Oh woe is he. To feel hope and then...well...Ben now knew all to well that to continue breathing was indeed his less attractive option for the next few moments.

He now watched lazily, his body to tired to react to his fear, as the crease in the man's face that served as his smile tore asunder with a sound like the tearing of fabric and flesh as one.

This newly formed mouth was so very different from the man's outward appearance. The Slender Man's maw was a ragged chasm across the bottom half of its face. It was a Maw fit for one of Ben's Halloween pumpkins, messy and crooked.

Ben's arms had gone slack since holding up the flashlight had become futile. In the light of the moon he could see all too well The Slender Man crack its smile wider.

It was now that Ben could see that within this mouth were rows upon rows of Ivory needles protruding from the man's black gums. They were not the teeth of a person nor the teeth of an animal. These needle like teeth were placed like they had been jammed into its jaw haphazardly.

The lack of symmetry was rather distasteful. To think a being in possession of such suave and neat attire could be in itself unruly. It saddens me...I digress.

It leaned towards Ben. It was so tall it had to bow itself until its head and shoulders were below its own waist in order to come mouth to eye level with Ben. It placed its hand on Ben's shoulder again and this time it indeed had a hand. Through The Slender Man's seemingly delicate skin his bones were visible yet veins and arteries were no where to be found.

Its hand griped his shoulder despite there being no tendons in its fingers. It pulled Ben towards its mouth. He was so close to the man's face he could make out the subtle grooves and bulges of a skull or perhaps muscles behind its face. Ben watched as from between the many rows of needles came a black tongue.

The tongue was thin at the end and fat at the base in the man's mouth. It was slick with saliva and so, in the light of the moon, it had a sheen. It was like a writhing mass of solid oil.

The Slender Man's tongue rolled across its many rows of teeth before retracting. Ben thought the man may be smelling him like a snake since he had no nose.

Smelling him or not The Slender Man was certainly inspecting Ben. It drew Ben closer still and pressed what should have been its forhead against his.

Ben stopped breathing as a static noise began to tickle his ears. It was a harsher and far more intimate version of the static Ben had been subjected to earlier. The noise was no better than the thick silence of before. Ben found that when he tried to concentrate on the noise it warped and disappeared. It was like raw silence being forced into his mind.

Concentrating on the noise made Ben's thoughts blurry so he instead focused on the slighty sunken skin where The Slender Man's eye sockets might have been. Around the edges of his vision there was a slight distortion, a crackling of black and white. The static was invading his vision now, affecting his perception of sight as well as sound.

The Slender Man pulled away from Ben and stood at its tallest height. Ben rubbed at his ears and his eyes, bunching up the sleeves of his onesie in his fists and using the night sky pattern to try and purge the invading static by filling his ears and blotting out his sight.

His attempts were futile and soon his distorted vision became even more so as tears burst from the wells of his eyes.

It was then he heard a cracking through the static in his ears. He looked up, his eyes puffy from crying and his face bruised and slightly red from his rubbing, and saw as well as heard The Slender Man's jaw snap.

He heard a series of snaps and then the sound of bones mending again and again as its jaw repeatedly crumpled and realigned until it was far larger. The skin around its mouth seemed strained as its head changed dimensions.

The Slender Man suddenly arched its back as the cracking of bones ceased. It's spine curled as it brought its gapping mouth to eye level with Ben once more. There were more rows of needles than before and Ben could now see the stretched and quivering tissue on the inside of The Slender Man's mouth and throat.

The Slender Man cocked its head to the side with a crack of its neck so that the chasm that was its mouth was now vertical.

Ben watched through his static ridden eyes as the maw widened and moved forward. The rows of needles passed by Ben's field of vision and grazed the sides of his head. The oily tongue writhed against Ben's face which caused Ben to shiver with disgust.

Yet Ben stood there and simply took it all in. It was surprising that he had not screamed throughout the entire experience like many other children did...perhaps he felt screaming would not be a suitable enough expression of his horror.

Ben stared. His eyes glazed over with static dancing across the entirety of his vision and his ears deaf thanks to the harsh pulsing of silence.

