How could he have led her on like that? How could he have let her begin to care for him only to have her find out that he had to kill people in order to stay alive?
Althea panted heavily as she ran through the forest, tears streaming down her dirty face. She had been running for what felt like hours, the trees blurring past her as her tears obscured her vision. The burning need to get away from the danger prevented her from stopping, from resting and gaining her breath once more.
Finally, a mangled root jutted up from the ground and her foot caught. Althea cried out as she hit the ground, pain shooting through her right ankle and the left side of her torso as she fell on a long jagged rock.
The blonde whimpered as she attempted to stand again, the pain burning through her. She tried to ignore it, determined to get farther away, to get somewhere where no one knew her and where Slenderman wouldn't be able to find her. Althea would curb her curiosity; she would turn into the flighty broad with no sense of self that everyone expected her to be.
Anything to get away from everyone that wanted to harm her.
Althea stood shakily, moaning quietly at the pain that increased when she tried to put weight on her injured foot. Her will wavered, and she sunk back to her knees.
How could she have let that… that monster let her think he cared about her?
Althea let out a sob, her exhaustion finally catching up to her. She had been running for a straight hour, the only pauses she took being when she would trip and land in the dirt or mud as one tumble had resulted. It was now that she had finally let herself stop the endless running that she felt the stinging of scrapes and throbbing of bruises alongside the burning of her ankle and ribs.
Althea brought a hand up to wipe the tears away from her eyes, her sobbing and her exhaustion making it impossible for her to have noticed the figure looming ahead and to the left of her…
Althea shot up, a loud gasp piercing the silence of the dark room she had been sleeping in for the last several months. She shuddered, frowning at the low light the moon cast on the wall opposite her.
Ever since she had found that damned mansion two weeks ago, that nightmare plagued her. Every time Althea closed her eyes, the sight of that looming figure haunted her, forced her to relive the terror of that night three hundred years ago.
The woman growled in irritation, throwing the blanket she had been using off of her. She would not let that turning point of her life torment her, not when it had made her stronger, made her into what she is now.
The blonde grumbled to herself, walking into the kitchen on quiet feet. She glanced at the clock, and her scowl deepened when she noted the glowing green numbers. That blasted nightmare had woken her at three in the morning.
With sluggish movements, Althea began to brew a cup of coffee. She needed the energy it would give her if she wanted to go downstairs and play with the toys she had captured when she took over the house.
As she drank, Althea stared out of the kitchen window and let her mind wander over her plans, though incomplete as they were.
She had been debating between taking care of the one living in the cabin separate from the mansion and kidnapping the redheaded human she had seen outside the mansion to torment Slenderman. Of course, she supposed she could always do both, but if she did that she would need to time her actions perfectly.
If she killed the one in the cabin first, it would be damn near impossible to grab the human, but if she kidnapped the human first, Slenderman would likely bring the one in the cabin closer to him.
Althea sighed, taking her gaze away from the window and the night sky beyond. Planning her hunt for someone as powerful as her was going to be difficult, especially since she knew the man was protective of those he cared for.
At least, that was what she had gathered over her weeks of watching them.
Draining her mug, Althea rinsed it and placed it carefully in the sink. Now that she felt more awake, she began to move towards the basement door. The woman figured she had earned some play time with the family she kept trapped underneath the house, especially since she had been able to rein her curiosity in enough to avoid acting too quickly on her desire for revenge.
Scared whimpers greeted the blonde as she made her way down the stairs, and the sound brought a slow smile to her face. It was time to hear her favorite sounds-the screams for mercy and sobs of agony.
EJ stomped into his home, grumbling to himself. He had only about two or three more months of organs stocked up, and that was only if he kept rationing his food the way he was. Of course, it was difficult to keep organs fresh, so he had to eat the older food first, and the stale state of them nearly beginning the rotting process was starting to turn his stomach.
Jack had been out trying to find more people to harvest, and it seemed as if the summer hikers were avoiding the area for some reason. It was pissing him off, because he needed to eat damn it!
EJ growled out his frustration, throwing open his fridge so he could grab a beer. It wasn't until he turned to enter the living room that he noticed the slim, almost elegant figure standing in his living room.
He frowned behind his mask, stepping cautiously into the room. As he did, he was able to see the details of the woman. She was relatively short, about the height of a dwarf from Lord of the Rings. The lady had bright blue eyes, though they shone with a cold calculation of someone who had shut themselves off from emotion. Her long, blonde hair was pulled up into a graceful bun, not a single strand falling from its place.
"What do you want?" EJ asked, twisting the cap of his beer off of the bottle to give an illusion of comfort, though Jack was anything but relaxed.
The woman tittered, shaking her head as her plump mouth pulled up into a venomous smile.
"How crude, you'd think you would at least let me introduce myself first," she said, her voice resembling the cold beauty of ice shards hanging on his roof in the winter.
"I don't like strange visitors coming into my house uninvited, the sooner you tell me what you want, the sooner you'll leave. So again I'll ask, what the hell do you want?" EJ asked, shifting his mask to the side in order to take a drink of his beer but still be able to keep an eye on the intruder without his vision leaving him.
The woman sighed, tsking at him in disdain. She had clearly thought he would be different, though exactly what she expected was beyond him. He lived alone for a reason.
"Very well, I'm here because I have a grudge to settle with someone who lives close by, and you happen to be the perfect person to start with to get my revenge," the blonde said, and before EJ could react, the shadows surrounding her shot at him.
Jack yelped in surprise, dropping his beer as the shadows wrapped tightly around his wrists and forced his arms to spread wide. More shadows wrapped around his waist, constricting until it was painful.
The pain didn't stop him from struggling. He yanked at the shadows binding his wrists, snarling in irritation and anger as he tried to get free.
The woman laughed, walking forward with a relaxed grace that only served to piss EJ off more.
"Let me go you crazy bitch!" he snapped, making the woman tsk again.
"You shouldn't speak that way in front of a lady," she said, giving him a mock expression of disappointment.
"Fuck. You," Jack snarled, glaring harshly at the hag.
The lady sighed, but said nothing. Instead, she put her long fingers on either side of Jack's displaced mask and pulled it off his face, taking his sight with it.
EJ stilled, the combined lack of sight and feeling of being bound making his chest constrict as terrifying memories flooded his mind. He could no longer speak, could no longer hear anything the woman said to him as the memories took on a realistic quality and threw him back into his captivity.
Althea raised a slim brow when the man in front of her began whimpering pathetically. All his fight had seemed to drain out of him the second she took off the mask.
"How interesting," she hummed, tapping a fingernail against the hard plastic of the mask in her hands. This little hunt of hers might be more fun than she had originally thought.