In the midst of the forest, where the trees span miles high and creatures hide amongst the branches, there is a sort of peace. There was a serenity. There was a calm. It ran through the forest as silent as the creature who called it it's home all the way to the more hidden parts of the woods. Where there sat a cabin, abandoned by it's original owner many years ago, it now housed a family of grim porpotions.
But in a small room on the second floor, where the moon shone in just right and cast gleaming silver beams upon two sleeping forms. Small as the room itself, twins lay sleeping in their crib, one girl and one boy. They slept soundly within their veil of blissful ignorance. So young, so believably unaware of their world.
Unaware that that world has already been looming over their crib for a while now. In the shape of glowing white eyes, ink black claws, and a corkscrew nose. In time they would have come to recognize this shadow as someone they should be weary of despite being of the same genicidal universe. But not on this night. On this night, the world in which they would have grown up will come crashing down upon them in a flurry of claws. Softly at first, cradling them like the precious beings they were.
And just like that, the care was gone and replaced with deafening fear as he dunked the boy into a tub of water, waking him in second and sending him into a cycle of shrill screams warbled by the water he was currently being submerged in. It was easy to hold him down with one hand, the other on the girl and trying to keep her quiet after her brother's screaming had woken her up. She was beating against his claws but he was bigger than her, stronger.
He was already beginning to dig into the soft flesh of her neck, paper thin against his scissor claws. The boy was growing still, his screams getting replaced with bubbles that were steadily growing less and less. He could see the light beginning to fade from the toddler's eyes and taste his life fource.
Then the door was kicked open and his plans were stopped. His claim to power was cut with the blade of the man in front of him as it slashed across his face, barely clipping his nose but affective enough to send him back whilst the woman behind him yanked the boy from the tub. He hadn't died yet, coughing and sputtering water as he sobbed in his mother's arms with his sister in tow at her hip.
He should have known better and it was no one's fault but his own for not ridding the world of the children's lives anyway faster. He was a fool to think that their father would not react fast enough after hearing their screams. Yes, a fool through and through.
He was yelling at the woman behind him.
"Jane, run to the forest! Get them to the woods!"
He didn't honestly think that face-less joke would be enough to stop him? That he could 'protect' the children? He got his answer when the woman grabbed her daughter's hand and ran out of his sight. Then it was just him and the man with the carved in smile. He looked angry, his knife gripped hard in hand and for the first time in his years, his smile looked like a frown.
He was insulting him, calling him some rather colorful language for trying to hurt his children.
Yes, his sweet baby girl and his bouncing baby boy.
It was humourously easy to take him down, a little kick here, a scratch there and than he was face-down in the snow outside. He had been expecting more of a challenge from the man. He flicked his claws clean of the blood on them before evaporating to hide within the air, watching and waiting for one of the tiny life forces that he had nearly lost.
Nearly.
He heard her before he saw her, her tiny voice calling out into the chilly air with fear and hypothermia in every note.
"D-D-Daddy?"
Then he saw the girl come through a gap in the trees, her eyes brightening at the sight of the man on the ground.
That's right, girl.
"Daddy!"
She was weak, he could tell in the way she fell at her father's side and almost kissed the snow. Her smile faded a minute when he didn't respond, grabbing his arm and tugging at him meakly as she began crying.
"Daddy? Get up, daddy!"
She shoved at him and rolled him onto his back and the shadow had to keep from laughing out at the blank stare in his eyes. He looked right back at him in smug glee.
Watch, Woods. Watch as I take her from you. You have no choice, do you?
"Daddy!" She sobbed, her tiny fists pounding on him just as they had on his claws mere hours ago. So cute. "Wake up, daddy! Stop sleeping!"
He wanted to coo in her ear like some sort of gently spirit that it would be alright, that her daddy would wake up soon enough. Though she herself would not.
"Daddy..."
He shifted behind her and rematerialized, his shadow falling over her tiny frame. The fear in her eyes, so much like her fathers, would be a sight burned into his mind forever. He intended to savor every moment.
"E-Evil clown! Evil clown!" She screamed, trying to rouse her father once more in hopes he would wake up and make the nightmare end. Sweet child, didn't she know that's what her father did best? Giving people nightmares?
