Story sources:
🧓Story6: Walls…
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Huh?
🧓Story6: White walls…
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Nice, now put a few pictures up and that would be even better.
🧓Story6: White padded walls…
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh, it's back to the nuthouse is it?
🧓Story6: Day in, day out… White padded walls.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Your problem, not mine. Apparently something happened to put you there. Like maybe you trying to kill your family? if you are Clarissa, the answer would be yes.
🧓Story6: Let me tell you why I see these white padded walls day in and day out.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I can guess, because you've gone off your chump.
🧓Story6: I am, at least according to several doctors, certifiably insane. Hallucinations, paranoia, schizophrenia, multiple-personality disorder, the list goes on.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Or you could be Lady Une. Whatever the case, you don't get every type of disorder. Your story is more than a bit far-fetched. Multiple personality disorder is a ficticious condition anyway.
story5: I was a normal, working class man,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay, so you're not Clarissa or Lady Une. That leaves Jeff, but he wasn't a man before he went batcrap bonkers. Jeff was a self-harming, vain, masochist, who became a murderer, and he only pulled the crazy act to get out of doing hard time. He did not develop schizophrenia, he was not paranoid, hallucinating, nor did he decide to take on various personalities, he decided on only one - narcissistic and evil. So you must be some other dude. But you may or may not be insane. if Jeff could land himself in the whatky shack wrongly, the same could be said of you.
🧓Story6: living the American dream.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Ackh! How sick I am of that "American dream" stuff!
🧓Story6: I had a wife. I had two children. My income was high and my debt was low. I had it all.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 😠 I'm reminded of that cruel dude in the One-eyed Mother glurge, you better not be him, because if you are, your crazy act doesn't fool me!
🧓Story6: Then things started to go wrong. They started to go in a direction I couldn’t even fathom.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: unfortunately life sometimes does that.
🧓Story6: My wife and I had always wanted to go to the British Isles, but for the longest time,t he money wasn’t there. It took seven years and two promotions before we could even begin to think realistically.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hmmm, well, that jerk who disowned his mom because of the one eye was always flying off on supposed business trips so I guess you're not him either. Good.
🧓Story6: Anyway, after months of careful planning and preparation, we were on a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean. Just me and her. No kids. No job. Nothing but beautiful scenery and relaxation for twenty-four straight days.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Why no kids? The better part of a month's holiday and you just left them behind? I can see that if this was meant as a second honeymoon, and the trip was maybe 14 days. But this is ridiculous.
🧓Story6: Fast forward a week. Having taken in many of the big city sights, we decided to see some of the smaller places out in the countryside. We packed a small bag of essentials and took a cab into the rural side of England.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Yawn* Besides otaku jawing on about anime or other fans going on about the latest pop musicians they're crushing on or just like to gossip about, people's travel stories are the next most boring thing in the world.
🧓Story6: This is where things started to go wrong. Not ‘the whole world is coming to an end’ wrong, but it sure felt like it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Whatever, just get on with it already.
🧓Story6: We came across an old tailor in a moderately decorated cabin. he said he had been making suits for over sixty-five years. My interest was piqued. I decided to splurge a little bit and buy one. Nothing beats the craftsmanship of a home-tailored suit.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You know, you could've left out all that preamble before this point. So you bought a suit from a tailor. and let me guess, it was somehow possessed and made you believe you had become Slender Man because that was supposedly one of his suits.
Let's see if I'm right.
🧓Story6: After paying for it and calling for a cab, a picture on the wall caught my eye. It was old. Black and white. Mid 50s. It was a very tall and very slim suited man standing on a grassy plain. His face appeared to be smudged out. It was old.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You already established that, no need to say it was old again.
🧓Story6: I didn’t think much of it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Neither would I. But then, I don't think much of Slender Man in the first place, but that sounds like a picture that should have been taken down and stuffed into a pile of old papers. Obviously not fit to adorn a wall in some public place. When you want customers, you just don't go hanging smudged up old pictures.
🧓Story6: Even so, something about this picture was unnerving. It gave me an odd vibe. It felt almost…menacing.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well pictures can make people feel a lot of different things. This one, though? Boring.
🧓Story6: I inquired about the photo, but the old man refused to talk about it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Of course, there's always people who don't want to talk about supposedly creepy old stuff in these pasta stories, whether it's old pictures, old tapes, old cartridges, old computer desks, lost old (nonexistent) videos/episodes.
Well maybe the man should take the picture down if he doesn't want to talk about it, because people are bound to notice it. Duh! Simple solution!
