Master

Master
I'm sure everyone here has heard of him. The White King. Der Großmann. Master. The Slender Man.

He is perhaps the most famous of all the creatures found in these pastas. But, on a more serious note, he himself is not fictional. I have seen him. Out of the corner of my eye, at times. It is only in complete darkness that I can sense him any more than I usually do, as his face hangs over mine and he stares into my soul. Without eyes. So has everyone I know. He appears to them as he appears to me, because we know that he is. We know he exists. We know what others choose to ignore. And perhaps it is because they choose to ignore that he does not haunt them.

Perhaps it is because we know the truth that he chooses us to torment. There was one day in particular that I remember. I was at the park, with my two friends. Ryan, and Tyler. I still know them, I still talk to them, we're still alive. (Thankfully) But he stalks us. More quietly, now, but the force is still there. The feeling. Like you're being watched from inside yourself, from all directions, supervised constantly. I'm never alone anymore. I can't be. He's always here. But it's more than a feeling for the others. I've seen photographs. I've seen him follow them. There's nothing keeping us sane any more. There never was for me, but for my friends, they were on the slope. Now they're down here with me, in the darkness of insanity. The light no longer shines on us. We're hollow on the inside. Just proxies of our own will. For that demon.

It still sends a chill down my spine when I think of how it all started, two years ago. I was looking up pictures of him online, just like any other day. You could say I was slightly obsessed. That night, when school ended, I invited both friends over to hang out. We took our bikes and rode through the park near my house, trying to scare ourselves into believing that he was there, that he was following us. And then, it happened. I can still remember it clearly even after all this time. I felt something take a hold of me. Of my mind. Things got white, as if everything was in a fog.

"He's here," I said, out loud. And then, I took off on my bike. Leaving them there. I could hear "Oh, fuck!" and "Shit! Let's get out of here!" as my two friends saw him appear. They caught up with me later down the trail, and recounted what they saw. "He was right fucking there, man!" I remember Tyler saying. "Standing next to one of the trees!"

By then I was out of whatever trance I had been in, and I remember telling them that we'd better head back to my house. We spent that night locked inside my room, awake all night. While he stared through my window at us, from the ground. We had to hide underneath the windowsill, just so he couldn't watch us.

In the years that followed, up to about three months ago, my friends were plagued by a series of attacks and confrontations. Because they saw him. I was the lucky one, I had taken off in time.

I'm not sure what's happening to me now. I feel a darkness inside me that I can't stop. A need for blood, an anger, a need to kill. To murder. I imagine people being ripped apart by wires, how their blood would spray on the walls, and how beautiful it would all be. If I could just get them alone. And the feeling of triumph in that final moment of their lives would be oh so much sweeter if they deserved it. And so, I wait, now. Like a time bomb. Waiting for somebody to step far enough out of line that I could have the pleasure of killing them. And not for anything big, really. Just throwing a punch, for no reason. Just so that I could rip their eyes out, so that I could tear the flesh from their bones. So I could bathe in their blood.

And I'm sure it's him. He's inside me. Inside my mind. He's a part of me. And he. Is. Real.