Reading

Since I can remember I spent my time with Summer. Football ( The English kind, not the American kind... What? They had the name first. We just appropriated it.) Tag, Hide and Go Seek. Anything really. In fact there was this one time when we were playing dodgeball with a few other kids, she said use the ball. There were two. So I picked up a basketball and threw it at her. She bounced it off her hand and it broke her finger. Of course I had to pay her back so she had me turning pages for her to read aloud for the next month. Charlotte's Web. I cried at the ending. (What? I was young and imaginative... According to Summer anyway...)

She taught me to read properly when my parents were out working. Doing something or other. They worked in a pharmaceutical company so they didn't have much time for me. They were either talking to doctors and selling drugs, or talking to the company and looking at what drugs they had to sell. I was pretty young really, and I missed them. But you know that thing about gifts not making up for bad parenting? They worked out pretty well with me.

When I was younger, I struggled with reading. So she put it upon herself teach me. She would bring in a book, set it down on my lap and say "Read." If I ever got somewhere that was difficult to pronounce, or I couldn't understand, then she'd spell out the sounds like she had been taught the same way. It... I suppose she was kind of an older sister to me.

You know what happens when you learn to read? You learn to write. I did as well. Poetry I guess was my thing when I was younger. But now I don't do it anymore. If circumstances were different... Maybe I'd have made something of myself. Somehow made it as a ghostwriter or something.

Actually that's doubtful. Very doubtful even, but I can dream.

Nowadays she rests her head on my lap, she asks me to read to her as I run my fingers through her long blonde hair. Jane Austen, John Buchan, J.K Rowling... if it's beautiful or exciting she'll let me read it. She says she loves the imagery in my voice. Sometimes, when I read to her, it's like I'm visualizing the places. The Thirty-Nine Steps of the novel, the sea, waxing and waning of waves, or the buzzing of the plane engine as it flies overhead.

Sometimes I realize I've lost myself so much in this book, reading, that I'm late for work.

I don't regret a second of it really.

I'm sure most of you know this. You do what you have to do to make your girlfriend happy.

The Shadow Spinner

I suppose the interesting thing about working at a bar is the people you meet. (I'm going to keep locations secret for now because I have no idea who may be reading.) To give you a general idea of how it's like, we keep a working blunderbuss under the bar. The boss man has been known to use it on people trying to buy us out. And it does feel a little comforting knowing that there's a fuck ton of scrap metal able to be projected out of the barrel at high speed toward someone trying to steal from us.

I don't pay too much attention about the whole being bought out thing, I just work there, serving drinks, making the occasional cocktail, from biker gangs to businessmen and as such you get all these funny stories.

Guys buying girls drinks is the funniest thing. Most of them act all cool, like they're not doing it at all because they want sexytime with such a women, just because they're flattering and sweet.

Or that time Batman walked in. (Yes, seriously. He was in a Batman outfit and growled at me for a beer. I think that classifies as (The Motherfucking) Batman.)

I was also propositioned twice for sex.

I declined. (Seriously, what the fuck is it with cougars and hitting on guys young enough to be their son? One of their responses to "I'm sorry I have a girlfriend." was "She can watch." I have never slapped a customer, but I was close at that point.)

You'd be surprised how much hard work it is, but they tip well enough to just about make rent and utilities whilst Summer's work as a councilor in the local high school gets us enough to eat and for the next show.

Occasionally I see a kid in a hoodie walk in with the hollow eyes and the stalked demeanor, asking for a glass of water. We offer food and shelter for a little while. It's not permanent, and it's not much, but I hear the stories. I've seen some of them happening as well. We know that we have it a little easier than most. So we do our part.

What we do...

It is kind of like that book, The Shadow Spinner.  I remembered it a while back, when we first began to see him. It is about a Sultan who asked each member of his harem he took to at night to tell him a story, if it bored him then he would kill her. Until he gets to Shahrazad. She survives for a thousand days, each night telling him a part of her story more exciting than the last.

We* do something so ridiculous and outlandish that maybe Slenderman believes we are on the same level as him, or maybe he sees us as court jesters and he keeps us alive because we're interesting.

Either way, it gives me a day longer with Summer, and for that, I would gladly die the next day.

Sometimes he vanishes like we scared him. Sometimes he comes closer, and sometimes he gets bored and wonders off.

One time I dressed up in a Slenderman costume, (It's pretty easy actually. Makes me wonder if some of those vlogs are fake...) mimicked his every move. He tilted his head, I tilted mine. He took a step forward, I took a step backward. The next thing I knew he was up close to me, and then he just vanished, like evaporated or something before my eyes.

I don't know if Slenderman spooks easily, but that time I couldn't sleep. It felt like I was mocking him... I suppose I kind of was but still...