🧓Story6: That just added fuel to my mental fire.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And your mental conditions too…
🧓Story6: Days upon days had passed, and my wife and I took in every sight, every castle, every grassy knoll we possibly could but, alas, eventually we had to go home.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Fine. Dandy. Who cares?
🧓Story6: Part of us wanted to stay, but we were exhausted. There was no way we could spend any longer there.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: A vacation, and you were this exhausted? Sounds like you need a holiday from your holiday. :p
🧓Story6: Our flight back home was vague as we were both asleep most of the time; the drive back home was hazy. We just wanted to relax.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay, okay, I get it already. Next?
🧓Story6: As I pulled into the driveway, something was off. Something didn’t feel right. I got the same feeling I had when I saw the picture inside the tailor’s home. It was a feeling of dread and curiosity. I didn’t want to continue, but my mind forced me to.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I know, you were exhausted - in every possible way…
🧓Story6: I stepped out of my car and when I stood onto the concrete,
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Ack! This burns! "stood onto the concrete" that just sounds dumb. You could've said "I stepped out of the car and onto the concrete".
🧓Story6: my legs suddenly gave out. I fell to the ground onto my right house and
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Say what!? You fell onto the ground, onto your "right house'" just, what!? Oh, wow, this piece of writing is a disaster!
🧓Story6: found myself able to force myself up. I must be more tired than I thought.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Gah! *Eyes and ears are bleeding* You could've simply said "Somehow I forced myself to sit/stand up" whichever position you were aiming for.
🧓Story6: My wife helped me up and supported me to the bedroom. I was going to be asleep for a very long time.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You're putting me to sleep.
🧓Story6: Or so I thought.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 🙄 You probably could've done away with everything up until now and just had an opener that said something like "There was this picture of a man with a smudged out face in a suit I saw on a vacation, and it bugged me until I got home and I still couldn't get it out of my head."
🧓Story6: That night, I was plagued by nightmares of the suited man on the grassy plain.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 🙄 Oh, brother.
🧓Story6: It wasn’t really a bad dream as much as it was his presence haunting me in my subconscious.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Yeah right, you're not scaring me.
🧓Story6: Just standing there, unnaturally tall, unnaturally thin. Standing there without a face, an identity. No matter how hard I tried, his face never focused. It was as though the picture had come alive in my thoughts but remained unchanged. This went on until I had been abruptly woken up by the sound of a smashing of a lap.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: The smashing of a - lap? First you fell on a right house on the ground, now you're hearing smashing laps? Dude, I think dusty old pictures are the least of your problems, even if you don't think so.
🧓Story6: I raced down the two flights of stairs leading from the bedroom to the living room. Armed with only a brick we used as a doorstop, I slowly crept to where the only lamp in our house used to be.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: What? only one lamp? Most people have more than that, even in a modest house, people can usually have more than one lamp.
🧓Story6: I knelt down to pick up a piece to examine when I felt a slight blow of wind from behind me, like a person running past. I shot up faster than a startled cat. I s[pun around to see who or what that was. My eyes had still not adjusted, so surrounding me was nothing but darkness. My next thought was to listen. Nothing. Not a single thing. Not even the sound of a house settling. Maybe it was my nightmare, or fatigue playing tricks on me. Maybe we had a slight tremor that caused the lamp to inch off the table. Regardless, I was tired and I sorely wanted to get some nightmare-free sleep.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Okay I get the picture already. Maybe a small quake, maybe it was even one of your kids sleepwalking, whatever, maybe it was all in your head.
🧓Story6: It didn’t happen.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So you're saying it was all in your head?
🧓Story6: Throughout the rest of the night, the “slender” man was everywhere within my dreams. He was a bit curious though. He only ever seemed to cautiously hide behind trees. Only in the original photo was he completely exposed. Even subconsciously I wished I hadn’t moved next to a forest knowing he could be lurking. Watching me. Analyzing me.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Dude, it's not the picture, it's you, you have become obsessed - over a stupid old picture.
🧓Story6: It didn’t take long to force myself awake. I looked to my left. 10:46 AM. I looked to my right. My wife was calmly sleeping. Lucky her. I dragged myself out of bed and slowly made my way downstairs. I half expected the TV to be blaring with my kids’ eyes glued to the screen but then I realized that they were at their Grandma’s house. They were due back that day. I was going to miss the quiet, but it was alright – I missed my kids even more.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well that's one thing in your favour. But I'm confused. All of this nonsense your being afraid of forests and such was all within this one night full of weird Slender dreams? Even so, that picture just isn't worth it. No really, it isn't.
