Perfection

Creator: abldr

☀*this was taken from reddit credit goes to the original author*

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So like every other edgy, bored teenager during the peak years of Internet freedom, I got myself into some stuff I had no business poking around in. People talk about the glory days, when Internet anonymity was real and you could do all kinds of illegal things, but those people are full of shit. Anonymity, online or otherwise, is a fucking joke. I learned that the hard way the summer I graduated from high school.

I was held back in the third grade after a really serious illness kept me hospitalized for almost six months, so my friends graduated the year before me. My senior year sucked, I was alone and it was too late to make new friends, so I skipped a lot of classes and spent most of my time online playing games and talking to my friends through AIM. It was actually a really dark period of my life that I try not to think about too much, and because I haven't ever tried to repeat my deep web exploration I've forgotten a lot of the stuff I did. I do remember, though, that it was my friend Brian who got me into deep web exploration.

We were all obsessed with 4chan, /b/ specifically, and an anon had taught him how to use Tor safely. He'd been mentioning it for a while and I got curious. I asked him about it and he made it sound like a utopia for people like us, who were tech savvy and, well, nerdy. You could find anything, he said. Any porn you could imagine was yours for the viewing. There were sites offering drugs, which you could purchase and have delivered anywhere in the world. He'd been a part of a few raids too, and I admit it all sounded like a lot of fun. So I downloaded Tor and he taught me how to access the hidden Wiki and some other neat sites. It ended up taking over my life. It was like being a kid in a candy store. Suddenly I had access to unlimited movies, games, porn, information of any kind. I stayed away from the really nasty sites, like Violent Desires and anything that had even the slightest hint of containing child porn. Of course, it's impossible to avoid that kind of thing down there, and I saw a fair share. If I'm being honest, it never bothered me much. Neither did all of the very graphic gore. I'm not ill-adjusted or anything, but I've never liked kids much and I'd long since been desensitized by gore. I made it a point to report what I could and move on but it never stuck with me.

After the school year ended I had three months to pass before going off to college, and I basically became a shut-in. I spent almost all my time hopping from site to site, seeing what was down there. Most of it was just back-doors to existing sites, but it was still fun to fuck around with things and be a general asshole. I still talked to my friends but they'd moved on to WoW and Brian in particular spent less time on the deep web than I did. However, one evening he messaged me and told me he'd found a way to view sites based on location. I have no idea how he did this and if he told me I quickly forgot. I assume it was some kind of script, but maybe that's not right. Either way, he showed me how to use it and I started poking around sites that were registered in my state. Most weren't anywhere close to me, so I was just opening tabs, browsing quickly, and moving on. Eventually I came across a site that was registered to someone about two hours from me and I opened the page.

Whoever had created the site didn't know much about design. The layout was wonky and incredibly ugly, and it took me a while to figure out how to navigate around. The links were the same color as the background, which was just a black screen with the words '#1 Devotee' repeating over and over, and highlighting had been disabled, so I had to tab to find any of the links. One took me to a chat that was very active, with people posting every couple of seconds. The usernames were all generic male names, like Brad or Tim, and they were all talking about someone they called 'Perfection.' It was really bizarre. I read the chat for a while, and literally all anyone talked about was how amazing Perfection was and how they admired everything he did. I wondered if I'd come across some kind of weird community that idolized a celebrity. It made me laugh a little, so I kept poking around while keeping the chat open in a separate window.

One link led to a bunch of sound clips that were about thirty seconds in length. After listening to a few, I realized they were all just random sounds. A car door shutting. A toilet flushing. The sound of a man clearing his throat. Typing. One was of terrible quality but I could make out a baby fussing. Holy shit, these people were really dedicated. I imagined one of the members creeping up to the house of whoever it was they were obsessed with and recording any sound they could and bringing it back to the community like a treasure. I tried to figure out who 'Perfection' was but it was strange, his real name was never mentioned anywhere I looked. Another link took me to some kind of digital archive that contained file downloads. Warily, I clicked on one and downloaded it. It opened up a document that was almost 500 pages long, and seemed to be some kind of novel about growing up with Perfection. I only scanned it, but the general gist seemed to be that Perfection and the narrator were obsessed with each other. It read like any awful fan fiction. I closed it and downloaded another file. This one contained what looked like hand-drawn blueprints for a house, with the rooms labeled things like 'our studio' and 'second kitchen for quarantined food'. The latter struck me because I'm a Celiac, and I know all about quarantining food. Whoever it was, they had some kind of allergy too. Other documents contained inventories of strange items, like Q-Tips (clean and dirty), fruit rinds, cups, bits of fabric, and used tissues. I was starting to get really skeeved out. Whoever these people were, they took their obsession a little too seriously for my taste. There was even a forum dedicated to Perfection, which had thousands of threads and even more replies, all having to do with this person. It was overwhelming, in a way.

