Something Slender (and Awful) - Anger leads to hate

[x-asgardian.livejournal.com]

William Kaplan has his own encounter with the Slendermen, and the unpredictable nature of his powers.



One second, they were in the station gaping at how big and empty it was, full of nothing but trash and echos, and the next, the grime had almost washed over them in a wave of blown newspapers and trash, swept down the stairs leading up to the city. When Billy had cleared his eyes of smog and grit, the girls were gone - a flash of blonde at his ankles before Sue's head disappeared into the ground was all he had as a sign that something had just gone much worse than they could've expected.

Billy gave a very unmanly yelp at the sight of Sue sinking through the floor, and slowly backed away, unable to tear his eyes from the spot. He continued to back up until he bumped into a pillar, which made him yelp again. He froze, certain he'd bumped into one of his pursuers. "Don't look, don't look, don't look," he whispered, one hand slowly reaching behind him. He heaved a sigh of relief as it touched the cement post, then slid down to a crouch, wrapping his arms around his knees as he sat there, shaking. "Sue...Tandy....I'm sorry guys," he whispered. "I thought these would work. Keep everyone safe. Why didn't they work? Why didn't they work?" He continued to mumble, staring blankly at the spot where Sue had vanished.

At first, the disturbance in the distance was soft, almost sub-vocal, to the point where Billy in his panic and confusion didn't notice it. But it started to build, those faint tremors and hot puffs of air familiar to anyone who routinely rode the NYC subway. What remained of the trash began to roll around Billy's legs and ankles as the vibration from an incoming train grew in intensity. The subway that ran beneath the city was powerful but what was building in the underground tomb-like place held something more than the power of electricity and momentum.

Pinpoints of light exploded into view from down the track as something roared, faster and faster, picking up speed, coming for him ...

Billy jumped as the noise approached, peering down the dark tunnel a moment at the light. Something about the noise didn't sound like the normal trains, and even if it was, he doubted it would be returning his recently snatched friends to him. He glanced around the station a moment, pausing on the spots where the others had stood. No, whatever was coming down the tracks, he was sure he didn't want to be there when it arrived.

The exit signs pointed down toward the other end of the platform, no small distance, and with one last look at the empty station, he started to run toward the exit. The distanced seemed to stretch on and on, with the wind and noise growing stronger. He looked over his shoulder at the much brighter light nearing the station, and turning back toward his destination, he put his head down and barreled forward, slamming the emergency exit door with his shoulder as he pushed his way through.

The door closed behind him with a wooden thud, cutting off the noise behind him so suddenly it left an echoing silence in it's wake, full of nothing when it should have been almost unbearably loud. The shadows in the alley slipped back away from his feet as he came to a stop; a flash of white, a face, some hands, nothing more, appeared a few feet away from him.

The silence was just as disturbing as the noise, and Billy stood there, heart pounding, sure that the sound was carrying halfway across the city.Or...wherever he was. This alley didn't look at all like where he thought the door would lead. He froze, mid-step, when he saw the face and hands blocking his way out of the alley. "No.... no no no..." He glanced around quickly. He wished he could just zap himself out of there, like Sue had suggested. Although, zapping them... He looked as flickers of electricity suddenly circled his hands as he summoned the lightning. The crackling was eerily muffled, and he attempted to stare down the creature. "Stay back," he called out to it, holding out his palms and sending a few bolts at the pavement between them.

As the lightening crackled against the pavement, the Slender Man suddenly vanished though it hadn't appeared to have moved at all. The shadows swept in and pushed back against Billy's attempts at fighting back, filling the creature's disappearance and eating ground as it crept forward. Silently, the Slender Man appeared once more but on the side, where a wall should have been, reaching out of the murky darkness and seemingly unconcerned about how much energy or lightening was being thrown around.

"No, no, no," Billy continued to mutter, edging backwards. His gaze darted about, looking around, peering into the dark corners. He jumped away as one of the shadows moved, shooting a bolt of lightning at the area. It didn't seem to phase the creature, but it did give a brief illumination to the area. "More light," Billy thought, as the brightness faded back to shadow. "Maybe that will keep them away. I want more light. I want more light," he started to chant. Images of flashlights and streetlamps and candles and torches began dancing through his thoughts as he continued to back away. "I want more..." The thought was interrupted as a nearby stack of discarded cardboard boxes suddenly erupted into flames, filling the alley with light and shadow.