🧓Story6: I continued down the stairs, hoping to get a game of Solitaire in on the computer, when something made me feel very weak and hollow. The lamp. It wasn’t broken. But it wasn’t brand new either. Someone took the pieces and shoddily glued them back together. And the glue wasn’t glue. it was black and rubbery, like tar. I would have tasted it for origin, but that’s never a good idea.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Eww. I wouldn't taste it either. Well maybe your wife got up and repaired it while you were still sleeping, then crawled back in to sleep again.
🧓Story6: My wife needed to wake up. Soon. I was starting to panic.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: And in all this, I still don't know yours or your wife's names.
🧓Story6: I explained what had happened the night before, about the lamp and the nightmares and such. She just rolled her eyes and told me I was on something. Wives. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 🙄 I know some wives who say the very same thing about husbands. And if you have a history of being on anything, well, I could see where she'd get that idea.
🧓Story6: Anyway, still feeling uneasy from this morning, I managed to force myself to look out into the forest behind our house. it was very calm. Nothing out of the ordinary.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well coulda told ya.
🧓Story6: it wasn’t completely dark, so it didn’t look nearly as ominous as it usually did at night.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Duh! Stupid! Of course it's not going to be as dark during the day!
🧓Story6: I was badly lamenting this night, in particular. Suddenly, I saw a light out of the corner of my eye that caused me to nearly jump out of my skin. It was just the kids getting dropped off. i swear I was thinking too much into this. I couldn’t keep my nerves steady half the time.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I get it. You're a complete basket case. 🙄 You didn't have to be, you know. But you brought this all on yourself because you got it into your head that some dumb old picture was something more than it was.
🧓Story6: Hours passed. We played with the children. We put them to bed. We relaxed on the couch. My wife was asleep on my chest. I was nodding off. I slowly closed my eyes. It wasn’t long before the quiet was broken and my wife and I were woken up. A window broke upstairs.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: All of a sudden your house is accident prone, or maybe some robbers have been trying to break in and steal stuff. A bunch of things from a big vacation could be pretty tempting for anyone who was unscrupulous and knew you had gone on that vacation and were just waiting for their chance to rob you.
🧓Story6: In a panicked flurry, we ran up the stairs as fast as we could. Our eldest son, scared out of his mind said it came from his brother’s room. Without even thinking, I kicked the door in. Only the night light int he far corner brought light into the pitch black room. And there he was. The man from my dreams. The slender man. Hovering over my son’s bed.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh really? So where's your youngest son then?
🧓Story6: Having seen him, I acted without even knowing what was going on. Punches were thrown. Long black tendrils whipped all around. The last thing I remember was being held tightly above the ground and thrown against a wall. That’s when I blacked out. When i came to, my wife was in tears. I had three cracked ribs. My son was gone. The slender man had my son and there was nothing I could do. But I knew he was going to come back , and that was when I would get him.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Unless this is another Nicole/Lindsay thing. There has to be a reason you ended up in the whacky shack.
🧓Story6: The rest of the day was full of emotion. My wife could hardly stop crying. My other son was in a constant state of shock. I could barely think straight. I did, however, manage to call the police. I told them my son had been abducted by a man in a long black suit. I kept the detail of the tendrils to myself in fear they wouldn’t believe me. But that was the least of my worries. I needed to figure out when he would return.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Then what?
🧓Story6: The police showed up and took each of our statements. They examined my son’s room. They did a quick scour of the forest outside. it seemed not a single piece of evidence was found. They began to leave when something hanging from a very high up branch caught their eye. It was a piece of material. Black. Pinstriped. Much like the suit I bought while I was on vacation. I pointed this out to the police and they inquired to see my suit. I gladly showed them the way. When they opened the closet door, what they found was beyond belief. Wrapped in my now tattered suit was my son. Completely drenched in blood. He didn’t look conscious. Both myself and the police were shocked and disgusted. That’s when I blacked out.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So was it Slender or was it you?
