The Faithful

Not long after I started writing about the Chosen, I woke to a migraine I had never thought possible. I dragged myself out of bed, stumbling my happy ass to the bathroom to make the difficult decision from contacts and glasses. I splashed some water on face, brush my teeth, yadda yadda, and finally looked up in to the mirror to brush my hair. Instead of my glaring face staring back at me, I saw a pale,withdrawn figure with teeth like a shark's smiling at me and waving slowly. I screamed and scrambled backwards, tripping over the rug and falling backwards into the tub behind me.

My tailbone ached like a motherfucker, and I drug myself back to my feet, looking around for the shark boy. No one is there. Everything is perfectly still. In fact, the entire bathroom shows no signs of my embarrassing little incident. I see nothing, and reassure myself to the fact that I've been sleeping too little and working too much. I go on.

I used to write every few days, rarely going four days between each post. After that, I couldn't go two without feeling the compulsion to write more. And more. And more yet. I begin to worry that perhaps I need to take a break, and once more deny any ill feelings I might have had. I begin to have nightmares that feature our friends the Boogeymen, and lose more and more sleep as the days go by. I doodle strange and menacing messages in the empty space of slips of paper that were scattered throughout my home. I start writing, by accident, that I need to run. run. run. run run like you never have before. Remember, please god remember.

I freak out, and begin to reveal my worries, one at a time, to other people that had encountered the scary things that go bump in the night. Their answers were surprisingly few, and vague. Without an actual Fear meeting to encourage these things, my confusion and conflicting emotions were chalked up as over-exposure to the people I was writing about. A vacation was suggested, to which I readily agreed. Certain events at the time made me believe this was the best possible idea, and I took it. Or tried to, rather.

Bad things happened. I became more miserable and withdrawn, manic and depressive alike in the same days. The day I returned from my miserable 'vacation', I found in my mailbox a solitary envelope, postmarked and dated with no return address, addressed to my pen name. I had a minor meltdown, and finally willed myself to open the envelope that scared me so badly. Inside was a polaroid. The picture was of myself embracing a young girl in some odd costume, and the words on the letter were few and oddly familiar. They simply stated "Do you remember yet?" I flip the polaroid over after reading this, and see another phrase written in tiny, cramped writing. "07/14/2011." 

I assume the date on the back was the date it was taken, though this makes little to no sense to me. My birthday was a simple, boring day that I sat at home and celebrated by myself. This was something like a month before I had even encountered any writings of the Slenderman or the Fears, and I began to worry for my sanity. In the picture, we were standing in front of the home I live in now.

What's the point in my telling you this? Well, I'll get to that. Just remember... I told more than a few lies, and was afraid of more Boogeymen than I ever told you. Lonely hearts will poison the best of minds.