The Screaming Tower

The Wooden Girl is a bitch.
And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

***

It was only moments after writing how suspicious the open gate was that I-330 decided to enter the castle. Without hesitation, she strode forward. When her foot crossed the threshold, instead of entering the gardens which she had seen from outside the walls, she was indoors. It was a circular tower, with red and black checkered floors and a gilded spiral staircase stretching up higher than I-330 could see. When she looked back, there was no sign of any doorway or gate that she had come through. The walls of the tower were perfectly smooth stone, without any openings. Yet even without any windows or sources of light, the interior was completely illuminated.

Cautiously, I-330 went to the stairs and began to walk up them. After some time, she started to wish that she had counted steps, because there was no way to tell how far she had traveled. When she looked down, she couldn’t see the floor anymore, but when looking up there still didn’t seem to be any end.

As she came up one step, a pathway made of gilded metal extended from the stairs, reaching towards an ivory door. Once again, the invitation seemed suspicious, but I-330’s curiosity overrode any doubts. She went through the door, and found herself in the back of a grand theater. The rows were filled with audience members, all focused on the stage with grins fixed on their faces. The play being performed was a domestic comedy, featuring slapstick quarrels between the bumbling husband and his wife. I-330 watched with more than a little confusion at the performance. The acting was stiff, more like a puppet show than a theater. But in spite of the show’s poor quality, the audience laughed mechanically at each joke.

At one point in the play, the wife responded to her husband’s blunder by hitting him over the head with a rolling pin, causing the pin to snap in two. The audience burst into laughter, and continued laughing as she kept hitting him. Even as his skull started to cave in, and blood splattered across the stage, the laughter didn’t stop.

I-330 ran out of the theater, back onto the staircase. She had come to the conclusion that this was “a seriously fucked up place,” and leaving should be her first priority.

But when she tried running down the stairs, instead of descending through the tower, she continued to go higher. When she tried running the opposite direction it had the same result. No matter where she went on the stairs, she kept getting closer to the top. Until, without any indication that it was coming, the stairs stopped. At the end was another door, made of black wood. After her experience with the last door, I-330 quickly came to the decision to not go through this one. She turned to leave, only to find that the stairs had disappeared, leaving instead a massive drop that stretched all the way down to the bottom of the tower. The only path open was through that door.

Before going through, I-330 turned her shadow arm into a blade. At the very least, she could be prepared to fight. With painfully slow caution, she cracked the door open, and peeked inside. The room beyond had the same red and black checker tile as the bottom of the tower. The walls were covered in shelves of porcelain dolls, and in the center was a table, set for tea. Seeing no one inside, I-330 entered the room, and walked to the table. It had a distinctly Victorian appearance, with a lace trimmed tablecloth and elegantly crafted china.

I-330 reached for a cup, and the moment her hand touched it, deafening laughter came from the dolls on the shelves. I-330 turned to run for the door, but standing between her and the exit was the Wooden Girl. Before I-330 could fight, strings fell from above, wrapping around her limbs.

The dolls stopped laughing, and the Wooden Girl raised its arms up. “Yes! I did it!” It started skipping around I-330, giggling as it spoke. “All this time I’ve been trying so hard to get you, when I just needed to open the front door and let you walk in!” It skipped up to I-330 and grabbed her jaw. “Now, you belong to me.” The Wooden Girl forced I-330’s mouth open, then stuck a hand inside. I-330 felt strings flowing down her throat, into the rest of her body.

“This is… the heart. Let’s try stopping that.” The Wooden Girl said, and I-330 felt like her chest was about to burst. “Aaaaand start it again.” The pain vanished. “And here’s the lungs….” I-330 started choking, unable to draw in breath. “Alright, enough of that.” The Wooden Girl pulled its hand out, and I-330 could breathe again. “Oh, don’t glare at me like that.” It said. “You’re my pet now. Put on a smile.” Against her will, I-330 felt her lips turning up into a grin. “Muuuuch better.”

The Girl clapped its hands and giggled again. “I’m going to have so much fun with you! Ever since we met, I’ve been saving a special place in my plays for you! And I’ve set up a room just for you to stay in and have all kinds of games for us to play and it will be so fun! Won’t that be fun? Say ‘Yes, Mistress.’”

I-330 struggled against the command, but was unable to control her mouth. “Yes… Mistress.”

The Wooden Girl squealed with excitement and jumped up and down. “Say it again! Say it again!”

“Yes, Mistress.”

With another squeal, the Girl started to run circles around the room. “I can’t wait I’m going to tear your skin off then sow it back on and we’ll dance together and I’ll break all of your fingers and I’ll rip out your throat and then kiss it to make it better and we’ll watch the sunset and I’ll make you gouge out people’s eyeballs and eat them whole and-” The Girl stopped running, and stood straight up. “It’s tea time!”

