*Author's Notes: I do NOT own the copyright to the game "Slender," all of those rights go to the respectable owners of the title and creators of the game. This is all just suggestion for a storyline, none of this is confirmed 'canon' by the creator, but seeing as the game as of yet only has a loose sort of plot, this plays around with it. Anyways, this is chapter 1. Hope you enjoy!*
Slender
Her first thought was 'cold,' followed soon after by 'dark' and 'windy.' Hearing the sound of a clinking chain fence behind her, she opened her eyes. Her suspicions were confirmed following her view of the forest stretching in front of her as far as her eyes could see on all sides, except where the fence bisected it. She had a camera resting in her right hand at her side, and the blinking red light betrayed the fact that it was recording upside-down at the moment. She lifted it up and opened the screen, seeing simply double of the scene already in front of her. Sighing, she shut the screen and switched the light on, illuminating the darkness only slightly. The trees rustled and swayed, releasing their dying leaves from their branches only to have them deposited on the ground below. With a satisfying crunch, she began to walk.
There seemed to be a sort of path through the leaves, leading her to believe others had been here recently and she was not entirely lost. Hiding trees were revealed by the camcorder's flashlight slowly and eerily as she shuffled down the path, and after ten minutes she came across a car. 'Finally,' she thought, stepping up to the car. Peering in the window, she noticed there were no keys in the ignition and there seemed to be nobody nearby. With her heart already hanging heavy from feeling stranded, she didn't seem surprised. She turned to walk away from the car, and as she did her light caught a flash of something on the trunk of the car. Curiously she walked over to the area where she noticed the abnormality. A single piece of copy paper lay on the trunk, and there were telltale signs of the paper being written on. She flipped the paper and a strange drawing stared up at her: an egg-shaped oval with two X's on it, with what looked like what was supposed to be a body attached to it, and a message scrawled around the drawing. "Always watches… no eyes?" she read, heavily confused. She put the note in her jacket pocket and almost immediately regretted it, as a pulsing 'thud' resonated through her skull continuously. Swearing, and with the feeling she was being watched, she began walking down the path again.
She was running now, toward a house in the distance across an open field. A few minutes earlier she had spotted it, and in her excitement she took off full sprint toward the long-awaited building. Peering in, she called out "Hello?" into the tile-lined blackness. On the far wall, she noticed another one of the papers like the one in her jacket pocket. As soon as she remembered having the paper, she was hit full-force with the pulsing thud that she had seemed to forget about up until that exact second. She stepped over to the paper on the wall, pissed off and out of breath from the running. On the paper was another drawing of the egg headed suit, this time a more frantic message written on it. "Run… run… run… run… run… run…" Her breathing started to get heavier and heavier, her fear becoming tangible to the point that she could taste it in her mouth. She stepped out of the house, still facing the paper. When she turned around and looked into the forest, she finally relaxed. Until she saw the man behind the tree with the blank face and suit. White noise built up inside her head and she passed out.
"Yo, Anja, wake up. Class is about to start." She opened her eyes and looked up at the blurry face looming over her. Stretching and yawning, she pulled herself off of the table and let her eyes go into focus. "Destry…" Destry was leaned against the table, smiling down at her from his makeshift throne. "How long was I asleep?" she asked, recalling the strange dream she had just been woken from. "Well, judging from the position of the sun and with Mercury in retrograde…" "Quit being an ass. Just tell me." He laughed, "Ok, ok. About twenty minutes. It gave me time to walk Axie to school." Axie was Destry's little sister, and for only being in elementary school she was extremely bright. "Alright, everyone quiet down. We're about to observe optical illusions, so you all need to relax your 'chi,'" came a voice from outside the door to the classroom. Professor Dent stepped into and across the room with an elegance and grace only achieved through careful coordination and concentration. He wasn't a true professor, never had been, but his students during his first year of teaching three years ago were misinformed and always referred to him as 'Professor.' The name stuck. Destry swiftly took his seat next to the still-groggy Anja, his childhood friend of almost ten years. She smiled at the Professor as he passed, and he almost had to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing at her tousled hair and half-opened eyes. She flipped him the bird, still smiling, and the gesture was kindly returned. A student dimmed the lights in the room as the Professor switched the projector to the 'on' position and the illusion slowly came into focus on the screen in front of the room.
Sometime later, toward the end of the class, the Professor explained the next image to be shown. "The last picture of the day is not an optical illusion, but more of a 'drawn paradox,' if you will. I thought of it a few days ago after… I guess it would be called a dream. Any who, here ya go." As the image was put onto the screen, time seemed to slow for Anja. 'This can't be happening,' she thought, 'no… not this…' On the screen was an altogether too-familiar drawing: an egg-shaped oval with two X's on it, with what looked like what was supposed to be a body attached to it, and a message scrawled around the drawing. Anja stood up, wide-eyed and open mouthed, and stared back and forth between the note and the Professor with clear disbelief. "Um… Anja? Something wrong?" the Professor asked, with a slight glint of either curiosity or recognition in his eyes. "I… I…" Destry coolly put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm fine," she said, with a breath of relief as Destry's hand seemed to release her tension like an airbrake on a truck right after it stops at a light. She sat back down slowly, never taking her eyes off the projected note. After a long pause, the Professor switched to projector off the student returned the normal state of the lights, marking the end of the lesson. "Anja, are you sure you're alright?" Destry asked in a hushed tone. "That note… that note…" "What about it?" She drew in a long breath and finally told him. "I saw the exact same one in my dream before class started." The bell rang and anything Anja would have said after that was lost in the shuffling and talking of students going to their next classes.
