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Someone shoved me in a room and told me to type this.
The bodies pour into the viewing to say their final farewell to me. Alica is inconsolable, not that Rob isn't trying. Jake and Casey sit silently near the front, dressed in black. Everyone is wearing black. My parents and siblings are all in a group near the front. Ben is at my casket, crying and whispering "I'm sorry" over and over. My father has my mother under his arm and he won't seem to let her go. My brother just seems deep in thought somewhere miles away.
"Is he really?" Mammoth asked, bursting onto the scene and rushing to the casket. Nobody says a word. My sister steps aside. He stands over me, looms, really, and shakes his head slowly. He pulls a flask from his back pocket. He's back off the wagon again. As he turns to exit the chamber, he spots a man sitting in the back of the room, trying his best to go unnoticed. He has dirty blonde hair, long, tied back into a ponytail, a heavyset build, and acne scars riddling his face. This is Grant. This is the man who made Chameleon.
"I can't believe it." He says as Mammoth passes him up for a bottle. Tears stream down his cheeks. It's no surprise. Their lives are all in shambles now. I was the center of their universe. I was the center of the whole universe, because this is my daydream. Not reality.
I'm still alive. I can't die. I have tried. Nobody else exists but me, me alone in this hollow skeleton of a simulation.
I climbed up to a skyscraper roof downtown by Clematis.
I took a nice long look out at the ocean and the lights. They were oddly enchanting, as if they wanted to stop me from what I might do. I was resolved. I took a step off that building and closed my eyes. I fell, no teleportation trick like Ben got. I kept my eyes shut tight and prayed for pain, death, anything besides this free fall. Nothing ever came. I opened my eyes and realized I was laying in my old bedroom, the house silent and deserted. It had glitched out almost like this was some kind of…
"...simulation world." I said out loud and cursed. I didn't question where I was, even though I knew I had been kicked out back in April; that felt an eternity ago. I knew the combination to my dad's safe, and of course nobody was around. I typed it in and popped it open. There were handguns, revolvers, and rifles. Most were for hunting, some were for protection. I took a revolver to ensure the job got done, I gritted my teeth, I wrapped my finger around the trigger, I applied a slight pressure, and I pulled. Click. Did it misfire? No, the bullets were all still in the chamber. I tried again. Click. I couldn't believe it. Click. That bastard Chameleon did this so I couldn't die. Click. Fuck that. Click. I tossed the gun to the ground and grabbed a nine millimeter. I shoved it under my chin. Click. I checked the clip and the chamber as if I had trained with guns all my life. Click. I ran outside. Outside was not the outside I remembered. It was a wasteland, a desert, sun-scorched and barren. No structure existed for miles. I felt a shudder pass over me. No door existed behind me, only endlessly stretching crag and crevices in the barren earth.
So this has been my life for the past eternity.
I have walked this plane for a good long while. Sometimes it shifts to a memory of a place, but others it's the void, others it's the barren wasteland. It's like a bunch of different universes mashed together, House of Leaves style. It's all the basis I have to explain my existential state because this is not my reality anymore. Physics and laws have gone out the window.
I don't age. I don't die. I don't seem to have any consequences for anything I do. I've drank. I've snorted coke. I've spent weeks high on meth and never died. Of course, things are getting more disjointed as well. It's rare to find drugs and it's harder to look for them. When I find them, it's usually a twist of fate that drops them into my hand.
For example, this happened as I was walking up the road a few eons ago. Some girl bumped shoulders with me and said "Hey, you! It's been ages since I've spent any time with you." She looked frightfully skinny with red hair and either freckles or scabs on her face. I had no earthly clue who she was. In fact, I had not seen a single person for what felt like fifty years, but I just rolled with the punches.
"How have you been?" I asked synthetically.
"You know. Fuckin' bitches 'n' makin' money." I followed beside her as she walked up the street. Streets didn't work like they used to. Sometimes I would be in places I remembered. Sometimes I had no idea where I was. I think once I walked out of my bathroom into the same woods Ben wandered. Luckily my excursion was brief. Unluckily I survived it.
As I followed along I made some attempt to gather information. "Where are we headed?" I asked. "You know this place is between spacetimes. It's transdimensional, I think is the word." She just shrugged and sparked up a cigarette.
"I, uh, don't suppose you have one to spare, do you?"
"Back at the room, come on." She led me into a parking lot and off the main road.
I recognized this place. This was Paul's Motel where I woke up after those months of silence. Darek had met this girl here when he was using my body, hadn't he? She beckoned me upstairs. As far as things happening in my life went, this was a hundred percent improvement over the monotony I dealt with during the last years in this hell. So, I followed with piqued curiosity.
