IV
ANNOSUS OF PERDITION
(part one)
Timeline Summary:
Takes place during Summerween, though events diverge heavily from canon.
Author's notes:
Rated 18+ for mildly suggestive themes.
SHOUT OUT to this story's favers/followers:
✨Car9723, CritterTheCryote, GunCon, johnnycatalina, LordStar8045, NVS Tobi, Obvious Ghost, Straightjacketed, Theory of Weirdness, William Easley✨
It's been a busy two days at the Shack.
To recap:
The Twins' Friday shift was split between two tasks. First, the Copier Store, making flyers for Mr. Mystery's Mystifying Mirror Maze of Maddening Multiples. Second, posting their advertisements onto every telephone pole, storefront, awning, sidewalk, fire hydrant, old person and fat pet in town. Despite their run-ins with the police throughout their outing, an 8-hour song loop of Sounds of Silence could've been the soundtrack to their day, given the cold shoulder going on between them. When it was quitting time, Wendy took Dipper to Tambry's for some preliminary decorating.
Saturday, Summerween, reduced the Shack's daytime hours to 4pm, whereupon they temporarily closed so Stan could drag the kids and Soos (off the clock, unpaid, and, as he always was, willing to be a mule) to the Summerween Superstore for supplies to transform the Shack for its evening reopening. Once everything was unloaded back at the homestead, the property was adorned from the What-ter vane down to the Bottomless Pit.
Around 6pm, Dipper was notified on the group text that Tambry's preparations were pretty much done, and so he allowed himself an extra hour to help with the Shack's finishing touches. (Soos, basically pulling a double, deserved all the extra hands he could get.) After everything was done, Dipper split away at seven o'clock when the Shack reopened to Stan's eager crowd. The boy headed straight to the bathroom to spruce himself up for Tambry's. Stan, aware of the kid's plans, handed him a pile of Vintage Fashion Validation subscriptions. ("Make yerself slick, Slick.") Dipper had to promise himself he wouldn't pitch them in the trash. To his horror, he went above and beyond this silent oath and actually had the magazines splayed open on the sink counter. (Bruce Wayne was Dipper's only fashion inspiration and the boy had no tuxedos.)
And now, we return to the present:
It's about 8:15pm by the time he's out of the bathroom, and, much like two days ago when the Big Dipper emerged from his blanket chrysalis, there's a whole new boy coming down the stairs.
Peeking out of his unbuttoned leather jacket is a Pac-Man ghostie T-shirt proclaiming 'BOO!' He's still sporting Stan's blue jeans, but now he's sprung for the cowboy boots, which stick out from beneath his pant-cuffs. His jungle-maze hair is for once presentable, slicked back with a pound of bacon grease he scooped from the masonry jar in the medicine cabinet. The only addition he ditches is the gold neck chain, which he yanks off from under his bandana and discreetly plops into the planter.
He stands before the front door, reaching for the handle. Ready to exit this wooden womb, to expedite his birthright of an awaiting pubescent world. A world of sovereignty. A world of cred. A world of Wendy.
"I hope you're not leaving without your parka," a voice from behind him warns. Dipper turns to face his sister. She's transformed herself into a papier mâché shrine to isolation: a tropical island, albeit one not under the sun, as she holds that particular cardboard prop limply at her side. Her only friend is the lone coconut tree that hangs over her head, branching out from the rear of the shoreline that encircles her legs. (A tree whose reinforcements, Dipper suspects, are probably his missing clothes hangers.)
"The leather's unlined," she clarifies, pointing her sun-wand at his Greaser jacket. "Just because you're too cool for Trick-or-Treating doesn't mean you should go chilly."
Dipper holds out their shared cell phone, with a silver piece of clothing hanging over his arm. "Wendy asked me to bring her jacket. Classic Wendy, forgetting things. I'll double-up on the way there."
He turns away, before pausing. Turns back. "Unless you think that's creepy?"
Mabel shrugs her ocean-printed leotard shoulders, making her island buoy. "Doesn't really matter what I think, does it?"