With a twirl, the Girl sat itself down at the table. “Oh Pet, would you be a dear and pour me a cup?”

I-330 walked to the table and picked up the teapot. She began to pour it, but her grasp started to loosen on its own, until she dropped the pot on the floor, causing it to shatter. The Wooden Girl shook its head. “Oh dear. You’ll need to clean that up.”

“Yes, Mistress.” I-330 went on her hands and knees, and started licking up the tea, while the Wooden Girl laughed.

“You missed a bit.” The Wooden Girl put its foot in front of I-330. “Such a bad pet, spilling tea on its master’s foot. Clean it up as well.”

I-330 struggled for a moment, but then leaned forward and licked the wooden foot. Splinters stabbed through her tongue, and when she stopped her mouth was filled with blood.

“That will do, Pet. Now go and get me another teapot.” A cart with a new tea set had appeared in the room. I-330 began to walk toward it, but suddenly came to a stop. Her shadow arm had grabbed the edge of the table, and was refusing to let go. I-330 tugged on the arm, but it kept its hold. The Wooden Girl flicked a finger, and a string sliced the arm off.

“Get the teapot. Now.”

Unhindered by the arm, I-330 walked to the tray, and picked up the teapot with her remaining hand. But as she lifted it up, her shadow arm regrew, and smashed the pot. Before the Wooden Girl could react, the arm extended in a spike that went through the Girl’s forehead. The Girl fell, and the strings that had been controlling I-330 vanished. Her arm’s sudden attack had surprised I-330 as much as the Girl, but once she took in what had happened, she started running for the exit.

The Wooden Girl rose up, it’s face now painted in an image of rage. “No no NO!” The voice screamed through I-330’s head. “You’re ruining everything!” The dolls rose off the shelves, and flew towards I-330, who smashed them with her shadow arm.

“Stop breaking my things!” The Girl screamed as the roof was torn off, and hundreds of strings came from above. I-330 threw open the door to leave, but there was nothing on the other side but the screaming void.

“You’re going to stay….” The Girl said, slowly advancing forward as the strings followed behind it. “And we’re going to play forever.”

It didn’t take long for I-330 to decide that the screaming void was the preferable alternative there. She jumped, and fell into the darkness. For hours she fell, until space began to distort again. The next I-330 knew, she was lying in sand. And all around her was a massive, unending desert.

There seems to be a constant trend of me never getting the chance to just sit down and process things. Writing in this journal seems to be the only opportunity I have to think, and even then it only comes in short bursts between disasters.

What I really wanted to do was lie down on that grey shore and stare at the burning sky. Three Fears, dead in seconds. We’d had all these plans, taking on the Slender Man’s Fears individually, trying to pick them off one by one while I regained this power I was told I should have, until we could afford a direct confrontation. But then the Slender Man just wiped them out, with barely any difficulty. How am I ever supposed to compare to that? I’ve only managed to kill one Fear so far, and that was on accident. It destroyed an entire pocket universe by creating and blowing up a fucking star!

I don’t know what I’m going to do next. Maybe if I actually got some time to sit down and try to plan a way out of this god damn mess, I’d figure something out. But I was only on that shoreline for a few minutes when I suddenly felt the ground shaking beneath me. Out in the ocean, that massive tree was appearing. Which meant the Slender Man wouldn’t be far behind.

Once, I might have tried to fight. But after seeing its power in action…. I just ran. Ran like a coward. A stupid coward, considering I had no idea where I was or where I could go. But you rarely think things through when you’re panicking.

Thing about that beach: no matter how far you run on it, you never seem to move. Every time I looked back, the tree was still the same distance from me. And its branches were growing outward, as if reaching for me. The sand beneath my feet started to give way as huge rifts opened up in the ground, and huge waves rose from the ocean. A rift appeared beneath me, and I started to fall into darkness.

And then, I felt something pulling me. An invisible force, grabbing me and ripping me away from that universe. Everything twisted around me, and I was flung through a chaos of space as the sound of a young girls’ laughter echoed in my mind.

When everything stopped, I was no longer on the beach. Instead, I was… wherever this is. It looks like I’m outside the most stereotypical Disney fairy tale palace imaginable, with gleaming white towers and vibrant gardens. Except it also happened to be floating in the middle of a howling void of darkness and screams.

The front gate is wide open. Honestly, it looks a little too inviting. Given the shrieks of terror coming from the whirling blackness all around the estate, I’m a little suspicious. Hence why I’m just sitting out here and writing instead of exploring.

But I’m going to have to go in and explore eventually. It’s just the sort of thing I do.

