When I Saw Slender Man

My world is darkness now, but hasn’t it always been this way?  I seem to remember a time when I could feel the warm sun on my back.  A time when I could hear a girl calling my name.  My name… what is my name?

It’s coming back to me now, a story I once heard about a little girl catching butterflies in the schoolyard.  The bell rang and all the children lined up to go inside but the girl didn’t hear because she was so far away from the school.  None of the children said anything and none of the teachers noticed she was gone, and so the girl remained outside unattended.

Butterflies are easy to catch if you know how.  All you have to do is wait for one to land on a dandelion or a blade of grass, then you slowly and quietly cup your hands over it and pounce.  Once the butterfly is trapped under your fingers you carefully grab it by the wings and stick it in a jelly jar with holes poked in the lid.

So far the girl has collected six butterflies and she was stalking her seventh.  At the edge of the schoolyard where the girl was playing there was a little fence and then a small patch of forest in which the children were not allowed to play.  The girl followed the butterfly all the way to edge of the yard.  Finally the butterfly landed on a clover right next to the fence.  The girl cupped her hands and pounced but she was too slow and the butterfly got away and flew into the forest.  She looked back to see if anyone was watching her and that is when she noticed that everyone else had gone back in, except for a tall, slender man standing under the old metal slide.  He was wearing a dark suit and he had a blank face.  The girl was afraid and let out a scream, but the scream was soon muffled by a cold pale hand.  The man under the slide was gone!  The girl turned around quickly and he was behind her.  She tried to scream but the hand covered her mouth then there was a hand on her arm and one that held her legs so she couldn’t run away.  Then another hand clenched around her neck and she dropped the jelly jar.  It broke into a thousand pieces and all the butterflies escaped.  Then the slender man picked up the girl and dragged her into the forest where she was never heard from again.

“That story’s not true you’re full of it!” said a boy standing next to me.  I can’t remember his name.  

“It totally is true Jimmy, Sarah said her cousin saw the whole thing!” said the girl next to me.  

“Sarah’s a liar, and besides the story doesn’t make sense at all.  First of all Slender Man can’t teleport, and second Slender Man isn’t real!  On top of that who goes around catching butterflies, why would anyone want to do that?!” exclaimed Jimmy.

“Because they’re beautiful” I said.

“What?” the two of them said at once.

“People catch butterflies because they are beautiful,” I said shyly.

“Anyway,” continued the girl, “if you don’t believe me take a look at this!”  The girl produced a piece of old glass from her pocket.  It was covered in dirt and the edges were worn so they  weren’t sharp anymore.

“Alert the media you found a piece of glass,” said Jimmy.

“Not any piece of glass it’s the glass from the jelly jar!” exclaimed the girl.

“Where’d you get that? Sarah’s cousin?” laughed Jimmy.

“No I found it in the schoolyard myself.  It was right next to the fence,” said the girl, “I am still looking for the lid and when I do you will have to admit that Slender Man is real!”

“Whatever,” said Jimmy with a roll of his eyes.  With that, the girl got mad and stormed off.

“I think she likes you,” I said.

“Gross,” he said, “everyone knows that girls have cooties!”

“You believe that, but you don’t believe in Slender Man,” I retorted.

Jimmy and I were outside when a loud bell rang and everyone raced to line up by the door.  I was standing behind Jimmy.  Jimmy was short, but so was I.  We were small compared to everything around us.  He was taller than I was though, but I was taller than the girl who told us about Slender Man.  All of us who lined up were short compared to the the tall people.  The tall people seemed to be in charge.  One tall person with a whistle told all the short people to line up and be quiet.  We listened.  

Jimmy, the girl and I all went to school, where we sat for hours listening to a tall person with white hair, and a yellow dress talk about numbers.  Occasionally the person would right on a large green board, and the rest of the short people would write what she wrote down on something white with blue lines and wires on left side.  I wouldn’t though I would just stare out the window into the schoolyard and think about the jelly jar girl. What was her name and did her parents miss her?  Did Slender Man kill her? Is she still alive out there somewhere.  Jimmy says that Slender Man is probably just a sex offender, and that the girl was probably just kidnapped and forced to make internet videos like the ones his Dad watches when he thinks no one is at home.

Day in and day out the tall person with white hair and an ever changing color of dress talks about numbers, and other tall people who once did something important.  I wonder if I will ever do something important.  Most people don’t.

Outside the leaves on the trees at the edge of the schoolyard change colors and fall to the ground.  I think I am becoming taller.  Jimmy definitely is.  The white hair marks his height on the wall and it is definitely taller than his last one.  This is all Jimmy talks about at recess.  I think that Jimmy is my friend.  We spend a lot of time together.  He likes to talk to me and I pretend to listen while I stare off into the woods.  There are not many leaves left on the trees now and they remind me of hands reaching up from the ground grabbing at the sky like something beautiful they want but will never have.  They remind me of Slender Man.

I remember a cold Saturday morning and the tall woman that I live with wouldn’t let me go outside without a jacket and a hat.  I put them on and run outside to meet Jimmy.  We were going to meet the girl who told us about Slender Man at the schoolyard.  Jimmy told me she found the lid to the jelly jar.  We rode our bikes as fast as we could.  The wind in my face was cold.  It made my eyes water and my nose run.  We pedaled harder, rode faster, and my heart started to pound as we passed the piles of burning leaves lined up along the street.  I looked over and saw that Jimmy’s face was bright red from the cold air.  He was laughing and threw his hands up in the air as he flew down the hill.  “Look no hands!” he shouted.  I let go of my handlebars too, but my bike wobbled and my hands were soon clutching them firmly again.  We arrived at the schoolyard and the girl was already there.

