X-Virus

The forest whispered its usual secrets that night—branches creaking like old bones, fog curling thick enough to taste iron on your tongue. You’d been recruited by Slenderman three weeks ago, yanked from whatever nightmare life you’d clawed through before. One moment you were a monster on the loose, all jagged edges and instincts that made humans scream; the next, you stood in the Slender Mansion’s warped hallway while the faceless entity tilted its head at you like a curious predator sizing up new meat.

“Fit in,” his static voice had rasped directly into your skull. “Or be culled.”

Fitting in was the joke. Your monstrous form wasn’t built for it—too many unnatural features, skin or hide or scales that never quite looked human, teeth or claws or extra limbs that refused to stay hidden. The other proxies gave you side-eyes. Jeff cackled every time you accidentally left marks in the dining table. Masky just chain-smoked and muttered about “another freak.” You tried, though. You sat at the long table during the rare group meals, kept your monstrous acts to the shadows (mostly), and only let the hunger show when Slender sent you out on a hunt. Still, you felt like an outsider in a house full of killers.

Then there was Cody.

X-Virus. The one with the cracked gas mask that leaked faint green vapor, the one whose lab coat was always stained with things that used to be alive. He didn’t look at you like the others did. He looked at you like you were the most fascinating specimen he’d ever wanted to take apart.

It started small. You’d catch him watching from doorways, eyes glittering behind the lenses of his mask as you tried (and failed) to look normal during one of Slender’s briefings. He’d linger too long when you passed each other in the halls, gloved fingers twitching like they itched to poke and prod. One night you came back from a messy assignment—covered in things you didn’t want to name—and Cody was waiting outside your room, leaning against the wall like he owned the shadows.

“You’re... different,” he said, voice muffled and cheerful through the mask. A single finger traced one of your more monstrous features. “Fascinating. Mind if I… borrow you?”

You didn’t get a chance to answer. Cody’s grip was deceptively strong for someone who looked like a mad scientist who’d lost a fight with his own experiments. He dragged you—literally dragged, your unnatural form scraping against the floorboards—down the hidden stairs behind the east wing, straight into the glow of his underground lab.

Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Tables were cluttered with syringes, vials of glowing fluid, and half-dissected things that still twitched. Cody’s “love language,” as he called it later, was simple: science. Twisted, obsessive, hands-on science.

“Hold still, beautiful,” he murmured, already strapping a thick leather cuff around one of your limbs. His voice had that soft, reverent edge—like you were the rarest virus he’d ever cultured. “I’ve been dying to see how your body reacts to my Strain-7. The way you heal, the way your monstrous traits respond… it’s poetry. You’re poetry.”

You bared your teeth, half-growl, half-laugh. Fitting in had never felt this dangerous. Or this wanted.

He spent hours on you that night—mapping the way your monstrous body responded to his serums, the way pain and pleasure blurred when he injected something that made your veins light up like bioluminescent fire. Every scalpel stroke was gentle, every stitch careful and affectionate. He talked the whole time, voice low and excited, telling you how your monstrous appearance and monstrous acts made you perfect, how the others were boring meat while you were a walking miracle of evolution and nightmare fuel.

“You don’t have to pretend here,” Cody whispered against a sensitive spot on your monstrous form, mask pushed up just enough for you to feel the heat of his breath. One gloved hand traced your unnatural features. “Slender recruited you because you’re a monster. I’m keeping you because I’m obsessed with every goddamn inch of it.”

By the time he finally let you up—covered in fresh marks that were already changing in the most beautiful way—you realized something. You weren’t trying to fit in anymore. Not really.

You were falling for the one person who saw your monstrous appearance and monstrous acts and said: Mine. Let me study you forever.

Cody walked you back upstairs at dawn, arm slung around your shoulders like a proud scientist showing off his favorite project. The other proxies stared. Jeff made some crude joke. Cody just flipped him off with a bloody glove and pulled you closer.

“Next time,” he said softly, just for you, “I’ll show you what happens when I mix your blood with my newest strain. You’ll love it. I promise.”

And the worst part?

You already knew you would.