Chapter Thirteen
Yesterday Never Comes, Tomorrow Always Was
It was dull and gray when Stan Marsh awoke with a start. His eyes wandered the room, his room, as he attempted to grab his bearings. A bright flash and a grumble of thunder grabbed his attention at the window. It was raining cats and dogs, metaphorically of course, but that didn't stop the thoughts of familiarity from running a marathon in his head. Sitting up in the bed certainly didn't stop them either nor did it ease the sharp sting in his stomach. Of course, there also was the thought that something was off. The boy buried his face into a palm as he painfully attempted to sort his head out and clutched his aching gut with the other. Maybe it had been a dream. Images of battle. Smells of death. Sounds of...something something. It had been too real to have been imagined by the subconscious of his screwed up little mind.
This all was fine and dandy, however, his sense of time and his clock, of all freaking things, were telling him that he had fallen asleep after returning home from school. He also heard his dad downstairs playing Drunken Guitar Hero, and winning spectacularly, so a simple assumption led him to believe that the rest of the family was fine and well. This was all theory, of course. Call it Schrödinger's family if you will. Of course, Stan, being ten years old and not too well versed in the ways of most things sciencey, had no idea who this man with a funny name was nor what the deal was with his cat. No, instead of pondering such things, the option of standing up and rearranging the mess that was his twisted wrinkled clothing was taken.
"Blow his fucking head off!"
Kyle's voice; commanding, dripping with urgency, swimming in injury. This had been a dream, but felt more like a memory. Or maybe it had been the other way around. Stan wasn't sure. There was no sense to be found here. It had packed up and fucked off somewhere for greener pastures and sunshine leaving behind things that were not compatible with rhyme or reason, like frozen orange juice concentrate wrapped in underwear stuffed in a left shoe and abandoned in the microwave. He thought for a moment, at least until he doubled over with a grunt as his aching stomach demanded his attention. Who was Kyle referencing? Had he been talking to Stan or someone else? Why did his stomach feel like it had been split open with a knife? These questions and more ran around like headless chickens in Stan's mind, none of which there were ready made answers for.
Spittle dripped from Stan's mouth as he fought off the pain in his stomach and righted himself to his full height. The sting subsided as he spied a yellow book on his dresser. He ran a hand along its spine to feel its smooth glossy texture. That's right. He had somewhere to be tonight, but... Unlike earlier, doubt was beginning to cloud his judgment. Despite the disclaimer "Intended for entertainment purposes," thoughts of taking a book whose subject material pertained to resurrecting the dead to a cemetery suddenly and explicitly seemed like a very grave idea. He held the book in his hands, went to leaf through it, but promptly placed it back on his dresser. No, entertaining thoughts of bringing Chef back from the dead was not a healthy way to deal with his untimely passing.
"Told you it'd bite you on the ass, children."
Chef's voice; matter-of-factly, filled with sadness, very much sounding like someone had ripped out his vocal chords, placed them in a blender, and attempted to stuff them back in Chef's throat in a half-assed manner. Stan, of course, had no idea what that actually sounded like, but took a wild imaginated guess. He nodded in determination and, abandoning the book, reached for his phone instead. He had an apology to make and needed a secondary clear head to help him sort through his jumbled mental filing cabinet. With numbers dialed the line connected to its destination. Luckily, the person who answered on the other end was exactly who he wanted to talk to.
"Kyle? Dude, I'm sorry for what I said earlier today."
"Sta-? That's alright, dude. I know you didn't mean it."
"Dude, is it okay if come over? I...need someone to talk to."
"Sure. Uh, you okay?" Assurances were uttered as well as a promise of seeing him soon. However, before goodbyes could be said, Kyle interrupted with a plea. His begging was so pronounced that Stan could almost imagine the other boy on his knees and interlocking his hands together. "Stan, please promise me something."
"Okay."
"Promise me that whatever happens, you'll accept reality for what it is and let it go."
"Sure."
"No, asshole! Promise me!"
"Okay! Okay! I promise!"
Without a face to go by, Stan was unable to gauge whether Kyle believed him or not. The other boy seemed convinced and the two separated from the call. Stan tossed the now silent phone on his bed and made for the door, but not before taking a long look at the book sitting on his dresser. It was calling to him, pleading with him to take it to where it wanted to go. The longer he stared at it, the more demanding it got; venomous insults, statements that it had made love to his mother, that it would kill his friends.
"Wendy will never look at a pansy ass kid like you ever again."
