The Mirrored Soul #4
If you've not been along for the ride so far and want to join in, click the first Mirrored Soul entry on darkship . No more 'Previously On...'s, though.
(Channel IV- Afternoon Repeats)
From the Mirrored Soul television station’s Internet forum:
Mandingo (7.30am)
So, anyone still watching? I can’t work out where the ‘darkness’ stuff is meant to be going. It’s like some sort of Twin Peaks flashback. Also, I think Adam found out last night, or just went crazy.
Elmyra (8.45am)
Missed it last night- Adam found out?! What happened?
StevieP (9.50am)
The show’s been downhill since Carolyn left, IMHO.
Dawn3658736 (10.45am)
That looked like Adam finding out to me.
Mandingo (2.00pm)
Update: Adam definitely found out last night. He’s talking to some doctor-type now who I think is the psychologist who started the whole thing. It’s been a slow few weeks, but I think Adam going back to Arizona has been a good move for the show so far.
Cory flicked through channels idly, looking for something to kill the time before he was due to meet friends at Joe’s. I wonder whether they’ve cancelled that crazy Mirrored Soul shit yet, he mused, turning onto 740. He’d become quite a fan of the late night showings, which was really the best way to watch: drunk and/or stoned, watching the best parts of someone’s imagination.
The only problem was, there were too many adverts.
Cory had watched the live bits every so often, watching Adam work late or bash away at drums which he’d never get better at while imagining himself as Lars Ulrich or something, or just doing what Cory was doing, sitting on his couch watching TV for an hour or so. Watching Baywatch re-runs with Adam had been a hoot and a holler. In some ways, Cory figured Adam was on his wavelength. Except more motivated. And crazy, obviously. He’d missed a few days, not being a regular viewer and wasn’t sure what was going on. He could discuss it on the Internet, but he had better things to do with his time.
Carolyn was onscreen, packing a suitcase and, although you could hear Adam’s protests, Carolyn was adamant. “This hasn’t worked out the way I’d planned”, she was saying, “you working and writing and hardly seeing me. I hoped I’d be in on it more.”
Cory vaguely remembered watching this when it happened, which must have been about a year ago. They must be showing repeats or something.
“Just give it time, Carolyn”, Adam was protesting. “In six months, the stuff I’m writing will make me a star.” Carolyn paused.
“You already are”, she said, and left. Which was pretty much her out of the show. Cory had hated that line though, breaking the fourth wall and all that. Carolyn was one of the few characters who knew what was happening- that sort of thing made it harder to suspend disbelief. Cory went to grab a beer from the fridge.
Freaky shit was par for the course for a programme set in someone’s mind, yet when Cory came back and there was Adam looking directly at the camera (the mirror, Cory supposed) and announcing “I know you’re watching me”, it still gave Cory the creeps.
“You’ve been watching me for the last eighteen months and I never knew about it”, continued Adam. Cory sat forward, interested. Adam was definitely in some crappy hotel bathroom, or a garage toilet or something. He was stripped to the waist, maybe modesty had stopped him going further despite everything that the ten people who watched this (or however many it was, Cory didn’t know but he knew that none of his friends watched) had already seen him do.
“You, the audience, have had the chance to view my every waking moment, my every thought, my dreams. Well, here’s one more thing that you can watch, that you can talk about on the Net or whatever.”
He was holding a razor blade, and Cory must have blinked or something because all of a sudden there was blood all down his arm. Horrified, Cory carried on watching, and on the flight between Arizona and Chicago Dr Gregory’s mobile started ringing, as Adam Dark collapsed on the floor and the last image was the bare bulb in the bathroom and then darkness, nothing but darkness.
Cory racked his brain trying to think whether this was the first televised suicide and wondered what the station were going to do about it. Over in the section dedicated to The Mirrored Soul in the television station not too far away, the small team in charge of Adam’s televised exploits were wondering the same thing. One of them, an underpaid junior producer called Marcus Goldman, was already grabbing his coat and his car keys to drive down to Flagstaff, while two were arguing over whether to call an ambulance or check whether it was Adam imagining things again: the amount of times they’d fretted over whether they needed to call the police in to a murder, assault or theft perpetrated by Adam, only to find it was a flight of fancy, made them wary. But such things were only fleeting, whereas this had been a minute straight. The station’s switchboard was lighting up, which happened so rarely on this channel that the staff barely recognised it.
It was only after the Mirrored Soul’s production team had picked up the phone and made panicked calls to the psychologists who were officially running the experiment and only after Cody had noticed that the absence of a light at the end of the tunnel which either refuted God’s existence or threw doubts on Adam’s death, only after that did The Mirrored Soul return to air with Adam’s smiling face, holding up his arms to reveal no traces of the suicide that the viewers had apparently just witnessed.
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste, isn’t it? Especially on an audience so small?”
Viewers, producers and psychologists looked on with interest. An Adam Dark that knew of his condition meant that the show would never be the same again.