“Let’s see it,” said Jimmy

“Well to tell you the truth,” said the girl.

“You don’t have it do you!  I came to school on a Saturday and you don’t even have it!” he huffed.

“I have this though,” she said and pulled a machine out of a case.  It was black and it looked like a dish attached to a pole.

“What is it Anne?” I said.  

Anne, her name is Anne.  How did I know that?  Anne smiled and said, “It’s a metal detector.  My dad let me borrow it.  He’s just glad I found some friends and a hobby.”

I like the memory of  Anne’s smile it feels like a ray of sunlight peeking through the darkness.  It hurts too.  Every memory of Anne hurts, but I can’t remember why.

“Fine we’ll help you, but I get to use the metal detector,” said Jimmy.

He took the machine from her and began waving it aimlessly at the ground.

“Come on Jimmy we have to look by the fence remember,” said Anne

“Fine,” he said and we moved out to the fence at the edge of the school yard.  The fence seemed more like a barrier between worlds than a simple fence.  Our world with school, society, and safety was on one side  Slender Man’s world with wild uncertainty, mystery, and danger was on the other.  In my heart I yearned for a taste of that danger and maybe that is why I was so fascinated with Slender Man.

“Anne, do you know any other stories about Slender Man?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “There are the classic ones like the one that says he lives in the forest and captures children.  He captured like fourteen of them all at once or something, and all that was left of them was the camera, and a picture of Slender Man taken right before he captured everyone!”

“That’s a story someone made up,” scoffed Jimmy, “none of it is true and that picture was obviously photoshopped!”

“No, It’s all true, because there are stories that happened here in real life like the girl with the jelly jar,” she replied.

“That’s not true either,” said Jimmy.

“Then why are you out here?” she asked.

“I’m looking for buried treasure,” he replied with a grin.

“Anyway,” said Anne as she turned her attention to me, “There’s another story I read about that happened at this school about twenty five years ago.  These kids were playing on the old slide and one of them slid down and ran around to the ladder to go again.  His friend was at the top of the ladder and slid down.  When the kid reached the top he looked around and no one was there.  he called out to his friend thinking he was hiding but he didn’t answer.  The kid even looked under the slide and no one was there.  He just vanished into thin air like the jelly girl.”

“Maybe we should look at the slide,” I said.

“That’s a great idea! Jimmy you stay here and keep looking for the lid!” said Anne.  Jimmy flipped us off and continued to wave the metal detector over the ground.  Anne and I ran over to the slide as fast as we could.  When we got there we looked closely at the old metal slide.  The metal was polished and worn where generations of children's hands and feet had been, but there was another spot that showed signs of wear that was quite unusual.  Anne noticed polished spots on the tall bars that helped to stabilize the ladder.

“These marks are too far up for a child to reach,” she said

I reached my hands up to try to touch them and said, “You’re right there’s no way a kid could do that.”  It looked like a tall person had been wringing their hands on the pole.  “It could have been an adult,” I said.

“It wasn’t It was Slender Man,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I just know!” she shouted and began to cry, “He has to be real!  I saw him, in the woods on the first day of school.  He was standing there and staring at me.  I was afraid, I didn’t know what he was.  Then I heard the story about the girl and all the other stories on the internet and I knew it had to be Slender Man!”

I put my hand on her shoulder and she collapsed to the ground sobbing with her head in her hands.  I knelt down beside her and that’s when I notice the strange symbol under the slide.

“Anne,” I said,” look at this!”  I pointed to the symbol.  It was a circle with an x through it.

“That’s Slender Man’s symbol!” she exclaimed.

Just then we heard a shout from Jimmy.  We both startled and then looked over at him.  He was all the way over by the treeline holding a round piece of metal in his hand.

“Guys! Look what I found! It’s the jelly lid!” He shouted.

After that time seemed to move in slow motion.  A faceless man in a dark suit emerged from the treeline and pulled Jimmy into the forest.  Anne and I ran as fast as we could to the fence and without hesitation climbed over the fence and left the safety of the school yard to venture into the realm of Slender Man.  I called out Jimmy’s name at the top of my lungs.  My throat burned and my voice cracked.  I had to find him.  I was so frantic and single minded that I lost track of Anne.  I stopped and looked around for a while she was nowhere to be seen, but I thought I heard her voice a few times.  She was calling out for Jimmy, but she also said a second name, my name.  What was my name? What name did she call?  Soon Anne’s voice was quiet.  Poor Anne my name was the last thing she said and I can’t remember it.

“HEEELLPPP!!! Jimmy! Anne! Where are you?!” I cried, “It was Slender Man he took them.  SLENDER MANNNN!!!”

I looked around at the trees.  All the leaves had fallen off and now they all looked like Slender Man.  A cold wind blew through the patch of forest and I could almost hear the trees shiver with cold or was it fear.  Their gnarled branches shot out and waved in every direction, clawing and groping at the sky. I looked up into the grey above me and reached up like the trees. Something white began to fall from the sky.  It was cold and it stuck to my clothes.  I stuck my tongue out to to catch one.  A tall person told me once that each one of these white things are different. I watched one softly float down from the grey sky and land gently on the tip of my tongue.  Right before it melted and became a part of my body forever, there was a moment when I saw it’s beauty clearly.  In that moment I was happy knowing that beauty would be a part of me forever.

I turned around and that’s when I saw Slender Man.

End.