Olive woke up.

Staring at the planked ceiling, her entire room enveloped in near-perfect darkness, she wondered what had woken her up. Normally she was a deep sleeper and had in fact been late to several events because of staying in too late.

She heard something. The faintest of sounds in the very back of her awareness, a barely audible scrape of metal (bone, maybe?) against wood.

Sitting up in bed, Olive pushed her plaid comforter aside and squinted. Her room wasn't very large, about twelve feet by ten, with a minimum of furniture. There was her twin-size bed, well-suited to her five-foot-four height. Next to her was a small nightstand, hardly visible in the tiny amount of light emanating from the cloud-covered moon outside. A polished cabinet, its dark surface gleaming faintly, stood in the corner, an arsenal of coat racks hanging next to it.

Scrrrape.

Pulling her legs out of bed, she lowered her bare feet to the wooden floor, feeling around for her slippers. Something touched her foot. Something rubbery.

Jerking her legs back up, she tucked her knees in and pulled away from the edge, trying hard to see what she'd touched. She knew for a fact that her slippers were fuzzy, little brown things designed to look like puppies. Neither of them were gumboots.

SCRRRAPE.

The sound was more insistent this time, the clawing of something getting angry, and Olive checked this time. Ensuring that it was her slippers this time, she slid her feet into them and walked forward, ducking to look underneath the bed. Nothing was there - she could see all the way through to the other side, dim moonlight casting shadows on the floor.

Olive frowned. There wasn't anything that should have a shadow... especially not anything with that many appendages.

scrape.

Scrape.

SCRRRRAPE.

Olive's breath hitched. She had a feeling she knew who - or what, rather - was in the room with her. It was the same thing that had visited her room on several occasions over the past few months. A creature that always ensured that the room was as dark as possible before entering. She could feel her heartbeat escalating, a dull thumping in her ears.

Straightening, Olive looked over her bed and saw...

...nothing.

Her forehead wrinkled. Had... had she been imagining it?

Briefly checking under the bed again, she saw no hint of the shadows from previously, and shrugged. She was tired, after all. It was the middle of the night, after all.

She wasn't in the mood to deal with it, after all.

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Ignoring the hairs on the back of her neck rising, Olive took her slippers back off, lined them up neatly, and slid back into bed. Pulling the covers up to her chin, she closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply.

There was no scrape to alert her this time. Just the distinct sensation, a poke at that strange sixth sense in the back of everyone's head, that something was watching her.

She opened her eyes.

It was hanging from her ceiling, upside-down. A painfully thin figure, lanky legs and arms kept tucked in at its sides. A suit darker than nightmares, with a white undershirt and a black tie. The clothes didn't seem to obey gravity, much like their wearer. A writhing mass of tentacles spread out from behind its back, coming from nowhere and going everywhere. Its face, a smooth white surface with a texture like fabric, stared into Olive's eyes from mere inches away.

Olive groaned irritably. "Slender, we've talked about this."

The fabric where its eyes should have been wrinkled as if in consternation, and she continued, "I get that you have old habits and I totally get that you have a hard time with people - I'm introverted too, I understand. But can you please not wake me up at-" She squinted, reaching for her alarm clock. Nonsensical hieroglyphs, symbols that would drive anyone mad, scrolled across its surface in a glowing red text.

She glared at the figure hanging from her ceiling. "Really? C'mon, what time is it?"

A faint sigh, a breath of unearthly air drifting through the air, brushed across her cheek. The figure still didn't say anything, but the characters on the alarm clock flickered temporarily, to be replaced by three numbers. Olive stared at it for a moment and then squinted at the figure. "Four thirty? Do you even sleep?"

With a slithering hiss of movement, the figure twisted his spine in a hundred and eighty degrees and dropped from the ceiling, landing like a spider with inhumanly long limbs jutting upwards, their joints extending in the wrong direction. Rising from the floor with tentacles writhing, he slowly shook his head. Olive blinked. "Oh. Sorry. Have you ever tried? Sleeping is - I dunno, a fun habit?" She frowned to herself. "Wait, why do I need sleep?"

Slender shrugged awkwardly, still not saying anything. Olive turned to look at him, and he shrank back slightly.

With a sigh, she flopped back onto her bed. "Uggghhhh. Don't feel bad, you're gonna make me feel bad."

Glancing around nervously, Slender precariously sat down on the very edge of her bed, folding his freakishly long hands on his lap. He weighed almost nothing, and if she closed her eyes Olive was unable to tell if he was even still sitting at the end.

Rolling over to rest her head on her arm, she asked sleepily, "So why do you come here? It's not like we're... I dunno, in a relationship or anything. Don't get me wrong, I love hanging out with you, but 'hanging out' with most of my friends just means, like, chilling. With you, I tend to end up actually hanging from something or another."

Y̴̨͍͓̣̱͖̟̳̫͈̟̱̠͈͆̂̍̿͂̈̑͊̈̈͐̂͌̓͝ǒ̸͕̺̥͓̙̗͎̦͍̙̪͇͗͌̏̈̑̀͠ṳ̴̊̃̍̓̽̂͆͗͒̓͆͘̕ ̵̢̧̪̜͚̺͉̳̤̖̞̪̈͑͆̀̈̀̓͝d̵̬̱̠̺̰̊̈́̈́̓o̶̰̽̊̏͝ ̴̢̡̛͖̤̼̫̥̲̲̬̗̪̘͈̅͌́͆͐͊̎̎̇̊̚̕͝ͅn̸̙͍̯͓͔͈̜̄͜o̴̫̲̝͕̘̖͕̫͍̱̐̅t̵̡̡͚͇͖͖̤̟͈̜̭̬͛̈́̒ ̶̨̢͚̠̖̌̂͒̈́r̶̖͎̺̼̬̪̤͊̿̽̓̆̇͂̈́̎̽́͘u̸̦͗̀n̷̼̮̍͑̆ͅ.̷͍͙͖̙̜͓̟̫͔̤͓̞̅̋̀̾̄̓͐͋͂͘ͅ

A barely audible whisper wormed its way into Olive's mind, and she grimaced in spite of herself. She'd never get used to that.

Olive shrugged. "Why would I run? You haven't hurt me or anything, you just sorta... stood there the first time we met. I mean, the tentacles are a bit freaky, yeah, but it's nothing a girl can't get used to."

Slender paradoxically perked up and slumped simultaneously, and Olive frowned. "I dunno how I'm supposed to interpret that. Look, is there anything you wanted to talk about, or did you just want to watch me sleep?"

Considering the question for a moment, Slender merely nodded, his tentacles slowing to a crawl. Olive snorted. "You actually wanna watch me sleep?"

Slender paused, and Olive had the distinct feeling that the entity was possibly panicking just a bit. She sighed. "Don't make it creepy, 'kay? I need sleep, even if you don't."

Nodding gratefully, Slender sank into the floor and melted into the shadows. She could still see his shadow flickering across the floor as if he were still standing before her, but his physical form went unseen. Rolling her eyes, she snuggled back into her covers and closed her eyes.

She was asleep in minutes.