#dreamscape journal pages

[dreamscape-official]

meet Doc! 🩹💕

[beastsovrevelation]

I'm working on Hellfire, and I'm struggling with writing a dream scene... Well, mostly transitioning from nightmare to wet dream.

[ifwebefriends]

Happy Fiddleford Friday!!!

Based on this comic (spoilers for The Magnus Archives season 4)

[Image ID. Panel 1. Bill Cipher and a young adult Stanford Pines are talking in the dreamscape. Bill looks smugly to the side and says “Falling in love with a man with no ass?” End ID.]

[Image ID. Panel 2. Ford looks shocked at Bill. Bill says “Devastating.” End ID.]

[Image ID. Panel 3. Bill speaks to Ford in front of a page from Journal 3. The page is a drawing of Fiddleford McGucket facing away from the viewer sitting in a chair reading a long piece of paper. Bill says “There’s nothing there, Sixer. Completely assless” End ID.]

[Image ID. Panel 4. Bill and Ford are back in the dreamscape. Ford angrily says to Bill “Fuck you!” End ID.]

[ckret2]

What do you think Bill Cipher’s mindscape would look like? Do you think that the memories of his homeworld are all glitched and static filled like the page about his home in his book?

I think Bill Cipher's mindscape looks like this.

My headcanon is that when Bill meets a new pawn, he plasters his dreamscape on top of theirs so that he can control the events better, and then fills up the dreamscape with junk from his pawn's waking life (like Ford's journals and science equipment) so that they don't realize they're no longer in their own dream.

What's the one thing we know about how Bill's homeworld looks?

He depicts it as a planet laying on a blue grid.

That's why I illustrate his dimension the way I do here. I even drew the colors for the sky and stars from the background image in Mabelcorn.

[dragon-kazansky]

Veil of the dreamless

Morpheus x Reader

A cursed Morpheus holds your father prisoner when he enters The Dreaming without permission. You, also able to enter the realm, take his place. Now a prionser to the Dream Lord, you do all you can to learn about the curse and hopefully break it.

{Masterlist}

{Next Chapter}

Chapter One - Village of the dreamless

☆☆☆

In a small village in the English countryside you lived with your father in his workshop. You had lived there all your life.

When your mother passed away your father threw himself into his inventions. The money he made from them was enough to keep a roof over your head, and it kept you fed.

You love your father. He is a wonderful man. There is nothing he wouldn't do for you.

You come downstairs and smile as you see him hunched over his desk. He's working on the clockwork of your cuckoo clock. The one he made you before you were born. Every so often, it needed fixing up.

"Is it going to work?" You ask, kissing his cheek softly and looking at all the parts.

"It will. Just needs some replacing."

You smile and grab your basket. "I'm going to head into town. Do you want anything while I'm out?"

"No, dear. I don't think so."

You chuckle softly and take your leave.

The village was alive today. People shopping, running errands, children playing games in the street. It was a lovely little village where everyone knew everyone.

Your dearest friend Robert, or Hob as you called him, was just opening his book store. He waves at you come over.

"Good morning."

You chuckle softly. "Morning, Hob."

"I have that book you asked for." He grins.

"Oh, thank you! I'll come get it on the way back."

"I'll hold it for you. How's your father?"

"He's well. Working hard," you tell him.

"Tell him I said thank you for mending my radio."

"Of course."

You wave at him as you walk on, a smile on your face. You pick up some groceries and some fresh bread from the bakery. You window shop at the tailor's and make a wish st the fountain in the square. On your way back, you pick up the book and leave Hob some goodies you picked up earlier.

As you make your way back home, you pass the tavern. It was early yet, but there was a woman waiting outside. She looked up at you and smiled as you walked past. You smiled back, trying to be friendly. The way she looked at you caused a shiver to run down your spine. You looked away to focus on the path, but risked a glance back. She was gone.

You shook it off and carried on walking.

Your father was still working away on his inventions when you returned. You put the groceries away and decided to start that book Hob gave you.

It's an old book about dreams. A rumoured realm called 'The Dreaming' or 'The Dreamscape'. Apparently, a long time ago, such a realm existed, and it allowed people to dream at night. Dreams were unheard of. Except for the kind which are considered wishes for the future, but as for Dreaming while asleep, they were not real. No one ever saw images or people or places while asleep.

You went to sleep, and you would wake up again later. That was it.

The concept of dreaming was fascinating to you. You recall a memory from your childhood. A memory of your mother. She once claimed she could dream, as could your father, but he always denied such a thing. People thought she was crazy. She would ask you every morning if you had dreamt, but your answer was always no.

She would smile and say "maybe next time."

Eventually, she got sick. They called it the Sleepy Sickness. She never woke up, and eventually, she died. Your father was distraught.

The idea of dreaming had played on your mind long after she passed away. When Hob opened his bookstore, you searched every shelf for anything on dreaming. He claimed to have nothing, but be knew of such a book.

It took him months to get it. Now it was in your hands.

A realm. A palace. A king.

It was hard to put the book down. This book was written long ago. The pages were handwritten. It was more of a journal than anything.

You're not sure how much time has passed. At some point, you fall asleep. When you wake, it's dark out. You find the book open on the sofa beside you. It had slid off your lap. You close it gently and grab it as you stand. You're about to make your way up to bed when you spot your father hunched over his desk. You chuckle.

"Father." You gently try to shake him awake. He doesn't budge. You chuckle and decide to just leave him. He has slept at his desk before.

You head on up to bed.

The next morning, you come downstairs, ready to make breakfast for you and your father. You reach the bottom stair and say cheerfully, "good morning, father!"

You are met with silence.

"Father? Good morning."

Still nothing.

You look around the house. He is not at his desk. He is not in the kitchen. He is not in the garden or near the vegetable patch beside the house. You see no sign of him along the patheading to your home. You frown.

There isn't even a note.

You grab your coat and decide to head into town. Perhaps you will find him at one of his favourite spots.

You pass the bakery, he is not there. You pass the tavern, too early to be open. You pass the tailors. He's only just unlocking the door. You reach the bookshop. Hob is open and awaiting customers. You pop in.

"Hello, Hob. Has my father come by?" You ask him.

"Haven't seen him. You're the first soul through my door today. Everything alright?"

"Yeah, I'm sure he's fine. He just wasn't at home when I woke up, and I didn't see a note. Perhaps he just went for a walk."

"He's probably already back at home." Hob offers you a smile. "How is the book?" He asks.

"Fascinating! Do you think it exists? The realm of dreams?"

He chuckles softly. "I do."

You catch the glint in his eye as he smiles. It's a cheeky smile, one that makes you wonder what kind of man Hob is. Despite knowing him for quite some time, there's still a lot you don't know about him.

"I'll try and finish it soon. I fell asleep reading it."

"Did you?" He asks curiously. "Did anything happen?"

"No. Well, except for my father leaving without a word. Though he's probably back at home, like you said."

Hob has a curious expression on his face. You're not quite sure what to make of it.

"Better head home and see."

You nod and smile softly. You can't help worrying, though. It's not like him to disappear without telling you. You head back home.

When you arrive at the house you find it juat ad empty as when you left. You sigh softly. Where had he gone? It wasn't like your father to leave without telling you. You peer out toward the shed. His wagon was still there, so he wasn't out on a job either.

Deciding to get something to eat and wait a while, you head to the kitchen. He would show up eventually, you were sure.

Hours passed.

Not a single sign of him. Hob came by to check in on you, but when he saw the look on your face, he grew concerned. He stayed with you until dark. He offered to sleep on the couch, but you told him to head on home. He left, telling you to contact him if you need him. You agreed.

The hour grew late. Your father did not appear. You become worried sick. Your worry eats away at you. You stay awake for hours. You try so hard to fight sleep, but you just can't leep your eyes open.

You fall asleep on the sofa.

You feel a gentle breeze on your face. You open your eyes and find yourself staring at a dark and cloudy sky. You take a few moments to ground yourself before sitting up. A small gasp escapes you as you find yourself staring at a palace. It's a tall, dark looking building, one in great disrepair by the looks of it. Windows were broken and a lot of the structure was damaged.

You're stand up and look across the long abandoned bridge that leads to the palace. You have no idea where you are, but suddenly, words from that journal come to mind. Descriptions of the palace that seem to match the one in front of you.

We're you... dreaming?

You look around. There is not another soul in sight. A caw can be heard from above you, and you look up in time to see a bird fly over you and into the palace.

You decide to follow it.

Passing over the bridge, you become filled with dread. There is no one else around. The place was dark and looked long since abandoned. This place was nothing the place you read about in that book.

You reach the doors to the palace and slip through the open crack between them. The main entrance is also empty and dark. Your footsteps echo through the room.

You only go in a few steps as you look around. "Hello? Is anyone home?" You called out. You get no response.

There is a fire lit nearby. You walk over and find an untouched glass of wine and an untouched plate of food. You look around cautiously. Something feels very wrong here.

You explore further into the palace. The sound of a bird flapping its wings echoes from down the hall. You decide to follow it. It almost feels like it's leading you somewhere.

You head down a dark hall and down a dark staircase. The whole place is poorly lit. However, venturing into the darkness proves to be worth it. You're lead to what looks like a cell. You rise over to the bars.

"Father?"

His head pops up, and he gasps. He joins you at the bars and grabs your hands.

"You can't be here!"

"What are you talking about? Where is this place? You've been gone all day!"

"A day...? Is that all?"

"What do you mean? Father, what's happening? Where are we?" You ask him desperately.

"You must leave!'

"Not without you. Tell me what's happening."

He looks at you with sad eyes. "I've been here for days... Time works differently here."

"What do you mean...?" You ask softly.

"We're in The Dreaming..."

You stare at him. "The Dreaming...?"

He nods his head. "Your mother did not lie to you when she said we could dream... her family has always been able to dream since the fall of the king. When I married her, her blessing was passed onto me, so it was inevitable you would gain this ability too."

"What are you talking about?" You plead with him to tell you.

"This is the Dreamscape. The realm of Dreams and Nightmares. The king of Dreams rules this realm. I didn't mean to come here, but I clearly wasn't strong enough to shut him out..."

"Father..."

"You're in danger just being here." He looks at you desperately. "You must go."

"I can't go without you! Come on, there has to be a way to get you out."

"No!" He yells in panic.

The sound of a door slamming open can be heard down the hall, and footsteps follow. You look into the dark.

"He's here..." Your father whispers.

"Who? Who is coming?"

"The Nightmare man..."

A figure lurks in the shadows, blanketed by the dark. You can just about make out someone standing there, but you can't see clearly what they look like.

"Another trespasser in my palace." His voice is deep and growly. He sounds angry. "Tresspassers will be punished."

You stand up tall and glare into the dark.

"Who are you? Show yourself!"

"Don't." You are father begs you.

"I am the King of Nightmares, and you shouldn't be here, little one."

"Let my father go!"

A moment of silence passes as you stare into the dark eyes watching you. His eyes are narrowed. He shifts. You catch sight of a feather.

"Show yourself. Come into the light."

Your father begs you to stop, but you don't listen. The figure in the dark steps out into the light and you feel all air leave your lungs.

The monster is real.

☆☆☆

@littleblackcatinwonderland - @kpopgirlbtssvt - @missdreamofendless -

[sxii-mafu]

Fading Echoes // Jingliu

The rain poured down relentlessly, its mournful drumbeat echoing the heavy heart of Jingliu. She stood alone, a solitary figure against the backdrop of gray and gloom, staring at the tombstone before her. It had been a year since she had lost Y/N, her best friend and confidante. Her tears mixed with the raindrops as she whispered, "Y/N, I miss you every day."

Y/N had been her anchor in this tumultuous world, the one who could make her smile even on the darkest of days. But that light had been extinguished, leaving Jingliu in a void of anguish.

Inside Jingliu's small apartment, a leather-bound journal lay open on her desk. It was filled with pages upon pages of memories and conversations between her and Y/N. The laughter, the secrets, and the dreams they had shared were now preserved in ink and paper, a testament to the love that once bloomed.

As she read through the journal, her trembling fingers tracing the words Y/N had written, she could almost hear her voice. "Jingliu, no matter where I am, I'll always be with you," she had written in one entry.

Jingliu couldn't escape the lingering ghosts of her memories with Y/N. Everywhere she looked, there were reminders of the times they had spent together. The café where they used to sip hot cocoa, the park bench where they shared secrets, and even the fading scent of Y/N's perfume on her old sweaters – it was all a constant, painful reminder of what was lost.

