This story is not mine to tell, but in light of recent trends, it needs to be told.

Over the last few years, I've noticed a growing obsession in our culture. Where first we fixated on vampires and zombies, now our attention has begun to shift towards a figure known only as “The Slender Man.” This character, fictitious though he may be, has proved to be a fitting avatar for our nightmares. He is unseeing, yet somehow watches, and he gives us all new reasons to fear the darkness. Yet the truth of the matter is far more unsettling, for this Slender Man is nothing more than a hollow mockery of a far darker and deeper fear, a pale representation of an utterly terrifying personification that has haunted humanity since we first clustered around the firelight.

You know him as the Fat Man.

If the concept seems new to you, you're not alone. Very few are consciously aware of the Fat Man's presence, or of his prevalence in our existence. All it takes to see him, however, is a look through open eyes. No story, no art, no idea has ever gone unnoticed – nor untouched – by the Fat Man's influence, and even when we strive to bar him from our thoughts, he is somehow yet there. We dress him up in caricatures, casting him as everything from villains to the subject of cruel jokes; we distort his appearance to match our less desperate fears. We invent ways of ignoring him, claiming to confine him to the shadows... and still, the Fat Man follows.

In each piece of terror you've experienced, there's been a feeling you couldn't define: Like having hands far larger than feels right, or of being powerless to stop your own impending doom. The feeling of an impossible task, monumental in its scope, which must be completed in less time than you can measure. The membrane that holds the nightmares at bay, slowly shrinking as the images beyond it take on their hint of darkening red. That emotion, those sensations, are the touch of the Fat Man's embrace.

Think back on the stories you've read, but go beyond the written words. Perhaps you've even seen him mentioned by name: A character in a children's story, the subject of a haunting song, or a concept in a twisted scene of grotesque horror. Each encounter leaves you feeling both dirty and detached – even if imperceptibly – as though your presence in the world has been pushed just slightly out of safety. At times, you might close your eyes and see images flash of people you know... disapproving looks on their nigh-unreadable faces, with layers of blackened filth caked into wrinkled crags. Where the Fat Man touches your mind, your thoughts are marked with oily tar, leading you to feel guilty, disgusted, and afraid.

He doesn't need the darkness. He doesn't care if you see him. When the Fat Man comes, you have one choice... so you run. You can't escape, but you flee in terror all the same; hoping, pleading, begging to yourself to outrun him, even as you know you never will. You deny it to yourself – even now, you deny it – yet something inside of you knows the truth. Some part of you that has existed since even before you could speak – a part of you that your ancestors learned to shut away from their thoughts – screams in abject horror... and you hear the Fat Man laugh.

There is no coming back, because you were never here. The Fat Man has already found you. When you fall to his embrace, the world as you know it is gone, stripped away and altered into something empty and flat. It becomes little more than a cast of hollow marionettes held against a fading background. You reach out to them, and they know you... but they're still only puppets, with no lives or souls of their own. You search for safety, for comfort, and you might believe it can be found, yet everywhere you go, the feeling persists: You can never go home. It is gone. You are gone.

Because, of course, it's not the world that changes. For others, life goes on. They see no difference in you, no change, but the more astute might feel a sense of loss. You are no longer with them; the Fat Man has taken you. The façade that you now live in is empty but for you, with no hope for hell or redemption, and only endless gray on the horizon. Not even the Fat Man pursues you there, for he already has what he sought. Your only reprieve comes in your nightmares, when for a brief moment you remember... for a brief moment, when you forget to believe. You wake up to a fractured world that holds no sense nor comfort, and for a fleeting instant you can see things as they are. Then as your terror dwindles, as your panic subsides, you repair the barriers in your mind and fall back into the emptiness.

The Slender Man is a new invention; nothing more but the latest fence built to keep the Fat Man out. Fear him all you want, and take solace in the light. It won't matter. When the Fat Man comes, you'll remember. You'll know.

You'll know.

He has been here all along.