Darjil-Kentaar.
Slender Man.
A fitting moniker, as I am thinner than most of my kind. Of course, that is the best my name, as well as any of the words in my language, can be spoken by humans. The true tongue of the skeentesh, The People like Trees, is unpronounceable by human vocal cords.
Not many have learned this. Not many have bothered, for their minds have been filled with too much paranoia to bother trying to understand my presence in this decayed world.
I am of the krayatvar caste. It is my duty-my very being-to protect my people, to find the criminal element and strip their flesh and muscles from their bones. Only then, can the innocents be at peace.
Of course, there are still some criminals even we skeentesh cannot find a way to kill, most of them dimension traveling cretins such as the creature that calls himself Smile Dog. For them, though, there is still no escape from the hands of the law-Tenilk-Tanark, Abattoir's Ark. A device known as the Sešcir, the Light, is held over them just before the switch at the end of the device is flipped and a blue light teleports them to a designated cell within Tenil-Tanark.
But not even my tentacles (which only the krayatvar are born with) and the Sešcir can put him away. The monster in the night, the shadow that even cold-blooded murderers and rapists tell tales of to disturb each other. The most vile creature you could think of, the sea that the river of grieving blood empties into.
Targen-Genock.
The Operator.
The disgusting excuse for a skeentesh is the very offspring of repulsion. He seems to think that he can do the atrocities he does because he consider himself stronger, and therefore capable of doing it. This would not be quite different from the other leeches and psychopaths in my homeworld, were it not for the fact that he enjoys...children.
There is little more precious to a skeentesh than a child. It is the birth of a child that seals a bond between a man and woman. Such things are of no meaning to The Operator, who takes them, tortures them to death, and records their dying screams and leaves the tape behind as his little "calling card", along with carving the Pardtel, the Zero (the insignia which simplifies my faceless species), into the tape recorder. He often leaves notes saying that he enjoyed murdering the innocent child, his twisted ideology believing that he proved the power will of a god by murdering those whose only crime was being weaker than him.
One would say that what he does is...nothing more than common psychopathy. That...he is just another stain on society. That...I am overreacting.
I AM NOT! HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF YOUR ONLY SON WAS ABDUCTED, STRIPPED, AND MOLESTED TO DEATH?! AND THE LITTLE BITCH THAT DID LEFT A NOTE SAYING THAT IT PROVED HIM A DEITY?! HOW WOULD YOU FEEL?!
I...I apologize for my outburst. But my rage-it is what drives me, further towards him, after all that occurred afterwards…
"Enter" High Elektern Selik-Odar growled as I took a deep breath and exhaled, before pushing the door open. You could not blame him;I had always been something of a headache for him.
"So, you at least had the decency to come on time. Please, take a seat, Darjil-Kentaar. Pray that you have had time to plan your upcoming speech."
I did as I was told and slipped onto the chair, taking care to sit incredibly straight so as to at least make a good first impression. I scratched the "suit" on my body. We skeentesh do not actually have clothes, or a dress code for that matter-if we feel like "wearing" what we want to wear, we simply think of it and command our bodies to change "clothes".
"Hopefully, you have remembered just why I called you into my office?" Selik-Odar asked derisively. I was surprised by his level of contempt. Surely, my actions could not have enraged him this greatly.
"You have been concerned with my actions relating to the search for Targen-Genock, yes?" I answered flatly.
"Concerned? Disgusted would be a much better word really! You have chased after this psychopath with reckless abandon, and have led to the deaths of three of your fellow krayatvar! You have broken into several public buildings without an access warrant, and have killed several skeentesh that later turned out to have absolutely no connections to Targen-Genock!" Selik-Odar roared to the point that if he had a mouth, I have no doubt he would have been frothing. I turned my head back twice and saw several krayatvar staring through the frosted glass before continuing with their own business.
"Well, somebody has to look for him! And since all of the other krayatvar are too busy sitting on their asses, killing the common shoplifter and drug dealer, I am the one that has to deal with a true monstrosity! You want me to stop? Then get everyone else to actually do something meaningful by butchering that animal!" I hissed with an edge of annoyance and pure frustration.
"EXCUSE ME?!" Selik-Odar growled, those two words being my only warning of his incoming rant. "How dare you insult your fellow krayatvar? They have worked from dawn to dusk, risked their lives, trying to cleanse this world of its criminal element, and you know what you do? You endanger their lives even further, chasing after some ghost because of a personal vendetta, not caring for the innocents that get caught in your crossfire! You push your comrades to the side because they don't want to go on suicide missions with you, and you have the nerve to call them lazy! You want to become some renegade vigilante, is that what you want?!"