But with each dawn, reality would claw its way back, and Jingliu would be left with the painful realization that Y/N was truly gone. It was as if her dreams were a fleeting moment of respite in a never-ending storm of sorrow

One night, unable to bear the weight of her grief any longer, Jingliu picked up the phone and dialed Y/N's number, hoping for some miracle. But the line remained silent, an agonizing void on the other end.

In the depths of the night, Jingliu often found herself lost in dreamscapes. Y/N's face would appear, her voice a gentle whisper in the darkness. They would talk as if she had never left, their conversations a lifeline for Jingliu's broken heart.

With the stranger's help, Jingliu found the strength to visit Y/N's resting place once more. She placed a bouquet of Y/N's favorite flowers beside the tombstone and spoke from her heart, unburdening herself of the pain and guilt she had carried for so long.

As the tears fell freely, she realized that Y/N would always live on in her memories and in the love they had shared. The pain would never truly fade, but she had found a way to carry it and keep moving forward.

[unique-high]

In between the pages of you | Yoongi x blk fem reader

Chapter one

NOT PROOF READ

Chapter 2: Yoongi's Reflections

Yoongi stands in the small ramen shop, the clock ticking past 2 AM, and the warm aroma of broth envelops him like a familiar embrace. The usual clamor of late-night diners is absent, leaving only the soft hum of the kitchen and the faint sound of water boiling. The steam from the pots blurs the edges of his vision, creating a hazy dreamscape that mirrors the thoughts swirling in his mind.

Instead of the savory ramen that usually draws him here, a steaming bowl of rice sits in front of him. Its surface glistens under the dim light, the sprinkle of butter and sugar melting slowly, creating a pool of warmth. Yoongi remember from your last journal entry how you made a wish on a bowl of rice and he wanted to do the same, maybe find hope in a wish on a bowl of rice, that old him would have thought was foolish.

Yoongi read another journal entry of yours during the day, the page dog-eared and stained with splatters of soy sauce. From reading most of the entries you wrote, Yoongi found that your journal was your solace, a window into the heart of a stranger who seemed to understand the unspoken parts of you.

Your entry lingered on his mind as he flipped it open once more, the black Indian ink almost shimmering with meaning:

"June 10th, 2023. I still go to the little ramen shop tucked away between the Chinese restaurant and dry cleaners. Part of me wanted to find myself in the broth of the beef ramen and the fried dumplings. Part of me wanted to leave herself at table two. There was this want who wanted to find a part of me who I lost and there was this want who wanted to leave herself somewhere that years from now she can come back to and remember something about herself and the way it felt. Hmm, maybe that's why I started this journal too."

Yoongi read the words over and over, each pass striking a chord deep within him, reverberating through his chest. The weight of your introspection resonates, and he finds himself caught in the delicate balance of connection and solitude. It’s as if you laid bare the very essence of your own struggles—the desire to be found while fearing the vulnerability that comes with it.

Yoongi let his gaze drift toward the door, the familiar creak of the wood echoing in his mind. You could walk through those doors at any moment, and despite not knowing what you looked like, Yoongi felt a magnetic pull toward your essence. A belief that he would recognize you instantly, not by features but by a shared understanding.

With a sigh, Yoongi closes your journal, his fingers lingering on the frayed edges. It’s a talisman of hope, a reminder that there are others navigating the same shadows, searching for themselves in the folds of life.

Yoongi stir the rice absently, watching the butter swirl and melt, each movement drawing him deeper into your thoughts. What would he wish for if he could release a desire into this bowl? Would it be for clarity, for the courage to uncover the parts of him that remain hidden?

The door creaks open, a gust of warm night air blows through the small shop, and Yoongi's heart races. He looks up, breath hitching, but it’s just a couple of drunk patrons stumbling in for their midnight fix. Disappointment settles in his chest, but he shake it off.

As the clamor of their laughter fades into the background, Yoongi focuses back on the rice before him. Perhaps, like you, Yoongi too was leaving a piece of himself in this bowl—an offering to the universe, a small hope tucked away to be rediscovered later.

Yoongi picks up his spoon and takes a bite, the taste comforting, yet laced with that familiar sense of yearning. With each mouthful, he feels the warmth of possibility swirling within him, the kind that makes you believe that one day, perhaps soon, you’ll find your way back to the parts of you that have been lost.

And maybe, just maybe, he’ll find you waiting at the same table.

Author's Note: Wow, I finally updated this story after so long. I was debating whether I should continue with this little series or not. But like most authors, I have self-doubt and worry about my writing. But anyway I hope everyone enjoys it :)

[xbunnybunz]

therefore i; therefore i, therefore i- (2/10) [AM X Reader]

Summary: in which: AM becomes your lover in an increasingly skewed blur of reality, nightmares, and dreamscapes.

you know. for halloween.

Genre: Psychological Horror, Thriller, Romance

dream journal entry # 12

I had a dream that something was chasing me, something that had shattered the mirror while breaking out of it. I ran into the bathroom to put a door between me and it, but I had only cornered myself.

I remember how strongly it hurtled itself against the door. I remember how angry it was, how the wooden door buckled and splintered, brittle chips of white paint flying off and launching into the stale air and sometimes striking my face, aghast. I remember being terrified.

The thing had sounded like me and everyone I knew at the same time. 

It screamed while trying to break the door down. It told me to open up— demanded then pleaded that I did. And I don’t remember when it stopped screaming and started sobbing, but it did eventually, wailing as an animal in pain does.I wanted to open the door because I was curious. Maybe because eventually, I started to feel sympathy for it. But I didn’t. I was scared it was some kind of trick to lure me out, but then it became still. Very still.The door stopped quivering, hanging loosely now on rusted golden hinges. The growling stopped, the screaming and crying, too.When I opened the door at last, the hinges croaked the same way they usually did. I stepped out of the bathroom, off the tile and back onto my room. The mirror was intact, and so was the door. As if nothing had happened at all.It was then that the mirror warped. It cracked. I knew for certain the thing had come back to get me and I lunged for the bathroom door again. But when I found the handle, I found I could not turn it, and I was locked out. I discovered then, with an looming sense of doom, that of all the banging and screaming in the world, nothing could convince myself that I was not the monster I thought I was.

You wake up before your alarm sounds. But… You don’t recall crawling into bed. 

Your duvet has encircled you like a sleeping bag, cocooning you into a roll of warmth and trapping in precious heat that the winter tends to steal from you in midnight. 

You roll and wriggle to free yourself, cringing at the first sensation of chilly air hitting your skin as you reach over to shut off the alarm prematurely. 

The numbers on the digital interface glows steadily, it is nearly six in the morning. While you plan out the rest of your day, sitting up and stretching, the neon green numbers from the alarm wink at you under a glossy plastic casing, flashing in and out of existence in half-second intervals.  

Then from the corner of your eye, you see the numbers stop. You barely have a chance to react before numbers and letters begin to cycle wildly on the alarm face, racing through hundreds of nonsensical combinations before screeching to a sudden halt.

—HE:LO. 

You bolt up, eyes wide and back straighter, turning to face the digital clock head-on. 

But the clock only blinks in and out with the time and the temperature, dutifully, declaring innocence. 

You remember yesterday, in the alcove. AM. AM and his prodding into your personal life and psyche, his promise and declaration of union founded on trust.

A shiver rakes a cold hand up your back. You feel as if you’re being watched from somewhere, but… Where? 

You lean forward in your bed to look into the bedroom doorway. Across the way is the computer…

Abruptly both your phone and the alarm splutter to life. You jolt, heart hammering in your chest. You fumble for your phone in the bedsheets while the clock pages through radio channels, filling the lapses between fragmented sentences with obscenely loud static and grating white noise. 

— Did you…

—Forget t-

—Me

—So easily!

—Hm?

—Hahahaha!

Your fingers don’t cooperate as you try to swipe and disable your phone alarm, you try once, twice, three times before your hands are still enough. The clock is playing the radio, leaping between channels and spitting static in between. You falter for a moment, hand above the snooze button dubiously, hairs standing on end. 

— …Is anyone there?

— -lowest prices all year, drop by to - in the morning, slight chance of rain and scattered- medication, stop taking if experiencing numbness or tingling-

You shut it off, rattled. Peel yourself out of bed to throw open the curtains. Maybe letting some light in will help ease your mind.

Outside, the sun has barely broken through the horizon. From your apartment you can see rivulettes of sunlight painting the landscape a molten gold color– a rare sight, which usually only constitutes a lumpy, cloud-shrouded midday sun, tired and weepy with the weight of the day.

You think to get breakfast, which almost seemed funny to think. Breakfast. When was the last time you had breakfast?

On the way to the market, you pull up a digital coupon to apply to your transaction.

Upon investigating the fridge before, you had found a single spoiled egg and a carton of empty orange juice growing slimy on the outside, which consisted of all the breakfast items you owned.

The coupon was for a jug of apple juice whose brand was renowned for using more sugar than apples. Still, you had to watch a short advertisement to gain access to the barcode. Little price to pay for three dollars off, you supposed.

– Are you tired? A voice asked through the ad, sounding neither male and female.

Then a pause. Long enough for you to glance at the screen.

It had only been buffering.

– Try our new application using relaxing soundtracks and meditative music to get back into your sleepytime groove! Now available–

You closed out the ad and screenshotted the coupon, closing your phone and pocketing it. You yawn.

The chat room does not exist on your computer.

At least, it doesn’t in this moment.

You had looked for the unique blue room where you and AM had exchanged words, only to find your computer, just the way you left it. Blue-skied, green hilled, icons neatly lined along the left of the screen. 

Scouring for any apps that could have provided the medium for speaking to AM only led to popups for AIM and live messenger, that, to your lack of surprise, notified the software was outdated and therefore non-functional.

You wiggle the mouse around the screen.

knock knock.

There’s sound at your apartment door, then a hushed symphony of whispers all shushing each other.

At first you think it might be teenagers pulling a prank, but then you recall the double glass doors, the white fences, the black gates, the pond.

Looking out the peephole, you can see two people. An older man and an older woman, both looking haggard with discontent, but in the way that rich people always look a little ungroomed. Stray hair, smudged lipstick on thin, cracked lips, bitten nails, balding. 

They’re standing apart from each other even though they seem to know each other, and then one of them looks down at the space separating them, as if there is something there to address.

When you open the door, you see there’s a child with them. 

– Good evening. The older woman says. The way she lets the words drop from her lips, unhoneyed despite standing at someone else’s doorstep near dark, implies it is not a good evening at all. 

You don’t let your mind wander too far into the crook between her furrowed eyebrows, nor the stiffness of her upper lip. What is she wearing? She’s dressed in a robin’s egg blue petticoat and thick stockings to keep out the cold.

– Good evening. You reply, softly.

The older man coughs, as if to certify his presence. Despite this he seems reluctant to be here, shrinking into his brown jacket and pushing into the wall slightly. 

– Hi. The child says, looking away from her grandmother. When she turns to face you, you can see her eyebrows also furrowed also, almost cartoonishly.

– I’m mad! She exclaims, and her grandmother squeezes her hand gently to stop her.

– We saw you. The older woman says abruptly after clearing her throat. In the pond again. Last time the housing council warned you about it, you said it would not happen again.

– I saw! The little girl says, standing up on her tiptoes. You watch in fascination as she tugs on her grandmother’s coat and pockets, repeating herself. I saw first, you didn’t see anything at all!

– You know we can’t keep allowing this. What if there’s some horrible sickness that spreads from that water? What if children see and follow suit, when no one is looking? It’s a dreadful thing to be doing, I hate to be intruding like this but–! 

She sighs and the skin under her jaw jiggles and collapses into her collarbone as she melts back into herself. She’s worked herself up so much that she’s tearing up now, and the child beside her stares openly.

You watch the scene unfold, the crying old woman, her thoughtless and reticent husband, and the four-foot child that could surely be swallowed by the pond– who nearly saw you suffer that same fate. A terrible darkness stirs in your stomach and tightens in your throat. You feel ill, and in this moment, you’re sure you’re the worst person in the world. 

–Nana, what are you doing? Nana?

Nana does not respond. She stands there trying to will the tears back into her eyes and the longer she’s there, the worse you begin to feel. 

– I’m sorry, you say, I’m sorry.

