Free

In the beginning there was me and Mom.

In the middle there was me and Redlight.

By the end there is me and Simon.

There was always a missing person in all of this. That person was Dad- Tony. I miss him, I really do. Even though everything that happened was just…/bad/ he still came back for me. He, Mom and Simon came for me. I guess I should explain because so much has happened.

Yesterday I sent a message to Mom and Dad. I remember I put down a time and place for them to meet me and I also remember feeling scared and nervous. I didn’t really go crazy like I wrote. I sort of…pretended it. When I tried to kill myself and saw Mom and Dad reaching for me I snapped out of it. Redlight’s hold on me must have been broken on my end or something because I couldn’t feel his influence anymore, a voice in the back of my head telling me to do things to prepare for him. There was still something there, something dark and tangled in my mind. I think it was Him. That thing I called Dad for a while.

I had to pretend to be under Redlight’s control still though so I wrote that entry so he wouldn’t lock me up when he figured out I had tried to kill myself. He actually believed my lie which still surprises me because I thought it would never work. But the lie brought him back to me after being away for a long time.

The next day Redlight took me and a few things in a bag and we went to the place I told Mom, Dad and Simon to meet me. The place we stopped was a big clearing in the middle of the woods. There was a tree stump near the middle, I remember, and Redlight told me to go sit on it and wait for my parents and the policeman. I don’t know how long I was there, but it must have been a while because my legs fell asleep. After a while though I finally heard Mom and Dad. Dad more because he was talking loudly about how he hates coming in the woods and Mom was just saying a few things during his pauses.

I guess they saw me a few moments later because Dad stopped talking. I couldn’t turn to look at them; I was staring at Redlight who motioned for me to stay quiet. At the time I got really scared, I didn’t know what to do because he was taking out some things from the bag and he always has horrible things with him. It turns out it was two weird guns, I think one was a stun gun. Even though he had told me to stay quiet and not move before we got to the clearing I couldn’t help but turn when he suddenly shot a dart out and hit Dad in the neck.  He only got a few steps and then he fell over. Redlight started laughing but then Simon pointed a gun at him.  But before he could do anything, he froze up, and I saw these little cords out of his chest.  Mom was screaming, and Redlight was just laughing as he reloaded, then shot her too.

I remember wanting to cry when I saw Mom hit the ground and see her body twitch from the electrical blasts. I was so scared because suddenly it was just me and Redlight and he had the most horrible smile on his face that stretched the bits of tree I could see slivering around on his head and one of his eyeballs was hanging loose out of the socket. The last thing he brought out of the bag was a pipe and he told me to hold it for him. He went over to Dad and grabbed him by his hair and pulled him up to make him look at me. The both of them were staring and Redlight told me to “have at it”.

He wanted me to hit Dad with the pipe over and over until he died. I know that’s what he wanted. And Dad couldn’t do anything, the dart must have had some bad drug or something in it because his fingers were able to clench but the rest of him was staying still.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t keep fooling Redlight anymore because I couldn’t kill my /Dad/!

I remember walking up to them not knowing what was going to happen, just scared of what was going to happen to me. For the first time in months I realized there were no more side options I could take to live, I only had one and I’d probably die. The thought of actually being /dead/ scared me so bad my hands started to shake. I wondered if it would hurt, if it would take long, if I would go to Heaven after killing so many people, if Hell was as scary as I thought it was…

And then he kept screaming at me to do it and I hit Redlight in the face with the pipe instead of Dad. It cut his face and while it bleed a tree root started pushing through and wrapping around his eye- I wanted to puke or scream, but before I could Redlight got really, really angry. Simon told me he said, “You miserable little punk” or something, but I didn’t hear anything except TV static because I had broken free of Him. Of Slenderman. I did it, I got free because I wouldn’t obey him and Redlight, and I was me again.

That was when Redlight suddenly picked me up, yanking the pipe out of my hands, and threw me to the ground. It hurt so bad, I think I landed on a rock, but he wouldn’t let me get up. He just grabbed my hoodie and made me look at him. His face was so ugly and his skin was /moving/ from the tree parts trying to grow out of him. That was when I was able to scream.

