As this is an author’s analysis, THERE WILL BE ***SPOILERS***OF THE STORY OF COURSE, so if you are reading this BEFORE you read the actual short story, I have two things to say:
1. Please don’t and
2. This is a post strictly to discuss characters, the ending, and my crazy mind that created this story, so all will be revealed and you will know everything about it before you even had the chance to read it. So, with that being said, let’s begin!
>> SIDE NOTE <<
I've created a Spotify playlist inspired by this story and the characters! So if you'd like, give it a listen by clicking directly on these words, and you'll be taken straight to the playlist on Spotify.
This one is like a ridiculous, horrible dream on crack. That's it. That’s the best description.
I was not on crack, I assure you, but dang if it doesn't sound like it. For those that see a connection between this story and the movie "Us"... NO. I didn't borrow the idea. I actually had this written over a year ago when I was still planning on applying to graduate English programs. It was going to be my story application into the creative writing program, however, it surpassed 10 pages (this thing is a whopping 40 on Microsoft Word), and I realized just how expensive a master's degree is when the only real job existing for a master's in English is a job as a professor (which is what my dream job was but then I realized that it is nearly impossible to get tenured and also it is nearly impossible to work at a college without a PhD and also all the positions are filled until one of the professors already employed drops because there is no retirement limit, yada yada yada). So, off went Kristen to Indeed and to other ideas for jobs and thus fell the PhD dreams down the toilet. If higher education was not so much damn money, then sure, but with my racked up debt from TTU, there was no way unfortunately, but it's okay because now I am now on a different path in my life that holds a lot of happy promises! Yay!
Alright, so this is a story analysis, not a "Kristen's failed dreams" analysis, SO here we go!!
"Curiosity Killed the Copied Cats" as I was saying, is not fashioned after "Us." I actually got inspiration from looking in my mirror one day. Yeah, not very exciting origins, as none of my stories really have at their core (it's the love and language that weaves the magic into them). By the time "Us" was announced and came out, my story had been shipped off to different magazines for consideration, so, no... I didn't copy. I quite pride myself on not borrowing ideas from anywhere. I feel that my horror is pretty stand alone on the crazy scale, which this story surely is crazy.
I just want to start off now by saying that I adore my character, Ethan. He is a nut job and I love him for it. As I kept writing this piece, I realized that this story could actually be a short horror novella if I wrote some more meat to it. There was enough to Ethan's character that allowed for one. There is still enough up in my brain as far as backstories and plot go with this idea that could translate into a longer piece, but for now, he only exists in this short story.
Ethan is a mad man who is also brilliant. At least, that is what I wanted to convey. When I was imagining Ethan’s voice, I thought of Tiny Tim’s voice (“Tip-Toe Thru' The Tulips” and all that... you know, the guy that also sings that song that plays in the background as Spongebob is cooking endless Krabby Patties for the Anchovies in episode 1? Yeah, his voice). I wanted Ethan’s voice to be high and unduly cheerful with a hint of creep factor. I mean, why else would Insidious choose one of Tiny Tim’s songs to play in the movie? Because his voice is too happy, and you get a bit of an unnerving feeling when you hear him. That’s what I wanted for Ethan. So, anytime you read Ethan’s dialogue, imagine it in Tiny Tim’s voice.
I really loved how I crafted Ethan’s dialogue, even though it’s quite ridiculous and confusing. It was the most fun part about writing this story. I got to ramble like a mad person with no filter! Ethan talks almost like a broken record and speaks in high excited volumes quickly and frantically. It's like his mind has a hard time keeping up with his mouth. That’s because of the many years that he has been doing this. It has created this creature of madness, having seen his other selves from other dimensions and having eaten them like an endless buffet. He fully understands the conventions of the universe as far as wormholes and parallel universes go, and he should... he's traveled to a lot of them to eat his counterparts.
When I wrote this story, I was real hopped up on Stephen Hawking at the time. I had just read about half of his book, A Brief History of Time (it’s anything but brief), by the time I started writing this, so I knew a bunch of fancy words like "quintessence" and “quantum theory", although I still don't think I have a full grasp on any of it, which I shouldn't as I am not a physics genius and nowhere near claim to be one... I just like quantum physics a lot (Rick and Morty fan -- but I liked physics before it was cool to like it and before Rick and Morty took over my binge-watching Hulu sessions).
I sometimes think that I should have gotten a degree in physics, because I always wanted to work with NASA studying cosmological physics, however, I am a failure when it comes to anything math related. Science? Sure. Ask me to tell you about mushroom classifications that I still somehow remember from college biology? Sure. Tell you about the universe expanding and parallel universes and how if we enter a wormhole we look like a corkscrew string of spaghetti? Sure. Tell you what 24 x 12 is? What the hell does that mean?
I DON'T DO MATH, thus I didn't get a degree in physics... I got it in English --- the farthest I could get from math.
So anyway, I knew enough about quantum physics to flourish my story with it and to make Ethan sound like a smart but crazy loon. Thank you, Stephen Hawking, and for including illustrations in the book for us dumb morons so that we could semi-understand your mind.
Essentially, and I mean this in the "Idiot’s Guide for Physics" version because that’s the only version I know, Quintessence is a hypothetical form of dark energy, more precisely an expansive field, postulated as an explanation of the observation of an accelerating rate of expansion of the universe.
In basic terms: the universe is expanding.
