A/N: Prologue for what's gonna be a hot mess of a multi-chapter. This prologue centers around Stan, which makes you go "What, I thought this was Kenny and Butters!", but, dear reader, it is! It'll make sense later. But you have the option of not reading this and just reading the rest. It'll still make sense, but this prologue brings about a more enjoyable experience (would you eat your spaghetti dinner without the tomato sauce? Yeah, I thought so).
Also, if you're familiar with musical group Boards of Canada, you might notice the title of this fanfiction and the titles of coming chapters, are named after Boards of Canada's album "The Campfire Headphase" and the album's songs respectively. I'm not affiliated with BoC at all, I just love their music.
Disclaimer: South Park belongs to Matt Stone and Trey Parker. I'm not affiliated with Boards of Canada either.
Campfire Headphase
Prologue: Campfire Headphase
Stan's peering through his dusty glasses at the coffee machine, which is dripping sweet-smelling translucency at regular intervals into its pot. A thin layer of dust shrouds the exterior; it was only really clean at the area behind the handle, where knuckles scraped it on a daily basis. He's staring at the machine in an awkward position, leaning against the countertop with his head propped on his hands, his behind sticking out as if it was perfectly second nature. His eyes are fixated to somewhere beyond the coffee machine; he sees double because it's out of focus. He doesn't bother to shift it back; his mind is not on the coffee.
Stanley Marsh is twenty-five years old. Only a smidge more than a quarter of his life has gone by, and already he feels bent out of shape and tired of all life has to offer. The romantic drama novels had said love was life's greatest event. The autobiographies written by bullshit-sputtering politicians had said education was the key to the future. The philosophy books had said life had meaning beyond what most saw in it. The books lied.
And all his spouse Wendy can do is sputter on about how Stan should be coming up with a new novel already; he's a terrific writer, and Wendy is so glad to have married such an intelligent man. Yet Wendy hates him on some nights with every fibre of her being, and threatens to leave him, taking 2-year old Kingsley with her. Some nights Stan feels like telling her to go ahead instead of consoling her like he always does. But he could never tell her to just go ahead. Divorces are far too much paperwork.
The coffee machine's low hum of machinery at work comes to a sudden halt as the switch flicks itself off with a 'click' that's in sync with the hum's stopping. Stan shifts the two coffee machines back into focus, and it is one again. He blinks slowly. Eyelid to bag, to top of eye again. He gets out of his awkwardly rigid position and realizes his back is stiffly sore now. He thinks little of it, and readies a mug.
Just as he lifts the coffee pot away from his now three-quarters full cup, he hears stomping and the floorboards and the cupboards vibrate simultaneously. The stomps are quickening and definitely raising in decibel. It's all the calm before the storm, which Stan realizes, when the cause of it all storms into the kitchen in a flurry.
Wendy Marsh. Maiden, Testaburger. Formerly the flagrant, environmentally active sweetheart of South Park, Colorado. Stan does not remember feeling particularly prideful when he had achieved the goal of being wed to her, the dream of many a man in the town, but something in the back of Stan's mind tells him he must have, or at least verbally displayed it, else Wendy would have chastised him their wedding night.
"Stanley Marsh!", she exclaims all up in a dander, "I'm sick and tired of our mailbox being riddled by complaints from readers! Whatever did you write in your last work to get them so worked!". She huffs after this, emphasizing how so terribly sick and tired she is. Stan had watched this whole scenario with his mug at his lip; his process of taking a test sip was interrupted by his wife's intrusion on his once-quiet morning.
He removes the mug from his lip so his speech won't be muffled. Without missing a beat, "I killed the main character", he murmurs, his level of interest notable in his lack of volume and tone. Wendy's expression displays disbelief for a moment, and is for once at a loss of words. Finally, she comes to.
"Wh- Stanley! The main character in that long-running series of yours! You just killed him off!", Wendy's voice is lathered in shock and anger, and Stan imagines that if she were to furrow her brows just a bit more, she would pop a blood vessel from all that pressure on her eye socket. He decides answering her question is too much of a hassle, so he doesn't. Instead, he decides the kitchen is now quite monotonous of a surrounding and wants to be in front of his computer instead.
Stan shuffles his feet slowly and ambles out of the kitchen, not blinking once through bags and all. From his peripheral vision, Wendy looks sorely appalled from Stan's lack of disinterest in his career - what's holding up the Marsh household - and how it appears that he thinks he's too good for such a conversation, because that's what it is.
With his back to the direction of the kitchen, he can hear Wendy sputtering nonsense about how it's his fault Kingsley can't go to private school, and it's his fault that they have to live on the poor side of town. Nothing he hasn't heard before, of course. Once in his study, it's only a matter of seconds before the muffled tangent from a few rooms away comes to a complete halt and all that's heard thereafter is Wendy's final scream of frustration before the slam of a door, and then the silence Stan's waited for, for a long, long time.
He swishes the mouse around to get rid of the screensaver, and then sits himself down on the worn pleather. His desktop wallpaper of the default rolling hills flickers on and it hits him like an instant relief. He opens Microsoft Word with a click-click. He goes into 'open' and digs out the vaguely named "work" file. It flashes open to reveal what Stan's really been working on this past recent. Even going as far as practically ending his series he was made famous for, so he could devote his time to writing it.
He begins to skim his work over for spelling or grammatical errors; Stan never did trust spellcheck.
The Biography of Kenny McCormick
By Stanley R. Marsh
Kenny was born into poor family in South Park, Colorado to Stuart and Carol McCormick and was the middle child of three children, along with his elder brother Kevin, and younger sister Karen...