Chapter 3: Survival
Stanley wakes up the next morning with his head pounding, his face to the side with a puddle of drool that smelled heavily of alcohol underneath his cheek.
Groggily he lifts his head up from the table, him groaning from the sunlight that shown brightly in the window. He gets up and rummages through the fridge, all that was there was pitiful amounts of condiments and rotting food. It seemed Stanford didn't eat much…
Grumbling, Stanley grabs his pathetically thin winter coat, a newly sewn patch over where it had burned through, and puts it on. He pulls the hood over his brown hair and looks around to find the keys to the house. He finds them and stuffs it in his pocket as he walks out, locking the door behind him.
He decided not to drive his car, as it already had very little gas in it, and he needed whatever money he even had on him to buy some sort of food. Slowly he walks through the snow, the cold barely bothering him as he was used to it. The snow that fell gently fell from the sky reminded him of New Jersey and how he and Stanford would build snow forts by the beach and have snowball wars.
He finally makes it to the small town, him pulling his hood tighter around his head as people looked at him oddly. He looked around at the shops, seeing if anything resembled a grocery store but he saw nothing. Cold and hungry Stanley finally makes it to a small minimart, a small line in there already. Not particularly care what he wanted to get he grabs a small loaf of white bread and waits in line with the rest of the people.
Finally it was his turn and he sets the bread on the counter, the older woman ringing it up. "Just the bread, then, there stranger?" the woman asked. Stanley does a small nod. "That'll be ninety-nine cents."
Stanley goes into his much worn out coat and fiddles through his pockets. All he managed to pull out a packet of sugar, a paper clip, a bunch of lint, and a peso coin from his time in Columbia. He sighs as he was about to tell her to put it back and that he couldn't afford it when another woman calls out, "Hey, that's no stranger. That must be the mysterious guy that lives in the woods!"
People start to gather around Stanley, who pulled his hood up more over his head. "Uh, n-no, no. You've got the wrong guy." He tried to explain.
"I've heard strange stories about that old shack," an odd sounding man interjected.
A young African-American man with a mustache then says, "Yeah! Mysterious lights and spooky experiments."
An old man then stands next to the woman behind the counter. He must've been her husband and they ran the shop together. "Gosh, I'd pay anything to see what kind of shenanigans you get up to in there." The old man admitted.
The woman who said that he wasn't a stranger then asked, "Oh, me too! Do you ever give out tours?"
"No. Really I-" Stanley stammered as he looks at his hand. He sighs, maybe thinking this wasn't a bad idea. "Yes, I do give tours!" he announces proudly, a smile on his face. "Ten… nah-no… fifteen bucks a person!"
The crowd begins to cheer and take out money when the same woman again asked, "Sir! What did you say your name was, you man of mystery?"
"Oh, uh, Stan…ford. Stanford Pines." Stanley lied, thinking he can't use his real name.
He had led them to the house that was his brother's in the woods. Even though he didn't know what over half of the stuff was he tried to play it off like he knew. Although there was an incident where the woman that asked a lot of questions, which he found out her name was Susan, where her eye got effected by one of the devices Stanley showed, people thought he was funny when he shows off a skeleton saying it was tourist that died on the last tour.
As the people left he had counted the money he collected from them He made over fifty dollars just for showing off weird things. After what he had seen with the portal and through Stanford's journal, he believes that the town of Gravity Falls is crazy, but not many people knew about what was happening in the woods around them.
Stanley gives a smirk, finally coming up with a plan. As a conman, this was going to be his biggest yet, and he had to play it out perfectly. He decided he would stay in Gravity Falls, Oregon, by day doing a business and by night try to fix the portal and bring his brother back. But he had to do a few things first…
He found leftover wood and paint around the house, no doubt from its construction, and starts making signs. The name he decided to call his little business was the "Murder Hut", so in big red letters he writes that with his terrible handwriting. He starts making signs and sawing parts of them off to make them look like arrows, each read "Step right up!" in black letters. Other signs red in capital red letters "NO REFUNDS". All around the woods he placed the signs, and whatever junk he found in the house he three together to make some sort of attraction.
