Inferno-Part Two

     I don't know how fast I can crank these out.  I'm in a motel for now, and haven't seen him since yesterday (the day of the subject of these comics), but after what happened, I don't think I can stay here for too long.  I'm already making arrangements to leave.

Inferno-Part One

    
     Today has been quite an adventure.  I only have time to upload the first part, and the motel's scanner cut a bit off the right side.  Ah well, I'm lucky the motel had a scanner at all. 

Thin Ice

It was a narrow escape.

Class ran late.  It was dark when I got out.  I hadn't planned for that.  Foolish, very foolish.  Now is not the time to make rookie mistakes.  It is a big city, no trees for miles.  People move on the streets as blood struggling through a clogged artery.  Such a setting seemed…safer…to traverse.

I felt it important to be around others instead of sequestering myself in my dorm and planning my eventual departure.  I've been reading the blogs of others stalked by the creature, and believe it might be possible to outrun him.  It's not possible to run forever, but I recognize those around me will be in danger were I to stay.  I don’t know if I somehow involved Delia from next door or if she was already being watched.  It’s still a possibility that I read too much into her demeanor, but I will not allow myself that petty hope. 

There was another reason for leaving the dorm.  On the way to class, I stopped off at the local art supply store, and a place called ABC Ice House.  I purchased a bottle of turpentine, some dry ice, a pair of pliers, and some bottled water from a vending machine.  I had an idea for a possible defense maneuver, see.  As I was paying for my things the oddest sensation overcame me, like pins and needles followed by a wave of chill.  He was at the big glass shop window.  No one else seemed to notice him, but a few seemed uneasy.  The credit card reader malfunctioned, probably his doing, and I had to wait for a tekkie to come and fix it.  While I waited, there was an almost irresistible urge to look back out at him.  I resisted; ‘The Abyss gazes back’ and all that.  I ended up paying in cash, not wanting to stall any longer.  When I looked up next, he was gone. 

I made it safely to school.  A word about my school; it has no formal campus and is comprised of bought buildings and homes around the city.  The class I had today was in the basement of an old office building.  The basement itself is well-furnished, but the sub-basement below it is full of pipes and rust and tetanus.  There wasn't room in one elevator for all of my classmates, so I got on the next elevator heading upwards alone.  The lights flickered, and the elevator began to descend.  Aghast, I pressed the button for my floor again and again.  As expected, the elevator stayed its course.  I didn't quite dare press the Stop button and strand myself between floors. 

The doors opened on the sub-basement.  I pressed the close-door button a few times, but to no avail.  Before me was a corridor perpendicular to the way I was facing.  The walls were stained with water, and a scant few fluorescents intermittently lit the way.  There was a familiar figure down the hall to my right.

He was walking towards me.

The lights were going out the closer he got.

Old trick, Slendy, but effective; my heart was instantly in my throat.  I pressed for the elevator once more, then gathered my courage.  There was a staircase ten feet to my right.  He was about 25 feet away and moving slowly.  I began to walk.  Three feet; As lights shut off, I tried to fight the image of a wave of Dark.  Five feet; all I can make out is his head and hands, the rest camouflage.  Ten feet; he is five feet away and the doorknob slips in my hands.  I make it inside.  I lost my nerve and ran.  He was behind me of course, what is a door to one who can bend space.  A flight of steps, and I can feel him closing the gap.  I am cold.  Fear will do no good here and I channel it into adrenaline.  I reached the door to the basement.  No time to try for the lobby.  For a horrible moment, the knob doesn’t turn.  I imagine his hands inches from my neck.  The knob turns. 

He is outside the door.  Of course.

It is a long moment.  Below, I hear a man whistling as he walks down the corridor I’ve just fled.  It is the loneliest sound I have ever heard.  Slender Man bends over at the waist, head turned to the side at a near 90-degree angle.  Regarding me?  My fear was a low hum, like a telephone wire.  I don’t know why I decided to try what I did next.  Blame it on being cornered.  I backed towards the concrete lip of the stairwell, and jumped over the edge.  My right foot song when I landed on it.  It may be fractured.  As soon as I landed, I got my water bottle and the dry ice and shut the door.  Most of the ice did not make it into the water and I almost lost the cap.  It was a small bottle, so the dry ice bomb readied quickly.  I hadn’t figured on it working; it was a last-ditch survival effort.  My only explanation for its mild success is that I caught him in between dimensions as he teleported.  It exploded as he appeared at the door, and he fell back into the stair room.  I observed his “skin” blacken slightly as he did.  I ran for the elevator.

The man who had been whistling held the door for me.  I collapsed onto the back wall, my poor foot throbbing.  The man—I assume he was maintenance—regarded me skeptically. 

“What’s that noise about?”  he inquired.

“I think a pipe burst,” was the best I could come up with.

At The Window

And I’d almost regretted making this blog, thinking I’d reacted in haste.  I had thought perhaps I’d imagined my encounter because of paranoia.  There are other reasons I’d assume hallucination over reality when dealing with something like this, besides pure skepticism.  They relate to my aforementioned original interest in Slender Man’s mythology, but again I am not going to post about that now.  I will have to eventually.  The goal of this journal is to record my experiences so that, even if I should die, others in my situation might have another piece of the Slender puzzle.  To do that, I am going to have to bring up things about myself and my past that I’d rather lie buried.  Good lord, I sound melodramatic.  I will chalk that up to what I’ve just seen. 

My roommate and I were studying quietly in our dorm when I noticed something flicker by our fourth floor window.  I got up to check.  The DVD I was watching had started to skip, but I thought nothing of it; I was playing it on my old PS2, and it sometimes skips with movies. 

He was outside, in the small alley between my dormitory and the hotel next door.  As it is night and the alley has no street lamps, I could only make out his shape by the rim light illuminating him from the hotel behind him.  That is not a shape one forgets.  I was going to attribute it to a trick of my mind, but my roommate had come to look out of the window as well.  She asked if I knew ‘why that man’s wearing such a weird costume’. 

I think I can rule out hallucinations.

The thing of it is, he wasn’t looking up at us.  From what I could make out, he was pointed towards the room one door down from our room.  I heard them shut the window.  Perhaps I have an ally?  My roommate’s friend, Delia, lives there.  I will go talk to her. 

Delia was strange.  Granted, I’d never the occasion to talk to her outside of a passing greeting here and there, but she did not seem quite right.  Her face was drawn and sullen, her eyes bruised from what I assume to be lack of sleep.  It is too early in the semester for that, unless she has been out partying frequently.  It was the way she spoke that rose my heckles, however.  Slurred and simple, and at one point she repeated herself twice.  Her eyes were so distant then.  This may still have to do with drugs or alcohol, but given recent events her behavior is raising red flags.  I will proceed with caution; from what I read, Slender Man can addle one’s mind.  That or she may be becoming one of the minions I hear about.  I don’t know how I can help her (if I can help her) so I will spend the rest of this night researching.

You may wonder why I don’t go on the run, as I hear many do.  The way I understand it, he is always watching you wherever you go.  If this is the case, running will solve nothing.  That aside, I am not yet autonomous.  I have no money of my own, and I can guarantee my parents will disable my credit card were I to disappear.  The small funds I have would not get me out of the city. So I will be preparing an arsenal of weapons, both traditional and...experimental.  I have no idea if they will work, but it is worth trying, should I need them.  Better to stand and fight, if I am not merely a witness.