That really sucked.

So the bandaged prick already noted down what happened on his end, but guess I'll summarise: Basically we've been travelling to people's houses, having Kelevra look through their windows in order to see if any of the faces would match the one in Claude's memory. Came to this house, in this neighbourhood, lights were on, so Kelevra perched up on the tree in their backyard and kept an eye out for any people that would walk by any windows. Time was getting into an hour, I was getting bored of just waiting around, I spotted a 7/11 not far so me and Franky decided to go get a few drinks, while Kelevra kept watch. On our way back, we heard gun shots erupting from the area of the house, so we started running back, once we got to the house, the car that was parked near the backyard suddenly started speeding towards me and Franky, we barely managed to jump out of its way. I looked around and saw Kelevra in the backyard, cowering behind a tree, yelling to us that, that was our guy in the car, so we immediately gave chase.

Now I'm not going to pretend that we could outrun a car, the guy was quickly gaining speed, but because of the narrow road and all the cars that were parked on the curb and the coming up turn, he couldn't speed up too much, allowing us to at the very least keep him in our sight, the goal was to somehow stop him from making that turn, because that's when we would definitely lose him. So I yelled at Franky to do something, thinking that maybe he could Path us closer or something like that, instead he just stopped and knelt down on the pavement, I couldn't exactly see what he was doing, because at the time I figured he just tripped so I had to keep running after the car. Eventually the car had reached the turn and as it was in the process of turning, suddenly something jumped onto it's hood from the nearby park's bushes, it was a small, black figure, but the thing that I very clearly see, even at night, were the bright, glowing eyes. The car, predictably swerved and almost ended up turning over on it's side, as it landed back on four wheels, it began to speed up again, that's when I saw another dark figure crawl out from the manhole that the car just drove over, it stopped in the middle of the turn, looking around, it was a Denizen.

For those of you who don't know, Denizens are these freaky creatures that roam around in The Path, nobody knows what exactly they are, whatever they are, they look creepy. They look like feral humans, crawling around on all fours, biting into things, or clawing at things with their sharp, long claws. Their skin is pitch black, but is also extremely thin, it's so thin in fact that when any light falls on them, you can see their skeletons through the skin and all the organs that slush around within them. And their eyes, are like black orbs, that light up like headlights if any light reflects off of them and somehow, Franky can summon them to his aid, something I forgot about during the many years since we last used this ability of his to our advantage.

After the second Denizen finished looking around, it managed to leap onto the back of the car, that once again was trying to pick up the speed it had lost, as the car veered out of my sight, I could hear the sound of glass breaking, followed up by a man's scream and then the unmistakable sound of the car crashing into something. This was it, my chance to capture the man that was one of the people behind Alesa's murder, I sped up, anger and excitement fuelling me. However, as I was about to turn the corner I tripped over something and fell flat on my face, I immediately got up and was ready to resume my chase only to realise that once I got past the turn, I was greeted with another street, row of cars parked on the curb, leading up to another turn, no wrecked vehicle in sight. The street looked eerily similar to the one me and Franky were running down just a few minutes ago, the major difference being that all the buildings looked abandoned, dilapidated even, the road had various cracks in it and all the parked cars had massive, black tree branches growing through them. I looked behind me, to see what I tripped over, it was a black root growing through the concrete, no doubt about it, I was inside The Path, worst thing about that, is that Franky wasn't the one who transported me there, no, when Franky Paths us through, he usually does it as quickly as possible, I barely ever get to even catch a glimpse of what The Path actually looks like inside, until that day, that is.

There was nothing I could do other than walk down that road all over again, with my hand on my sword, I started walking towards the turn all over again. The further I walked, the heavier the air would get, it was getting harder to breathe, to a point where I was sweating profusely, whilst just trying to keep walking, it's as if I was about to have a heart attack or something. I had to stop and catch my breath, I leaned against one of the cars and stood there for a few minutes, that's when I noticed the noise around me, noise of a heart beating, at first I thought it was my heart, but no, this sound was from somewhere else, so loud, I could hear it crystal clear, to a point where it would start to press down on my ears and actually start giving me a migraine. When I looked up from the ground, looking in the direction of the turn, I could see a light emanating from the turn, the way it was dancing against the black trees, implied that the source of the light was a fire. Reminding me that one of Alesa's murderers could be seizing this opportunity to escape, anger came back and I started to walk through the street with greater pace than before, doing my best to ignore the heavy air, the migraine, everything.

But

I was not prepared for what I was going to see once I made that turn. There, around that turn, in the middle of the street    there she was

Alesa, her ginger hair flailing around, behind her the fire, white fire, just burning away at whatever it was. When she saw me, she gave me one of her bright smiles, god, she was too kind for any of this shit. She started waving at me, as if nothing ever happened, as if she wasn't dead from a bullet wound to her head. as if she wasn't currently buried in a cemetery, then that feeling came back, a feeling I'm all too familiar with, the hand that was on my sword was shaking, I wanted to do it, then and there. But quickly, that feeling faded away with his appearance, Slender Man was standing behind Alesa, spreading it's long arms to the sides. A lot of people have different descriptions for it, usually with it wearing a suit of some kind and I have seen it before in a suit, but this time, it wasn't wearing a suit, it's body seemed to protrude directly from the ground, it's black body appearing to be pointy and crooked in places, as if it was made out of the black branches itself, I couldn't even see it's white head due to all the white fire behind it. Different branches began to grow from it's body and wrap around Alesa, lifting her up with ease, she was still waving away with that bright smile of hers, completely oblivious to what was going on, it was lifting her up, to where it's head supposedly was.

then       




she started to catch on fire, the white fire, it burned away her hair, her skin began to melt revealing her bones and despite all that, she was still waving, still smiling.


it was terrible, i wanted to throw up then and there, i was terrified, i wanted to      wanted to



Then I heard screaming, this bloodcurdling screaming, sounded like it was coming from a woman, but it wasn't Alesa, she just kept on smiling. The scream was coming from everywhere around me and then suddenly it was coming directly from behind me, it was getting closer, i wanted to look around, to look away, but i couldn't, i just couldn't and as the scream got closer, I braced myself for whatever was going to happen next.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder, opening my eyes, I instantly turned around to see Franky holding on to my shoulder. Looking behind him, the street was normal again, no black branches penetrating the row of cars, abandoned buildings and I could feel heat behind me. Turning around, the source of the heat was the car that we were chasing, it was on fire, smashed against one of the lamp posts, the driver was outside of it, sprawled out on the ground, bleeding from his neck. Trying to wrap my head around everything, Franky pulled on my shoulder, alerting me to the sirens that could be heard in the distance, with various onlookers already staring at the scene from their windows. We quickly ran into the park that was next to the turn and once convinced that we were out of sight of regular onlookers, Franky Pathed me to where Kelevra was.

After which we Pathed our way out of the neighbourhood back to our hiding place.

I've been keeping an eye on the police reports of the incident since, the car's plate number made it easy to track down any relevant information. The driver also survived, he is currently in the hospital recovering.

That's going to be our next stop, Kelevra won't be joining us on this one, since he departed somewhere on his own two days ago, didn't say where, don't really care.






I hated typing this out.