Dipper pinches the bridge of his nose and hangs his head. "Mabel, listen... There actually is something I need to apologize for. Unrelated to this. And I'm gonna need to tell you real soon." Mabel quirks a puzzled brow at this. That's new info. Before she can pin down an explanation, Dipper continues: "But I'm not sorry about tonight. I... I only have this summer to hang with Wendy's crew." He looks up. "We have October. I promise."
"Do we?" Mabel counters, deflated. "I mean..." She motions above her own head. "... won't you have outgrown it?"
Dipper opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He closes it, looking off to the side. Blinks, like a man seeing for the first time. "I haven't thought that far ahead."
"Yeah, me neither."
Comfortable silence. Totally not tense or awkward. Nooooo...
"Look," Dipper haggles, "for tonight, go and have a fun time with Candy and - ahhh, whatshername - Grentel. Ya gotta let me have this one, ok?"
"What do you mean, 'this one?'"
Dipper holds her stare. He wrinkles his mouth and throws Wendy's jacket on. Like that, he's gone.
Mabel stares at the shut door. Waddles trots in, bedecked in his little corporate suit. She kneels down and scratches him in the sweet spongey spot between his ears. "If only you could solve my bro-bro's blue-blues, Waddles..." she sighs. "I mean, you are HR."
A clattering sound from the front porch pierces through the wooden door.
She walks forward and opens it. Squeaky-voiced curse words stop dead as the light from the Shack bathes the trespasser's face.
"Gideon!" Mabel puts her hands on her hips.
He's a deer caught in a helicopter's search light. A single droplet of sweat draws a curving line from his temple to his cheek.
But then... a holiday miracle occurs.
Mabel's gaze softens as her eyes dart down to the bowl of candy he hovers over, along with a tape gun and a 5x7 index card laying beside it advertising 'Courtesy of Stan Pines, y'all!'
"Is this... some kind of peace offering? So Stan doesn't have to buy candy?" she ventures.
"Why... of... course it is! I've changed, Mabel, honest-to-betsy!" He holds up his hand, as if swearing over a stack of Invis-O Bibles. "I'm so saintly now, it's practically sinful!"
"Wow!" Mabel smiles. "You've really turned around, huh? Well, I guess even vomit puddles have substance to them. And it's just in time for Summerween!"
"Posi-lutely! Speaking of, I'd be right honored to escort you to- GET THE SWINE AWAY FROM THAT!" he commands, swiping the bowl up from the hungry-hungry hog rooting around in it. The pig pounces on Gideon's leg, squealing wrathfully. Mable bends down and drapes an arm around her pet.
"It's OK, Gideon! Pigs can digest chocolate!" she laughs, before tilting Waddles' chin towards her and giving him a nose-kiss. "You're no doggy-dainty, are you, Waddles?"
Gideon's eyes shift to-and-fro like he's remembering a really good tennis match. "Fine! But we, uh... need to think of the trick-or-treaters! Gotta make sure they git... what's comin' to 'em..."
She waves him off. "Oh, just let him have a couple!"
"NO!" he yells, holding the bowl out to his side. He catches himself. "I mean, uh..."
"Geez, what's with the worry-rage? It's not like they're laced with laxatives or itching powder or some junk." It takes a moment for the realization to hit her, and then her eyelids fly out of sight. "Why, you little saboteur!"
Gideon's hand shoots out, clutching her collar, wrenching her to him. He swirls her around in one fluid motion, shoving her to the ground. His other hand stretches his suit's stitching as it scrambles around in his pocket.
"Hold still!" he spits. "I brought a chloroform-chocolate as a contingency!"
"SOOS!" Mabel screams, pushing Gideon away. "BODY SLAM NEEDED!"
"Mabel, darling," the boy hisses, straining to soothe, "just open up and say aaaahhh! It's got almonds!"
"NO! Your almonds are evil! EVIL ALMONDS!"
Waddles belches out a rebel squeal and clamps onto Gideon's calf, who screams like a pixie being mugged by a tickle-monster.
"The bacon's eating you now, dough-boy!" Mabel laughs.
