Dr Rust's sandbox
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//This excerpt from a journal along with the author's footnotes was recovered from a suburban home on the outskirts of California. Evidence found at the house suggests that Foundation agents had raided the house hours before our men could arrive.

The occupant of the home was reported leaving the home with a female neighbour by a occupant's friend, three days before SCP agents arrived and both assumed to be living under new aisles now. We will continue the search for the occupant and the neighbour before other parties find them.//

**Journal entry 23/02/90

There are many people that believe supernatural creatures, old folk tales do not exist and that rumours of such beings existing is false. Well I can say that those rumours are true,1 after my frightening yet awe-inspiring discovery while on my holidays in Japan.

I had gotten myself lost while hiking through the Japanese countryside and against my better judgment decided to travel through a nearby wood. After several hours of exhausting walking and listing to my grumbling stomach, I decided to stop and get my bearings before I keeled over.

It was then that I spotted a fox nearby. The red fox just sat on a rock in the middle of a grove, its piercing eyes following my every movement. It is strange to hear someone say that they have felt a sense of unease and dread from a fox watching them, but it is easy to see why when the said fox tilts its head at you.

The fox let out an unnerving sound that was like a woman shrieking. This and along with its outright horror inducing expression, almost made me die of fright right on the spot.

It turned around and to my disbelief had eight tails. How I missed the fact it had eight tails is beyond me and against my better judgement2, I chased after it in hopes of getting a photo and becoming a rich and famous son of bitch for presenting photos that would have cryptozoology experts and amateurs murder me in my sleep for them.

Chasing after it was no easy tasks; I had lost count of how many times I slipped in the mud and caught my ankles in empty barrows. I lost sight of the eight tailed fox, right near an old shrine of a fox3.

I realised then that I had gotten myself more lost in the forest. Cursing luck, and myself I decided to sit down and think of how to find my way out of the forest. Just as I was preparing to climb a tree, the fox appeared again, just sitting on top of the shrine watching my every move.

What happened next still makes me wonder if god decided to play a prank or two on me for that one time I committed rather awful prank in church during a funeral.

The fox's body started to morph and change, its limbs making sickening cracks and snaps as they reconfigured themselves into a new shape. The thing leaped into the air, landed right in front of the shrine as its transformation finished with an odd popping sound.

I stared at a five foot bipedal fox that sat crossed legged, holding a biwa4and had an uncanny smile that looked worse than a special effect gone wrong.

Certainly one of the last things I ever expected to see in my life. The bizarreness and insanity of it all only increased when it opened mouth and spoke.

"Greetings tabibito, I am Mayu of the clan Ongaku. For a far wandering traveller, you’ve really gotten yourself lost human." The fox creature greeted, playing away on the biwa with a Cheshire cat smile.

I concluded at the time that I must have died of starvation and was in a strange afterlife… or I was under the effects of starvation and thrust thus imagining the whole insanity.

This brief yet great enlighten state of mind I had disappeared when I remember the tales of the kumiho. Shape shifting foxes that lured innocents by turning into the perfect man or woman of the victim and then tearing their heart or liver out and devouring their victims’ said organs.

Unfortunately, I was too stricken from fear to stop myself from screaming the word 'kumiho' out aloud. To say the fox creature did not take react positively to this mishap would be an understatement, as it started to morph again. It became much more animalistic and larger in size until it looked like a beast from that anime: Berserk5.

"I am not a kumiho you ignorant bastard, I am a kitsune! You shall remember that Baka, unless you want to be feed your own liver!" Mayu roared at my, her mouth pulled back into a snarling maw and her form ready to pounce.

Most people would find the idea of a giant fox about as intimidating as a bad creepypasta story made by an immature ten year old. I found having a giant wolf-fox hybrid thing growling its mouth filled with serrated teeth right near your face while giving demands was quite a terrifying experience to personally endure.

After my panicky and hasty apology to Mayu, she or it calmed down rather quickly. As she calmed down, her body changed from that of a nine-tailed fox on its hind legs to a rather good-looking, modern clothes wearing Japanese woman that appeared to be in her thirties though there were still the multiple fox tails poking out from her pants.

This did not comfort me at all; I kept imagining her saddling me while preparing to cut my heart and liver out with a wooden spoon.

To my surprise, she leaped ten feet into the air and disappeared into a nearby hole in the ground6. Couple of seconds later she popped right out of the hole with two plastic bags over her shoulder7.