"WHAT IF I DO?!" I screamed, not really thinking about what was coming out of my mouth, anger clouding my judgement. I was not known for being very much of an orator.
Selik-Odar stood up, looking ready to strike me down then and there, before he suddenly switched to a cold, venomous demeanor, his voice a calculating flatline.
"Very well. Your services are no longer needed or wanted, and your right to kill is officially revoked. You are dismissed."
I shot up from the chair, my blood boiling with rage. How could he do this to me? One of his most trusted krayatvar, and his most devoted and relentless. In a final yet meager act of anger, I picked up the chair and threw it into the wall behind Selik-Odar. Before he could react, I turned and stormed out of his office, slamming the door shut behind me. All of the other skeentesh were staring right at me, obviously having heard the brief yet vicious argument that had taken place.
"What are you lazy assholes staring at? Shouldn't you be doing your work for once in your pathetic lives?!" I spat at them, shoving several out of the way and throwing the front doors to the headquarters open.
The Operator was on my mind.
He was the only thing on my mind.
The huge abandoned gray steel factory rotted alone in the middle of the parched desert. For two weeks, I had been gathering as much information on The Operator as I possibly could. Recycled printed reports, informants, archives at libraries. It had been one large paper trail leading to this very factory, where I intended to settle the score for good. Or so I believed.
I slowly pushed open the front door, squeezing myself in so The Operator could not hear me coming in. The place was incredibly dark, to the point that I could barely see my own hands. It smelled of rusty iron, almost like feces. I would have surely wandered around hopelessly before walking into a potential trap of The Operator's, which I have no doubt he had set up in case anyone snuck in. Luckily, a krayatvar is not just born with tentacles. We can open our minds and infiltrate the minds of others to see their memories and thoughts, an easy way of flushing out criminals.
It was uncomfortable to sift through the monster's mind. So many thoughts of glee as he listened closely to the dying screams of children, him reminding them that he was a god because he was willing to kill such "weak" things as them, his pleasure as he licked their cold dead flesh and bathed in their blood-
Ah, yes! There he was. On the third story, in the second-to-left corridor, in the room marked Ψ395. I teleported myself up to the open door, another ability only the krayatvar possessed. This bastard was a pure idiot if he thought his pissy little traps would be of any use against a krayatvar.
I walked into the room, using all my strength to try to not cough from the stench of peeling paint and decaying steel and wood. Looking around, I became very confused, even frustrated. Where was he?! He was right here in this room when I was searching for him, he couldn't have just vanished into thin air! I spun around and looked behind me, uneasily turning back to the room. It felt as if though the shadows themselves were alive and eager to trap me here. A chill ran up my spine. It hadn't felt this cold before during my short time in this factory.
Suddenly, without warning, the door slammed shut behind me with a nerve racking KLANG!, like the sound of chains. And that was when I finally saw him;he looked similar to me, really. No face, no hair on his neck, head, or hands, a suit, and standing at about eight feet tall. The only difference was that his body was more muscular and bulkier, and he had no tentacles. Perhaps he had taken such an appearance so as to mock me.
"Well, well...look who just couldn't leave well enough alone!" The Operator tsked. My blood began to boil;so, this bitch wanted to play games? Well, then I was going to be playing hardball with his skull.
"I didn't come here to socialize, you piece of perverted, twisted shit!" I snarled, trying to keep him laid back and unexpecting of my upcoming attack.
"No, I suppose not. After all, if you can't even make idle conversation with your own boss, what chance do you have a simple little fellow like me?" he asked in a mockingly friendly tone.
That did it. With a cry of rage and hatred, I teleported in front of him, my arm already outstretched and my fist balled up, ready to punch the front of his skull into a fine powder. My fist met the air instead, as he stepped to the side and, in a flash, was on my right of the room. I cursed myself for not remembering that The Operator was capable of "flash-stepping", an ability making him able to move faster than the naked eye could see. Just as I turned my head, he sprinted forward with a yell, punching me in the head and sending me flying through the wall, showering me in peeling paint and thick combs of dust.
The leftmost side of my face began restructuring itself from the blow as my tentacles pushed me back up, just in time as The Operator sped through the hole in the wall. I teleported behind him, making him trip over the table in the room. I leaped into the air and came down with a hammer fist to the back of his skull, laughing as I heard the bones in his skull shatter and crumple. I slashed his back four times with my bottom two tentacles before stomping on his spine. I reveled in The Operator's shriek of pain, even though we both knew that such wounds were of little concern to the skeentesh and could heal within a matter of minutes at most.
