#54: Angel Wings and Fire Swords

01/23/19

Let me just say that this has become weirdly numb, living this life I know isn't truly mine. I think all the time about Darek and what the nature of this reality is. I just don't feel like any of the proposed possible truths fully encapsulates the bizarre nature of this experience. So I just keep recording things and reviewing old data, trying to work out what is being shown to me and why. I'm filling up spare notebooks and scribbling theories in between the lines. It kind of feels like my life has become an ARG or something; it is like I am an outside observer at this point. It's so surreal; I can't do anything but divorce myself from my feelings and march forward with the investigation. The investigation is all that's really left.

I analyzed the video posted to Ben's YouTube after I posted entry 53. The base video is Ben talking about how he has no clue who Veronika West is; he doesn't remember any of what he discovered before I went through the doorway. With the forbidden knowledge I have I can only assume that Lucinda is accessing the Veronika West account through Ben or possibly another individual linked to the Outer Layer. I am unsure if she is being used as an agent of Chameleon or not. I'll go more in depth on my theories about these individual entities in the next entry.

Ben also mentions Mammoth's suicide. What does this mean for the rest of the events recorded in the earlier entries? Mammoth did prominently feature in some of the entries and I recall him being a player in Ben's videos at certain points. However I can not see removing him doing anything except erasing an added element to the story which does not alter the core function. I do not think this happened through my own efforts, but it is at least a sign that the course of events can be altered.

One major influence the death of Mammoth has had is that it has caused Ben to give up drinking and smoking. This explains why he hasn't been around as often, I suppose. Perhaps his attitude towards me relates to his struggle to stay clean. After all, the addictions are merely a symptom of a much deeper disease of the soul. He might be struggling to restrain Mark out of sheer will power now rather than with the aid of numbing agents that inebriate the body and diminish the effectiveness of a third party occupying it. I had been putting off confronting him about the things going on because I thought he was unhappy with me. If it is just a matter of him dealing with his personal issues, maybe I should speak with him.

On that subject, I'll shift over to the more interesting part of the video, the black and white footage of the bridge featuring Mark's stylistic signature. Here is my best transcription of the message.

“As I awake, I have no memory of what brought us here. Why do I exist? A thousand times I've [?fell???] to run straight through all our tormentors but until that time, I will fight this bloody war with every strangled breath[?]. Cause beyond every bend I could be just like you. It's the worst kind of pain I've known.”

Okay. So when Mark says “just like you” we see footage of Mammoth. I always did say he and ADDICT were basically indistinguishable, just one mess of crazy, except ADDICT had less restraint; he was basically Mammoth if we lived in anarchy. Given this, perhaps Mark is saying that the corrupting force of ADDICT turned the entirety of Mammoth into a mess and Mark wishes to avoid the same fate. He will keep fighting just to prevent that fate. I would assume “all our tormentors” refers to Chameleon, so that means Chameleon is responsible for what happened to Mammoth. Not only that, the last line “it's the worst kind of pain I've known” implies Mark was there at some point in the repeated history. Perhaps the death of ADDICT has given Ben freedom from addiction that caused Mark to fall along the same path Mammoth did? It's speculation at best there.

I feel like I'm not really seeing the full scope of what is happening from this side of the doorway. Chameleon is clearly making a power play with how things are changing. I will go into more details on my next move within the next week or so. I am considering some moves of my own and I am already seeing that fate may not be changed so simply. Here's the final entry from beyond the doorway...

??/??/??

So imagine after going through that whole emotional roller coaster, seeing the ethereal form of your ex who was erased from history, you end up face to face with someone who masqueraded as your dead first love. My heart was having none of this. The sun blared down and the trees seemed to bend away from the force of my quiet, tense rage. I wanted to leap out and throttle her to be perfectly honest.

I didn't want to understand why she did what she did, why she decided to lie to me and give me false hope even knowing that I would figure out the truth. She was my creation, though. She represented an aspect of me that perhaps I instinctively did not want to acknowledge. Perhaps this fury was more than just some sense of dishonor upon Alice's name. So I did not assault her immediately. I gave her a chance to explain herself.