The boy's face is now a child's nightmare: a dam of goblin teeth grit against seafoam spit. His pained eyes fight not to cross amidst the lightning storm of veins flashing across his brow. He manages to muscle through the agony and pin her wrists, before swiftly clamping her neck down with his elbow.
She chokes in surprise. His ulna bone is digging into her throat.
Her body tries to gasp, but nothing comes out.
She can't. Breathe.
This isn't funny anymore.
"So what's it gunna be, girl?" he hisses, his now-thick sweat trailing off his face onto hers. He lifts the chloro-chocolate above his head, preparing to ram it through her braces. "Trick or treat?"
Darkness engulfs the pair, looming from above. A voice like crinkled wrappers answers-
"TREAT."
It first appears, from Mabel's perspective, that a hawk has swooped down and sunk its talons into Gideon's pompadour. It's only after the boy's Pillsbury body becomes airborne that she sees the talons connect to a hand.
Omigosh, it's... it's him. The legend Soos had warned her of- the phantom of the night, the guardian of the festivities. This towering, masked scarecrow... is the Summerween Trickster.
Gideon is far from starstruck, kicking and hollering as the Trickster stares at him with the empty eyes of his dollar-store mask. Waddles still bites stubbornly onto the boy's leg. Suddenly, Gideon gasps in shock as his eyes roll upwards.
"My hairdo!" Gideon screams, seeing his pompadour crushed in the monster's grip. "How dare you!"
Trickster's reply? He eats Gideon - and to that extent, Waddles - WHOLE.
"NOOOO!" Mabel screams to God Above. "WAAAAADDDDDLLLLLEEESSSSS!"
"Yecchh," the Trickster wretches to himself. "So moist."
In one seamless motion, Mabel swings onto the Trickster's neck from her grappling hook and traps the beast in a choke-hold. "YOU BARF UP MY LITTLE PIGGY RIGHT NOW!"
Trickster's face rotates a sickening 360° towards Mabel. His maws part, jaws unhinging (if the undulating mass beneath the mask even has jaws.) He howls at her with bone-vibrating fury. The force of the soundwaves sends her plummeting to the ground.
Her grappling hook falls a short distance in front of her. She worms towards it, hand outstretched, inches from salvation.
A foot plants onto her back, snapping the wires of her papier mâché palm tree. Had it not been for the costume's insulation, it might've been her spine.
"Summerween is a hallowed time, childling," the Trickster grates. "Those who do not embrace its saccharine spirit must be purged, lest one bad apple spoil the bunch."
Mabel grunts under the bodily pressure. "B-But Waddles has Summerween spirit big enough to spare! It's got love handles, I say!"
"Perhaps," the creature concedes, picking her up by her broken palm tree. "Your handiwork does scream enthusiasm." The Trickster places her down. "If you vouch for this Waffles, then there is a way to earn his release."
"I'm listening!"
"I need a treat. If you can collect one hundred pieces of candy-"
"You'll poop out Waddles?!"
"NO. I'll let YOU live after ATTACKING ME." He rubs his throat. "That chokehold chafed, y'know."
"But-!"
"And if you don't want the swine to be mine, I require a different prize." The creature flicks up his gaze, his chest puffing out and his claws twitching in thought. And in the lighting of a hungry full moon, under the majesty of the undead stars crying out in silence behind the phantom clouds, this creature strikes a spiritual chord in Mabel in the worst of ways. He's more horrifying than any Reaper. This monster looks, in this setting, in this purposeful pose, like some kind of primitive priest welcoming her into an unfeeling world trying to eat itself. Then his hollow gaze meets her own. The command he gives next proves her intuition right: "You must reform one soul who has fallen by the Summerween wayside. Prove your Summerween spirit has enough to spare." He crouches to her level, a flame igniting within his empty sockets. "And do it," he insists, before the embers black out with a hiss, "before the last jack-o'-melon burns out."
He returns to his full height, sickeningly wet crunches popping all along his frame like bones in a blender. In a feat of gymnastic wizardry, he then back-flips onto the Shack's roof and crawls out of sight.
Mabel stares after him, mouth gaped, wide eyes now filled with indescribable dread.
