8Hello! It's me again! Mairzy!
I just wanted to apologize and say I really don't have the spirit for the sequel I was planning on writing. I just didn't have a vision for it like I did with hNwBM.
For those curious, it was mostly going to start out as an expansion of lore, with an explanation of that happens to Gus and Ricky in Florida and how a few characters come to be, such as McGucket and Gideon. Then wrapping up with a tale about Fiddleford McGucket, a young cryptozoologist, and his progressively dangerous relationship with a demonic mind-parasite. This went from the assumption that McGucket was the author. Of course canon took a different turn, and while there's nothing wrong with expanding on what is now an AU, I'm going to let this sit.
This snippet sort of delves into what I wanted the book to mostly be about, with hints about the beginning and the end. Mostly, I enjoyed the idea of McGucket blindly trusting Bill while Bill wedges himself firmly into McGucket's brain and redecorates at his leisure. I hope you enjoy this glimpse of the friendly/destructive relationship I wanted to explore with these two characters.
Fiddleford pushed himself up briskly off the pillow. His room. His room! His room was before him- wooden and solid and smelling like Bunsen burners and old pine. He gasped into his own chest. What a dream. Or was it over? "Bill!" He called into the darkness "Bill!"
"Fiddleford? Is that you?" The voice- young and pleasant, came from the adjoining room. Mandy stuck her head out of the small bathroom, her eyes smiling "Fiddleford, what's wrong?"
"Mandy..." the man stopped fussing with his beard and hopped off the bed. "It was just...nothin'." He crossed the distance between himself and his lovely wife. He stepped up to her, put his hands on her cheeks "Are ya real this time?" He sounded lost, like a man who had been wandering in a desert.
Mandy shrugged flippantly "I dunno." Her voice was completely different- not sweet at all, but nasally and grating to the eye "Do ya want me to be?"
Fiddleford drew away from his wife as if burned. There was shock, then a hot indignation in his chest "Bill!" He gasped.
Mandy Lynne McGucket tilted her had back and laughed and out loud. "Ahahahahaha, aHAHahahaha!" Then her body twisted into her herself, her arms and legs and torso fading away, swirling about her two eyes, which merged into a giant eye. "Eeeyah!" The shape-shifting thing cried excitedly as it's triangular form solidified around it. Such a strange looking creature- flat as a piece of paper, and completely faceless but for a gigantic eye, but still donning a top hat and bow tie.
"Ahhahaha!" The triangle elbowed him in the ribs, "I really got you that time, didn't I, Fizzlefur?"
The cryptozoologist clenched his hangs and beared his teeth "Bill! That was not funny!"
"From your vantage point, maybe!" The triangle said, tipping and putting his arm around the man's neck "But from mine, it was hilarious!" He snapped his fingers and the bedroom at the first floor of the shack was gone, replaced instead by a confused space populated by floating triangles of varying colors and angles.
Fiddleford pushed Bill away "And ya got m'name wrong. Again. Seriously, Bill, ten letters. Fid-dil-ford. How hard is that for you to remember?"
When he looked up, Bill was rapt in the action of beating a paddleball. He caught Fiddleford looking at him at the corner of his eye and pointed at the ball with his free hand. "Fingerfood! Have you tried these babies? Hours of entertainment! Hours!"
Fiddleford groaned and threw his hands up in the air. "Ah give up!" He turned on a heal and walked away from the demon, into the sea of stars and triangles. Maybe if he kept walking, he would wake up...eventually.
"Hey, hey! Pal! Hold up!" An object appeared in front of him- a stop sign in fact, planted into no earth at all, its red, octagonal face at the level of his eyes. It blinked a giant red eye, then morphed into a more pointed, more snappily dressed shape. "Say, Fordie, what's got ya so down?"
Fiddleford crossed his arms and looked away "I'd rather not talk about it, Bill!"
"Okay, now I'm kinda mad!" Bill turned a slight gradient of yellow and red "You don't want me to get all mad!" His shade settled back into the canary yellow color "You called my name, Fiddlestick," Bill pointed out, one hand on his pointed side "you were about to tell me something! So spit it out!"
Fiddleford pursed his lips before pressing his large nose close into Bill's space "I'm not afraida you, Bill."
"Ah, how naive!" Bill sounded absolutely delighted, like when he talked about turning puppies into brain-eating slaves.
He shook his head "For your information, the reason I was callin' you was to see-" he gestured to the space around him "if this was still here!"
Bill's slitted pupil went from right to left. Then he shrugged and stared at Fiddleford, waiting for him to continue.
"I," Fiddleford rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "Truth is, I didn't know if I was dreamin' or not."