After a week or two being there, he managed to get enough money to pay off the bills that was being sent to the house, him pretending to be Stanford. With the leftover money Stanley went and bought a beater car that looked very similar to his own, still putting it under the name Stanley Pines. He managed to scrape together something to resemble a body and puts it in the driver seat, not buckling it up. Stanley knew how to mess with cars, so he cuts the lines to the breaks, so the car couldn't stop. He starts up the car and puts it in neutral and he starts to push it down an abandoned road.
For an hour he pushed the car until he found a suitable cliff.
"Goodbye, Stanley Pines," he mutters to himself. "Not like you were good for anything anyway…" he then grunts as he pushes the car, watching it tumble down the cliff side, the windows shattering and the metal denting. Finally, it lands at the bottom, smashed to pieces. For good measure Stanley went back to the house, grabbed some gasoline and matches, and went back to the site of the crash, driving his car a certain way to make it look like he was drunk when he "crashed".
Slowly he climbs down the cliff, careful not to spill the gasoline he had. Once he was down he starts pouring the gasoline, covering most of the car and managing to get it on the fake body as well. Quickly he ignites and match and throws it onto the car, a flame bursting into life and starting to engulf the car at a much quicker pace than Stanley had expected.
"Shit!" he screams as he runs as fast as he could, taking the long way to climb the cliff to his car. Just as he made it to the top the car explodes beneath him, shaking the ground. He peeks over to see the flaming car, it slowly turning into a charcoal black. "I gotta get outta here…" he mumbles as he gets in his car and begins to drive away, but not before he threw his original license that bared his true name out the window and it lands on the edge of the cliff. Already sirens were being heard in the distance.
The next day there was a phone call, to which Stanley answered cautiously, "Hello?"
"Is this Stanford Pines?" a gruff sounding voice on the other line asked.
"Yes," Stanley answered automatically. "This is he speaking."
"Do you have time to come down to the station right now…?" the voice asked. "There was a car accident last night, a car went off the side of the cliff, most likely drunk. There was a license at the scene stating the name 'Stanley Pines'. Are you two related?"
"He… is my twin brother," Stanley lied flawlessly. "Why… do you think it was him?"
"We need you to come and identify the body, Mr. Pines." The gruff voice states and before Stanley could say anything else the phone was hung up on the other side.
"So far so good…" Stanley whispers as he puts on his coat. He goes to put on his dirty knitted hat when he realized he still had his long hair. They wouldn't believe that he was Stanford if he didn't look semi-presentable… He goes through the various drawers that were around the house and finds a pair of scissors. With a deep breath he starts cutting off a lot of his hair, the strands falling to the ground. It looked very choppy and disheveled, but he figured he'd go to the barber in town later or tomorrow to get it fixed to look a little neater.
Again he didn't drive his car, especially after he used a car that looked similar to his to crash it. It took him about fifteen minutes to get into town, him going straight to the police station. His heart pounded as he walked in, for the first time in his life him going into a police station willingly without being in handcuffs. The receptionist at the counter looked at him as he walked in.
"Uh, hello, my name is Stanford Pines," Stanley lied casually. "I had a call about-"
"Yes, we were expecting you." She replied with monotone. "Just step to the left and someone will come for you and ask you a few questions."
Stanley tried to not look nervous. "Alright…" he complies, going to where she told him to. Someone was there and lead him to a small room, a room he was familiar with actually.
"Have a seat, Mr. Pines." The man that led him told him, the man wearing a suit and tie. Stanley sits down, his hands starting to sweat. "On the phone you said Stanley Pines was your twin brother?"
"That's correct." Stanley confirms.
"Do you know why he was here in Oregon?" the suited man asked him.
"I have no clue…" Stanley answers. "Maybe he wanted to do a surprise visit. We hadn't spoken each other in a while."
The man then sighs, "Was your brother an alcoholic? The way the car was driven it looks as if he was drunk."
Stanley shrugs. "I've known him to have a few drinks, but a full out alcoholic I don't know."
