Slender

The woods were cold and wet… The leaves in the trees above me dripped with dew from the mist that had rolled across the area moments before. My breath was labored as I had been running previously from the on-coming shadows. Lost? No I’m not lost. I refused to think that there was even a possibility of me being lost. Such a short word with such a hopeless meaning... I would prefer to think that my position had been… Temporarily misplaced. But the shadows were coming, and the lightened red sky only provided more despair to myself as it proclaimed the on-coming night. Onwards I went, through the branches and the limbs, my footsteps sending the cracking sound of breaking sticks through the trees ahead like a warning to the resting deer and sleeping birds who scattered at my approach. Walking on and on and on. I jogged once my breath slowed and walked as it ran fast, and when night finally settled, I said in a voice unlike my own, “Perhaps I really am lost. “

 Shivering I finally stopped walking and just sat. The brush underneath me was itchy but I didn’t care, the tree behind me was hard and rough, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was the shadows. Although night had already come through at its peak, the shadows still reached towards me- like groping fingers reaching for their own salvation. “No..” I whispered. “No,No,No,No,NO…” a wind blew into my face, the leaves around me whispered, and I felt the eyes of the forest watching me as I grew more and more paranoid- more and more insane. “Lost, Not lost?!” I began to sing, “Whichever is fine. Birds- oh little birds- why have you left me behind? I wish to huddle with you in your nests… I wish to… What? What am I saying? Why am I singing? Oh… Oh,oh,oh,oh,ohh…” I began to weep. My head in my knees- my hair shifting around my face in the wind like stalks of grass… Then there was a sound. Like the patter of falling leaves... No. No! A footstep! It was a footstep!

“Hellooo!” I called out laughing. “Helllloooo!!!” Standing hastily, I waved into the darkness. “Who is there? Who are you, my friend?” Another step, and another. “Yes, yes- help me, please help me! Lost, I am totally, helplessly lost!” I could now see his figure through the shadows… “My…” I gasped. “You are a tall one aren’t you? Slender as well… All the same, can you help me leave this place, oh Slender, Slender Man?” He just kept coming towards me, not answering my calls. “Mister Slender? Oh Mister Slender man?” My smile fell. “Why are you not answering me?”

He was just a few yards away now, and as I saw his body and face for the first time, a scream caught in my throat and I began to run. Panting, I went faster… Faster! “No!” I called through the trees. “I do not need your help! Leave me be Slender… Help me by leaving me in peace!” I slowed to a stop, hands on my knees. “Lost him. I’ve lost him…” Looking up, I see the dawn- just a gentle lightening of sky to give me hope. Walking towards the light, I felt hope. These woods were not so hopeless after all… Perhaps… Turning a corner around some bushes I stopped dead. “slender…” I whispered, and as he stepped closer to me he seemed to grow taller. And taller… And taller. I was frozen- not in fear, not in cold, but simply paralyzed… And as he stood directly over me with his blank, white, face- My head began to spin. It’s not that he had no face, I realized… It’s that he had too many faces- and as they blurred across my vision my mouth began to tremble.

“What… Who are you?” With his many eyes he blinked at me, and with his many mouths he smiled. “I am nobody and everybody.’ His breath blew over my face. “I am the body of the living, and the spirit of the dead.” His shape shifted closer and his height adjusted to match mine exactly. “I am, as you call me, a slender.” And with a thousand million voices he laughed. The voices of men, women, children even- and as he reached out for me I began to tremble from head to toe. His embrace was too much- his self was too much… And I was slipping. Not literally, but figuratively. Out of me and into him. “Now you are, as you call yourself…” He said to me with my voice, my spirit, my soul- “We are Slender-Man.”