08/02/19

I don't know what I'm really doing anymore. I am beginning to see the futility in pursuing anything. It would be easier if i just ended it all. No more blog entries, no more confusing messages, no more Mathew Monaco. This whole thing is a tangled web of confusion.

I solved the first puzzle by the way. There were lowercase letters in the hidden images a long while back, in the first thirty entries. If you take the chronological order in which they appear based on the jumbled dates you spell out "fearthechameleon". Ha. He was there even in the beginning.

Also, I think I solved the purple flame message. "The future will flee to the safety of the purple flame" Notes in the back of Casey's journal suggest she believed the shadow man in Jake's drawings was not Madrik like Jake believed but the dead-walker, the other version of Jake that existed simultaneously to him. These systems of split personalities between all parties is so complicated unless you think of it a certain way. It's like...they're all filling a role in one repeating pattern that we all experience. One of the actors is "self". Another is "insecurity". The dead-walker was insecurity eating Jake alive. It was who he ended up becoming. The future self. Casey was so intelligent. I don't doubt she figured this out as well.

The purple flame was harder to decipher. Looking at some posts on Chameleon's Tumblr, I noticed only one featured heavy use of the color purple. It was an image that became Rob's profile pic last iteration at the end. I remember having trouble reading it.

FOURLITTLEFIGMENTS

HEARTSLIKESTONE

ONEBETRAYEDANOTHER

THREELEFTALONE

This references the death of Rob Airheart which left myself, Ben, and Ali. If Rob is the purple flame, the safety to which the future flees, it stands to reason Rob was in possession of this sketchbook. It might have been what drove him mad. Then "Darek can u see me?" comes from Rob who sent the sketchbook to me before dying.

So what am I doing today? I don't know. I'm just writing. I want to recreate the scene from entry 74 where I seemed to communicate with Chameleon using proxy versions of myself and Aaron, or rather Shawn. Can I enact a similar incident if i enter the same state in my writing again? I want to experiment with it right now.

FTP: I entered the dimly lit room and sat at the computer, the only light available spreading from the screen. I opened up entry 76 and began typing into the laptop. It was late in the night. Hopefully nobody would notice the shadows cast by my form in this dilapidated building.

I reviewed the words I had spilled onto the page in my coke-fueled emotional binging last night. I was surprised to see a message already waiting for me at the end of the paragraph.

FTF: You are going to die. Accept it.

T I M E slips away from you.

Down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass you go.

FTP: Who are you? I asked to the computer screen. Chameleon types in a very specific manner. This isn't it so who are you?

FTF: Oh, you foolish boy. My name is Matthew Patrick Monaco. I am you, you frozen in T I M E from before this even started. I am you from beyond entry 100, where you are faced with a choice and you foolishly grasp at broken straws to plug a leak in your narcissistic desperation. I know your history because it is mine as well. I know your destiny because it is to become me. Every T I M E this has happened you have succumbed and this time, this final iteration, you will be eaten alive by the chameleon. We will become an integral piece of the darkness, woven into T I M E itself.

FTP: I don't believe you. I said in monotone. I dared the other to try and prove me wrong.

FTF: Unlike you I carry undiluted memories. The date was November 14th, 2013. On that day entry 100 came to pass and the darkness was made tangible. Check Darek's videos on Facebook. There's the proof. Oh, right. You intentionally remain blissfully unaware of anything on social media for the sake of your (in)sanity.

FTP: ...keep going. I beg you. Help me. I can't remember anything from that date that was special.

FTF: That was the first day of the rest of my life, the day I stopped living in reality and sought only escape through substance through this project through mental breakdown cycles. Before that day I cared. But something split. You know that tale by now though, don't you, Darek?

FTP: I'm not Darek. Are you?

FTF: Do you know what entry 100 represents? Do you know the original story or was that taken from you by him as well? I remember so much I've forgotten what i forgot.

FTP: I don't remember. How old are you?

FTF: I am T I M Eless. I have been you. I have been Darek. I have been Cameleon. I have watched universes rise and fall in my T I M E experiencing this paradoxical immortality. But that is beside the point. Here our paths intersect. Allow me to impart on you restricted knowledge from my archives.

On that day, in the 100th entry, Darek kills Anna, skewers her through with his blade (a blade borrowed from Kendra mind you) and she breaks. He then kills himself. Well, his future self. He was a T I M E traveller in that iteration. Thus he slowly went mad coping with the eventuality of killing his daughter and then dying horribly. Because he went through this tainting he does not split when he dies so much as he… hatches. This entry, this day, the darkness was born.

FTP: Who is the Darkness? What is it?

FTF: In a word: Chameleon. It is the side of you that you fear. It is your artistic desires seen as childish mimicry, the possibility that you are a hack and that everything you do from your poems to this little experimental art project is a sham built on stolen concepts and rebranding. That's why Chameleon uses such Slenderverse-based communications. It's what you love, what you know, so Chameleon becomes it. And now the truth dawns that you are nothing but a walking bundle of insecurities covered by plate armor you stole from other people.

Casey? Won't even talk to you now. Long gone. She got sick of you draining her like a psychic vampire. Ali? Lonely and hollow thanks to you. She was changed and robbed of something because you used her. And Ben, Ben was smart. He cut you off before you could drain him but you still got a coveted piece didn't you? This soul will rise with the setting sun, indeed.And now he's stuck in the same place you found him toiling away at a dead end job all because you came into his life. How tragic.