I entered the motel room and a black man leaning heavily on a cane held his hand out like he had something to give me. I held my hand out; he dropped a piece of crack. I smoked it. The girl was nowhere to be found but the curtains made me uncomfortable. I resolved to repeat my routine of peeking out of them. Every time I looked, the scene would change. Now it's a motel. Now it's the moon. I asked him for another piece. Now it's a cruise ship. He said no. Now it's the nine hells. I asked him for another piece yet again. He said no again. I suffered.
Then she came back. "Do you have a hit?" I asked in desperation. My voice crackled a little bit imitating the noise I wanted to fill my senses with. She shook her head, but then she went up to the black man and started handing him money. My sobriety had returned to me, unwilling and dirty. "Hey what are your names again?" I asked
"Allie." She answered. I chuckled at that. I knew an Ali once when I was just crazy and not an addict.
"Chris." He said with that slight twang of an accent.
"Chris?" I repeated, surprised he would choose such a name. Surely it was a chosen name in this profession.
"Chris Rock." He offered me another blast. I took it. The next few hours were a merry go round of Allie scoring money, Chris selling her drugs and then hooking me up, and Chris checking his little compartment of goods in the ceiling occasionally while I looked out at the psychedelic wonderland beyond. Remembering that reprieve from reality has my mouth watering as I type.
I ended up spending a lot of time staring out at that miasma and the forms it took. Eventually it felt like looking at clouds and seeing different shapes based on shifting perspectives. It was all one thing but it showed me infinite realities. The next time I looked back over (and fished through my pockets for the last of my money), Allie was coming into the room again and Chris was asleep on the other bed. She shook him awake after he ignored her vocal cues.
"What you want?" He said in his groggy irritation. Allie began pulling $100 bills from her bra in fistfuls and throwing them on the bed. "How much you got? I want all of it."
My lips were chapped. I started at them with the tip of my tongue as I watched him slowly make his way to his feet. Whatever wound had him limping did him no favors here. Chris pulled his stash down and count out fine chalk-white chunks. "How did you get that much money?" I marvelled.
"Tricked some john." She said. "Got him naked in the bathroom then fucked him in the bedroom, then cleaned up in the bathroom afterwards. Literally. With his slacks and his belt and his wallet right there? Dude must have been loaded because he had all this on him. Glad I fucking remembered to check."
"So, so can I have a hit?"
"Sure, if someone would hurry their ass up." She sounded impatient. She needed a hit worse than me. Spontaneously I remembered that Allie was gay and didn't like doing the things she did for money at all. How pathetic this disease made us.
"Listen bitch." Chris said turning to her. "Your bitch ass just made me lose count so you ain't gettin' shit now." He started packing everything up. "Thanks for waking me up to pay your debts. Respect. Shop's closed."
"No!" She and I said in unison. But things only got worse from there.
I started to feel unreal, a set piece in a play about the absurdity of the mind: paranoia(Was that a cop I just saw?), ADHD(I could not focus on their arguing for more than a moment.), OCD(I checked the window again.), servitude to this thing called crack(I needed another hit.). How could I ever think this was fun? It was fun when the alternative was nothing, isolation, bitterness, and resentment. Darek and the others had stripped me of everything now. The hollow world I walked looked real and sometimes felt real but, ultimately, was just that--hollow. With a sigh I set off to wander the streets seeking alcohol with no money at four in the morning. Eventually I would tire. Eventually I would rest. I had no dreams inside my head, only silence.
The next morning they were gone. I wandered the motel room in hopes of finding crack. I found a joint, a mixed drink, and a pack of Newports, menthol 100, half full still. Alas, it was a disappointment. I wanted more. No such luck. The alcohol tasted sour. At eleven in the morning(according to the wall clock), a knock echoed out and the manager said "Time to check out, five minutes!"
I chugged the rest of the booze and took the pack with me. I threw the door open to a familiar sight. The world around me was a miasmatic ethereal darkness. Before me spanned a long staircase lined with identical black mahogany doors. I was inside Chameleon's hall of infinite time and bullshit again. No surprise. I lit a Newport and started walking. Dead walker dead walker. All doors lead nowhere.
It gets stranger. My dreams may be empty but I can generate daydreams realer than you'd expect. That girl, Allie, and Chris Rock were memories echoed out through my mind. I'm convinced that's what this is, the inner world of my subconscious. These echoes reflect memories Darek took from me. Darek took a lot from me. I have been trying for the past while to recall a specific memory. At first it didn't come. Then the scene started to form. The funeral from the beginning? That was what is known as an in media res intro, where it starts in the middle of the action then goes back to show how it got there. I got there by imagining the scene and replaying it. I wanted to confront Grant, to find Chameleon himself.
I was out of the coffin. Everyone else was gone. It was just me and Grant. "I just think you made a mistake when you were drunk." I said slowly. "And you didn't know how to deal with it so you just ignored it. All I want is an apology. An acknowledgement. Some proof that you know what you did was wrong."
Grant stepped up to me and stared with intensity to match my own. "The only mistake I made was putting up with you. I deserved so much better in my life."