"AHahaha!" Bill stretched out his arm to a ridiculous length and hugged him about the shoulder, pulling him close to his triangular brightness "The joys ah dreaming! Don't mosta saps not know the difference? Ya walk into your office and your boss isa dinosaur mada tacos and ya think that's normal!"
Fiddleford pursed his lips "Not my dreams! Come on, Bill, you've been free to roam my dreamscape for what, how many months now? You must have noticed that my dreams are especially realistic! And they don't have anything that doesn't usually appear in my life- except for maybe an oddly colored waterfowl or somethin'."
Bill seemed to become more interested in his nails than what Fiddleford was saying "I guess it is kinda overly detailed in here. I mean!" He flew forward to shove one his sketchy fingers in Fiddleford's face "Look at that! I actually gotta splinter fromma desk! It hurt! Who dreams so detailed the desks have splinters?!"
Fiddleford raised his hand. "So ya have noticed," he said, sounding only slightly vindicated.
"Hey! What are you going to do about my finger?" Bill accused, holding it. Though it had been fine before, now that he was talking about it, it now appeared to be inflamed, red, and throbbing.
Fiddleford considered answering his question, but decided instead to saay, "Bill, I don't how you haven't noticed this yet, but I suffer from a rare condition called vitasomnia. I dunno, maybe you've never met anyone who's had it, in all your demonic years."
"Never hearduvit," Bill was now causing the other fingers on his hand to blow up like balloons, one at a time.
"Well," Fiddleford said, grumbling to himself because Bill was ignoring him "it causes this. Well, not this-" he gestured around the unreal space "you created this. But it causes what I dream to be especially realistic. Matching up with my life. In fact, most' the time, I dream that I spend all night sleeping in my bed."
"I noticed," Bill rolled his eye.
"Right. Well, my dreams are so realistic, that I can't tell my dreams from reality. But the opposite is also true. Sometimes I can't tell whether or not reality is a dream."
"Can't ya just pinch yourself?"
Fiddleford shook his head "Things feel as real for me as they look."
Bill's singular eye opened "Is that so?"
"It is," Fiddleford sighed "the only thing I have to tell the difference is green swans."
Bill tapped his shape under his bow tie "Because swans don't have green plumage in reality..." Bill thought to himself out loud "so if you see one in your dream, you know you're dreaming!"
"Exactly!" Fiddleford let out a relieved sigh.
"So what would happen if some guy dyed a swan green and put it in fronta you in real life?"
Fiddleford frowned "That would be cruel," he said "maybe even dangerous! It's actually nice to see green swans, because if I know I'm dreamin', I can do anythin' I want! But otherwise, I have ta treat every dream like reality. Which can be really frustrating when you don't keep waking up and doing the same things over and over, hopin' this time it will be real!" He smiled, despite what he was saying, "But lately, I've found a better way to tell the difference between dreams'n reality."
"Oh yeah, pal? What's that?"
He pointed to Bill with a smile "You! You always talk to me in my dreams! Do you have any idea what letting you abide in my dreamscape has done for my stata mind?"
"Waita minute!" Bill flew down to McGucket's level "Are ya telling me ya hadda ulterior motive letting me live in here? And I thought you were being generous!" He crossed his arms and honestly looked like he was pouting. How he managed this with just one eye and not any mouth to speak of was anyone's guess.
Fiddleford rolled his eyes and pushed Bill away gently "Ah course I was! At first! You're an amazing creature Bill, and- no. No, that's not right. Bill, you're a gen'leman. A true gen'leman. Ah admit," he shrugged "your sense of humor is- quite skewed! But there is no one in Gravity Falls I consider to be more of a friend." He gave the triangle a pained look "I just should have told ya this sooner. Maybe I didn't realize it at first, but this really is a symbiotic relationship."
"And here I thought I wasa mental parasite." Bill rubbed the back of his triangle self, looking for a moment like an awkward teenage boy, albeit a very weird looking one with a two dimensional triangle for a body.
Fanatically, Fiddleford now shook his head "Nothing could be further from the truth! All ya've done is help me! With my relationship with my son, with my research, with my condition- so many things! You- you're a godsend, Bill."
"Fodderfinch, think about your words," Bill looked at him sideways, which was a very weird experience while talking to a two-dimensional demon "I'ma demon. I'm pretty sure there isn'a single god who sent me."
"No," Fiddleford said, "I know Ah'm right," he frowned "I just wish you'd get m'name right."
"Boy," Bill observed, ignoring his request "ya sure are pleased about all this!"
Fiddleford shrugged "I suppose it's because I'm glad to have my years while I have them. This disease will probably," he sighed "put me in the asylum."
"That sounds like fun!" Bill exclaimed.
