Eyes Open

Where are you going from here?

It was certainly a daunting question, one that was replaying itself over and over again in Troy’s mind as he struggled to find an answer. It seemed that this wouldn’t just be a temporary trip at all – and Troy didn’t want to be spending the rest of his life running from the creature. Surely that was letting it win?

"I’m going to work out how to stop it," Troy eventually said. "I’m not running for the rest of my life."

"You don’t have a choice," Jeff told him firmly. "You can’t go back now. Now you’re running, there’s no turning back. That’s not how it works."

"Fuck that," Troy fired back. "You say it’s not how it works, but how would you know? Who does know how it works? You said so yourself that no one really knows what the Slender Man is all about. Perhaps he only works the way he does because everyone reacts the same? Perhaps he only continues to be how he is because no one’s turned around and given him a good ass-kicking yet?"

"Troy," Nate said tentatively. "Do you not remember last time you decided to try that? I’m not being a dick, but it wasn’t Slender Man who got his ass kicked."

"Thanks, Nate," Troy glared. "I can’t say I noticed."

"Look," Jeff butted in before the two friends could start bickering. It was a wise move, as once they started, Troy and Nate could go on snapping at one another for hours. "Troy, you can’t forget that I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. Do you not think I’ve tried? Or do you think I’ve just been running like a frightened child for ten years? Sure, I’ve been running, but as I’m doing so I’m always thinking ahead to the next time he catches up with me – what can I do? How can I beat him? What have I tried before that hasn’t worked? Is there any way I can improve on them? All of my ideas have failed so far. The bastard moves in the blink of an eye. One second he can be directly in front of you, the next he’s nowhere to be seen, and the next he’s right behind you and you’re dangling in the air by you ankle as he hurls you one hundred metres down the road. You can’t 'kick his ass'. I’m telling you now that it does not work like that."

"So I’m just going to have to run around for the rest of my life?" Troy snapped. "What if I don’t want to be a fucking drifter for the rest of my days? What if I want a normal job and a family?"

"You can’t have that now," Jeff said firmly. "Slender Man stops all that. If you did have a family, I doubt that you would see your children for any more than three years before they vanished. Would you put your wife through that? You’ve got to think of other people now – any person who is not already involved with Slender Man can be dragged into this sorry mess if they come into contact with you."

"And you’re just expecting me to take this news like a good little boy and not make a fuss?" Troy demanded. "Fuck that shit! I’m not giving in as easily as you did."

"You think I gave in easily?" Jeff asked shortly. "Pray tell, you’ve only known me a few hours, where did you get that impression from?"

"The way you’re acting now," Troy fired back. "If you’d not given up so easily yourself why would you be so casually telling me all these things?"

"Because I learnt pretty quickly that if you don’t accept these things, you’ll be dead pretty damn fast!" Jeff said loudly. "Did you see the state of yourself today? Did you? And how long have you been trying to 'kick his ass' for?"

"So I was supposed to know this instinctively, was I?" Troy demanded angrily. "I was supposed to know he could move like he was simply teleporting, and had huge great big fucking tentacles or whatever the Hell they were sticking out of his fucking back? Am I a mind reader? What was I supposed to do, sit there and let him take me God knows where?"

"While I’m not expecting you to know all that, I did expect you to think that when you see a tall, faceless creature spying on you, you’d perhaps at least entertain the thought that he wasn’t human and not charge right at him without even knowing what you were getting yourself into!"

"Well pardon me for not knowing what I was doing in a completely surreal situation," Troy spat. "Perhaps you should do your own research before you judge me, eh? I’m an insomniac. I’d been hallucinating for days before I saw this Slender Man guy. How was I supposed to know it wasn’t all in my head? In my head, things tend to work out for me."

There was a slight pause during which Troy glared at Jeff slightly triumphantly. Indeed, his point did seem to be holding some good ground.

"Guys," Nate said eventually. "Arguing isn’t going to get you anywhere, is it? Troy, you need to accept that Jeff has been doing this for a lot longer than you. Jeff, you need to accept that everyone will react differently to this sort of thing. Right?"

Jeff and Troy looked away from one another like two children who had been in an argument over whose turn it was with the toy truck. Nate sighed, feeling like the responsible parent in the same illusion.

"Just drop it," Nate muttered eventually. "The pair of you. We’d all do good to get some rest and chill out a bit, if you ask me."

Troy didn’t say a word, instead he disappeared into the bathroom, and after a couple of minutes they heard the shower running.

"Might chill him out a bit," Nate said, after a slightly awkward silence.

