Repetitive.

My feet crush the iced over grass beneath them with a satisfying crunch as each tentative step carries me towards the whispers.

Ragdoll skipped around me playfully, her naked feet making no sound amongst the grass and weeds that littered what was conceived to apparently be my backyard.

"This is quite fun is it not Puppet? Who knows what awaits us once we leave the sheltered haven of your porch light..."

The lingering uneasiness permeated through the cold nighttime air like a thick blanket of foreboding. 

It struck me as odd that even though it was only the end of August, it could be so cold this night...

We follow the low whispers to the very back of the yard, to the rusty chain link fence. 

"Aren't those chills running up your spine so exhilarating Puppet? It's like we're playing a macabre game of hide & seek..."

Shrugging off Ragdoll's euphoric excitement, I peer over the gate and into the world beyond.

Tall, yellowed grass had invaded the small stretch of field the lie before me. It was as though no one had ever thought to ever mow this place.

The condemned back alleys awaited me with open arms and curious whispers.

I glance at the gate. Locked as always. Too determined to turn back now in search of a key, I jump the fence. Hitching one foot onto the top bar and then catapulting the rest of me up and over.

I land a bit heavily. Albeit due to the fact that it was dark and I could have sworn the damn ground was further away.

Damn me for being too fuckin tall.

Quickly my attention was turned back to the now, as the whispers spiked in urgency. Whoever was repeating "Slender Man. Slender Man. Slender Man." Must of obviously caught on to me.

"Careful Puppet, don't want to fuck up do you?" Ragdoll taunts with a giggle.

I cast her a quick glare but catch movement behind her.

Someone was running towards us.

"Midnight jogger?" I think out loud.

But soon the whispers stopped repeating inside of my head and I could here whoever was catching up to us chanting it angrily.

It was then I noticed the shimmer of the knife.

"You should be running..." Ragdoll whispers rather worried then disappears.

My mind went blank except for one word. And I admit I was repeating it just as violently as the freak chasing me with the knife was chanting "Slender Man."

And as I turned tail and took off into the darkness of this abysmal valley I had walked in to it kept slipping out of my mouth with each panicked breath.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!"

Feline.

"Shut. The Fuck. UUUUUUUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 


My television is thrown as I roar in a frustration induced rage.


Yet still, as the screen shatters into a thousand pieces, the circuits and wiring propelling themselves into the darkest corners of my room,


The whispering refuses to stop.


The emotionless chant keeps lingering.


"Slender Man. Slender Man. Slender Man. Slender Man."


The walls feel to be closing in on me. Confining me within a violent claustrophobic seizure of the mind.


My fingers groping for the doorknob. Twining themselves around it and ejecting the door outward.


The whispering grows louder.


My ears perk up. I grow more alert.


"Don't be stupid..."  I hear Marionette warn me off to my left.


"Follow it... Who knows what you might find..." Ragdoll giggles to my right.


The unrelenting chorus that keeps repeating it's dull monologue starts to grow quiet.


"Let it be....." Marionette growls.


"Let's play pretend... you can be the cat..." Ragdoll smiles innocently.


I smirk and Marionette snorts, "Your funeral then..." and walks off into the darkness.


Ragdoll skips passed me, "Let's go! Before Father finds us..."


I started to say something violent but the whispers got quieter and I quickly started after her.


My curiosity getting the better of me...

The Slender Man.

Afraid to open the wooden door

That leads out to the night

Though my stomachs feeling sick

All I can do is write

Scared to glance out in the dark

To those decrepit woods

Scared to take one haunted look

To where the Slender Man stood

In this room I hear it's call

Kid's laughter in the wind

I hear it moving in the night

Tears fall cause I am pinned

Images of a faceless man

Rip apart my dreams

Slowly drawn towards madness

I feel my ripping seams

I cower in this nightmare

The Slender Man in sight

His many arms draw towards me

All I can do...

Is write.

Unison.

