(Time)

We stopped his bleeding, of course. We wanted to keep him alive. For now, at least.

But why? I hear you ask. Why not just shoot him? Well, he was one of the smartest members of the Panopticon, way back when. We could still use his skills. All we have to do is...persuade him to work for us.

We both want to same goal, after all: the eradication of the Slender Man meme. Only he doesn't believe that it's a meme at all, he believes it's an actual monster. Silly. The only monsters here are us, Jack.

"He'll show up," Jack said. "He'll come to kill me. Him or one of the others. Then you'll see."

"Shush, Jack," I said. "You're just being silly, now. No one's coming for you. It's all in your head. I mean, you told us yourself that it was a meme."

"I was trying to keep you from going crazy!" he shouted. "It obviously didn't work."

"Now, now," I said, "no need for insults. All we want you to do is join us again. Remember working together on those campaigns? All those political ads we did? Come on, it'll just be like that, but this time we'll be helping people."

Jack took a deep breath and then winced in pain. We had all the bullets removed from his legs and even gave him some pain pills, but not that much. "You're not helping people," he said. "You're hurting them. You're trying to make them ignore reality."

"Reality is pain," I said, "you know that. Isn't it better to ignore the pain? Pretend like it's not there?"

"But it is there!" Jack said. "You can't ignore it. You have to fight it!"

"Tisk tisk," I said. "You can't fight pain. It's all in your head, remember?"

"It's a stupid metaphor!" Jack shouted. "He's real! You can't pretend he's not! Doing that will get people killed!"

"Good old Jack," I patted him on the back. "Always getting worked up over the little things. Don't worry, you'll come around. We have all the time in the world."

Time, Jack. Time is all anyone needs to change people's minds.

 -- The Scissorman