The man then gets up and then gestures a hand for Stanley to get up. He then lead Stanley to a small morgue and opened a cabinet. The man pulls out a tray and removes the blanket, asking Stanley to identify it, which he complied saying it was "Stanley Pines". Papers were brought to Stanley and he fills them out, saying that he identified the body and that Stanley Pines was officially dead.
Stanley made it back to the house and he goes immediately into the kitchen and took a shot of the other whiskey he had found the other night. After he was satisfied he goes into the small storage room at the end of the house, it having a small twin bed he put in there and a desk. The other day after he made some money he went to the local thrift store and bought a few things of clothes, including a few dress shirts and ties, and he even found an old looking maroon fez.
On the ties he had sewn question marks into them with the little embroidery skill he had. He almost did it with the fez, but he decided against it. Stanley goes through Stanford's journal and found a page that had a wheel drawn, a triangle in the center with what looked like a top hat and one eye. Surrounding the triangle was various symbols, such as a pine tree, a shooting star, a llama…
"That's weird…" Stanley mutters as he noticed the six-fingered hand symbol, his heart suddenly aching as it reminded him of his brother. He then saw a symbol that looked like a crescent shape. "Huh… that looks neat…" and that was the design he sewed onto the fez, a pale gold in the center of it. He places it on his head, thinking that it oddly fit him very well. He looks in his standup mirror, him wearing a pale yellow dress shirt with a red tie with the yellow question marks, his fez proudly on his head.
As of that moment, he was officially no longer Stanley Pines, but going by the identity of Stanford Pines.
He then goes to a fairly large room that he had started to transform into a show room, it already having various "attractions" that he made up. He goes around to adjust a few things to make sure everything was straight and alright. A sound from outside makes him go to the window, a few cars that were traveling through town noticing his signs.
The man then opens the door and greets, "Welcome to the Murder Hut! My name is Stan Pines, but you can call me Mr. Mystery!"
"Pardon me?"
Ford was shocked that Layla knew who Bill Cipher was. He gives her a confused look, trying to play it off that he really didn't know.
"Don't play dumb, Ford." Layla groans. "Obviously Cipher wants you for something, and you were running. So, why does he want you?"
Ford sighs, "When I was studying in Gravity Falls, Oregon, I met him. He tricked me into building this portal that is a hole in our dimension. It was a way so he could get a physical form on Earth."
Layla's eyes widened. "You're from Gravity Falls?" she asks him in awe.
"What?" Ford cried out, surprised she knew about it. "Um… actually I'm from Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey…"
"But you've lived in Gravity Falls!" Layla cries out. "So, you've seen the gnomes… the unicorns… all those strange things!"
"I'm a scientist that studies anomalies…" Ford explains, him looking at the woman oddly. "Are… are you from Gravity Falls?" he asks her, now curious.
She nods enthusiastically. "Yes, my dad and I lived there." She tells Ford. "My dad was a doctor… he was trying to do stem cell research, he wanted to help people like me or amputees get limbs back… he studied around the oddities, seeing if their cells could help with his research."
Ford then narrows his eyes. "Wait a minute… a doctor on stem cell research… Bartek…" he then looks at her, his brown eyes widening. "You're the daughter of Dr. Bartholomew Bartek…? The insane doctor that kidnapped homeless people, cut off their limbs and tried to grow them back? One of the most unethical doctors from the late sixties?"
Layla flinches, wrapping her arms around herself. Slowly, she nods, her face looking like it got paler. She then walks to the edge of the room, peeking between some boards to see outside. After a moment she walks back to Ford.
"Yes… he did do all of that…" Layla whispers. "But… you don't understand-"
"Kidnapping people, even people that had no homes, and chopping off body parts for human experimentation is unethical and evil." Ford stated, his voice hard. His thoughts then went to Stanley, what if at the age of seventeen when he was kicked out of their home had been taken and experimented on…?
Layla's eyes narrow angrily. "Like I said, you don't understand! He just wanted to help me!" she holds up her left hand again, slightly moving the nubs where he thumb and pinky would've been. "You know better than any other person what it's like to be made fun of for your anomaly! My mother actually left us because of me, because she thought it was my father's genetics that caused it, saying I was imperfect!
