Chapter Two: The Aftermath
Months passed and winter came, and with it came the first snowfalls. When Ralph looked out to see that the ground was completely white, he ran down the hallway at once and stopped outside Felix's bedroom door.
"Hey, Felix!" he called. "Do you wanna build a snowman?"
There was no reply. Ralph tried the handle. It was locked.
"Aren't you gonna come out and play?" Ralph asked.
Again, no reply. Ralph peeked under the door. "Hello? Is anyone in there?"
He thought he could see Felix's feet – or were they just a pair of unworn shoes? Without a reply, he couldn't tell.
Ralph stood up properly. "What's wrong, Felix? Normally when I suggest building a snowman, you're totally up for it. And now you're not? I mean, it's cool if you're not, we don't actually have to build a snowman-"
The door opened. "I have a lot of homework to do," said Felix, "so I can't play with you today."
Just as quickly as it opened, the door slammed shut again.
Ralph stood there for a few seconds more. "Okay, bye," he finally said. He turned and walked back to his room, dragging his feet.
. . .
That evening, after dinner, Felix Senior noticed that the door to Felix Junior's room was unlocked. He found his son standing by the window, looking out at the snow with a longing almost like that of Juliet in the balcony scene.
"Son?"
At the sound of his father's voice, Felix yelped. An icy blast shot out of his hands and froze the windowsill.
"Sorry, Dad," he said immediately. "I didn't hear you come in."
"No need to apologise, kid," said Felix Senior. "Actually, I was just thinking about your . . . powers, and I had an idea." He tugged off his workman's gloves and dropped them on Felix's bed. "Would gloves help?"
Felix picked them up and slipped them on. He held a hand out in front, waiting for something cold to appear. But nothing happened. He allowed himself to smile. "Good idea, Dad."
"Thanks. I'll ask Santa Claus to get a pair especially for you." He patted Felix's shoulder, which made the boy flinch a little. "You know what to do," he added. "Conceal it."
"Don't feel it," said Felix.
The eyes of father and son met.
"Don't let it show," they finished together.
. . .
A few years later, Felix moved up to middle school, and Ralph saw his big brother even less. Consequently, that winter, Ralph was determined to do something in the snow with him, like old times.
On the first day of winter break, Ralph approached Felix's bedroom, clutching a crumpled piece of paper in a big hand. He was only eleven, but Ralph's growth spurt had already begun and showed no sign of slowing down. His arms were thick with muscle, and his footsteps were so powerful they made the house vibrate.
Standing outside Felix's door, Ralph cleared his throat and began to read from his paper. He had everything planned out.
"May I have a moment of your time, please?" he asked. There was no reply, but Ralph carried on regardless.
"I'm afraid your proposal to spend your winter break Staying Inside and Doing Nothing is unacceptable." Time for a dramatic pause. "You know I love you, don't you?" He waited. "And you love me, right?" Another pause. "But if you love me, then how can you expect me to waste the best years of my life – childhood – being bored because you won't play with me?" Now that was a great rhetorical question. "So all I'm asking is that we build a snowman in the Great Field again." He heard nothing from the other side of the door. "Why, it only takes a matter of minutes! You'll still have plenty of time for other stuff." Still nothing.
It was time to move in for the kill.
Ralph picked up his mother's Polaroid camera from the shelf, pulled the saddest face he could, and took a picture. He waved the film around for a bit and then slipped it under the door. "Perhaps this will convince you."
Now Ralph could hear footsteps. He waited there on the floor for what seemed like forever. The picture was pushed back out face-down. Felix had written something on the back.
Sorry, I can't.
There was no excuse, lame or otherwise.
Ralph slowly got to his feet, his eyes dark. Something inside him changed. "Fine, be that way!" he yelled. He punched the stupid door and stomped back to his own room.
A few seconds later, Felix's door fell off his hinges. He ran over and tried to lift it back up, to no avail. "Dad?" he called. "The door needs fixing."
He was glad that Ralph hadn't seen the snow in his room.
. . .
In contrast to Ralph, Felix didn't seem any taller than he was when he was eight. His tiny stature was dwarfed even more by the great star-shaped ice burst on the wall. His parents noticed this as they stood at the foot of his bed.
These days, Felix could have good nights and bad nights. On good nights, sleep was a peaceful and welcome respite from a stressful day pretending to be normal. On bad nights, the nightmares would manifest themselves in the real world as icy intruders in his bedroom.
The night after Ralph's speech was a bad night.
