November 27th 2012
Long After Festival Week, First Day of Dark Autumn
11:57 AM

The Twisted Holiday

     
       As much as I might not show it, The Slenderman has a wonderfully dark sense of humor. It takes quite a long time to understand it's true purpose, because to most it appears only to be cruel or mocking. Perhaps the best way to show this to all of you is, after my long absence in preparation for this, the most auspicious of days, to introduce you to our favorite time of year. The Dark Autumn. 

       Dark Autumn is a time of year we have reserved for ourselves, my family is quite used to my long time away during the month in which it takes place. Dark Autumn is a wonderful time of year where I am set free to do the worst of my deeds for the Slenderman. In fact, for the first long time, every day was dark. He tried to use it to subdue me, kept commanding me to bring him anyone at all. My puzzle finally coming back together was a concept he could not, at first, handle. What might someone with absolute power do once all of the poker chips had been picked through and pulled away? They hope the game still goes their way. I had grown to find a moderately sickening love for our trade.
       I was to go to any random town in the country that I had not been to before, note that after Dark Autumn I could never come here again, and then set myself loose. Why once, in the brisk of Dark Autumn, near the end of the month, I found a small woodland town, buried under three feet of snow somewhere in northern Maine. By the time I was finished with that town of 3,000, not a single of them went untouched by the man of my psychosis. A few days is all it would take to tear apart someones world, and wipe a city off the map by killing not a single person. 

       One thing that must remain perfectly clear, is that the Dark Autumn is not a month of killing spree. It is a month of influence, a slow spread of the psychosis epidemic. Something that could sweep the nation in the form of The Slenderman, and not a singe person would ever know the difference. It was the way of things, and lovely too were they. People believe that Slenderman is a myth that is perpetuated by our tendency to exaggerate shapes in the dark, stretching them to inhuman proportions and often leaving parts we can not account for trailing off like tentacles. The Slenderman? A figment of the Darkness? More like the idea of fear itself. They say that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, I tell you that the man of my psychosis is in fact fear itself. 

       People grow sad and afraid in the months leading up to, and including winter, and that is because of the Dark Autumn. We spread the tidings of misery. Why must one do such a thing? What purpose does it serve to a man who wants only to be left alone? It is a sad realization, one might think. Sad, depressed and scared people tend to look for the richest of ways out, often ending in death. More deaths, the fewer people who may one day disrupt his sanctity. Preventative measures rich with collateral damage.
       This DA, I am heading off to sunny California. Wish me luck in my month of joy, and do not worry. Things will not change so soon, nor often. 

November 21st 2012
Third Day of Festival Week
12:36 AM

Eventful Evening

       Perhaps I lied. It is not the third day, not yet. Mostly because I have a story to tell you all about my day. I think I shall skip the normal nostalgic pleasantries this time around and give you a bit of insight. 

       The images the good Slenderman fed me were of a young boy, a fascination he seems none to willing to break. He was the younger brother of my old best friend, and I knew the kid well. He trusted me even. Once I had been given the appropriate knife image, which meant not to kill the poor kid, but to nab him and let Slenderman do his deeds with them, I set off looking for him. He was at this damn festival and I knew that well enough. 

       Meandering around here looking for this kid took away a lot of the feel of knowing all of the affairs of the crowd, without getting stuck in their festering pools of demon children who forwent the mornings ablutions. I found the chubby target mingling somewhere between a stand that sells marshmallow shooters and a stand that sells marshmallows, no doubt the two stands were in cahoots with one another.
       I walked up behind him, and tapped him gently on the arm and he smiled up to me, ignorant of his fate. I smiled back and told him I had something cool to show him; the time-honored way to gain the trust of the adventurous side of any youth. I lead him to the building that I had first lost my way at and told him to hold on a second, that I had forgotten my jacket. As I rounded the corner again I saw the approval images flash vividly in my mind like momentary hallucinations and heard the distinct veracity of his quick appearance, a minor scream of a child muffled before it had time to echo to the ears of the wandering, likely concerned, parents. I grimaced, it was not a pleasant task, but it was also not my place to judge.
       I went back to my bench and flipped open my laptop, reflecting on it all. In reality, as much as I feel for his victims sometimes, the fun of it is exhilarating. It is an idea so much bigger than myself. One day, I will have to muster the gumption to be curious, and ask the man what he does with his victims. Possibly soon. 

Grasping at Straws, Gasping for Breath

November 20th 2012
Second Day of Festival Week
1:30 PM

Grasping at Straws, Gasping for Breath

       Festival Week is really getting in to full swing today, but I know I am going to be busy later tonight, so I wanted to write down my thoughts before I got... side tracked on the task I have been delegated. 

       After I woke up in that alley, I felt as though I had just been stuck in some sort of sick, lucid dream. My vision was intensely blurry and what little light there was shone so bright in my eyes that the oft playful phrase, "Moon Burn," found itself redefined. Perhaps this was intentional, or a side affect of my being unable to close my eyes throughout the entirety of the experiment, but whatever it was it was damn obnoxious. I finally had to start wearing the glasses that the doctors forced on to me a good year prior. I slipped them on, because I always carried them around to satiate my mothers all-too-frayed nerves, and looked around. The world had a different twinge to it now. Everything appeared a million shades darker, and equal amounts more amusing. 