For the record, screaming "In Brightest Day, in Blackest Night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power. GREEN LANTERNS LIGHT!" did a good job. He vanished pretty quickly for some reason. I haven't seen him since then.

And with that I leave you. If you find yourself near Chicago, drop us an email. We'll see what we can do to help.


Autumn

*See: I (Summer does do things, but it's my job to put myself between him and her. He is dangerous afterall.)

So the first time I properly saw Slenders.

Ahem.

The first time I remember seeing slender is a funny one. I was fifteen at the kind of stage of life where I was midway through hormones, learning to drive, terrible mistakes regarding my future, and looking at porn. (Admittedly the latter two may be one and the same...) And I was in the fucking bathroom. I ended up suffering from pee shyness because he was a silhouette at my window... A second story window.

A second-fucking-story window.

I suppose there's the theory that he could have been a window cleaner in a business suit. But what happened afterward sort of disproved that.

I turned around and he was there, he kinda had to tilt his head to fit, but that just added to the full frontal Eldritch Horror. At that point, all pee shyness had gone away. He just stared at me for a moment... Well. I say stared. I more mean... Looked? Tilted his faceless head in my direction? Yeah, let's go with that one.

Well, he tilted his faceless head in my direction... And then he just left. Like... I must have blinked because he was just gone...

TL;DR: Pissed myself literally the first time I saw the Slenderman.

Autumn

Well meeting is the most interesting part

When I first met Autumn, I was maybe five or six. We were the same age and his family moved in next door to me, and we would play games together. Cops and Robbers, Dodgeball, ( I will never forget that incident with the basketball, no matter how many times you apologize, Autumn.) Imaginary games in my back garden, like there was this one he invented that was like a magic kite and it took us to wherever we wanted and we more often than not had to survive on an island. I was a little bossy and made us drink water from a bottle rather than the lake (like he wanted.)

Sometimes my dad would let him stay over and we would just talk about nothing in particular. His parents were business people, their lives were with their work mostly... They traveled a lot. We were as good as family to him really. They would just dump him on us and say they'd be back in a week. It made me sad for him, but he never complained to us. He said that they were always busy and that he didn't miss them much. It's funny now I think of it, I remember the shy, infinitely creative boy with the tawny hair and green eyes, and me, oozing self confidence and being far too book smart for my own good.

We were eleven when we first saw him... This Slenderman... It was on Halloween, my parents are gravely against it but, well, Autumn decided to look out for me. He successfully got me to change into a fairy costume, jumping out of my bedroom window and we were off. Exploring the suburbs with candy galore. I remember his face as he told me. "Come on Summer, they'll never know..."

We were walking down another street when we saw it. Or rather him. He was tall, taller than I had ever seen, his limbs were out of proportion with his body and wearing a suit that fitted him. He had no face.

It was a beautiful costume. I walked toward him, looking up. I smiled at him, told him that his costume was scary.

He said nothing. He just turned and walked away. He smelled odd, like... I don't know. Like old people, like pipe smoke the kind my Uncle smoked.

Autumn came after me, a little confused. "Who was he?"

I smirked at him. "A stranger."

"You shouldn't talk to strangers Summer, it's bad." He frowned at me, matter of factly.

Of course I knew he was right. But I was an obnoxious ten year old.

When we got back, my parents grounded me for two weeks, they forbade us from seeing each other.

As you can tell, that worked out incredibly well for us.

Summer

Here's an introduction for ya

I heard tell that you guys have a problem.
A practical problem.
One that perhaps is similar to a certain faceless being from another dimension.
I'm Autumn.

If you say it's a girls name. You. Yes you, Sir or Madam, are a fucker.

Back on topic, we... We have a simple solution.

Bullshit.

Yes.

Bullshit.

The kind of bullshit that Jersey Shore is made of. (I haven't yet tried wearing a tiny shirt, gelled my hair to shit, worn sunglasses and screamed "COME AT ME BRO!" But that is currently in the works. Summer refuses to do that though. Apparently it's like making fun of an orphan girl because she has no parents.)

Summer, my dear girlfriend, and I have decided to create this blog in order to document this idea to the point that maybe... Just maybe, until the black king catches on that we are nothing, we will be left alone.

So. I currently have a Claymore. Don't ask how, or why or what I am doing with a Claymore. Let's just say that I'm debating painting my face half blue so that the next time he returns I shall shake my sword at him, and starting doing William Wallaces speech from Braveheart.

"THEY MAY TAKE OUR LIVES! BUT THEY WILL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!"

...

Fuck... I need a ginger wig as well to do it properly.

Fuck, we'll be back later. He's here and we don't have our Green Lantern costumes on yet.

Bye for now!

Autumn