"Hey Mabel! Lookin' gooood, gurl~" a witch-robed Grenda compliments, arriving on the scene and clapping her Thor-hammer of a hand onto her friend's back.
Candy, dressed as one of the peppermint mints of her namesake, follows. "Are we ready for the fun?"
"Are we gunning for fun...ning?" Dipper asks himself, forced grin bordering on a jack-o'-melon. It collapses as he smashes his fist against his brow. "Why couldn't I have been born a mute? People might think I was dumb, but they wouldn't know it."
Tambry's door is looming closer and closer with each stride, pulsating dubstep vibrating through the walls like an entire robotic ecosystem having a collective seizure.
Between the party-prepping and working the Shack these past couple of days, Dipper only now realizes that his game plan for tonight is still in freefall. Again and again he curses himself for not making the time to compose a researched and categorized list of talking points. The clones be darned; how could he possibly go with the flow without any kind of prior preparation?!
"I just need gum. Gum will save me," he (tries to) assure himself, rapping on the door and digging into his pockets for a pack. He fumbles and drops it, bending down to collect the sticks. "Gum and a cola. People will see me nursing a can in addition to chewing and they will subconsciously accept that my non-verbal communication has increased by-"
100%. He's struck totally silent as the door swings open and he comes face-to-face with something that is decidedly not a face.
Namely, Tambry's toned, glitter-spackled and very exposed navel. Outside of her shoulder puffs, the entire upper half of her witch costume is basically a sports bra.
"... You know," she eventually quips, "I honestly can't say it won't blink before you do."
Dipper unfurls back to his full height, flashes an obviously pained grin. "Got any cola?"
Tambry, always the model ambassador, yanks him by the earlobe and drags him in, where a well-placed kick-in-the-tuckus sends him stumbling into-
Well, what his five-year-old brain imagined his sea monkeys were getting up to as they hatched in their shaded aquarium.
Now of course, his superior twelve-year-old brain can better compare what he's witnessing to a deep sea exploration, a plunge into the darkest depths. Glow-in-the-dark party streamers droop from the ceiling like inverted, nuclear kelp. He sees pufferfish in the stringless neon balloons polka-dotting the drywall. Electric eels swim before his eyes as he loses himself in the rows upon rows of UV fluorescents.
Not to mention the swarm of Comb Jellyfish at the center of it all. It's a pretty bland name for ravenous li'l Cthulhus whose least terrifying but most noticeable feature is their ability to refract light, lining their bodies with bolts of rainbow lightning and creating a shimmering disco ball of the deep. And that's exactly what this crowd is, and the rip current of their dancing sucks Dipper into the belly of their rave.
He's suddenly in a battleground, explosions of neon assaulting his eyes at every turn. The neon comes in all kinds of shapes imaginable: oversized sunglasses. Clown wigs big as clouds. Suspenders, derbies, fedoras, bracelets, glow sticks. And the face paint. Holy cow, the face paint. It's a slide-whistle spectrum with designs ranging from tribal war markings to bargain bin supervillains to Picasso graffiti.
Dipper's a clown car on a roller coaster track, his sense of direction gone. The only reason he manages to regain it is because he knocks shoulders with someone and is spun around crashing into someone else, catching that person to keep them both from tumbling to the floor.
Judging from the oof! they emit right by his ear, his jaw must be resting in the crook of their shoulder. The silky voice confirms it's a female. His left arm is wrapped around her middle with his ring and pinkie fingers falling into the grooves of her ribs. Meanwhile his thumb-to-middle finger clutch a soft mound which he always imagined EyeBats would feel like BUT OH JEEZ THAT'S NOT AN EYEBAT!
He jumps back, brain unable to verbalize what he's just done but conceptualizing it in primal terror. If he's not already blushing neon, his cheeks will soon be flashing it from the slap he braces himself for.
And because of the pact they made to surprise each other with their costumes, his horror is amplified by the possibility of this being either a stranger or Wendy. HE CAN'T DECIDE WHICH IS WORSE.
