A/N:

No Alice is not an OC, she's my version of the killer from the Alice Killings story. And the 'Emily' mentioned in this is also from the Creepypasta story 'Emily'. Go fig…

And onwards to chapter two…

"I'm not doing it."

Jeffery…

"No."

Prey tell why not…

"He's an idiot and I'll end up killing him!"

No you won't…

"Do you really want to take that risk, Slendy?"

Toby head clicked from one side to the other as he watched the disagreement bounce back and fore. After a while, he folded his arms and glared pointedly as Jeff, "You don't like me very much, do you?"

For a moment, Jeff eyed him dejectedly before turning back to Slender, "You see? It's taken him this fucking long to realise a blatantly obvious fact!"

This particular disagreement boiled down to the fact that Ticci-Toby was meant to be accompanying Jeff on his trip to the outside. Slender had been watching the people of the outside, and a particular group had caught his attention. There were many, they were immoral, they were cruel; and their time was due to run out in a matter of hours. But due to the amount of future victims and knowing that they would no doubt put up a fight, Slender concluded that it would be more effective to send two. And as Jeff was still in need of practice to control his mentality switch from public to private and Toby not being outside for almost a fortnight, they seemed the best choices.

But personality-wise, they couldn't have been more ill-matched. Jeff clenched his fist and took a shuddery breath, anger twitching behind his eyes, "I work alone. You know that…"

"So do I." Toby nodded, "So we'll work alone like normal, just on the same job in the same place at the same time."

Jeff growled irritably and aimed his blade at his unfortunate partners face, "Look at what you're pairing me with, Slender! Just look! If we go outside then only one of us is coming back alive and I'm telling you right now I don't plan in dying tonight!"

"Good plan…" Toby muttered with a hint of sarcasm, only infuriating Jeff further.

Enough of this… The silky voice of their mentor demanded, his towering form looming over them menacingly, You either obey, or face the consequences…

The pair glanced at one another quizzically, "Such as?" Jeff urged.

Slender tilted his marble-like head to the side, Do you really want to find out…?

"No thanks, Slendy." Toby answered for them, despite his mask putting on the widest grin of innocence he could muster up and holding out a hand eagerly, "Address please!"


Shad wafted through the woodwork and into the room beyond it, sitting on the sofa beside the morose figure of Jack. A sense of pride swelled within him as he had overheard that Jeff was forced into taking another sudden job. Serves him right really for pushing his luck. No one went outside without Slender's say so. And Slender never said so unless there was a job to be done. When outside, the world was yours for a night, as long as the job was done by the end of it. And Jeff needed to learn that. That's more or less the reason why Shad grew so irritable with Alice's procrastination. Why wait to finish the job right at the end of the night? Wouldn't it make much more sense to get it over with, and then spend your freedom doing something to move on from it before being called back once again? But then again, everyone to their own.

And besides, it wasn't as if the nightlife of his… what should he call them? After all this time he'd never found a word for them. Not friends for definite, colleagues seemed too official, housemates seemed so infantile; so he just went with 'others'. So as he was internally monologing; it wasn't as if the nightlife of the others was of any interest to him. He was a tracker. He observed those he was ordered to from the shadows, and reported back to Slender. Without him, Slender wouldn't have half of the jobs he does. And Shad felt proud of that.

He was efficient in his work, and didn't take kindly to those around him abusing it. Like Alice procrastinating. Like Jeff mocking it. Like Jack fearing it. All of it was just irksome and yet… Yet he couldn't help but feel hypocritical in some sense. The amount of times he found himself wondering for his own purposes was almost embarrassing. But, he refused to let himself dwell on it. It wasn't productive at all. A sigh escaped him as he felt a rare glimmer of something inside of him as he wondered what she would be doing at this moment.

"Soon, Emily…" he breathed.

"What was that?" Jack asked quietly, looking up momentarily.

"Mind your own business."