That got the Slender Man's attention. It jerked back away from the suddenly blaze of lights, desperate to get back into the shadows but they were shrinking, too. Center stage for all to see did not sit well with them and for the first time since it had started stalking Billie, it grew confused.

It got Billy's attention too. Not at all what he expected, and the thought that he should have focused on streetlights crossed his mind. That changed, though, as he tore his gaze away from the burning boxes and back to the creature, noticing it pulling back from the fire. "That's it!" he called at it, suddenly brave at what seemed to be the first real sign of weakness. He looked around, noticing a large metal trash barrel near the shadows. I want more fire. I want more fire." he began to chant, only noticing too late that the alley was filled with such barrels, as they one by one began to burst into flame.

The first noise, true noise, that the Slender Man made was a croaking half-laugh, half-scream. The fire and light was almost painful to it but it knew that Billy couldn't withstand the inferno he'd created either. Dropping to all fours, legs and arms akimbo, it started to skitter towards him; a giant, almost spider like being back-dropped against flames licking up the walls around them.

The growing blaze pulled Billy's attention in every direction, looking first this way, then that, as the columns of fire grew taller. Burning debris began to fall from the taller stacks, catching scattered garbage nearby on fire. Billy continued to retreat, mind scrambling for some solution. The all-too-recent thunderstorms made him discard any thoughts of dousing the fires with water, and every other idea sparked his imagination with even more disastrous consequences of tidal waves, giant sandstorms and empty vacuums of space. He continued to inch his way backward, step by step, unable to look away from the approaching Slenderman.

Up and over burning detritus, almost running now. Ignoring fire and pain to reach Billy, to grab and hurt him and ...

A ripping noise exploded above the sound of the fire as black flesh rippled on it's sides as slim, white fingers wriggled their way out. Straining to escape it's own body newly framing hands gripped at air and nothing as it closed in on the boy.

Billy watched in horror at the forming hands, continuing to back up just trying to keep out of their reach. His heel hit something solid, and he tore his gaze away, spinning to find himself up against a brick wall. He looked about for some other escape, but the smoke was beginning to make it difficult to see...everything except the Slenderman. He looked over his shoulder, and the creature was still very clear. And very close. He frantically began to feel about the wall, looking for a door, window, even a handhold, but without any luck. A small part of him imagined conjuring a door in the wall, but even as he tried to form the words, the image of the ground swallowing Sue up stopped him, and he could vividly imagine the same happening wit his "door." He turned, back to the wall, to find the creature nearly on him, and he swallowed, trying to brace himself for whatever was going to happen.

~It's not real. You can fight back. I'm going to get help.~

The words formed in his mind, and Billy jumped at the strange sensation. HE didn't think them. It felt more like... "Maddie? Maddie! She's okay," he whispered, the thought that if she was, the others might be as well. "Not real?" The flames certainly felt real, and the Slenderman definitely was. But if he was going to get away, he was going to have to do something. Something Magic. He looked around the alley for anything he might use. There. A fire escape across the alley, but definitely out of reach. You can do this, Billy, he told himself, pushing aside the images of natural disasters as he began to chant as he pushed off the wall. "I want to get up there, I want to get up there, I want to get up there" The alley was barely a few paces, not really enough to get much speed but he ran anyway, barely slipping past the outstretched grasping fingers before launching into a magic-fueled leap to the escape.



All hail the Dishonorable Judge Slenderman, as Matt Murdock is on trial for being a failure, a loser and a general waste of space.



Noise, like an insidious fog started up almost immediately as the fire cut Renee off from Matt and Hope, it wasn't any one thing, more a combination of screams, shouts and the sounds of trains and feet in the distance and then up close a hand grabbed Matt on the shoulder, only...it was like being grabbed by a ghost, the feeling muted and slimy cold against the, was that heat? He could hear brief crackles of fire but it was soon covered up by the sound of everything else, a cacophonous conglomerate of sounds that made it difficult to hear anything at all.