He telekinetically forced me off of him, fracturing several of the bones in my back as I landed. Still healing and struggling to get back up, The Operator telekinetically lifted the table and launched it at me. Time seemed to slow down around me as I just barely managed to stop it with my own telekinesis, a battle of mental strength occurring between The Operator and I, the table nearly being pulled apart as it was tugged in two directions.
"Why don't we just be gentleman, huh? Shake hands, put these petty grudges aside. You look like you need to lighten up!" The Operator laughed as he struggled, spitting blood from his ornukan, the pocket on his left side used for breathing, drinking, and feeding, the skeentesh version of a mouth.
I knew that he was trying to get me to lose my concentration so he could pull the table back in his favor and shred me in half. I was truly appalled at how stupid he thought I was, to give in to his tricks. Alas, The Operator was not a very mentally strong individual, seeing as to how I was constantly tugging at the table and he was occasionally pulling it back.
At last, I tore the table from his hold and flung it at him at approximately six hundred and seventy geliaks. Lucky enough for him, then, that he managed to leap out of the way just in time, lest he would have been cleanly sheared horizontally in half. I would have enjoyed seeing his halved remains.
Struggling back to his feet, The Operator clenched his right hand into a tight fist, his knuckles turning brown from the sheer grip. If he was anything besides psychopathic, it was that The Operator made himself much too obvious.
He ran straight at me, a black and white blur as his right arm stretched forward, ready to deliver a punch capable of splitting my skull in half and and sending my brain flying of its stem. Alas, his obviousness made his fruitless attempts all the more laughable, as I teleported right behind him just as he was about to send me flying back.
"Wha-?"
The sound of The Operator's spine tearing in half as I impaled him with a tentacle was music indeed;he looked down, before turning his head, his skin even more pale than usual. His ornukan was now practically vomiting blood as he slid off the tentacle, blood oozing from the hole in his back and torso.
"Perhaps...I should savor your final sounds;record them, maybe?" I suggested mockingly, referring to his modus operandi. To my shock, his response was not one of a dying moan, but rather laughter as he pulled out his recording device. His thumb pressed the red button on the top corner, and even though it made a buzzing sound, I saw that there was no tape inside.
Why should I go alone? Why not come with me? We can hold hands, see the sights of the other side...true lovers die hand-in-hand" The Operator giggled.
"What the fuck are you talking about?!" I screamed at him, picking him up by the shoulders and shaking him as the room suddenly felt warmer-a lot warmer.
"Oh, you! Don't you know how a hydron can be activated? Oh, surely, you know!" The Operator giggled.
The son of a bitch-he had set this up! There was a hydron under this factory, just one of which was capable of reducing up to twenty miles to mere ash, and hot enough to reduce an individual to their basic particles.
I suddenly pressed my hands onto his head, ready to crush his skull and teleport away, leaving The Operator to be vaporized. Unfortunately, fate was once again turning its back on me, as the white light of the exploding hydron suddenly erupted from below, moving in like a wall, ready to consume us. I teleported away as fast as I could, only to remember that I was still holding onto The Operator, and that anything carried during teleportation was also teleported away.
A small amount of myself and The Operator still remained in the room as we were being teleported away when the hydron blast hit us. The sheer heat, the flames-it ripped through me, stabbing at my nerves like a thousand knives, biting at my flesh;it was something I never wish to experience ever again. But what was even worse was the explosion tearing into my teleportation. I shrieked madly, my whole being feeling so wrong as I flew through the slipstream, swirls of light and vague images flashing by me before I lost consciousness.
I still do not know for how long I was blacked out. But when my vision returned, I received my first hint that I was no longer in my realm. As I pushed myself up off the ground, I saw several skinny brown trees with weak branches, with nary a leaf on them. The ground was dry and sandy like the desert was, but there was much less sand here, and several weeds were taking root.
I looked around and took in my surroundings in full. For miles upon miles, there was nothing but the dessicated desert and a weak tree here and there. Perhaps I was teleported to the Nybarng plains, I had thought to myself. I cursed after that though;the Nybarng plains were on the other side of my planet.
But how wrong I turned out to be. As I cautiously walked through the vast plain, with my mind outstretched to look for any potential danger, my mind was suddenly filled with the most bizarre, outright incomprehensibly thoughts I had ever touched. Even The Operator's mind was less puzzling than whatever was thinking this!
