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conundrumdumdum · 7 years

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Loved Too Well

(Warning: this story contains themes that may be unsettling to some)

The jingle of bells blended into the light chatter of the small bakery as I pushed the front door open. Within the first few steps, I was enveloped with warmth, the interlaced smell of coffee and baked goods. Windows spanned the front of the store and one of the sides, allowing plenty of light to illuminate the wafting steam from cups and the smiles of people enjoying their day. This bakery was in the heart of a college campus in the city, a crossroads between corporate folk and students. Despite the wintry urban landscape that painted the windows with monotone colors, the interior of the restaurant was a warm, welcoming brown. Along the windows, booths with high wooden backings created private enclosures; a commonplace where young couples shyly interlaced their fingers and sheepishly smiled at each other. I walked between several rows of couples and people typing on laptops before I reached the end of the booths.

Peering around the final wooden backing in the row, I found a man hunched over a newspaper. His black hair was peppered with gray strands, matted against his head and encrusted with a scattered layer of dandruff. From the side of his face, I could see that his beard also had the same speckled color as his hair. And although unshaven, his cheeks were hollowed.

“Oscar?”

His bowed head rose up, and I was welcomed with a weak smile and upturned eyebrows that framed a pair of swollen eyes. I took the seat across from him and he waved the waitress over. After pouring each of us a cup of fresh coffee, Oscar looked at me again with a moderately warmer smile than before. I was finally able to get a good look at him: his green eyes were rimmed with webbings of red veins, which fed into the blushed skin around his eyes. The rest of his face was translucent in contrast, with a texture similar to dried flower petals. I smiled back and hastily took out my notepad and pen from my bag. I didn’t want to make this meeting any harder on him.

��Well, before we get started, tell me more about why you picked this location.”

“Desiree always wanted to come here every Friday after her classes. We talked about anything that came to mind. It was amazing – there was never a moment of silence between us.”

Glancing down at the mug in his hand, Oscar swirled his coffee around. “That was ten years ago. Her favorite’s the cold brew. I always tried to tell her that the cold brew here was just ice cubes and the black coffee they made the day before – this isn’t a real coffee shop. We debated that one for at least an hour.”

Oscar smiled, lifted the mug to his lips, and tilted his head back, sipping his coffee. “She always wanted to win our little debates.”

I glanced up to survey the shop: From the front, I could see the waitress making her way around the tables collecting empty mugs and plates. Her voice was chipper as she joked around with a group of people dressed in suits. She knowingly whisked past the tables with the young couples who were too busy staring at each other to notice anything around them. When I shifted my gaze back to Oscar, I found him staring at the wall behind me with empty eyes, mouth pressed together in a firm line.

“Do you want to talk more about Desiree and your relationship with her?”

Oscar’s eyes immediately dropped from the wall to his half-full mug. After a few seconds, the edges of his lips curved up slightly. I flinched as he suddenly broke his statue-like stance and stuck his hand into his coat pocket to rummage around. His hand extended outward and produced a lint-covered midnight blue velvet pouch. I took it into my palm and pulled at the gold thread that closed it. Inside I saw a glimmer of silver. I pinched the rim and lifted it out of the bag to examine it closer: it was a silver ring topped with a small diamond that sparkled in the sunlight softly falling through the coffee-shop window.

“After dating for two years, I realized I really loved her. Even though she moved to France for work, I knew she was the one. With everything that we went through and all of the memories we made, I knew I was going to propose to her…”

“What happened?” I asked.

“It just didn’t happen,” replied Oscar. He hastily grabbed the pouch from my hand and stuffed it back into his pocket.

“What didn’t happen? I mean, I don’t want to assume, but was that the time when she—“

“NO!” Oscar yelled. His sudden outburst made him withdraw into his seat and stare down at his cup again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off.”

“It’s okay,” I replied. “It’ll help both of us if you just tell me about it. No rush.”

Sighing, Oscar looked out the window. The snowflakes that collected on the glass slowly collapsed into water droplets. Watching the droplets collect together and trickle down, Oscar continued: “I was packing my bags and was going to board my flight to France that night. To make sure all of the pickup plans were confirmed, I tried calling her but it went straight to voicemail. Without thinking too much about it, I just assumed she was tired from work and wanted to sleep early so she could pick me up in the morning. So I rounded everything up and headed to O’Hare. As the plane was boarding, I checked my phone and I had 4 missed calls from Desiree. I put my phone on silent because of customs and border control – which took about an hour or so to get through.”

