Ending.

They found Simon. They found his body.

I don't feel anything.

I don't feel anything except resignation to what I must do next.

They found Simon with a bottle of antiviral medication next to him. Mine. It didn't work. For all his thought and theory, it couldn't save him. Daddy isn't a virus, or a tulpa, or anything so simple. Daddy can't be categorised and classified and tucked away in a box. The Slender Man is beyond understanding.

He is chaos. Writing, gaping chaos, beyond human conception and comprehension. Even looking at him makes our heads hurt, can even drive us mad. The extent of his nature is simply out of reach of the tiny scale of sane thought. He is the true face of the universe; cruel, vicious, random and impersonal. He shifts and changes, always different, with no order or consistency impressed upon him. He is what we make up gods to hide from - the face of a reality which does not require that we be safe or happy or sane, or that we not be made to suffer. No rhyme or reason.

The universe is vast and empty, and we are alone with Him.

Now I'm doing it too.

They found Simon with his innards torn out, and his limbs stretched. To do so without breaking the skin, they said, must have taken a long time. It must have been slow. And now Simon is dead, Simon is nothing. Simon does not exist anymore, not as a person. Now it's just a bundle of meat in roughly his shape. I feel sick. I feel like I'm suffocating. He's gone, he's gone and dead, and he'll never come back. He'll never hold me, never kiss me, never talk to me again, and I've never lost anything like this, never, and my nails are digging into my palms so hard I feel like I must be bleeding and my breaths are growing moist with welling sobs.

Why did he leave me, and kill Simon? I don't know. To speculate would be futile and arrogant. To uphold a pretence to understanding would be naieve and idiotic.

Natalie, Joey's older sister, ran away from home shortly after He started appearing to her. She knew to run. M got something right, it would seem. That was about a month and a half ago. She's run far - we talked recently, after her comment. She's in hiding, but apparently she's not alone, and she's a long way from here. Simon was an idiot to hang around Eastbourne. I won't make the same mistake.

So this will probably be my last post, everyone. To anyone who's still reading, anyone who's helped or offered support, I want to say thank you for your support on this, the worst four months of my life, the first four months of the rest of my life. Sorry I couldn't be here for all of it. But from here on out, I go it alone. I'm going on the run. I don't know where I'll end up - I always wanted to travel - but I don't have any choice except to outpace Him.

Simon, I love you. I will always love you.

Kari.

Alone.

I haven't seen Simon since he first came by. He's not returning my calls, he's not responding to my texts. I don't know where he is, or what he's doing. He's abandoned me, off on some wild goose chase to find why I survived. He's left me, alone, with all my fear and confusion, so he can go and play hermit some more.

I just want him with me. I want to enjoy the life I've gotten back. I'm out of hospital now. There's no physical reason why I'm not okay. But I'm still a mess.

I haven't seen Daddy in days. But I'm not letting my guard down.

Frustrating.

Why can't I remember?

One month.

A bizarre amount of time to be gone, a month. Especially this month. It seems like no time at all passed when I was gone, and yet to the people I love, this month has been life-changing, or life-ruining. Simon just left. He's lost his way. Exhausted, nearly to the point of delerium. He's a mess. This Daddy issue was damn near the death of me, and yet while I've returned without a scratch, his experience has left him with a hollow, wild desperation about him. I've caught up on his blog. It's an odd feeling; an insight into a mind I don't feel like I recognise, horrible as I no doubt am for saying that, he's changed almost beyond recognition. His hair is greasy and wild in its natural tight curls. His eyes are near-dwarfed by the yawning shadows underneath, swollen from lack of sleep. He's even neglected to shave, though his thin, light adornment could only charitably be called a beard. It must be odd for him to see me, nearly exactly as I was the day he last saw me, when he has been forced from his home and his family, and lives in terror.

And then we have Daddy. I don't know how to feel. On one hand, I've seen glimpses of him (or Him, as Simon has ended up writing it - I'd be very interested to read that book of his) but on the other, I honestly can't tell if I'm in danger. I was returned unharmed. He had me, and yet I'm still alive. Everything about Daddy - or the Slender Man, as it were - is one big question mark.

Whenever I wonder about this, Ms. Fisher's corpse fills my mind. Jagged ribs jutting from her chest like teeth, the hollow cavity like a maw. Her arms blue with the bruises of burst blood vessels, stretched obscenely. Her terrified face. To have endured that and still have room left for terror. The last thing she saw must have been beyond imagining. Like what Gladwell's brother saw. Gladwell's name was Simon too.

But I think of Daddy and I don't see what Simon sees - my Simon, that is. It seems odd that he criticised me for granting Daddy supernatural status, and he has since ascribed him the properties of the vicious, uncaring void of the universe. He's always been rather nihilistic, and I never bought into it.

After all, the void got me. Sucked in by the darkness. And I've returned.

Filling in gaps

Okay, I'm all caught up with what went on in my absence. So here's my side.

It was night, a few days into the stakeout operation. I was on the computer at the time because sleeping was not an option at that point, and I'd set it up so that I was facing the window. I didn't really have a reason to be doing so - alarm systems and intercoms meant that I'd know as soon as Daddy was spotted, and there was no way I'd spot him before the camera perimeter, so we thought.

I glanced out of the window and, between the trees, there was a flash of black and white. A headache overwhelmed me. At this point, the text was sent to Simon. I do not remember writing or sending it.

I was shaken awake by one of the guards, who shouted at me that the building was on fire. I climbed to my feet and we moved quickly through the house. Flames had spread at a startling pace. The heat was unbearable. I scrambled down the stairs and into the main hallway. A feeling of something wrapping around my torso, and I was pulled back into the darkness.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital. A month had passed. I had no memory of anything which had taken place in that time.

Sorry, guys, I don't know much more than you do on this one.

Prelude

He's outside, in the distance. I can see him out of the window. I'm back, but I still haven't escaped.

Big post coming tomorrow.