FTP: Hello. It has been some time for you hasn’t it? It is so strange. So very strange. Time moved forward, but it moved backward also. I’m typing this up from my parents’ house. I don’t know what exactly happened to me, but i seem to be back in time.
I’ve been here four or five days, trying to sort through my own mind and comprehend just what I’ve gone through. It seems the blog still exists, but it says I haven’t posted here in over a year. I feel like I was there beyond the doorway maybe a day. To learn that all this time passed, while at the same time things seem to have reverted as well, is boggling my mind. I knew, I KNEW something unusual was going on with time ever since I saw that video of Ben mourning Casey before she even died. That doesn’t mean this has been any less frightening and overwhelming to experience.
Since returning to the real world from my long slumber(the details of which I will share in chunks as I transcribe it), I’ve snooped around my belongings for clues as to my own identity. It sounds stupid typed out like that, but this whole situation is absurd enough to warrant such statements. I found out I graduated high school in 2017. So I am still 19 somehow, and it is still 2018 somehow. I don’t understand this. Time moved forward but I moved backward. I lost the last two years of my life even though it has been almost two years since I updated this blog.
I haven’t seen my family in so long. I’ve been hiding in my room scared to confront them directly. Part of me wants to babble like a madman about what I went through, but I know I can’t just throw a million things at them. This feels like some type of Groundhog Day scenario, so they likely don’t recognize anything is amiss.
One thing I’m sure of, though; this is wrong. I’m not wrong, and I’m not delusional or hallucinatory. There is something very wrong here that goes beyond my mental condition. And I need to get it out to someone. Since I can’t rant to my family or friends, I’ll rant to you guys. It only makes sense.
05/14/17
It started off like any other day. I had basically resolved to end the investigation. I think all my leads had hit dead ends or something. Writing this from the future, it feels distant and surreal, like a dream that lasted longer than i was asleep for. Ali was right, I had figured; it was pointless entertaining the whole thing when I could just live a life. Or had Darek convinced me of that?
April crawled by uneventfully, marked by drunk, stoned evenings which permitted my mind the depressurization it needed to face the next day. Even though my circumstances had been so unusual and overwhelming, I fell into a routine that comforted me with complacency. It’s crazy how we can adapt so quickly; the mind is as resilient as it is fragile.
So nothing really happened during the time between the last entry and this incident. Rather, if it did I turned my head and ignored it. I actually remember a weird dream I had about a week before this date. Typically my chemical-induced slumbers are uninterrupted and dreamless. That night, however, I’d been forced to sleep sober due to unforeseen circumstances. My rest was not restful at all. Tossing and turning, waking up in the middle of the night, I saw flashes of the events of entry 43 playing out before me, this empty expanse that filled me with dread, broken scenes depicting me running from a massive storm head, darkness that both claustrophobically smothered me and left me weightless in eternity, I can barely see what I dreamed of, but I can feel it. Oh, I can feel it like I’m still there. It is insane the lengths the mind will go to in order to deny impending danger, because I just shook it off, got stoned the next day, and move on with my life.
Anyway, this day enters like any other. I didn’t feel odd waking up. Nothing stuck out to me as I proceeded through the motions. I woke up, ate breakfast, smoked a bowl, messed around on the internet for a bit, smoked another bowl, went to work, drudged through a short four-hour shift, grabbed a snack from the shelves, and began the peaceful walk home. I hadn’t even thought about Darek at that point, hadn’t heard his voice since waking up in fact.
The evening was a cool one for Florida, the last of the sunlight had just evacuated the sky and the stars kept me company as I passed under street light after street light. I had some song playing, something melancholy if memory serves. It has been so freaking long since that moment. So much has happened. Forgive my inability to properly set the scene.
Have you ever just felt a disturbance in the air? Like something atmospheric shifted and you aren’t privy to the specifics, but the hair on your body stand straight up and you feel a shudder rush through your soul? Whatever was happening in that moment, it shook me to my core and froze me in my tracks. It was right behind me, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t force myself to turn around. My backpack hung loosely over my shoulder, swaying in the remnant of my motion. My entire body turned, struggling just to swivel as the weight of the air slowed my movements. It was like I was in water.
“Monaco…?”
The backpack fell to the ground. My hand shot to unzip it as my eyes took in Ben’s appearance. Disheveled didn’t begin to describe it. He looked like he hadn’t slept, shaved, or showered in a week. His clothes were loose and hanging off his thin bones. His eyes, haunted by ghosts that stalked his head, stared wildly through me. He had noticeable bags beneath. There was something in his hand, some sort of crumpled piece of sketchbook paper, and in his other he held a knife. My hand was already inside my bag, digging for the police baton Richee had purchased me.