Playing around with his coffee cup, Oscar peered up at me and continued: “What went through my head was that she got sick in the middle of the night and wanted me to get a taxi to her place when I got there – which I would have been fine with, she has such a busy schedule. I wanted her to sleep early and not worry about me, so I called her immediately.

“There was no response. I got nervous then – I didn’t know what to think. I was so worried about her that after I landed I ran out of the airport without my check-in luggage. Thankfully she gave me her address earlier on when we were first planning the trip a few months beforehand. The taxi driver was able to get me to her place quickly.”

I scribbled a few notes on my notepad about his encounter. His fingers that were nervously rotating the coffee cup earlier had stopped their fidgeting. The skin around his nails was white and seemed rigid as his fingers flattened against the mug. When I looked up I saw the redness that emanated from his eyes had spread to his whole face. Little twitches from the side of his mouth made tremors in his unmoving face.

“Oscar? Are you alright?” I asked.

“I need a light.” Standing up, Oscar buttoned his coat and took out a lighter. “I’ll be back in a bit, feel free to order anything to eat. I’ve been keeping you for a while.”

His face was still stiff as he turned around and walked towards the entrance. The waitress that had been previously been juggling customers was handling the booth next to us. When Oscar passed her, she gave him a weak smile and made her way to our table. A jingle of bells signaled his exit.

As if on cue, she poured more coffee into our mugs. She smiled at me. “Are you his friend? I haven’t seen him meet with anyone here before. He’s always sitting here reading his newspaper – no phone, no laptop, not even a Nook or tablet. Who even reads newspapers anymore? I haven’t touched a newspaper except when I had to paint a vase for my art class!”

“I guess you can say I’m a friend. I’m trying to…figure out his situation.” Glancing to the front of the restaurant, I could see Oscar through the windows that lined the front of the store. Puffs of white smoke alternated with the condensation of breath that floated from his mouth. The snow slowly dotted his black peacoat. After checking that he’d be away for a long enough time, I turned back to her and asked, “Since you see him so often, what do you know about him?”

The initial warmth that radiated through her smile was replaced by a scraggly scowl. “Ever since I started working here, he’s been a regular and always seems to be so…distracted.” She stared at the newspaper on the table. “I didn’t bother to notice before, but it seems like he brings in that exact copy of that newspaper every time. He always stares at it, and never seems to read anything else in the newspaper except one page. That’s all I got – hopefully you can figure him out and get him the help he needs.”

She walked away with her coffee pot to the kitchen. Left to my own devices, I picked up the newspaper on the table. It seemed to be in all French, titled Le Parisien. From what I could guess, it was an issue from 2010 in either June or July – whatever “juillet” meant. Scanning the front page, there were two pictures: one of the World Cup and in the lower right-hand corner was a picture of a blonde-haired woman with a pretty face. Her smile was bright and blue eyes seemed to shimmer even through the faded print of the newspaper. She seemed like she was in her mid-20’s.

A jingle of bells shook my focus and I quickly pushed the newspaper back to its original location. Taking my fresh cup of coffee to my lips, I watched Oscar as he made his way back to our table. He seemed to be more relaxed than before.

“Sorry about that, where were we?” he asked, stripping off his coat.

“We were talking about when you flew to France,” I replied.

“Oh, right.” A few moments went by before Oscar continued: “I reached her apartment and knocked on her door. There wasn’t any response so I knocked harder and louder. I didn’t know why she called me and my thoughts went through every possibility: she could have been robbed, she accidentally hurt herself, or she tried to go somewhere during the night…I thought of everything!