"I'm scared," said Felix. He was sitting up in bed and trembling violently, with the quilt wrapped around his body like a security blanket. "It's getting stronger!"
Ice spikes protruded from all four corners of the room. Felix saw them and yelped. "I need thicker gloves!" he cried.
"Felix, getting upset only makes it worse," said his mother. She went to hug him, but he shrank away, pulling the quilt tighter around him. "Don't touch me," he urged. "I don't want to hurt you."
His mother and father shared a look, the kind of thing that parents do to say, "We've run out of options." They slowly walked out, his mother closing the door behind them.
Alone at last, Felix squeezed his eyes shut. "Don't let them in," he muttered. "Don't let them see. Be a good boy now. Conceal, don't feel. Conceal . . . don't feel. Conceal . . . don't . . . feel . . . Conceal. . ."
The mantra lulled him back to sleep.
. . .
Time passed and things changed. The differences between the brothers became even more obvious.
Felix was a short man, like most Nicelanders. He had inherited his father's mousy brown hair and bright blue eyes, giving him a certain cuteness that others were drawn to. Fortunately, by adulthood he had mastered the art of concealment, so he was a little more comfortable with going out and making friends than he had been as a child. As long as he wore his gloves at all times, which he did, he was fine. His circle of friends grew outside just Gene to include Roy, Don, Nel, Norwood, Lucy, Deanna, Meg and Mary, to name but a few.
In stark contrast to Felix, Ralph reached a finite size of nine feet tall, by which time he weighed six hundred and forty-three pounds. His eyes were an unfathomable dark brown, while his hair naturally settled into harsh spikes. He lost his playful and outgoing personality, instead regressing to his pre-adoption days, becoming as tough as his hands.
Oh, he wanted to be like Felix, to be popular, to be the kind of guy with friends on every street. But the incident he could not remember had forever scarred his relationships with others. Thanks to his oversized hands, he had a tendency to wreck things. And when that happened, no-one would want to come near him. On the rare occasions when he left the house, people shied away and refused to even make eye contact.
Felix's parents moved out after Felix came home from college, so he and Ralph were alone together. Well, in reality, they were hardly ever together. Felix was usually not at home, instead helping with his dad's handyman business. The job was easy for Felix Senior because he had a magic hammer, but he always promised Felix that he would use it someday. Ralph, who could never hold down a job for more than a month, mostly just stayed in and watched whatever was on TV.
In the evenings, Felix would either go out to relax with friends or stay at home. If he went out, Ralph watched some more TV. If he stayed at home, Ralph would excuse himself and walk the long way to the Great Field. He would sit on the stump and reminisce about the good old days. After a few hours he would retake the long way home, sneaking in through the back door to avoid waking Felix.
It wasn't that the brothers didn't love each other anymore. It was just that it was easier not to talk to each other.
. . .
The last good day came on the Fourth of July when Felix and Ralph were in their late twenties. Guests had piled into Felix's back garden for food and flag-waving. (Mary brought her famous pies, per the norm). There was a constant stream of people telling Felix that the party was great and they loved this song and ooh these cakes are delicious! No matter how inane the comment, Felix greeted everyone with a smile and a polite reply.
It was a good day for Ralph because he got to eat cake and pretend that he had friends.
It was a good day for Felix because his parents were there – and they seemed to be proud of him. As Felix talked to everyone, he kept noticing that his parent's smiles grew bigger and bigger until they almost reached their ears. For the first time in forever, their son was socialising. And there wasn't a snowflake in sight.
When the weather turned nasty in the evening, the garden drained like the Red Sea. Before Felix's parents reached their car, Ralph gave them a big hug. "See you soon," he said.
Felix waved from a distance. "Will you be okay?" he asked. "It's very foggy."
"We'll be fine," said Felix Senior.
. . .
The funeral was held a week later. Two new graves were planted on the summit of the hill. In front of them stood two figures, black against the blaze of the sunset, one tall, the other short. Ralph stood as still as a statue, while Felix kept shaking with fresh sobs. Ralph stepped forward and placed a hand on Felix's shoulder, but Felix shrugged him off. Swallowing his tears, he reached into his pocket for the magic hammer and hugged it to his chest. His dad had left it for him in his will.
Ralph left with nothing.
. . .
For uncountable nights, Felix cried. He couldn't hold back his powers. He threw his gloves off, he wailed, he let the fractals form where they may. Within a matter of minutes, his room was completely frozen. Felix slid down the icy door and rested his head against it, not caring that it was chilling him to the bone.
