Slender: Detention

I wrote the single sentence that was scrawled across the chalkboard. I am a 7th grader, and I will not act immature. A stupid, and unappealing sentence to anyone my age, yet as you wrote it for the two hundredth and thirteenth time, you found it quite compelling. The clocked ticked the second hand going ever slower. The minute hand remained in place for what felt like eons. The sky outside was a cool grey, and storm clouds were forming in the north. Several children had come to play at the little part right outside. The wings swung aimlessly in the slow wind. The grass dwindled, and the trees swayed like torches in a dark chamber. I sighed, and returned to writing the sentence.
In my peripheral vision, I noticed that my friend, Charlie, was pretty much asleep. His pencil was stuck in his nose where he had been digging. To my left, Grant was writing quickly, and hurriedly. We were all ready to leave. It did not take long to write a five hundred sentence when you desperately wanted to leave. What was hard was trying to not think about how much time had passed, and if you would ever be free from your desk. It was terribly fascinating.
I began to write line two hundred and fourteen. I am sick of writing and I say fuck you teacher. I looked up at her, and she seemed to know that I was writing about her, because she stared at me with her cold, obsidian colored eyes. Her grey hair was iron colored, and her arms were crossed over her chest. In fact, she looked more like a statue than a person. She didn’t move a single muscle, unless it was to breath.
I shivered and quickly erased the line, starting over. I am a seventh grader, and I will not act immaturely.
This is the very definition of detention if you may ask. For it is a tedious, endless span of time that only you can determine when it will end. The punishment, that seems so blunt and un righteous, suddenly becomes profound and despicable. You try and find new ways to keep yourself awake, to keep yourself from totally giving up. You try and doodle on the paper, or make a code so that you can talk to your friends. You try and sneak and do you’re your homework, and you try to make a fool of yourself so that the teacher will just dismiss you. But, nothing works when you are under the owl woman named Misses Grennet.
I looked up at the clock. One minute—give or take a few seconds—had passed. One measly minute. One fucking minute.
I groaned and my head came in contact with the desk and the impact was so loud, that Charlie woke and grunted. He looked at me confused, and dazed. “Why am I at school?” He asked, and then when he wiped his drool away and looked down, he groaned and put his head back on the desk. At this rate, we would be here all night.
It was about ten minutes later when I decided to take a well needed break. I looked at the door, the small window showed the bleak, grey hall. Outside, the day was beginning to grow older. I wondered if my parents were worried about me. Of course, they knew I had detention, but it’s been too long. I looked at the clock, and it taunted me with its constant monotonously slow tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. I looked at Mrs. Grennet. I tensed. She was staring at me, and her expression was hostile, and still. This was not the thing that disturbed me. The thing that made me tense were eyes. They weren’t there.
Simply, they were not there. Only two obsidian voids. Slowly she held up her watch and tapped it. Her expression didn’t change as she said, “Tick tock, time spent wasting is not time well spent.” She smiled then and behind her, the board was suddenly covered with the sentence. I am a 7th grader, and I will not act immature. I am a 7th grader, and I will not act immature. I am a 7th grader, and I will not act immature.
I practically forced myself to finish for the rest of the afternoon.

The sky was dark, and it was around 7. We were all free to go, but Charlie would have to stay and finish everything tomorrow. We had slung our bags over our shoulders, and were hurrying down the dimly lit halls of the school. I didn’t dare look back at the classroom when we left. I was still shaking from that unnerving experience.
I told Charlie and Grant about it. Grant told me that it was probably just me being stir crazy, Charlie said it might have been a nightmare. Neither seemed very much logical. They weren’t the ones who’d seen her eyes no longer sitting in their sockets where they should have been. Our footsteps echoed through the halls of the school, and we quickly bustled out into the humid fall air. The streets lights were beginning to flicker on with audible buzzing noises. We hurried along and hopped on our bikes, and began to ride home.
As we rode, I couldn’t help but feel like someone was following us. Not in a car, or another bike, or even on foot. Like something was maybe watching and following us in some kind of unseen realm. I tried to shake it off, but it was a like an itch that just had to be scratched. Every few blocks I would look over my shoulder, shudder, and then shake my head again. I was going crazy.
Soon, we were heading into our neighborhood. It was called Maple Wood, and of course, it was right next to the forest. The forest was ominous, looming, and quitter frightening at the moment. It was as we were heading up the backstreet, that I saw it. The thing that stood at the edge of the forest, on the side of a bench. It was a six foot ten man. He wore a black suite with a crimson red tie. I fell off my bike when I saw he had no face. I stared, goose bumps running up and down my arms. On the bench a little girl sat. She looked stunned, and she looked as though she had been running through the woods. The tall man…glared at me you might say, but I couldn’t tell. He had no nose, no eyes, and no lip—nothing. Just an ivory whiteness that was like the void of Mrs. Grennet's eyes.
“Dude! Come on! My mom just called, and she said we better get our asses home before eight.” Hollered Charlie. I gulped and nodded. I stumbled to my feet, and when I looked back neither the girl or the tall man were there.