As I opened another link, which led me to a gallery of photos, I checked the chat and found, to my surprise, that it had stopped completely. No new messages had been posted in at least five minutes, and I felt a pang of paranoia. Did they know I was here? Would they be angry? I typed a quick 'hello! just browsing don't mind me' in the chat box and went back to the gallery. A little ding signaled a reply but I ignored it and waited for the first image to load.

It was a very grainy shot of a woman with a baby. They were exiting a hospital, the woman in a wheelchair. She looked down into the baby's face as the nurse pushed her toward the curb. The woman was familiar but I couldn't place her, and the photo was of such poor quality that it was impossible to make out any defining features. The next photo showed the same woman and child playing in their living room. The baby was on its back, reaching up toward a hanging toy. Every photo I opened was of the woman and baby, but I noticed that as the series went on the baby began to age, and the woman was featured less and less. And some of the photos were incredibly strange. Some were zoomed in on items the child was holding, almost to the point of being completely out of focus. Others were of footprints, or broken branches. One was of a used potty chair, almost like the one I'd had as a kid, that had been taken outside onto the lawn. Whoever was taking the photo was holding a piece of stool in their hand. This is when I started to really get unnerved. Clearly the community that ran this site was obsessed to the point of madness about this person, Perfection, and suddenly I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. I closed the window and the chat pinged again. This time I checked it.

*Are you proud of this world?*

The message was from a user named Steve. I frowned and typed back.

*what?*

*You must be so proud. What do you think?*

I had no idea what to say. I hesitated. They typed another message.

*It's okay, don't be shy. My house is your house. Look around!*

*it's something. you guys are really obsessed with this guy.*

There was a brief pause.

*who is he anyway?*

Another user replied this time, someone named Bob.

*He is Perfection. He is God. I live my life to serve him so that one day he may grace me with his approval. This world is far too filthy for him. I must continue to create our utopia.*

These people were fucking crazy. Clearly I'd stumbled on some kind of community of super-fans and I felt a little angry.

*how do you know he even wants you guys to do this? this is a pretty huge invasion of privacy*

Someone else replied, Terry.

*We are in love. Those who keep us apart will be destroyed.*

I typed faster.

*he doesnt even know who any of you are you fucking idiots. get a grip. the whole self-insert thing is cringey enough but this is all so fucking over the top*

Steve replied again.

*What have I done to upset you?*

*nothing, i just think its fucking weird that a bunch of random people have been apparently spying on someone and stealing their photos and stuff*

*There is only room for the two of us.*

The message caught me off guard but before I could reply, every user I'd been talking to replied simultaneously.

*Are you proud of me?*

I felt a weird wiggling in my gut. Something was wrong.

*Does this house suit your needs, Perfection?*

I started to type back but it was like someone struck the back of my head with a hammer. My heart was hammering as I re-opened the gallery of photos. The hospital photo was grainy but suddenly the woman came into focus and I made a choked sound of alarm. I scrolled to the bottom of the gallery and opened the newest photo, which had been posted only an hour before. It was of a closed door in a hallway, light seeping under the door and illuminating the walls just enough to see my framed Batman poster and the distinctive paint smear above the doorknob, where I'd brushed a wet paint roller by mistake a year before. I frantically pored over the item catalogue and found the listing for the red sweatshirt I'd lost as a toddler. I found the stuffed toys I'd thrown out or donated over the years. The condoms I'd flushed down the toilet in the ninth grade. Twenty pounds of feces, taken from our septic tank, and contained in a large plastic drum. I found my eight-grade report card and the Valentine I'd thrown in the gutter that same year out of crippling anxiety.

The chat pinged again.

*I love you more than you will ever know. You are my Perfection.*

I sat numbly as messages began spamming the chat, all from different users.

*I love you.*

*I love you.*

*You are God.*

*I'll never leave you.*

*Perfection*

*Perfection*

*love you*

*my lord and savior*

*never leave you*

I ripped the power cord out of the wall and flew out of my chair. I closed every curtain in the house and locked every door. I opened every cupboard and closet and looked under every piece of furniture until I was sure I was alone, and then I curled up under a blanket in the farthest, darkest corner of my closet and went to sleep out of some kind of shock response. When I woke up I took my computer apart and buried it in the woods behind my house. I told my parents that it had suffered a fatal short circuit and had caught fire. They bought me a new laptop but I could only bring myself to use it when the internet was disabled.

I never found out who Devotee was. I've developed agoraphobia, and I rarely leave my apartment. It's been almost five years but I still take my trash to the dump and have it incinerated. When I do go out in public I wear large hats and sunglasses. I do everything I can to blend in and stay under the radar. My computer was unearthed and taken from its grave but I am not sure when. I hope I never find out.

I still panic whenever things around the house go missing.