It's time. I’ve put this off for far too long. It’s time for me to share what happened to me that night in Chicago. You might be disappointed that I didn’t have a clear head for most of the night, as I gave up wandering quite early, at around 9 pm, stepping into a bar to warm up, then deciding to have a couple of drinks and some food because the bar was close to where I was staying, and I could easily walk back, and I guess ‘a couple’ of drinks became ‘a lot’ because my memories are, for the most part, quite hazy. Don’t worry, not all of it is, unfortunately. Alright, so I was in the bar, yada yada, kept to myself, and I still had that rose scent on, I got a few more compliments about smelling good, and nothing eventful happened then. It was snowing when I left, and much colder, so I zipped up my jacket and started walking. Now it was late, and I wanted to get back to my room as quickly as possible- thank you to those who gave me tips on navigating the city and it's people, very helpful, but I’m sure I disregarded all of it that night. So I’m walking, it's late. Very little people are out now, the time and the cold seemed to be a deterrent. I was just looking forward to crawling into bed and sleeping but clearly, that was not to be. I don’t remember when I became aware of the woman, but suddenly I looked up and she was there, maybe a block away, seemingly distressed, standing next to-no, pulling away from what I thought was a man at first, a man wearing black. She was speaking loudly and he was holding onto her arm and not letting her leave. I should have left them be, I should have moved to the other side of the street, but I didn’t. The next clear thing I remember was approaching the two, and seeing a strange, hazy look in the woman’s eyes, like she had been drugged, and then... The man turned to me. He was wearing a black coat and black pants, a bit tall, and everything was normal until I got to his face. My eyes may have been blurry before this moment because of the alcohol, I don’t know, but his features were...wrong. I remember just staring at him as he let go of the woman’s arm and she collapsed, and he faced me fully. Something was wrong with me, it was hard to think, it was hard to breathe, there was a constricting feeling in my gut and my chest. I think I tried to talk to him, tell him to leave the woman be (which was incredibly stupid of me now that I think about it. I’m a 175+ pound guy but I’m not a fighter)- but my voice didn’t come out. I remember his head slowly tilting, features changing, melting, and then the illusion was lifted and it let me see it for what it was. A blank, featureless face, pale, smooth, bald, just like the others. But this one was BIG. Over seven, maybe eight feet tall, and the clothes it wore weren't just weird markings on its skin like a piss poor excuse of a disguise, IT WAS WEARING CLOTHES. I remember the woman screaming and running as fast as her shaky legs could carry her, so it was clear she could see what I was too. It just stood there, and I just stood there frozen, horrified, because I knew, in some part of my boozed up brain that if I ran, it would be an invitation to chase, kill and devour me. I didn’t think these things, these Slenderbeings had any sentience, any awareness of what they are or what they did to humans, but... that’s where I was very, gravely wrong. I’ve gone over the memories over and over these past few weeks, trying to figure out a way my brain could have fabricated the next moments but I can’t. Its taken me this long to come to grips with what happened. It spoke. In English, it spoke to me. I remember seeing its empty face rip open horizontally, see a wet black maw filled with milky white teeth open in my direction, and I’m not ashamed to say it, I fucking pissed my pants. It hissed at me, and I swear I still hear that sound when I’m drifting off to sleep, a deep, alien noise that nothing on earth can replicate. Its tongue was slimy and black, and it stuck it out, much like a snake would, tasting the air and my peculiar scent before moving its jaws and speaking. I can’t describe what its voice sounded like, it was many things, it was in my head and in my ears and in my lungs, I felt sick and dizzy just from hearing it. I’ll never forget it either. It said: ‘You smell like me.” and then I’m pretty sure I blacked out. Not fully, or else I’d probably be dead, but enough to not be aware of moving, because when I ‘came to’ I was pelting down the wet sidewalk towards the lights of my hotel, and somehow, I made it. Now, to you, this may sound like nothing to flip out over, but you need to understand that Eli and I and everyone else who researches these things were operating under the assumption that they were driven by instinct, base animal processes, that their only purpose was to breed and feed, and now everything we know about them has been thrown into doubt and question. Was the large slenderbeing in Chicago an outlier, maybe one of a kind Or all they all capable of learning, of social order, and other things reserved for intelligent animals and humans? I dubbed the one I saw Subject X for my own sanity, and I’m going to donate my next paycheck to the lab where the person who tipped me off about X works, because holy shit. Another note, Eli spoke of aberrant treewalkers in his last post, and I’m inclined to agree on the subject of juvenile creatures being less adept at camoflauge. Perhaps the ones I’ve previously seen in the cities I’ve visited have been such, not knowing what clothes actually are for, they adopt a clumsy disguise to look more human. I left Chicago the very next day in broad daylight and have not left my apartment since I got back. What does this mean for how we approach these creatures? Can they possibly be reasoned with? Do all of them have the capacity to learn and consciously adapt? And is Subject Zero more intelligent than any of us first believed? These questions have not stopped haunting me. -J