When I got home, my legs felt like Jell-O. and not because we had been pumping so hard to get home, but because I was still shaken about the man. I was tired, so maybe I was imagining things—hopefully I was just imagining things.
When I walked into the kitchen, I found my mother and father sitting at the table. My brother was dialing someone. My mother sobbed. I gasped and dropped my bag on the floor. I had never seen my mother cry. She looked at me with her brown eyes and wailed. My father hugged her and he looked at me. He mouthed, meet me in the den.

“What?” I stammered. I was petrified, and I wanted to burst out in tears myself. “How-this doesn’t make sense. He’s just, gone?” I asked. My father gave me a grave look, which meant yes. My baby brother, only four, had gone missing. Gone missing when my big brother was walking him home.
“Your brother says he didn’t hear him scream, holler, or even stumble. He just looked back and he was gone.” My father said. My father looked older now, stressed. Although he had a head of swept grey hair, and his oak brown eyes were usually wise, he now looked strained and panicked.
“Well—what are we going to do?” I asked. My heart was thumping against my chest. Too many things had happened today for this to happen. Something this unbelievable. My father shook his head and shrugged his shoulder, lost for words, lost for thoughts. He slumped into his big cushion chair and I swallowed. I couldn’t stand up anymore. My brother was probably gone, dead, or being tortured right now. I put my head in my hands and sat down as well.
How could this night get any worse?

I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and did my best to sleep, but I just couldn’t. It was U rather impossible. I groaned and sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. I felt like an old man, an old man who couldn’t die, even though he was fourteen days overdue.
I put my head in my hands for a moment, and then I heard something. It was a small sound .Something that you don’t recognize unless you truly hear it. It was a tink-ing sound, like something being cranked up. I slowly looked up and through my fingers I saw it. I leapt and gripped the frame of my bed. The tall man was sitting right there in my desk chair staring at me. I think…Anyways, in his hands he held a Jack in the Box toy. It was a multitude of colors, basic colors—red, blue, yellow, green, violet—but they were riddled with markings, strange markings. He slowly cranked the box and stared at me. In the lighting, one half of his face was shadowed, the other as bright white as the moon itself.
I could not stop myself from beginning to shutter, shake, and jerking. Suddenly, there was something running down the length of my back. It was a needle point and I tensed, gripping the bed frame. I dared not look back, but the tall man was no longer there. Goosebumps spiked across my body. I shook my head and didn’t look back as the needle point slid up and down my back. I knew it was his finger, but I just couldn’t accept it. Then he grabbed my head and I nearly screamed. Nearly.
The box began to make music. It was friendly, not menacing or strange. Regular childlike music. But slowly it began to break down, and it sounded like one of those slow motion scenes. After about three minutes of this it stopped. I opened my eyes, and stared at the box sitting in my desk chair. A child’s voice whispered in my ear, “Go open it.”
I shook wildly, but swallowed my cold fear. I slowly slid my legs out of the bed, and began to walk towards it. My carpet didn’t make a sound, but as I past the window, I saw a raven land on the branch of the tree outside. It looked at me with its beady yellow eye and flapped its wings. I turned my attention back to the box. Abruptly the box started to tick, like a time bomb. And then, Mrs. Grennet was in my room. She didn’t have eyes and her hair was down. She opened her mouth and it was metal grating against metal. “TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK!” I then sped up my pace, and just as I was about to grab the box, the crow burst into my room. It cawed, flapped its wings, and thrashed its claws. I screamed and burst out of my room. I ran down the hall, and tripped on the rug. I clamored down the stairs and fell face first on the first floor. I looked up and the raven was cawing and flapping its wings, feathers swirling downwards in spirals.
Then my mother and father burst into the main walkway from their room. The raven cawed again, and my parents looked up. I was about to cry at their feet, when I saw him—the tall man—in my family portrait. He had a finger up to his blank face. Tentacles were slithering around my entire family and he had one hand on the shoulder of my brother.
I passed out.

