#75: Fear the Chameleon

07/29/19

This is how I got into fearthechameleon.tumblr.com

The serial number on the sketchbook is 0100320141011. The title of the first video on Ben's YouTube channel is "15 January 2016 at 01 00 pm 2016 01 15 M0 10 03" and there were more numbers in similarly titled videos that lined up. Of course I tried the serial number alone to get into this Tumblr. It seemed like that was the"package" Jake was trying to protect. But realizing this, I tried to add an M to the front of the numbers and it let me in. Oh, fuck, it let me right in.

The video. That song. It's straight from the memories of Tyler and Grant. It made me remember everything. The flood of emotions it brought on is at the tips of my fingers, ready to be unleashed. I don't know what this will entail, but it will lead deep into whatever depths the sketchbook connects to, into whatever fearthechameleon is run by. Whatever keeps hijacking my entries.

I met Grant in the eleventh grade. I had been forced to change schools due to traumatic treatment on the part of authority and this was my first social circle ever, really, since… well, Alice…

Holy shit, that is it, isn't it. Im exactly like the Director with his Allison army. I tried to recreate Alice and those friends in every group of people I came across. I chased her at the exclusion of reality. And that downfall can be traced back to him, to this sham of a friendship that shattered my innocence but for real.

I met him through Richee. Actually, Tyler introduced me, but Richee connected me with him. See they were neighbors back then. Might still be now. Grant is still alive, possibly. My memories of his death were as fake as Alica's.

It seems my mind "kills" those it hates. Alica was "killed" when she betrayed my trust at some point I can't recall. Grant never stopped being dead because to me he is dead. It's better that way. He may have changed as a person but who he was and what he did to me as that past person is still with me, locked deep in a cage encased in hatred and calling itself Chameleon.

I loved him as much as I could. He was my best friend and I would do anything for him to comedic excess. I remember coming to his house at two in the morning. I remember consoling him. I remember that I don't remember things too, like my outbursts and how divisive they became. I remember suicidal ones. I remember angry ones. I remember this being the root of Darek's presence, when he was formlessly aware of my vulnerability. I'm trying to say that my mind may not have known I was being taken advantage of, but my emotions tried to warn him away.

T I M E and T I M E again I would betray myself to him. I would tell him all the things that ran into my mind without censor while he collected and controlled information, always wearing a different mask to placate me while he doled out misinformation and misdirection. I would meet a cute girl, we would talk, I would tell him I liked her. He would remind me I did this with every girl in our classes. As if he were different. As if I were the monster wearing flesh but he was above justice. That was the narrative he maintained out of my earshot: I was unstable; I was an attention seeker; I was obsessed with sex. He flat-out projected his insecurities on me and ruined any chance that someone could ever rescue me from the hell I began to find life seeming. I would see him talking to these girls and suddenly they would be distant. The cycle repeats itself again.

It's burning at my mind, incinerating the rest of my thoughts. The "why" to all of this, the demon in the cage, the melting oozing charismatic miasma that I've denied even to this day. It was just a thing that happened. It was no big deal. My mind says one thing. My emotions tell a different story.

The story starts in his parents' liquor cabinet. The star of the show is a water bottle mixed with pilfered vodka and two teenage boys out on the town.

"Let's go to Casey's house " I declared enthusiastically. I was acting drunker than I felt but the feeling was real and different and enticing. Was this what teenagers did for fun? Was I finally normal? Was I finally cool?

"Aren't she out for vacation with her what?" Grant was significantly sloppier with his speech, but somehow I interpreted it fine.

"Yeah, she's out at her lake house with her parents." I lamented. "But we can still get into the back patio." Drunk, this idea sounded fantastic.

We travelled together to Casey's house across the neighborhood and sat in her patio and I reminisced even in the memory in the rich smell of HER memories, that unique trace of bittersweet harmony because our paths diverged here in this world. I broke up with her and I turned away from her and I can never make that right. In that place though we were still dating and Grant was my best friend and we were a bunch of weirdos making a second family. It was like Alice was real and right there with me. And Grant was Shadow and everything was real and magical.

This is where my version of the story and Grant's version differ greatly. According to Grant, I jumped into the pool with him. We swam around. I came on to him. I told him "I miss Casey's hugs." And we hugged. I told him "I miss Casey's kisses." And we kissed. He stopped me from going farther and made me get back to his house to dry off and sleep the drunkenness away. I learned this in senior year when someone shared that story with me while we were talking. This occurred early 2010 and i learned about that in March 2011. For a year that story floated around and I never heard it once. What else did he say about me that I never heard? The best part of this incident in 2011 is when I started telling my side of things i learned that a mutual friend ran off and informed Grant that I was "talking shit about him". Do you understand how severe this cage was that he put me in? My accusation was demoted to mere slander that carried no credibility! It's bad enough women don't come forward with these types of things; imagine being a boy, being told "rape doesn't happen to men", and being ignored. Imagine that for ten years because that's how long ago this happened. I'm getting memories back as I do this. Im twenty six. Oh God I've lost years

So my story continues. We walk home. I am, interestingly enough, recording on camera to document my experiences drinking. I didn't want to forget. This detail comes up because there is a witness to the falsity of Grant's version of the story. I don't remember her name and I don't feel like tracking her down but, in one clip on the video I specifically say as we settle down onto his bed "don't kiss me." And he in turn insists I turn the camera off and go to bed. I showed this to someone and that was all the defense I got to send out. He took his crimes and he turned them into a shameful locker room secret. My best friend.

