How did it come to this? How? I had been tricked, manipulated and now... Now I was left with nothing. It was all gone...

But how had it come to this?

Well... It all started a long time ago, when I was a young lad. Despite my mother continously telling me not to go near the forest, I always did and played there, by myself. I couldn't help myself, you see, the fairies were my friends, my only friends, and they lived there, in the forest. I had to go there everyday.

But one day, when I went to the forest, my friends weren't there. All there was, was a curious mist. The forest didn't look as friendly as it usually did, but I didn't let that intimidate me. I sat down on my usual bench and started playing, even if it was by myself.

But, being a child, I soon got bored of my games and wandered into the forest, having never actually entered it. Maybe the fairies were in there, waiting for me, I had thought back then. As I trailed down the forest paths, I saw something black in the distance. At first I thought it was a tree, but then I realised it was moving.

It was a tall, tall, and if I had known the word back then, slender man. He had no face, but some how I knew he was staring right at me. I looked at him with big eyes and said nothing. He started approaching me, slowly, delibrately.

"My mummy tells me not to talk to strangers!" I warned, frowning at the man. The man started walking faster. After a few moments of contemplation, I continued speaking. "But you're different! Hello! I'm Arthur!" I called out to him, giving the man my biggest smile. The man stopped walking, as if confused by my friendliness. He then straightened up, seemed to give me a nod and turned around, leaving. I immediately went home after that, to tell my mother what I had seen. She didn't listen to me, thinking it was just my wild imagination.

The next day, I went back to the forests in hopes of seeing the strange man again, but he was gone.

It was only later, when I was twenty-three, that I would see him again, much to my horror.

Some time after turning twenty-three, I noticed the fairies becoming anxious and nervous. Whenever I asked them about it though, they quickly brushed it off as nothing. I disliked being kept in the dark, but the fairies were the only people I really trusted, so I had no other choice than to accept their decesion to keep secrets from me.

Then, of course, as said, I met him again. The slender man. It was horrible. I started being sick, I had hallucinations, I couldn't sleep at night, I had nightmares, I became paranoid and worst of all, I knew that the slender man was always watching me. I would always see him in the corner of my eye, if not directly in front of me.

Whenever I told any of my friends, they wouldn't believe me. They ignored me and laughed at me. They told me to get a therapist or that I was insane. But I wasn't insane. I knew something horrible, something supernatural was happening to me and there was no one out there to help me.

One day, I couldn't take it. I hadn't seen the fairies in weeks, or more precisely, since the slender man had come, but I needed them now, more than ever. So I started trying to attract the fairies to my home. I painted their symbols onto my walls and hung up their flags. I put up fairy houses and all my little, sparkly trinklets out, left the lights on and put up burning candles everywhere. I put flowers anywhere I could think of and let soft music play in the background all the time.

The slender man had always been watching me as I tried desperately to make them come, but as the days went by, my hopes of finding help in the fairies started diminishing. The slender man, despite having no face, seemed to be grinning at me smugly, laughing at my pathetic attempts to get help from somewhere else, anywhere else.

I also disliked that I could never glare at him. Whenever I turned to face him, he would disappear from sight, as if he knew my intentions. Knowing he was carefully avoiding me, while still staying present, I took this to my advantage and brought out my books on magic. If my friends wouldn't help me, so then, God help me, I'd do it myself. I should have known that no one could be trusted.

I was luckily rehearsed in magic and quite good at using it, despite a few mishaps here and there. Flipping through the pages, I tried to find a spell that could protect me from the slender man. A shudder made me look up and out the window and I realised that the slender man knew what I was doing and wasn't pleased at all. He was outside my window, on the opposite side of the street, visible to everyone, if the fleeing animals were any indication.

He started walking up to my house. He was coming for me. I blanched and quickly locked the door to the room I was in, a tiny part of me knowing that this wouldn't stop him. I needed to find a spell and fast. I heard a door slam open, probably from downstairs. It was the front door. I really, really needed a spell.

I did my best to stay calm, knowing that in order to perform any magic, I needed my full concentration and a clear mind. Predator, Promises, Protection- I quickly looked up the spells listed under protection.

Protection, protection, protection...

Bloody hell, I could hear him coming up the stairs! He didn't even bother being quiet this time! He let every foot thud down loudly and... Was- was the house vibrating under his footsteps? N-no, that must have just been my imagination. I bit my lip nervously and quickly read through the spells... Protection, protection, protection... I had one! I had one!

I almost shrieked when I heard the door rattle. He was far too close for comfort now. I quickly started reading the spell out loud, slowly walking to the back of the room, never letting the door out of my sight. My eyes widened as the door slowly opened and the slender man entered. I kept my voice steady and refused to stutter, glaring at the man, just in time to realise I couldn't back up any more, already touching a wall.

Slenderman started approaching me and I started chanting faster, knowing that if I didn't finish the spell by the time he reached me, I was a goner.

You are mine, give up already. Give up. Give up, give up, give up... Started echoing in my head. He... He was using my mind to make me want to surrender early! But I kept chanting. He approached me and reached out for me, grinning, thinking he had won. But before he could even touch me, I finished my chant and he was forced back.

