#61: Kendra

04/26/19

FTP: So I'm settling in here nicely. I've decided how to format things going forward. Up here I will recount the events between the dream and now as I write up chunks of the narrative set during my sleep. I think that will be most effective; it worked last time. This entry all concerns the 27th of March, this first part starting after the dreaming ended.

After waking up, Ali was immediately besieged by messages and calls from Rob. She's since blocked his number and I think entirely cut contact with him. Whatever excuse she used about him causing too much drama was nothing but a pretense. I was the one she always wanted by her side anyway.

I hung out with her all morning as we wandered Wellington and she begged her parents for help. Spoiler alert: no luck on that part. I had no idea how much worse things were going to get.

I seem to remember us hatching different ideas for how to proceed. Jae would take Ali in to train her with the job. Maybe I could try and get the same job? She shot it down,
saying Jae could only recommend one person and Ali had the IT knowledge to manage a computer job. I'd find something. I knew I'd find something. Until then Ali would vouch foe me and keep Jae okay with her sudden bonus roommate. Where did we go until Jae could pick us up? She said she couldn't make the trip until the next Saturday. Since Ali's parents had left her out on the streets, we had to give her some kind of shelter. It took a lot of convincing but I think we agreed on trying to talk to my parents.

When we got back my mom screamed at me. She told me to pack my shit and get out right then. Obviously, I didn't just calmly go about this business but my arguments were utterly futile. It was as if she were an NPC set on a track of ignorance to my plight.

“Fine. Fuck you, then!” I heard myself say, but now I wasn't speaking. I was just the spectator on the side observing. “You're full of shit and I'm done with you anyway!” I followed my body to my room, not sure what to expect as I opened the door.

I guess Ali and I left behind a stinking mess in my room, paraphernalia and alcohol containers. I didn't remember doing more with her than smoking a bowl and, well, what we did, but true to my mother's word(amidst a sea of put downs and passive aggressive disappointment), the room was a disaster area the likes of which Ben's party days would envy. Normally my instincts said blame it on Darek, especially in that moment as he puppeted my body,  but recent events reveal that reality itself is an unreliable narrator. I have no room to assume anything.

I didn't even resist the move after that. I just kind of grabbed a backpack of essentials and met Ali down the road from my former home. Her presence was a welcome light in a dark unknown around me.


03/27/19

The dream imposed itself upon reality immediately. I felt as though I had been traversing the thick miasmatic fog all day, as if my spiritual self had been here the whole time I was with Ali. I can't be sure how soon after sleeping I saw the figure in the distance. I might have noticed her as soon as I slept. It felt like hours, days elapsed before I spotted her.

“Alice?” I called out, half-delirious.

A small smile illuminated her features. I saw full, red lips, thick glasses, and a distinct cheek dimple framed by royal purple hair. Memory did not betray me this time.

“Kendra!” I raced to her and threw my arms around her. She returned the embrace with a whimsical ease to her posture that lessened the weight I had been dragging around for these past weeks.

“What are you still doing here, you silly boy?” She asked me with a knowing smirk.

“I'm… I… I don't know…” I said. That weight suddenly crushed heavier down on me.

“Every time you get swept up in the darkness you always need me to come save you.” She pressed a finger to my chest and poked me, sending a slight warmth spreading through my torso. “You never realize until it's too late that you can do it yourself.”

As her finger pressed into my chest, a light radiated out from me, around me, piercing the dark fog.

“You've been so close to putting it all together in every post I have read on your new blog.” Kendra mused. “But you've got false angels in your ears misdirecting your mental processes, so I'm just going to have to spell it out for you plainly.”

We began walking, her own body generating the same warm glow as mine. “This dark cloud is not a location; it's a portal to the underbelly of the mind. It leads to the deep recesses of the subconscious where Chameleon lives. All those doorways you've been seeing are parts of that dark labyrinth the dark cloud leads you to. But that's because you're not looking where you're going. You're letting yourself get turned around.”

With each step we took the darkness seemed to be eaten away by the light, and i saw that we were in fact in the same familiar woods that I had known from my last trip to the Outer Layer. It appeared to be night time, though the inability to see the sky or anything more than a few feet ahead prevented me from confirming that. We continued walking together.

“You were right about Gwen being linked to the cloud. But you need to know she lied when she said she represented your relationship with Alica. I know that for a fact. I've been here a long time, longer than I can clarify right now, and I've seen her birth and who she is. She isn't an external event you experienced. She's an answer to an age-old question. Was Alice one of the users or one of the used?”

I paused in stride and felt the warm glow shrivel slightly. Without breaking stride, Kendra clasped her hand around mine and propelled me forward. “See? You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's this question that put the first crack in your soul. That has been there as long as I've known you. You turned it over and over in your head, even without conscious awareness. What were Alice's true intentions? Why did she behave the way she did regarding you, and what did she see you as?”

“Gwen,” Kendra continues as we began to be able to make out farther and farther ahead, “is the scenario where Alice never existed. Gwen, the real one, Alice's sister, pitied you and wanted to manipulate you so she created the fake account, invented a sister, and played with your emotions. The whole story from the relationship to the cancer was a big lie.”

I could now see the reflected moonlight off of the tree leaves and a couple stars twinkling in a clear night sky. I dare not try to find the dark cloud. Searching for it might trigger a reaction.

“Anna, inversely, is your more realistic vision of Alice, a troubled girl just like you who used the internet to escape reality, who fell for you and agonized over the fact that the happiness you shared could not last, who may even have deceived you about her sickness but out of a desire to protect your image of her. She died as an angel in your world so she could watch over your spirit.”

“Fat lot of good it did…” I mumbled.

“It has made all the difference." Kendra assured me. “Her influence over you echoes across every fraction of this Outer Layer, from Anna to Zanark.” She smiled over her shoulder at me. “In a way, bot Gwen and Anna are your interpretations of who Alice could have been.”

“So…” I mumbled. “Was there ever really an Alice here?”

Kendra stopped walking unceremoniously. She gazed up at the luminous round moon, now fully visible, and carefully formed her answer. “To exist in the same form as you or I would have been a bastardization of what she was to you, Mat. No, she never walked among Anna and Gwen; all of Anna's memories were the result of Gwen's manipulation. But she is among us; her spirit lives with you. Everything she was and is lives in your memory.”

“Memory…” I whispered. The word lingered on my lips. How much memory had been taken from me over the years? How much of who I was did Darek and Chameleon and Zanark delete and fabricate and obscure? Despite all of that, Alice still remained a constant focus of my shattered soul, never wavering, never dimming, a beacon for me to follow through the darkness.

Kendra pointed forward, toward a thinning of trees which indicated a clearing ahead. “Go this way. The girl at the lake waits for you. I must attend to some other matters.” She smiled and kissed my cheek as she strode in the opposite direction. “It was good to be with you again. I've missed you this past two years.”

“So you do remember the missing time.” I said after a moment of contemplation, but Kendra was gone when I turned.