What terrifying monster attacks people's noses that stick out of a mask? [closed]

Question

Suppose there is a creature that attacks human noses, if the nostrils are visible. People have discovered that they are safe from this monster, if they wear a mask. It is not enough to wear the mask over the mouth; it must cover the nose as well. The monster is so terrifying that all people wear masks, and do not allow their noses to "peek" out the top of the mask.

What would such a monster be like? Why does this creature go after noses in particular? How does this monster "attack" the nose? Why are the masks an effective deterrent?

Animals only (no COVID, tuberculosis, or other microorganisms).

Answer 1

Moe.

The first stooge has many characteristic methods of inflicting humiliating pain on the head, eyes, ears but especially the noses of his hapless compatriots. Black and white brutality as humor seems strange in our gentle age but even in his own time Moe was terrifying. Your modern Moe has the bowlcut, the sadistic scowl, and lightning fast hands for gripping, slapping, pinching and otherwise violating the unmasked nose.

Answer 2

small fly, parasitic worms.

"The fly" as it is known is a small flying creatures. More likely looking like a vinegar fly. It flies in silence, it is size and agility make it hard to spot / avoid / kill. This fly reproduces by laying eggs in human nostrils. It lay eggs with a little sting that inject eggs.

The eggs migrate towards the brain. They are indeed blocked by bones. But in a short amount of time worms come out and go through the crane. There the worms start to eat the victim brain. A side effect is that affected people will feel the need to be around other people.

I don't know how hardcore you want to go with the parasitic trop. Is up to you, you can even go to zombies like humans. You lay look at Ophiocordyceps unilateralis / Cordyceps for example.

But at one point the victim will fall dead, and free swarms of flies.

Answer 3

This is the infamous Hairy Horsefly. It is quite an ordinary looking and acting fly, except for two long trailing bristled streamers that trail behind it in flight. The male, which has no such streamers, looks even more like a typical fly, and pursues females by pupal mating. When the pregnant females hatch, they have an insatiable compulsion to fly into warm, moist openings of the body, where they become entrapped by their long bristled hairs. Their struggles splay out the bristles and attach them more firmly to a mucous membrane. After a day or two they weaken, after which the eggs inside their body hatch and the maggots begin to feed - first on the mother, and then on the victim animal. They are uncommonly effective, as good as botflies, at surviving the host's internal conditions and immune response while devouring flesh. Their numbers can easily eradicate all the mucosa surrounding the nasal cavity, spreading into the paranasal sinuses and opening routes for bacterial infection to reach the brain, and once meningitis sets in, they can fan out into the remainder of the carcass to breed the next generation.

When something sucks, but that isn't enough to say about it, remember the Hairy Horsefly.

Answer 4

A Seven Year Old

The terror of the house. Nothing is safe from his inquisitive, grubby, bogey encrusted fingers! Neither cookies nor frosting nor salty snax!

And where do those grubby fingers like to go with the greatest alacrity? You guessed it -- right up the nose!

Yep, little Jimmy is true bogeyman in training!

But it's not all bad: this little horror may actually be building up his immune system and protecting his teeth at the same time. So when little Jimmy "Bogeyman" Thrushwaite's fingers get the itch, remember it's best to keep the mask down for easy access to future good health!

Answer 5

It looks scary, whatever you deem that as

You see, no matter how you look at this, there are few things as subjective as fear. Some people will panic at the sight of a spider, others will actually cry if left in a cramped space, and many were once scared of the dark. In other words, something that is scary to one person is not necessarily scary to others. Therefore this question can't be truly answered...or at least not with a definitive physical description of a creature.

Your creature, putting simply, has no and all shapes. It has incredible psionic powers and the ability to shape-shift. It can easily find out what one is most terrified about and appear to them as exactly that. Someone with arachnophobia would perceive the monster as a colossal spider or a swarm of spiders, while someone scared of the dark would see what appears to be a growing shadow that lurks towards them while absorbing all light it finds in its way. This process is almost instantaneous and can be applied to several individuals at once. If it so desires, it can even affect the senses of their victim, in order to further terrify them. It could even fool one into not being able to perceive its presence, luring them into a false sense of security before utterly crushing the illusion.

Now, why noses? Because that's how it finds its prey. Despite its incredible abilities, the creature is very poor at recognizing its targets (which isn't that odd when you think at how much it might take to constantly change shape and influence the senses of the creatures around you). Just looking at what something is scared of is not a good way to indetify your prey, because everything is scared of something, but noses? Those are different, and humans especially have distinctive qualities at this region that make them much easier to tell apart from all the other things. A mask that covers the mouth and nose also hide a large amount of the face, and can make identifying an individual hard even for us humans, let alone a shape-shifting cryptid which had to use most of its brain power into being able to use telepathy and influence its own shape and other's perception of it.

There you go. Something that's technically an animal, needs noses to attack and will look scary no matter who looks at it. Is it a real animal? No. Could it exist in our world? Most likely not, at least not with earth biology (I am aware of mimic octopuses, but I don't think they can inflict a sense of claustrophobia). If what you wanted is a realistic animal that can scare everyone,you're out of luck, because there are people in this world which sees parasitic animals as incredible but not scary at all, and that applies to basically all fears and phobias out there.

The problem with what you want is "simple" : you want something that can trigger a displeasing subjective feeling in every single human and also hide so well that we somehow cannot hunt it to extinction (even if we're talking small animals, most creatures will react badly to some kind of chemical, and you can bet humans would be more invested in finding this chemical than achieving world peace). In other words, you need something which can change how people perceive it and which is capable of essentially disappearing so that it can't be tracked, hunted down and killed off.