Slender

Chapter 8: This Is It

We all fell into the swamp. The ice broke, and it was a swamp. We all splashed around in the gross green shit the swamp had in it. It was anything but normal water. It was mostly mud, wet, gross, sticky mud, and we were sinking fast. "How the hell do alligators live in this?" I thought.

If you stopped, you sunk. But moving forward took so much energy in the thick mud, and we were already fatigued. "Whatever you do, don't stop moving!" We all yelled at just about the same time we discoverd you'd sink if you stopped. Zoe, all of a sudden, tripped. And had her head sink below the surface. Jeff, dove for her and pulled her out. Now, not only was Zoe extremely tired, had to keep moving, she couldn't see. Jeff had to push her forward as she was vomiting, crying, and I hate to say it, dying all at once.

She had swallowed so much mud when she went down, she couldn't breathe. We got to the edge of the swamp and got the hell out of it. Jeff gave her the heimlich manuver on her, and it worked. She cleaned herself up with snow in less the a minute, and we were back on running again.

Once again, they were closing in. And faster this time. We ran into a random part of the woods. Great. Now we had no idea where we were. They kept forcing us deeper and deeper into the woods. Until finally, they appeared in front of us too. Running in any open direction we ended up heading back towards the field again. 

We were running as fast as ever, cause now they were right on our asses. Every time we looked back they were within an arms reach. You know what I just noticed? They never move while you're looking at them directly. "Guys! They don't move when you look at them!" I yelled out, thinking that might give us hope. To which Zoe put down by saying, "No! Don't look at them! It gives you Slender Sickness and then you'll be dead before you know it!" God dammit, that's the one thing that may have helped. 

Unless you were one of us, I couldn't stress enough how fatigued we were. We must have run at least 4 miles all ready, I figured. 

This can't be happening. I thought to myself. This is all a dream, I'll wake up in a few minutes, or right before they get me. It'll be Friday morning, and this whole thing will dissapear.

 I tried to shut my eyes and purposely kick a few things to try and wake myself up. Well, it's not a dream is all I got out of it. Besides pain, of course. Now I was running the slowest of us all. Falling behind by the second. My human survival instincts kicked in, and in a minute or 2 I was at the front of the pack again.

We made it back onto the plain, but we didn't stop this time. They were still right behind us, right on asses. 'Til the point where we couldn't even turn around because they would get us, or so says Zoe, but she knows about this type of stuff, so we always go by her word. We kept running all the way back to the little pond we landed on the first time we were here.

"Oh bloody hell!" Jeff yelled. Theres no going around it this time. "Jump in! Swim to the other side!" I yelled. We were all so cold and numb the coldness of the water didn't really have an effect on us. We swam through, all the exact same length through at the same time, somehow. We got up on the ten foot land chunk before the pond and after the cliff. Oh shit. The cliff! Bam. We all ran into the wall of the cliff. Huddled together and looked around.

There they were. All 5 of them. In front of us, staring us down. Just like the one did in the basement. This is it, I thought. This is where we all end. After all we went through tonight, this is how it ends, how I end. 

That's what would have happened, if it wasn't for Jeff and his quickthinking wits. He pointed behind them, yelled, "What in bloody hell is that?" Somehow they heard us, don't ask me how. They all have just plain heads, no eyes, no nose, no ears, so how did they hear Jeff yell? 

Jeff was on the right of all of us and pushed me into Zoe and to the left. We all ran, again, for this last time. "Jeff! Holy shit you just saved our lives!" I yelled. "Yea, don't metion it." Is the response I got.

We all kept running along, again, for this final home stretch. "Don't look back, just go for the house!" Is what we all were think, as far as I know. It's what I was thinking, that's for sure. We got to the bottom of the hill. I could see my house. All the lights, they were on. Oh no, the hill! Theres no way we could make it up the hill before they got us. 

"Go! Go! Go!" We all were shouting. We'd made it too far to go out now, we were them. The first people to survive a Slender Man sighting. We were going up the hill as fast as we could, it took us about a minute to go fifty feet. We made it about halfway up, when Zoe slipped and slid downward. "Zoe!" Me and Jeff both yelled. We dropped to our knees and slid. We got to Zoe about 20 feet from one of them, helped her up, and ran. 

We made it to the top of my hill, and into my basement. The hot air was tempting to stay there. We stood still for a moment, then looked at each other and ran up the stairs, and into the streets. A mile later, we were in the police station. Reported what we saw, and they sent out a search party. We were instructed to stay the night at the police station. They were contacting our parents.

We had done it, we escaped Slender Man. The Slender Men had been beaten.