Mayu walked over to me and opened them; inside one of them were a freshly killed hare and in the other, a few pouches filled with rice. Mayu yet again added more insanity to the situation by plucking one of her tails off. Just simply plucking it off like how my brother used to pluck hairs off my sister's head when playing.

Mayu grinned at me as she waved her other hand over the moving tail like a magician performing a magic trick and changed it into a boiling pot. It was both kinda awesome and unsettling at the same time.

Mayu told me to gather some firewood as she prepared the pot. I picked up some wood here and there, watching behind whenever I could in hopes of preventing Mayu from using that wooden spoon on me if she decided to have a mood swing.

After building a fire pit, I watched Mayu prepare the hare for the pot. I can still remember seeing her skin the hare in one go and then tearing its body perfectly in half. That sight alone definitely ensured made me consider my questions and my manner of asking them very carefully.

"How will you be able to eat the rice? You don’t have the teeth for it." I asked Mayu.

Mayu only laughed in response to my question and then leaped right in front of me, her smirking face a few inches from mine. That act made me stumbled backwards, hitting the cold, wet ground with a thud. The kitsune patted my head as a parent does to a naïve child. Definitely did not improve my view of her any better… or keep any feelings of dignity I had for myself left intact.

"Have you forgotten so quickly tabibito?" Mayu replied with a light chuckle.

She reached up to her mouth and pulled the corner of it as far she could to reveal her teeth. With a small grunt of pain, her teeth slowly morphed from those of a canine into those of found in a human.

I cannot debate that it was a dumb question and her grin made me feel like a student being subtly shamed by their professor in front of the class. I then decided to ask how old she was as Mayu prepared to take the food out of the pot.

“I am eight hundred and one years old. I’m betting you want to know what one such as I do with so many years on her hand. Well, let me sing you a tale of my life just after I serve us some food." She responded to my question.

Mayu transformed two of her tails into bowls and spoons8 while turning another one of her tails into a Biwa. After filling the bowls, she picked up the biwa and started her story.

Her story started in a small town in the region of Hoshu, in 1234 AD. The small town was under the ruler of a fair, but naïve lord who remained unaware of his corrupt son’s shady behaviour.

The lord’s son and his friends kept terrorising the young women and boys of the town. Mayu arrived in the town as an old woman and took up residence with a kind old couple who had lost their daughter to the Lord’s son, both of whom had never recovered from the trauma of losing their child.

Mayu, moved by the compassion of the old couple and motivate by righteous rage, conceived a plan and took the form of a beautiful geisha. Mayu had herself noticed by the Lord’s son, thus was taken away by the Lord’s son and his band to the Lord’s home. The band managed to sneak Mayu into the son’s room while his father was holding a feast.

Mayu caused a commotion when the band readied to do stuff to her that still makes me ill to the stomach by just thinking about it. She then changed into a normal fox just as the Lord, guards and guests broke into the lord's son room to investigate the disturbance.

The Lord upon witnessing his son, son’s friends naked and were about to 'dog' a fox. The guests’ laughter, shock, and cries of disgrace at the lord's son situation sent the lord into a fit of rage. The said rage directed at the very red-cheeked son.

The Lord banished his son and his companions even as the young men tried to explain that the fox was a kitsune9.

“The Lord was deeply affected by his son's behaviour when the villagers came forward with evidence of his misdeeds, thus the lord watched more carefully of his nephew that was to inherit the title." Mayu said as she neared the end of one of her tales, slowly playing the biwa all the while.

"And what of the son did you…" I asked, assuming that no one would let a spoilt little brat of a bastard off so easily. Mayu shook her head, giving a small, wicked smile. The said smile sending a shiver up my spine.

"The Lord’s son and his friends were found died ten days later, their hearts and livers missing.” Mayu calmly stated as if it was just telling someone the time of day. She tuned the biwa’s strings as she began to speak with a smirk on her face. "A rather ill-tempered kumiho I encountered on the outskirts of the village while traveling into it was caught by the gang; one of them must have called her a kumiho and paid the price."

I asked her how many tails a kitsune or kumiho could have. Mayu responded that she knows a few of her kind, which possess ten tails, a rarity according her. After finishing our meal, I fell asleep despite the possible danger of her killing me with a spoon.

When I awoke the next day I found myself on the outskirts of nearest town10. I returned home twenty-five days later after reaching Tokyo by getting a ride on a rice farmer's delivery truck and helping the said farmer's family with their crops as a way for paying them back for their kindness.

Today, I am going to check myself into a therapist and psychiatrist because I swear my next-door neighbour bears a striking resemblance to Mayu’s human form and owns a Biwa to boot. I am sure it is just a coincidence.

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