"Ha!" I said, with both relief and smugness. "Why hadn't I done that sooner? You can't harm me ever again! This spell is a specific spell to chant against any individual, in order to stop that person from harming you! You lost mister, you lost!"

I wish I had kept my mouth shut there and then. Maybe he would have let me be (Yeah right) if I had stayed silent. But instead, the slender man used my mind, my voice, to speak to me again.

There is more than one way of hurting a person. He then left and the weeks ahead were even worse than the ones before. Now the slender man seemed to be after my friends and family, but they couldn't see him, neither realised he was hunting them. Only I saw him approaching them. Whenever he reached out to touch them, I pulled them away and protected them as best I could. I would have cast a spell over them, but magic only works if the person is aware of the spell and believes in magic...

I was the only one though. The only one to believe in magic. So they could never truly be safe. And that knowledge was killing me.

I started having nightmares again, even night terrors. They were always about the people I cared about and the slender man and they were dreadful. Often I would wake up screaming and crying, with faded images of slow and painful deaths fresh on my mind. I had been forced to watch them slowly die at the hands of the slender man, screaming and groaning in pain, pleading me for help.

But in the dreams, I could do nothing but watch in horror. But that was only in my dreams. The reality was worse. I warned my friends and family, I begged them not to go to the forests, where their murders had often taken place, but they never listened. Then the slender man started killing them. He started killing my friends and family, slowly, painfully, with me never getting to them on time. He pratically lived off my pain, as I watched my world fall apart around me.

Whenever he killed them, he would come to me at night, bloodstained and grinning, an actual grin on his face.

Only a few left now Arthur~ He would purr. He would then proceed to explain to me in detail what he would do to his next victim and then softly say I win Arthur. I win.

That always killed me. That he had already won before the fight had even begun. That I was already helpless and couldn't protect anyone, before I had the chance to do anything about it. I had already lost. And as the killings went on, I tried to stop caring. I started pushing everyone away, in hopes of protecting them from the slender man that way. But apparently, he knew me too well and knew what I was trying to do and went after them anyway.

And then I snapped. I had an idea, a brilliant one. I knew exactly how to protect them from those slow, horrible and painful deaths. I invited them all to tea one day, despite knowing that my cooking was terrible. I promised that I hadn't done any of the cooking myself this time, that I had gone to the shops, and they believed me. But I did do some "extra" cooking. To everything I had bought, I had added an extra ingredient, a special one.

When the remains of my friends and family arrived, they asked me if I was OK. If the nightmares had stopped. In truth, I felt more relief than I had in months, so I smiled at them pleasantly and answered truthfully, although, smiling made them question my sanity, because I rarely ever smiled. At the time I didn't care though, because it had been such a relief to know that they were finally going to be OK, that this nightmare would soon be over.

They sat at the table and I brought in the food and tea in, excusing my self quickly, making up a story about forgetting to make a phone call that I desperately needed to make. While they ate and drank, I stayed in the kitchen, smiling, satisfied with myself.

I'm coming Arthur. I heard the slender man whisper inside my head, yet again using my own voice. I smirked and leant back on my chair.

Then come. I dare you. I thought back. It took a while, before I knew that the slender man had arrived. The enraged scream inside my head was the give away. I entered the dining room my friends and family were in, grinning.

"I win Slenderman. You can't hurt me or them any more." I announced proudly, hands on hip and chest puffed out. The slender man seemed to glare at me, until I heard manical laughter inside my head. I faltered and seemed to cave in on myself.

You think you beat me Arthur? Me, Slenderman? The Slenderman? A supernatural creature that has existed for centuries? And you think you could really outwit me? Poor babe, don't you see what you have done? Don't you see what you did?

I frowned at the slender man (his name was Slenderman?) and crossed my arms, glaring at him.

"No, I don't. You can't kill them in cruel or gruesome ways any more, because I got there first, I've beaten you-" And then I realised what he had done. What I had done. He grinned at me, walking up to me slowly, pridefully. I couldn't move at all, as I stared at the table, with my friends and family half-lying on it, seemingly asleep.

Just that they weren't asleep. They were dead. At my hand. Slenderman had tricked me into killing my own friends and family. All of them.

"No..." I managed to choke out, feeling like thousands of sharps swords had dug themselves into my body and were slowly twisting to cause more pain, my mind screaming with denial and agony. Slenderman continued grinning sadistically and placed two of his hands onto my shoulders.

"Dear Arthur, I think you will make a good assistant, don't you?"

And there and then, my world shattered. I was left with nothing. Nothing but the Slenderman. Wanker.

I had a plot bunny attack and ended up writing this, despite there being a ton of other stuff I should be doing.

Anyway, the idea of "Slenderman's Assistant", is that Slenderman can feed more if he has assitance than if he had to do it all by himself and also he doesn't have to do all the work when assisted (so he can take on more than one victim at once). The assistants often don't have any other choice than to be Slenderman's assistant, as you can see with Arthur, who has partly lost his mind(?) and ended up killing his friends and family.

If I were to continue this, another assistant would be Gilbert and anyone else I decide to throw into the ride. Also, as an assistant you reach a "supernatural" status, so you're not completely human any more and live longer than a normal human (you also stop aging... But you can die of old age XD)

I hope you enjoyed my little One-Shot. XD