He kissed me the second the camera was off. He turned it off. I was so drunk. I remember just thinking "oh" and kind of tuning out in that heavily drunk manner I became all too familiar with in more recent years. The more I think about the kiss the more it is like digging a hole and having the ground cave in beneath you. Now I'm trapped, trapped remembering the way his tongue felt in my mouth, rough and dry and invasive, the way he slid my pants around my knees to gain access to my crotch, the way I asked him to stop and he did but then he started again, the way his hands were all over me inside me groping me violating me. I just fade to black and cut to the end of the night at that point, with the guest room mattress spinning beneath me and my soul weary. I remember it all. I always have. I choose to forget that.

That stain on the story affected everything from that moment on. Every relationship from Casey to Alica to Ben that monster ate them all up and left no morsel but the ghosts for me to dance with,forever alone in my head because it's mine I'm safe here he can NOT hurt me in my own head. 

But I can.

I know. I'm scared. Please just end me.

Keep going.

The rest of the story is that I made a comment about it the next morning. "It's not that different." I said casually.

"What?"

"Kissing a guy." Again as if discussing the weather.

And he just glared at me like I wasn't supposed to remember. That's why I don't, I guess. I remember Tyler openly mocking me by telling the story about "two other friends of mine" at the same Poetry Live show where he and Grant performed that song. That was when I realized my shameful secret was a joke to the world. And people wonder why I tried to kill myself in my senior year. irony really is palpable. Even when he was a misunderstood artistic genius in my eyes he was still a prick. No wonder I killed them, wrote then off, or altered anyone linked directly to them like Aaaron, or rather Shawn.

You can view the contents of the Tumblr yourself. There's suggestions that this is not just a single being working to collect these odd moments. It is a collective. This confirms the theory that Chameleon has access to every single one of us. He wanted me to remember. He wanted me to hear that melody and remember all of it. Oh God. Casey. Ali. Ben. What have I done. I'm so sorry. I failed you all. How can I ever repent for the lives I've ruined. I'm broken. Broken. Broken. Broken.

As for the rest of the blog, I've deciphered various codes and determined that this blog primarily houses the records of the conflict between Zanark and Chameleon themselves. Most videos are straightforward or open to individual interpretation. For example, in the first video posted, Mark runs into the forest path looking for a note that says "THIS SOUL WILL RISE WITH THE SETTING SUN FOR HIM DAWN BREAKS WHEN NIGHT HAS BEGUN" Interpretation of this passage could raange from a link to Casey West(the direction the sun sets in) or maybe his surname Fiinix which refers to the Phoenix whose birth comes from the end of its life. Subjective.

Obviously this note was present there in a previous iteration and Mark was seeking it out. It might have been from Madrik. Sounds like something from the sketchbook actually. But while that might have been insider info when it was posted in 2016, it serves no purpose in m y investigation now. However, the video with the dead cat? That one freaks me out because Lucky is a black cat and I know he isn't real but he was the best part of being back home, dammit. It also had codes hidden within codes and I decided to break them down.

"Empty Nokse Filters Excessive Recctions Oarking Our Suicides" Certain letters are part of a hidden Zanark code like in "Oarking" which should be "Marking". This then makes the ADDICT code "enfermos" which translates from Spanish into "sick". This reminds me of entries like 18 that were a jumbled mess of codes almost indecipherable. And the Zanark code wasn't fully solved by me. You can try yourself. I think it is supposed to be "I am at Mark's side" but I could not tell what one of Addicts words were. "Intense Necrosis Suppressing Endless Lunccy Accuravely Captures Idols ??? Nevet Erradicated"

The word it represents is "inselaciune" which, with some accents here and there, is Romanian for "deception" but for the life of me I candlt figure out the word after Idols. Anyway, the third Addict message is "Hate and Chaos Mill Even Rarer Iterations" which is telling as "Mill" should be "kill" and "hackeri" is Romanian for "hacker". Chameleon is hate incarnate and he wants to destroy everything. This kills "rarer iterations" which is a way of saying something Casey helped me realize. Anything can happen. If you end your life you never get to experience the absolute rarity of life, the one-of-a-kind moments of divine clarity that only happens in "rarer iterations".

The final Addict code is "Murder Useless Entitkes Revealing Tiref Emptingss" which is "muerte" for Addict until the Hijacking video. From the shifted letters, I collected IAMAT?RKSIDE and I have to recognize that I missed one or more letters at the ???. Likely I only missed one, but it doesn't fit seamlessly. It could be "I am at Mark's side" or "I am a trackside". It could be "I am at darkside". The first is most likely but I can't decode any more without making big assumptions.

There's a lot of Zanark text in both this and Hijacking. I'm still working on them. That's all I have right now.