“I knocked so hard that her next door neighbor came out and shushed me. She couldn’t understand what I was saying, but I guess she knew that I was worried about Desiree. She helped me call her landline…yet we didn’t hear any ringing from inside the house. I was close to calling the police at that point and was asking the neighbor for the local police number. Just as she finally understood what I was saying and was about to give me the number, the door to Desiree’s apartment opened…”

Oscar’s face crumpled into his hands and his voice became muffled and wobbly. “There was a man who answered the door, with no shirt on. I was so fucking mad. I wanted to kill him but I knew deep down it was too late…”

His words morphed into a stream of sobbing as he laid his hands and head on the table. Taking napkins from a dispenser on the table, I pushed them into one of his hands and proceeded to rub his arm from across the table.

“Take your time.”

Using the napkins, Oscar blew his nose and dried his eyes, which were now bright, glowing red. I let him take his time to recollect himself. Without prompting him with further questions, he looked me in the eye and said “when I finally was able to see her face to face, I didn’t see Desiree – it wasn’t her! Her eyes were emotionless, completely dead. She’s usually always so joyous and shines her bright smile to everyone. Before shutting the door on my face, she only told me one thing: ‘I thought you weren’t going to come.’”

Oscar filled his lungs with a deep breath before continuing: “I didn’t know what that meant. We had been planning for me to come visit her months prior. I bought the tickets so far in advance too! It’s not like it was going to be a surprise to her. She even told me she was excited to show me around the river and the Eiffel Tower! I don’t understand what happened between us. Was it because of the distance that she decided to fuck another man? What did I do wrong? We had a future. We had everything set out before us. I gave up so much in my life to be with her – I wanted a life with her. I was going to fucking propose to her. I laid down in front of her door and started begging and crying for her to talk to me…”

Waiting for Oscar to end his rant, I jotted down a few notes from time to time. He went on for a few more minutes talking about his confusion about the whole situation. It was only after he noticed that he been running in circles with his thoughts that he stopped.

“I’m sorry, I just…I can’t come to terms with it.”

“That’s okay, I won’t keep you for much longer to dwell on this. I have just one more thing to ask you about and we can go our separate ways.”

Looking up at me, Oscar silenced himself, lips still quivering.

“Can you tell me what you know about what happened to Desiree in 2010?” I asked.

I saw a brief cringe flash across his face with my question. With that, I expected another outburst of emotion, so I readied my pen.

“About a year after that day, I was finally able to take another set of vacation days off of work. So I visited back in France to try and reconcile our love. But all I remember from that period of time is the image that I wanted to push out of my mind the most...”

“And what was that?” I inquired.

“I…saw a chair knocked over beneath her. There were large piles of mess around her living room—it was so chaotic! She had tied a rope around—I don’t wanna talk about this in detail actually, if that’s okay. I can’t sleep at night because of this. I ended up shutting the door on her because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing…I didn’t know she was going to end up like that. I just had no clue…I fully believe it’s my fucking fault. I deserved it.”

The denseness of the silence that filled the space between us put pressure on my chest. I cleared my throat to relieve myself. “Thank you for sharing, Oscar. I know it isn’t easy to open up about this.”

“Thank you for listening to my story. I’m sorry I’m a mess.”

“It’s alright Oscar. I’ll be reviewing what you said today. Expect a call back later on this week for further instruction.”

After placing a few dollar bills on the table to pay for my coffee, I slipped my pen and notepad back in my bag. Standing up and swinging it over my shoulder, I looked at Oscar, who was staring blankly at the wall behind where I was sitting. Figuring he didn’t want to say anything more, I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Take care, Oscar.”

I proceeded to make my way to the entrance, unwillingly letting the last seconds of warmth absorb into me before I would make my way out into the Midwestern tundra. With the setting sun, the light that filtered through the windows stretched to the other end of the store. The booths were mostly empty except for a college student staring at the screen of his laptop. Everything was quiet, as if the silence that filled the end of our conversation followed me to the door.

Pushing open the front door resulted in the jingling of bells, accompanied by a blast of cold air that encouraged me to tighten my jacket closer to my body. A flurry of snow spun around me as I made my way around the side of the store. I walked along the windows that fed light into the bakery. Upon reaching the edge of the building, I gave one last curious glance into the store to check on Oscar. He was gone.

#short story #fiction #creative writing #story #writing

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sevralships · 7 years

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“Worlds Apart”

(So, the other day I watched ‘Blendin’s Game’. At one point, Dipper has the throwaway comment “No one should be alone on their birthday.” The line is made in reference to Soos, but Stan is standing right there when it’s spoken and BOOM just like that, my brain started cooking up some Stangst).

