Slenderman cannot be owned
No child should ever be able to remember the day of their birth. But she did. She remembered from the moment she opened her pale, blue-grey eyes for the first time and saw her mother's face. She remembered her father looking down at her with hidden disdain.
She remembered seeing the tall man standing in the corner. He was wearing a suit. A nice black one with a black tie and a white dress shirt underneath. The newborn girl had giggled and reached out to him then, making his head tilt slightly. It wasn't until that point she noticed he didn't have a face, but she didn't care.
Then she had suddenly been whisked away, the people in white spouting words she didn't know. The girl cried for the tall man, for her mother as they strapped her down and slid her into a large tube. The loud wumping sound it made not a minute later made her scream all the more.
When the newborn was finally brought back to her mother she clung to her so tightly her weak muscles seemed like they might snap. She didn't notice the tall man disappear.
They named her Skyler. Skye, for short. Her father disliked her from the start. In his mind, she was a burden, just another mouth to feed. There were times he wanted to rip her straight black hair from her skull. Her mother was oblivious to this due to her own "condition". The woman seemed to have a split personality, going from smiling at the child in one moment to screaming at her the next. Despite this, Skye still loved them.
She enjoyed it when the tall man came to visit her too. Sometimes she would be lying in her crib with her eyes closed, and then she would open them and he would be there. Other times she would be playing with her toys when she would look up and he would be standing in the corner. He was always watching her. Skye would giggle and try and get the tall man to play with her, but he never would. He would just stand there.
Watching.
Things continued like that until Skye's fifth birthday.
She had been there when the stranger came up to them as they left the movie theater that night. He had pushed her out of the way hard enough to make her skull smash against the wall. She saw him hit her mother, cried out when the woman hit the ground. The man took her purse, her necklace, her wedding ring.
Then he pulled out a gun.
Skye could only watch as her mother's knees burst into disfigured red masses of tissue and bone. Her elbows exploded. As the woman screamed in pain he finally put a bullet through her head, ending the torture. The child could remember staring down the barrel of the weapon, but after that there was nothing.
Nothing but waking up in a hospital with the tall man standing nearby.
Her father began hating her all the more, blaming her for her mother's death and the ridiculous hospital bill. He took up drinking as a form of "stress relief".
Sometimes he would vanish for a day, leaving the child to fend for herself until he came back with a beer bottle and a hangover. Sometimes the tall man would come and keep her company those days, but not usually.
This time girl had been huddled against her bed when he appeared, head tilted. Skye looked up at him, dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. She didn't want to sleep. She didn't want to see her mother die again.
"Hi." The tall man nodded slightly in acknowledgement. "Will you...Will you play with me?" He stood completely still as he always did when asked that question. Skye cast her eyes sadly downwards and drew her knees closer to her chest. Then there was a faint rustling that made her look up again. All of her toys (at least the ones her father hadn't destroyed in a fit of drunken rage) had assembled themselves in front of her. There was her drawing kit, her stuffed raccoon, Lincoln logs, a small blue ball, the worn alphabet blocks she still held onto... PLAY
"What's your name?" It was a question that she'd never asked him before, never having seen a purpose for it until now. Perhaps That was why he seemed surprised, his body tensing for a bare moment. Then the blocks shifted, clacking against each other as they moved on the carpeted flooring.
SLENDERMAN
It made Skye smile slightly as she scribbled on the page. When she finished, she held it out to the male.
"For you." If he was surprised before, he was stunned now. It took several minutes for him to respond. Something seemed to uncoil and rise up from his back, slowly reaching forward over his shoulder. It looked like a thin tendril of condensed black smoke that was apparently solid enough to grab the paper from the child's hands and hold it in front of his head. It was a simple hand-drawn picture of him and Skye holding hands, a few words written in child's scrawl beneath.
For Slenderman. My best friend.
The tall man abruptly vanished. It scared the girl, making her think she'd upset him somehow. But then the blocks started moving again, drawing her attention to the phrase they spelled out.
THANK YOU
This is my first attempt at writing and publishing a story. Suggestions would be welcome, flames can be tolerated. Whether I continue this piece is up to you.