23/11/12
The more you think about him, the closer he gets. Your fear, your thoughts, they make him manifest. They draw him, like a magnet draws iron, and the closer he gets, the more influence he has over you. So it's easy, right? Just stop thinking about him. Thing is, you can't. Once you've seen the pictures (photoshopped or not, who really knows?) or read the stories (fiction, apparently) or researched the history (just myth, to scare little Germanic kids) you can't stop. He becomes every creaking floorboard and every yawning shadow. You see him, between trees, through rain-lashed and distorted window panes, out of the corner of your eye. It gnaws away at you, like an animal at its own infected flesh, until its all you can think about. It's all I think about. I'm starting to lose myself.
Him. Or it. Who knows? The Slender Man. Der GroΓmann. The Tall Man. The Thin Man. Der Ritter. Fear Dubh. All names given to that manifestation of malevolence. I've looked at the legends, from old Germany, of the black-suited and tentacled stalker of children. How they would vanish, often without trace, into the woods. Maybe that's how it started, a tale to scare little children into behaving. Like a Germanic boogeyman. But the legend has twisted, distorted, been expanded through those that lurk in the dark corners of the Internet.
It begins with a half-seen glimpse of an impossibly tall, thin, faceless creature watching from the tree line. Then you might see him outside your house. Or worse, inside it. He really is an efficient stalker. It's been said he causes 'Slender sickness' in his victims, like his presence gives off a deadly radiation. Headaches, coughing fits, nose bleeds, insomnia, amnesia, hysteria, paranoia, insanity; then finally, you just vanish. Other sources claim the victims sometimes turn up, days or weeks later, dead and hanging from a tree like a twisted marionette, organs removed and bagged, then replaced into the hollowed corpses.
What struck me, really, was when I did serious research, pretty much every society around the world has its own Slender mythos. Yes, the details vary, but in essence it's the same story. And there's never a way to win. There's no beating the Slender Man. Once you've seen him, that's it. It might not be tomorrow, or next month, or even next year, but he will take you. He's good at watching, waiting, and letting you go slowly out of your mind.
I guess I'm running out of time.
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