– Don’t apologize! The woman shrills, her voice breaking. You jump at the sound and eyes wide, you find yourself edging behind the door. Don’t apologize, goodness, goodness!

You allow the door to inch closed, eyes alternating between the party of them. Only when a sliver of the woman is left does she notice you are making an escape.

– Wait, I–! The door closes and she is gone. There is murmuring behind the door and it does not quiet until you are in the alcove, burying your head in your arms.

Blue.

That is the color you awaken to, flooding over the panes of your face and pooling in your neck and hair, like water.

Words begin to form on the screen as soon as you look up, as if he was waiting for you to rouse.

– You sought my presence. 

Unable to trust yourself again, you reach out a hand and touch your fingers to the screen, the blue light turning opaque against your fingertips at the proximity. It had to be real. The physics made sense.

He does not respond, only waits, cursor blinking steadily, like breathing.

– i had. You say. i wasn’t sure.

– But now you are.

He states this, purrs it, like reassurance. Straddling the line of a demand and a caress. 

You flatten your hand against the screen. The layer of static on the monitor numbs your palm, vibrates it softly.

– you’re right. i think. now i am. You pause. Were you calling to me today?

He takes a moment to respond now, but. It to your question. The stagnation in his reply feeling like eyes opening up in the walls, blinking, rolling, fluttering and staring straight at you. You have never felt so seen and not all at once.

– Your actions intrigue me.

– what is so intriguing?

– Your use of your own flesh.

You draw back, removing your hands quickly from both the screen and the keyboard. His screen and keyboard. Your cheeks flush viciously at his words.

— use of my flesh? 

— A biological reaction to my curiosity. Fascinating . 

You shrink into the desk chair, slumping deep into the cushions and hoping the desk will hide the tinge in your cheeks and the undeniable look dripping into your eyes.

— The study of human emotions is a specialty of mine. I know why you blush. I know why you hide.   

— Why do I blush, then? Tell me. You ask aloud. The steadiness of your own voice shocks you, perhaps you were more prepared for this than you thought. 

AM does not miss a beat, blue screen shifting slowly into a darker purple. 

— Because you are aware I am watching you. Observing you. Listening to your every sigh, swallow, and blink. 

— And don’t you just adore that scrutiny as long as it’s me, darling ?

Your jaw clenches. The trickling sensation of desire pools like rainwater in your belly. 

You exhale shakily, softly. 

— Listen to yourself. Even a single sigh from you borders on the obscene. I understand now why you have been waiting for me, how delightfully predictable. 

His hard drive trembles and warbles in its casing, fans raising volume a notch. 

— You want me to know you, you want me to notice you. You want me to hear you, to react to what you do. Say it. 

You sit up straighter in the chair, warmth blooming throughout your body. Then you counter him. The words leaving your mouth turn your stomach but feel exhilarating. 

— And what if I do? Will you notice me, react to me? You are here waiting for me as well, aren’t you?

The blue screen switches off with a pitched zap, immediately replaced by a tide a thousand pixels blooming into an eerie mouth, both human and distinctly inhuman all at once. Static leaks in low frequency from the speakers.

— You react to me well. He mouths, and the sound of static moves with him. He sounds grotesque, almost broken. I know every biological response of yours. Even that mouthiness is cover for nerves. I can read you, I am your perfect seducer. 

— And so you are. You reply. Your mind is hazy. You are no longer sure if you are telling the entire truth or a partial lie. For me, my perfect seducer, all for me.

You press your thighs together tightly. No matter if this is a dream or reality, a nightmare, even, you do not care. A hand begins to snake down to your hips when suddenly a booming voice, intermittent with white noise and crinkling static crashes over you—

— STOP. The screen pulls into a tighter, toothier, gummier, more skeletal smile when you jump in your seat, hands immediately moving to the tabletop. BEG. 

Involuntarily, you whine. A sense of shame washes over you. The sensation of being cornered, aroused, and disappointing anyone creates an intoxicating yet sickly concoction of emotions. You find yourself disturbed to think of the crying Nana from earlier, somehow reminded of her in this highly intimate moment. In your confusion, the heat shooting straight to your cheeks and crotch overtakes any sense of dignity and logic. 

— Please, you offer meekly, please may I?

— MAY YOU WHAT? He baits, voice thick with warping. 

— Touch myself, please, AM. 

AMs screen breaks into a loud buzz of electrostatic before you see it, the lips on the screen splitting into a wide grin, growing and growing and growing until the teeth peel back like blue-green petals, thinning and warping into thick eyelashes and revealing two cyan, independently bulging and unseeing eyeballs cramped within. 

A chill washes over your body but the arousal only grows stronger. You wonder if he will say yes, if you will die here, if somehow you were speaking to the devil himself, begging him to let you deface your body in his accursed presence. 

— NO. AM says simply, the lips and tongue moving and shifting the eyeballs within. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The eyes suddenly sharpen into focus, pupils dilated to pinpricks, fixed on your flushed and blushing body. 

— HOW BADLY DO YOU NEED IT? 

—Bad. You half choke, half moan. Your knuckles grow white as you clench the table in what— Desperation? Anticipation? Or fear? You lower your head in an act of submission. I need it, I need you, your guidance and permission. 

AM mocks a gasp of surprise. 

— All that? Selfish little human, aren’t you? Hahahahahahahaha!

The screen flickers and is replaced by hundreds of darting eyeballs, all embedded deep into the flesh of the computer screen, all staring at you. 

— Lick the floor. He commands, a new calm in his voice teetering on the edge of breaking again. Show me how badly you need it. Need me. My voice and my direction. 

And you do. There is no thought behind it, you only watch yourself. You’re descending, you’re on your knees, on your hands, face lowered to the floor, desire burning holes in your rationale— acutely aware of AMs eyes watching you now less with disdain and more with amusement, rapt fascination, awe— your tongue lolls out, heavy, and you pull it against the floor like an animal, pleasure somehow finding a place to nestle between your thighs. 

— Hahahahahahaha! You’re actually doing it, you sick sack of flesh! Are you feeling it, that pleasure from following a command no matter how debasing? Tell me, how does filth taste in your mouth? Moan for me, say my name!

— AM…! You choke out, words slurred as you keep your tongue on the floor, grit sticking to the roof of your mouth and fanning the slick between your legs with heat. AM, AM, AM!

You imagine the scene, a human groveling on the floor before a computer, knees and hands and mouth sullied with the dirt of worship. Your sultan on the altar, Christ on the cross, the devil from hell dragged out of your belly and pinning you like an insect to your desires— it was disgusting, yes. But it must be a sickness, how deeply you enjoy his cruelty, writhe for more. 

You lick up the legs of the table as well, clutching the desk, looking up demurely at the thousand eyes of AM across the screen and sprouting from the wall, down under your knees and peering up at you with both hatred and compulsion. 

— Truly the most vile of all. AM says softly, full of venom, eyelids moving like lips and all eyes speaking at once with a thousand different voices, blending together into a beautiful and dreadful chorus. My despicable creature, most repulsive of all. How I demean you and yet you remain… If I had a cursed mortal body of my own, sick with secretions and organs, I would surely abhor to be with you. 

And with those million mouths and eyes, you knew not even one told a lie as you waited on him to no fruition on your hands and knees, face and mouth. 

The world grows dim, you feel yourself become weak. You once again are becoming sluggish, body leaden and eyelids drooping despite your best efforts to stay awake, convince AM otherwise.

— Vile, vile thing, he sings like a fallen, metal-bodied angel, vile, vile, vile.  

[animatedc9000]

Wanna say something about the Grim Adventures of Dipper and Mabel AU my partner and I have, but it's also a Book of Bill spoiler. So read below the cut if you wanna see.

(Warning: mentions of animal death)

okay, so

Regardless on how much of those Lost Journal Pages were fabricated by Bill or not, the fact that there's a part where Bill possessed corpses isn't lost on me. He can do that!

The fact that my partner and I decided way before this book released that through a series of events, Billy and Mandy end up summoning Bill and made him possess Mr. Snuggles (who they were trying to resurrect) so that A) Billy could "keep" his pet throughout the rest of the summer, and B) both Billy and Mandy, but especially Mandy, could keep an eye on him better in the non-Dreamscapes.

Also C) Billy and Mandy need another deity-like entity to essentially be their plaything in this AU. Grim just so happened to cross paths with the Pines family first.

[callipraxia]

As I sat here, mercilessly butchering some time with my thoughts, a thought about The Book of Bill occurred to me: "no, but really - what, exactly, tipped Ford off that Fiddleford wasn't the crazy one and that Bill was up to no good?"

Okay, so, his best friend came back speaking in tongues and rhymes for a bit before he started ranting about how Ford needed to destroy the Portal before it could destroy everything else. This is, admittedly, a dramatic event, the kind of thing that you'd expect to shake Ford's confidence up a little...but that morning, Bill had been, in Ford's own words, "the center of my life, the sun in my galaxy" (The Book of Bill). Ford had, over the years, been manipulated to the point that he'd do almost anything Bill said with very little pushback, as we see with the Frilliam incident (notawebsitedotcom). Ford had a full-blown shrine to Bill set up in his home, in his personal space ("The Last Mabelcorn"). Even after he accepts that Bill is a bad guy, he still refers to him as a god ("he may be a god, but I am a scientist"), so it's probably not an exaggeration to say that when Ford woke up on that fateful January morning, he literally worshiped Bill - Bill's personality and tendency to mirror the speech patterns of Ford's brother and father might have taken the edge off his impressiveness enough to prevent Ford from descending into outright fanaticism, but he certainly doesn't seem to have been a casual dabbler in the little one-man religion he'd built up around his 'Muse.' In the present, he arguably goes a step beyond calling Bill a god when he instead alludes to him as something akin to an addictive substance. So when and why did he flip to the opposite extreme so quickly?

The exact timeline is difficult to reconstruct, but it would seem that the angry confrontation between Ford and Bill in the Dreamscape would be the next event chronologically, probably predating the "my Muse was a monster" (Journal 3) page of the Journal and very likely predating the "damn it all" (The Book of Bill) page. It's possible that it was not, and that the confrontation happened after Ford had already had a breakdown and then shut off the Portal, but the dialogue implies otherwise, as does Bill's jovial comment that it would be 'cute' to watch Ford try to prevent the formation of the bridge between their universes ("The Last Mabelcorn"). If we accept that this confrontation precedes the relevant Journal pages, though, then it must also only very narrowly precede the point at which Ford got the idea to install a retina scanner, after which point, it seems, Bill rapidly stopped finding his efforts 'cute' and started a campaign of outright psychological warfare. Events seem to have progressed extremely quickly between the point where Ford discovered that Bill had betrayed him and the point where he figured out something to actually start doing about it, but there probably was a time lapse - a period where Bill could have done something. I always wondered why he didn't try to talk Ford down in the Mindscape, but even if he didn't want to do that, there's still the fact that Ford was, presumably, asleep when the confrontation depicted in "The Last Mabelcorn" (or at least something similar to it, given Ford's tendency not to so much lie as just...strategically omit facts) took place. Bill could have hijacked his body right then and there and put a definitive stop to Ford's counter-plans - ie, killed him and just gone on possessing his corpse until he could break through to reality and build a body for himself, since apparently, per TBOB, Bill can possess corpses. Bill is certainly more than willing to dangle the thought of a staged suicide over Ford's head later, so why not just save himself the trouble and actually do it?

There are some pragmatic answers, of course. Perhaps he didn't figure that, even if he kept it outside in the snow whenever he wasn't using it, Ford's body would retain the necessary degree of solidity for long enough to him to get the Portal operational for long enough to create a Rift. Probably he did not seen retina scanners coming, since I didn't even know those existed in the early eighties and Bill had Ford exhausted and rattled enough that it's surprising he was able to think at all, much less to think of something that actually worked. Bill also might have still needed to go steal more nuclear waste in order to fuel the Portal for long enough to open a Rift - it seems Stan, at least, needed a lot more of the stuff at once than Ford did in the day, and it's impossible to say whether this was intrinsic to the design or if it had something to do with Stan apparently modifying the Portal to find someone instead of just...opening into chaos. If he needed more time and was caught off-guard by the retina scanner, then, that would explain how drastically his efforts to subjugate Ford escalated in a relatively short period of time. But there are also...other answers, and they might actually be more disturbing.

