The Elephant in the room

Has anyone ever wondered how that phrase started?

Did someone actually put an elephant in a room or something? I admit, I'd pay to see that.

But I mentioned that I have left Em and Ryan and started traveling on my own. No one's asked about it, in which I'm grateful. But I imagine some of you have been wondering why. And while I have contemplated whether or not I wanted to tell anyone, I have decided to come out with it.

I'm being haunted.

All right, so that's a fairly melodramatic way of putting it. But it's sort of what's going on. A few days after Ryan was once again Lost, I woke up to see a familiar figure in my bed. I figured it was just one of those trick dreams. The kind where you think you're awake even though you're not. But I didn't wake up again, and the figure spoke.

"Hello Darling. Did you miss me?"

Nightscream stood there, the bladed gauntlet on his hand making tapping noises against a nearby nightstand. He looked just like I remembered him. Well, how I remembered him before Redlight got inside his head and brought low the strongest of all of us.

No one is immune to this world.

At this point, I really did think I was dreaming. I told the figure of Nightscream as much, and proceeded to try and ignore him until I would finally snap out of it. But everything felt too real. Dreams never get sensations quite right. It always feels like an approximation of a sense. But I could hear the wind blow through the flimsy window. I had to squint my eyes due to the low light. And when Nightscream used his gauntlet to raise my chin and lock our eyes I could feel the cold hard steel just as well as everything else.

Nightscream did have the courtesy to explain it to me. He wasn't a dream. More like a hallucination. A "gift" from the Slender Man. Although as time has dragged on, a hallucination is perhaps not the right word for it. He is in my head, and only I can see, hear, feel him.

But he is not Nightscream as only I would see him. He has not been drawn merely from my own head but from so many sources that it is almost a perfect copy. He is Nightscream. And he is alive.

I have spent... months. With him by my side. It is terrifying how much I long for good conversation and the simple warmth of being near another human being.

That is what I am being offered. An eternal companion. Someone who cannot die, who will not leave. A challenge and an equal and a chance to make right one of my greatest mistakes.

All I had to do was come back. Stop running and serve Him once more.

I have yet to make a decision. Even now Nightscream sits by my side, chiding me gently. Trying to hide his fear.

Believe me, as nontraditional as it may be, this Nightscream is alive. And if I refuse this offer... I will once again be responsible for his death.

You know, when I first left the Slender Man, I had always intended on coming back. I just needed to figure out who I was. Find a new reason to serve.

But I still haven't found it. Often I find reasons to oppose him, even when he offers such tempting rewards with such devastating consequences of refusal.

But I can't stay in limbo any more. As pleasant as it is.

I'm sorry Nightscream.