School let out, and Destry had to run to catch up to Anja for their usual walk home. She was acting strange, on every other day she would wait for him at a street corner and tease him about being late every time. Finally walking beside her, and despite being out of breath, he asked her what was going on. "I don't know, honestly, I've just been on edge today… I felt like someone was watching me up until now…" "Let's just get home, we can talk more about it there." Destry's mother worked all day, not getting home until after he was asleep, and his father had been dead for about as long as he had known Anja. They stepped into his empty house as they did every afternoon, the same routine as it had been since middle school: go to Destry's house, study, and part ways when Destry needed to pick up Axie from her school's club activities. They went immediately to the living room and set their bags down, jumping into their homework as soon as it hit the table. "Gah, being a junior sometimes blows… all this work," Destry whispered, mostly to himself. He found himself nabbing glances up at Anja whenever he could. He always had been attracted to her shoulder-length, straight black hair and her contrast of bright blue eyes and fair skin. Today she had some color in her cheeks, presumably from stress or uncertainty from the event in their art class. He excused himself to the bathroom for a few minutes and, upon arrival, let his emotion flow. Gripping the sink, he stared at himself in the mirror and tried to compare himself to Anja's soft beauty. Staring, he noted his 'emo-cut' dark brown hair and his black-irised eyes, and he nearly lost his temper. There was no way to compare him to her; in his eyes she was too good for him. He walked back to the living room and decided to finally bring up the day's events to Anja. "What exactly happened today? What did you dream about in those twenty minutes?" She looked up at him with a slightly surprised and very distressed look on her face. "Why… exactly do you want to know?" "You've never acted like this before. In all of the nine years we've been friends you've been normal. Mostly." She slapped his arm jokingly. "Hey, watch it. I wish I knew exactly what happened, just… when Professor Dent put up that picture, I couldn't believe it… in my dream, if found the exact same note on the trunk of an abandoned car in this forest. I decided to put it in my jacket pocket, and as soon as I did there was this pain… a pulsating, thudding pain, deep in my head. That's when I felt like I was being followed in the dream." Destry very well could have told her to stop, that it was simply insane, but he instead asked her to start from the beginning so he could understand.
Once she finished to the point where she passed out in the dream, Destry stood up and offered to get her some water. "Please…" Her voice had wavered multiple times during the discussion, and she could use the refreshment. Destry came back with the water, and she gulped it down gratefully before even saying "Thank you." He got up to take the cup back into the kitchen, and she watched him walk away. 'He's gotten so tall…' she found herself thinking, despite seeing him every day. Comparing his almost six foot, one inch body with her meager five foot, four inch one was almost cruel to her, but she did so anyway to sort of 'indulge' every once in a while. Destry walked back into the living room, and she noted his thick-rimmed glasses he pulled off so well, making him an almost picture perfect hipster. "Sorry for spilling all of that on you…" she almost regretted telling him about her dream, despite how attentive he had been throughout the whole description and the completely serious tone he had used any time he had a comment to make or question to ask. "Why? I wanted you to tell me, don't be sorry. I'm sorry for bringing it up, so if anyone should be sorry it should be me." She stared at him with fearful eyes. "I… no, it's… its fine, really. Neither of us should be sorry over this, that's just stupid." Destry smiled to her with a completely sincere look that warmed her up inside and filled her with relief. "We should start picking up; Axie should be getting out soon." Silently, the two of them gathered their belongings and stepped back into the chilly outdoors. Destry was the first to break the silence, noting the seasonally cold weather. "Already October, huh? Hell, seems like yesterday you and I were wearing shorts and a t-shirt, trying to beat the summer heat." Anja chuckled a bit. "What, not a cold weather type person? You look so natural in a jacket, I thought you would be." "Yeah, well, you're mistaken." They reached the street corner where Anja had to part ways with Destry to go home. Usually, the goodbye was short and sweet, a typical "see ya later" type thing, but today unfortunately seemed different. She had shared the most unsettling dream she had ever had with him, and it just seemed wrong to just leave. The two of them simply stood at the corner, every now and again a car passing by, and time seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, a church bell rang off in the distance, and Destry needed to get his sister. "Well… bye," Anja said quietly, despite her mind and heart screaming at her to say more. The two stepped away from each other awkwardly and parted ways for the day. Suddenly remembering, Destry called out "If you need anything, call me!" Anja nodded, and continued walking the rest of the way to her house in silence yet again.