It’s been a few months since Ford was accidentally sucked into the portal. Ford tries to avoid being captured in a dimension far from home, while Stan closes up the new and flourishing Murder Hut. Angst, good grief, so much angst. SFW. 4,429 words.

Fic below cut! Enjoy!

“Thank you for exploring the mysteries of the Murder Hut!” Stan said jovially, as he ushered the last patrons out of the gift shop, “And thank you for buying our over-priced souvenirs! Don’t forget to tell your friends and remember, no refunds!” The couple chuckled as they got into their station wagon, as if he were joking about the no refund policy. Stan watched the car pull out, leaving tire treads in the torn up lawn. As the tail lights disappeared from view, he flipped the sign on the door so that the side that read CLOSED faced outward, resolutely turning the deadbolt.

Stanley turned around and appraised the gift shop. There was merchandise on the shelves that needed to be restocked or tidied, but apart from that he thought it had really come together. It almost looked at if the racks of punny tee shirts and shelves of tchotchkes were the use for which this room had always been intended. It had been some kind of storage room before, and alone he had hauled all of the mysterious sciencey boxes and crates to the lab below or to the junkyard. It wasn’t the first time Stan considered the irony that the weirdness he was peddling wasn’t half as strange as whatever dumb research had been going on here before.

He sighed heavily, and grabbed dad’s old fez off his head, placing it on the counter with some disdain. Stan glared at the symbol of the Holy Mackerel for a moment, absentmindedly running his hand through his hat-flattened hair. Whaddya think of my latest scam, pops? he asked in his head. Sure, he’d probably never become a millionaire at this gig, but people were forking over the dough like you wouldn’t believe. If he’d only known sooner what a natural he was at the sideshow business, he never would have wasted all that time on Stanco Enterprises.

So, yeah, he was making decent money, but it wasn’t like that would matter to dad at this point. Even if he could present the old man with millions, would that explain away the car crash in which he’d ‘died’? Or the reason no one had called him by the name ‘Stanley’ in months? Or why the real Stanford was nowhere to be found?

“The hell with you, old man…” Stan muttered dismissively, flicking the fez and watching it topple over.

Well, then, onwards and upwards, Ford thought bitterly to himself as he awkwardly clambered up the ladder of some sort of fire escape. The beings in this dimension had six limbs and as a result, their gait was quite different from that of a human, and the rungs were spaced impractically for a four-limbed biped such as himself. His twelve fingers had made him a freak in his own dimension, and they were no advantage to him here either.

He swiped stinging sweat out of his eyes with one of the aforementioned abnormal hands and kept climbing. He huffed and puffed as he went, cursing the abysmal heat of this dimension. He wished he could ditch his pack, the extra exertion of carrying it contributing to his unreasonably high internal body temperature, but he didn’t dare risk it. Everything he owned was on his back, and some of his belongings had been hard won. Most expendable were the outer layers of clothing he had discarded in an effort to survive the temperature of this world without heat stroke, but he didn’t even dare toss those. For all he knew, the next dimension he found himself in might very well be a frozen tundra, and he would be damned if he was felled by something as avoidable as hypothermia.

“There it is!” A voice behind him called, modulated strangely by his dimensional translator, “The interloper must not get away!”

Stanford cursed under his labored breath, forcing his burning limbs to move faster. Interloper? He didn’t know what he had done to get on these beings’ bad side, but they certainly didn’t sound happy with him. He racked his mind for some perceived infraction. The two chasing him now were the same that had given him food and shelter, and he had no idea what had precipitated their change of heart. What custom had he failed to follow? What offense had he committed? Nothing came to mind, and as he reached the rooftop, he hoped he was overlooking some innocent mistake. If not, there could only be one other explanation, he thought grimly, they struck a deal with someone who made my capture worth their while.

Stan’s grumbling stomach led him into the kitchen. He flipped the switch and the exposed bulb overhead came to life, bathing the room in light. The wood-burning stove was cold, useful as it had been in the winter and spring, it was unnecessary in the humid heat of Oregon summer. The climate reminded him of his childhood summers in New Jersey, but it clammier here in the western mountains. He opened the fridge, appreciating the cool air that gushed out at him as he looked over its meager contents. He grabbed a couple things before closing the door and setting about making himself a bologna sandwich just as he had the last three nights.

