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EssenceofNexus Hey I just saw this and it looked like fun, and what's a contest without at least a couple of entries? :D If you're still accepting entries, I got a little horror one-shot typed out. If not, no hard feelings! Content tags include horror (ofc), sensory descriptions of a similar nature, some physical contact, and content generally inspired by the Slenderman games, stories, and some scenes of the movie.
Username: Lanternwisp
User ID: 533997
Word Count: 1746
Would you like to be pinged when the winner is announced?: Yes, if there is one at this date :0
Submission:
The woods were still, and the birds were silent. Marwen’s steps sounded louder, intrusive and out of place, and her ragged gasps seemed to offend the forest around her, and she could swear the blurred trunks and canopies were bending in closer as she ran—she felt a chill at her back.
The wind was catching up—
oh god she hoped it was the wind it must the wind please let it be the wind—but even assuring herself that it was only air, shivers made her shoulders jerk violently and she told herself it was the cold, only the cold, just the cold.
Leaves crackled behind her now—unsettled, disturbed by a breath of air, and the sound made the rapid beating of her heart skip and swell into a silent scream inside her chest to
hide run hide run hide run keep running—it was just the wind, it wasn’t him—
But half-buried beneath the rustling crackle of the leaves she heard a lower sound, like the creaking and crack of splintering bark. The smell of moldering leaf litter and threatening rain came, carried on the chill scent of the night wind, engulfing her and surrounding her, reminding her she was alone and still far from home—
too far, too far oh god she was too far.
Her diaphragm crushed the air out of her lungs from sheer reflex, trying to force a scream out of her as she panicked
stay quiet stay quiet stay quiet—she clamped down on the impulse as she ducked behind a large tree trunk, but a stifled noise of terror still escaped her despite one hand covering her mouth, slipping out into the air and away, like the last straggler bird attempting to escape the encroaching edge of winter at its heels.
Stay quiet, stay still, stay quiet stay still and maybe he wouldn’t see her, she tried to get her breathing under control but her lungs screamed at her for
air, even as her brain screamed at her for silence.
The leaves quieted their crackling, the last brittle gasp of autumn before winter took hold. But the low crackling like shredded wet bark popping and snapping under pressure was still there. Closer now.
Marwen covered her face, her hands cold and shaking in terror—she knew the rules. She had to make sure she didn’t see it. And maybe, she hoped, if she stayed still, stayed quiet, kept her face from being recognizable—
the way his wasn’t—maybe he would pass her by.
Maybe he wouldn’t see her.
Maybe she’d survive.
She tried to keep her breathing quiet, felt her body shiver uncontrollably in terror as the sound came closer, grew more ponderous, until—it stopped.
She didn’t dare move.
Moments passed, she wasn’t sure how long, the rapid beat of her heart serving as an unreliable clock that stretched the time out to feel longer than she was sure it was.
The air felt colder in front of her. Marwen wasn’t sure if that was her imagination or not.
She was afraid it wasn’t.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, and she kept herself tense as a piano wire stretched to snapping—until she felt a touch against the back of her hand.
She managed not to scream, kept quiet as what she thought was a hand—
too big, is that skin?—was splayed lightly against the back of both of her hands, the fingers passing slowly, almost gently over her knuckles, questing as if to map the surface of where her face should be, hidden behind her palms.
She didn’t dare breathe, but her lungs screamed the longer she starved them of air, so breathe she had to—barely, barely inhaling as slowly as she could manage, trying to limit the depth of her inhales so her ribs didn’t rise and fall noticeably.
He knew. He knew he knew he knew he had to know—
She wondered if it was human for a wild and brief moment, before the wrongness of the skin chased that consideration out—almost damp in that not-quite-warm-or-cold way, she thought it felt like
skin but the texture was
wrong that felt almost rough and scraggly, like the grained lines and knots of birch wood made too soft, too pliable—she hoped it was just bark.
The hand rested for a moment, fingers wrapped around her skull as gently as an egg, palm over her hands that hid her face, as if the other was pondering whether to squeeze and crack her head open. Would the sound stand out in these woods at all, with the crackling of the leaves and —
not-bark-no-it-definitely-wasn’t-was-it—him?
She was afraid
he knew.
