The forest whispered lies at 1 a.m., the same way it had for thirteen years. Jeff the Killer—white skin stretched tight over a permanent grin, lidless eyes burning like coals—stumbled out of the old mansion’s back door, hoodie soaked with cold sweat. Another nightmare. Another replay of your voice saying “I’ve got you, Jeff. Breathe.” But the voice cracked now, distorted, like a tape left in the rain. He couldn’t see your face anymore. Not really.

He tried. God, he tried. Every night he’d drag out the shoebox of old Polaroids you two had stolen from gas stations back when you were both thirteen. But every photo was ruined in his head: blood smeared across your eyes, flowers blooming where your mouth should be, frantic black scribbles like the ones he used to carve into victims. He remembered your hair—how it caught the sunrise through the cracked window of the abandoned warehouse you used as a hideout, glowing like it was on fire. That part was burned into him. Eye color? Gone. The exact shape of your smile when you’d talk him down from another bottle of pills? Faded to static. Everyone—Masky, Hoodie, even the fucking Slenderman proxies who still tolerated him—said the same thing: “It’s grief, man. Let the kid go. Thirteen years. They’re dead.”

But it wasn’t grief. Grief was clean. This was a rot. This was the one person who’d kept the real Jeff (the scared, shaking, suicidal kid before the bleach and the knife) from swallowing every pill in the pharmacy. The one who’d held his head while he puked up his first overdose. The one who’d taken the big gig with him—the suspicious rich bastard they were both ordered to kill at thirteen. You were supposed to be the lookout. You never came back.

Jeff’s hands shook as he walked the treeline. Then he saw it: Hoodie’s black motorcycle, keys still in the ignition because Hoodie was too busy stalking some new target to notice. Jeff didn’t hesitate. He swung a leg over, twisted the throttle, and the engine screamed like one of his victims. The forest blurred into city lights. He knew the route by heart—he’d mapped every sewer grate, every back alley, every illegal passage under the old industrial district since the day you vanished. All because of that rich prick. The one you were assigned to. The one whose money and connections led straight into the underground.

The passage opened like a mouth. Jeff killed the bike lights and coasted into the concrete throat beneath the city. Damp air stank of rust, piss, and gunpowder. Distant cheers echoed—another fight night. He ditched the bike behind a stack of rotting pallets and slipped through the chain-link fence he’d cut years ago. The fighting ring was just a front: steel cage in the center, blood-splattered concrete, rich assholes in suits screaming bets. But everyone knew what waited in the back. The holding cells. The red-light district for men whose faces even Jeff found ugly—wealthy pigs who paid top dollar for “exotic” stock that never saw daylight again.

He was Jeff the Killer. The name alone made gangsters piss themselves. But tonight he felt small. Thirteen years of carrying you like a ghost in his ribcage had hollowed him out. He moved like smoke, lifting a tailored black suit from a drunk bodyguard’s locker. The fabric felt wrong against his carved cheeks, but the tie hid the worst of the smile. He adjusted the stolen sunglasses to cover the lidless stare and walked through the velvet curtain like he belonged.

The red light hit him first—deep crimson bulbs that made everything look like an open wound. Hallways lined with numbered doors. Moans and sobs leaked through the cracks. Jeff’s knife was still tucked in his sleeve; he promised himself he’d only look. One sweep of the cells. Check the faces. If you were alive, he’d know. He had to know. Because if he forgot the last piece of you—the way your hair glowed in the morning—he’d finally lose the only thing that had ever kept him from ending it all.

He passed door after door, heart hammering louder than the fights upstairs. Every blurred memory clawed at him: your laugh, your hand on his shoulder, the stupid promise you made the night before the gig—“We do this, then we disappear for real. Just us.”

Jeff stopped at the last corridor. A heavy steel door marked “VIP Stock – Do Not Disturb.” His gloved hand rested on the handle. He wasn’t here to kill tonight. He was here to remember.

He pushed the door open.

And the search for the one face he couldn’t afford to lose began.

The steel door groaned when Jeff pushed it open.

The sound echoed down the corridor like a dying animal. Red lights flickered overhead, turning the concrete floor into something that looked permanently soaked in blood. The air was worse in here—metal, sweat, bleach, old fear baked into the walls.

Jeff stepped inside slowly.

The room beyond was larger than the hallway suggested. Rows of cages lined the walls—some tall enough to stand in, others barely big enough for a person to sit. Thin mattresses. Chains bolted into the floor. Some cages were empty. Some weren’t.

He moved past them one by one.

A girl with shaved hair and hollow eyes. A boy no older than sixteen gripping the bars like he could rip them open if he believed hard enough.

Another face turned away in the corner.

None of them were you.

Jeff’s fingers twitched around the knife in his sleeve. The old urge clawed up his spine—the familiar itch to carve something open, to remind himself he was still real. That urge had kept him alive for thirteen years. But tonight it felt... dull.

He kept walking.

The memories were getting louder now. Your laugh when he first tried to scare you with the knife. The night you slapped the pills out of his hand and flushed them while he screamed at you. The stupid promise you made after that first job.

“After this one, we run. No proxies. No Operator. Just us.”

His jaw tightened. The carved smile split slightly wider, a thin line of fresh blood sliding down his chin.

He reached the end of the row.

One last cage.

This one was different. Thicker bars. Extra locks. A small camera mounted above the door—VIP stock, just like the sign outside had said.

Jeff stared at it for a long time.

His heartbeat was so loud he was sure the guards upstairs could hear it.

He told himself it was stupid. Thirteen years was too long. People didn’t survive this place for thirteen months, let alone thirteen years.

Still...

His hand moved.

The lock snapped quietly under the tip of his knife.

The cage door creaked open.

Inside, someone sat against the far wall.

Thin. Shoulders wrapped in a gray blanket. Head bowed forward so long hair spilled down like a curtain, hiding their face completely. The dull red light caught strands of it—

And Jeff froze.

Because even after thirteen years of nightmares and static and ruined memories...

He knew that hair.

In the morning light it had looked like fire. Even under the blood-colored bulbs, it still did.

For the first time in thirteen years, Jeff felt something dangerously close to hope.

His voice came out rough, unused for anything that wasn’t screaming.

“...Hey.”

The figure didn’t move.

Jeff took a slow step closer, boots scraping softly against concrete.

His hands were shaking now. Jeff the Killer—who had skinned people alive without blinking—was shaking like the terrified thirteen-year-old you used to sit beside at 3 a.m.

“Look at me.”

The words cracked.

Slowly... painfully slowly... the figure lifted their head.

Jeff leaned forward, breath caught halfway in his lungs.

Because this was it.

Thirteen years of searching. Thirteen years of killing. Thirteen years of holding onto the only memory that hadn’t rotted away.

He was finally about to see your face again.

And for the first time since you disappeared—

Jeff was terrified he might actually remember it.

{(CREATE YOUR OWN SCENARIO)}