The Beach

I’m sitting on a beach of grey sand, watching a still sea as the sky burns from the remains of a dead universe.

What happened to that optimism? We were going to attack. We were going to take the fight to the Fears. Start killing them off. Turn the tides. Win the war. Now… this.

We had been preparing to leave. The Red Cap had suggested we kick our counterattack off by attacking one of the Fears’ pocket universes. If we all attacked one together, we might have been able to kill it before the other Fears arrived to help. The first target was going to be the Black Dog, as that’s the Fear I seem to have had the most success physically fighting.

The Red Cap had started to distort spacetime around us to transport us, when a total silence fell over the temple. Like a switch controlling all the ambient noise had been suddenly switched off. The distortions the Red Cap had been creating vanished, as spacetime reverted to its usual order.

“Oh.” The Red Cap muttered. “Fuck.”

It pushed me away just as black roots broke from the marble floor where I had been standing. The roots wrapped around the Red Cap, and crushed it into a puddle of blood. More roots came out of the ground, impaling the Convocation’s birds and encircling the Brute and Bride. I scrambled across the floor as the roots tore through the tile, coming toward me. Had to stop when my head bumped against the side of the fountain. I looked up, and saw that the blood coming from the fountain had turned black. Cracks were spreading along the marble woman, which quickly reached her eyes. Black branches burst from those eyes, followed by more branches from all over the statue, tearing apart the fountain and splashing that black blood all over me. Had to wipe it away before I could see again, and when I opened my eyes, in place of the fountain was the Slender Man.

It looked down at me, and I felt frozen to that spot. Its hands reached toward me, and started to grow, slowly coming closer. I knew I had to get away from it, but my body couldn’t move. Its hands were almost at me, when a wave of blood hit it, knocking it back. The blood formed into the Red Cap, who quickly shouted at me to run before turning into liquid again and wrapping around the Slender Man.

With the Slender Man pushed back, I could start moving again. Jumped to my feet, and started running away from it. A pillar had been knocked over by one of the roots, so I jumped behind it, using it as cover so I could look at what was happening. The Red Cap was flowing through the air around the Slender Man, changing between humanoid and liquid as it tried to press the Slender Man back further. The Convocation and Brute and Bride had joined in, shooting lightning and fire at it. None of it seemed to have any effect; the Slender Man stood still, unfazed by the attacks hitting it, not once looking away from me.

A bird landed on my shoulder, and started tugging at me. I slowly followed its pull away from the fight, but kept looking back at the Slender Man. As I moved away, it followed after, slowly taking each step, without a care for the Fears trying to stop it. The Red Cap appeared in front of it, and blood poured from every nook and crack of the temple behind it. The blood came into a huge wave that towered over everyone, which thundered toward the Slender Man, shattering the roots and pillars in its way.

The wave hit the Slender Man and completely enveloped it. But when the wave had passed, it was still standing. It pointed an arm at the Red Cap, and black branches rapidly grew out of it, impaling the Red Cap. The Red Cap struggled against the branches for a few moments, and then dissolved into a pool of lifeless, inert blood.

The Convocation swarmed around the Slender Man, completely covering it in birds. Sparks flew between their wings, turning them into a mass of lightning that roared around the Slender Man. Hundreds of branches exploded outward, tearing the birds off the Slender Man and ripping them to shreds. As the blood and guts rained down, the branches retracted back into the Slender Man.

A stream of fire roared across the temple, exploding around the Slender Man as the Burning Bride appeared. The Brute appeared behind the Slender Man, swinging one of its massive fists. Branches came out of the Slender Man’s back, wrapping around the Brute before it could finish its punch. The branches brought the Brute to the ground, trapping it. The Bride unleashed another stream of fire, but as it approached, the Slender Man held out a hand. The fire stopped, then started to flow into its hand. It condensed into a small ball of fire, which vibrated and glowed with all the energy being compressed into it. It almost looked like a star was growing in its hand.

The bird that had been pulling me earlier started tugging at my sleeve again, and I let it guide me. As we got away, spacetime around us started to distort. Before we teleported, I looked back once. The Bride had been trapped to the ground by more branches, and the star in the Slender Man’s hand was violently shaking as more fire was drawn into it.

There was a burning flash of light and a roar just as we teleported, and we appeared on a grey beach that stretched on and on. The place looked like it was shrouded in twilight at first, but then a sun exploded into existence in the sky, bathing everything in burning light. Trails of flame leapt from the sun, leaving burning gashes across the sky.

The bird that had taken me there, the last of the Convocation, let go of me. It tried to fly, but fell to the ground. After a few more attempts to flap its wings, it became completely still. Leaving me all alone on this grey beach.