"You should know better than anyone what it was like to be an outcast and have no friends! What right do you have to judge my father, who wanted to help his only daughter!?" she screamed the last words, tears spilling from her eyes.
Of all the things Ford's family was, they never judged him for having his six-fingered hands. His mother loved him the same, his father was indifferent, and Stanley… Stanley was his best friend, always defending him, making sure he would fit in. His twin was his anchor to the world… Ford had a supportive family for the most part with his anomaly, but no one was as supportive as Stanley, who loved him no matter what.
"You don't see anything wrong with a man killing a bunch of people for theories?" Ford asks coldly. "In 1962 the man had a warehouse of subjects, all with limbs chopped off terrible, spinal cords severed, and several lobotomies… people that were dying from man-made cancer from overdeveloping cells. People were being malformed and dying…" Ford then steps up to Layla, her flinching, him looking down at her with hard, cold brown eyes. "You really don't see a problem with that?"
Layla pushes him away from her, causing him to fall backwards onto his back. She glares at him with tearful eyes. "OF COURSE I THINK HE'S A MONSTER FOR IT!" she screams at him. She was crying, her words heavy with sobs. "He's my dad though… I can't justify for what he did, all he wanted to do was help me… he's the reason why I'm here-"
"WAIT A MINUTE!" Ford shouts as he jumps up, putting a hand over her mouth. "Your father got you here!? HOW!?" he demands. Layla clamps her mouth shut, begging with her eyes for him not to ask again. "Layla… how did you get here?!" he demands again as he removed his hand from her mouth.
"He-" she was cut off by the sound of the door crashing in, a few of those insect beings crawling in. "We need to go! NOW!" she orders, grabbing Ford's hand with her left and she started running through the building.
She leads them to and open chasm that had a rope dangling. Layla jumps onto the rope and after a second of swinging she starts to climb. Ford, unsure, jumps as well, gripping the rope, him gasping as he started to slip.
"Shit!" he yells, his feet dangling. The insect beings hissed and pointed at him when they had caught up. "Oh, no… this isn't good…" he mumbles as he tries to pull himself up. Ever since he was a kid he was terrible at gym… Stanley was better physically…
"Ford, hurry the hell up!" he heard Layla scream from the top of where the rope was tied to. She had a knife in her hand, ready to cut the rope. "Don't you know how to climb!? I have less fingers than you and can climb!" she yells at him, trying to get him to move faster.
"Well I'm sorry I was terrible at gym class!" Ford screams back sarcastically as he pulls himself up, although very slowly. The beings were right below him, hissing in their odd tongue. As one made for his leg he kicks the creature and it stumbles, giving Ford a tiny bit more time.
"You're a man and you can't climb a damn rope!?" Layla screams angrily, her left hand face palming her face. "You have got to be kidding me!"
Ford pulls himself more, him glaring up. "Hey, don't judge me! I was the academic twin, my brother was the athletic one!" he finally was almost to the top, but Layla was impatient and grabs him by the collar of his white dress shirt and pulls him over. Before he could thank her she slices the rope, it falling into the chasm, the creatures screeching as they fell. "Thanks…" Ford breathed.
"Yeah, yeah…" Layla replies as she stands up. Ford gets up as well, peering down the hole. "There's going to be more, so we need to get moving. I'm assuming you don't have a weapon…" she looks around, finding a chest and opening it. Inside were a few guns that looked as if they were taken out of a science-fiction TV show, a black long coat, some battery cell looking things, and goggles. "Here, take these." She tells Ford as she hands him the gun, cell pack, coat, and goggles.
"A-a gun?" Ford stammers. "I don't know how-"
"You aim, pull the trigger, and hope whatever you shot is dead." Layla snaps at him, agitated. "That is a highly intense laser beam weapon, that thing can blow holes through metal. So, I suggest you make sure what is in front of you really needs to be dead…"
"Oh, you think I'm going to point this thing at you?" Ford yells at her, completely baffled at the suggestion. "I mean, you did save my life twice now… your father may have been a terrible man but I don't see any problem with you."
"It's all about survival, Ford Pines." She tells him seriously. "And in this world… you trust no one."