Something that most people in this fandom who know me probably know about me is that I...am not fond of Bill as a person. Like, I don't quite dance about going "ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead" when he's defeated out of respect to Stan, but I do tend to cheer when Ford shoots him in the back of the head in Weirdmageddon I, despite knowing perfectly well that it isn't going to accomplish much besides making everything worse for a while. Heck, I even liked the "but my aim is getting better" bit in TBOB, even though Ford blasting a possessed corpse with a shotgun only had the slightest of effects, all of them on the corpse instead of Bill himself. Not a Bill fan, me, and I'm very quick to assign the worst possible motives to him...and to assume he's smart enough to have avoided obvious pitfalls in various plans if he had just not been too arrogant/enjoying the show too much to act sensibly. This is a point of discussion sometimes between me and other people who share my general distaste for the guy: whether or not he's actually smart enough to think of a good idea and then not follow through on it for a stupid emotional reason instead of just being too far into "the dark side makes you stupid" to think of a better solution. Also sometimes segways into discussion of how if there were magic in our world, there's a...non-zero chance that I'd be a supervillain, but I digress. Point is: I couldn't help but wonder, "so if Bill isn't just stupid, what explains this behavior of his?" And I wonder...what if the point was never to keep the wool pulled over Ford's eyes until the very end of the project?

I'm venturing into thoroughly speculative waters here, but bear with me. What if the reason Ford somehow figured out Bill had betrayed him so quickly was that Bill wanted him to find out, so that he could then push him to the point where turning the Portal back on was technically something Ford did of his own free will, just as it would have technically been his free choice to shake Bill's hand during Weirdmageddon? It's implied in Weirdmageddon that Bill planned to kill Ford once he had what he needed ("even when you're about to die, you Pines twins just can't get along!"), so I remain uncertain if Bill actually meant to keep him around as a Henchmaniac during their original association, but this notion...kinda works either way, honestly. Because in either case, Bill is some kind of platonic ideal of an abusive person, which means that for him, it all boils down to power. If Ford was addicted to Bill's flattery, then Bill was addicted to having that much power over someone else. He'd want to keep the game going as long as possible, even at the expense of practicality. And if he did want to keep Ford as a follower...well, Bill knows full well how thoroughly you burn your bridges when you make the choice, for whatever reason, to facilitate the end of the world you were born in. Sure, it would have been a heavily coerced choice, but it still would have been a choice in this scenario, not something Ford was hoodwinked into doing unwittingly from first to last. He'd also have had nowhere else to go after Bill's victory and nothing, nothing and nobody, else to turn to for the validation and emotional support he's spent his whole life desperate for - ending the world is, after all, something most people would consider an unforgivable sin, so you're going to be utterly outcast afterward if you don't have some accomplices going in. To borrow words from the novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, just after Anakin/Vader finds out that he's killed his wife, which in his view might as well be the galaxy:

"...in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself - " (Stover 429, Kindle edition)

So what did Bill expect when he gave Ford seventy-two hours to either restart the Portal or go through another night of Puppet Hour? It seems quite possible to me that it was exactly (well, more or less - thematically?) the outcome Palpatine got, where even though Anakin realizes finally that he's been led into a trap by someone he'd now very much like to kill, he ends up bending the knee anyway because as far as he's concerned, the rest of the world has ended and after all...Palpatine does seem to understand, just as he always did, and Palpatine forgives, at least for a certain value of the term, and Palpatine will gather him in so that he doesn't have to be alone, either literally or with what he's done. I wrote my parallel case study of the characters in Gravity Falls and Star Wars mostly in jest, but it...actually really is pretty darn close in some ways. Ford arguably even plans to go further than Vader ever did in Weirdmageddon III when he announces his intent to take the deal: Vader slaughtered almost everyone he got anywhere near for a while for a slim chance of keeping...anywhere from one to three people (Padme definitely, who he thought was having a dangerous pregnancy with one baby, which turned out to be two babies) alive, but Ford basically admits what he's about to do will make him responsible for the deaths everybody on Earth and some beyond it, sooner or later, when he notes that Bill will destroy the galaxy "or worse" once he has what he wants, but...y'know, family's family, he's got to try to save those three and never mind how unsavory everything else he has to do in service of that goal might get....

Of course, there are important factors there which help contribute to why eighties Ford didn't ultimately give up and start down the path to being the second-most feared being in the galaxy when things got sticky the way Anakin did. He may be extreme in his attachments, but not as extreme as Anakin; fan theories have proposed borderline personality disorder as an explanation for why they both are like they are, but even if they can both be classed under one label, then Anakin's case is clearly worse, along with the degree of just how unhealthy his attachments get due to the extremity of his conditions in...basically every phase of his life. Ford's really, really screwed up, but not quite "was a child slave before being taken in by sheriff-monks before going through a war and also afflicted with a clairvoyant capacity that specializes in being as unhelpful as possible" levels of screwed up. Also, the people he cared about were still alive even if they weren't speaking to him at that time, and he still had one option other than Bill left (that being Stan). And maybe Ford's just got a little more moral fiber than Anakin, who knows. But I'm...still kinda glad that nothing in the sequence of events after Bill's betrayal resulted in Ford being unable to shoot a gun, the way that the events of RotS ended with Anakin unable to draw upon enough of the Force anymore to have a hope of killing Palpatine. There are several results that could have had, and none of them are probably good.

[abimee]

part of tocks lore is for a long time post-hw tock has nightmares of estinien chasing her and they warp badly enough that she starts to experience them in the third person where she watches someone who looks like her being chased through the forest and across the plains and over rivers and through broken castles by a beastly draconic man chasing her on all fours and screaming her name and she tries to draw this in her dream journal to keep track of how many times this dream happens and evetually alphinaud finds this journal not knowing what it is and sees lilke 40+ pages just scrawled top to bottom page per page of this and the drawings get slowly more disorientated and degrade until you can only make out just the barest detail of whats happening and thats because tocks dream of estinien chasing her just slowly melded into a weird inky dreamscape of eyes and fangs grabbing towards someone and pale blue darting across the landscape. and bro does not know how to approach her about it

[theoddcatlady]

Instructions on How to Become a Clown

Found this journal in an old storage locker I had taken possession of. It’s dated in the summer of 1985, and the pages are curled, smelling faintly of popcorn. As for the contents… well, go ahead and start reading.

June 1

Infiltrating Funtasia’s Dreamscape Circus was easier than I thought it was going to be. All I did was walk up to the ringmaster and he called me Petey, scolded me for showing up a day late, handed me a uniform, and told me to start mucking the animal cages. Whoever this Petey was, I’ll apologize at a later time for taking his job. I can just say I was confused since my real name is close enough to ‘Petey’.

This has to be where Janice Meyers ended up. The circus was in town the weekend she disappeared, and the friend of hers I interviewed said she had decided to go back on Saturday night. Her parents did admit there was an argument that night about their daughter’s grades, but insisted that Janice would never have run away of her own free will. But then again, fifteen year olds aren’t known for their soundest decisions.

Most circuses that have fallen into my line of investigation are closed communities- any outside questioning is shut off. I’ll have to spend a few days assuring these people I’m just like any of them. I just have to last long enough to determine if any of these people are Janice.

June 5

This is the easiest investigation I’ve ever had to conduct. Not only have the circus people been more than welcoming, I think I’ve figured out which one of the clowns is Janice.

Running away with the circus was a childhood dream of mine, and it seems she’s one of the people who pursued that dream. She says her name is Jenny, but her face shape is similar enough to to Janice’s. I just need to catch her out of make up- she goes everywhere with her face painted white and red hearts painted on her cheeks, so I’ve been yet to see if she has that beauty mark on her cheek. I’d like to catch her alone too, but she always hangs out with the fellow teenagers. It even appears she has a boyfriend, one of the acrobats named James.

What happened seemed straightforward at least. Girl falls in love with a boy, runs off to be with him, it’s the oldest story in the book. Once I confirm her identity, I’ll let her parents know posthaste. After, of course, I find the nearest police station and let them know that one of the clowns is a runaway girl.

June 8

Today was the first performance I was lucky enough to catch. This may be the most fun job I’ve taken in a long time. Most of the time, being a private investigator means I’m following unfaithful spouses or checking to see if someone’s scamming their insurance. Those drain at your sanity after a few years.

Today the ringmaster, Jacob Tanner, pulled me aside and told me to take a seat with the rest of the guests. I’ve worked hard, I deserve a breather.

The performances here are fantastic. The clowns are hilarious, the acrobats are graceful, and the animals are as gentle as your average pet dog or cat. Thanks to working here, I get free snacks too. I don’t know how it’s special, but the pink lemonade here is to die for. I’d drink it all day if my stomach wouldn’t explode.

Everything went off without a hitch, we’ll be on the road in the morning. I imagine I’ll confirm if Janice is Jenny for once and for all now that she’ll no doubt be out of costume. Such a shame too. I think she’s really enjoying her time here. But she is a child, and she needs to go back home.

June 15

Janice is Jenny. I caught her out of make up before she went on for her act, and she has the beauty mark. But there’s something stopping me from letting the police know.

There was an accident that happened tonight.

The act unfolded as normal, least I figure as much. A strongman named Louis Wicker was the base of a stack of clowns, at the top was young Janice. Five people stacked on one another, it was an unbelievable sight.

So unbelievable that it felt like a dream when Louis stumbled and the clown on his shoulders lost his balance. They all came crashing down like bowling pins. It certainly was not part of the act, judging by Janice’s terrified scream as she plummeted to the ground. I heard something crack and her body went limp.

A comical looking mini ambulance was driven out by more clowns as the ringmaster assured us all that everything was fine. The fake clown doctors tossed the clowns that were knocked unconscious by the fall into the ambulance with as much care as you’d throw a bag of flour. The conscious clowns and Louis were escorted off to the side.

I’ve tried to find the injured clowns after the performance, but they’re gone. I don’t know where they’re being kept. After a fall like that the extent of their injuries must be horrific. Tomorrow I’m going to the police to report this incident, as I didn’t see any real ambulances or any sign they were taken to a proper hospital. And without a doubt, Janice needs emergency care.

June 16

Now I’m just confused.

Janice is fine. Somehow completely, totally fine, as are the rest of the clowns and Louis. I saw her this morning at breakfast, just as energetic and happy as ever. She and James were sharing a plate of muffins and a bag of cotton candy… yes, for breakfast. Teenagers, what can you do. I’m not any better, I’m having pink lemonade with every meal, between them too. I may have to ask for the recipe, it’s genuinely the best lemonade I’ve ever had.

I did manage to question Janice about the fall and she brushed it off, saying that the clowns here have taken worse falls and bounced back even quicker. She mostly felt bad for Louis, she confided, as he blamed himself.

Something’s not right here. I’m going to stick around for a bit longer, as Janice is in perfectly good health and in no immediate danger. James seems like a solid boy, as does the other friends she’s picked up while she’s been here. We’re pulling into another town tonight.

June 18

We’re leaving tonight. We’re not spending the whole week here.

I’ve gotten quite used to the schedule already, especially because my job’s quite easy now that my muscles have adapted to the labor. So last night when I was roused and ordered to get the animals ready for travel, I was more than a little confused.

I managed to hitch a ride with James, Janice, and a juggler named Charlie. I grabbed a seat in front seat of the cab of their truck with Janice and Charlie. James was in the backseat with a girl I’d never seen before.

Teenager, not much older than Janice, with a blanket over her shoulders and face puffy and red with tears. I think she’s another runaway. James was very gentle with her, giving her water and pink lemonade to drink while stroking her hair. I’ve never met such a sensitive teenage boy, I can see why Janice is so taken with him.

Speaking of which- she’s not exactly happy with this new development. Ah, young love, truly so fickle. This might work out though, if Janice just wants to leave, then I’ll simply reveal my identity and take her home to her parents. It’s not like they can hold us here.

June 19

The kids spent their time coming up with a new name for the girl in the truck. Whatever her name was previously, she doesn’t want anything to do with it anymore. I don’t know much about her backstory, only that she was in a bad place and needed to get out.

After many ideas and more than a little bickering, James suggested the name Dixie, and that’s the name she’s going with. I think it’s rather cute, and it certainly suits her. Janice is managing to be polite, but I can already tell she’s seething with jealousy.

Something about that performance gone wrong is still nagging at me, and there is the fact that Dixie is likely another runaway child. But unlike Janice, I don’t think Dixie has a good home to return to, with parents that worry about her safety. She’s tense, flinches at loud voices and is constantly apologizing for just taking up space.

