Running. Screaming. You never know when he might come out of the shadows next… Bodies showing up in your backyard faster than you could say 'shoot me'. Someone close to you plays that awful, terrifying game for fun.
You turn around quickly at the sound of your name being screamed out into the night, and you run to your back porch, shotgun loaded and ready to shoot the intruder, when your little sister comes into view. Her opaque emerald eyes glimmering in the motion light, her hand raises up from being held down and she murmurs in German a 'lovely' poem and then falls to the ground, the evil man behind every murder in your country finally where you could see him.
"Slender," you say, his name falling off your tongue and into the dirt in front of you faster than poison down a rat's throat. He looks (or so you think) up at you, that awful expressionless face cocking to the side a little, and your breath catches in your throat at the sight behind him. Someone was running in the forest, away from the terror occurring in your backyard, a small voice calling out to the one you thought you trusted when you two were little.
"Austria!" the voice called out, screaming and making a break for the borders of your country. You raise the shotgun to Slenderman's heart and he—does he try to stop you? He puts a hand on the gun, the voice continuing to screw with your mind, and he takes this opportunity to throw you against a tree on the fence of your yard. You grip the shotgun even tighter, deep gasps falling past your lips. Your time is almost up. "AUSTRIA!" a brunette dashes into the yard, her frying pan up and ready to fly, but Slender throws her to the other end of the enclosed space.
"Any last words?" his evil voice says tauntingly to your conscience. You nod your head and immediately throw your legs up, kicking him straight in the face, hearing a crack and you smirk in satisfaction. Maybe those lessons Germany gave you while you were young really did help…
Blond hair flies in every which way they want as Slender stands back up, never lacking the limp you gave him. He throws a dirty glance (again, if he had a face, you would've laughed at him) and you smirk upon the black blood oozing out of a gash on his cheek. He never backs down, or at least, that's what they told you when you were little, warning you the folklore character that was 'Der Groβmann' would get you at night if you dared strayed out of the sight of the lights of the protective town. You're quaking in your military-issued boots, the metal of the gun becoming slippery and you feel oddly…incapacitated. You take a quick look around to see what was around you, and you see the real danger in front of you.
The house. The very same house where the folktale was created in… You take a moment to bring this all to memory, and then you remember: the people shouting profanities in German and French into the air carelessly, and your Mutti working helplessly, her pen scrawling across the paper at a faster speed than you could write now, and your Vater standing over her, reading over her shoulder. You remember being out in the woods late one night with a few friends, flashlights in hand, ready for a game of flashlight tag.
Memories flood back into your mind faster than Niagara Falls, and you remember how you and Slender met and how he started haunting you to no end. Your beam of light from the flashlight you held in your small hands landed on a figure taller than your eldest brother, Gilbert, and your other older brother, Ludwig, let out a very loud and annoying scream to warn the other boys that there was a danger ahead. You didn't listen, you never did. You just kept running through the forest, determined to find your way back home, only to bump into the folk-legend that the townspeople and your mother created.
The all-mighty, all-powerful Slenderman.
