The Lemon Meringue Boy

Part 15

What I saw had a faint trace of Bill, the bricks, the hat, the one eye, but his wrists were in chains. His ankles too. They stretched his arms and legs apart and continued on into the infinite abyss.

 That wasn't even the most sickening part. He was melting. Bits of him seeming to rot off and fall to the floor below in a puddle, and every once in a while he would glitch out, his features distorting in a spatter of rectangles. He looked up. His eye was dripping too, the whites streaked down his face like wet paint, his pupil split and runny like a raw egg yolk. Despite the seeming torture, the look he gave me was one hundred percent satisfaction. My disgust and fear left me all at once when I saw it, leaking nothing but rage in their place. 

"Aren't you supposed to be DEAD Bill?!?!" I shot at him. He looked at me with mock offense.

"Geesh, good to see you too kid." I ignored his obnoxious sarcasm. His voice seemed strange, like an old film with bad sound quality. My head was still spinning. How was he there? How was this possible?

"We defeated you last time, didn't we?" I couldn't believe this. I was just talking to him like a normal person. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!

"Sure looks like it doesn't it? Funny." He looked down and made a show of surveying himself, his dripping bricks shifting and dropping even more of himself on the floor. 

I was fed up with his mind games. He was going to explain himself. I had the upper hand. I would pester him until his stupid voice and stupid little self begged for mercy.

"Then why are you still here?!" Bill looked at me with such a condescending eye that I wanted to strangle him right then and there.

"Looks like Mr. Braniac needs to hit the books." I looked at him questioningly. He sighed like what he has just said was something any normal person would understand.

 It actually took me a while to figure out it was a sigh. It sounded like television static and auto tune had a baby. If he wasn't an evil psychopath I might've felt sorry for him. He was really messed up. 

"It's the law of conservation of energy kid. You heard of it? It means energy can't be created or destroyed. We got that so far Pine Tree?" He talked slow like I was a kindergartner learning the alphabet. I just glared at his ugly dripping face. 

"Great. Let's get into the fun part now, kay kid? When my two dimensional and three dimensional forms were destroyed, my conscience and energy force was the only thing left of me and was left in the hands of the Court of Divine Forces. You know, the guys who make all the big decisions. They originally wanted to get rid of me altogether. I'd pretty much broken every single rule of space time and also, you know, killed one of them. Heh. Good times. Now that I think about it that was probably a factor. The problem was that one little scientific law, so the final decision was to chain me in this lovely little void and leave me to rot and eventually implode upon myself when my life force is deemed useless to the universe. And don't think I don't love it here." 

He tried to seem calm but under his collected expression his eye burned with cold fury. I stared at him in shock. He didn't seem to realize he had just told me a lot of heavy shiz. I guess being trapped in a void for a whole summer not able to do or hear or see anything or anyone while you rot on puddles of yourself can do something to a guy. I once read about sensory deprivation tanks that basically do the same thing except for the rotting part, and after being in there for a little more than an hour a person, or demon for that matter, can get permanently traumatized. 

Something about this really creeped me out. In my previous encounters with Bill he was always aloof. Always reluctant to be direct. Now all I did is find him here and he spilled his guts. He must have been desperate for someone to talk to. That punishment... it was inhumane. 

Suddenly I was hit with the reality of what I was doing. I was sympathizing with him. The realization struck me like a bullet. Inhumane. I did think it was inhumane. The thing about that was that Bill wasn't human. He was a heartless demon. He was corrupt. He only cared for himself. His revolution destroyed his own dimension and everyone that cared about him. He destroyed the town. He tortured my Uncle Ford on too many occasions to count and made Stan lose his memory. Heck, he almost killed Mabel, my sister, my right brain. If he had his way, the world would be destroyed and peace would not exist. 

"Oh, one more thing fleshbag. Whadaya think of my spooky voice? You like it?" 

No. it was him! That was the last straw. I couldn't stand one more second of this psychopathic demon who should have never bothered me again. Gravity Falls sacrificed everything to get rid of him. It couldn't be for nothing.

"You know Bill, I don't want to get in the way. I bet the Divine Force Committee or whatever knows what they're doing. Heck, my life sure is better with you gone. I'll bet anyone who's ever met you would say the same. For all I know, this is a dream. A sick, twisted dream about a hell bound demon risen from the dead. He should have never been seen again but no, he has to show up and ruin everything our town worked for again and make it all pointless. Looking like this no less." I gestured to his dripping complexion. 

"I could leave you know. Leave this all behind me. Wake up and leave you chained here forever. Or gone. You could be gone forever and this never actually happened and I would never know the difference. Time for me to quiz you on my favorite scientific theory. Ever heard of Schrödinger's Cat?" He just watched me with a smug patience that made me think he was up to something.

 "So do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to wake up. I'm going to leave this place forever. You'll stay here and do your imploding or whatever and I'll go about my business without having to deal with you and your stupid little mind games ever again!" 

I expected, hoped, to see fear or sadness or even anger in Bills expression when I looked up. What I saw, to my dismay, was a violent brand of amusement in his dripping eye, like a child knocking down a tower of blocks. He chuckled to himself. Softly at first, but slowly it built upon itself, louder and louder until it formed that laugh. Bill's signature laugh that I'd always despised. 

It crackled and glitched to accommodate his pitiful state. The sound once again bounced around off walls that didn't exist. His laugh was everywhere, overwhelming me until I fell to my knees. I pressed my hands against the sides of my head, trembling and praying the pain away. 

With my brain still fried by the strange electric charge of the hellish sound, it finally stopped. I looked up at Bill, his eye still glinting with his inside joke that was apparently so hilarious. My eyes shot flaming daggers of rage as I scowled up at him. What he said next was not at all what I was expecting. It was one word. One word was all he needed.

"Try."