“ominous cloud” by joint creativity. (this article contains spoilers for “Search Party,”)
Four investigations:
Investigation requires impersonation. It’s a murder of sorts. The costume puts the body on, and the name takes a person.
Thank God for imposter syndrome; it’s the only thing that saves us from losing ourselves completely. We need to hold onto that sense of imposture, because when we let it go, and the impersonation becomes the person, then very bad things happen.
Investigation seeks out fragments. It goes through garbage and unfurls scrunched up paper. It reads bank statements and medication warnings and food labels and old birthday cards and pages from newspapers with the top half of page 43 cut out — what was at the top of page 43? It sniffs at tissues. It pulls them open to see if there’s blood or semen inside.
Investigation seeks out blanks and fills them in.
I am playing the part of detective now.
I am going through my own garbage to find out which self-of-mine murdered my other selves. There are four suspects: Chris, a suburban drudge who hired me; Christopher, who is cold and stylish and mysterious and flirts with me; Christof, who saw something terrifying and went insane. And, I admit it, there’s me.
Here’s why I’m now including myself as a suspect.
Earlier tonight — at 11pm, I found, hidden inside the dust jacket of a hardcover book (“Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way,”) a second, smaller book: Christof’s diary. It chronicles a descent into insanity. The last few pages aren’t lexical at all — they’re just sketches and symbols. The content of the diary did not give me any clues.
But it was what I did as I read through Christof’s diary that gave me the proof I was looking for. While I was reading it, I came over all hot, dissociated, itchy, strange — I found myself undressing and sitting crosslegged, reading Christof’s diary on the floor. As I finished each page, I instinctively tore it out and scrunched it up. I felt so strangely satisfied, so prickly — it’s hard to explain.
Now that I’ve torn up the whole diary, I feel sweaty, feverish. I’m surrounded by pieces of paper. I’ve just done more than I’ve said. Don’t send for help.
Fortunately I have enough presence of mind to dictate this article into my smartphone and hit publish. This keeps the evidence safe. This is where you come in. You’re the witness — you have to be. I’m sorry for roping you into this. I can’t trust myself anymore. I need you to connect the dots. I think this is part of something bigger. Something much bigger.
When the detective comes to find you, I want you to make sure they believe that you didn’t write this article. I wrote this article, you’re just the reader — honest. If the detective doesn’t believe you, do what you have to do. The detective must believe you. You would remember if you had written this.
Don’t let them leav-
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