END OF CHAPTER ONE!
Chapter Two begins tomorrow.
(Channel IV- Afternoon Repeats)
From the Mirrored Soul television station’s Internet forum:
Mandingo (7.30am)
So, anyone still watching? I can’t work out where the ‘darkness’ stuff is meant to be going. It’s like some sort of Twin Peaks flashback. Also, I think Adam found out last night, or just went crazy.
Elmyra (8.45am)
Missed it last night- Adam found out?! What happened?
StevieP (9.50am)
The show’s been downhill since Carolyn left, IMHO.
Dawn3658736 (10.45am)
That looked like Adam finding out to me.
Mandingo (2.00pm)
Update: Adam definitely found out last night. He’s talking to some doctor-type now who I think is the psychologist who started the whole thing. It’s been a slow few weeks, but I think Adam going back to Arizona has been a good move for the show so far.
Cory flicked through channels idly, looking for something to kill the time before he was due to meet friends at Joe’s. I wonder whether they’ve cancelled that crazy Mirrored Soul shit yet, he mused, turning onto 740. He’d become quite a fan of the late night showings, which was really the best way to watch: drunk and/or stoned, watching the best parts of someone’s imagination.
The only problem was, there were too many adverts.
Cory had watched the live bits every so often, watching Adam work late or bash away at drums which he’d never get better at while imagining himself as Lars Ulrich or something, or just doing what Cory was doing, sitting on his couch watching TV for an hour or so. Watching Baywatch re-runs with Adam had been a hoot and a holler. In some ways, Cory figured Adam was on his wavelength. Except more motivated. And crazy, obviously. He’d missed a few days, not being a regular viewer and wasn’t sure what was going on. He could discuss it on the Internet, but he had better things to do with his time.
Carolyn was onscreen, packing a suitcase and, although you could hear Adam’s protests, Carolyn was adamant. “This hasn’t worked out the way I’d planned”, she was saying, “you working and writing and hardly seeing me. I hoped I’d be in on it more.”
Cory vaguely remembered watching this when it happened, which must have been about a year ago. They must be showing repeats or something.
“Just give it time, Carolyn”, Adam was protesting. “In six months, the stuff I’m writing will make me a star.” Carolyn paused.
“You already are”, she said, and left. Which was pretty much her out of the show. Cory had hated that line though, breaking the fourth wall and all that. Carolyn was one of the few characters who knew what was happening- that sort of thing made it harder to suspend disbelief. Cory went to grab a beer from the fridge.
Freaky shit was par for the course for a programme set in someone’s mind, yet when Cory came back and there was Adam looking directly at the camera (the mirror, Cory supposed) and announcing “I know you’re watching me”, it still gave Cory the creeps.
“You’ve been watching me for the last eighteen months and I never knew about it”, continued Adam. Cory sat forward, interested. Adam was definitely in some crappy hotel bathroom, or a garage toilet or something. He was stripped to the waist, maybe modesty had stopped him going further despite everything that the ten people who watched this (or however many it was, Cory didn’t know but he knew that none of his friends watched) had already seen him do.
“You, the audience, have had the chance to view my every waking moment, my every thought, my dreams. Well, here’s one more thing that you can watch, that you can talk about on the Net or whatever.”
He was holding a razor blade, and Cory must have blinked or something because all of a sudden there was blood all down his arm. Horrified, Cory carried on watching, and on the flight between Arizona and Chicago Dr Gregory’s mobile started ringing, as Adam Dark collapsed on the floor and the last image was the bare bulb in the bathroom and then darkness, nothing but darkness.
Cory racked his brain trying to think whether this was the first televised suicide and wondered what the station were going to do about it. Over in the section dedicated to The Mirrored Soul in the television station not too far away, the small team in charge of Adam’s televised exploits were wondering the same thing. One of them, an underpaid junior producer called Marcus Goldman, was already grabbing his coat and his car keys to drive down to Flagstaff, while two were arguing over whether to call an ambulance or check whether it was Adam imagining things again: the amount of times they’d fretted over whether they needed to call the police in to a murder, assault or theft perpetrated by Adam, only to find it was a flight of fancy, made them wary. But such things were only fleeting, whereas this had been a minute straight. The station’s switchboard was lighting up, which happened so rarely on this channel that the staff barely recognised it.
It was only after the Mirrored Soul’s production team had picked up the phone and made panicked calls to the psychologists who were officially running the experiment and only after Cody had noticed that the absence of a light at the end of the tunnel which either refuted God’s existence or threw doubts on Adam’s death, only after that did The Mirrored Soul return to air with Adam’s smiling face, holding up his arms to reveal no traces of the suicide that the viewers had apparently just witnessed.
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste, isn’t it? Especially on an audience so small?”
Viewers, producers and psychologists looked on with interest. An Adam Dark that knew of his condition meant that the show would never be the same again.
END OF CHAPTER ONE!
Chapter Two begins tomorrow.