What Is Love?

Chapter Twelve

Danny Dare

The night was moonless and foggy, making the forest too dark to see much.

A door slammed.

"What the...?" I sat up in bed, startled from my dreaming. The sound seemed like it had come from the main room. I started to shake it off as the house settling or something like that, but then I heard the voices.

With slightly shaking fingers, I reached under my bed and grabbed my old softball bat. Weaponry at its finest.

I crept up to my bedroom door, not turning on any lights, and slowly opened it. I winced and swore under my breath as the door hinges creaked. Damn, there went the element of surprise. Steeling myself up, I shoved the door open and ran into the room, bat at the ready to bash some heads - but there was no one there. The voices I heard were coming from the TV screen. My eyes widened as I took in the image that played there - a dark silhouette of a man with glasses and an unnatural smile.

"We are watching," said the deep, distorted, disembodied voice on my tv. The man's glasses glinted at me menacingly through the staticky screen and I repressed a shudder. "You cannot run. You cannot hide. You cannot fight," the voice continued. "He sees you..." And then suddenly the screen turned to pure static and the volume turned to full blast.

"Shit!" I yelled and dove for the remote, dropping the bat in the process. I grabbed it and clicked the red off button hastily. With a sigh of relief I tossed it back down and started to turn. A dark shadow in the corner of the room froze me were I stood.

Oh. My. God. There was a someone in my house.

I knew I should be terrified (and I was) and I knew I should scream (which I wanted to) but I didn't. With a twist in my gut, I realized something - yes, I was scared, but I was also extremely pissed. What did this guy WANT?

I managed to glare at him. "Get the fuck out of my house you son of a bitch," I growled.

The man the Internet had named as Hoodie just stared at me, and then in a flash, bolted out the front door.

I grabbed the bat off the floor and ran to the doorway. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of movement.

"Oh I've got you now..." I muttered. Still in my pajama pants and tank top, I ran barefoot outside, trusty bat firmly in hand. "Come on!" I yelled out my challenge to the night. My eyes strained through the darkness in search of the signature tan hoody.

There!

I sprinted after him, not caring about the sticks and stones that cut into my bare feet. Hoodie, however, pulled farther and farther ahead of me. After a few minutes, I lost him completely. Then with a moment of shock, closely followed by fear, I realized that he wasn't the only one that had been lost. I hadn't the foggiest idea where in the world I was.

"Oh crap..." I spun around in a circle, trying to get my bearings. The night around me pressed at me from all sides, the sounds of wild life and who knows what else made me near hysterical as panic set in. I'd just made probably about the worst mistake of my life - I'd gotten myself lost, at night, in an area the Slender man had been known to haunt - and I had a feeling I was going to die for it.

I gripped my bat a little tighter. Well I wasn't going down without a fight. With wide, super dilated eyes, I stared around me, wearily searching for my impending death. I felt him before I saw him - he was right behind me.

I didn't even bother looking, I just swung blindly as I turned to face him - and missed of course. Something slithering, black, and snake-like wrapped around the end of the bat and I realized with probably less shock than I should have that it was a tentacle. Said tentacle wasted no time in ripping my only form of defense from me.

'You can't fight,' the memory of the voice on the television reminded me, and at that moment I conceded that it may have been right.

So I ran.