.

Methodology

Transcripts were subjected to word frequency and voice pattern analysis to discern if common subconscious trends existed among the subjects returned from SCP-3366. We believe that this is appropriate seeing that SCP-3366's effects do not easily lend themselves to conscious expression, owing to the possible extraparadigmatic nature of the subjects' disappearances. By quantifying word associations and concepts, we should be able to clarify the nature of the reality behind the veil […]

We were able to quantify the conceptual existence of the setting as some kind of throne or royal chamber, likely Achaemenid in origin (symbol-cluster 'carvings'/'wedge'/'marble-stepped', p = 0.05 across all sets). Common to all accounts is the association of all elements of the vision with the subterranean (symbol-cluster 'hole'/'dark', p = 0.16) and the uncertain assertion of chronology and dream-logic (symbol-cluster 'I don't know'/'sequence'/'why', p = 0.10).

The overlying Broad Conceptual Lattice (p < 0.30) of all five subjects can then be lineated in terms of three symbol-cluster structures, two of which we believe are representative of extraparadigmatic entities:

First symbol-cluster structure: Suggested entity. Coded as male/humanoid/prince/self. Believed to be benign. Associated with youth, royalty, and impotence (p < 0.10). Has been partially transmuted into a solid substance (stone, metal, wood) and is currently subject to torture by his bride.

Second symbol-cluster structure: Suggested entity. Coded as female/nonhuman/witch/other. Believed to be malevolent. Associated with death, omnipresence, sadism, and magic (p < 0.20). Bride/companion of the aforementioned prince entity.

Third symbol-cluster structure: Nature unknown. Associated with elements of immobility, virility, decay (excluding death), blindness, and escape (p < 0.10). Possibly represents a collection of interchangeable descriptive/identity elements belonging to either prior entity. Alternatively, represents a third unidentified entity altogether.

Addendum: Memo from Reliquary Site-76

Scan of OBINT175305, page 1, lines 3-9.

Item #: OBINT175305

Item description: Vellum manuscript dating to the 4th century. Written in Middle Persian in the Pahlavi script. 562 pages with 23 illuminated panels. Fragmentary, with each piece largely legible and well-preserved.

Item found: Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham

Date found: 22/12/2015

Reason for acquisition: Object of interest in SCP-3366 investigation.

Actions taken: Removed from location via clandestine channels. Delivered to Site-52 on 29/12/2015 for analysis.

Open attachment: Level-4/3366 EYES ONLY

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Hi, it's Livingstone here from Analytics. One of our bots flagged a text for us the other day and we thought you might want to take a look. If you haven't the time, here's a short brief.

One, it's remarkable, if it's authentic — it contains stories similar to those found in the 10th-century Hezar Afsan (en: "The Thousand Stories") and the later 13th-century Arabic manuscript of Alf Layla wa-Layla (en: "The Thousand and One Nights") found in Cairo. In other words, it's the most complete Persian precursor we have of the stories, allowing us a glimpse into its thematic evolution over time. Most strikingly, whereas the Alf Layla and the Afsan preoccupy themselves with the jovialities of coincidence and the miracles of fate, our Persian text, almost in mockery, seems to be gripped by an overarching sense of inevitability and permanence.

This shift in concern is most apparent in our version's Nights 13-17, which deviates significantly from the original structure. The tale of the fisherman has been all but elided, while the tale of the ensorcelled prince nested within it is given priority within a higher frame. The prince is thus no longer rescued by the foreign king and is instead left to rot in the lightless chamber on his legs of stone, tormented by his sorceress bride. The bride's Egyptian lover is no longer a slave, but a court physician imprisoned for practicing forbidden magic. The text transcribes his specific crime as "bone-conjuring" — which should strike anyone in our line of work as sufficiently ominous.

The rest of the story takes a violent turn, more so than what's seen in the later texts: the lover's lecherous glares and silver tongue towards the princess lead the prince to further punish him by entombing him in a crypt after gouging out his left eye and slitting his throat. There is a callback to the tale of Sage Durban, when it is revealed that the lover has remained alive through the use of a dish of strange white powder. While the powder renders him immortal, his wounds never fully heal, and he is doomed to lie on the floor of the crypt a "half-corpse", unable to see, move or speak.

Here I come to our second, but more pressing, observation, one that I'm surprised slipped past the initial containment team. In the middle of a disturbing passage in which the bride attempts to make love to her mutilated lover, the tale ends. The conflict is not resolved, and the story comes to a halt. Shahrazad does not even deliver any resolution. In fact, the remaining pages have simply been left blank.

Given the ornate nature of the entire binding and the prohibitive cost of bookmaking, I'm sure this isn't some kind of copyist's mistake. I've asked Archival for a sweep of our material for related subjects, just in case anything else has changed under our noses. In the meantime, don't turn your back on your patients just yet. I have a feeling that something bad is just about to begin.

— Dr. H. Livingstone, Department of Analytics, Reliquary Site-76