       I ambled home in the pitchness of the night. About the only memory I could hold in my head was the address of my home, somewhat a more peaceful reminiscence of A Clockwork Orange. My brain felt like a puzzle I had lost all of the pieces to, and the man of my hallucinations was taking his sweet time putting it back together. 

       The first time he contacted me, it was more like blacking out than anything else. I just sort of slipped away from the school work I was focused on, slumped in my desk for a brief moment, and the continued working, or, this is how it appeared to most people. Narcolepsy in its infancy no doubt. What really happened was my conscious slipped away from me back to the road, and the man was in front of me. A flood of images poured into my brain, most of which were kindly familiar to me. My friends, my town, even my family. Either he had known about me forever, or he pulled these things from me. After the pleasant images stopped a bright red, seemingly boiling eye flashed in my brain. He was telling me to watch these things for him, but all I felt at first was fear. But, time with the Slenderman comes with an understanding of what it is he is really about. He just wants to keep himself hidden to people, he wants to live in peace. He may take some less that acceptable preventative measures, but in his position you have to do what you have to do. Snapping out of it I flashed a smile moments before I continued my work. 

       My work slipped as bad as my social skills did, the puzzle was scattered, and it took a long time for it to get back to where it is now, and some pieces never came back.

       I have just been watching today, staring out at the crowds of people, noticing nothing too outstandingly intrusive. He has yet to contact me, but we will see where these things go. Oh it appears I must go on and close my laptop, the sun is starting to dim again, and there go the images. I may have more to say later, as I said before, I tend to get sidetracked in the fun of it. 

November 19th 2012
First Day of Festival Week
12:31 AM

It's All About Grasping the Idea

       Today was the first day of Festival Week in my hometown. All of the people come together in a sort of sad attempt to reclaim whatever it is they think they lost throughout the year; an entire state full of people back-peddling on their mistakes. It can be fun to watch in that twisted sort of way that sitting on a bench in a mall and chuckling to yourself as the huddled masses of over primped, over distracted teenagers desperately try to fit in with each other is fun. 

       I guess I can't really say that I was an exception to the rule a few years ago myself, but I have this very festival to thank for that.
       Before I regale you with that tale though, let me take a step back and really get to the heart of things. You know, shit can be dark sometimes. Not the kind of dark where you are skulking along in car with all the lights shut off like you are trying to keep from being found in the midst of whatever unscrupulous act it is you do and you fail to see a dog as it darts out in front of your car and you cry for days after you hit it. Not that kind of dark, not any physical kind of dark. More like the metaphysical kind. The kind where you find yourself laughing like I do at the poor souls and their endless meandering. The kind of dark that he is. Now, when I say he, I am not really all too sure if he is any distinct gender or not, but we all seem fit to call him a he, some of us even call him father. I think you nice folks here on the internet have adopted a rather finely blunt name for him in "The Slender Man," or "Slenderman," or whichever side of that pointless argument you stand on. 

       It was a few years ago on the same day as today, and perhaps that makes my nice little date up there a bit pointless but that is up to you, and I was walking around the festival grounds smiling. I had just broken up with whatever flavor of the week I had called a girlfriend and I was free to enjoy myself however I pleased. I had a wad of cash and a plethora of gluttonous things to blow it on. It was a nice little stroll I was having, the sun was out, the sky was blue as a chemical fire and it was a crisp 40 degrees. It even took a long time for me to realize I was alone, and for me back then, that was quite the feat. I ambled around behind one of the various overstuffed buildings, hoping to regain my bearings. Right about the time I did, I looked up and noticed the sky was much darker than it had just been. It was as if I had been walking for ages, ages that all passed in a single instant. 

       In front of me was a long, grey street, much like the ones you see slapped together for intense shots in horror flicks, and at the end of it was this tall, dark figure. It wasn't all that startling to me at first until I realized its striking resemblance to some of the pictures I had seen online. I tried to scream but the vacuum of the darkness sucked it up.  Before I could even muster the thought to attempt it again, an action I now seldom think would have worked anyway, I was enveloped in his grasp. It felt as though he had a million hands, all holding me down as the blankness of his face sunk deep into my memories, and my sanity slipped ever so slowly away from me. Like pulling teeth, every bit of the human aspect slipped away one painful thread at a time. As he let me go he fainted a smile, with whatever muscles reside behind the tight flesh I imagine. 

       Ever since then, I see him from time to time, we communicate in a way that I can not describe in ways that give it justice, and he asks me to lead people to him, or watch over them. I don't know why I listen to him, I feel as though I am compelled to, by what I have no idea. 

       Today was just a watching day though, so I did what I always did until he instructed me otherwise, I watched the poor people of this town like some kind of twisted hawk, a messenger of something... something that was not, as the idiom goes, peace.

I have a feeling I will be talking to him tomorrow.