Stalker

The Foggy Thought

The past few days have been horrible. I've had no sleep, the fear and anxiety are too much at night, the thought that HE might be out there, just standing next to my window is enough to darken my dreams and stop any thought of sleep that creeps into my mind. There must always be at least one light in my room on, or some sort of music, or else he could be in the dark corner, waiting to greet me with that pale white face that I've seen so often otherwise. At school, in the forest, near the park, even inside my own home. How can anyone stand this forsaken curse and how did it even come to land on me? Was I thinking about him too much or was it simply that he thought I would be good prey for his next hunt?

Either way, it doesn't matter, because no matter what, he's going to catch me, and God only knows what'll happen after that. I know the symptoms, I've been researching them for hours on end and going over what's been affecting me. It can't be right, I want to be wrong so badly, but there's no hope. My memory has been fading and I can barely remember where I keep my sketchbook anymore. It's filled with the proxy sign,the circle with the X through it, as well as my various depictions of Him, the thing, or Slenderman, as he's so famously known. Most are based off of my encounters in real life, his shady figure in the trees with barely visible features. Others are from the dreams, his haunting head with an angry expression formed by the thin skin covering his skull-like features, the black tentacles behind him, so ready to grab me and I want to move, but I'm frozen with fear, paralysis taking over all of my muscles.

Sometimes, the worst thing is the blood and the vomiting. In school, I'm not exactly normal and coughing up blood three days out of five doesn't seem to help, not the mad rushes to the bathroom to throw up any food that had been in my stomach, the acid always burning my throat and leaving a horrendous taste at the back of my mouth. The dizziness will always follow in suite, along with a metallic ring or hum in my ears, causing me to lose focus, my hands forming C shapes around my ears to try and block out that sound that no one else can hear. No one else sees him either, when he stands outside the classroom window, looking directly at me without any eyes. His whispers create a lullaby, leading me into his dark grasp that always leaves me empty after it disappears. I want him to take me now, instead of playing these childish games, I want the teasing scratches to stop and the footsteps at midnight to go away.

It's strange how a person can be freaking out on the inside, and yet be cool and collected on the outside with no sign of what's really going on in their mind. For all most people know, I could be plotting how I'm going to kill them, but it isn't as plain as that. Even my family can't tell. The paranoid looks have no affect on their conversations about petty things such as the most popular stories floating in the media or the drama in the small social life that I carry on vaguely. Though, now that I truly think about it, I seem to have pushed all of the people who were my friends away when I started going out to the woods to draw all of the things I had seen and had time yet to see. There were stages to how the drawings progressed. The first time I saw him, I only drew a shaded figure hiding between the trees. By the second day, I began to draw clearer details, such as his suit and the many tentacles that protruded from his back and all seemed to have minds of their own. After the third and fourth days, it lead to his face and the proxy sign, even carving it into myself when I had no paper available.

It feels like weeks or months since I've been feeling like this, but it's only been five or six days and he already has a stone cold grip on my mind and sanity, or what I have left. My thoughts can never form anymore, all of my mind in a thick fog that isn't lifting any time soon.

After all this thinking, I find myself in the woods again, pencil in my right hand and my sketchbook in the other, part of a drawing already done. A forest. Fog slowly slipping between the trees to cast its grey darkness on the fallen foliage. An outline for a tall man and a suit are partly done, the tentacles stretching out to grab at the trees behind it, the cracks and snaps showing around the shaded bark. The moons full smile is slightly hidden by the branches and pitch black limbs that almost wrap around its perfect circular shape. After I look up from the haunting image, I realize that I was only drawing what my eyes were seeing, and now I wonder once more for the thousandth time. Will this be the end?