Slender Man

If you stare into the abyss, it stares back, into you. It's inhuman form rendering me so much more terrified by it's human facade, endeavouring to draw me in with it's gaze. A mortifying gaze. One without a face.

As I stood there, fixed to the earth like the tormented soul I have become, it drew near. Slender. Like a collection of branches and malevilence, gliding towards me. It's shadow would have ensnared me, if the trees and the twilight hadn't already done so.

Fear had become me, yet I managed to suppress it's evil urges. I turned on the spot and sprinted away from the woods, torch in hand, heart in mouth. I made it to the cabin, and suffered the worst kind of sleepless night.

As dawn broke, I set off for town. Swearing that it's gaze was upon me the entire time. Perhaps an illusion, I thought. How wrong I was. It had left it's tainted mark upon my mental health, and would soon enough leave it's mark upon my flesh, of this I was certain.

I shivered into the town square and managed to pass two words from between my lips. "Slender Man!" With this, the roar of the markets subsided and retreated into solitude. Nobody wanted to help, nor could they. This was my curse, my burden.

I was left in the loneliness of my abhorred situation, and it would never change. Dread wormed it's way through my mind, and it became my only thought.

I awoke to find the pitch blackness consumed the sky. Nobody had tried to move me, or leave their abodes, or so it seemed. I prayed to my god, but knew it would be of little help. The Tall One bowed to no god, it only pursued.

A pin-prick of realisation amplified into a barrage of spines that maimed my entire being. I can't live like this, everything I was, or could have been was irrelevant. I belonged to the Slender Man now.

I made my way into the woods, once more. This time knowing I would not return. I paced the previous night's route, and halted at the point where we met.

He was waiting.

Somehow, within the span of a night, he had become so much more terrifying. His attire a deeper shade of death than any that could be imagined. His grotesque form looming above me, topped by a gaze more severe than any other.

I stared into the abyss, and it stared into me.