🧓Story6: When I came to, I was in an unfamiliar place. Grey painted walls. Small windows on one of them. One exceptionally bland table. Great, I was in an interrogation room. I sat there, alone, for the good part of an hour before actual human life entered the room with me. Now, my memory is a bit hazy at this point so I’ll try to sum up the conversation as best as possible. Your son is dead. Deepest sympathies to you and your family. I’m not fully guilty, but the evidence leans toward it. A further investigation must be held. You will be brought back home but you will be under constant supervision. And so on and so forth.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Slender will pay for this. 😒 😠
🧓Story6: I was driven home in the back of a police cruiser. Last time I was there was in high school when vandalism was the cool thing to do. I was welcomed with open arms from my still sobbing wife and my emotionless son. Going back wasn’t easy. Thankfully, we didn’t have to stay very long. The police explained that we were going to stay at a hotel for a few days. We gathered our things when a picture from our fridge caught my eye. It was a picture my late son drew. When I saw it, my heart nearly stopped. In the cutest drawing style you can imagine was
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Let me guess - Slender Man. Well, considering all the pics there are online, and your own obsession, this is hardly surprising or creepy. 🙄
🧓Story6: my son standing next to a tall, faceless man in a black suit. I made sure no one was around to see me stuff the picture into my pocket.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 🙄
🧓Story6: The hotel was what you would normally expect. Simple wallpaper. Two twin beds. One TV. Cheap flowery design on everything else. It would have to do since we were stuck there. We settled in, placing our stuff and lying down. I, on the other hand, went into the bathroom, the only place I knew was private. I locked the door and took the picture out of my pocket. I scoured the page for clues but to no avail. All that was there was the crude drawing and his name scribbled into the bottom corner. The thing that unnerved me most was the fact that the slender man had no face. No identity. Not a single outstanding feature. It rattled me to the core. But I had enough stress from today. I needed sleep. Badly.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: See, being featureless as he is in the facial department, slender should have the opposite effect. Boring as all heck. Bland. An overgrown bug. A weird looking doll with that little knob type thing that a rubber/plastic head fits over, but no head. Boring.
🧓Story6: The night was rough but I managed to sleep. Not a single dream with the slender man, either.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Blah.
🧓Story6: Then, a banging came from the door. Being half asleep the whole time, it scared the hell out of me. I turned to my right. 5:14 AM. Heads were going to roll. I dragged myself out of bed and very slowly opened the door. It was the police officer that drove us here. He had a look of panic on his face. He said my son was missing. Nothing clicked. It took me a good minute to wake up and grasp reality again. My son was missing again. Snatched right from the hospital. But this time, I knew where he was.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You didn't even specify that he survived the first time.
🧓Story6: I had to get back to the forest. I had to find the remains of my suit. It was the only way to stop the slender man.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Um but he doesn't have just one suit. The suit has nothing to do with it anyway, Slender Man's just a piece of crap and he's just playing you all in a sick head-game.
🧓Story6: But I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I asked the police officer if he could drive me back to my house as I had forgotten something. He pondered a moment and obliged. This time, I had been allowed to sit in the passenger seat. The ride there was quiet. I tried to get some sleep. He didn’t start any conversation. When we got there, I was careful to make sure no one else saw me. I entered the house through the front door and quickly escaped out the back and headed for the forest.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 🙄 But the last time, he put your son in a closet inside your house if I understood it right. Shouldn't you look for the suit there?
🧓Story6: It was still very dark out so traversing the heavily wooded area was not easy.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Sigh* You already said it wasn't going to be easy. You didn't need to say it again. and yes I get it - forest = dark. Well, not really, but if you say so… Blah.
🧓Story6: The only light that came through was that of the moon.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Well that would depend on what time of year it is. You said you were trying to sleep during the drive, so that drive had to be quite a while, and if it was summer, it would be light out by now. Just saying. Your dark forests just don't scare me.
🧓Story6: So I walked, almost blind, hoping to find some scrap of my suit. It seemed to be impossible until amidst the darkness, I saw a scrap of paper.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Paper? Seriously? Like in those stupid little notes Slendy loves to leave all over the place? Let me guess, "Don't look or it takes you."
🧓Story6: The white of it stood out like a sore thumb. I leaned down to pick it up and when I turned it around, what I saw completely horrified me. It was another drawing by my son, with both him and the slender man. But this one was different. There were three other people. A boy the same height as him, an older looking girl, and another boy as big as the girl. Then it dawned on me. It was us. My family. My son drew us in with the slender man.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: 🙄 Kids draw. So what?
🧓Story6: Then, from me behind me, heard branches snap and footsteps of a single man. I was terrified. I knew for sure it was the slender man. Then I saw a beam of light. It was the police officer. I ran up to him and showed him the picture. I explained that my family was in great danger. All he told me was that there was nothing he could do. He said I should go back to the car and we would go back to the hotel.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So much for that wasted few paragraphs.
🧓Story6: A million thoughts ran through my head. Should I concede? Should I resist? What I did next is peanuts compared to what was about to unfold, but I didn’t know, and looking back, I didn’t want to. I gave into the police officer’s request and began to head back to the car. While he had his back towards me, I picked up a fair-sized stone and brought it down upon his head. He staggered a bit and fell to the ground. I took the car keys off of him and ran towards the car. It was still dark. I needed to get back to the hotel.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: STUPID!