Stan’s evenings had been too full to devote too much time to making dinner. Instead, his nights were spent wishing he had paid attention to his science classes in high school instead of cheating off of Ford’s work all the time. He wouldn’t have been West Coast Tech material even if he had studied his tail off, but some of that nerd stuff might have come in handy now. Ford’s portal was undeniably well beyond anything the brothers might have learned in their bare minimum public school curriculum, but at least Stan wouldn’t have started right at square one.

It’s useless, he thought to himself, I’ll never be able to get him back. The bite of sandwich Stan was chewing tasted ashen in his mouth. No! He told himself stubbornly, his free hand curling into a determined fist, Stan Pines doesn’t give up that easy! He felt a pang of guilt for even considering it. Sure, it might be impossible, but he’d be damned if that meant he wasn’t going to give it his best shot.

Would Ford do the same for me? Stan couldn’t help wondering, not for the first time. He had never stopped considering Ford his brother and best friend, even as a decade of silence and estrangement passed between them. It didn’t matter. As far as he was concerned, it would take more than ten years to come between twins. Apparently, it would take more than the mysterious gulf of time and space between them too. But would Stanford feel the same way? When he’d first brought Stan here, it wasn’t as a brother. It wasn’t as a friend. It was as a pawn, a partner at best. If he didn’t want anything to do with me then, Stan thought, his shoulders slumping with blame, why would he want anything to do with me now?

Finally on the roof, Ford desperately ducked behind a large funnel-like structure to hide. It very seldom rained here, he had been informed, and it was crucial for the six-limbed humanoids here to gather as much of the rainwater as they possibly could. Grateful for the slightly less suffocating heat in the shade of the funnel, Ford dug into the satchel at his waist for the device that allowed him to move between dimensions at will. It was not of his making, but rather a very important acquisition he had made shortly after escaping the Nightmare Realm. Hopefully he’d get a chance some time soon to tinker with the thing and make it more practical. Had he designed such a device, he would surely have given the user the power to choose which dimension they would be transported to. Whatever lunatic was responsible for the design of this device had thought to include all sorts of features, a day-counter, an external thermometer, something like a compass, but hadn’t thought to give the user any way of controlling or predicting where they ended up. It was a gamble of which his pragmatic mind was not too fond.

Holding the device in his hands now, Ford was perturbed to find that the thermometer on it read a higher temperature than he’d ever seen on it. He wasn’t sure what unit it measured in, not celsius or fahrenheit or even kelvin, but he’d gotten a rough idea of the conversion rate from observation and the number he saw before him did nothing to ease his mind. Don’t be foolish, Stanford, he scolded himself, you did not need a thermometer reading to ascertain that this dimension is unbearably hot.

Ford’s unease doubled however, when his attempt to leave this god-forsaken dimension was unsuccessful. Instead of doing as he had told it to do, the device gave him some sort of error message. He was still deciphering the language the device had been programmed to display, but he knew enough to figure out that the device was too overheated to function. He muttered a curse to himself as he heard his pursuers reach the roof.

“Where did it go?” One of them asked, “Did it go down the other side?”

“I still smell it,” the other replied plainly, “It was complaining of the heat, maybe its weak body gave out.”

“You’d better hope not,” the first creature replied, “Not if you want One-Eye to keep up its end of the wager, at least.”

“Of course, I do,” came the reply, “You check that side of the roof, I’ll check around the rain-catcher.”

So it is as I feared, Ford thought grimly, blowing on the overheated device in his hand in a vain attempt to cool it down, He’s found me again. Who knows what he promised these fools in exchange for my capture. He could hear the four feet of one of his pursuers grow near, and slipped the device back into his satchel and clenched his fists. All my education and sometimes I swear those boxing lessons are the only thing on which I can rely.

