The Unknown

7

“Say Bill,” Dipper began as he pushed open the door to the Mystery Shack, holding it open for Bill to go first, “why do you wear the jar containing my soul around your…body?”

“It’s called ‘style’–look it up some time,” Bill replied as he passed, giving the other a glare brimming with sass.

“Come on, I’m serious! Shouldn’t you have eaten it like a long time ago?”

“First of all, demons eating souls is a myth usually not practiced,” Bill explained, following Dipper into the kitchen. “I mean, there are some exceptions for the oddball demon, but that’s a huge stereotype. Second of all, I prefer my souls aged before eating them and yours is barely a decade old (the best souls tend to be the ones left to wander purgatory for many centuries. If you reach millenniums, you’ve gone too far.)” Dipper smiled as he poured himself a glass of Mabel Juice that his sister had made fresh before they fought the tangle. He pulled up a chair at the table and rested his chin in his hands, sipping on the glittery drink with a dreamy gaze in his eyes. He and Bill clearly had weirdness in common and that’s really all he could have asked for in a relationship. “And third, I like your soul. It’s blue and that matches my hellfire flames, don’t you think?” Bill boasted flamboyantly, igniting his hand for comparison. Before Dipper had the chance to respond, Bill continued. “Oh right, you’re colour blind–you wouldn’t know bismuth from bronze,” he shrugged and extinguished the fire.

“Speaking of which, how do you know I can’t see colour? Do souls have an effect on colour vision?”

“Uh, duh. Geez, I thought you were the smart twin, why with all the questions? You’re just like Shooting Star.” Bill sat opposite of Dipper, hovering above the seat of the chair so that he was eye-level with the other.

“I like hearing you talk,” he admitted. “You know pretty much everything, and I mean, wow dude, listening to you explain things is straight up fascinating!” The smile on Dipper’s face grew wide and he let out a small squeak of excitement. “Sure I guess I could figure things out on my own but I just…sorta like it better coming from you.”

“Well, it’s been fun, kid, I’ve gotta admit,” Bill said with uneasy acceptance. There was no denying the warm, soft feeling at his core for Dipper. Pine Tree was his now and if he wanted to spoil the kid, then really what harm could it do? After all, he already had his most precious possession and could rip his conscious away at any time if he wanted to so it couldn’t really be that big of a deal. “A big step up from spending my weekends changing intestines to snakes.” But still, there was the nagging feeling in the back of the demon’s mind where knew he was setting himself up for disappointment. He had accepted Dipper’s impending death, but there were further consequences he knew he would be facing quite sooner down the road. “And that’s a pretty good time, if I do say so myself.”

“What do you do on the weekdays?” Dipper asked, glancing away and then back to Bill with a look of worry.

“Glad you asked! Usually I’m making deals with unsuspecting kids desperate for answers. Or mixing hydrogen fluoride into people’s bathwater, whichever comes first.”

“Wow, rude,” Dipper grumbled and took a sip of his juice.

“You think you’re the only brainiac kid who’s obsessed with mystery? Pfft, I once knew this six-fingered freak dumb enough to open a portal directly into my home dimension. Hm, I guess he was a bit older than you, though, come to think of it,” Bill reminisced. “It’s been like thirty years and I haven’t been back since. Got out of there the first chance I got,” Bill declared, slamming a fist down on the table and casting his glare out the window. A hateful surge of red flared up in him and then quickly dissipated, regaining his guise of composure. “There’s havoc to be wreaked elsewhere besides that boring place,” he promptly added. “So I don’t know, he’s probably dead or something. Maybe his eyes boiled out of their sockets or his brain disintegrated the moment he came through. Humans need their brains to live, right?”