"Right, you little maggot, you're coming with us."

It was the one clear sound, even as the others crowded back in again, and the voice sounded angry and menacing all at once.

Overwhelmed with sounds, nothing seemed quite right as Matt tried to focus his powers and failed. His powers seemed alright, but everything around him wasn't what it should be. It wasn't entirely wrong, or at least, it wasn't drastically different, it was just enough to confuse him and make him doubt that he was understanding what was going on. Everything lit up around him with the sounds turning his sonar absolutely useless. Standing there, breathing hard as he tried to get himself under control, Matt nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand on him. "No!" he replied more from habit than anything else, raising his stick up to use it defensively. He tried to shrug the hand off his shoulder and it didn't move. "Hope! Renee!"

His cry was met with a returning scream that sounded like a combination of his friends and a train whistle, combined with the crackle of flame and the stamping of what sounded like a hundred feet. It spiraled upwards in intensity until it was all he could hear, a torturous melody of failure.

"You're a failure."

It came through loud and clear, a slimy, chilling voice that wormed its way past the cacophony of other sounds to scrape along his ears like a knife through flesh. It was wrong, so very wrong sounding and it hurt to hear it.

Grabbing at his head and covering his ears, Matt was surprised to find that they weren't bleeding. A voice that...wrong, that bizarre, should have surely left some sort of tangible evidence! "No, I'm not!" he protested, more automatically than anything, but the seeds of doubt were already planted. He'd had plenty of problems over the years, plenty right now that were failures, monumental ones. It hadn't been all that long ago he'd relapsed with drugs after all, less than a year. His heart pounded rhythmically in his chest and he didn't know what to do, he was helpless. "Let go of me!" he insisted again, struggling.

"Control your client."

"Mr. Murdoch, you need to stop this, you're only hurting yourself."

There was seemingly no change to the level of noise but smells filtered through now, paper, woollen robes and the floral scent of a woman's perfume. The voices were still needles and knives against his brain, subtly wrong beyond their seeming ability to cut through the laughter and screams currently playing a polka across his brain. He was shaken by hard, yet soft and slightly slimy hands that gripped him on the shoulders and forced him down into a hard wooden chair.

Forced to sit, Matt still tried to fight back, unable to do more than shake uselessly. All the self defense training he had received at Xavier's useless right now and his stick was gone too. The sounds assaulting him didn't make fighting back any easier, either. Had they moved somewhere else? Where were they? He hadn't felt movement, but everything was subtly different, confusing him. "Client?!" he asked, "What do you mean?! I didn't hire anyone!"

"You sure about that?"

A hand stroked his face gently, a comforting touch that felt anything but and it was gone almost before it started, followed by a blow to the back of his head, a brick wrapped in a feather pillow and twice as disorientating. Murmurs slipped past his ears as the dull roar of a court room in session coalesced around him for a moment only to be snatched away by the mocking sounds of a child's laughter turned horribly wrong.

"How do you plead, Mr Murdock?"

The blow hurt and Matt gasped, falling forward though he didn't fall out of the chair. His mind starlighted, ribbons spiking into his head making it throb. "Not guilty!" He gasped, head ringing. He had no idea what was going on, why was he in court? He hadn't done anything recently! Not for months and months!!

"I'm sure they'd agree," soothed the voice again, an echo behind it like the silence before a crack of thunder and then came the screams of his friends, the ones he'd been separated from not moments, or so it seemed, before. "Don't you think?"

"I never hurt them!" Matt insisted, voice strident, "They're my friends! Don't hurt them either!"

"Of course not,"

It mocked, this voice, a slithering, chuckling sort of smugness that knew all his little hidden faults and judged him wanting, judged him weak willed and a failure at everything he'd ever tried to do. It was right to do so, was it not? What had he ever offered anyone but a junkies promise, easily broken when it was convenient to do so. How he could know all this from just a laugh was a mystery but it was quickly drowned out by the return of the hand on his face, a chill caress that once again buffeted him to the side with a slap after only a second.