Jeff lowered his hood as he and Toby entered the gloom-shrouded street. This was it. This was where they were stationed for the night. The knife wielder had deliberately blanked out the reasoning behind his particular killing, he figured that if he knew why Slender thought that people should die, then he was going to start developing his own opinions and that would put himself at risk. And besides, why should there be a reason behind a decent kill? No, this wasn't his public character talking, this was him. If he was in character, then he wouldn't go right for the designated house, he'd stop at each one beforehand on the way. Why? Just because…

"Got the address?" he asked.

Toby waved a scrap of paper in his face before pocketing it, "All here; the Number Nine Nightmares!"

"The number nine what?"

"Nightmares. It's got a ring to it, don't ya think?"

"The Number Nine Nightmares… Okay, here's what's going to happen from this point on," Jeff ordered, pointing the tip of his knife to Toby's chest, "You're not going to say a word. From this moment until we finish the job, not a single fucking word is going to come out of that jacked up little mouth of yours, got it?" Toby just stared at him blankly, making his eye start to twitch, "Do you understand or not?"

Toby looked conflicted before finally choosing to speak, raising his arms desperately, "You just told me not to speak, make up your mind!"

"Oh shut up…" Dropping his shoulders irritably, Jeff stormed down the street, "I'm going to fucking kill Slendy."

The masked boy of barely nineteen jogged a little to keep up with him, using his newfound order of silence to be a good way of getting into the frame of mind for the job. He pulled out his hatchet from the loop of his belt and started making practice swings. He remembered past victims, and how they were so loud. He didn't like them being too loud; loud was good if it was fun, but when it wasn't it just freaked him out.

They stopped at a door numbered with a metallic '9' and Jeff looked at his partner curiously, "I'll go through here and look around before making my way up, you get in through an upstairs window and make your way down. Ready for this?" he asked, his voice getting pitchy with unnerving excitement.

In answer, Toby cracked his head sickeningly to an awkward angle, hatchet in hand. Something about this door wasn't right He raised a gloved finger to his lips and let out a skin-crawling signature "Shhhhh…"


"And you carry the one, then what do you get?"

Trixie watched her sixteen your old brother stare furiously at the paper and shrugged in defeat, "A number?"

She tucked a strand of her sandy hair behind her ear and shrugged, "Well you're not all wrong."

"It's maths, how could I be wrong with that answer? Christ, why did I chose this subject?"

In answer, she rolled her eyes, "You know what Ollie, I asked myself the same question about two or three years ago when I first started."

"And look where it's gotten you; nineteen and still living with the parents." He smirked, giving her a playful shove on the shoulder.

"Oh piss off, my apartment is being fumigated, give me a break!"

"Beatrix Dole, watch your language!" Trixie flinched and turned to see their mother tapping her foot in the doorway. Her mother rolled her eyes, "What're you two up to anyway?"

"Oh I'm just helping Ollie do his maths coursework that's due in tomorrow." She shrugged innocently.

Ollie gave her a wicked glare, to which she returned with a sneer that only an older sister could pull off. It was the kind of look that said 'If I'm going down for swearing, you're going down for this'.

"I really don't know what to do with the pair of you, you're as bad as each other." She scowled, but brushed it off, "Well you get it from your father, that's for sure. He still hasn't fixed the door number. That poor post-man…"

Trixie stifled a snigger, "He said he'll do it on the weekend."

"He just didn't specify which weekend." Ollie added to himself.

Their mother sighed again, more dismissively this time and looked at her watch, "Shouldn't you be thinking about heading to bed? It's getting late."

Ollie groaned, "I've been thinking about sleep since starting this thing!"

"Wow, an entire fifteen minutes…" Trixie scoffed. Frankly she felt that she was way to old be to told when she should and shouldn't go to bed, but then again it was pretty late. But it was the principle of the thing, "I'll head to bed, but I'll be on my computer for a little while." She bargained.

"Half an hour tops." She agreed, "And no, Ollie, you're not staying up to finish that, it should have been finished over a week ago."