"Felix?"
That voice. . .
"I know you're in there."
It was Ralph on the other side.
"People are asking about you. They want to know if you're okay. Well, of course they know you're not okay, but – they're really worried about you."
Felix sniffed.
"Looks like it's just us. If you need someone to talk to . . . you've got me. You know that, don't you?"
Felix couldn't trust himself to talk without sobbing, so he just nodded.
"Can I come in?"
Felix looked around. Through his tears, he saw only two colours: the white of the snow and the blue of the ice. Snowflakes hung in mid-air, suspended by grief. He shook his head.
At first nothing happened, and then he felt the floor shaking as Ralph walked away.
. . .
Ralph went to the Great Field – the only place he could think to go. He lay down, flattening the grass, and rested his head against the old stump. There were only a few clouds above him; millions of stars twinkled in the great expanse of the sky.
For a while, Ralph pretended that the stars were snowflakes. He focused on two clouds that looked like two boys, and imagined that they were building snowmen and riding icy slides.
Comforted by memories he didn't know were fake, he drifted into sleep.
. . .
Ralph awoke to a smell – a harsh, thick smell that conjured up images of rotting fish and rat droppings. He groaned and sat up, disturbing a glass bottle that rolled away and smashed into tiny pieces.
Where am I?
He held his nose. Above the buzzing of flies, he heard a metallic whirr coming from behind a pile of bricks. Ralph scrambled to the peak and looked down onto the Great Field.
Nothing could have prepared him for the sight he saw next.
Bright yellow bulldozers littered the grass. Hundreds of workers in blue overalls were walking between them, pointing and shouting to each other in southern American accents. Somewhere, a drill kicked in. A tubby man with a ginger beard and a clipboard approached the trash pile and looked up at Ralph. "Mornin'," he drawled.
"Did you move my stump?" Ralph snapped.
"That I did. I' was in the way o' the new apartment block?"
"Apartment block?"
Tubby held up the clipboard. Ralph skimmed over the words. "'Imminent domain?'" he cried. "Who wants to live next to a trash pile?"
"Lotsa people, ac-chally" said Tubby, "includin' Mayor Gene. Lotsa new guys movin' inta town who need-"
"I don't care if Michael Jackson himself is moving here," Ralph butted in. "Kids have made happy memories here! People won't stand for it."
"Can't've been many kids," said Tubby. "Far's I've heard, i' was jus' you 'n' Felix. An' Felix's getting' himself an apartment here."
Ralph's mouth dropped open. "He's doing what?"
Tubby nodded. "Said a while back he was thinkin' o' sellin' his old place. Said when he's there, he's surrounded by 'is parents. Kinda sad."
"That traitor!" Ralph growled. He clenched his fists. His hands shook. Finally he ran towards the nearest bulldozer, roaring in unimaginable fury, and started punching the cold yellow machine.
"Hey, you're breakin' the bulldozer!" called Tubby.
"Good!" screamed Ralph. He pulled off a door and proceeded to smash the windscreen.
"Sir, if you don' stop that right now, I'm callin' the police!"
Ralph dropped the door and ran away.
. . .
The apartment was finished after two years and built to high quality. It was one of the tallest buildings in Niceland – and, to some, it was one of the prettiest too. The outside had a traditional red-brick feel, while the inside was furnished with cool colours and eye-popping patterns. A grand penthouse stood out on the top floor. There was even a swimming pool on the roof.
Hundreds of Nicelanders turned up to see the grand unveiling. Among them was Felix, or Fix-It Felix Jr. as he was now known. Seconds after the ribbon was cut, everyone poured in to survey the builder's handiwork and ooh and ah as appropriate.
Two men stayed outside. One was Felix himself, waiting for the crowd to die down.
The other hadn't been seen by Felix for a while. His clothes were ripped and dirty. His face was set in a scowl. He looked up at the abomination and couldn't contain his anger anymore.
"I'M GONNA WRECK IT!" roared Ralph.
Quickly, before he could think twice, he climbed up the side. He proceeded to smash the windows and punch holes in the wall. When a Nicelander got in his way, Ralph threw him aside. People were backing away and screaming. One woman fainted.
"FIX IT, FELIX!" the Nicelanders cried.
Felix grabbed his magic hammer. "I CAN FIX IT!" he reassured them.
That is how Ralph became Wreck-It Ralph.
And that is the story behind Fix-It Felix Jr.