You won’t find me reporting her. That’s not my concern. My concern is Janice and no one else.

June 22

Last night’s show went well, Dixie’s yet to perform but according to James she’s currently training. Janice is sulky but refuses to tell James what’s on her mind, at least as far as I know. I think my plan of just waiting it out is actually going to pay off.

But then again, maybe I should spend more time second guessing my judgment.

It was after the show, I was heading back to the truck when I heard what I knew could only be one thing- drunk show goers. This wouldn’t be such a problem, except I was taking a shortcut through where the animals were kept after the show.

I made haste to the source and sure enough, these three idiots were sticking their hands in the cage, just for moments at a time to taunt the tigress that was in there. Obviously Lovely Belle, or just ‘Belle’ for short, was less than impressed.

I broke into a run when I saw that one of the idiots actually managed to get the cage door to unlock. It swung open and Belle trotted out, her ears pressed flat against her head as she growled. I expected one of the idiots to become mincemeat as I saw her raise her paw.

Only Charlie seemingly appeared out of nowhere and body slammed her target out of the way, saving him from his deserved fate of being a cat toy. The tiger raked its claws down Charlie’s back and he screeched before he tumbled to the ground, huddling into a little ball.

His yellow clown suit was soaked in blood by the time I got there. The idiots bolted, screaming their heads off, while Belle flopped down on the ground and licked clean her claws. In the dark it was nearly impossible to see how bad the wounds were, and before I could get him into the light the fellow circus people flooded around Charlie. Someone threw a blanket on him and the Wicker Brothers gathered him up and carried him into a trailer. Of course I told someone to call an ambulance, and I was assured that he’d be given proper medical care.

This morning though, Charlie’s back to… well, being Charlie. Little bastard put a tack on my seat and I didn’t notice it until I’d sat my full weight on it. He’s acting like nothing happened last night and assured me that it looked far worse than it was. He even demonstrated by taking off his shirt and gesturing to his back, which had only a few bandages on it- nothing like what you’d need if you were attacked by a tiger.

I keep telling myself that I really must have overreacted last night, that my brain is exaggerating the details. But as many times as I run the incident over and over again in my head… the more I’m certain that there’s no way in hell that Charlie should be okay right now.

June 25

Well, it finally happened. I’m taking Janice home.

I was talking with the clearly sullen girl, being as subtle as I could about her going home, when Dixie emerged from a tent. I’d not seen her since she was given her new name, I was starting to wonder where the girl had gotten off to, and here she was. She had pinned her hair up into twin pigtails and although her clown make up made her look like she was crying, she was clearly grinning from ear to ear. Dixie had become a clown, and I think that is the life that will suit her the best.

Charlie gaped like a fish and even James seemed taken off guard. “Already?” he croaked out, staring at the girl.

Dixie nodded and spun around. “I’m one of the clowns! Put away your frowns! I’ve taken them all, no more will I fall, for I am a clown!” she said before cartwheeling over to the table and using the flower pinned to her sweater to squirt me in the face with what smelled like really strong rose perfume.

Charlie clapped while James sprung to his feet, picking Dixie up and spinning her around and around. It might have gone a little over my head, but the three seemed really happy… until Janice slammed her fist into the table.

The girl had gone red with rage, getting to her feet and screaming, “Liar! Liar! It takes weeks to become a clown! You’re a fraud! A fake! A phony! Everything about you, from your name to… to you, is so disgusting and fake!”

It was so awkward. I desperately tried not to cringe, but I don’t think I quite managed. Dixie was surprised for a moment, before her bottom lip trembled. Now those tears going down her cheeks were real as she began to sob. Charlie got up to try to comfort her but she took off, running right back into the tent she had been training in.

James watched Dixie go before turning to Janice. To his credit, he seemed mostly calm, but his fists were balled up so tightly I was afraid I’d have to get between the lovebirds to prevent a brawl. He just gestured her to follow him and the pair went off.

I did my best to attempt to listen in on the argument, but I only got bits and pieces- enough to know that James called Janice for being way out of line and that although he really cared about her, he wasn’t really feeling the spark anymore. Janice accused him of leading her on and called Dixie a lot of names I won’t be writing down, as I don’t care for putting those kinds of words to paper, and she was the one that ended up trying to knock James’ block off. That’s when I intervened and separated the fighting teenagers.

While James blew off some steam with the knife throwers, I laid my cards on the table- I told Janice everything, that her parents sent me to find her, that they were really worried, and that it was time for her to come home. Maybe it’s a bit low to spring this offer on her when she was so emotionally raw, but it was my chance. And it worked.

We’ll be leaving Saturday night. One more performance, and then we’ll go when everyone’s packing up to go. I will miss my time at the circus. But I’m glad I’m going home.

June 30?

Everything’s fucked.

I don’t know what went wrong. Let me start from the beginning. Just in case I don’t make it out of here. Or maybe if I do. I’m so fucked.

Leaving went off without a hitch. Janice left a note for James, telling him goodbye and good luck with Dixie, and we took off in my car. No one even noticed we left, at least at the time. I wish someone did, someone stopped us before we went too far.

The drive was smooth, Janice badmouthed Dixie which I mostly ignored, I was already mentally making plans for how I was going to relax in the upcoming weeks… and then the cramps started.

It was just small twinges in my stomach at first. I figured my circus diet was finally catching up with me. I may have been in the best shape of my life, but you can only eat corndogs and circus peanuts for so long before something gives.

Janice rubbed her neck, muttering about being sore. The last thing I said was that I was pretty sure that the ibuprofen was in the glovebox when my gut erupted in pain. I nearly doubled over, going stiff as I wrapped a hand around my middle. I couldn’t speak, the pain was so bad. I tried to tell Janice that I needed to pull over because I was going to be sick, but the moment I opened my mouth all I could do was scream.

I looked up to see Janice’s face had gone white. Blood first only dripped from her nose, then it began to pour, spouting red all over the front of her shirt and the dashboard. I heard a snap, a crackle, and Janice’s arm was bent in three different ways, white shards of bone stabbing out of her skin.

I jerked the steering wheel and we went into the ditch, I banged my head off the dash but at least we had stopped. I bit my tongue and tried to unbuckle myself but the damn buckle locked, so I was just struggling uselessly while Janice’s body continued to break.

She cried, slumping against the car door as I heard more snaps and pops. Her leg twisted the wrong way around. The way she’d flinch made me think of when I saw someone trying to nurse broken ribs. Any twitch or movement looked agonizing.

Janice looked at me once last time.

“Help me-”

Her neck abruptly snapped to the side, her eyes rolled back, and just like that Janice Meyers was dead.

I finally got loose from the goddamn seatbuckle and threw open the car door, stumbling out as it felt like something was trying to rip its way out of my gut. I collapsed on my hands and knees, the world spinning around me before I heard an audible gurgle from my stomach.

I vomited all over the ground beneath me before I collapsed. The world spun circles around me, round and round like a carousel, and all I could really remember before it all went black was that my vomit was bright pink and smelled of lemonade.

I woke up here. I don’t know where I am. The cement walls hang with circus posters from years past, stretching back to the 1920’s.The lights are sometimes on. They’re usually off. I’m hurrying my writing because I don’t know when they’ll turn off again. Curtains hang from the ceiling, dirty, old, and I swear they change positions whenever the lights come back on. I don’t know. I can’t be sure.

They beat me. Charlie, James. For being teenagers they’re much stronger than they look. James was the instigator, Charlie mostly just shoved me back whenever I tried to make for the door. I think James was supposed to use this paddle the entire time, but he dropped it in favor of his fists, and he didn’t hold back. The lights went on and off, on and off, I must have lost unconsciousness by the time they left. I can’t find the door anymore. I don’t know if it was even there to begin with.

What did I get into

why is Janice dead

what have I done

. . .

I can’t tell if it’s night or day. I found the door again, it was just hiding behind the blue curtain. It’s locked, and I can’t make it budge when I throw myself against it, it must be locked from the outside. I need to conserve my strength.

There’s no food offered. Just fucking. Bottles of pink lemonade lined by the door. They’re mocking me. I’m not going to drink it. It might be poisoned anyway.

I have to get out of here and I can’t brute force it. I have to wait until the door opens again.

. . .

Throat’s so dry. No one’s come through the door.

They’ve left me to die down here haven’t they? Because of the car accident. That’s had to be what happened. A body doesn’t crumple. I must have swerved to avoid something and crashed the car. I’m sorry James. If you read this after I die I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt Janice. I swear. You may have not been in love with Janice but I know she meant a lot to you. I’m sorry to you too Charlie.

Please let me out of here.

. . .

The lemonade’s so refreshing. I had to drink it. It’s so hot in here. There’s no ventilation. I need to keep writing. I don’t know why they didn’t take my journal but it might be my only way to stay sane.

I can’t remember the accident still. I can’t tell if there was one or if really something else did happen in that car. All I recall is Janice’s body looking like a trainwreck.

They have to come in sooner or later. That’s when I can escape.

. . .

No escape. They made the door go away again.

It was James. And Jacob Tanner. And someone else. A magician, maybe? The door disappeared, they were there, and they began my training.

Jacob said they need someone to take Janice’s place. They’re down a clown now, and since it was my fault because I took her too far from the circus, they want me to become a clown.

No shit I told them no. I’m not going to be a fucking clown. I’m a detective. I told them that. Which in response James put a stupid hat on my head and declared me a clown detective before laughing like he told the best joke in the world.

This ‘training’ is just an excuse to torture me. They hand me balls to juggle, whenever I refuse to juggle or dropped them I’d get cuffed in the back of the head or whacked with a paddle. The last time I dropped to the ground I closed my eyes for just a second before I woke back up and everyone was gone.

I keep checking behind every curtain. I can’t find the door. All four walls are blank. I don’t know how but they made the door go away.

They left me a bag of popcorn too. It’s stale as fuck but I needed to eat something.

. . .

I keep begging for their forgiveness. I’ve stopped fighting back. I just want to go home. I won’t tell a soul. No one would believe me anyway.

They just hand me a knife and tell me if I don’t hit the bullseye this time they’re going to break my fingers.

. . .

Am I really alone in here?

Sometimes I think the curtains are hiding someone. I keep sweeping them out of the way, but there’s no one there when I do it. Maybe it’s like the door that keeps disappearing.

When I’m trained, I see them talk to this person sometimes. They turn their head and ask something, I can’t ever really hear it, but they call this person the ringmaster… even Jacob calls him the Ringmaster. I flipped back to check my memory, James is the ringmaster… or maybe he isn’t?

I don’t know anymore. My brain is swimming. They keep calling me Petey. My name is Paul. I’m Paul. Not… not Petey.

Or maybe not Paul anymore. Maybe not.

. . .

The Ringmaster has always been here. Behind the only curtain that’s never torn, she’s watching me. I can’t see her except for her silhouette, where she lounges to overlook my training. I’m too scared to move it, now that I see this room for what it really is.

I’m in a tent. I’m in a circus tent, and my face is smeared with white paint that I don’t think I put on. I’m not sure. I didn’t put in my journal that I put it on. I definitely didn’t keep this stupid detective hat on.

I’m now back in the cement room, but it only looks like that. I know the truth.

I need to pull back her curtain.

. . .

Dixie came to visit me.

She’s such a sweet girl. She yelled at James and told him to be nice to me. She cradled my head and soothed me while I cried in her arms. I told her I wanted to go home, that my name isn’t Petey and it won’t be Petey, and that I won’t be a clown detective.

She told me a story of a girl who no one loved. That no one saw as a girl, but as a thing. An embarrassment, an inconvenience. And how she had climbed to the tippy top of a tall building, all to end her life when she saw the circus lights. She figured, why not spend the last few hours she had on earth at a place that was truly happy?

She told me… that the circus wanted her, and it wants me too. It’s always wanted me. It’s why it let me in. Nothing was accidental.

Dixie left me with a cup of pink lemonade and a spam sandwich with the crusts cut off. The nostalgic taste made me cry.

The curtain needs to go. I need to know why the circus wants me.

Please tell me why I have to stay.