He is watching me from the foot of my bed.


"That curious lean of his head..."


He's simply watching as we write.


Before this nightmare I have always been a writer.


"This outlet was supposed to be a haven for just that..."


Instead of a chronicles of the horror that now haunts us.


The pen is flicking across the page.


"The pitch black inspiration spattered across the canvas of such pure degradation..."


Once more the madness becomes one unified mind.


"DrIVen BY INSanITy."


He stands there silent yet so triumphant.


"As we lastly do His bidding..."


Among us all the Mannequin holds the power.


"BUt THaT WON'T Last For LoNg......."

Reappearance.

Small droplets of rain were hitting my face with soft plops. I felt sharp stones digging into my spine. Once more I open my eyes.


The sky. Grey like it has always been.


I tried to move. But my body screamed no.


"You fell..." a soft voice explains out of sight.


I slowly turn my head until I see Ragdoll's big brown eyes looking into mine.


"I did did I?" I reply and she looks up at the two story roof.


"You left your shoe up there..." She says quietly.


I follow her gaze and stare at the lip of the roof where I had fallen from.


Surely a fall from that height should have killed me?


"He caught you..." She answers and I look back at her.


"The Slender Man caught you..." She explained further.


An eyebrow is raised. "He did did He?" 


She looks at me.


"I think I made a mistake with making Dummy..."


I gasp, "You Think?"


Her look turns to a glare.


"You're not helping the situation at all with your idiotic sarcasm..."


I sit up painfully and cast an angry stare at her.


"After what you have done? You GAVE me to the Slender Man!" I shout and she cringes.


"He did exactly what I had tricked Him into doing. You just had to be so unstable. He found hurting you more enjoyable than I had originally planned..."


She looks away.


"Didn't help that you are a masochist..."

I actually felt a smirk sneak it's way onto my face.


"Ol' Slendy found enjoyment in my fetish eh?" I chuckle and she sighs.


"What are you going to do about Dummy?" She asks seriously.


I furrow my brow.


"I have no fucking clue."


For the first time in a while I hear her laugh.


"Little Scare-crow doesn't know how to fend of fear..."

Chaos.

What do you do when everything grows silent?


When the horrific static distorting the radio dies down to a low thrum. Creeping into the back of your mind and nesting.


The crickets die. The wind grows quiet. The nighttime sounds of passing cars and domestic abuse smothered beneath the thick blanket of silence that has slowly lain itself out.


The soft thrum increases on it's journey to it's violent crescendo.


The suffocating veil of shadow casting it's glow over what should be consumed in light.


That macabre ragdoll standing limply in the doorway, a small bundle moving restlessly in her arms.


You can see her lips moving but no words meet your ears.


You can only read those luscious red lips mouth those few horrific words.


"Help me..."


Yet the words that finally meet your ears speak differently.


A cascade of lies and aroused moans assail my ears.


"The child of my father is the lover that I need... Slit me open like your veins... Let me flow all over you... Devour the child the Slender Man birthed... Before he consumes us all..."


She leans her head back towards the sky. Blood flowing from her every orifice.


The screams. The sexual screams.


I scratch at my ears. Until blood runs from deep gashes.


Yet still her words are injected into my eardrums.


"Words spilling like scarlet angels from my eyes... The rain will turn to blood... Your mind will consume you... Whoever prevails in the digestion of the other... The Slender Man will come for..."


I'm peeling the flesh from my face, an abstract agony.


She keeps bleeding. She keeps screaming. A chorus of hatred to tear apart what's left of my tortured sanity.


I hear my screams echoing over the static on the radio.


"WHY ME? WHY ME? WHY ME?"


Each words a nail driven into my skull.


I reach forward, gripping her thin wrist, pulling her into me, my fingers sliding over her slender wrists until I tighten my grip.


Snap.


Then twist them all the way around. Blood, bone, sinew, screams. Sprayed all over me.


I thrust my tongue down her throat.