"You were always such a disappointment."

'Always a disappointment.' The words stung and hurt more than the slap. "No..." The words little more than a whisper. "I do my best.." Which wasn't good enough. Never good enough. He wanted his dad to be proud of him, not just another junkie.

"I call Jack Murdock to the stand."

It was a dry voice, seemingly pulled from the ether as it cut through the constant sound, it gave no indication of gender, but was somehow both at once and neither. It hurt to hear, just like the other voices had hurt, slicing across his brain like lemon on a paper cut.

"Matty, what have you done now boy?"

Matt froze, time stopping, "Dad?" he whispered, almost crying. It wasn't proper for a 17 year old guy to cry, but it was his DAD and he wasn't dead! Everything was wrong with this place, but if his dad was back even for a moment, it was okay. He didn't want to hope even as he did beyond reason. "Dad!" he tried to get up despite the pounding in his head to go to him, even if he wasn't there.

"Jack Murdock, in your own words, can you tell us what your son did to you on the occasion of his birth?"

Hands held him down, even as the voice came through loud and clear, somehow both feminine and masculine at the same time and slicing across his ears with a razor like kiss of syllables. Fingers like small round points of agony dug into his clavicles on either side as he struggled, keeping him in his chair.

"He was responsible for his mother leaving, if he'd never been born then we'd have been happy."

What?! "NO!!!" Matt protested, trying to stand and only causing himself more pain, "That's not true!" Except that he didn't know that. His father had always refused to discuss his mother. Maybe that was true, "No..." he protested, softly now, fight gone. "I couldn't help being born...I didn't mean to..." he sniffled, trying not to break down. He'd wanted his father, but not like this!

"Silence in this court! Counsel, I will give you only one more warning on this, control your client or have him controlled for you."

A gavel sounded, and another set of hands reached from behind to hold him down again, the pain was intensifying now, not just a sharp itch but like small razors wherever the hands touched.

"So what you are saying is that Matt here was a failure from the moment of his birth."

"Yes, from birth, if he'd never been born, I'd still be alive."

Matt's shame turned now to anger, "That's bullshit! You were killed by the mob! You worked for them! I wasn't supposed to know but I did! They fixed your fights and killed you when you wouldn't do what they wanted!" He jumped up despite the pain, punching the slenderman in the face before running away, dodging any that tried to get in his way. The thing felt like snake, leathery but with a chill to it that felt like a knife slicing against his fingers.

They chased him, how could they not? He was food to them, a meal of no small quarter with delicious fears and insecurities that they could manipulate and exploit for some time before they gobbled him down, every last bit.



Tandy Bowen faces her worst nightmare - D'Spayre, the demon that tormented her only a short time ago - or... does she?



As soon as Tandy reached the top of the stairs that lead to the street she was alone. "Billy? Sue?" Tandy turned around but she saw no one. "Guys?" She took a step back and looked around her surroundings - this was diffidently not Kansas anymore."Hello?" She clutched her fist together and closed her eyes, "Calm Tandy...you can do this. You will find them and all will be better again. Plus you have the henna marking that will keep away all the baddies." The crescent moon around her right eye started to appear faintly, her powers playing on her emotions. Slowly she opened her eyes when she heard a noise, and slowly turned her head to see what caused it.

Only a few feet away from Tandy was D'Spayre, walking closer to the teen. The demon appeared to be utterly at home against the grey backdrop of the ruined New York, and a cruel smirk was pulling at her lips. "Did you really think you could get away so easily?" Dozens of imp creatures appeared all around Tandy, effectively cutting off any route of escape. "You are mine."

The main star of her nightmares for the past several weeks was standing within arm's reach. Tandy took a step back to give some distance and nearly tripped over the imps as they appeared around her. She tore her eyes away from the demon and looked around, "No...it is a dream...you aren't here...the imps aren't real." She forced herself to look back up at D'Spayre, "You aren't real."

"Oh I'm very real," D'Spayre disagreed, her gaze following Tandy's movements as she stumbled, red eyes gleaming with cold amusement, enjoying the teen's obvious fear. "And I'm always here. You'll never be able to escape."