It hurt. Everything hurt because he was killing me from the inside. He was trying to force me out of my own body after I had finally gotten it back for myself and it /burned/. I was so sure I had somehow caught fire but I couldn’t move away at all. And all I could do was cry and scream for someone to help me because it all /hurt/.

Mom shot Redlight in the back.

All of a sudden Redlight had frozen with a shocked look and let me go. He made a few watery noises and stumbled away. That’s when I saw Mom standing there with Simon’s gun, hands still shaking from the effects of the tazer. We made eye contact and I promise a million words were able to be said without actually saying them. She loved me, she’d do anything for me, and she’d never stop until I was safe.

Slenderman appeared behind her and all I could do was stare and gasp. I didn’t even get to warn her. He had come when Redlight fell to the side, probably knew that one of his own important people was dying. He was angry, that I know for sure. Even though I had broken free, there was this noise in my head like a siren. It hurt to hear and even though I reached up to cover my ears and curl into a ball I saw what happened next so clearly. Slenderman cut off the arm holding the gun from the elbow down with one of the many tentacles slashing through the air. Mom started screaming and holding her injured arm and she fell to her knees.

Beside me I turned in time to get an even worse sight: the tree had finally caught up to Redlight. It was growing /out of him/ from his eyes, nose, mouth, ears, every inch of his body. Blood was being pushed out of him from the inside violently, leaking out and covering the ground. Redlight was dead. He was actually dead and he wouldn't be able to come back.

I think I might have been screaming but I’m not sure. Everything was happening so fast and I was suddenly pulled to my feet by Dad. He had managed to get up and over to me even though he was moving slowly like he was half asleep.

Dad pulled me over to Simon, shoved me into his arms while Mom somehow got up and came over as well. There was so much blood and everyone was crying and Slenderman was so angry and that tree was just /taking over/ Redlight.

They told him to take me away. They told him to take me and not look back, to get me away from Him. Mom looked him in the eyes and made him promise to take care of me and keep me safe. Simon did. Dad pulled me into a hug and told me over and over that he loved me and that no matter what I was always gonna be his daughter. Mom kissed me on the forehead before Dad picked me up and put me in Simon’s arms.

And he took me away. I screamed and kicked and clawed and tried to go back to them because they were /going to die/ if we just left them there but he wouldn’t let me go.

The last thing I saw was Dad picking up Simon’s gun, pulling it out of my Mom’s cut off arm, his other arm pulling Mom in and holding her up while she held her bloody stump, and pointing the gun at Slenderman.

He was laughing the entire time he shot at him even though he knew it wouldn’t work. He was laughing and calling him names, telling him to just try and kill him.

The trees around the clearing caught on fire and I couldn’t see anything else.

Simon told me I passed out when the fire started, which I guess I did because I don’t remember him driving me to the police station. I do remember someone asking me what happened, and sounding surprised because I was alive. I think everyone thought I was dead. Simon did most of the work after the forest. He made sure no one really bothered me. Apparently I’ll be staying with him now because the only known relatives in my family other than my parents, Dad’s parents, mysteriously died the same day I was found. Their house caught on fire due to some sort of power surge. That’s what the police say anyway.

I am writing this on Simon’s computer. He’s standing behind me and correcting my grammar while making a list of things an eleven year old girl would need to live with him.

For the first time in a long time I know how to feel. I am sad. I am sad and crying while I write this because Mom and Dad were left behind and I couldn’t do anything. The police said they didn’t find any bodies in the clearing, just a giant tree which they had never seen before.

I am praying for the first time in months to God that my parents are alive and got away. I just want my Mommy and Daddy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted and that’s all I never got. I just want my family back and happy so we can do normal things and make friends and grow up together. I want to go to the movies with Dad and listen to him complain about how lame it is, I want to bake a cake with my Mom one more time, I want to go to bed knowing that everything is going to be okay because Mom and Dad are there and they will never let anything bad happen to me.

It’s all I want. It’s all I want. Please, please, it’s all I want.