eternal sunshine of a spotless mind

i always find jim carey's forays into serious acting to be very entertaining. like robin williams at around the same time, his landmark performance and subsequent outrageous oscar snub in the truman show served as a reminder that comedic actors don't neccesarily have to only be court jesters. here again, he takes up a more serious script, alongside staple dramatic actors such as kate winslet, and flourishes.

the film itself, a career high point for many involved, including director michel gondry and screenwriter charlie kaufman, essentially revolves around the question "is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?" set in a world where targeted memory loss is a commercial service used to get rid of the memories of old exes, it follows carey's joel through this experience, erasing his memories of winslet's clementine.

the dynamics of this technology within society is also explored, as this internal storyline is combined with the external plot involving kirsten dunst, mark ruffalo, elijah wood and tom wilkinson. indeed, this larger view of the concept as a whole serves to beautifully compliment the much more intimate a-story.

i really should have reviewed this along with (500) days of summer. it covers similar ground, deconstructing the manic pixie dream girl trope (interestingly, this film plays the characters out as though the leads switched roles, with winslet playing up her energy and vitality, and carey almost unrecognisably understated) and providing a non-linear meditation on a relationship. here, unlike in (500) days of summer, however, the more serious treatment is helped along by a tangible threat, both in the frankly terrifying concept of memory loss and in the constantly pressing erasure of clementine as a person in joel's life. that this takes place in joel's mind allows the fear to be given shape in a huge number of gondry's visual setpieces. as the end looms, objects disappear, dimensions shift, and there even appears a faceless man, threatening to take away his loved one forever, who provides joel with an enemy to fight, even if it ultimately ends in his defeat. my only criticism is in how unrealistically this is portrayed - there is no stalkingburningcrushingtearingrippingkillingdyingmutilatinggaspingbludgeoningswallowinghatingfearingdisembowelingchokingscreamingbeggingrunninghidinghurtingbleeding


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The Slender Man

I've found it.

The way out, I mean.

It's consumed me. Obsessive. Clawing through Kari's blog, the other blogs, whatever information I could get my hands on. Moving constantly. I can't see him, but I'm constantly shouldering the weight of his presence. He's here, and he's close. But I think I know a way out.

Think about how He spread for a moment. An initial exposure. It was picked up by others, and quickly, more information was generated by these others. This was released, where it was picked up again. There are three steps here:

Infection - the initial exposure to Him, or information about him
Replication - sightings, experiences - more material is created, more information.
Dissemination - the replicated agents are spread to new people to be exposed.

What with the otherworldly wraith stalking us, it's understandable that people wouldn't pay attention to the coughs and colds we have a tendency to get. The coughing. The aches.

It's the "slendersickness". He's a virus.

A memetic virus, to be exact, rather than an actual physical viron. But the idea of the Slender Man follows this exactly. It's how he spreads.

It also explains the changes and differences between accounts: they're mutated strains of the virus, changing to get around immunities and truly infest new prey, or just because of a poor efficiency in copying information.

 The theory holds. It fits.

Of course, Kari gets every sickness that comes near her.

And Kari was taking antiviral medication. Introducing the idea - or the meme - of immunity. She got the symptoms - the sightings, the "sick" symptoms, even the disappearence - but she survived. She fought it off somehow.

So I've been back to her house - her back door is never locked - and I've got her medication. I've taken it. He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me He can't hurt me

After all these months, all this pain and heartache, all this death and horror, I've won.

He's right there, but all He can do is look on.

The Search

I'm back out in the wide open world. I hate to leave Kari behind, but I've learned not to stay in one place.

She found something. Some way out.

I just need to find out what.

Anyway, I'm off now, it's raining hard right now, and I don't want my phone to get wet.

Kari II

Kari's alive! I'm in her hospital room now. Her mother hasn't stopped crying since she arrived, she's so overwhelmed. Kari herself is awake, and while she's confined to her bed until further notice, she says she feels up to walking or running - or whatever else. They found her unconscious by the roadside near Motcombe School. She was rushed into hospital, but aside from minor burns and a severe case of dehydration, she's fine.

I've been thinking all afternoon about how I'm going to write about this, how I'm going to describe how this feels. 

It feels like, after everything that has been taken from me, something is being given back. Relief. Astonishment. Love, more love than I can say. I love her so much, and I was so sure I'd never see her again, alive at least, and every fear and doubt and dread lurking in the back of my mind that she was dead is gone. It's all gone. She's alive. 

How is she alive?

Kari's alive.

On the bus on the way to the hospital. They found Kari. She's alive, stable and aside from dehydration, alright.

I can barely type right now. My hands are shaking so much. Predictive text is a lifesaver.

I'll update you all soon, but you'll understand I'm gonna be a little preoccupied.

An Excerpt.

"I cannot forget...where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon...and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. 


When the French Government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent...all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect."