At this point, the figure before him turns, and he briefly entertains a third possibility. In the lighting, she looks like one of the Falls' elusive wildlife, appearing as an angelic... deer-gypsy? Green fawn speckles dot the sides of her eyes, which are lampshaded with half-moons on the lids. Tying these together is a green circle mottling her nose, like some kind of radioactively-congested Rudolph. If, y'know, a radioactively-congested Rudolph also happened to be a wicked hot brunette in a skin-tight bodystocking!
Even more unexpected (but oddly just as stimulating) is the up-and-down glance she flicks over him instead of any kind of enraged snarl. "Well, that's certainly one way to ask a girl to dance." Her lip-ring pulls tight against her amused grin. "What, you the strong-and-silent type, cutie?"
Dipper's non-verbal communication drops down to just 97.5% now, as he grates out a few sputters from a voice like unkissable sandpaper.
Let's assess the situation: An actual flesh-and-blood girl (read: not a DD&D character) just called him cute.
Her athletic figure curves into his body like a knife into hot butter. "I'm Oleanna Chance." She playfully tugs at his bandanna. "But you can call me OC-"
"Yo Dip!"
"W-Wendy!" Dipper cries, absentmindedly jabbing OC's eyes as he plants his palm on her face and shoves her back into the dancing fray.
Dipper's actually shoving a lot of people now, almost igniting a mosh pit as he beelines towards the voice. His ears are not deaf to the huffs and grunts he elicits, from the wordless exclamations to the indignant 'Heys!' to a lot more, uh, sharply-worded responses. Surprisingly, they don't shock or sting him because he's too... no, 'numb' is not the word for it. 'Numb' is actually the worst possible word for his present state, because he's anything but. He's... He's hungry. Urges that had been forming and growing precariously now roar monstrously in his system, like amoebas fast-forwarding into rampaging dinosaurs. With an out-of-body horror, he hears his teeth chattering violently in his skull as his mesolimbic pathway prepares itself for the impending dopamine hit.
But why? What release is he even expecting? His intentions are swirling. Despite this, he feels like... whatever he decides to do, he can do. He can be anyone, be with anyone in this twilight world.
And there's only one girl he wants to be with.
His mind revs itself over all the potentials of Wendy's costume. What's gonna be revealed, angled, accentuated? Will her body be hugged in a low-buttoned school uni, her usual plaid migrating south to a mini-skirt? What if Mabel clued her in to the elf maiden from his board game that he's admittedly invested unnecessary time into designing the frills and corset for? Or will Wendy be flashing spandex as Catwoman, with every single possible curve of hers defined and gleaming in the moonlight? Her trademark smirk and half-lid eyes would be a perfect fit for that cowl and he can almost see her now, motioning him closer with a claw and what if he just bowls her over and places his hands on her hips and drinks in her scent and rests his forehead against her own and tilts up her chin and looks her deep in her eyes AND-!
"Hey dummy."
He lurches to a halt as he bursts through the open sliding-glass into the cool night.
He'd like to say it's the fresh air that's a splash of cold water for him, restoring his senses from the cloud of pheromones he just navigated through. But as cheesy and wimpy and stupid as he feels it is to admit it, he knows it's her.
It's definitely not the setting he finds her in, which the gang's hard work has turned into a macabre Wonderland. He views her through the lens of a wired, spiderwebbed archway as she sits atop a centerpiece coffin. Flanking these props are rotten, exaggerated planks nailed together into fence pieces. Mason jars of glowing goo form spooky traffic cones for the arch's entrance, their highlighter ink giving them a distinction from the recycled Christmas lights weaved into the grass beneath them. The ground supporting all the spookiness atop it is an ethereal, almost heavenly platform as a result. And despite all this, Wendy is still the pièce de résistance.
She's a vision of... wholesome beauty. Knowing Wendy, he wouldn't have been surprised if he found her in a tattered gown draped against skin caked in gray cream, looking at him with painted lantern eyes and a blood-dribbling crater of a maw. Heck, she would have been right at home with the zombified Barbies propped up on their dowels that peek from behind the glow jars.