I think the example from Hawking was the image of a balloon. You draw little circles on a deflated balloon with black marker to represent the planets and things in the universe. When you blow up the balloon, those black marks all start expanding and moving father out from one another as the balloon gets bigger. That is kind of what quintessence is.
Although, I hope we don’t all eventually pop when the balloon gets too big, but eh.
In the story, I use quintessence as a means to explain how all the different parallel universes exist. While we can’t literally see these planes, as they would have to be traveled to through tiny tiny tiny tiny wormholes, the big black nothingness of space isn't actually nothingness... its where all these tiny wormholes exist. At least, that’s my take for the story. Quintessence and wormholes are really cool things to research, if you’re interested!
So, parallel universes and wormhole travel.
We all know what these things are. The idea is that we have thousands of thousands of other selves out floating in the universe living better or worse lives than us because of the choices we did or didn't make here. Wormholes are how you get around space in the matter of a second. Well, as I explained above, that's at least how I use these things in my story.
So, for the plot of the story, essentially what is going on here is that Nate's wife was taken by Ethan years back so that Ethan could have his own version of his wife, since his Kathy died from a car accident that he survived (all of this is unbeknown to Nate). So, Ethan steals Kathy from Nate and pulls her back into the mirror with him to his own dimension, but Kathy can't last in another dimension that is not her own, so she withers away and dies, thus leaving Nate without his wife thinking that she went missing and Ethan without another wife, spurring him further and further to hunt down more versions of himself so that he can eat them and slip into their place. BUT, every time he does this, Kathy soon gets cancer or dies from an accident, so, essentially, Ethan is cursed to scour the universe for other selves to take their place until the Kathy dies and he has to move on again only to repeat the process for forever (the guy is this immortal monster now by traveling against time and reality through wormholes and eating himself). After all, he technically has forever to do so as there are thousands and thousands of speculated parallel universes.
When you think about it, isn’t it romantic in an evil, horrible, gross, demented way? Ethan loves Kathy so much that he is willing to become this ugly "thing" and kill others just to spend a few days with her until she dies. He misses her so much that he literally travels time and space to be with her. Except, I’m pretty sure now that the Kathys whom Ethan meets in his current state would flee in horror at the sight of him, but then he would probably just shrug his shoulders and leave to go find another copy of himself to eat. For Ethan, it’s more so about feeding for sustenance now than anything else, and also the fact that he’s pretty much cursed and reduced to spend his life traveling since he doesn’t truly exist as a human being in the realities of the universe.
Ethan comes upon Nate again in the story ---- this is the second encounter he has had with Nate (unbeknown to Nate). Ethan first visited to take Nate’s Kathy. A few years went by, and now he has returned unknowingly to the same timeframe and dimension: Nate’s.
Ethan has forgotten what he did here, has forgotten who Nate is.
I wonder why that is?? Why would Ethan feel a connection and pull to Nate’s timeframe and dimension so much? Why he is so intrigued with Nate specifically, and why has he been playing with him for so long instead of just eating him? As Ethan says, “there is a reason, oh, there is a reason!”
DUN DUN DUN! BIG TWIST AND SPOILER..........
Ethan is Nate and Nate is Ethan.
Yes, they're essentially the same person, because they're each other’s copies, BUT they are LITERALLY the exact same person. From the same dimension. Of the same creation.
Ethan is Nate in the future (a never-ending time loop is taking place), and so that is how he is able to visit himself again, why he doesn’t remember himself and how he started, why Nate’s Kathy went missing (he basically stole his own wife from himself), why they have the same mannerisms, etc. If you read back through with this knowledge, you can pick up more clues.
So, we have time loops, quintessence, wormhole theories, quantum theory, parallel universes, doppelgänger folklore, and spirit folklore speculations... are you keeping count?
With the spirit folklore, I made it in my story that what we think are ghosts are actually our other selves existing on a different plane of existence. I feel that Ethan explained that well, so I won’t get into it.
The "Ethan is Nate and Nate is Ethan" idea comes full force at the very end, but, as I said before, it is also hinted at throughout the story in certain remarks that Ethan makes and by their shared mannerisms of "touching their hair at the same time" and also that little bit with the teeth flying out of Ethan's sleeves in context with Nate's image in the mirror losing his teeth (pretty gory, ew, sorry).
So, the end.
We end with Nate alone in his empty house after he has destroyed the mirror that Ethan walked through and as the mirror in the bathroom remains covered up with a sheet. Nate is pretty much a husk of a person at this point, I mean the guy just fought off his doppelgänger who was soaked in black oil, had red eyes, and had teeth flying out of his sleeves, so he deserves to be a husk.
It’s been maybe half a year at this point when Nate is sitting in the living room. He’s done nothing really except stew on Kathy and the thought of what Ethan had done for so long. Essentially, he is slipping into that monster-like way of thinking. By “killing” Ethan (notice the “”), Nate has taken on the role of Ethan... to become him and balance out the universe.
Ethan can’t truly be killed. As this is a time loop, Nate is Ethan and Ethan is Nate... he’d have to kill himself to stop the inevitable from happening, which he doesn’t. We see at the end that Nate feels a pull of hunger for his other selves, that he is sorely missing his wife, and that the mirror in the bathroom calls to him. He knows how to get through the mirrors because of Ethan, and as he sees his reflection in the mirror, he realizes that the veil has dropped again, and now he is the predator hunting down this innocent version of Nate/Ethan to eat him and take his place to have Kathy back.
So, the big question... did any of this make sense???? I hope so, because even though all of this came from my mind, it still confuses the hell out of me when I think about it.
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