Slender: Entry 3.5 - Sarah

25/11/12

Sarah was, to be honest, one of those people I only ended up being friends with because we worked together - we would never have picked each other out of a crowd, but circumstances forced us together so we thought we would make the best of it. She was nice enough, we just had little in common. Sarah liked manicures and reality tv and clothes with playboy bunnies on them, whereas I prefer bed hair and playing guitar and jeans with holes in the knees. I suppose that's why she worked in the garden centre café whilst I dug holes and weeded flower beds. At any rate, I'm somewhat off topic here. Lets just say we made for an unlikely union.

Anyway, when I'd found 'Marble Hornets' I had emailed the link to Sarah - she loved anything paranormal and I thought it would be fun to give her a scare. I'm so sorry.

It was a Monday afternoon, four days after Mark had warned us about the security cameras, that Sarah came to me, wild-eyed and terrified. I was engrossed in work, watering flower pots, when she caught my arm and pulled me behind one of the creeper-covered arches. Her usually perfect hair fell in tangles around her shoulders and her fingers gripped my arm fiercely.

"Whatever you are doing, stop it," she had said in an angry whisper, "it's not funny anymore."

I was dumbstruck - I had no idea what she was talking about. After a few minutes of quiet explanation, she told me she was being stalked. By a man. A tall, thin man in a suit. I guffawed, thinking she was joking, until I saw that unmistakable terror in her eyes. But it was a hoax. He wasn't real. It was impossible.

I tried to calm Sarah, telling her that her imagination was getting the better of her. I don't think I convinced either of us, but we agreed to talk more at the end of the day, and we both went back to work.

Closing time came and I waited for Sarah in the staff room. I waited. And waited. I was still sitting on the edge of the staff room table when Mark came in to finish locking up. It seemed Sarah had already gone home. I left, thinking she must have forgotten, or had to rush off somewhere.

She didn't turn up for work the next day.

I found her bag, with her house keys and a broken mobile phone, in the disabled toilet.

Locked in.

From the inside.

Mark let me check the security cameras. They show Sarah leaving the café and running to the staff room. She collects her bag and puts on her coat in a hurry. Then the picture starts tearing and rolling, before giving way to static for 3min 15seconds. No one has seen Sarah since.

I decided to go to her house.