Faceless, Lowercase

Omega steps through the door of the incredibly nondescript restaurant wherein tonight's date is supposed to take place. However, when he steps through the door, he instead finds himself in a dark forest, the sky above a deep periwinkle blue. Omega instantly realises where he is and who he’s supposed to be on a date with, and chuckles softly to himself.

In response, a voice resounds behind him. “Omega.”

“It's been six years since we last met,” Omega replies, turning around to face his partner for the night, who doesn’t, himself, face Omega because he hasn’t got one of those. Omega continues: “I thought you were dead.”

“Dead? If only,” ol’ slendy retorts. “No, that wasn’t me. The Slender Man you fought was the Slender Man as imagined, and copyrighted, by Victor Surge. I, however, am the slender man (lowercase) as he appears in Arkngard’s Slender Ran trilogy.”

“Then why are you here? If you’re not the Slender Man I fought seeking revenge, then we have no reason to interact, do we?”

“Well,” the slender man clears his throat before continuing, “the thing is, I’ve been having something of an existential crisis for the past few years. You see, the last time I appeared in a Fear Mythos work, I had a blank verse duel with Arkngard that ended with his death by my hands. And now that he’s dead, I’ve been stuck in the limbo of an existence that doesn’t allow me to appear in new written works. After several months, possibly years, in my purgatory, I went and had a drink or several with Magreat’s Slender man from The Blog Without a Face, since he’s gone through something similar, which helped me mellow out to some extent. But, alas,” slendy pulls out his gun and points it at Omega, “I can't go on like this, so I’m here to die by your hand.”

Omega, unphased, counters, “ah, but lowercase slender man, you’re being written right now. This is a written work in which you appear. I have no need to fight you, because your existence that doesn’t allow for you to appear in new written works is not actually the case.”

“. . . oh fuck you’re right. I am being written right now. Vague though our surroundings are, I can clearly see that we are standing in the Forest of Black Leaves. If I’m here, does that mean that Arkngard isn’t dead?”

“Well, no, not exactly. I’ve read the poem to which you referred earlier, and Arkngard, himself, said that he, as well as you, are both fictional creations of a higher power. This means that, instead of being imprisoned in a meaningless existence, your real creator merely has been feeling burn-out. Or something. I don’t actually know; I’m also a fictional character, and thus also only exist in a fictional world.”

The slender man puts his gun back in his jacket pocket and sighs. “So now what? If I have no reason to fight you, and thus have no reason to die by your hand in this forest, will I just fade away, back into the crushing isolation of not being written into fictional works?” He pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and starts to smoke it, somehow, savouring it for as long as he's outside of his prison of non-existence.

“Even in our darkest hours, hope survives,” Omega says, aloud but directed at no one in particular, causing the slender man to stop, turn, and (not) face him. “You wanna get a drink? It’s Happy Hour at Utnapishtim.”

“I’ve never been, but okay, sure.” And with that, the two step into a newly-materialised Door that leads to that eldritch bar to drink the night away.