Disremembered Tales

Chapter 6

Marco stood outside the house with a blank face. He'd offered to go out and look for supplies, but it was only so that he could see how Dipper, Mabel, and Star would act once they thought they were alone. Marco wasn't an idiot; he could tell when people were hiding things from him and Star was hiding something from him. It had to do with Dipper and Mabel. They told him that they only knew Star, and that they had met from some adventure that Star had gone on without him. But Star took him everywhere; they were nearly inseparable.

Or so he had thought.

But there was more than that. Something that had been on his mind ever since he came across the two kids in the burning castle. Mabel had recognized him when she first saw him in the Castle.

She called you by your name.

The voice whispered in his head and Marco froze. That wasn't something that you knew about someone just by being friends with Star. Marco had troubling remember people's names, even after meeting them multiple times. They weren't just hiding things from him; they were straight up lying to him.

Marco sighed. Maybe this was all in his head; maybe he was reading into things that weren't there. Ever since the worlds merged, he'd had horrific nightmares. They usually played on his emotional insecurities, but some of them were more... physical. One of Marco's worst nightmares was Star lying to him. She would tell him that none of it had been real and that she was just dating Marco to get Tom jealous. It wasn't something he ever imagined she would do to him, but part of his nightmare had become a reality. If she was lying about this, what else was she lying about? Did Star ever have feelings for Marco, or was he just being used?

He was supposed to be happy.

He was supposed to be happy.

The lines kept running through his head and it only made him angrier. He was supposed to be happy. Marco had helped Mewni defeat Mina and he finally managed to get the girl of his dreams, but now nothing felt real.

Marco couldn't stay here any longer. Not just because it was making his existential crisis worse, but because they would all be suspicious if he came back empty handed. There was sure to be plenty of empty houses with stocked pantries.

He passed three houses before deciding on the brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac. He could hear sounds from inside the first houses, human or monster he could not tell but he thought it best to avoid any confrontation in general.

The front door was slightly ajar and Marco carefully opened it all the way and stepped inside. He flipped the light switches, but the power must've been cut because nothing happened. Marco fingered the flash drive in his pocket that contained Star's speech. It wouldn't be very useful if no one had the ability to watch it.

Marco's hope for food quickly dwindled when he saw that people had obviously been here before him. In times of a global crisis, humans had a tendency to get chaotic. It looked like a tornado had gone through the living room. Even the couch was flipped over a shattered TV.

The kitchen wasn't in much better condition. It looked like there had been a fight here; there were small blood stains on one of the walls and cereal was scattered all across the floor. Marco checked the pantry and it was completely cleared out. Next, he checked out the refrigerator. An ungodly smell overwhelmed Marco and he shut the door as quickly as he could. It was too late though and he gagged as the acidic smell of rotten milk made his eyes water.

Whatever was in there was not safe anymore, Marco decided, this house must've lost power a long time ago for things to have gone that bad.

The next two houses that Marco checked yielded similar results; trashed rooms and empty kitchens. Marco's stomach growled. He could keep doing this for hours and never find anything edible. There wasn't much he could do about it, though, he'd been hiding away in the castle for days while everyone else stocked up on as much food as they could find.