This is actually my very first horror story. (The horror poem I published recently was actually written after.) I was very inspired to try this genre after playing "Slender: The Nine Pages" because Slender Man is one freaky dude, and I think I did a decent job. I just tried to keep in mind that less is more….

And I don't own Slender Man, of course.

Bunnies

"Ms. Ferris, I want to thank you again for agreeing to speak with me."

Little Amanda Ferris is just five years old, and it comes as no surprise that she loves to chase the fluffy bunnies through her yard. It's not that she wants to scare them. It's just that they look so very soft, even softer than the stuffed ones her mama and daddy gave her, and bunnies are the best thing to cuddle with, she imagines. The bunnies are all she has, when mama is sleeping or daddy is away, but they always run from her. She has very nice dreams, though, of a day when the bunnies don't run anymore, and they laugh and play in the meadow together. There is not a meadow near her house, just the woods, but she thinks bunnies would like a sunny meadow far better, where they could eat all the soft grass they want.

"I was told you've been having hallucinations and paranoia."

Amanda chases a bunny into the woods one day. Her parents say not to go in there alone, but daddy's not here, and mama can't be bothered from her shows, and if they've forgotten her for now, maybe the things they say no longer count. And besides, the woods reach right up to their house, so it seems impossible to stay out when they seem to already live in it to begin with.

Amanda does think her parents are silly sometimes. Like the time mama wouldn't let her give carrots to her bunnies. They were the stuffed bunnies, the ones that don't run, but mama didn't seem to understand it was all make believe. Amanda, on the other hand, is very good at that. She's only five, after all, but she worries the older she grows, the worse she'll get at make believe, and if that happens, one day, the bunnies won't come to her in her sleep anymore, and they'll never play together again.

Amanda is very afraid of this. More so than anything. Even more than spiders. Well, very nearly about the same as spiders.

"You promise you'll at least try to believe me, right? Promise?"

She runs very far into the woods, and her feet make such a noise on the dry leaves. She lost the bunny, but she knew that it went off this way, and it really was such a cute bunny. But, eventually she has to stop and catch her breath after she surely ran for what felt like many, many miles. The woods are very quiet. She doesn't even hear the birds chirping like they do outside her window. Maybe their mamas and daddies tell them not to go out in the woods, either.

The bunny didn't listen to its parents, though, but neither did she. And that didn't make her naughty if even the bunny did it.

Amanda sticks out her lower lip, just the way mama tells her not to, because it makes her look like she's pouting, but she's not. She just wishes she found the bunny. It would find her really very nice, if it got to know her.

"I first saw him as a child."

When she turns around, she almost misses the man standing there because he is tall and thin like the trees. He wears a black suit and necktie, but he has no face, just a pale smoothness where all the things you'd expect on a person should be.

"He's been following me ever since."

Her eyes start to hurt, and she sees spots, black spots, all around the edges of her vision, that won't go away even when she blinks. She wants him to go away, too.

"He? Who is he?"

"I-I was out chasing the bunnies," she says. "I like to chase them. I just wish they wouldn't run."

The man doesn't respond, not that she could see a way for him to do so. You needed a mouth to talk. At least, that's how it always worked for her.

"I don't know."

The blackness in her eyes has closed in further, and she feels something warm on her face, and she wipes blood from beneath her nose.

"I think," he began, in a voice that was so much deeper than daddy's, "that you and I are going to become very good friends."

"He's…he's always watching…"

It's probably been a good three decades since Amanda had last been out in the woods. She hadn't been out of the hospital for much less. She watches the trees go by in the headlights as the radio plays some random tune she only half-hears and only half-listens to. Her husband is driving, which is for the best, because she's never learned how. They are going to visit mama, if she even remembers her now that her mind's gone. Daddy went away a few years ago. She doesn't think he's ever coming back.

"Doctor? Doctor, please…I need a tissue. My nose is bleeding."

The headlights flicker, and he tells her it's okay, and he turns off the radio when the voices become jumbled. It's quiet now, except for the hum of the road, until the radio starts up again, but it's nothing but static this time, and it roars in her ears as the headlights blink once more before going out entirely. He jerks the steering wheel, and she would've been thrown forward if her seatbelt hadn't stopped her. The engine hisses, but her husband isn't saying anything. It's dark, and she can hardly see him, but when she opens her mouth to say his name, nothing comes out.

He's out there.

"What do you think will happen if he catches you?"

Amanda is shaking, and she has to jerk on the seatbelt over and over again until it releases her. It is cold when she steps out of the car. She looks back, just once, and blackness overtakes her vision, just for that second, and she turns and starts to run.

"I don't want to talk about it anymore. Please, I…"

"Just a few more questions, and we'll be done. I promise."

She runs for a long time. Her breath turns raw and ragged in her throat, but she can't stop. The partial moonlight filters down through branches and mist and makes the leaves above shimmer where they've been caught in it. She finds the bank of what once was a stream, a deep, narrow bank with only a trickle winding through it and roots like fingers poking through the sides. She slips down into it and huddles there with the cool, damp soil pressed against one elbow. And she waits. She waits for a very long time.

"And every time, you always see this same figure?"

"No, most of the time, I don't see him at all."

"Then, how do you know he's there?"

The woods are silent, not so much as a cricket to be heard, and her eyes can't help but lock onto a bunny lying not far off. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, not on the outside, but it's not moving. She imagined a day when the bunnies wouldn't run anymore, but she didn't think it would be like this.

Her nose starts to bleed, and she lifts her head with jerky motions.

"You just know."

"You didn't think you could run from me forever, did you?"

I hope you enjoyed. I thought it was pretty creepy, and kind of vague, too, but that's the point. I tried very hard to not show too much because I love that kind of horror the most. And they say that Slender Man's presence causes nosebleeds, so that's what that was.…

Anyway, please review and tell me what you think.