A YouTube video was playing. Its title was proclaimed boldly above it: "Final Entry". The bar below indicated that it was more than three-quarters finished. The character called Jay was addressing the camera directly, his expression calm but serious. He looked uncharacteristically self-assured, different from how he normally presented himself to his online audience.
"... While some of what was shown over the course of this series did reflect actual events in a accurate way, a large portion of it was staged, or very heavily edited, for the purpose of presenting to you the kind of story that we wanted you to see," he explained. "The Operator is only ever as real as the idea of him is strong in the minds of those who know of him, and it is not easy for that idea to be planted in a person's mind. Even when it is successfully implanted, it often does not exist long enough to grow into something substantial. For you long-term viewers, the idea of him has been growing inside your minds for some time now, even if you are still not aware of it. He is now as real to you, to all of you, as another human being."
Jay smiled slightly as he concluded, "Our work here is done."
The screen went black, and for a moment the words "Thanks for watching" appeared, followed by the image of the Operator symbol a mere second before the video ended.
The young woman who had been watching slapped her hand down on the table in frustration. "That's it?" She demanded, "That's how it ends? Some bullshit about Slenderman being real to all the Marble Hornets fans now?"
She let out an exasperated sigh and leaned back forcefully in her desk chair, the back of her head coming perilously close to brushing against a figure who had not been there a moment before.
"Who would have thought such an awesome series would have such a crappy ending?"
On the other side of the country, a boy had just finished watching a YouTube video and was about to switch tabs to Facebook, when he noticed something odd in the reflection on his computer screen.
Halfway across the world, another boy had gotten up to go to dinner as his mother had been insisting he do for the past ten minutes, but he found something unexpected blocking his path.
A slightly paranoid young woman checked over her shoulder for the eighth time since she had sat down to watch Marble Hornets videos. This time, however, there was actually something new there.
Two girls clutched at each others arms and began to scream in terror, as they swiveled around to face the thing that stood behind them.
A young man tried desperately to push himself as far away from the thing as possible, but it was too late: the hand reaching towards him was already so close to his face that it blocked most of his vision.
She screamed.
He screamed.
... But it did not make the slightest bit of difference. It could not, not at this point. They already belonged to him.
Every single one.