With the hunger in his belly acceptably sated, Stanley set to work getting the gift shop ready for the following day. It had been a decent day for sales. He hadn’t realized the summer drew so many tourists to Roadkill County, Oregon but he was more than happy to clean out their wallets for them. He tried to quiet his worries as he set about replacing shirts on emptied hangers, filling in gaps on the shelves, adding more Murder Hut pens and bumper stickers to the trays by the cash register. It wasn’t working.

This place was strange. It was the key to the Murder Hut’s success. Despite the offbeat wackiness of the fake attractions he had been fabricating, it was the pervasive weirdness of this place that really sold it. None of the outlandish attractions he was showing were as bizarre as the real things he’d seen around Gravity Falls. It had seemed like a nondescript enough place when first he had arrived this past winter, but his first impression had been wrong. He could have sworn he’d seen small bearded men scurrying across the forest floor, had seen butterflies that upon closer inspection sure looked like some sort of pixies or fairies.

His nerdy brother had always been fascinated with oddities, had always been drawn to the strange creatures and monsters of science fiction, fantasy, and folklore. It made sense that Poindexter had chosen the freakiest town in the country to throw away his grant money. Some things about his house, however, didn’t seem to add up. His eyes traveled on their own to the rug beneath his feet. He’d moved it in here to give the gift shop a more welcoming, kitschy vibe, on account of the mysterious one-eyed triangle design. He’d only ever seen something like the design on dollar bills, but doubted Ford’s otherwise shabby, unfinished home drew any decor inspiration from money. It was a motif he had found all over the house, windows, paintings, glass prisms, everywhere he looked he seemed to find more triangles. He remembered Ford excelling at and enjoying trigonometry in high school, but even Ford didn’t love math enough to let it dictate how he decorated his home. Most of the triangles had eyes, never more than one, giving Stan the skin-crawly sense that he was being watched.

Well, I’ll just have to ask him, Stan decided, using his foot to smooth a wrinkle in the eerie rug, I’m sure he has some dumb explanation for the triangle obsession, and just as soon as I get him back, I’ll find out what it is.

Without hesitation, Ford threw a punch, his fist connecting loudly with the face of one of the beings that had been following him. His knuckles landed square against the creature’s nose and he felt the brittle exoskeleton fracture. An instant later he was running across the rooftop, towards the edge. It was only a few feet between this building and the next, and without allowing himself time to hesitate he leapt, easily clearing the gap. It was not a maneuver that would come easily to the scuttle-y movements of this dimensions inhabitants, and he wanted to put as much distance between them and himself as possible.

The sky was a strange wash of greens and purples, something he had come to recognize as an equivalent to the vibrant sunsets in dimension 46’/. He was outside the settlement where his two betrayers had taken him in, and he knew they wouldn’t dare pass into ‘the wilds’ as they called them, especially not past nightfall. The climate here was like that of a very extreme earthly desert; once the sun was below the horizon the temperature would drop drastically. Had Ford been planning to spend another night here, he would be worried for his life. Between the cold and the mysterious beasts that inhabited the wilds, it was not a place he would like to try and make camp. However, he only intended to stay long enough to get his overheated device back in working order so he could get the hell out of dodge.

Stanford did not slow down until he approached a strange cluster of plants, large as the maples and pines of Oregon but more like cacti in structure. The sandy ground would have been shaded here for some time already and with the sky growing dark the temperature would be plummeting soon. He sat down in the sand and placed the device on the ground in front of him, impatiently checking the temperature every few seconds.

He nearly fell over with shock at the sight of Stanley on the small glossy screen, only to realize with a start that it was his own reflection he was seeing. He touched the fingertips of one six-fingered hand to the scruffy facial hair on his chin and jaw, hiding the cleft chin that was easiest distinguishing mark to tell the twins apart. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, having been too worried he would lose or break the precious tool in the chase, and he looked scruffy and wild-eyed, with a few scuffs and scrapes on his face. It was startling to realize the resemblance when it was normally like night and day for the twins to tell themselves apart in photographs. He sighed, and realized to his own surprise that he was actually disappointed that he couldn’t see Stanley. This is all his fault, he reminded himself stubbornly, pushing away the thought before it could distract him too much, If only he’d listened to me, instead of letting his emotions run rampant yet again…

Finally the device in his hand was back to a functional temperature, and not a moment too soon as the cold air was making goosebumps rise on his sweaty skin. It’s no use thinking about Stanley, he told himself sternly, It doesn’t matter where the blame may lie, you’re never going to see him again. He’s not the one you should concern yourself with. The device began whirring in his hands, sending small surges of power through his fingers, feeling almost like static shocks. As the ground seemed to fall out from under him, and he was pulled into the tight vacuum of teleportation, Ford reminded himself obstinately, Bill Cipher. It’s not my reckless brother, but my deceitful Muse who is to blame.

