A picture’s worth a thousand words.
When I was a kid, my little idyllic family home had a million pictures hanging from the walls. They ranged from all manner of family, to friends, to even just ones my parents thought looked cool. Each one was a looking glass into the image burned on it.
There was the one from my parents wedding day, smiles plastered on everyone’s faces. True joy seemed to abound on that day, but that was to me, someone who wasn’t there. To anyone who was, they remembered the rising humidity, the glares on my grandparents’ faces, and the way the photographer had to precisely angle every click to hide a growing belly.
Because a photograph is never meant to capture the true nature of what transpired, instead it’s designed to create a false reality. Young women take a hundred snaps to capture the perfect shot to post online, creating a prison of falsehood that they’re forced to live in every day. The order they wish to portray betrays the chaos that we all live in.
A photograph is not alive, is it? No, it’s the memory that we’ve fabricated about a very real time and place. We wash away the dirt under our fingernails, and replace it with a fake smile and Photoshop. But it’s not real, it never was. We all smile and nod at the illusion, because no one wants to see their own illusions be dashed.
It’s fragile, only kept up by the combined efforts of all who know better. It’s a blindfold that we can see through, yet one that we pretend is pitch black nonetheless.
Crowley. Doubt. You boys like to take a lot of pictures don’t you?
Wherever that hellhole you crawled out of is, I bet its plastered with them.
To the idle observer, they’d see a smiling goofball holding a crowbar like his child. They’d see a masked man locked in a passionate embrace with a red haired knockout. Each one of them crafted to show how Knock Knock were just a pair of fun-loving misunderstood chaps.
But to the people who were there?
They remember the swing of that crowbar upon their loved one. The blood and viscera splattering everywhere.
They remember the black tendrils crawling up their spine. They remember the horror beneath that mask.
You’ve created a false reality, boys, one where you guys are only trying to live your best life. And the only people that can even begin to see through it are the ones who’ve suffered at your hand.
I know in your minds you’ve cleaned up what you did, but I remember.
I remember Destiny’s blood staining the mat, the screams of her husband and child echoing.
I remember Stephanie Rose’s fearful screams as Doubt ripped away any remaining innocence in her.
I see through the blindfold.
Neville sees through it.
That’s why we’re coming for you, to take those photographs you’ve taken and show the other side of them.
The blood-soaked depravity they were developed in.
We go into chaos to bring order.
For Stephanie.
For Destiny.
For ourselves.
Ordo ab Chao.