But tonight, her figure is graced with a modest, knee-high dress. The blouse is a dollop of golden honey while the high and low hem is layered with a blue like Oregon dusk. A ribbon around her middle is, ironically, the bow on top. There's... a tenderness to her whole look. He feels the same appreciation he has for a ray of sunlight falling through his attic window, the same peace he finds from a cool breeze tickling his skin from under a cracked sill. It's something precious, something pure.
In hindsight, he's not only embarrassed and ashamed to have shoved her into the same box as the other girls' costumes, but he's sincerely floored that he even considered she would go in it.
She pats the spot next to her on the wide coffin. "So you gonna hook a girl up with her duds? 'Cause I'm turning into a Wendysicle here."
Dipper rightly decides not to comment on how tasty that sounds. He sits beside her, luckily managing to infer her slang from the context so that he doesn't have to feel like an idiot asking for Cool Kid-to-Social Reject translation. He unzips his leather, unfolding her jacket and shyly presenting it to her; she snatches it triumphantly.
"Suh-WEET! Mosquito forcefield, act-o-VATE!" she declares like a bionic Hulk Hogan as she slips it on, hooking a chuckle out of Dipper. "So," she says as she makes an exaggerated sweeping gesture, showcasing the yard around them, "whaddya think, man?"
"Welllll," he cheekily shrugs. "I can't really offer unbiased feedback, can I?"
"Nope!" She grins manically like she's some kinda Senator basking in her own corruption. She elbows him as she brushes back a curtain of bangs just above her eyes. "So embrace the ego-boost! Tambry went nuts with your black light idea in there. Great face-rubbing ammo, man."
"T-Thanks," croaks Dipper, rubbing the back of his neck as opposed to any faces, hoping that the strobe lights running over the yard hide the redness in his cheeks. "So, uh, why aren't you in there then?"
"Eh," she shrugs, jerking a thumb to the dance scene inside the house. "Too many love-turds, not enough rooms."
Dipper's eyes follow, only to bulge at the example she's pointing at. "Whoa." He shields his gaze, face a solar storm of heat. "I wasn't aware two people could dance that close without doing the tango." His expression mutes into thoughtfulness. "Especially when they're breakdancing."
Wendy heaves a sigh, her fishtail dangling as her head lolls back. "It's like... why are teens so unimaginative, Dip? We're totally unsupervised; we should do something we could never get away with in a million years!" She swirls the contents of her plastic cup in her hand. "Like, I dunno... rent a boat and bushwhack an illegal maritime cartel or something, be heroes. Hey, maybe I'll dare some sap to do that tonight. You got any good pranks planned for Truth or Dare?"
Her partner-in-crime contemplates. "We could always make someone turntable a ouija board." He shyly grins. "Summon a rapper entourage."
Fizzling tanginess floods every one of his face's orifices, a coat of sweet stickiness clogging his pores as his ears are assaulted with hiccupping belly-laughs. He cleans his vision in time to see the plastic cup tossed at his head but not in time to dodge it. "Nice going, doofus!" Wendy snorts, her slender frame quaking as punch streams down her nostrils. "You owe me a refill!" She knocks her cowgirl boots against his own.
The irony is blinding: he can stand tall with slick hair and slick leather and have nerves of noodles. And now the grease in his hair is probably running, his upper-half is soaked and he smells like a bowl of Frooty Loopies, but one laugh from her and he feels his cheeks wearing the widest, most confident smile you ever did see.
He slips back into the house, navigating around the outer edges of the rave to the snack table. As he's ladling some punch into a fresh cup, his anxiety jumps back to life. At the end of the table's luminescent glow, beyond the bright neon-colored tableware and frosted snacks, he notices a squirming mass huddling together in the darkness, speaking in conspiratorial whispers.
His eyes probe the sight as he stands rooted to the punch bowl. One of the shadows raises its head above the pack. Flashing into Dipper's vision is a glow-in-the-dark hellhound. Its demonic eyes aren't just lanterns, they're practically jack-o'-lanterns. Its gigantic maw is a trash compactor of saber-toothed fangs. They part, but there is solace in the fact that it's a familiar voice that belts out: "Hey, Dr. Funtimes! Advice, please."