 - Robert W. Chambers, The King In Yellow

Park Base - I'm giving up.

Fuck it. I'm out of here. He's here, I know it. The bushes are too constricting. There are too few points of exit, and the fact that I have to walk forward from my position to get to the nearest exit makes them inconvenient in the extreme. And He's been here. And not as in "when he killed Joey" or "When Kari had that fucking dream about him" but as in He's been here not long ago. As in, He's probably here now.

Oh how quickly this new shelter became just like everywhere else. I'm forced out, like I was forced out of my home before. Like Ms. Fisher, scared of her own apartment. The whole point of a home is that it's a sanctuary. Safe as houses and all. But it's just a societal construct. Like the right to life, the right to freedom from persecution and torment. Little structures we set up to grant ourselves a better hand that what the universe has dealt. Ultimately meaningless to anyone who decides to ignore them. Meaningless to the very people they're meant to protect us from.

Our conceits of safety don't matter at all.

They are nothing to him. The little safeties we have invented for ourselves, as a species, are nothing to him, and our dependence on them is the trap we fall into time and time again. I see why so many in my position do what I did and uproot themselves.

This place was comfortable, strategically advantageous. Now it's a deathtrap. I can't be here any more. It's like serving myself up to him on a fucking dinnerplate.

Park Base: Night 3

I think I saw him last night. My maglite's beam caught some dark, silent shape drifting from the stone table into the undergrowth opposite. I wasn't sure enough to leave - I've put a lot of faith into this camping spot. But I sat awake the whole night. Of course, my biggest concern is hallucination. I'm entirely sleep-deprived right now. Only a few nights from the last month have had proper night's sleep. My mental state is fragmented and weak. On the edge of sleep, it could have been anything, and my fear over it all just deprives me of more sleep. I don't know what I'm seeing, or whether or not is really there.

EDIT: What happened to Night 2?

EDIT 2: Okay, I know, I don't know why I'm asking you guys that. There was a Night 2 entry, and now it's gone. I can't find any trace of it. Did any of my subscribers have it come up on their reading list?

Park base: Night 1.

It was pretty good. I slept on the floor, and the circular bench and bushes blocked out the wind. The mat I sleep on stops the worse effects of sleeping on stone, and my sleeping bag is really warm - it's an expensive one.

But make no mistake - comfort was not a luxury I had. sitting on the bench, sleeping bag still packed, ready to run. Just staring down the path towards that table, waiting. It's a bizarre feeling. I'm not looking for Him any more. I'm expecting him.

I ended up sleeping in the park last night. On that round stone bench, right near where Joey died. They've opened it back up. You can see splotches of blood in the earth. They tried to overturn as much as possible of the ground, but it didn't help.

Now that there's no police around - for a while it was the hot-place to be, every ambitious young gumshoe trying to find the clue that would make his name - it seems like a good place to stay, albeit morbid. You can get in 24/7 if you are willing to climb over the gate, and if you do that late enough, no-one'll see you. The tall bushes restrict entry points. I appreciate that it isn't the place least associated with Daddy, but hell, I'll get an undisturbed night's sleep every so often if I'm lucky.

Got back into my house this afternoon. The window was boarded up since last time. Shower. Change of clothes. I feel a little less disgusting. Packed my rucksack full of food from the fridge, spare clothes, and a powerful Maglite we keep under the stairs.. Grabbed a sleeping bag from the loft, and a thick synthetic mat made for camping to go underneath it. Anything else I thought might be useful.

Now I'm back on the street. Feeling better. The sleeping arrangement is infinitely more comfortable, but all that facilitates is my ability to lie here, heart racing at every errant sound around me. I'm back on the "days-without-sleep" counter. Anyone who could sleep with Him after them deserves every second and more.

I can't do anything without it being overshadowed by Him. So this is how my life is going to be.

Losing faith in my dismissal of the Tulpa Theory. Losing faith in all my theories.

We know nothing. There are no loose ends to unravel. Nothing I can work with.

I'm dangling, hopeless, over the abyss.

Nothing. No headaches, no panic, no paranoia.

It's odd. Not quite serenity. More like an absence.

It's been over a month since she was taken now.

At this point, the dissenting conjecture is the biggest problem...

Unless the hypothesis...

...it seems like several assumptions are flawed. Back to the drawing board.

The technician found me. I was walking down towards the seafront when I saw him. I tried to hide, but he spotted me. Shrieking, he dashed towards me. I turned on my heel and ran around a corner. A slight glimpse of a suit and an indistinct white face as I turned.

The shrieking stopped. He never rounded the corner. Knife in hand, I moved around the corner. No-one was there. He'd disappeared.

He was there, and then he was gone.

As bad as the fear of psychotic whispering was, the total silence is worse. Like static in the air, tingling, wound tight. I feel impotent against the weight of it.

It's swallowing me.