"I wouldn’t bet on it," Jeff sighed. "It’s not his fault he’s so irritable. It’s a hallmark of Slender Man – personality changes. Sometimes really drastically. Again, no one really knows why. I’m guessing it’s just that – being stalked and not knowing why, or by what, or for what purpose? Pretty shit, if you ask me."

"You’re so calm about it," Nate said quietly. "But he took everything from you. Every chance you had of getting out of that town and having a normal life was ruined by him. How can you stay so calm? Do you not resent him, even in the slightest?"

"Of course I do," Jeff nodded. "It’s hard not to. The bastard had terrorized me, he’s killed my friends, he’s driven everyone away from me when they don’t even know why. He’s destroyed my chances of a wife and kids, of ever having a stable home to give my kids everything I didn’t get as a child. He’s ruined my life and turned my world completely upside down, but hatred and resentment festers into depression and self-pity. That’s the last thing I need. I need to stay focused and determined, or one day I might just give up and let him take me. God knows what would happen then. I imagine your friend was so messed up because he saw what did happened then."

"Is there any idea of what he does?" Nate asked, not really knowing if he wanted to hear the answer or not. He knew it wouldn’t be pleasant, or very uplifting, but something was driving him to ask these questions.

"Well, just like everything about Slender Man, many different people have many different opinions," Jeff shrugged. "Some people believe he takes them to another dimension or realm. They’re the same people who don’t believe that Slender Man is from the same plane of existence as we are – that he’s an alien or from another dimension entirely. That would explain why people literally just vanish without a trace. But then, remains have been found too."

"Remains?"

"Oh yeah. I follow the news whenever I can, and it’s clear when it’s a Slender Man incident. He seems to have an obsession with organs. I’m not sure if he has obsessions as such – he probably works completely differently to us. But that seems to be his thing, so to say. As serial killers have their calling card, Slender Man does too. For a while, police thought they were dealing with a serial killer – well, they are, but you know, a non-human one. For the most part Slender Man is a serial killer, I guess. But anyway, all these bodies were found in the woods any time between days and weeks apart. Youngest was seven, oldest was twenty-nine, all ages in between as well. Twenty-one bodies found all together, and all with the same injuries. They have a large cut running from their neck all the way down to the groin, like in an autopsy, but it seemed to be sealed shut. When the pathologists performed autopsies on the victims, they found that every single organ inside them had been removed, placed into a see through plastic bag, and carefully replaced within the body, in their correct positions."

Nate blinked. He had been expecting some strange and horrific things, but nothing had quite prepared him for the randomness and insanity of what Jeff had just told him.

"Like, all of them?" Nate eventually asked."One by one?"

"Looked like it," Jeff nodded. "Of course, no one has ever seen him do it, so he might have some quick way of doing things. But something tells me he takes his time with them. Anyway, the police went mental, thinking they had this crazy serial killer on the loose. Of course, because of the obvious medical knowledge, every doctor, nurse, surgeon, pathologist, medical student, paramedic, army medic ... everyone in the area linked with the medical profession were hauled in for interviews. The police naturally found no links and the case went cold. Of course, me and the other runners knew. We knew it was Slender Man, and none of us went within five states of that place in any direction for months and months. It’s happened in other states, too, but that’s usually kept hushed up. I mean, would the public really stay calm if they thought there was a serial killer on the loose who could get from California to Maine to Florida to Washington all in a day or less? The country would be like a massive version of my childhood town – Bibles everywhere, people saying it was the devil and the apocalypse was nigh and all this. So naturally they kept it quiet. It was only us runners who were clues in. We knew what we were looking for, see."

"It must be awful knowing what’s going on and not having any way to stop it," Nate muttered, and Jeff gave a sad nod.

"It is," he agreed. "Especially when you see people you know and care about get killed or vanish. That’s happened to me a few too many times. Once is too many times, but I guess the more runners you know, the more you’re going to notice when they’re gone. It’s hard to just pick up and carry on running, leaving them to God knows what. But that’s the way it works, unfortunately. You can’t pick and choose who lives or dies – that’s out of our hands. I like to think that maybe the ones who vanished aren’t dead. Perhaps they’re just ... somewhere else. But the Slender Man doesn’t exactly give off an air of a creature that wants to simply relocate some people. Everything he does is sinister, and the closer we think we are to understanding him, we realize the less we know."

As Jeff stopped speaking, both he and Nate became aware that the shower had stopped running. They glanced awkwardly at one another, knowing that Troy had probably heard this particularly depressing part of the story.

Troy had – though he was trying hard not to let it show. He leant against the door, in his boxers and his still bloody T-shirt, staring into space, going over and over what he had just heard.

He felt like there was no point trying to understand. And if there was no point in understanding, was there really any point in anything?

Troy didn’t think so.