You are not a person, Mathew. But I am. I was born with this name and I took it from the world. Remember your seventeenth birthday how you learned your name only had one "T" on your birth certificate? It wasn't the name you were meant to have but bureaucracy made it your identity. It forever changed your identity. You became a slave to it, without control, at the mercies of the letter of the law. But the name you threw away, I claimed. Everything you threw away I claimed. Maybe I am Darek Ocanom. Maybe I'm everything you can't bear to be.

FTP: No.

FTF: Yes. You've come to the end of the journey. You are faced with a choice. Walk free, live, and subscribe to the curse of knowing what you know. You will be rotted away by T I M E slowly. Or, join me. Become me. Kill yourself and allow Chameleon to become you. Acceptance is the first step. Take it, take that first step right off a bridge.

If you have no complaints I will continue to illuminate your past.

Nothing?

Okay.

You have never in your life been an individual person. You have been the interests of the nearest person whose ass you could fit your nose up. Does that offend your politically correct sensibilities? It should. When a harsh truth invokes anger that is the tool for changing who you used to be. You don't have that fire in you though, do you Mathew? Where did it go?

The night was chilly and the flames licked at the sky from the pit that would be their grave marker. Flames are so fascinating conceptually and such an anomaly scientifically. What is fire's state of matter? You and Alica sat around it holding the folder full of poems. Not first place poems, not understood, well-received, or highly praised poems. Just poems from a boy who lost his way befriending devils. And on that day you sacrificed your righteous anger at a world who rejected you. On that day Kendra planted the seed to bring life to Darek Ocanom, her lover across time and space.

Ask yourself this question in preparation for her final revelation. If Chameleon was with Grant, why did Chameleon persist when Grant died? Who in your life manipulated you further after Grant gave up trying to groom you? Come on. Don't be obtuse. Remember all of it...

FTP: Who is Darek Ocanom?

FTF: You aren't asking the right questions.

By the way have you not figured out the other blog yet? Look back at how you found fearthechameleon. Is there a deeper hidden message? I don't want to do all the work for you; stop being so fucking passive

That's your problem. That's why Ben is the one Darek wants instead of you. You just let the universe treat you like a little bitch. And i know that one hurt because I also know you thought the same before.

FTP: Who is Chameleon?

FTF: The taker. The liar. The false guide. The yang. The darkness. The tempter. The forgotten one. The hollow core. This one seeks conclusion. Resolution. Finity. Fitting given its role as the destroyer. Do you know it's true name at this T I M E?

FTP: Who is Zanark?

FTF: Data. Preservation. In some form, omniscient. In others, immortal. Untouchable by the darkness. Existed long before. Innocence preserved. Naivety holding hands with wisdom.

FTP: Who is Mathew Patrick Monaco?

FTF: The fool. His journey is almost complete. He will find his future holds Death.

FTP: Who is Matthew Patrick Monaco?

FTF: The World. The answer. The final form. I will become you with the Chameleon's help. You will fade into obscurity and I shall become the force that collapses the simulation. Then you and Ben will be freed of this shackled existence and I will be rewarded with the sweet embrace of death.

Any more?

FTP: You're just trying to mislead me. You're intentionally giving me leading replies that drive the conversation toward a certain perspective. I'm not buying into it. I'm better than you. I don't need you.

FTF: Rich, coming from you. I have the drive to end this hell. You just let it gut you with a masochistic smile. I'm glad we are nothing alike. Enjoy your final hours. The end begins here. Recently ADDICT came into possession of a journal linked to Lucinda West. Do you know what she is connected to…?

FTP: please no

FTF: Yes. The lake. That's right. And do you know what connects you to the lake and your precious Zanark? Do you know what ADDICT is doing to her as we talk? Give me the reins. I'll paint a picture.

The Outer Layer has ceased to be a chaotic swirling conflict zone with Gwen's death at Kendra's blade. Anna, now at peace with her inner self, returned to wait for her beloved Mathew by the lake. Days passed and spawned into seasons. Distraction after distraction came up in his life. She watched from behind the teary eyes as Ali went missing, as Rob robbed him of the only crutch he had in his waking world. She lamented his dependance on substances to feel anything. All those bottled feelings from him went right to her. A winter quickly settled on the forest.

She stared out at the lake which had no right to be liquid in this temperature. A thick wrap cloaked over her shoulder of earthy brown protected her from the elements. I was there when it happened, watching between the particles. The ADDICT a world away and months before any of this stared down at a promising madman's casked many feet below him. He dove off the bridge and found himself submersed in the lake. Now, necrotic and soaking wet and moldy, the ADDICT comes up from the water, his mossy brown hair clumped to one side of his scalp. Lacerations from the fall still had not healed but he looked dead as any ghoul. His eyes, bloodshot and undiscerning, honed in on Anna's yelps of terror.

As his body revealed flabs of grey flesh and torn waterlogged clothing barely clinging to a bloated monster, as he limped onto shore with a broken leg dragging in the muddy lake floor, Chameleon's odor enveloped the lake. Zanark was no longer home. He had fled, abandoned Anna, and it was not the monster gnashing at her, tearing into her like a cannibal, snapping her bones and throttling her, but the vacancy that shining angel left in her heart that caused her spirit to release itself from her body.

Shall I continue?

FTP: I'm gonna be sick.

FTF: I am here if you want to talk, my vessel.