Dreams Exist At Dis
"Wiiiiiiiirt!" his younger brother yawned out. "I'm tired!"
Wirt looked at his younger brother, Greg. His sibling just happened to yawn out his declaration of sleepiness as they arrived at a clearing. It was an open grassy circle, with a lone pine tree sitting at its center. To Wirt, it was a welcome change from the constant Eldritch trees dotting the path.
"Alright, Greg. We'll sleep here for the night," Wirt said, carrying his brother to the tree. Greg propped himself against his older brother, who had taken a seat and leaned into the trunk. Greg and Wirt watched the night skies, surprisingly cloudless, for a few minutes before Greg began drifting off.
"G'night, Wirt," Greg mumbled, falling into the sandman's embrace.
"Night, Greg," Wirt said, keeping vigilant. He had felt a presence following them ever since the Beast died, his candle extinguished. It never showed itself, dancing and zipping between the trees, but he could always see an eye in the darkness following them. Wirt glanced upwards to where a shooting star was just passing over head. 'I really hope that I'm wrong...' Wirt thought.
"Who's out there?" Wirt called out. There was no echo, as the call quickly faded into silen–
"HELLO THERE PILGRIM! YOU AND KETTLE SEEM FAIRLY LOST! NOT FROM AROUND HERE, ARE YOU?"
"Gah! Wh-Who are you?!"
Wirt stared, startled at the thing in front of him. Glancing down to make sure his brother was still sleeping, Wirt took the pause as a sign to observe the thing that had responded.
It was, in essence, a living triangle. A yellow triangle with a single, reptilian-like eye, a top hat, and arms & legs that seemed to belong in a cartoon. Wirt gripped his cloak tight and shifted his weight so he was in between the Triangle Thing and Greg.
"SORRY, DID I NOT INTRODUCE MYSELF?" the Triangle Thing said-shouted. "I'M BILL CIPHER! I COULDN'T HELP BUT NOTICE HOW YOU GOT RID OF OL' LANTERN HEART!"
Wirt frowned at 'Bill'. "L-Lantern Heart?" he stuttered, still unnerved by the creature. "You m-mean the Beast?"
"YEAH, THAT GUY!" The Triangle said excitedly (despite lacking a mouth). "NOW, LOOK, FOR YOU AND YOUR BROTHER'S EFFORTS, I'VE GOT A DEAL THAT CAN HELP YOU TWO TREMENDOUSLY!"
"A d-deal," Wirt skeptically asked, complete with a raised eyebrow.
"YEAH, A DEAL! LOOK, I CAN HELL YOU AND YOUR LITTLE BROTHER FIND YOUR WAY OUT, BUT IN EXCHANGE, I WANT YOU TO TAKE ME WITH YOU!"
"Really?" Wirt asked, eyes wide. It sounded too good to be true, but after months of traveling the Unknown, he was just about ready to try anything.
"YEAH! SO, HOW ABOUT IT?" Bill asked. He seemed almost jittery, holding out his hand. Wirt stared at the blue-flamed hand, tempting him to agree. Wirt looked beside him, to where his brother continued to sleep in peace.
With resolve, he nodded his head. He looked towards the strange creature (but not the strangest he's seen) and spoke, "Su–"
"Don't do it..."
Wirt stopped his hand, nearly halfway into the Triangle's hand. He could feel the strangely cold flames licking his palm. Startled, he put his hand down and twisted his head, looking in every direction.
"HM? SOMEONE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT?" Bill questioned, throwing his voice into the clearing. "WELL, DON'T BE A SPOILSPORT! COME SHOW YOURSELF!"
In immediate response, a shimmer formed between Bill and Wirt, like a heat puddle. Except that this heat puddle quickly became the shape of a preteen, maybe twelve or thirteen. The kid wore a blue vest over a bright red t-shirt, stained with splotches of dark red that Wirt really hoped wasn't blood. Ripped cargo pants completed the blue-and-white hat wearer off, but the kid was faced towards Bill, so Wirt couldn't see him face. Just the curly brown hair that also happened to have dark red stains.
"Hey there Bill," the apparition greeted. Wirt detected a note of sarcasm in its (his?) voice. "Long time, no see."
"P-P-PINE TREE! IMPOSSIBLE!" Bill cried out. "YOU'RE ALREADY GONE! DEAD!" ''Pine Tree'?' Wirt thought. He looked up at the branches above him. 'Could he be...?'
"You haunted me to the end of the mortal plane. Now, I shall haunt you to the end of this plane," 'Pine Tree' said. Wirt huddle up next to Greg and hugged him, ready to run if need be.
"NO, NO, NONONO! I PROMISE TO BEHAVE PINE TREE!" Bill tried to appease. "I'M SORRY FOR WHAT I DID TO YOU AND SH–"
Pine Tree's fists clenched and his body tensed. "You will not speak her name!" he shouted, pointing at the Triangle.
"OK, OK, I'M SORRY! BUT PLEASE, LET ME LEAVE!" Bill cried desperately. The Triangle's cartoonish hands were held together, pleading to Pine Tree.
"No, Bill. You will leave these children alone, and you will never leave," the apparition declared. It folded its arms over its chest to show it was serious.
"YOU...YOU...YOU MORTAL!" Bill shouted, his eye glowing red with rage. He floated upwards above the ghostly image, fear and pleading turning to anger and shouting. "YOU THINK YOU CAN COMMAND ME?"
Bill spread his hands out, and grew ten times his size. Wirt shrunk back in fear, but Pine Tree didn't even so much as flinch. "A DREAM DEMON?" the Triangle questioned.
"Yes," Pine Tree answered, bursting with confidence.
The apparition spread his arms, like he was about to give someone a hug, and began chanting, "Em morf enalp siht!"