Stan's own voice; normally quite upbeat and friendly, but here very angry, spiteful, almost demonic in nature. Stan smirked at the voice in his head. He really could care less. She seemed happy with Kyle and he was happy not being involved with her any longer. She was better as friend material anyway. Despite that, the egging and insults continued. With a sigh, Stan grabbed the book as he exited his room. The insults silenced as the atmosphere surrounding him lightened. He made his way down the stairs and covered his ears as he passed his dad drunkenly caterwauling into a Guitar Hero microphone. He passed his mom as she and his sister Shelly were reading through some kind of book each, something about a dude shaving fifty times in gray. How that was entertaining to girls was beyond him. Normally he'd stop to ponder such things, but he was a boy on a mission. He entered the kitchen, turned the oven on to its highest setting, and tossed the book inside. The book pleaded with Stan to save it from its fate, but, to its horror, pleas had fallen on deaf ears as Stan was no longer there.
Sometime later, Randy found the oven blazing and spewing out thick acrid smoke as an alarm screamed overhead. After engaging the fire with an extinguisher all that he found, to his disappointment, was a pile of ash. However, if he had investigated further he would have found a few scraps of pages that had escaped charring. Mere letters that were arranged in such away that if a sharper mind had seen it it would have simply read, "God dammit." Whether or not that was coincidental would be entirely up for interpretation, but like a probable bear possibly sharting on a theoretical squirrel in the woods, no one could tell for sure if there was no one there to witness it.
Notes: If I had continued, the next chapter would have been "Ironing Board Girl: The Cooning or My Enemy is Not My Friend". It would have been a chapter of Cartman being Cartman. For example, he breaks into the school at night and switches the contents of every locker around to incite a school-wide brawl. Ironing Board Girl would have thwarted his many plans, leading him to create the villainous persona, The Coon, and declare her as his mortal enemy.
"Walking the Mountain Path" - Butters falls ill to a supernatural illness, foretelling the coming of Satan and the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Pip, Tweek, Dougie, and a reluctant Cartman travel into the mountains to find the only thing that can cure him; a flower. There, they're surprised by a horde of zombies.
"Somewhere Between the Crossroads of Life and Death" - Stan's zombie alter ego surprises Stan, Kyle, Wendy, and Kenny at Hell's Pass hospital with demons and zombies, forcing them on the run with Butters. Kyle helps them escape by allowing himself to be captured. On the way to Butters' house, they meet up with Pip, Tweek, Dougie, and Cartman. A final showdown at Stark's Pond takes place between Stan, Wendy, Cartman and Kenny and Dead Stan and his army. They win. All injured, Wendy critically so. Kyle dies to save her. At the end, Stan again speaks to the unknown voice, who refuses to alter time any further.
"The Friendship Connection" - Everyone adjusts to a life without Kyle.
"Crossing the Tides of Time" - Stan and Wendy search for a way to bring Kyle back that won't involve zombies. They come across a fairy ring that takes them to "The End of Time," where they meet the God of Time and learn about how everything ended up the way it did.
- There are multiple timelines all running congruent with each other that deviate from the Main Timeline (the actual show): Original Time (Stan Dies), Bad Time (Stan Kills Himself and Everyone Else), and Another Time (Current Time).
– They discover that time was initially reset because the spirit of Dead Stan from Original Time had so many regrets about death and seeing adult Wendy with adult Kyle that he was able to influence the God of Time to reverse time. This leads to Stan finding out that he is the one outside time (as he shouldn't exist and Dead Stan is the original) and is (as the time anomaly) also responsible for the exploding cows and thus Clarabelle's death as cows are highly susceptible to changes in time.
– Kyle and Wendy's remnants of memories from Original Time are glitches of the time reversal process.
– Original Stan's ghostly/zombie origins come from a glitch brought about from the time reversal process, leaving him as both alive and dead at the same time. Original Stan existed in Bad Time and Another Time due to a glitch caused by Stan diverting from his original self and moving on from Wendy after she chooses Kyle (which is a glitch in itself).
– Kyle is brought back from the dead in a similar manner as Crono in Square's SNES classic Chrono Trigger. After receiving a Time Catalyst from the God of Time, Stan travels back in time to the fight on the frozen Stark's Pond with his zombie counterpart in "Somewhere Between the Crossroads of Life and Death". After some words to inspire an injured Wendy to fight as Ironing Board Girl, Stan uses the Time Catalyst to freeze time, swap Kyle with a handful of ash, and returns to the present time.
– In the end, the God of Time attempts to delete all timelines except the Current Another Time, but finds that he cannot due to the fact that Kyle, Wendy, and Stan all draw glitched memories from the other two timelines respectively. He ends up rolling time back to the beginning to fix things.
- The chapter then ends with a repeat of the beginning of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" with everyone experiencing a brief moment of déjà vu upon Chef's arrival.