"Well the deadline's tomorrow afternoon so not really." he muttered privately.

Flashing her brother a secret nod of approval, Trixie ruffled his hair affectionately before kissing her mother on the cheek and wishing the pair goodnight. As she made her way up the stairs to her room, she paused along the corridor to peek her head into her father's study to see him delicately adjusting the fixture of a spice-rack that he'd been building for the past few days.

"How's it coming along?"

He looked up and smiled in triumph, "Almost done, should be on the wall by lunch tomorrow."

"Great," she smiled sheepishly, "because the old lady wants you to fix the front door."

"I know, I know; it'll be done tomorrow. And careful, you know she gets sensitive about being called Old Lady."

"Only of she hears me." Trixie grinned, "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, love."

Trixie waved as she left the room and wondered a few doors over until she was laying on her bed, back propped up by pillows and laptop against her knees. With her door closed, her parents never need know that she planned on breaking the half an hour tops rule. Well not really planning I, but figured that it would get broken anyway so why deny it? The minutes ticked away, the sounds of shuffling and creaking sounded around the house as her parents and Ollie heading to bed. And then, there was silence. A silence which was occasionally broken by the clicking of her fingers on the keyboard. But as the fatigue started to set in, Trixie figured it was time to join the silence and at least try to pretend the she was going to be fully awake tomorrow.

She switched off the laptop and shifted under the covers, switching the bedside lamp off, flooding the room in shadows. But as her eyes closed, a feeling of unease came over her. Hadn't she turned the computer off? She was sure she had, so why was the rhythmic sound of clicking and tapping still echoing from outside her room? Maybe Ollie was sneaking a few minutes on the internet before bed; or was it her father still in the study? Yeah it was one of those, nothing to worry about. Just sleep, she told herself, it's too late in the night to be playing mind games.

With that thought in mind, she did in fact sleep for some time, but she found herself awakening with a need to use the bathroom. Half asleep, she trudged groggily down the stairs to use said facility. Minutes later, she emerged and was about to head back up to her room once more, when she paused at the bottom of the steps, hearing odd noises. Shuffling and grunting, almost in desperation. Trixie instinctively took a step backwards.

Feeling herself gag, she realised that the noises were coming from her parent's room. People who had two children, one already moved out and the other not far off, all acts of affection should be banned until the nest is empty, Trixie inwardly whined. This was disgusting and she did not feel comfortable going back upstairs where it would only get louder. Finally it stopped; the silence swelling with unnatural tension, like something was quite right. And then, it was shattered. A voice, raspy and tinted with excitement, it was almost inhuman. And despite the innocence of the words, they couldn't have been more threatening.

"Go, to, sleep…"

She slapped a hand over her mouth to stop a shriek of panic. Who the fuck was that? Part of her wanted to race upstairs and find out, and yet fear was making her back away. The rhythmic clicking had returned, this time closer, louder. A cold chill crept up her arm, curling around her neck. She glanced to the side and trembled at the sight that beheld her. The front door was wide open. Someone was in the house. Someone was upstairs. And apart from the ticking, everything was too quiet.

"No… No…" was all she could muster, miniscule whispers that didn't even dent the silence.

From the gloom, something stepped towards her. She shrieked silently and cowered away. The hooded figure pressed a finger to its covered mouth, a gleaming, miniature axe in hand, and very calmly let out a long, "Shhhh…"

Trixie found herself backing away, accidently cornering herself into the kitchen. Her hands fumbled at the draw, hands clasping on the first sharp utensil she could find. But the minute she turned back to threaten the intruder, he was already within swinging distance of her. He shushed her once more. She felt the blood pulsate at the back of her head, heart begging to escape through her ribcage, tears pouring down her face. She didn't want to die. Were her family dead? She didn't know. But she was going to be hacked to death by this thing, this monster. And there was nothing she could do about it.