The forest clearing glowed blue at the preteen's words. Blue electricity crackled around the tree, but never touched it. It did, however, find its way to Bill, who once again recoiled in fear."NO!" Bill cried out, backing away."STOP THAT THIS INSTANT!"
Bill attempted to run away (or was it float away?). But when the supposed 'dream demon' reached the edge of the clearing, he bounced off of an invisible wall. The 2D shaped turned around, his eye looking around wildly, trying to find an exit.
But Pine Tree would not let him leave.
"Fo dne etisoppo eht no nomed siht hsinab!" the ghost chanted out, his arms raised far above his head. Bill hissed like a cat getting soaked as an enormous bolt or blue lightning kept out of the ground and struck him
"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Bill cried out. His form began to dissipate, like mist in the heat. The yellow triangle continued to evaporate until there was nothing left. Wirt looked on in awe as the ghost's shoulders slumped in exhaustion. The blue light of the grass circle began to fade.
"Sorry about Bill. He and I have a...complicated relationship," the ghost said without turning around.
"I-It's fine." Wirt assured him. "So, you're P-P-Pine Tree?"
Pine Tree turned around to face Wirt, and the living boy's heart crept up into his throat. The preteen looked like he had walked out of a horror novel. While his right eye was perfectly fine, the ghost's left eye was a bloodied mess, with no trace of the blue iris of the healthy eye. Scars littered up and down the boy's face and neck, along with bruises and what looked like teeth marks. Like his name, there was a light blue pine tree embroidered on his hat, completely untouched by the red stains around it.
Wirt felt his heart go out for whatever trauma the kid went through.
"Yeah. Bill tortured me and my sister a long time ago. In a sick twist of fate, when we moved on to the Unknown, he was dragged along with us," Pine Tree explained, holding up his right arm. Upon closer inspection, Wirt saw a line of stitched around the other kid's wrists, like someone sawed off his hands and then put them back on.
"Is th-that why h-h-he can't g-get out?" Wirt stuttered, very unnerved by Pine Tree's appearance.
"Not on his own, yeah," Pine Tree confirmed. "Sorry about my body. This is how I looked when I moved here, so this is how I stayed." Pine Tree brushed his hair out of the way, and Wirt saw what looked like a birthmark on his forehead.
"So, y-you're, uh, sister?" Wirt asked. After a moment of silence, Wirt quickly sputtered out, "S-Sorry! Sorry. Didn't mean to b-be ru–"
"Don't be sorry. It's not your fault. Her and I were called Pine Tree and Shooting Star. As such, when we came here, I embodied a pine tree, while Mabel became a shooting star," the tortured soul said, pointing up. Wirt looked up, beyond the pine tree's branches (we're they his arms? Could they feel?) and saw a shooting star again, following the same path as the last time he saw it.
"So that's...?" Wirt trailed off.
"Mabel, yeah. I'm Dipper. Pleased to meet you," the newly named 'Dipper' greeted.
"Well...is there any way I c-can repay you?" Wirt asked. He didn't want Dipper's deed to go in rewarded.
Dipper put his hand to his chin, adopting a thinking pose. "Yeah..." he said after a while, "there is one way."
Dipper looked towards the tree and snapped his fingers. Above his brother (oh god, Wirt forgot about his own brother in the mess of things), a hole in the tree silently formed. Within the wooden cubby was a number of things, including three books, a fez, glasses, a sweater, and some other mundane things. The branches (so they are like his arms) moved inwards and gingerly picked up the small red fez and the broken glasses, depositing them in Dipper's outstretched hand.
"Here. These items belonged to two very close friends of mine. Please see to it that they leave this wretched place," Dipper said.
"Of c-course! Thank you!" Wirt said, bowing his head a tad to his ghostly savior.
"No, thank you," Dipper said. "Now, sleep. My sister and I shall watch over you two until morning. Make sure to take care of your brother."
Wirt nodded in agreement. He shuffled over to his brother and leaned his head against the tree. "Good night, Dipper," he whispered to the dissipating apparition.
"Good night, Pilgrim," Dipper's bodiless voice whispered into the night.
The End
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A/N: Okay. This was something very new for me. I've never written something dark like this, and have only occasionally dabbled in Gravity Falls things (scrapped works). The 'Over the Garden Wall' fandom is completely out of left field, even for me, the writer. I wrote this because I thought it would be interesting, especially how I decided to go about it.
What makes this fanfiction a lot different from any of my other works is how I planned it. The first thing I got was my storyline: who's in it, how it would play out, et cetera. What I did next was something new, that I encourage other people who want to write a one-shot to try. I wrote out all of my dialogue that I knew what going to be included on separate lines. I edited the grammar, got the bold and italics down, and generally got a feel and flow for the story using just dialogue on every other line.
After that, I just filled it in with description. For anyone wondering, the stuff in parentheses is Wirt's thought process, not his actual thought monologues. I went through a few titles making this, including 'Death Isn't Everlasting' and 'Tormented Adventure' before settling on 'Dreams Exist At Dis'. The first title's capital letters spelled out DIE, and if you took out 'mented Adven' from the second title, you got 'Torture'. I settled on this one because I like would it can represent.
Now, the AU this is set in is new, but not original. I read 'A World of Beasts' by Whiggity (go check his story out!) and Thorouhly enjoyed the prospect of the Unknown being very distorted when it comes to time and space. So, for the record, Wirt & Greg and Dipper, Mabel, & Bill are from two different times. But time in the Unknown is just a relative thing.
Other than that...the torture. Yeah, I've never actually tried 'dark themes' and wanted to try it. I'm planning on putting in dark themes and concepts in a Minecraft story I'm working on, so I experimented here. Tell me if I did good.
Please, read & review. Thanks!
~Slenderbrine
Word Count: 1,719