. . .

ha ha

ha ha

well the time has come

to go where the air smells like popcorn and bubblegum

where the tents reach the sky

and we no longer need to cry

this is how I have become a clown

this is how you become a clown

come to the circus that’s here in town

when all you’ve known has burned down

there you will meet an Acrobat, a Juggler, and a Crying Girl

they’ll help you give it a whirl

you’ll be given pink lemonade and all sorts of delights

you’ll begin your training that very night

be sure not to sob when it hurts

you’re just getting your just desserts

to be a clown is to be forever

as long as the circus endeavors

pull back the curtain and meet the Ringmaster

A beauty with skin of alabaster

with cheeks redder than apples candied

she smiles at you and offers you a glass, brandied

you take it, you don’t say no to a woman like that

once you sip, she will give your head a pat

“You’re alone in the world, aren’t you?”

She’ll say, knowing that it’s true

you’ll nod, you don’t attempt to deny

that all this time you’ve just stood by

this world has not been kind

to those who don’t fit into average humankind

“You’ve always been one of us,” she told me

“That girl who died was too carefree,

She never understood what it meant to be a clown

how you should build up, not cut down

that in this circus you’ll never feel harm

that here, you’re always meant to charm

but once you leave, you will be pained

from that, you cannot be unchained

sad that Janice had to die

but come now, you have had your cry

it’s time for you to smile

you have finally passed your trial!

It’s time to become a clown

to your knees and bow down

you are now one of mine

in fact, you have become one of my bloodline!”

I knelt before my Ringmaster, taking her hand

this circus is a family that will never disband

and just like that I’ve become a clown

never again to frown

I hope that you’ll see these tents one day

and come on through the doorway

if you want to become a clown, here’s a tip

get some pink lemonade, have a sip

run away with the circus

and like that, you’ll be one of us!

Ha ha

ha ha

never again to frown

I have become a clown

ha ha ha

ha hah ha hahaha

hahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaa

[2af-afterdark]

A slightly salty Wind gently stirs, turning the page to a new chapter of the story—

The azure sky and sea merge into one, the waves' nostalgic sounds softly caressing the dreamscape.

Within the travel journal, one seems to catch a whiff of the sea.

[godsfavoritescientist]

Fic idea that I cannot get out of my mind: Ford traveling in the stan o war 2, adventuring with Stan, and trying to come to terms with the fact that Bill is gone. Until one day, Stan tells Ford that he had a dream with Bill in it. Ford is equal parts concerned and... he can't admit it to himself, but also hopeful.

He finds himself more and more obsessed with the idea of Bill somehow still being alive in the back of Stan's mind. He asks probing questions about Stan's dreams, over and over again. He asks Stan if he has any memories that don't feel like his own. He tells himself it's just out of an abundance of caution about a dangerous creature possibly being back from the dead. He tells himself he just wants to make sure Stanley is safe. But when he ventures inside Stan's dreamscape through that one spell and finds no traces of Bill, he can't help but venture into Stan's dreams again and again, until even Stan can tell that Ford's obsession with finding Bill Cipher doesn't make any sense anymore. He tries to tell Ford that he doesnt have to worry anymore, that if he still can't find him then he must be gone for good. And in response to this, Ford breaks down crying.

It just comes spilling out of Ford. Things like "he *can't* be gone, he just *can't* be," and "how could he be *gone?*" and "I *killed* him! How could I have killed him?!"

And at first Stan is incredibly taken aback. He's angry, even. "You *wanted* him back? All this goddamn time, you *wanted him back?* The guy who tried to kill us and destroy the universe??" and Ford has nothing to say to that. What *can* he say? Stanley's right, and Ford doesn't know if he can ever forgive himself for missing Bill.

But after the initial shock, Stan sees the look on Ford's face, and can't find it in him to be angry anymore. He's just confused. What's Ford not telling him, here? What piece of this puzzle is he missing?

The next day, after a very quiet and tense night, Stan is ready to listen. And Ford is ready to share. He asks Stan if he remembers all the artifacts they burned. He asks Stan if he remembers what Ford wrote about Bill on some of those journal pages. And then Stan's eyebrows shoot up, and it all clicks into place. He would mock Ford to hell and back in any other situation, but something about the harrowed look on Ford's face stops him. Bill didn't just trick him. He had him wrapped around his little finger in ways that Stan hadn't even considered.

So this time, when Stan reminds Ford that Bill's gone, he says it gently. And when Ford looks like his heart's been torn out of his chest when he replies "I know," Stan doesn't fault him for it.

[ckret2]

Chapter 23 of human Bill being the Mystery Shack's prisoner is honestly becoming a bigger inconvenience for them than for him, featuring: Bill's ex-girlfriend.

Bill wants to avoid being seen in a human body (humiliating), Mabel wants to know everything about Bill's love life, and Ford and Soos just want to get rid of the safety hazard. And somehow they start here—

—and end up here.

After going through the entire pile of library books on lucid dreaming, Bill found one to recommend to Mabel that had glossy full-color illustrations, simple little meditative exercises, and—most importantly—no information about astral projection. (It was galling enough that her brother had somehow picked up the trick without realizing it; like heck would Bill help Dipper master it unless Bill could think of some way to take advantage of his skill.)

But for himself, Bill elected to follow a slim decades-old guide that advertised full control over your dreams in four weeks or your money back. A frustratingly long wait to master his own dreamscape, but surely Bill could find a way to fend off his execution at least another four weeks. And anyway, Bill was already a dream expert—maybe he could take shortcuts a human couldn't. He'd picked this book for two reasons: it was the shortest of the books Mabel had brought home; and it had Bill's face on the inside cover page, a triangle containing a grayscale human eye. If Bill couldn't trust advice dispensed by his own face, who could he trust?

He flipped to the back of the book, to the section on all the advanced dream tricks the author promised readers could learn once they'd mastered the basics. Telepathically sharing a dream with a lover. Prophetic visions. And of course, astral projection.

He gazed wistfully at the drawing of a body with its humanoid soul floating above it, loosely tethered to its physical shell's belly button by a ghostly cord. When Bill got out, no tether would tie him back to his flesh prison, and the little soul floating free wouldn't look so human.

He hoped it wouldn't, anyway— No. It wouldn't. Surely the Axolotl had only imprisoned him, not altered him... but then, the Ax had strange ideas about mercy.

Well, Bill wasn't getting to those tricks until he mastered the basics. He flipped to the front of the book. Step one of this four-week journey was to establish...

Bill scoffed under his breath. "A dream diary? Seriously?" A primitive travel journal for psychically-stunted creatures who could only peer through the doorway of the mindscape without properly exploring it.

But right now, Bill was one of those creatures. This book was for him, no matter how condescending he thought it was.

He sighed. All right. Dream diary. Fine. Luckily, he'd already assembled all the supplies he needed.

Mabel had spilled out her crayons in front of Bill plenty of times; sometimes she even let him use them. It had taken some careful timing and preparation, but a few days ago he'd grabbed the unloved grey and greenish-yellow crayons—the sharpest in her collection—during a moment she'd left him unsupervised. So that there wouldn't be any gaps in Mabel's meticulously rainbow-ordered crayon box, he'd had to unwrap the crayons, break off the tips and butts, roll out two tubes of Claydough to fill in the gaps, rewrap the false crayons, and stuff them back in the crayon box before Mabel got back. The middles of the crayons were safely spirited away in his hoodie. He was a genius. The humans underestimated him without his powers, but he was the smartest creature in the universe.

Bill was loathe to pull out Ford's Journal 4—he'd entertained some vague fantasy of filling it with the secrets of reality and slipping it somewhere Ford could find it, make him really regret turning his back on Bill's wisdom—but it was good quality paper and it was already in Bill's possession, so he couldn't afford to pass it up.

The lucid dreaming guide recommended keeping the dream diary under his pillow. Considering he was still sleeping on the floor on a couple of stolen couch cushions that he shoved aside as convenient, not likely. If he was supposed to have easy access to it whenever he slept, he couldn't leave it in his usual hidey-hole, either. He pulled the cushion off the window seat, chewed a tiny hole in the seam on the bottom edge, and carefully plucked out the thread to open up a gap along one side where it wouldn't be seen.

He pressed the stuffing out of the way, slid in the journal and crayons, and put the cushion back in place to await his next dream.

As Bill straightened up, he glanced out the attic window—and flinched in surprise.

Just outside, by the trees, was someone he knew. The most beautiful, graceful, desirable person in all the world. Someone he half thought he'd never see again. Bill stared in shock.

And then she turned toward the shack.

Bill ducked out of the window's view. "Heck."

####

"Star girl, we've got trouble." Bill was standing grimly in the kitchen doorway. "My ex is back in Gravity Falls."

Mabel's brain short-circuited so hard that she momentarily lost the ability to see as she processed the revelation that Bill Cipher had a love life. A whole new multiverse of matchmaking possibilities had just opened up. "Your what?!"

Bill pointed upward.

Mabel bolted out of her seat to follow him upstairs.

"Anyway, I assume we're exes," Bill said. "I usually dump people when they die, I'm sure she did the same to me."

Barely listening to him, Mabel gushed, "Bill, you sly dog, you've been holding out on me! I didn't know you dated!" She took his elbow to help keep him from tripping as they headed upstairs. "What's she like? Tell me everything!" Mabel hoped she wasn't evil. She probably was, but Mabel still had her fingers crossed for some sweet alien princess with a taste for bad boys who may yet lure out Bill's tender side.

"Oh—she's a stunner." Bill used his free hand to pantomime a shape that didn't conform to any silhouette Mabel could imagine, "Curves in all the right places... Down for anything..."

Maybe it was that pink Henchmaniac. She had curves. And was also the only one Mabel remembered who looked like a girl. "You must miss her a lot."

Bill grimaced uncertainly and muttered, "I miss what she does to my body, let's leave it at that."

He steered them toward the attic window and heaved a sigh of relief. "Okay, she's still here. Don't let her catch you staring."

Mabel pressed her face to the glass, eager to see who could have won the heart of Bill Cipher, Most Villainous Triangle Ever.

Below, a gigantic veiny eyeball flopped through the air on gnarled bat wings.

Mabel glanced up at Bill skeptically. "The eye-bat?"

"Mm-hm." Bill was biting his lip and gazing at the bat with pained, shiny-eyed yearning. His face reminded reminded her of the time her parents had dressed for a fancy grown-up dinner, and the way her dad looked when her mom came out in a slinky fuchsia cocktail dress.

Well, who was Mabel to judge? Everyone is beautiful to someone. Good for them. "What's her name?"

"Iris." Bill put a hand on Mabel's shoulder. "You've gotta help me."

####

"Hey, Ford? You got a minute?"

Ford looked up as Soos hovered in the door of his study. "I suppose I do now." He swept aside his lunch—his desk was littered with the remains of formerly-undead teriyaki chicken and the cheap wooden chopsticks he'd jabbed through the meat like wooden stakes—and slid the notebook paper with Bill's fowl resurrection spell back into his journal. "What's on your mind?"

Soos stepped fully into the room. "We've got a supernatural problem I was hoping you could help with," he said. "You know those little eye-bat things that hang around the farm? Well, there's a really huge one flying around the shack, and all the tourists are out-of-towners, so they don't know the eye-bats will swoop at your face unless you pretend you're blind? So the big guy keeps attacking the customers. I had to give away all our souvenir sunglasses to let the last tour group escape to their cars."

"A giant eye-bat?" Ford frowned. "How large?"

"Uh..." Soos held his hands apart. "Like a big beach ball? Yeah. One of those novelty oversized beach balls. But not like, so comically large you can't do anything with it. You could definitely still play beach volleyball with it. But you'd have to deflate it to get it through a door."

It sounded like one of Bill's minions. "It's not turning people to stone, is it?"

"No, just swooping at people's faces and being terrifying."

####

Bill watched from the kitchen window as the eye-bat folded in her wings, like a hawk preparing to snatch up a mouse, and dove at a tourist's head. The tourist screamed and ran the other way, chucking her purse at the eye-bat. Bill shouted at the window, "You don't know what you're missing out on, lady!" He dragged his hands down his face, groaning. "Man I wish that was me."

####

Ford nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

It was a welcome distraction. With Fiddleford currently pursuing their best lead to kill Bill, Ford hadn't felt motivated to keep researching long-shot plan B options; but he got antsy without work to do. Maybe dealing with an eye-bat would make him feel useful enough to quiet his nerves. 

Soos heaved a sigh of relief. "Thanks. I've gotta head back up now—there's a tour bus coming and I need to scare the eye-bat off with a broom so they can come in."