And she reached out, pressing a hand to Tandy's forehead.

A cold shiver ran down Tandy's spin as she was touched on her forehead, like a cold hand of death. Pushing the woman away, Tandy backed away falling over the imps as she turned and started to get up to run away. She didn't care that the imps were there, they could be kicked, what she wanted was to get out of D'sayres reach. She feel again as one of the imps tripped her and she started to kick at it, the fear inside of Tandy was starting to take over.

More imps descended upon Tandy, holding her down and allowing D'Spayre time to catch up to where they lay, struggling. "That's it. I can sense your fear. Don't try to resist, let it come." She easily pushed her way into Tandy's head, intent on magnifying the girl's fear. "Let the fear consume you."

Tandy tried to push them off but there was too many of them and she couldn't think clearly. Something wasn't right, from the corner of her eye she saw tall men standing there watching her. The blonde girl started to cry from the fear as she screamed, "STOP!"

As the tears made their way down Tandy's cheeks, one of the imps leaned in, running its tongue along her right cheek and lapping up the salty water. The claws that had tightened around her arms and legs flickered for a moment, becoming long, curled fingers. Another imp joined the first, mirroring its actions on Tandy's left cheek.

Tandy freaked out as she lifted her hands towards the imps that were licking her and unleashed her daggers. She continued to crawl away, ready to unleash more if any of them got close to her again. The teen looked around, "Stay away..." Her crescent moon glowing brighter signifying another attack from her if they got close.

The imps were struck by the daggers, and they disintegrated momentarily before reforming. They didn't heed the warning of the crescent mark, and continued to move toward her, reaching out with too-long fingers as D'Spayre stood over them, taking in the scene.

It didn't work. Tandy got to her feet and looked at the imps and unleashed another attack before she turned and ran. If that didn't work than maybe she could out run them.

As Tandy turned to run, she found her path blocked - by D'Spayre. "There's nowhere to run," she told the girl, raising her arms. And all around them, more figures appeared. But these weren't imps - they were all D'Spayre. Dozens and dozens of copies that all spoke at the same time. "There's nowhere you can go where I won't find you."

At the same time, the imps latched themselves around Tandy's legs, gnawing at her ankles.

She spun in a circle as D'Spayre seemed to multiple, covering her ears to drown out the sounds of the demon. "Ow." She tore her eyes away from the army of D'Spayres and towards the imps that were gnawed at her ankle. "Fuckers." The teen whispered as she started to kick at them trying to get them off, her back hit something as she looked up to see a ruined statue of some kind. Kicking another imp off her she started to climb it, "GET AWAY!" She screamed as she kicked another one that was trying to pull her down.

But the imps climbed after her, the one she kicked replaced with two more, and several more followed. The D'Spayres watched, encouraging Tandy's fear - "Give in to it, let it take you" - all together, and the words echoed in the air.

Tandy held onto the statue for dear life. "Please stop..." She whispered as she closed her eyes to shut out the words that were surrounding her. Tandy slipped a bit but grabbed on, "Go away!"

As the imps climbed after the terrified teen, the original "D'Spayre" stepped out of the crowd, making her way to Tandy and reaching her arms out. As she moved, her arms wavered and elongated, as if she were moving through water, and her fingers began to meld together, becoming more tentacle then hand.

Tandy opened her eyes, half wished that she didn't as D'Spayre arms were turning into very long and wavy limbs. The teenager lost her footing and started to slide down the statue before she landed on her back. She moaned in pain again as she looked up and just screamed.

The distorted D'Spayre hovered over Tandy, bending down now and leaning closer to the girl. As she did, her facial features seemed to melt away, collapsing into her skin and smoothing over until her "face" became pure, paper-white skin, and the clothes she was wearing shifted and morphed, becoming a black and white suit.

Standing over Tandy was a Slenderman.

Tandy couldn't watch anymore as she wrapped arms around her face and created a ball to hide in. Tears stained her face as she rocked back and forth wishing for the nightmare to end.

The entity leaned over the curled-up ball of a girl, the too long fingers reaching out to wrap around her, drinking in her absolute fear, feeding on the emotion as she trembled and cried.