I couldn’t focus the next day in math class, first period. We were talking about Polynomials and I just couldn’t grasp it. I couldn’t stop thinking about the night before—the unopened Jack in the Box, the tall man, the raven, Mrs. Grennet. It was all too much. Charlie and Grant assailed me with a billion questions that I couldn’t answer, and I failed my test in History. Every time I read anything, all I saw as gibberish, and in the margins of pages I would see ‘FEAR, FEAR, FEAR!’ written terribly in the margins.
I threw up my lunch and was sick the entire rest of the day. By the time I got home, I was coughing like a madman. Bryce had yet to show, and my parents had bought takeout from Wok Express. I sighed and slumped into a chair. The sight of food was making me sick; I skipped it and slipped into the den. The TV was on, but no one was in. Deven must’ve left it on. But, I didn’t realize it until I picked up the remote—Deven didn’t come home till thirty minutes after me. And the TV was fuzzy. I quickly clicked it off and began to rid myself of all thoughts of the tall man. I couldn’t stop thinking about him any time I looked at a picture, so I decided I needed a walk.

When I stepped outside, I felt better. Fresh air and freedom. No more bombardments of strange events. As I walked along Neilbeen Street, I began to think about Bryce. I hoped he was OK…wherever he was. I plugged in my earphones, and listened to music as I walked, that defines the rest of my afternoon.

I threw up, and this time there was more blood. My head hurt, and I didn’t feel very well at all. It has been about three weeks since Bryce went missing, and the cops have given up. I have also contracted a strange flu, and so has my brother, as well as Charlie and Grant. We are all forced to stay home, under strict quarantine. The sickness started about last week when my friends, Deven, and I were out in the woods looking for Bryce. We knew it had been hopeless, but we tried. I didn’t see the tall man, but I felt his presence, and when we went by the little lake near the edge of the outer woods, I could have sword I heard someone whistling Mockingbird.
I had also started to develop night terrors. I would no longer just see the tall man. I would see vicious dogs, monsters, demons, and heinously crafted versions of real people. My room became a territory that was much less comforting, and more terrifying. I had also taken up to drawing. I would draw the woods, creatures, and the tall man himself. When I look at these pictures now, they move and morph—like they are alive.
I pulled myself up from the toilet and use the wall as a temporary cane. I cough a little and remember to flush the toilet. Looking in the mirror, I truly have no idea what I am looking at. I don’t know if I am human or death itself. My ribs were beginning to protrude through my skin, my cheeks were hallowing, and my eyes looked as though they would end up much like Mrs. Grennet's. My hair is no longer a volumous as it once was, and I cannot help but say that I have grown a full four inches in a few weeks. I think that I am becoming the tall man.

On my father’s laptop, I decided it was high time I did some research. This would probably be the only time I would be able to learn more about the tall man. Quickly, I opened Internet Explorer, and went to Google. In the search box, I instantaneously typed ‘Tall Man’.
Somewhere around a thousand search results came up. But instead of them saying ‘The Tall Man’ it came up ‘The Slenderman’. I quickly clicked on the first link. It was an entire website devoted to the creature that had haunted me. And as I would expect, their description of the creature was to a tee. Only now, his tentacles were obvious and stretching out around him. I read on to what they said:

SLENDERMAN: WHO IS HE?

Many people have heard of the infamous Slenderman game, or have watched someone play the game. This is when it starts to boil down to what he is. Slenderman is a six foot ten man who wears a black suit, with either a grey or red tie. He has no face. Slenderman is a famous new mytho, but he is still feared. The legend tells that he was once a tall man in Germany, all the little kids and men would laugh at him for being so skinny and tall, instead of bulky and manly like most. Slenderman’s true name is not known, and we couldn’t find it even when we investigated a possible grave in Germany. Most people say that Slenderman haunts children, but never kills them. They say that he kills the people around them such as parents and siblings. Though, most children disappear, it has never been reported that he ever killed any of them.
Slenderman is thought to only be able to haunt you if you believe in him, but slowly this is starting to become very fictionous, as everyone on this site believes in him, and we have yet to be haunted. We are not sure what Slenderman’s true goals are, but we believe that he may be a ghost from hell sent to torture the living.
Go to the link ‘Haunted Souls’ to learn more about those who have been haunted and hear their stories. Be sure to comment, we want to hear something from you too.

I swallowed hard. I was a little comforted since I knew more about him, but I was not comforted when they said that it is not known if he kills his victims. I shook my head and clicked on the link ‘Haunted Souls’.
Several images popped up. These images were pictures of people, children all around, Slenderman in the background, and several people who held up their iPhones to the mirror—they looked much like I did. I began to read their stories. Most of them consisted of people who had lost their family members, others were the actual accounts of people who went to kill the Slenderman, and also some were about people who knew others to be haunted. Only four times did I read that they found the dead body of the victim. That wasn’t good odds considering how many people had gone missing, reportedly from the Slenderman.
I shivered and sneezed, coughed and shut my eyes. God, please let Bryce be OK.