As I swiftly turned to the left in the direction of the thoughts, I saw a herd of…things. They were rather crouched over, with thin arms in front and long yet obviously powerful legs that the creatures seemed to be hopping with. Their eyes were black and beady, and their ears were pointed upwards. They had large wet black noses and light brown fur. On several of their stomachs were pouches with what appeared to be smaller versions of the things in them. In time, I would eventually come to learn that these creatures were called kangaroos, but I did not know that yet.
The creatures suddenly stopped and looked directly at me;they seemed to sniff the air intensely. as I readied my tentacles and fists in case these things decided to attack, one of them decided to test its luck and hopped up to me, before it made its final and most stupid decision:it actually tried to kick me in the gut! Alas, it was too slow for the natural reflexes of a skeentesh, and, faster than the eye could blink, I tore its legs off. It fell to the ground, releasing a painfully shrill screech that nearly shattered my eardrums, while blood flowed from the stumps. I smashed its own legs onto its head, instantly shattering it skull. The other kangaroos immediately bounded away, hopping on their legs as I looked back down at my kill, and then realized what I had done:I had left the little one all alone now, defenseless.
The baby kangaroo was still in its mothers pouch, its barely open and only several bristles of fur upon its newborn pink body. It was clear that it would die a painful death by starvation and dehydration since it was too weak to even leave the pouch by itself. As much as I hated to accept the fact, I knew that it now deserved a much quicker and more humane death. I grabbed its thin neck and made it looked to the right before I grabbed the head and made it spin to the left, snapping its neck. I dropped the baby and fell to my knees;though I believed in no gods, I still prayed to whatever may have listened to me for this murder of a child, even if it was euthanasia.
After approximately four hours of silent prayer, I stood up, dusted off my knees and ankles, and continued my trek through this increasingly bizarre landscape. The sun was beginning to set and the sky turned a shimmering mixture of purple and orange, the stars beginning to come alive slowly. Above me, I heard a rough flapping, and saw a hideous hair-covered demon with wings several feet long and constructed of pure leather. Of course, I would learn that these things were known as bats and were simply ugly animals, not true demons. I heard a barking and turned to see a wolf-like beast with pricked ears and orange fur. It looked somewhat like Smile Dog, though obviously not taking the form of a Siberian Husky and not smiling like a psychopath. The dingo, as I eventually learned, seemed to sniff me from far off and then turned and ran, howling with apparent terror and its tail between its legs.
Through my whole trek in this forsaken prison, there was not a single drop of water. If there were any sapient creatures here, how could they possibly survive? I was sure that those demon bats would snatch them from the ground and feast on them in the air, their blood becoming the rain.
After approximately seven hours of walking through this strange land, the night had taken over and I decided to rest against a nearby tree, which was about two feet shorter than myself. I picked up a worm and shoved it into my ornukan. I didn't realize until after I had digested the worm that I was suddenly starving. And soon, I found out that I was not the only one.
I heard the sand being crushed from several feet away and lazily peeked out from my slumped position. These beings were unlike any I had ever seen;they were muscular yet slender, many of them having long black and white hair. Their skin was black and their noses large, with prominent white markings on the faces of who I eventually learned were the men. In their hands were primitive spears and shields made of dry wood.
"Hello!" I called in the skeentesh language as I stood up and waved my right arm. These people halted instantly and seemed to size me up for a good minute before one of them shouted something incomprehensible and several of the women screamed and hid their children behind them. The man who had shouted pulled back his right arm before he hurled his spear. It went right through my stomach and poked out from my back, just barely missing my spine.
I was then enraged. How could these barbarians try to kill me when I had simply been trying to get their attention, and to ask where I was? My hate turned towards the man who had thrown the spear. I tore the spear out, the wound already healing rapidly, before I threw it right where his central chest cavity was. I enhanced the power of the throw with my telekinesis, and the spear tore right through his chest and ribcage before it burst from his back and fell to the ground, the upper column of his spine also slowly falling out. The rest of the group shrieked in terror and immediately sprinted away. And so, my experiences with humanity had begun.
For all these millennia, I have run into these beings that call themselves humans. They have no idea how to react to another intelligent creature, not even one trying to find his way home. They run and shriek in terror, and in some cases, try their best to attack and kill me. Every time it looks like I will make contact, they turn tail and run. Their fear and utter paranoia seems to grow whenever I am around, a product of their own inability to understand what I am, and how I came to their world.
