A few years ago I had heard about something called “The Slender Man” from a friend who worked as a TA for the theology department at the University of Maryland. My friend, Fredrick, told me this story about a strange creature that seemed to be made of shadows, smoke and the things that drive men to madness. He said the professors would mention the Slender Man and relate him to other cultures, each seemingly having their own variation of him. The Germans claimed he was a spirit sent to punish wicked children, in Sicily he was believed to be a rogue angel of death who would devour the souls of whomever he was near. The Japanese claimed he was the ghost of a man who tried to overthrow the Shogun who ruled over his farm, made to destroy those who would seek to harm the empire. The oldest legend though goes back to Greece.
It was said that after Prometheus granted humankind with sentience by delivering unto us the flame of knowledge, the other beings of Olympus sought to undo what Prometheus had done. Ares gave us war in hope that we would use our newfound intelligence to create weapons to wipe ourselves out, Athena gave us morality in an attempt to temper our rapid expansion, but there is a legend about the horror that Nyx, goddess of the night and her brother Erebus, god of the dark silence, unleashed upon our world.
It was told that the two had birthed a child together in an incestuous union out of spite for our kind. They knew that the offspring of their coupling would be a dark and mindless aberration driven by the fear that each man holds in his very soul. He isn’t given the courtesy of a name by his parents; he is given only a portion of his parents’ gifts. From his mother he has the ability to summon the darkness and cold of the underworld while his father blessed him with the capability to stifle all sound around him. Making those in his presence painfully aware of the terror they are to endure at his cold, remorseless hands. It is said he feeds off of the agony and anguish of those he stalks. His patience is otherworldly, as he’s been known to stalk the same prey for decades, visiting them in their dreams, afflicting them with sickness that cannot be labeled by medicine and letting them linger just to dread their final meeting with him.
We’ve been trying to collect as much literature as possible on this “Slender Man”, the ancient god of death and despair. So far all we’ve found are stories throughout the ages of people being put to death while being forced into the very depths of madness. No matter what culture he descends on though, the outcome has always been the same. For in the wake of the Slender Man all that is left is a cold, dark road covered in corpses with agony on their distorted faces.
("River Raid")
No comments:
Post a Comment