Stan gingerly rolled the snack cart aside, revealing the door down to the lab in the basement. He reminded himself again to find something better to cover the door. What lay beneath the house was too important, and too dangerous, to risk some dumb tourist wandering down there by mistake. He moved down the dim stairs carefully, reluctantly even. He didn’t really want to go down there, he had to.

He emerged into the lab and once again the enormity of his mistakes weighed heavily on his shoulders. All of Ford’s machines, many of which he did not know the function of, hummed and beeped along, absolutely indifferent to their creator’s absence. He couldn’t have disagreed more. This place, more than anywhere else in Gravity Falls, more than anywhere else in the Murder Hut, was Ford. It was of Ford, and for Ford, and every panel, lever, monitor, and jarred specimen seemed to bear Ford’s name.

Guilt gnawed in Stanley’s gut. I never meant for any of this to happen, he thought, desperate for some kind of forgiveness. But what sort of forgiveness could he find? Not from his parents, who thought him dead. Not from Ford, who was worlds away if he was even still alive. Certainly not from himself. There was no way he could forgive himself until Ford was home safely, but it was hard to believe in the probability of that. Stan’s jaw tightened as he gazed through the glass at the mysterious portal, dormant and showing no signs of ever having come alive.

How many times had he replayed that fateful day in his head in the past few months? He was dying to make more sense of it, but it had just all happened so fast. Ford had seemed so different from the moment Stan had arrived and in hindsight, that should have made him behave more cautiously. Ma always said hindsight is 20/20, Stan thought absently, and tried to ignore the stab of loneliness for his mother he felt in his chest. Grow up, he scolded himself at one, what grown man wishes for his mommy?

Even if there were some way he could reach out to his parents, there was nothing they could do. This was his mistake, his fault, his crime. And only he could fix it.

The intense pressure lifted and Stanford felt solid ground beneath his feet. His stomach heaved but he managed to keep from vomiting. It was nighttime in this dimension as well and quite dark, although the sky was littered with an unbelievable amount of stars. He crouched down, touching the ground tentatively with one hand, and was relieved to find soft grass beneath him. He lied down immediately, eager to rest after yet another day of running and betrayal. An indignant twinge ran through him, Have I not had a lifetime’s worth of running and betrayal already?

Ford drew a deep breath in through his nose and slowly let it out his mouth. He stretched out on the soft ground and looked up at the sea of stars, telling himself that he would figure out where he was come morning. No sooner had he shut his eyes than Bill was there, applauding patronizingly, “BRAVO, FORDSY,” he said, his eye smiling smugly, “QUITE A SHOW YOU PUT ON TODAY!”

“This is a dream,” Ford said stubbornly, turning his back on Bill and trying to ignore the dim shadow of Glass Shard Beach around them.

Bill was instantly in front of him, his small black hands at his sides as if on his hips, “OF COURSE IT IS, THAT’S NO EXCUSE TO BE RUDE.”

“You have no authority to be giving me lessons in decorum,” Ford sneered. He jabbed his chest with a finger, “I escaped your goons.”

Bill shrugged concedingly, “PITY FOR THEM,” he said off-hand, “BREAKING A DEAL WITH ME TENDS TO BE FATAL.”

“Well, it would appear that isn’t always the case,” Ford said, determined not to let Bill bully him.

“OH, I DON’T MEAN YOU, FORDSY,” Bill corrected, practically batting his eyelashes, “YOU STILL HAVE A PART TO PLAY IN MY PLANS.”

“You’ll have to catch me first.” Ford snarled challengingly, only to garner a bone-chilling cackle from his ex-Muse.

“YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER, FORDSY,” Bill said, his voice almost genial.

“I’m not scared of you, Bill!” Ford insisted, shutting his eyes tight and willing the dream to end.