"No…" she whispered once more, just as the intruder raised his weapon, a sickening crack at his shoulder.

"No!"

A solid human bulk slammed into the strangers side, knocking him to the floor. Trixie sank to the floor, knife poised in front of her. Her eyes widened in horror as she saw her brother tackling him to the ground. Trixie couldn't move. It was as if her body had shut down, cruelly forcing her mind to etch it into her memory. Fear paralysed her. A cruel chuckle could be heard in the doorway as another figure swooped in, an eccentric smile carved into his face. It was horrifying. Trixie sobbed, eyes wide but still unable to move. This was how it ended…

The second stranger twisted a blade of his own cruelly, looking down at Ollie with an inhuman cackle. And just like that, he swung it downwards, plunging it into his shoulder. The axe-wielder thrust his weapon into the teenagers throat, showing the floor in scarlet as he jaggedly tugged it to the side. Trixie screamed, the life of her brother pooling at her bare feet, rising up the cloth of her pyjamas. She couldn't save him, she couldn't do anything. And just like that, it was as if her mind finally took pity on her. It shut down, caressing her in darkness. Letting her dream of the horror she just witnessed before no doubt falling to the same fate. But she wouldn't feel it; she was unconscious and in theory, practically half-dead anyway.


Gasping for breath, Toby shook himself, eyes clearing and trail of thought slowly returning to him. It was done, why keep the act up any longer now? He looked at Jeff, "And is Jeffy back in the building?"

"Well, looks like our job's done." Jeff announced, wanting to get off the topic and not wanting to admit that the craving for a kill had not died now just yet, "Homeward bound as they say."

"But, what about her?" Toby asked, crouching down with an audible quirk from his knees so that he was at the girls level. He noticed she was still breathing, and thus the work wasn't finished.

"Didn't we kill her already?"

"Nah she passed out. Should we finish it off?" he asked, slumping his shoulders, "I'm too tired…"

"Not our problem." Jeff shrugged, not feeling in the right frame of mind to get back into character for a second time, he might end up doing something Slender would regret if he did. But the urge to kill was so temping.

"I guess we can come back tomorrow. Or!" Suddenly his eyebrows shot up, "Hey can we keep her?"

"She's not a pet, Ticci, she's a kid and she's not our problem." Jeff stated, trying his best to keep his temper. Come to think of it he could hardly call this girl a kid, but compared to him why not? But nevertheless his temper must stay under control, he would not get bonus points if he made Toby 'go to sleep' before getting back…

"Come on! And Slendy wouldn't mind, he loves kids! He likes us doesn't he?"

Man this guy needed a reality check, "We aren't kids, Ticci… we're leaving. If you ask me Slendy's losing his mind, this was hardly a two person job and frankly I don't see the threat."

"But look at her!" Toby cooed, roughly patting the paralysed stranger roughly on the head, "She's got a knife! Who wouldn't want to take that home?"

Jeff slapped his hand to his forehead in exasperation. He could feel the dripping knife twitch under his fingers and remaining in control was a struggle, "Technically we should be killing her too, she's a witness and for all we know she's part of the Number Nine Nightmares." He paused and gritted his teeth in a growl, "Damn it now you've got me saying it!"

Toby straightened up, tilting his head questioningly with an audible snap, "Uh, this isn't number nine. This is number six."

"What are you talking about now?"

"This is number six. Look I'll prove it."

The knife-wielder grudgingly let Toby lead them out of the room and away from the frozen girl until they were standing at the front door. Toby opened it and pointed to the number on the woodwork, one screw missing from its fixture. As the door moved, the number swayed a little, proving that it was somewhat out of place. Jeff used a finger to swivel the number around, matching the missing screw loop with the small, almost invisible chip in the wood where the metal once lay. A growing rage and realisation dawned on him as he stared at the number. That mocking, crooked, number six.

"Told you." Toby shrugged, looking pleased to finally get one over on his company, "Number nine is across the street."