“You know I've had a hell of a day so far.” I said, keeping my cool. “I bludgeoned Ben to death, I shared some bonding time with Anna who told me all about the guilt you encouraged in her, I entered a transdimensional lake and spoke to the shadow of someone I never thought I would see again. I am in no mood to deal with your manipulative bullshit, Gwen.”

Her smile did not reflect the atmosphere. That tension was more than a literary device; the gravity seemed to be weighing down on me. Every movement required gargantuan effort. She however seemed to move with all the grace of the angel she pretended to be.

“Look, okay? You're right. I'm not going to deny it. Give me a chance to defend myself, though.”

“Hell, no!” I shouted, trying to back up as she drew closer. The trees seemed to distort around us, tilting at an angle and elongating themselves. “I know people like you.” Grant’s name ran through my head and the entire world around me flashed into a negative of itself. The sky became crimson. The grass and trees darkened to blacks and blues. Gwen for a moment was nothing more than a venomous shadow from my past. As quickly as it came it went and I followed through with my warning uninterrupted. “If I let you explain yourself to me I'll get a bunch of fluffed up half truths that seem convincing enough to let you twist everything around again! I don't even want to hear it because I know you're full of nothing but sugar and bullshit.”

She did not lose her composure even as I laid into her, but that smile felt more and more forced as her eyes narrowed against my tirade. “Again I will not deny you your view of me, but have you considered to whom you are speaking?” Her wings spread out behind her for dramatic flair. “I came from you. I am a part of you. I am the part of you that knows you are better than what you play at. How many times have you hidden behind your weakness and treated your insecurity and ineptness as a barrier to responsibility and accountability? All those things that make me so disgusting to you are things you bequeathed to me, Mathew.”

Her wings returned to her back, folded neatly, and her face took on a more stern expression. “You need to think more critically about things if you have any hope of surviving the storm to come. Anna and I are both creations of your subconscious mind, parts of you that were cut away from the cloth. My theory? You based us on your past relationships. Anna, well, you went in the lake. You can guess who she was born from.”

I couldn't even manage to cut her off. She was hitting me hard and fast with such powerful revelations. As she spoke this strange energy gathered around. The environment didn't change in any clear way but the atmosphere might have been tangible if I had reached out and interacted with it. I couldn't though. My limbs felt heavy and my body was frozen in space as my mind raced a mile a minute to interpret what she was telling me. There was no obvious deceptions I could detect in her speech. Then again, I did not know enough about her state of being to know how honest she was being. If Anna was a product of my relationship with Casey, she was a result of my relationship with…

“Oh that's right. Alica. Your dear friend Ali who you have a totally platonic relationship with right? Your entire history is centered around manipulation. When you dated she basically held you emotionally hostage. After you reconnected you confessed to her that you were using her to satiate your lust for Casey. In fact…” she smiled with a knowing wink. “I think that was all she ever was to you.”

“No!” I screamed. “That's a lie! I will not permit you to fill my mind with such things! Ali is my friend! I love her!” Something was awake in me. Again, the environment did not waver but the atmosphere shifted, great anxious and tense. The best explanation of the sensation within me would be an eye peering into my soul from elsewhere, an eye engulfed in flame. “Go ahead and keep talking, Gwen, but you're on thin ice.” I growled. “Don't think you can trick me into betraying my own feelings. I confess that my relationship with Ali had it's manipulative subtexts. I was young and foolish and I just needed somebody to be beside me as I wrestled with my demons.” I took a step forward, my stance reflecting my authority. This was my realm, damn it! This winged pretender would not get the best of me within it. “But she knew this and she chose to allow me into her heart! In doing that a bond formed that transcends romance and traditional relationships. And that bond is real and it has withstood the test of time.”

“Has it really?” I started to respond but she waved a hand. “I retract that statement. Let me get to my point. Do you want to know why I masqueraded as Alice for you? Your relationship with that girl was manipulative, yes, but it had the best of intentions. You never used her to hurt her. You gave her everything you could give because she wanted all you had. It was a mutually understood manipulation, and that's where my motivation stems from. Hear me out.”

She stepped back and waved her hands out with a flourish. “Alice Rachelle Langdon is not an individual, she is a concept. She represents perfect love and peace which you have been seeking your entire life. She is a reprieve from the battles of the world. She is happiness beyond measure. All of these ideas stem from a central concept, an underlying pattern, which Alice embodied for you. And as she does this for you others have their own representative in their mental universe, such as how Casey has, well, once had Alyson, who represented simple satisfaction. Usually with food.”

