By the Time You Read This… : A Final Note Regarding Kamelot
Please listen.
I like Kamelot. I offer no defense, no excuse, and no explanation, because I have none and can hope to imagine none. This unfortunate fact is one I’d long preferred to keep hidden from all but my wife, who has long proven herself immune to the worst of my traits, and a single other confidant whose trustworthiness is founded on the somber solidarity between a man and a chip dip who share the same reprehensible affliction. His name I staunchly refuse to divulge.
There you have it, then. Now you know. Tell the world; it hardly matters to me at this point. By the time you read this I shall be no more. Even now I stare at the streets far below through the open window before me; the final portal to merciful nullity. A single step to liberate me from the evil recollections that doggedly sear my mind day and night.
Please do not think me insane. Though aware of the absurdity of such a statement coming from a man scrawling his final note with feet dangling five stories high, I must assure you that this determination was reached through calculated and deliberate reasoning. Do not doubt that, if you were to see the things that I have seen (and you may yet get that chance), you would understand and perhaps even share in my need to die. My final hope is that there may be no semblance of an afterlife to which my cursed memory may follow me after being drained onto the cobblestone.
I brought this fate upon myself on the fourth of May, and it started as one might expect – on Kamelot’s Facebook page. Having wantonly ventured into a place no man should be, I stumbled across a thing no man ought to see. I’ve, perhaps unwisely, included the execrable image below. I strongly advise the weak of heart to stop reading at this time, as this is the very figure which set me on this course; the very figure that doomed me.
I sat inert; wide-eyed and frozen in my seat. It seemed like hours before I was able to draw a breath and the entirety of my being convulsed in a manner so severe that the word “cringe” could never be adequate. I thought my organs would erupt and every last blood vessel would burst. The agony seemed to swell exponentially every second, until I was finally able to pry my eyes from the hateful screen and collapse to the ground in a broken heap.
At length, I recovered to some degree and was able to go about my daily routine, functional but shaken. Nights were restless. Strenuous effort proved ineffective at driving the words from my mind. Those words… Those fucking words! Winds whispered them through the trees and crickets chirped them through the walls. They bounced loudly in my mind without egress. MAY THE HAVEN BE WITH YOU. MAY THE HAVEN BE WITH YOU. MAY THE HAVEN BE WITH YOU.
After a week on edge I was drawn back to that horrible place. Whether out of morbid curiosity, a frenzied lust for closure, or some otherwordly pull I cannot say. At any rate, I clicked through. The road forked.
The initial blow to my psyche was potent enough. Hashtag. Meme. Monday. A fucking atrocity to be sure. But the real, unspeakable horror came with the fated option… “View comments”. The words mocked me. They sneered from their seat above the terrible unknown. I knew what would be behind that door. I knew where it would lead. Then again, how could I not? I tried in vain to shake it off. “It’s not worth it,” I pleaded with myself. “Don’t do it.”
But I did.
The sheer dread that washed over me is not something I can ever hope to explain. It was complete, pervasive, all-encompassing. I became it. In that moment, I was dread. I slammed my fist on my desk and cursed aloud. I cursed Kamelot. I cursed Tommy Karevik’s god-forsaken soul strip. I cursed their fans. I cursed Mark Zuckerberg, the gods, and the fates. Anything and everything to deflect the responsibility that I knew was ultimately my own. I shouldn’t have clicked.
Recollecting it is too much to bear. Even as I dance around my descriptions and explanations, my pen slips from my sweating hands. Nothing can remove the blasted imagery from my mind, yet I must, for I can bear it no longer! Oh, god! The dankness! The unprecedented dankness!
The window…