"And why didn't you point this out earlier?" he snarled, teeth clenched together.

"Simple. You told me to shut up and not to say a word until later. I was just following orders."

"So you just thought it was a good idea to carry on killing people in the wrong house?"

"Actually I thought it was a practice run." He shrugged crookedly.

"Do you have any idea what's just happened?" Jeff yelled, slamming him into the doorframe and pressing the blade to his throat, "We've just killed innocent people for no good reason!"

"When does that bother you?"

"It doesn't! Hell if it were up to me I'd go back in there and finish a job well done but Slender on the other fucking hand is going to be bothered! Understand?"

"I think he'd see it more as a learning curve not to team us up together in the future." He shrugged, "Uh, Jeff, you don't look so goo-"

"I'm going to fucking kill you!" he cried suddenly, pulling back the knife and swinging it downwards.

Toby snapped his neck to the side just in time to see the metal splinter into the woodwork. He shoved Jeff away and pulled out his hatchet in defence. He knew what was happening to Jeff, the slightly darker eyes and maniacal grin, scars showing prominent as he lunged for another attack; Jeff had fallen back into his outside character. And Toby was now the latest target. Now he had two options, try and calm him down back to sanity, or risk falling into his own persona by fighting him. Neither option sounded good. Or in favour of his health either.

"Don't blame me, Jeff, I was just doing what you told me to!" he insisted childishly, blocking another stab with his hatchet, "Do you want me to listen or not, make up your mind!"

"Go to sleep!"

"Not tired, sorry." He shrugged, taking a swipe at Jeff out of reflex and missing by inches, "Now listen to me! Wake up!"

Jeff leap forward, weapon at the ready, Toby standing firm and raising his. Yet neither was permitted to act upon it. Black snake-like tendrils shot out from the shadows, looping around the pairs necks and lifting them into the air, slamming them on opposite walls with enough force to make the troublesome door-number swing threateningly. The dizzying collision made Jeff shiver in awakening. He seethed for a moment, remembering the reasoning behind it, but was too distracted by the invisible force strangling him to even think about loosing control again.

You failed…

It was a statement, not a question. And neither of them needed to guess who had uttered it, the inhumanly tall figure gliding into the room was recognisable from a mile away. Slender… Jeff glowered and pointed his blade at the creature warningly, "I would have done the job if I didn't have Tick-prick here messing things up!"

"Don't blame me for following orders!"

Jeff's eyes burnt, "How about I give you some and then you'll have a reason for that drainage grate on your face!"

Suddenly they were both silenced by something slapping harshly against their wrists, knocking the weapons to the ground. A throbbing pain was summoned to their foreheads as the tentacles forced the pair to smack their heads together before releasing them to the ground.

"What was that for?" Jeff demanded, clutching the bump under his bangs.

To silence the bickering… I succeeded… Now tell me, what happened…

The story was retold, every careless mistake and weak threat taken literally, and Jeff felt more and more murderous with each word. Toby felt a pang of unease that maybe he should have pointed out the location flaw, but he figured that no matter what he did it would just end up annoying people so what was the point? It was done.

Any survivors…?

"Not really." Jeff shrugged, just wanting to get home and forget this night ever happened.

"One girl fainted. But… she looks pretty dead, apart from the whole breathing thing." Toby corrected.

Did she see either of you kill…?

"One kid but what's that got to…" Jeff clenched his fists, "Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me!"

"What?" Toby asked, eyes darting back and fore.

"You're such an idiot! If someone see's any of us kill, then they get the Sickness."

"Oh yeah, that's how you got involved, right?"

Jeff didn't have time to confirm that, ear-splitting sounds of sirens flooded the air followed by flashing lights of red and blue. They couldn't stick around for much longer. There was no time to right the wrong. No time at all. Slender calmly looked at the boys, hidden rage beneath his pale exterior.

Home… Now… This shall be discussed later…

A/N:

More on that in the next chapter. Please review! XD