Her teeth dig and dig until I hear her swallow.


The thrumming grows evermore. Drowning out our entwined screams.


I'm pushed upon the bed of spikes. the penetrating pleasure ripping through my flesh like the slip of razored silver.


She straddles me. Running her fingernails up my chest, leaving long bloody trails behind them.


I'm running my fingertips along her heated flesh as her back arches in response.


Am I simply this insane?


"Yes."


I'm sliding into her. Watching her screams turn to gasps. Sweat begins to form as our movements become liquid.


Blood pours torrential as torture turns to pleasure.


As Ragdoll's grinding herself back and forth on top of me. Something behind her catches my eye.


"I'm Going To Enjoy Killing You..."


My eyes widen. The static's orchestral score explodes.

I'm ripping away from reality. My mind the home for something so twisted. so depraved.


"Dummy..." were the words I gasp before his face is suddenly inches from mine.


"I WILL CONSUME YOU PUPPET!!! YOUR MIND WILL BECOME MINE!!! YOU HAVE NEVER FACED SOMETHING LIKE ME!!!"


His voice explodes in my head like a roar of thunder. He snaps his fingers and Ragdoll's gone. Her embrace replaced by his slender fingers wrapping around my throat.


He raises me off the bed and high into the air.


"What Will You Do Puppet? When You Realize That The Very Thing You Revel In Is The Very Thing That's Against yOU?"


I glanced at the ground, somehow we were thousands of feet from it. My fear of plummeting fills my stomach with lead. Bile burns the very back of my throat.


"I CAN MAKE YOU SeE WhaTEVEr I WanT YOU TO SEE!"


He brings me close to his face and I watch as it then starts to sizzle away.


"I AM INSANITY!!! I AM FEAR!!!"


Finally I felt my mouth open.


"Don't call me Puppet you son of a bitch." I growl.


Dummy looked as though I had slapped him... Quickly it was contorted with hatred.


"YOU. WILL. FEAR. ME!!!!!!!!!"


And he lets go.


And I fall.....




And fall....








And Fall......

Stuck.

"You idiot."


"You were the one who set Him off."


"You didn't close the door."


"Like that would stop Him?"


"Would have slowed Him down."


"I highly doubt that."


I raise an eyebrow at Marionette. The last couple of days we have somehow become a sort of team. Always sticking together. Maybe I'm still unconsciously too scared to be alone. Maybe I'm just that far too gone.


Whatever if is we're stuck together for the time being.


"Have you noticed that He appears to be alot more pissed off at us than usual?"  I ask him.


"I doubt He would just take Ragdoll's manipulation of Him without getting at least a little pissed."


I look at him for a brief second, let out a breath then walk over to the window and pull the blinds aside, revealing a flood of tendrils clawing angrily at the glass.


"I'm thinking He may be a little more than simply 'pissed'." I reply and drop the blinds.


"Why doesn't He just go after Ragdoll?" I continue before shutting my mouth. Unfortunately my idiotic statement had already been spoken, and Marionette spent no time jumping upon the opportunity.


"Because Ragdoll IS you dumbass. He can't kill her because she technically doesn't exist. You though, DO exist. So He just kills you and turns you into a macabre tree ornament and kills the rest of us as well. It's the only way."


I cast him a blank stare. "Okay, now can you put that in a folder and label it 'Shit I Already Know'? For fuck's sake Marionette, We have more pressing matters to deal with at this particular moment."


And thus I see that classic sneer slit open his face.


"In actuality, YOU have pressing matters to take care of, I just work here."


I perch myself on the edge of my bed and stare at the shadows cast from the tendrils outside weave and swirl like a strange kaleidoscope nightmare.


"Why doesn't He just appear in here like he always does?" I say, mostly to myself.


"He must still be waiting for something..."


I glance over and see Marionette's face etched deeply with worry.


"We really need to find Ragdoll don't we?" 


After a moment he looks over at me.


"Now more than ever..."