Splendor

Chapter 4: The Slender Brothers

*Reader's POV*

"Ma'am? Uh, ma'am? Are you alive?" I get picked up from what feels like a tree's trunk. Something lifts my eyelid, and I finally wake.

"Where..." My head throbs, and my speech is slurred, as if I'm drunk.

"Hush, hush.  You have a bad head injury. Just rest up, and you'll be back to running again soon." The calmness of his voice makes me slowly and peacefully fall back to a slumber.

                                                                                      ________

I get rudely awoken by a loud voice saying, "Up, ugly girl, up! Get your dumb ass off the floor!" I squint my eyes open and see 4 tall, pale men standing over me, hands hanging low.

"Who are you people?" I ask with an airy voice, "Where am I?"

"Oh my. She's having amnesia. Well, ma'am, we don't know your name or anything, but--"

"No, I remember my name and all that, I just don't know who you..." I realize what I just said. Tall, pale men. Tall, and pale, Like Splendy. "You... you guys are Splendorman's brothers... aren't you?" They nod. "Jeez. And I thought one of him was crazy enough."

"Well, the least we could do right now is explain ourselves," Says the one in the black suit. He points to himself, "I am Slenderman."

The one with glasses throws his hand over his shoulder, "I am Trenderman, not nice to meet you."

The nice one in a lavender 3 piece suit bows, "I am Tenderman, but call me as you like." I look around.

"Wasn't there another one of you?" I feel a tapping on my shoulder.

"Right here, pretty lady." A long finger strokes my cheek, and I turn my hand to see him. A long, slithery tongue sticks out of his mouth. He where's a tan drench coat and a brown fedora. "I'm Offenderman."

"I can guess why your named that..." I move his hand away from my face. I take in our surroundings. Dense, foggy forestation, trees with huge reddish trunks, and not a trace of snow anywhere. "Where are we?"

"The woods, idiot," Trenderman snaps.

"No shit, I mean, like, what state? I live in Colorado, where the hell is this?" Slenderman face-palms.

"Damnit, of course Jeff went too far..." He puts a hand on my shoulder. "We're in the San Francisco redwoods." My heart skips a beat. I've always wanted to come here, but not like this. Not in a complete nightmare. 

"Come, madam." Requests Tenderman. "We must be going." They start to walk, and I lag behind. They argue back and forth (well, all of them other than Tenderman, who would pitch in every once in a while with "Of course" or "Yes."). I tug on Slenderman's shirt from the back. He looks at me. 

"Why do people say you're the scariest?" The others fall silent. They're quietness unsettles me.

Slenderman sighs, "You are the first person to ask..." His voice grows gruff, "That was alive." I stop in my tracks, looking at him fearfully. He looks away, looking down.

All of them, almost on queue, started dyeing laughing. "AAAAAHAHAHAHAH! She fell for that!?" My face turns cherry red.

"What the hell! That isn't funny! I was just being chased by a psychotic murderer named "Splendorman", and that's a joke you make at this time?" They all straighten themselves up. 

"You're right, you're right, we're sorry." Says Offenderman. "Aren't we, boys?" They all apologize. Slenderman explains that he was the first of the brothers, and that he was simply terrifying back in his day, scaring passerby of his land and putting crop circles in farm to confuse people. We have a good laugh, and we continue our hike to an unknown place in San Francisco, California... I hope.