Their methods of law are also subpar. I have come across their criminals thousands of times-rapists, mass murderers, child molesters, arsonists. They always never get caught, escape, or are let free due to their overly soft judicial systems. I peer into their minds, and I find fantasy worlds consisting of torture and blood. It sickens me that a man who has molested and murdered an innocent girl is allowed to walk freely amongst innocents. But, I find them. I tried to send a message to their kind by impaling them, tearing their organs out of their bodies, just generally making them feel as much pain as they made their victims feel. But of course, humanity is too soft, and views me as the true monster even though I clean up their society.
And then, there are the delusional and demented ones. They know well of me, and see me as a god;funny how that is. But it stops being funny when they believe I am giving them orders and they begin stalking, mentally torturing, and even murdering others because they believe I told them something. They call themselves proxies, and believe that they are prophets spreading the word. Somewhat like a pathetic attempt at being like Smile Dog.
But humanity is not a completely rancid collection of primates;no species is. In that, I find them to be somewhat like my people. I remember the time I was wandering through this city called Stirling, which is coincidentally in the same continent known as Australia that I ended up in when I first came to this world. I watched as over a dozen children played in this area humans call a playground. An adult woman, who I presume was a parent of one of the children, lifted a device called a camera and took a photograph;I was standing there in the shade of a tree, with several children sitting around me. They actually seemed quite eager to learn who I was, seeing as to how I looked nothing like them. I tried as best as I could to explain myself without terrifying their young minds. I do not know why, but when that woman took her picture, I did not appear in the lens.
That same day, as night was approaching, I was scanning through a stand selling newspapers. The central top headline instantly struck me:
FOURTEEN CHILDREN FOUND MISSING LATE THIS AFTERNOON.
I was utterly shocked. How did this kidnapping happen so quickly? Was there someone watching me? That seemed to be the only explanation as to how fourteen children suddenly vanished after I was at the playground. A week later, I found out I was right.
As I walked amongst the trees and shrub, I noticed a peculiar scent that seemed to be not far from me. I decided to walk up to the front door of this library, pushing myself up a tree. It was late in the afternoon, and there was nary a person around. I teleported myself into the library, and immediately I was confronted by the smell of smoke. I turned to my right and pushed past several bookshelves before being greeted by the thick black soot and ash. If I had a mouth on my head, I would have undoubtedly started choking.
I made my way through the smoke, thankful that my vision did not require eyes and was therefore one hundred times stronger than the sight of a human. The orange and yellow flames became clearer and clearer, twisting through the librarian's lounge and hungrily eating at the tiled floor and beige walls. I thought I could see something through the fire, like several little squirming entities…
"I WANT HOME!" I heard a child scream.
The children! They were the ones in there, about to be burned to death;I had to get them out of there right now, or else, from what I saw, they would be quickly burned alive. I kicked down the screen door leading into the lounge and slammed my fist into one of the red Emergency Sprinkler activators, and immediately, water showered from the ceiling and hit the ground. I wondered why the smoke had not already activated the sprinklers. I then teleported myself into the middle of the ring of fire, where the children were.
"LOOK! It's the Slender person!" one the children, a boy with deep green eyes and matted blond hair, gasped with first shock, and then glee. The other children either cheered or looked upon me with awe.
"Please, stay calm" I urged them as I gathered three under each of my arms and one wrapped in each of my eight tentacles. I should have said the same thing to myself as I looked at the floor...and saw the Pardtel scratched into a tile. I literally screamed out loud enough that several nearby windows broke. He did this!
"Is everything okay, Mr. Slender?" a little girl, who could not have been more than seven, asked me, her face covered with soot.
"Do not worry about me" I simply told her before I teleported myself and the children out of the library. I heard the sound of sirens approaching from several blocks away. I laid the children down.
"Go, now. Find your families" I told them before I teleported myself far away.
Now, ever since that fateful day, I spend every second and day of my life searching for him. The Operator. He had been teleported to this world with me. And now, I shall not stop wandering until I find and kill him for good, and then, find my way back home. But until then, there is little purpose for me but to wander.
I come now upon a city, one filled with lights and the constant honking of the horns of cars. In one of the human languages, its name means "City of Angels". Though, having known humanity for so long, I expect anything but…
(NEXT ISSUE:A struggling, down on his luck Los Angeles newspaper reporter is called in to write about a strange new vigilante...a grotesque vigilante, one who brutally kills his victims and who eyewitnesses can only describe as tall, thin, and wearing a suit. Who-or what-is he? All this in Slender Man #1:News Story of the Year.)