The forest was dark, as usual. Any light that the moon and stars offered was restricted by the rows upon rows of evergreen trees - blanketing the three of us in a true darkness. Tree roots bulged and bridged out of the ground, acting like nature's tripwires or traps - though it would make more sense for it to be that thing's traps. With every blind step a sharp crunch would break the silence - leafs being crumpled and crushed.
The flashlight in Tim's hand jumped occasionally and swayed with almost every step - his quiet mutterings amongst the rustling of the paper in Brian's hands distracting me from my thoughts. My evening plans with Cody were abruptly shut down by the faceless fuck, but we'd still managed to talk quite a bit. It was nice.
I looked down to the barely visible drawings on the wrinkled, old paper in front of me. My hands gently held onto the small pile tighter seeing the grotesque pictures. Even though they looked crudely drawn by a child, the depictions of the walking tree made my blood boil. The "NO EYES" scribbed desperately onto the sheet with the image of a featureless face - the eyes replaced with two vivid crossed - only adding to it. We were quite literally being forced to hang up one way tickets for Slenderman, or one of us, to meet a poor soul that got too curious and ripped a page off.
"You're quiet, Rogers." Brian stated, looking from Tim and to me, instead - causing me to glance behind, seeing the blonde. "You okay, kid?" He hesitantly asked.
I only nodded in response. I hated it here, of course I wasn't okay. But, on the other hand, it wasn't all bad - I had more of an idea of what my life was like before this.
"M'kay, I know something is wrong now." Brian commented, the sound of paper crumpling following his words - most likely him stuffing the sheets into his hoodie pocket. "What's bothering you?"
I sighed as my gaze fell back to the pages below - beginning to take the right corner of my bottom lip between my teeth. A horrible nervous habit. "Why do we have to hang up these pages?" I asked, finally letting go of my lip - thankfully it wasn't followed by a metallic taste.
"Because we've been told to?" Brian replied, clearly confused - as well as slightly amused - by my question.
"No," I sighed, continuing, "Why do we have to deal with it's bullshit? Why did it pick us? We didn't pick the pages - that was Kate." I grumbled, my grip on the papers beginning to tighten, "And then she didn't even go into the forest looking to pick these - she was lured into doing it. That fuck has forced us all here, just to treat us like slaves."
A silence followed; they either agreed with me or they didn't want to have this conversation - and I'm pretty sure they hate it here just as much as I do.
"I mean, Tim - you said that you've been seeing Slenderman since you were a kid, right? They took you into a hospital, in and out, constantly - misdiagnosed you with schizophrenia and drugged you up to the eyeballs." I snapped, looking behind me to the two masked men - Tim's mask being on properly and Brian's ski mask being somewhat haphazardly slipped on. I scoffed before continuing, "Well? How is that fair? What did you do as a kid to earn it's interest?"
"I don't know, Toby." Tim stated - an almost stern tone to his voice, as if he was frustrated at me for bringing this up. "None of us know - and if we did then we'd get out of here." He continued, "I went through hell, me and Brian did, to avoid that thing and I'm sure you did too."
I felt my eyebrows beginning to furrow, slipping underneath my goggles, and clenching my jaw. "Then why don't we figure it out? Huh? Why don't we find out what makes us so fucking special?" I snapped, taking the top page from the pile and stuffing the rest in my pocket - slamming it against a tree bark and stabbing a knife through it. "It's complete and utter fucking bullshit." I seethed.
"Maybe you should get some rest, kid? We can do all of this." Brian hesitantly suggested. I could hear his concern in his voice, but it didn't help.
"No. You remember when Jeff called me a dog because of my muzzle?"
Tim's eyes narrowed, from what I could make out, under his mask. "Toby, you shouldn't worry about that - it's Jeff."
"I know, but he's right. I'm treated like a guard dog, and so are you two. So is Kate! And I would say Jeff is too, but he actually likes what he does!" I exclaimed, taking the pages out of my pocket as my other fist balled up - the feeling of the leather glove covering my palm only making my finger nails dig further into it. "It makes us hunt more workers down for it. We're it's lackies. I mean, for fucks sake it forces me to wear this shit-" I ranted, grabbing ahold of the thick, black plastic that dug into my cheeks. I couldn't feel the pain - but I could feel the pressure behind it. And I could see the reddened marks it'd leave behind. I'd tried loosening it up before, but it'd never budge - the leather straps would either tighten enough to keep it stuck to my face, or they'd fall out of the silver coloured adjusters.
Brian stepped forward, as my gaze was averted downwards, sticking his gloved hand into my sight. I could just make out his limb amongst the darkness, as well as the tinted lenses of my goggles, but I also knew what it meant.
Reluctantly I dropped my arm by my side as my other meekly reached out to pass the three pages I was carrying to Brian's pile. I kept my head low - I did feel ashamed for my outburst, I always did, even if it was justified. It always just left Brian and Tim with more work.
"Get some rest, Rogers, okay? You'll probably need it too, since you're working with Jeff and X."
With a small nod I sighed, hesitantly beginning to walk away after I'd briefly made eye contact with the two. "Yeah, yeah I will."