“Dude, you look sick.” Said Grant. We were in my backyard, we’d tried to play football, but my legs had collapsed on me, and we had to take a seat. I didn’t feel well at all. All of my mother’s remedies and the doctor’s medicine didn’t help. They didn’t realize that this was beyond their power; that this was all beyond anyone’s power. The only one who could stop it would be the Slenderman. I told my friends about him, and they seemed to believe it themselves. They too had grown, just not like I had. My fingers were long and nimble. They looked like skeleton bones, and now I didn’t even have as stomach; my entire abdomen had caved in. Every few hours I would feel dizzy, and I would feel the Slenderman’s presence in the shadows. In addition, I had grown ten inches in a course of two weeks.
“You—cough—th—cough—ink?” I wheezed and coughed ravenously, blood spitting out with my spit. It slapped the ground like rain. Grant and Charlie looked at each other and back at me sickeningly. I stared at them and shook my head. “I’m—wheeze, cough—fine. Just stop worrying; this will blow over soon enough.” I got out quickly and went back into a thunderous rouse of coughing. I forced a smile through the tears, but Charlie and Grant didn’t seem to be buying it. We spent the rest of the afternoon coughing and talking about the weather like a bunch of old geezers.

My spine protruded through my mole and freckle infested skin. A fleet of freckles had spread across my body, including my face, and my hair was starting to fall out. I was beginning to think that I was going to die, just flat out die. I started a fit of coughing again. I was waiting for it to subside, like it usually did after about three minutes, but this time it was powerful and choking. I coughed, and coughed. I kept coughing. Blood began to splatter out onto the sink. The smell of innards was beginning to fill the air. My heart picked up a crescendo and I beat on the wall. My brother was probably asleep, and when we slept with this strange flu, you couldn’t hear anything at all.
I coughed and coughed, blood flying out of my mouth. I wheezed, and slid to the ground, trying to heave myself back up. Every one of my attempts to get back up failed as my bones felt like they might just crack. I tried to reach out for the door handle, but I coughed again, and my heart leapt. I clenched my chest tightly Through my coughs I tried to call, plead, or beat for help, but it was almost impossible. My hands and arms were shaking, my heart was ablaze, and I didn’t know what to do. Then, the bathroom door burst open, and my brother stood before me. He gasped and coughed himself, and helped me up. Though I was still in a fit, he lifted me up easily and carried my down stairs to the kitchen, dropping me on the table.
He grabbed the phone and dialed 911 quickly. He gave me three cups of water, but still my chest burned and I couldn’t stop coughing. He gave me and entire bottle of cough syrup and some Nyquil so that I could sleep.
Later, I woke up in the hospital.

I flipped through the channels numbly. The little machine next to my bed was making pressurized noises, and the little vital machine was beeping slowly. I was at a good heart rate. There were three tubes stabbed into my skin, one of which was a food tube, the other was for blood, and the last was an IV. I looked out the window and stared at our small town, the forest took up about two thirds of the entire town. Cars moved slowly through the grey asphalt streets, and business went on as usual. I sighed and let my slump to the side.
I’d been in the hospital for a whole week, and I felt a tad bit better, but nothing drastic. I’d lost more weight than I gained, and things were not looking up. Bryce was still nowhere to be found. They told us in two weeks they would be having an empty casket funeral for him. I couldn’t blame them, I was starting to believe he was dead too.
My nurse brought in my medicine and some lunch—and orange and some Vanilla pudding—and the newspaper. She smiled and turned. She knew I was a lost cause. I picked up the paper first and flipped around in it for a while. Then I saw a small news article about another missing boy.

ANOTHER BOY GOES MISSING IN CALISTINE

(MA)In Calistine, Maine, another boy has gone missing mysteriously. Just a month ago, young Bryce Lewis went missing while his brother was walking him home. The Lewis family has nothing to say on the matter, but they have been said to speak at the funeral in two weeks. Now, young Philip Marsh has gone missing as well. It is reported that he was playing out by the banks where he always played when he fell into the river. His parents had come an hour later and their dog was crying on the banks. They found the boys tattered and destroyed shirt hanging from a tree branch, but they didn’t find the boy. Several suspects have appeared who may have taken the two boys, but no one can be sure. More on this story as new information emerges. If you know anything, please call us at 994-365-9850.

Put the paper on my tray and stared at the TV, then at the clock. In less than a few seconds I was suddenly reminded of detention a month ago, the detention that started this fucked up game. The game I will now call Slender.