Never Trust Your Demons

34

It takes me a second, but I stand up and find myself walking towards the stage.
"Conifer is your name, right?" "Mabel" asks as I come up onstage.
"Er...yeah..." I stammer.
"You appear to be a newcomer," "Dipper" says. "Shall we start with our normal act?" He addresses the audience. "Or shall we... spice it up a bit for Miss Conifer?"
Cheers of approval ring through the crowd.
"Spice it up it is then!" "Mabel" declares as "Dipper" pulls aside a curtain to reveal a large spinning wheel.
Please tell me this isn't what I think it is.
Dipper pulls out a small box with silvery blue daggers. Okay, yeah. Exactly what i thought it would be.
"You all remember the last time we did this?" He asks the crowd, who cheers in response. "Well Mabel here's gotten even better, believe it or not," He chuckles.
"Blindfolded is too easy," She quips. "Try backwards on a moving target!" The crowd cheers again.
Easy for them to say. They're not about to get spun around with knives tossed at them.
"Is it too late to switch to the normal act?" I stammer.
"Don't worry. There aren't any accidents foreseen in this tent tonight!"
Before I can protest, I find myself strapped to the wheel. Dipper spins it a bit and stops it as I go upside down. Mabel ties on a blindfold, then picks up a knife.
"You ready?"
My "No" is drowned out by the audience's cheers
Bill, you're going to pay for getting me into this mess.
"One for practice."
I suddenly find a knife stuck in the wooden target, right between my first and second fingers.
Oh. So that's how close they're going to be. I grimace.
"Here we go!" Mabel turns around and the wheel starts to spin at a fairly quick speed. A knife flies around her side. It wedges itself into the target, just a tad too close to my side.
Another one does the sane on my other side.
"How about two at once?" I gasp as two knives slice towards me at the same time, landing on either side of my neck. One scrapes against my neck, drawing a bit of blood.
"Ooh, that was a bit close!" The wheel begins to spin faster.
"Last one!" Mabel's voice is a tad too cheerful.
The world seems to go into slow motion as the realize this knife is going to hit me square in the forehead. There's no way it will miss me. Just before bracing myself to die, I notice a faint turquoise tinge around the knife.
I hear the crowd's cheers and I dare to open my eyes.
Somehow, I'm alive, and the knife is just above my head as the wheel slows to a stop.
Yeah, way too close.
"Give it up for the Marvelous Mabel!" "Stan" says, the crowd still cheering.
"And our brave volunteer, Conifer!" Dipper unstraps me from the wheel. As quickly as humanly possible, I make my way back to Bill.
"How was that a telepathy performance?" I grumble, sinking down into my seat.
"Probably to show they can see what they're doing behind them with their eyes closed... besides, it's more of a magician show than just telepathy..." Bill seems distracted.
"Hey, don't ask if I'm okay or anything," I mutter sarcastically. "Not like I nearly died or something."
"You weren't gonna die," He sighs. "Reverse Pinetree was watching. He moved the knife out of the way before it actually hit you."
"Huh... I thought these guys would be fake-"
"They are. Those amulets give them telekinetic powers... though I'm not sure how they got their telepathy..."
"Can we go now?" I sigh.
"No!" He exclaims quietly. "I.. uh...The show's still not over yet," he adds hurriedly.
Right. Like he's at all interested in the show.

The show's roughly an hour, longer than I thought it would be.
"Finally, we can go," I sigh. I start towards the exit, but Bill grabs my arm.
"I... I need to check something out." He stammers. He drags me towards an exit with a sign reading "BACKSTAGE: EMPLOYEES AND INVITATION ONLY"
"What do you need back here?"
"I want to see wha-"
"Hey!" A gruff voice behind us startles me. "You aren't allowed back there! Invitations and employees only."
"Sorry," I cut Bill off before he can say anything to the large guard, dragging him towards the exit. "We were just leaving."

I drag him to the woods, hoping that being in the spot we appeared in would make getting home easier.
"Okay, we saw evil, magical Dipper and Mabel. Can we go now?" I plead.
"Not... yet," Bill replies. "I still need to check out that thing backstage."
"But-but you said-" I stammer. "Darn it, Bill! What do I have to do to get you to do anything?!" I sink down, leaning against a tree. "I want to go home!" I pull my hood over my head, pulling the strings so it closes around the bill of my hat. "You know," I mumble. "I'm starting to see why Mabel loves Sweatertown..."
A black gloved finger pokes through the hole, pulling it open. I wish I could deny it, but my heart melts when I see his smile. Not a maniacal or mischievous grin, but a smile. I let him pull my hood down, staring at the ground.
"I can't."
"What?" I look up at him in shock.
"I can't get you back home," He replies, slumping back against the tree again. It's so odd to see him like this, without his confidence and all-knowingness.
"Can't?"
"As in we're stuck here, genius."
"Or won't?" I finish my question.
"'Won't'?!" He stands up, me following suit.
"I said," I repeat. "You can't or won't get me home?"
"I heard you the first time, but what do you mean, 'won't'?!"
"As in, you knew I was desperate for answers, so I was going to ask Dipper about Ford to see if he knew. You still don't want me knowing, especially knowing something from Ford, so you're not letting me back until I make a different deal not to or something!"
"What?! No, Police Box, I don't even know how we got here!" Bill seems both lost in thought and frustrated. "Dimension jumping takes a portal. We somehow dimension jumped without a portal. I can't do that!"
"Obviously you can, because we did!"
"Well, I don't know how!"
"Do what you did before!"
"I don't know what I did before, Connie!" He grabs my shoulders suddenly and shakes me slightly. "I-I don't know..."
He glances away as I stare at him in shock. For one thing, he called me Connie. Not Police Box, Kid or any other nickname he's assigned me. Just Connie. For another thing, he actually sounds scared, and that scares me.