He must, her thoughts wailed inside her skull at her, trapped with nowhere to run just like she was here and now, the way his fingers had lingered over where her eyes hid, as if knowing what she had that he didn’t.
Then the fingers slowly withdrew.
She didn’t dare move.
It was a trick. It had to be.
The silence was suffocating, pressing in at her eardrums even as the blind darkness of not knowing if he was still
there right in front of her ate away at her in bite-sized pieces.
He must still be there. She was sure of it.
She was terrified.
But she needed to see, in order to get out. The road back into the suburbs should be just over the next hill. Would she be safe, if she made it out? Was it far enough? Would she be spared, if she managed to wait long enough for him to leave? If she didn’t see him?
Was he waiting for her?
Marwen wanted to cry, wanted to call out for help, for someone,
anyone to save her. She didn’t dare though. She hadn’t known, she hadn’t thought it was real, she hadn’t wanted to get involved with all this in the first place, why had she gone along with this—
She quieted her thoughts as best she could, and tried to focus on counting her breaths, slow, as noiseless as she could manage, and tried to wait. Tried to be patient. Maybe...maybe if she waited long enough, he would leave.
Maybe she could go free.
Maybe she’d be safe.
Marwen didn’t hear any sound of footsteps or crackling though. She hadn’t heard footsteps before, but she was afraid that the continued silence meant he was simply waiting for her to look at him. To see his face—not-face. Where a face should be. The drawings had shown nothing, where his face was supposed to be.
The silence remained, until the wind picked up, reaching around the trunk to ruffle her hair in an almost jeering, mocking, and perhaps sympathetic manner. The cold bite of the air reminded her the sun was setting, she had to get home because oh god, would this be worse if she was caught out at
night?
Was it long enough?
Did she dare?
Should she wait longer still?
Am I doomed?
The wind briefly swelled into a more forceful howl for a brief moment, its cries groaning long and hollow like the bay of a hunting hound hot on the trail. She clenched her hands tighter still if it was at all possible to her face, and didn’t dare to move, listening as the leaves rattled and rustled, and as the wind died down to a reluctant whisper, and the tree canopy rattled and hissed all around her.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought amidst the howling wind, she might have heard... a sound?
Was it him…?
Or something else?
Someone else?
...Had he left?
She swallowed with a mouth too dry and a heart in her throat. She needed to get home. Home, where she might be safe. Home where she might be out of his sight.
Was it too soon? Should she wait a moment more? What was too long, too short?
Had the others gotten out?
Had they gotten away?
Was he still hunting them…
...or was she the last one left?
She didn’t know what was worse, the fear that the others had gotten away and she was the one he had picked to follow, or the possibility that he’d been drawn away by another who
had seen his face.
Would he come back for her?
The thought chilled her to the bone the way the icy wind couldn’t.
She had to leave, if he was gone she had to take this opportunity to get away and leave.
Marwen took a breath, prayed to a god she hadn’t believed in until maybe now, and peeked through the slimmest of gaps between her fingers, making sure to look strictly down at the ground, not up.
There was nothing there.
All she saw was the forest floor, dirt and dead leaves and a mess of underbrush, darkening and merging all of her surroundings into undefined shadows as the sunlight faded more and more rapidly from the sky overhead.
He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there.
Maybe.
She...she had to get out. Marwen continued to look carefully across the ground in front of her, slowly panning her gaze to and fro, side to side, scanning for any sign of something that might look out of place, something human—but not. She was ready to snap her eyes closed and hide her face completely again at a moment’s notice, hoping, praying it would be enough.
She saw nothing. Only the woods, the trees standing like a waiting mob, their leaves dark like the empty eye sockets of skulls staring unblinkingly down at her from overhead, holes of absence in the space of the grey sky where there should have been something else.
Run.
Run, her brain told her, kicking her heart back up into fight or flight mode as if she hadn’t been in an adrenaline-fueled-panic near constantly since this had all gone sideways into some horror-filled twilight zone. Tired and shaking with the effort at fighting her fear, Marwen dropped her hands and ran.
Nothing.
There was nothing between her and the tree-covered hill that overlooked the road separating the woods from civilization, the wilds from safety.
And then the nothing moved.