I remembered how Lucinda had referred to the patterns as repeating between us all. I wondered if everyone in the world had similar conceptual entities within them.

“So if Alice is a concept and not an individual, I figured I could become that concept for you. If I pretended to be Alice I could come to be transformed by your perceptions and fill the role that you needed.” She looked to me with something like longing. She stepped forward and caressed my cheek. “Do you not agree that we can change from our past? We can become something new and in doing so fulfill a greater purpose than what would be thrust upon us from birth.” Her face was inches from mine now. I was paralyzed. Was she...going to kiss me? “If Alice is your perfect love, stop trying to recreate the past and let's make a new future. What do you say…?”

As her mouth moved toward mine and her eyes closed there was a strange sensation in my gut. That fiery presence burst forth from within me, heating my entire body from my core outward with electric energy. Unconsciously, I seemed to generate a force field that knocked Gwen backwards and away from me. Her wings spread to steady her as she flew backward, preventing her from falling or crashing into a lot trees.

As this happened, a figure draped in shadows sprang forth from behind me. Long, flowing hair of royal purple with red tips caught my eye immediately. In her hand was an object in the shape of a blade. At first I thought it was on fire, but I came to understand that it was fire.

“You bitch!” The voice seemed so familiar to me and I couldn't quite place its the atmosphere transformed yet again. It wasn't just the air around me though. It was the energy swirling through this entire realm. As if it had been run through a photo filter, the environment dimmed and acquired an unsettling red-orange tinge to it. The tree bark became more like amber. The sky seemed as though it were sunset. The sun itself significantly darkened to an aggressive shade of orange overhead. And all around us the shadows gained prominence in my vision. The world around me stayed the same; it just seemed as if a strange film had fallen over my eyes.

Speaking of the shadows, Gwen darted backwards, wings propelling her through the forest, and she seemed to melt into them. The other woman moved to follow her, the tingling familiarity tickled my hippocampus once more.

“Not only are you a bitch, you're a fucking coward!!” She screamed shrilly. I couldn't place it then. The voice was so familiar yet not obvious enough at the time for me to place it. I've reflected on it since then and figured it out, but for the sake of the narrative I'll discuss that more fully in the next entry.

“What is going on?” I asked, finally finding enough strength in my legs to amble forward where Gwen had disappeared to. Overhead, I saw that the sun was being consumed by the dark cloud. Oddly enough however it did not seem keen on approaching the girl with the flaming sword.

She turned to face me and I finally got a good look at her. She wore thick-framed eyeglasses that did not detract from the beauty of her face. Her full lips were curled into a wistful smile that projected an aura of confidence and control. She had a dimple on her left cheek and feline green eyes. She was wearing a green sweater and ripped jeans, but I only vaguely recall her attire in the heat of the moment. Her eyes, her expression, her aura captivated me. I knew this person. I had met her before somewhere, in some form, and it was driving me crazy. Something else worth noting was that Gwen projected power and control with her words, this false confident facade erected to fool onlookers. This girl must have had confidence and power pumping through her fucking veins because she didn't even need to say a word for me to feel humbled and protected by her presence.

“Who are you?” I asked. She giggled.

“You don't know?” She put on an exaggerated pouty face. “I'm hurt.” Then she laughed again. “You'll figure it out on your own, sweetheart.” And she stepped close to me. “I missed you.” She leaned in and presses her lips to my forehead. “But you need to go back now. I'll make sure Darek has everything ready when you wake up again.”

She pulled back from the kiss to smile at me and, despite the chaotic tint to the world, despite the dark cloud lurking overhead having now blocking out the entirety of the sky, despite the chaotic whirlwind my emotions had been subjected to over the past few minutes as my body stood paralyzed in thought, I felt an unstoppable peace roll over me with her gaze.

Then the lightheadedness kicked in. The world started spinning. Not sure if my perception or it's reaction caused that. Regardless, a gray nothingness fell over me, heavy and unbreakable, and all was darkness as I fell into a hypnotic slumber.