"This isn't a joke, Bill!" Fiddleford shot back, with venom "Vitasomnia takes a toll on the mind. After a while your dreams become more unreal, but your reality does too! It happened to m'aunt and it will happen to me." He found a giant triangle, made of some material that mostly looked like wood, to lean on, and shut his eyes. "At this very moment, she's in a hospital in Florida, convinced that the people around her are monsters. She's afraid to eat and she's been force fed for years."
He then cringed "Bill, Ah'm sorry- that was outta line. I shouldn'a dropped that emotional baggage on top of ya..."
Bill just floated down to Fiddleford's level. The demon snapped his fingers, making Fiddleford's leaning wall disappear. Fiddleford struggled with balance for a second before catching it again. Bill flew a couple of circles around the bearded man. "What?" Fiddleford growled, "What is it?" Bill had better not be pitying him. Fiddleford didn't pity himself, he just...well, he wished he dared have a relationship with his son.
"I'm just thinking..."
"That's never good." Fiddleford said dryly.
"Puh-leeze. I'm true gentleman, remember?"
Fiddleford rolled his eyes "I guess I did get pretty enthusiastic with my words back there, Bill." Honestly, what had gotten into him that had made him so ready to be so candid with the demon?
"I thought it was sweet," Bill shrugged even as he was still circling him "of course, you are a giant sap." He stopped in front of Fiddleford's face, above his eye level, so Fiddleford could only see his bottom line.
"Bill, is this indecen' or-?" Fiddleford was just glad Bill wasn't acting like he pitied the cryptozoologist. He let out a sigh of relief.
"Huh? What? You're weird, Funkyfrog."
"Okay," Fiddleford muttered, "that's not even remotely close."
"I was just thinking...with or without me, why even suffer with vitasomnia at all? Why not live a normal life, with surreal dreams like normal people have, that you can tell from your real life?"
Fiddleford rolled his eyes "'Cause it's a mental condition, without a cure, that's why."
Bill floated downward so that he was in front of Fiddleford's face, but only a few inches away, and jauntily floating with his arms akimbo "Pal, you're looking at the cure right here!"
"You?" Fiddleford cocked his head "But, are you even capable of-"
"Sure I am!" Bill cut him off, snapping his fingers. "I'm the Master ah the Mind, pal! All I gotta do is go in there, tinker around a bit, and poof!" Fiddleford gasped and jumped Bill had actually caused himself to explode into yellow glitter, but a second later appeared whole again in the midst of the cloud of his own gore "Normal dreams! And no going crazy later! Whadya say, Flip-Flop?"
Fiddleford ran his fingers through his own beard. To live without this condition- to wake up every morning and now the world around him was real. To actually have fun dreams for once! But most importantly, he wouldn't end up like his Aunt Vi. If only Bill could do this, Fiddleford could have...a future.
He asked "Whadya mean, you 'gotta go in there'? Aren't you already in 'there'?" He tapped the side of his dreamhead. "As in, my mind?"
"You'd think I was!" Bill said, swinging his elbow "But actually, not quite!" He finished proudly. "Honestly, I'm just in the dreamscape. And's great in here! But it's like, the outermost later. Ya see, your mind is like an onion. It STINKS!" He laughed at his own joke, and Fiddleford sighed. Bill went on "Nah, pal, in order to do any real damage, a you gotta let me enter your mind!"
Fiddleford took ahold of his skull "Please don't damage my mind, Bill! I only have one!"
Billy laughed heartily "AHahaha! Not the good parts, pal! I'll just mess with the broken ones! I'll fix them up so you won't have any problems at all!"
Fiddleford grinned excitedly and breathed through his teeth. Oh, oh, how much he wanted this to be true! But...oh, what if Bill couldn't do it? It was, after all, a neurological condition, and not event he best doctors in the world completely understood it. "I just...I dunno, Bill!"
"What? What is it?" His angles sagged "Do ya- do ya not trust me? Come on! After that time I saved your life by telling you about the poison antidote?"
Fiddleford put his hands up "No, Bill, no, it's not that! I'm just...what if you you can't help me?"
"But I can! This is small potatoes for Triangulum!"
"Who?"
"Never mind," Bill said quickly, and took Fiddleford around the shoulders "look, pal, even if I can't, it's not like I'll mess with other parts ah your mind! Just the part that controls your perception ah reality. You can't possibly end up worse!"
Fiddleford screwed up his mouth. He supposed Bill did have a really good point. What did he have to lose by trying? He trusted Bill greatly- it wasn't like the demon would do anything to hurt him. He smiled wide, and his teeth were like stones shining in a forest of hair. "Alright, Bill! I agree! It's a deal!"