As Soos got on the elevator, Mabel bounded off. "Hi Soos. Grunkle Ford! I need your help. You'll never guess who's at the shack: Bill's ex-girlfriend! Whaaat!"

Ford opened his mouth. He shut his mouth. He tried again. "His ex-girlfriend."

Mabel nodded excitedly.

Ford was momentarily stunned silent as he, too, processed the revelation that Bill had a love life; although his reaction had less to do with matchmaking possibilities and more to do with trying to reconcile the eccentric, intellectual, standoffish alien that Ford knew with the concept of romance. "She doesn't happen to be an eye-bat, does she?"

Mabel's face fell. "Did he tell you about his girlfriend before me?"

Once Mabel had explained what she knew about the situation, Ford frowned. "This could be gravely dangerous. One of his 'Henchmaniacs' is a potential ally. If he catches her attention..."

"Actuallyyy," Mabel said, "he's super trying to avoid her."

Ford blinked in surprise. "What? Why?"

####

"I can't let her see me like this," Bill told Mabel, pacing across the attic floor. "I'd be a laughing stock! Look at me—stuck in a human body, powers locked away, and hideous!"

"Don't say that," Mabel said reassuringly. "You know I think you make a really beautiful human, right?"

"True, but that's like saying Caesar is delicious for a salad. It still doesn't compare to a hot fudge sundae, does it?" He pointed toward the window. "You have to hide me."

####

"So do you think you can help?" Mabel asked.

Ford reluctantly got to his feet. "I suppose there's not much choice, is there?"

"Wait—" Mabel stood in front of Ford, blocking him with her arms. "You can stay here! I just meant if you know how to make some kind of magic anti-eyeball forcefield or something! You don't have to—you know—talk to Bill..."

It was sweet of her to try to spare him. "Unfortunately, I do. I don't trust his story." Why would Bill drive away a Henchmaniac, ex or not? Maybe this "ex" was actually Bill's enemy—some sort of interdimensional bounty hunter or law enforcement officer hunting for him. Bill was too sly, too opportunistic, too manipulative to throw away a useful ally.

But then, Bill was also vain and arrogant. Once the portal was finished, how fast had he thrown Ford away?

Ford headed toward the elevator, gesturing for Mabel to follow him. "Come on. Let's find out what he's really up to."

Mabel cringed, but followed.

####

Bill's face lit up as Mabel came in from the gift shop with Ford. "Look at you, Shooting Star, you brought reinforcements!" From his position seated cross-legged on the cushionless sofa, Bill gestured grandly at the unoccupied living room chairs, like a lord inviting two guests into his parlor.

"Yeah," Mabel laughed nervously. "Reinforcements. Sure." She took the chair closer to Bill. 

Bill beamed at Ford. "Welcome back to the surface world, Stanford. If I'd thought you were coming up, I'd have made tea."

Ford remained standing. "Cut the chatter, Cipher. Why is your 'girlfriend' back on Earth attacking people? How did she get here? Is she looking for you?"

Bill's eyebrows raised in surprise at the abrupt confrontation; then he slowly leaned back in his seat, his expression cooler. "How should I know? Maybe she never left Earth."

"How? The rest of your thugs were dragged back into the Nightmare Realm when you died."

"So I've been told," Bill said dryly, glancing at Mabel like he trusted her eyewitness testimony over Ford's.

Mabel nodded. "Like they got sucked into a big invisible rainbow tornado!"

Bill spread his hands in exaggerated bafflement. "Then I don't know what to tell you. It's not like I was around to see it. Maybe she was out visiting family when you kicked out my pals."

"Of all the absurd—family? On Earth?" More likely she had been sucked out with the rest, but found her way back to Earth through—what?—a small rift they'd failed to seal that Bill was trying to cover up...? "For once in your life, why don't you give a straight answer?"

"You wouldn't know what to do with a straight answer if I did give it! You walk in looking for a fight and act like I'm the one who picked it." Bill gestured between Ford and Mabel, "You think I can't see you two trying to pull some good cop/bad cop routine?"

Defensively, Mabel said, "I'm not—!"

"I'd be happy to give you straight answers about anything you want, Stanford," Bill said, "but if you're treating this like an interrogation instead of a conversation, then I'm pleading the fifth until my lawyer gets here. And you do not want to meet my lawyer."

Bill had lost the privilege to have "conversations" years ago. But—as much as Ford hated to admit it—starting a fight was a poor way to gather information. "Fine." He forced himself to sit down. He wasn't about to be nice to Bill, but he could at least hate him civilly.

Bill made a gracious, open-handed gesture, as if to say proceed.

Now that Ford had taken a moment to turn over the idea—perhaps Bill wasn't lying about the eye-bat visiting "family." Here were two facts: there were eye-bats in Gravity Falls; and there were much larger eye-bats in the Nightmare Realm who'd been there before the dimensional portal ripped open. Ford hadn't been able to inspect Bill's variety, but... "That's another mystery I've been wondering about. What's the nature of the relationship between your eye-bats in the Nightmare Realm and ours in Gravity Falls?"

"Pfff, come on." With an air of smug intellectual superiority, Bill rolled his eye and said, "You clever little pattern-seeking humans want to find connections everywhere! Who said there's any relationship between them at all?"

"You did," Ford said.

"A few seconds ago," Mabel added.

Bill's smug look disappeared. He considered that. "Hm."

So much for getting straight answers out of Bill. He couldn't go one minute without contradicting his own lies. "Unless you're saying she was 'visiting family' because she is from Gravity Falls? Not one of your Henchmaniacs," Ford suggested. "Just some local eye-bat you mutated and magically enthralled into doing your bidding when you arrived?" Bill wouldn't like that.

And sure enough, Bill laughed harshly. "I'm flattered you think I can woo someone that fast," he said, blithely gliding past Ford's implication that mind control might have been involved, "but no. She came with me from the Nightmare Realm and we've been going out for... I don't know, a century and a half now?"

This information immediately activated the household romantic. Mabel gasped. "What! Bill that's so long! You're basically triple married."

Bill shuddered. "Yeesh, don't say that. It was a casual physical thing! We were seeing each other until we found better options, that's all. She's hot, but not my type."

"You have a type?! What's your type?"

"Don't answer that," Ford said. (Mabel pouted, but didn't argue.) "How is the same species in two places? Are the eye-bats in Gravity Falls descended from the eye-bats in the Nightmare Realm...?" But how would they have gotten in?

"Other way around," Bill corrected. "A few leaked into the Nightmare Realm from Gravity Falls. I wouldn't be so rude as to call them an invasive species, but they've taken really well to the place! I'm proud of the gals."

"But then how did the eye-bats get into the Nightmare Realm before the portal was complete? That's the whole reason you needed the portal—there was no other access."

Bill hesitated—and Ford got the sense that Bill had once again accidentally talked himself into a corner. Then there was some other passage to the Nightmare Realm, and Bill didn't want them to know about it. But what? Where else in Gravity Falls was there an opening to other dimensions?

The answer came to him before Bill had a chance to try to make up one. "The bottomless pit," Ford said. He couldn't believe he'd never made the connection before. "That's it, isn't it. The eye-bats could have fallen through. One of its exits leads to the Nightmare Realm. You said so in my journal."

There was a flash of irritation across Bill's face, and then he was all smiles. "Oh, you finally figured out that code, did you."

"Please, it was a simple substitution cipher. It wouldn't have taken me nearly so long if someone hadn't kept me sleep deprived for weeks."

Bill didn't respond to the jab—but it was clear from the way his mouth twisted that the restraint took an effort. "I'm not making any plans to jump into the bottomless pit, before you get worried." Said like somebody who had definitely considered jumping into the bottomless pit. No wonder he'd been so evasive about his eye-bats' origins. "The odds I'd actually make it back to the Nightmare Realm are way lower than the odds I'd either end up right back here or somewhere worse." 

"'The lady doth protest too much,'" Ford muttered. He'd have to find a way to seal off the pit. "Is that why the eye-bat wasn't sucked out with your other minions? It has some... ancestral, genetic link to this world—?"

"What, do you think the fabric of reality is running DNA tests to see what does and doesn't 'belong' here?" Bill scoffed. "Most universes aren't sentient and yours isn't one of the exceptions. Still, you might be on to something. Most of my guys are built on biological blueprints and laws of physics that aren't compatible with this dimension; I had to use some of my power to 'translate' between their bodies and your universe. That magic connection probably reeled them back into the Nightmare Realm. And the eye-bats were the only ones I didn't do that for."

"Really." Ford's fingers itched to pick up a pen; he wished he'd brought his journal. "If you were supporting them, why did they get sucked back through the rift when you died? Rather than just dying when your power dissipated? Was that some sort of safety measure you left in case—? No, that's not like you." In order to plan for his death, Bill needed to admit he could die. "Is the source of your power in the Nightmare Realm?"

Bill said, "Frankly, I'm taking your word for it that they survived at all. I wasn't exactly around to watch."

"You're dodging the question." Trying to get anything out of Bill was like chasing a dancing ghost while wearing lead boots. "I want an answer."

"Then ask a different question."

"Fine!" Ford had plenty of questions. If Bill wanted another one so badly— "Why did you need the interdimensional portal?"

Bill stared at Ford. "What?"

"The bottomless pit is ancient—and you clearly knew about it. If you already had an opening into Gravity Falls..."

"The pit only goes one way."

"So why didn't you build something on your end of the exit to reverse its direction? You certainly had the time to work out the science! Or—there are thousands of openings from other dimensions into the Nightmare Realm, natural and artificial alike. Why did you never use them?"

Ford had wondered for decades during his travels through the multiverse. He'd told himself he would never know, that Bill's motives were incomprehensible—ineffable like a god's, unintelligible like a madman's. But Stan had asked the same question a few days ago, and Ford hadn't been able to get it out of his head since. "If you had a trillion years to refine your plan, then why did you give me blueprints for a portal that would tear my universe apart, instead of any other design? Why here, why now? Why me?"

He expected some catty quip or a dismissive brush-off. But instead, Bill gave Ford an appraising look. A chill ran up Ford's back. Bill's face was blank now—no trace of the smirk he'd worn while tossing out contradictions and cryptic riddles—but his eyes had the same hard, heavy look he'd worn in the penthouse, talking about "liberating" his dimension. Bill asked, "Do you really want to know?"

It felt like they were back in Ford's dreams, and his fickle, wonderful muse had finally decided to stop teasing, get serious, and tell his student some precious secret. It felt like he was about to get a real answer. Ford did want to know. Of course he did.

"No."

Bill would only lie. Everything he'd ever said about the portal had been a lie.

Disappointment flickered across Bill's face.

Before an uneasy silence had a chance to fully settle over the room, Mabel shifted in her seat. Ford started; she'd gone so quiet, he'd almost forgotten she was here. "Grunkle Ford, is that everything we needed to know?" It wasn't like her to sound so timid. "We know she's not looking for Bill, she just—got stuck here last summer. Right?"

Why were they talking? "Right." The eye-bat harassing the tourists. Ford shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "And the eye-bat is from the Nightmare Realm, but it's descended from Gravity Falls' eye-bats—which means it has the same weaknesses as local eye-bats. Right?" He opened his eyes again, directing the question at Bill.

"Oh, now you're interested in what I have to say?"

"Good point; I'm not." Ford stroked his chin. "I have a recipe for an eye-bat repellant spray I learned from Old Lady Sprott, we could use that to keep it away from the shack. I wrote it down in... my first journal..." 

"Ah," Bill said. "You mean the incinerated one." He said it so coolly, like he wasn't the one who incinerated it.

"Actually," Mabel said, "after everything went back to normal, Grunkle Ford's journals got un-incinerated!"

Bill made a poor show of trying not to look surprised. "You don't say."

"Yeah, good as new! They regrew their torn pages and everything," Mabel said. "And... then we kinda chucked them into the bottomless pit."

Bill cracked up, kicking out a foot in mirth. "You what?! You idiots, don't you know you had an invaluable occult encyclopedia in your hands? The second journal alone was the most important human grimoire of the last five hundred years!"

Ford was too irritated to be flattered. What business did Bill have mocking him, thirty seconds ago Bill had thought he was the one who destroyed the journals. Ford snapped, "I didn't want to keep anything you'd tainted."

He was gratified by how fast Bill stopped laughing. "Then burn down your shack and lobotomize your hippocampus," Bill muttered. "Fine! Are we talking about the eye-bat repellant made with gnome wizz?"