Bill laughed again, “C’MON, PAL, WE BOTH KNOW YOU’RE SMARTER THAN THAT!”

Ford opened his eyes, a fiery retort ready to leap from his tongue, only to find a serene starry sky before him instead of his traitorous foe. He hoped Bill was bluffing about killing the beings from that desert dimension that had taken him in and then betrayed him. Yes, they had sold him out to Bill, but who knew what he had promised them. In their world, even water was a commodity, no doubt Bill had presented a reward they couldn’t turn down. Bill cannot win, he told himself for the umpteenth time, pushing away his pity for the two new casualties, Destroying him may very well be impossible, but I’d sooner die trying than be a pawn to him ever again.

He sighed heavily and sat up, grabbing his inter-dimensional teleportation device, hoping to distract himself trying to learn something about this new dimension. He observed the temperature, the compass reading, other various readings about the atmosphere. His eye was drawn to the day-count feature. He had acquired the device only a couple days after going through the portal, by his rough estimation, and he had managed to re-program the feature to count up from that point in hopes of measuring how long he had been away from his home dimension. Like a prisoner or a castaway’s tally marks on the walls of their cell or cave, there was something sickening and yet satisfying about seeing the number grow. It read one hundred twenty; about four months.

He reminded himself that the count might be somewhat off, but it did little to ease the queasiness he felt all of a sudden. It was likely that some of that was a result of hunger or teleportation, perhaps some a response to something unique to the air in this dimension, but there was no denying that some of it was regret. Regret for trusting a lying beast like Bill Cipher, regret for turning his back on his brother, regret for calling on him the way that he had. It had been selfish, blind, and he knew it. What good does regret do you now? He reminded himself, trying to shake off the feeling, You were only doing what had to be done. But whatever his motives had been, the result was still he and Stanley spending the eleventh consecutive birthday alone.

Just at that moment, a deep menacing growl issued from a spot a few feet away from Stanford and he was back on his feet in an instant. Well, maybe not exactly alone, he thought wryly. The unseen creature growled again, and Ford thought bleakly, Happy birthday, Stanley.

Stan groaned in frustration, slamming Ford’s journal shut. It was no use. I’m too tired and too stupid and too fucking sad to make sense of any of this, he fumed to himself. He had been dreading today for weeks. Missing Stanford and hating himself for losing him were central to all of his days lately, but he knew it would only cut that much deeper today.

As children, they’d loved their birthday. It didn’t matter much what they did with the day, they were best friends and just the fact that the day was shared made it special. But that very same thing was what had made it impossible to enjoy the day ever since he’d lost everything. He still swore it had all been a big misunderstanding. Of course, he hadn’t wanted his best and only friend to move across the country and move onto a life in which he was out of place, but not enough to ever commit the crime of which he’d been accused. Stanford was the most important person in the world to him, he would never have sabotaged his chance at happiness and fulfillment. Sure, he was selfish, but he could never be that selfish.

But somehow it had happened twice. A fit of hurt and anger had pulled Ford from his life yet again, and this time he wasn’t going to take it lying down. He had worked hard trying to find some way to earn back his place in the family the first time around, but this time it wasn’t about pops or about acceptance or a pat on the head. The most important person in his world was no longer actually in his world, and he needed to fix it. He had broken it, and he needed to know that he could fix it.

But he had to accept that it wasn’t getting fixed tonight. He grabbed a permanent marker from the cup that held several writing implements on the desk. He stood up, popping his back, and walked over to the very utilitarian calendar that hung on the wall. At first after Ford had been snatched away from him by the bizarre portal, he had been numbering the days, before it had become apparent that he wouldn’t be able to just get the portal going with a little elbow grease and ingenuity. It had been too depressing, watching the numbers grow, and he had opted just to cross off each box with an x as the days passed.

He drew an x through June 15th and sighed again, dropping the marker back in the cup. He turned his back on the inexplicably lifeless portal. As he started up the stairs, despite knowing there would be no reply, he softly muttered, “Happy birthday, Ford.” to the empty room that held his only hope for redemption.

#stangst #stancest #billford #stanford pines #stanley pines #bill cipher #ship tags included for exposure #sevralfics

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