“No. No, no.” He staggered toward me. Was he drunk? I wished I had a little alcohol in me then. Maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid. “You’re not gettin’ away from me this time…” His hair was as wild a mess as his eyes. Everything from his demeanor to his attire shouted danger at me.
“I… I don’t understand.” I managed, my hand closing around the baton at last. “How did you get here? Where did you come from?”
“I don’t know where I just was!” He cried. “The woods? The lake? The nightmare? There was a thing… it attacked me… tendrils and smoky mist, and… I can’t remember…” He looked to me again as if remembering I was there. “You. Darek Ocanom.” He sneered Darek’s name with such disdain. I rose to my full height, still shorter than him, carefully concealing my weapon behind my leg. “What was this about?“ He waved the paper in my face. “I delivered your dumb message. What was it about though? Huh? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE EYES ON ME, ASSHOLE!”
He was in my face now. His tone did not suggest amicability. So I reacted. I didn’t think. Something about him calling me by Darek’s name unclogged the flood gate of repressed tension. I smacked him in the hand as I extended the police baton, all on one sudden, swift motion. His knife flew into the air. Then I pushed into him, knocking him onto his back. I could smell the alcohol in the air now. He was definitely drunk.
“Why did you put your last name backwards?” Ben asked. Despite what I had just done, he showed no sign of surprise in his speech. I didn’t quite respond either. I just fell upon him, swinging the weapon downward. Again and again I crashed it into his face. I was trying to shut him up but it seemed like he wouldn’t stop speaking.
“Didn’t you” smack “know I’d” smack “figure it out?” I struck him square in the jaw, dislocating it. “Why are you” smack “trying to change” smack “the situation” smack “without changing yourself first?” He wasn’t even moving his mouth anymore. His face was becoming a bloody mess. There was no way the words could be coming from him yet they persisted to invade my ears. He didn’t even stop speaking when I hit him with the police baton anymore. I just kept whacking him and whacking him and the words just kept pouring out.
“You think you’re so damn cute, always playing the victim, acting like you don’t know anything. You’re a trickster who lies to all of us! Even yourself! Especially yourself! Does Monaco even exist? Or is this just Darek!?”
I remembered every word I heard because I had thought it countless times myself.
Eventually my arm grew numb. I was just swinging it mechanically and surrendering to adrenaline in a desperate plea to drown out the voice. The entire scene became a bloody mess. By the time I finally understood that the voice was an imitation in my head, Ben’s head had been reduced to an unrecognizable pulp. Darek broke into mad laughter in my brain and nausea fell upon me like a weight. My legs shook so badly, I was so weak, I couldn’t manage to get up off my knees. The entire world started spinning. What had I done?
With bloody hands shaking like a leaf, an indescribable and irrational clarity came over me. I watched those shaking hands, almost as if controlled by someone else, reach out to the scrap of paper at Ben’s side. It was, indeed,a message from Darek. It said “please deliver this for me” and contained a quote Ben was recorded as having said back in one of the early entries. It was also dated around the time the entry occurred, two years ago. My head was swimming with he sensory overload I was experiencing. I remember this note pretty well, though, because of what I saw on the other side.
It said “I have eyes on you” and showed various symbols ranging from Slenderverse icons to religious markings. When I laid eyes on the page my mind screamed into my ears, a tingling sensation swept through my whole body, like pins and needles everywhere at once. I screamed over the scream and dropped the note to clutch at my ears. I fell backward, away from the corpse. And my eyes swept up to the street.
Two things struck me simultaneously. I guess it speaks to my mental state that I focused on more than the obvious details in that stressful moment. First, the doorway was standing in the middle of the street, suspended there by nothing. It was the same doorway I remembered. When I saw it hundreds of memories of passing through it lit my mind. The other thing I noticed was that not a single soul occupied the streets even though it was early evening and this was not a quiet part of town. Not a single car was on the road. No people, no noises, no signs of life. I was the only living thing left as far as I could tell.
So much raced through my mind. I had questions. I had reservations. I had crippling nausea and vague tinglings of dissociation. The doorway called to me. Of course, my mind reasoned. This must all be a dream. I stumbled almost in a trance to the door. I walked around it. I touched it. It was as solid as anything around me. This didn’t feel like a dream, but it just materialized there in the middle of the street. I didn’t want to look back at the body laying on the sidewalk. I opened the door and passed through into the blinding white light.
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