The Slender Man's maw was impossibly vast yet constricting, much like the forest which had now been completely lost to Ben's mind. The forest had gradually eaten away at Ben's inner workings and now this monster would consume him entirely.

In these moments of greatest distress Ben sought solace in thoughts of his mother. He reflected now on the last time he had seen her, smiling down upon him from her greater height. His dearest parent who had invested so much emotion and sentiment into her little boy ever since the day he had been born.

Ben felt his very heart tighten in a grip of saddness and longing unparalleled by any other child of his age.

So young and yet experiencing such an utter and raw feeling of regret and depression, So innocent yet so miserably tortured by...guilt? Regret? What regrets could he have...perhaps he wished he had lived longer and so had made his mothers investment worthwhile? Your speculation is as good as mine...We digress.

The image of his dearest mother that had rested comfortably in his thoughts until now became restless. It suddenly warped, cracked and burst into static fragments. These fragments ignited a chain reaction and it was so that his very thoughts broke and were destroyed by his torment.

The desolation of the young boys heart was such that he finally screamed. It was a feeble and weak scream but the sheer raw emotion it portrayed made up for its lack of volume.

As Ben screamed The Slender Man flexed its jaws slightly. Its needle shaped teeth dug into and pierced the edges of Ben's face. They punctured his skin and slid into the flesh that was his face until they hit against bone.


The Slender Man's jaw snapped into place once the deed was done. It stepped back from the limp form of the boy and waited for the next part.

Its face and extremities had returned to their docile shapes as it had recomposed itself. It stood motionless and silent.

The boy had granted it such torment and pain that the creature felt no requirement to keep what left of him and so it waited, infinitely patient, for the next part.

Its patience was not tested for long as it felt beyond it self that both steps and moisture were falling but a few hundred metres away. He stooped over the motionless child and wrapped his limbs around his frame before standing and stepping impossibly far through its domain.

Only one proxy stood to claim the spoils and finish The Slender Man's task. They wore attire which was iconic of their kind, a hooded jumper and a pair of denim jeans.

Though they wore masks to hide their faces they each still wished to own an identity and so it was no surprise that this particular one had jagged black marker around their eyeholes and an eight by two grid in front of its mouth, to symbolise gritted teeth, on their facade.

To further characterize themselves they had cut two slits from their mask, running from their jaw to the bottom of their eyes. These served to display the stains running down their cheeks caused by their constant weeping.

The proxy was sat on the ground, gently convulsing as they sobbed. When The Slender Man approached they looked up suddenly, causing some of the tears that clung to their face to become dislodged.

They stood promptly, using their weapon of choice to prop them up. Another distinguishing characteristic of theirs was the sledgehammer they wielded. It's red handle and steel head were hard to make out in the dark so it was surprisingly, given enough room, more effective for dispatching things stealthily than a glinting knife or scalpel.

Of course it was more cumbersome and so in order to take the boy from The Slender Man's grasp it was necessary to drop it down their jumper so the head rested against their neck and the handle ran parallel to their spine, secured by a twisted pair of leather belts around the adolescents torso.

The broken person took Ben from the arms of one that could never be considered a person. They held the boy affectionately across their arms as if they were a babysitter having stumbled across a slumbering child in their care.

They looked down and let out a choked sob at the serene expression on Ben's face before finally looking at The Slender Man. The tears on their cheeks and jaw falling onto the stars below, dampening the onesie fabric slightly.

As they shook and almost collapsed under the weight The Slender Man reached a nub ended appendage to the proxy's face. It forced their forehead to the boys and through static and numbness the necessary was acquired.

Their tears stopped if only temporarily. Their tragedy forgotten if only momentarily as they turned without pause and walked away. The Slender Man was left to itself as the devoted follower left its realm...Their prize securely in their grasp and their task securely in their mind.


Author's Note: I had hoped for this to last three chapters at the most but since I am making this up as I go it may very well end up as four.

The motives for both Slender Man and my OC proxy are left vague so as to keep the story suitably mysterious and also because it midnight as I wright this and I have not the constitution to be fancy and detailed with what was originally a one-shot.

Hope you enjoyed reading it much more than I enjoyed stumbling over it.

-NathanEryk