Gore Tale*

I met someone today. he said he knew me. i didn't recognise him, at all. all the same, he said he knew me. he said he knew me better than any of my friends ever would. i told him it was possible. he told me he knew me better than my closest friends. i thought for a bit and realised he was right.

my friends, those i have known for the longest are likeliest to be the ones who don't know me at all. time has changed us and we've grown to be different people. the man listened to this and he said that i was on the right path.
when we were younger, we did everything together. we were all from the same class, we liked the same thing. no one wanted to be different and all the circles played with the circles and all the squares played with the sqaures. but time changed the dynamics and some of us discovered freedom of thought free from peer pressure, free from the desire of acceptance. we discovered individuality. the man nodded as i went on, agreeing with what i said and yet pushing me still to ponder his claim.

when we were younger, we didn't choose our friends, our friends were simply decided by the society. the drama club were a group, the chinese geeks were another, we were all birds of a feather. then we grew up and we met new people and this time, we chose them. we formed opinions and would group together with those who shared our views, our interests and our beliefs. then i stopped and looked at the man who claim to know me better than my friends. he asked me why i stopped and i told him that i wasn't sure where this was going and it seemed to have developed a life of its own now. the man smiled and told me that was precisely what i should expect from a thought process.

we make new friends along the way of life but we don't lose our old ones either. in time, we grow to either accept or reject the product our friends from the past has become. when we accept, we become good friends, true friends of the soul, but there are those who reject, and to them, friendship is about the length of time they've known someone. these people tend to deny all that you've become and so you learn to pretend to be something you were but are not anymore to keep the peace. they never see the real you because they refuse to and you grow tired of making them see.
now things were becoming clear and i understood how a stranger could know me better than my friends, my closest and oldest friends.

i look up then triumphant with this discovery but the man only looks amused at my conclusion. i demand a reason for his amusement and he tells me this:

I know you better than any of your friends ever will, not because they don't know you enough but because I have absorbed their memories of you, just their memories and not their opinions of beliefs. You see, I'm a soul eater and memory is something that I gain when I consume a person's soul.

i stare in stunned silence at his confession not knowing if i should stay or go. so i ask if he was going to eat my soul too? and he says:

Of course not. Besides, I was only doing you a favour. It is what you wanted anyway, you wanted a real friend, someone who understood you and accepted you for who you are and not because they've known you for too long a time to wipe you out of their memory.

i realised the words were true the moment he said them. realisation made my knees grow weak and i collapse in a heap on the floor.

Who are you and how do you know this to be true?

Do you not know it yet? I am you and you are me. I am your deepest secret made flesh, your deepest desires made whole. I am your ALTER EGO.

*incidentally, Gore Tale is an anagram of...? Guess!!