🧓Story6: I screeched to an immediate halt in the hotel parking lot and ran towards the door where we were staying. I swung open the door to behold the one thing I was trying to prevent. Amidst all the blood that painted the room were three bodies making a circle around the slender man. He turned and looked at me. His hollow, nonexistent eyes
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Remember, you said he was featureless. he can't have hollow eyes when they're nonexistent. But then, he's nonexistent anyway.
🧓Story6: stared deep into me. Emotions I had never felt before, emotions without names, filled my brain and body. It was like he was making me feel everything he ever had. And with an outstretched hand, he said only one thing. One thing that would be burned into the back of my mind forever.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: nameless emotions bullcrap. Every emotion has a name. That's why we talk about them as 'disgust' 'rage' 'strength' as in I'm disgusted with Slender Man, and when he gets the brunt of my rage, he will not have the strength to grovel.
🧓Story6: “…Help me…”
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Help YOU, Slendy!? 🤯 Not ruddy likely!
Anyway, this whole scenario. If the police drove the husband back home, why weren't officers there with the wife and the other kid to make sure they were safe? This whole thing just doesn't add up.
🧓Story6: Sirens came from behind me. I turned around to see the police cruisers pull into the parking lot and watched them get out. Using car doors as shields with their guns aimed at me, I raised my hands above my head. I slowly looked behind myself to see the slender man fade to nothing, leaving only a tattered suit in a heap on the floor. He killed my family. My life would never be the same. And yet, something told me I was never going to see him again. I would never be able to exact revenge, even if I figured out how to.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Slender will be brought to justice… By people of sound mind, who are not scared of pictures and tattered suits.
🧓Story6: Everything up until the white padded walls isn’t exactly clear to me. I’ve been told that after they saw me at the hotel with my DNA on the suit, I was made the primary culprit. After they arrested me and subjected me to frivolous testing to which they got nothing more than unintelligible noises, I was submitted to this place. The white padded walls. The same white padded walls I see all day, every day.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: But you recalled it all this clearly, that doesn't make sense. If you were insane you wouldn't be so aware of everything you just described. if you were not insane, you also wouldn't have acted this way unless you had done something and were now just trying to beat a murder rap.
🧓Story6: No one will know what happened to me and my family. The emotions that were broadcast to me caused me to lose my ability of speech. Now, all I can do is write and draw. I write out the emotions that the slender man felt. I draw the things he has seen. They are what keeps me here. I am a victim of another man’s emotion. Sometimes, I feel like I have become him. Like we were the same being. That day, I learned something.
We were.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Wrong. This "You will/have become me" crap is a line handed to some victims by various evil creeps. If you were Slender Man, if you felt anything like him, you'd be wanting to enslave, molest, torture, and kill little kids.
Your inability to speak is just a temporary condition brought on by sleep and dreaming. When you wake up, you'll regain your speech.
So let's fix this.
* * *
Story6Addition: It went on like that, I thought I was never getting out of this place until one night I had another interesting dream.
In it, a woman I could not see was speaking.
"There is no padded room, sir. You are not insane."
"what?" I tried to look around for the source of the voice, but could find no one. She continued.
"You need to wake up. Your wife is worried. Your children are back at home, safe and sound."
"They're dead. Slender Man, or maybe I - "
"No. Your family is alive." she continued. "And they are concerned. You have a high fever."
"But the Slender Man - " I began.
"Slender Man is nothing."
It was then that I realized the padded room had melted away, and I was speaking, not writing or drawing.
"You are not him." she said. Return to your family, they are calling you. Listen."
It was quiet except for faint voices calling me to wake up and saying my name. They grew nearer, louder, and then I opened my eyes.
I was in my own bed, My wife was at my bedside, the boys were there with their grandma, and I was told that 911 was called because of my high fever.
So, it had all been hellish dreams. Nothing more than fevered dreams.
I had not killed my family. Slender Man had not killed them. We were not one and the same. Now that I was awakening, I was starting to wonder what had come over me. What in the world had ever made me obsess over a silly myth to this point.
I was hospitalized and treated. When I recovered and was sent back home, I discovered the lamp had never been broken and repaired. There was no spooky dark forest near my house, but only the same streets and buildings which had always been there since before the Slender Man nightmares, a product of my exhausted, fevered mind.
The only thing that remained of my nightmares was the suit in the closet, which I gave to Good Will. I wanted nothing more to do with it, or any other that looked like it.
* * *
There!
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