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The forest teemed with life as the sun graciously shone down upon it, a welcome sight after the unforgiving winter. Trees shaded rabbits and deer as they ran and skittered past, out of the way for a couple of people. Leaves crunched under their shoes as they went through the brush to a specific spot. The pair was a bulky, square man and a lanky young man.
The former’s face, hidden by a white mask with ironically feminine features, was framed by dark, greasy hair that flowed like an overgrown side part. The man’s choice of attire was a red flannel and a dull yellow duster jacket with worn jeans and boots older than an entire generation. In his right jacket pocket, he carried a simple handgun used to train every recruit that passed through Slenderman’s team; in the other, there was a nearly-finished pack of Marlboros and a red Bic lighter he’d stolen from a victim. Masky: a nickname given to him after years of having no name nor a true identity. Not a single thing after his memories faded away.
The latter’s age couldn’t have been older than eighteen, and he looked like a lonesome heartbreaker you’d find sitting alone in a high school cafeteria with the way his hair curled and sprung. Yet if you looked closely, you’d discover cracks: the scars running down his face, or the slight cleft lip of his. He was tall and skinny as a bone; his clothes hung loosely on his frame. A stained brown hoodie lined with fleece and a pair of jeans he certainly hadn’t acquired legally. His shoes were duct-taped and ragged converse. A strange aspect of him was his Tourette’s and CIPA, meaning he was a prospective head proxy. Toby: a promising recruit from a destructive family.
Each of them was in their separate worlds. Masky held a strong grip on their surroundings, though, and stopped Toby before a shaded, man-made clearing: where recruits went to train and hone their skills before fulfilling serious missions. Tree stumps littered the clearing, with the tree line just before the horizon. To the left of them stood a large, red pillar. Masky’s heartbeat always quickened whenever he saw it from afar, but he couldn’t quite remember why. As a veteran proxy, Masky ought to be impervious to such trifles, especially ones that reminded him of the past; he couldn’t even recall why he felt so anxious around that damn thing, anyways.
Masky pushed his mask to the side, revealing a stern and aged face - most proxies never lived past twenty-five, but Masky was almost certain he’d passed his twenty-fifth birthday ages ago. Masky pulled out his cigarettes, fished out one, and proceeded to light it - or at least attempted to. The lighter was on its last limb, having been used daily and to such an extent that the flame weakly flickered. He stroked it again, and the flame shot up. Bringing the cigarette to his lips, Masky inhaled the smoke and let it swirl in his lungs before expelling the air.
“We’re here,” Masky grumbled, taking another puff from the cigarette. “You’ll be learnin’ the basics of a handgun, but you already knew that,” he sighed. The training should be an easy, straightforward job, yet it often proved to be the exact opposite: trainees were uncooperative even after they had their lives drained from them and then beaten with a metal rod.
“Yeah. L-Like I haven’t b-been told that for th-the past week,” Toby replied, his words being chopped up between his tics.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. You better count your lucky stars that you’ve got a mentor. When I was just making my way as a proxy, no elder trained me. All I had was the Slenderman to make sure I did my job well - and if I didn’t, it quickly taught me how to do it properly. You new kids have it so easy these days…”
While Masky ranted about how recruit’s training was so much simpler and easier compared to his times, Toby disregarded his harsh voice, which was arguably the easiest way to get Masky to shut up: ignore him, and he’ll eventually pipe down. Toby briefly remembered the prior months when he was left out in the cold, more tortured than trained. “Bullshit, if you ask me,” Toby thought; they might as well just throw him into a mission after months of mental torture. He forgot the pain but recalled the desolate landscape and what he saw. Letting his eyes wander the tree line, Toby grunted in agreement to whatever Masky was saying as his tics had his face contorted into a grimace. When Masky momentarily fell silent, Toby snapped out of his brain fog and twisted his neck to look to his right - beyond the clearing, a short dip in the earth.
“Now, we can’t use real targets because nobody filched any, so you’ll be aimin’ at some trees; maybe I’ll even throw a pinecone for you to practice on movin’ targets,” Masky said flatly, tapping excess ash off the cigarette, already halfway finished with it.
Masky ushered Toby over to a row of trees standing just before the red tower, placing an arm around his shoulder with a sturdy hold to guide the rambunctious young man. They stopped twelve feet short of the trees, and at this point, one could see the markings left by previous proxies: peeled bark, scars, and gaping gunshot holes. Masky let his arm fall as his eyes wandered to the red tower. No matter how hard he tried, it was like a moth to a flame; the headaches he suffered while staring at that cursed building! Masky brought his cigarette up to his lips and anxiously puffed away. His eyes glazed over, letting the smoke sit in his lungs for far too long. An itch started in his throat, which turned into an aggressive bout of coughing. Masky hunched over and dropped his cigarette to place his hands on his knees.
Toby witnessed the scene unfolding, anxiously gnawing on his fingers and further irritating the already-torn skin. Rolling his neck and grimacing, Toby shook out his body and tried to control his tics. Bouts of coughs plagued Masky, the issue exacerbated by his smoking, but he moved on shortly after. The coughing irked Toby, in a way - it reminded him of his mortality and how he should hope to die before he has to live like Masky - God knows no proxy wants to live for that long, and why Masky stuck around for this long baffled Toby. Maybe it was Hoodie, Masky’s long-time companion. Choosing to ignore the man’s coughing (Masky never accepted others’ help regardless), Toby nudged a rock on the ground with the tip of his shoe. The rock was relatively clean, save for a bit of dirt, and looked to be initially from another, larger rock. With nothing better to do, Toby lightly kicked the rock and followed after it, continuing to kick it a short distance away before rushing after it. His face grimaced, the sharp noise of his whistle cutting through the air.
Masky straightened himself up, beating his fist against his chest and clearing his throat. A thick wad of spit shot from his mouth as he spat into the dirt, leaving a foamy, dark spot on the leaves. Masky scowled at the uncouth act, turning his heel and briskly walking over to Toby, who had wandered a few feet while playing with the rock.
“Why the hell are you playin’ with a rock?”
“What’s it to you if I play with a ro-rock or not? I’m just messing around with i-it.”
“Jus’ stop kickin’ around that damn rock. We have to start training,” Masky lightly slapped the back of Toby’s head, rolling his eyes at the younger’s unruliness.
Toby rubbed the back of his head and sharply shrugged his shoulders. “Could we just start the damn practice al-already?” Toby grumbled, staring at the now dormant rock.
-
“You just have to keep your eyes an' head steady,” Masky explained, guiding the frail boy’s hand and steadying it. His calloused hands wrapped around the younger’s scarred, pallid ones. “Never look away from the target; got that?”
“Y-Yeah got it,” Toby replied, tightening his grip on the handgun. “I think I got it now, Masky,” he said, easing his hands and the gun out of Masky’s.