He laughed at her feable attempts at rescue, grabbing her by her pajamas and holding his claws over her neck. He spoke in a sickingly sweet voice, words of torment rolling off his tongue like honey.
"Daddy can't save you anymore."
"No! No no no!"
He wrapped his hands around her tiny through and squeezed the scream out of her.
"DADDY!"
He let her scream for the moment before cutting off her air as he hovered over her, holding her fearful gaze with his own as he leaned in close and opened his maw. The girl froze, some sort of invisible force holding her jaw open for the striped shadow before her eyes rolled into the back of her head, whites and veins the only thing able to be seen as she became dead weight in his hands.
He inhaled, squeezing her throat tighter to get his prize. He could see it, the small glowing ball under the skin of her jugular that slowly made it's way up her asphogas and out between her little pink lips in the cold air. She grew cold. Her skin looking nothing less than a corpse's as he grinned in sick elation. There it was, the very essence of her soul; her power. He could already taste it as it floated there in front of him, soft and pale blue like her eyes had been. He was so close to devouring it.
But then he was getting pushed away, a flurry of static assaulting his vision and disorienting him for a moment. But he saw it. He saw the Slender holding the girl carefully, his other hand cupped around her soul and carefully pushing it back. It fell back into place, disappearing past her lips and into her throat where she gasped. A thick intake of air before passing out in the being's arms.
It cradled her close to it's chest before turning it's sight upon the other. Though it had no eyes or mouth to express emotion with, the aura around it buzzed with anger and emitted waves of thick black smog. It rose to it''s full height and he saw the other child wrapped in it's many tendrils out it's back.
It spoke his name in dreadful tones, making his ears sting and his blood freeze in his veins. It took no mercy on him, his arm shooting out before he could scream in alarm, black settling over his eyes not a moment later.
When he woke up, both Slender, the twins, and the unconscious were gone. The bellow that he let out was enough to wake Zalgo himself and demand to know what it was that had dared disturb his slumber.
In a little town twenty miles away, a basket sat on the steps of a wide building with a fading wooden sign on the lawn.
Miss Jackie's Home For Kids.
The basket stood empty for only a moment, it's inhabitants nestled in the arms of their parents. The woman was crying silently, holding her son held as if she were trying to absorb him into her very being. The man was having his own trouble letting go, struggling to keep his hands steady while the girl was in them. He pulled her back just enough to press a kiss to her forehead, pretending that the tear down his cheek was just the rain. It was just the rain.
"Don't worry," He said as if she could hear him. "Mommy and Daddy will be back for you one day. We'll come back for you. I promise." He set her down in the basket, her brother following suit before he dug in his pocket for a slip of paper and a pen. He scribbled down on it then tucked the card between the folds of their blanket. Then he was pounding his fist on the door and pulling the woman off the stoop so they could hide around the side of the house where they couldn't be seen.
The hallway light flicked on and the door opened up to a middle-aged woman with long hair, a robe wrapped tightly around her as she looked out into the street. There was no one there, but her attention soon fell on the children and she pulled them inside.
Everyone soon heard wind of what happened, and the perpetrator was sent into his own isolation, punishment for what he had done. He was forced to remain in his circus for months at a time, only wandering out to look for prey when he became excessively weak or famished. No one ever wandered into his Carnival anymore. He was left to his thoughts and his hungers as his only company.
Until one day.
His senses picked up on the sweet smell of human blood. It drew him out faster than bees to honey, stalking around the old and tattered tents to find the source. What he found surprised him more than anything else. It was not a child that had wandered into his carnival. But it was a grown male standing there with a knife blade dragging across his palm in order to produce the intoxicating smell of blood.
Jack cautiously made his way out, a dark cloud that appeared just in front of him. He expected him to jump back, throw the knife or even scream. But he did none of that. He looked up at the towering creature behind dark Aviators as he closed his switchblade and pocketed it.
"You are Laughing Jack." It was an observation. Not a question.
"And just who are you, little man?"
Said 'little man' removed his glasses to reveal piercing blue eyes, folding them up and sticking them in his front shirt pocket. He did not seem afraid of the clown. Not one bit. He even knew who he was. Intersting.
"Let's save the insults for later, Jack. As for who I am," He turned those blue eyes on the clown. "My name is Thomas Hoff."
