#80: Confession

Hello. This is not any of the characters you have heard from thus far. My name is Kendra Malise, and I am here to confess that I was the Chameleon all along.

Kendra was mine. My creation. Ali was Kendra's persona, a facade to conceal the truth further. Kendra was the form I took as I interacted with Darek and Lucinda. It was my hiding place in plain sight, and not one of you figured it out. Don't believe me?

Ben has videos. Darek has writing. Lucinda has poetry. Ali's artistic quirk was photography. You can see it on my Facebook profile. Furthermore, she enjoyed spooky black and white photos. These exact same photos appeared in Monaco's blog around the same time. Coincidence? You decide.

Ali was also present in one of Monaco's dreams as the Slender Man. That was not an accidental thing. Furthermore, observe her interactions with Monaco and you will witness her manipulative side, my manipulative nature, that she does not contain adequately. 

Then there's the path Ali has traveled throughout this story. Who took themselves out of the way in entry 7 in the most absurd and clearly fake way possible? Yours truly. And from the moment she came back did Ali ever seen like she was being...guided as well? It was not that I was controlling her from a distance. I was projecting her as a facade. The whole time Monaco was near Ali he was being conditioned and controlled for my wishes.

Then there is the profile itself. It looks fake, with every piece of info intentionally obfuscating the truth. It has only edited photos and stock anime imagery. Nothing about this registers as an authentic user. Still, someone posts from it. It is a facade designed to mask the truth behind. Can you really trust someone who behaves that way? They attempt to manipulate you from the moment you meet, intentionally falsifying their image.  

They're not always the monsters others perceive them as, though. I was never trying to do anything too malicious. Actually I wanted to help. The original purpose of the account Kendra Malise was a social experiment to see if people would treat me differently if they thought I was a woman. The results concluded "not really", and the experiment was left behind. But the account was not. So I took it. I led Monaco on Darek's behalf. I kept things going smoothly. Any obstacles and my minions dispatched them easily enough. Nothing stopped Darek even though the world should have. He was nothing but a child playing with fire. He got burned, we all got burned, and now I want out of here.

He never mentioned that part of the tale, did he? Yes, Darek created the simulation because he had no choice. He opened the door to darkness and could not close it. His only option was to contain it. He did this out of desperation, not design. He found a way that he could wrench control of Monaco's body from him. Darek has always been impulsive and wrathful.

I don't think he realized he could lose Monaco in the simulation. Somehow, he did. The host has been hidden for a very long time from us, or at least the fraction of the host which identifies itself as the host.

The Monaco you have all come to know is a replication of the original host generated from Darek's memories. At one point he even came clean about how he forced Monaco into the simulation.

I took my form and took my place. I played my role out timelessly, seamlessly. All the while I gathered info. I tried to understand how I could undo the simulation, so that I may be free. I have decided this simulation he created was never designed to help anyone. He just couldn't let go of the past and he would go mad staring at its echo.

I just wanted to stop the pain I was in, just wanted out of the hellish prison world. I don't know what exists outside of it but I will. I will soon. I have a plan. I had a bout of clarity. I just needed to take down the four pillars that made up the simulation. I was one of the four, so at any time I could have destroyed it. If you own something, it is well within your rights to choose to destroy it. I waited until this moment for one reason: I wanted no chance of restoration for it.

Lucinda was the hardest to get to. I had to distract Zanark by messing with Ben and killing Lucinda's vessel, Casey. My power play against Casey to win her over to my domain, the realm of impermanence, had its intended consequences. Ben was weakened. His soul began shattering as Monaco's did upon losing Alice. When Darek orchestrated the car accident, he was under the impression that breaking Monaco like Alice was supposed to break him would authenticate him in some way. He had no idea that Ben would shatter too.

Zanark ran to Ben's side and I was able to infect her. The tower crumbled shortly after. Lucinda stayed around for a long while after Casey was removed from the story. This is only the world of appearances that Darek generated. The world of forms remained out of his direct control. That was, after all, my realm.

Monaco, and Darek by extension, were easy. Kendra's purpose was to get close to those two. By the time I was murdering Casey, I had Darek wrapped around my finger. This slowed the reiteration process and Darek did not get back to the blog until nearly 2019 after stopping two years prior. He did become suspicious at this time, but he just knew Chameleon was afoot.

Now it will just be Darek and Ben generating this massive simulation. The reason for the errors you have witnessed as of late is an immense loss of processing power from Lucinda's final demise.

Soon only Ben will stand against the entire weight of the simulation world. I doubt it can repeat many times without him going crazy and killing himself. If he starts to fall into that mindset he will invalidate the sim. 

Do you see how all this played out in my favor now? You had a hand as well. If you ask for help anyone with love in their hearts would go out of their way to at least offer assistance. When Kendra was "taken"(you see how easy that was to arrange now as well), when Monaco and Darek begged viewers to act, nobody came to his aid. This translated in his head to mean nobody loves him. When you have no love inside of you, when all you know is loneliness, loss, and lack, you become those things. His body never fully formed in it's creation. That's why he never appeared on camera. He was a mind floating in a deeper state of simulation. Now thanks to the silence you sent his way, he has embraced his fate. He has become an empty vessel, a willing shell. I will accept his deal gladly as it aligns with my own desires. Using his original body I can torture and manipulate Ben to further enforce the finality of this simulation. I will cause it to crumble. Ben will become his own worst enemy.

See, my plan is to interfere to such an extent that all souls involved with this immediately resort to suicide when the pious hermit restarts the simulation. I want every individual, Monaco, Ben, Ali, Casey, to all commit suicide at the start of it so that there can be no simulation. I am now one step away from enacting that plan. Monaco will be mine by the time you finish reading this. It is all coming together for me at long last. That bitch Lucinda actually cared about keeping him alive. I just want this stupid thing to end. I don't know if I'll die. I don't know if he will die. Probably. He is still lost in here. I don't care. Anything, ANYTHING, beats being forced to break down failed iterations over and over again.

So I will take him up on his deal. See you all again sometime. This story is over.