Just like that I felt the gnawing of anxiety on my soul, echoing out discord and leaving my hands shaking. I cast that version aside, ended that conversation, and began a new one. I had been at this for four hours now.
"GET OUT OF MY YARD!" He screamed. "GET OUT OF MY LIFE!". We were seniors in high school fighting with fists at two in the morning. I was shaking. I didn't expect him to come at me like that. Chameleon was smart. It projected memories of Grant that I repressed in my devotion to delusion. Grant was a teddy bear. This version of him was a bipolar bear.
"Please." I said. "I'm sorry. We can talk this out."
"Talk?" Grant spat, laughing aloud. "There is no talking between you and me." He advanced with a different kind of menace now. Oh God. He knew. He knew everything.
"I manipulated you. I molested you. I used you. And you knew that, you knew all of that but you still chose me over yourself. It was as if you thought caring meant being abused. So I'm no use talking to now, Mat. I'm your worst nightmare, the reminder of who you truly were and always will be."
"You are a coward, Monaco."
It wasn't Grant anymore, it was Ben, and he was still approaching me. I backed into the wall of the food court employee break area, out of space to move.
"You know it's true. You have always been at the heart of this conflict. Because you were afraid to be yourself, you repressed it. Because you repressed it you had anger issues. Your anger led you to isolate unintentionally and all of a sudden Darek is running your life."
"And let's talk about him." My own voice came from behind me. "Let's talk about me." Darek stepped into view, Darek with the curly red hair and scars along his face, his eyes furrowed in an eternal scowl. This was the Darek I remembered from my dreams those strange aeons ago.
"Who was there for you when you wanted to die? Me. I dragged you out of the depths of your depressed depravity. I put a fire in your belly again!" He poked at the bottom of my ribcage. "I went to bat against Chameleon and Zanark for you. I fought them to the bitter end for you. And I have always been your punching bag."
"You're responsible for all of this though!" I cried, waving my arms around at the desynchronized void we now found ourselves in. Uniform grey blanketed every direction. "You warped my memories and manipulated my body! You trapped me in a never-ending hell at every chance you got!"
"It is just like an ignorant citizen to judge their government without being able to see from the point of view of that government's leaders. Or subjects regarding their king. Or conscious souls regarding their God." Darek stepped backward into a veil of darkness. His eyes glinted golden. "I worked to ensure your morals kept you afloat. I took your memories and your will from you to guide you and mold you through the fire. But you are a ghost, Mathew Monaco. You run. You hide. You have no moral backbone, no spine!" Now he was moving and swaying erratically like an ape. This was not what I wanted. I swept it away. I'd become talented with that skill. Behind me lay the bodies of dozens of failed echoes of Grant. None possessed the quality I sought, that quality which had infected my past, that memory of what he meant to me.
"Shattered faith." I said, stepping into the void the world had come to be. Sure, it was many forms and shapes propped up, but this world is a doomed void. I know I am doomed to fail and die with it.
NOMYCHILD
"Chameleon?"
YOUDONOT DIETOIT
YOUARECORRECT THATITWILL SOONBEDESTROYED
BUTYOUWILL BESENTBACK
ALLTHEWAY
ANDPLAYA BRANDNEWROLE
YOUWILLBE
THENEWCHAMELEON
"What do you mean?" I cried out. The computer screen grew to the size of a flat screen television. A dark shadowy form stepped out from inside it. He left behind a realm of vibrant reds, oranges, yellows, a wasteland where screams echoed through the speakers of the TV. I backed up as a single beady eye stared at me. The person appeared to be wound in shadows.
"...Grant?"
It nodded. "I am he."
"The real one." I breathed.
"This is correct." He watched me with the caution a demon would exhibit. This was an agent, the original harbinger. I needed him.
"Kendra told me every agent has a pipeline directly to Chameleon, correct?"
"Yes." Grant said. His voice sounded distorted and eerie, as if it were synthetic.
"So Chameleon can hear and see through you."
"I am the lens of his camera." Grant said. "I am the tip of his pen."
"I want to make a deal."
He leaned toward me. "You have my full attention."
"I want out. I don't want to live this life anymore. I will sell my soul. I will accept years of torture. I will do ANYTHING to have something real to grasp on to." I paused to gather my thoughts. I wasn't sure if I was the author or the character now. "In lieu of that, any escape would be appreciated."
"What do you offer in return?" Grant asked. He watched me with arms hanging in front of him and matted hair raven black when it should have been dirty blond.
"Myself. My mind. This whole simulation world. Anything I have left to offer."
Grant was suddenly in my face. I saw now that under the shadows he was a cadaver and a decomposed one at that. "You have nothing to offer the Chameleon. You have nothing."
"I am something!" I shouted in agitation.
"You are of no consequence anymore." Grant said. "You must perform penance first."
With that he was gone, along with his departure I heard a whisper on the wind.
"You are nothing…"
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