Prologue: I May Not Be Able to Talk, But...
"Just keep vacuuming...just keep vacuuming…."
That's all I know how to say anymore.
The words feel dead and flat on my tongue, like a chewed popsicle stick, but I am afraid of flavor, afraid of feeling anything ever again. Not after...what he did to me. Not after he took my mind and unplugged the wires that connect it with the rest of my body.
Not after he seeped into the cracks in my skin and broke me from the inside.
You would assume it's my husband I'm referring to; who hasn't heard that story before, the story of the wife breaking free of the abusive husband, the story of how that abusive husband put said wife through the most traumatic moments of her life. No, no, that's far from it, that's not who he is...it's my...it's my...son…?
No, I will never call him that. Never again.
No, it's the little demon baby that chewed a hole into my life: Gideon Gleeful.
I have no obligation to call him my son anymore, to squish his pudgy cheeks like I actually care if he's still alive. He has no right to call me his mother, no right to believe that I carried his demented body around in me for nine months, no right to believe that I actually had a hand in creating the black hole that is eating at his brain. I could never imagine something so evil, so twisted, mooching off of my own genes, my own DNA. The thought is disgusting, even though it's true, we are related. His first word was "Mama," and that was what he used to call me, and that was when he was an angel, when I actually thought his baby fat was cute and I thought that taking care of him would turn out to be this heart-changing experience that would be worthy of a John Green novel.
That lasted for three months.
Ever since he stumbled upon Journal #2, when he was only three months and seven days old, it's been "Mother," in that disgusted tone of his, like he has something caught in his fat little throat. The fat little throat that I would now be happy to strangle.
In case you missed something, I want to be clear: I am not his mother.
I am not "Mrs. Gleeful," as everyone calls me. In fact, I'm Burris (or Buddy) Gleeful's sister, not goddamned wife. Whoever marries him, I pity severely. That man has no voice of his own, he is a speaker for Gideon's mind control...but I'm such a hypocrite, aren't I? I haven't said anything but 'Just keep vacuuming' for twelve years, twelve filled with Gideon's hairspray becoming my oxygen and never leaving the house. I don't even know if I can speak anymore.
Yeah, I have a name. It's a name I'd like to forget, but it's there; like that hideous birthmark or mole you never want anyone to see. I find names useless. I'm me, and you're you. Done with conversation. But of course I am the only human who feels this way, so I will introduce myself for your sake: my name is Danelle Obblene Gleeful, and this vacuum has been broken for six years, half as long as I've been stuck in this house, pretending to be married to my own brother and the mother to my power-hungry nephew.
Every time Burris is selling his broken cars and Gideon is off terrorizing children, I look in the mirror. Each time, I see another long streak of gray in my hair, marking another line that Gideon has played with, another time he has called me "Mother." Years ago, I could've yelled at him if I had wanted to. I could've tore every single white hair from that big head of his and stuff it in his mouth. But now, every thought like that has plummeted to the bottom of my stomach, become the bile that I throw up when the rest has run out. If I killed the kid, what would be fulfilled except my own, dirty wishes?
No, no, killing him won't fix anything. That won't fix the fact that my sister ran off with a man who created a portal to another dimension, that won't fix the fucking fact that I'm the only one who remembers that the man who owns the Mystery Shack isn't actually Stanford Pines, and the only one who remembers that Burris and I are related. Yeah, my brother actually thinks he's in love with me, he's tried to make a move on me, he was my first french-kiss. He doesn't know he's in a play, a puppet show that my sister tied the strings of and made the puppets for. If I ever see her again, if I ever see that damned Abrianna Gleeful again, I am going to shove her off the face of the earth and watch her bones break when she hits the bottom.
But now, and maybe forever, I am trapped in this this false reality where every step I take feels like I'm triggering tripwires, tripwires that will create more gray lines in my hair and more wrinkles in my skin. I'm married to my own brother, in love with a man who thinks I don't remember him, and not able to say anything about what I know of this town.
Oh, yes, I know all the secrets of Gravity Falls.
I was the one who watched the author write the journals, I was the one who bought him those journals, and I was the one who stood idly by while him and his cronies innocently began to scatter the pieces of our universe.
I have been vacuuming the same spot of this diamond-printed rug for years. I quickly figured out that no one cared if I moved, no one cared if I was still breathing; so I just stand here, hunching over this vacuum, in the same green smock that I haven't taken off in months, the same one I got married to my brother in. All I think about is how you don't feel things in your heart, but on top of your skin. Every day I relive my past, as I watch Gideon tromp around this town like he knows all the secrets, knows the depth of every face. Since I can't speak anymore, I listen. I listen to him rant about how he is willing to burn to the earth's core in order to get to the Mystery Shack, listen to him mutter the second journal aloud to himself. Pfft. He thinks he know all the secrets of this town? He's not even close.
Before this vacuum gets tired of vacuuming the carpet and starts to want to vacuum me or the gray lines in my hair start to spread to my body, I need to record these secrets and hide them somewhere. Maybe with the man I love, maybe with the rest of the journals that the cursed author wrote.
I won't be able to close my eyes if I know that no one will ever remember.