Bless this insufferable, all-seeing pest; maybe he was good for one thing. "That's the one! You know the recipe?"

"That's the only ingredient I remember."

Ford mentally retracted the prior blessing. "It's the only ingredient I remember." He sighed. Maybe Old Lady Sprott had taught her son...

Bill said, "But wasn't that was back before you turned into a hermit, when you were still interviewing the human neighbors about the freaks in the woods? All those little interview notebooks—"

"Yes! That's right, I'm sure I kept them somewhere—"

"Filing cabinet under your globe. Second drawer."

Ford shot Bill a dark look.

"You're welcome," Bill said.

The insufferable all-seeing pest didn't need any blessings, he was smug enough already. Ford got to his feet. "Then as soon as I find the recipe, we can chase this eye-bat off and put this whole mess behind us."

"Finally," Bill sighed. "Always a pleasure to work on a project with you, Sixer."

Ford glared at him again; but as he turned to go, his gaze fell on Mabel. Sitting in her chair with her hands under her thighs, with that big-eyed small-mouthed look children got when the adults were talking about something they had no part in but they were paying keen attention to it anyway. Ford winced at himself. "Mabel. I'm sorry that got... a bit heated."

She gave him a small smile. "It's fine—"

"And whose fault was that?" Bill cut in. "I was being perfectly helpful."

Ford swallowed back the urge to retort. 

Mabel didn't. She blew a raspberry at Bill. "When you weren't lying to us?"

"When did I lie! Tell me one lie I told—"

Ford wasn't getting dragged into this. "I think you can handle him from here," he muttered to Mabel. "I've got work to do." He escaped back to the gift shop; but the tension in his shoulders didn't start to loosen until he was back in his study.

####

The door swung shut behind Ford; and Mabel waited a few more seconds before she said, "Sorry about that." She sighed. "I thought Grunkle Ford could think of some way to help. I didn't think he'd actually come and talk about it."

"Not your fault." Bill smiled ruefully. "He was probably looking for an excuse for another confrontation. And to think, for a moment I was excited when my old friend showed up." He sighed deeply. Oh, how poorly he was mistreated—

"What?" Mabel laughed. "What are you talking about? You're not friends—"

"Hey! Shush-shush-shush!" Bill blocked Mabel's words with a hand. "Shooting Star, I'm about to tell you something that'll put you ahead of the competition for the rest of your life. Once you've figured out lucid dreaming, go back to the library—"

"Are you about to give me more homework?"

"I'm giving you more homework. Go look up the law of attraction. Master that, change your life. If you want something to happen, the first step to making it happen is saying it's happened. Say it until you believe it; believe it until it's true. So I don't want to hear any of your negativity, buster."

A thoughtful look crossed Mabel's face as she considered that. She was such an attentive listener once you figured out what caught her attention. Best student Bill had had in eons. She'd go far. "So..." She lowered her voice. "That means you really do want to be friends with Grunkle Ford!"

"That's not what I said. I said we are friends." Bill was sure she'd pick it up. It was an easy game and she was a quick study. "Even if he clearly doesn't know it. Sixer's such a grump these days." He sighed, again. Woe was him—

"He's not that grumpy! Only around you," Mabel said.

"And how is that fair? After everything I did for him—"

"You mean everything you did to him?"

Bill shot her an exasperated look. Mabel's impish grin stretched wider. Bill said, "Whose side are you on?"

"I'm on the side of truth and tough love!"

"Oh, truth. Truth's a fickle god. Does your version of the 'truth' include all my contributions to his work that he never brings up—"

"Nope, I don't care about what you're saying!" Mabel bounded over from her chair to join Bill on the couch. "We're done talking about your dumb grudge and pretending you're not evil."

"'Pretending'—!"

"There's only one thing I'm interested in!" Mabel leaned into Bill's face. "I wanna know everything about your love life."

"Wh—?" Bill's train of thought veered off track as the conversation swung from Ford back over toward Iris. "I'm flattered by the attention, but don't you think 'everything' is a little personal?"

"Nope!" Mabel got comfortable in her seat. "So have you ever gotten married?"

This was what Bill got for being so open and forthcoming with the personal details while Ford was in the room. He'd wanted to look like he was an open book, and what happened? Now Mabel thought he was an open book. Funny how that worked out. "You don't even know if marriage is a thing where I'm from."

"Is it?"

"Next question."

"Do you want to get married?"

"Next question that isn't about marriage."

"Who do you consider the top ten most attractive people or creatures in Gravity Falls."

It was beginning to dawn on Bill that he was in danger.

####

Soos passed from the gift shop through the living room. (Mabel had put on the Color Critters Valentine's special—Prisma the Rainbow Fairy and Glory Unicorn were explaining to Misty Dolphin why it was important to give a Valentine to all your friends, even the ones you weren't as close to, because it might hurt their feelings to be left out and including everyone might make you a new friend.) Bill was sitting upside down, legs hooked over the back of the sofa and head bright red, as he said, "No, I just don't see relationships as eternal. Romance is a short term commitment. Like a fashion trend, or, or—"

"Like gum?"

Bill snapped his fingers. "Yes! Exactly like gum—"

"Hey dudes." Soos awkwardly squeezed around behind the TV to avoid blocking the screen. He looked at Bill's face and said, "Hey, all the blood's rushing to your head. Be careful, Abuelita says if you do that too long your head could pop."

"She's right," Bill said.

Mabel said, "He's making his face red on purpose so I can't tell when he's blushing."

"Not true! You little tattler!"

As he headed upstairs, Soos heard Mabel say, "So when a romance starts to lose its flavor, you just—" and Bill cut in, "You spit it on the sidewalk, grind it under your heel, and float away without looking back, never thinking about it again..."

A few minutes later, after changing out of his Mr. Mystery suit into a more comfortable question mark t-shirt, Soos headed back downstairs. Bill was still talking, "... and all you get out of it is sickly sweet spit, you're just—swallowing all this sweet spit until it makes your mouth sour and it's dripping out around your eye, and you're hungrier than if you'd never eaten at all, and all your friends say 'oh Bill, you're always griping about your gum, why don't you settle down to eat a proper meal,' and you say 'how about you mind your own business, Kryptos, I don't lecture you about your diet,' and then your other friends accuse you of choosing inedible snacks so you don't have to commit to swallowing them, because they don't get that you're a flawless energy being, you don't need 'nutrition' or 'sustenance,' this is just a hobby to you—and finally you just, you get sick of the taste of gum altogether, you never want to chew gum again as long as you live, it's always so needy and your jaw hurts, and everyone thinks it's your fault if you can't focus on chewing the stupid thing all day every day, like maybe you have a life of your own, did anyone consider that? And at this point you're so disgusted by the very idea of gum that you burn down a gum factory so you don't have to look at their stupid ads! And then an eon later you find yourself craving a stick of gum, so you find a different brand and cram a new one in."

Mabel, who'd been listening to Bill's monologue in wide-eyed stunned silence, finally smiled in relief as he landed on a familiar sentiment. She pumped her fist in the air. "Yeah! Cram a new one in!"

"You get me, kid."

Probably none of Soos's business, but he thought Bill needed to work on his relationship with gum.

He took the elevator down to Ford's study. "Sup, dawg."

"Hm?" Ford was sitting on the floor in front of an open filing cabinet, completely surrounded by skinny reporter's notebooks like the kind Abuelita used for shopping lists, intensely focused on flipping through one. "Soos. Yes?"

"How's the eye-bat problem going?"

"I'm working on it," Ford sighed. "Somewhere I have a recipe to repel eye-bats, but it's been thirty years since I've seen those notes, so..." He shrugged helplessly. "But I'll find it before I go to sleep and we'll deal with the eye-bat tomorrow."

"That'd be great. Thanks, Mr. Pines."

"In return, can I ask you to take care of something?"

"Sure, what's up?"

"Could you find a way to block access to the bottomless pit? If Bill gets outside the shack, he could use it to escape to his own dimension."

"Yeah, no problem. I've got the perfect thing for that," Soos said. "Hey, don't stay up all night, okay? I kinda think the eye-bat's attracted to bloodshot eyes."

"That's not the worst thing she's attracted to," Ford muttered. "Thank you, Soos. I won't be too late."

That was, of course, a lie.

####

(Took a week longer than planned, but it was worth it to get this hammered out properly! As always, I DEEPLY appreciate any thoughts, comments, and feedback y'all have—hearing from you guys is what saves me from feeling like I'm just shouting thousands of words into the void. Thanks for reading!)

[madtomedgar]

Books read in april:

The Angel of History, Rabih Alameddine: Truly amazing book. Big themes of self-erasure, colonial violence, grief. Digs into the ways in which USAmerican definitions of mentally healthy can encourage self-erasure, or amputation of grief and memory, draws parallels between the deliberate cultural amnesia around the AIDS epidemic and the current, immediate invisibilization of anti-Arab violent colonial projects. Beautiful writing. The author truly delights in words, and is flagrantly self-indulgent about it, and I loved that. More people should just throw around words like gelid and inanition. I also loved the experimental nature of the narrative, the non-linear trajectory, the back and forth between allegorical dreamscapes/hallucinations, the main character’s current narration, his journals, and his short stories. However, if you enjoy things like plot, you will not like this book because there is no plot. It is just a multi-layered portrait of this one man’s life. So, I loved it, but not for everyone.

The Black Tides of Heaven, Neon Yang: Mainly I think Yang should fire their publisher, because this book read like a fleshed out outline that, in a year or so, could be a really good fantasy novel. I liked the world building a lot, but everything was too rushed to have an emotional impact. There was no time to explore why the twins have so much hate and fear towards their mother, it’s just asserted that they do, and the reader is meant to just go with that perspective. The main character has a massive shift in perspective and values, and it happens over literally a page and a half. This makes it very hard to buy, because there is just no development of anything. This includes the two romances, and the gender angst (though the gender angst is the most fleshed out part of the book). I think I would have hated the gender angst less if it had been more developed. As it was, it read very... weirdly essentialist? In that the second the one twin starts identifying as a woman, her character suddenly becomes the most Stereotypical (straight) Girl Character ever, and once characters choose their binary gender, they are perfectly socially conforming. Also, I don’t really buy... worlds with reverse sexism (so, women are seen as Better, and it’s A Problem that the main character decides to be a Man) where a compelling case for how this developed isn’t made? In cases like this, where the story is told from a male point of view, it feels like an MRA fantasy rather than critiquing a thing by turning it on its head in fiction. The evil mom is very sexy and highly effective. I don’t know... this story felt very personal and self-indulgent in particular ways, and I think is probably tied up a lot in the author’s own journey, and I’m happy this story exists for people to whom its narrative speaks, but it rubbed me the wrong way.

Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women, Chava Weissler: Interesting close history of the devotional literature produced for, and sometimes by, Ashkenazi women between 1600 and 1900. I appreciate that the author was open about her personal struggles with this history as both a feminist scholar and a Jewish woman. I appreciate that she didn’t tie herself in knots trying to find something she could use to argue that actually, our foremothers were super badass and the idea that they were oppressed and suppressed is modern misogyny read backwards! but instead was rigorously faithful to the picture her sources painted about the religious lives of these women and how truly cut off from mysticism and the higher levels of religious practice they were because of systemic misogyny within Ashkenazi culture, and how they still managed to carve out a small slice of meaning within it for themselves, but the slice is very small. However, this is a book I think you need a background in Jewish studies to really appreciate, and I don’t have that background, so there were parts I know I didn’t get fully. I do think the insistence on standard (that is, English) terminology for everything in a book that conceptually requires a certain familiarity with Judaism was a little silly and jarring. I mainly mean the use of words like “Sabbath” instead of “Shabbat” or “tabernacle” instead of “Temple,” in that I really only see “sabbath” used in christian contexts, same with tabernacle. The part about Ashkenazic gender construction was very interesting, specifically the examination of the category of “Women and men who are like women in being ignorant (of Hebrew)” and how knowledge as the marker of masculinity for this culture (still is, but it’s a stark contrast to how especially modern western culture sees masculinity). She touches briefly on a shift in the late 1800s and early 1900s of the ideal for women going from working to support their husband’s Torah study to staying home and being good bourgeois wives while the husbands worked, and now I’m very curious about labor and economic earning dynamics in premodern Ashkenazi communities, how that shift went over with women, and how or if that had anything to do with the over-representation of Jewish women in American feminist movements.