Dipper feels his way around to the other side of the table, where he's greeted by two other neon portraits: a zipper-mouthed clown (Lee, given the height) and a very scaredy-looking cat (Thompson, obviously Thompson.) Nate, in his demon-dog paint-coat, cranes his head to make sure no one else is listening in, looking like an actual dog hearing a whistle. "Yo, which is the better deal," Nate poses to Dipper, "fifty bucks a pop or a genuine human skull?"
Dipper laughs and, not that it can be seen in the dark, arches a brow. "What?"
The yellow teeth of the clown part: "We're mulling over our bribery options. Valentino's tasking us with daring Wendy into Seven Minutes of Non-Denominational Bliss with him during Spin the Bottle. Hard to say no to a crowd cheering you on!"
"WHAT?" Dipper repeats, Shock now sucker-punching Amusement.
"Yeah, as wild as our Wendy is," chuckles Nate, "she's got certain conservative values, if ya know what I mean!"
"What the actual heck, you guys?!" Dipper demands. "Wendy's our friend. If she and Robbie are going to do that together-" His voice cracks before catching in his throat. He looks down into his cup of punch, fingers digging into the plastic grooves, juice overflowing and dribbling onto his hand. "It should be because she wants to. But definitely not because she's ganged-up on and put on the spot."
The crew of older boys look down. Though their painted expressions remain fixed, they ooze shame and embarrassment.
"But... the skull..." Lee weakly defends, barely able to meet Dipper's eyes.
Dip pinches the bridge of his nose. "OK, think of it this way: do you really want to get on the bad side of Manly Dan's daughter?"
The older boys' eyes almost pop out to the point of looking like empty skulls themselves.
"Well, what'll it be, gents?" All heads swivel to the glowing skeleton swaggering towards them. "Act now, and I maaaayyyy be able to throw in some embalming solution." Robbie absentmindedly but still very noisily roots his hand around the candy pile laying within the shirttail of his hoodie-made-hammock.
Nate waves his hands frantically. "Sorry dude, we're not risking a Corduroy's wrath. That's like taking on a steroid-crazy marine on the day he earns his black-belt after finding out his entire family's been killed!"
"And then a bird poops on his shoulder!" cowers Thompson.
"You want lip action, do it with your skull!" Lee challenges, before all three book it.
Robbie's painted jaw drops in a mirror image of the skull he was going to trade them. His hold on his hoodie slackens, piling his candy at his feet. His sights shakily fall away from his retreating friends onto Dipper. Robbie's eyes aren't windows to his soul now, but gates; gates to hell. "YOU."
Dipper steels himself as Robbie marches over to him, close enough to know Robbie might start something. "Truce or not," the younger boy cuts him off, "I'm not letting her get shanghaied by anybody."
"Truce?" Robbie spits, blue and purple Kraken tentacles thrashing along his vein-popped neck. "You think that just because I don't squash your existence we have a truce?!"
Dipper's jaw clenches. Selective memory much, Rob?
Robbie rants on: "I'm sick of you tanking my relationship. Have you ever even had a girlfriend?" Dipper's eyes fall and Robbie smirks like a creature incapable of mirth but who still has the muscle memory. "Hmmm. What a surprise."
"Says the guy holding the lollipop wrong-end up."
Robbie's eyes slide down to the upside-down candy he's about to lodge into his facehole, before refocusing his glare on Dipper, crushing the lolly in his hand. "This ends tonight, Dipwad."
Before Dipper can reply, a third voice does it for him: "This must be a pretty captivating convo to keep me from my punch."
The two whip around to see a cross-armed Wendy. "So..." she grunts, "what's up, guys?"
Before either Dipper or Robbie can reply, the music car-crashes to a stop. The illusion is topped off with a blaring horn, snagging the attention of all three.
It's a YouView vid playing on Tambry's phone, held proudly above her head as it roars monstrously from her bluetooth-paired stereo system. The lights snap on and off, gutting the magic of the black light. The party's anarchy slowly stills, encasing in its own invisible amber.
"TRUTH-OR-DARE TIME, PARTY-PEEPS!" Tambry declares. "Take your seats Indian-style and prepare to trash your self-respect!"
Wendy and Dipper recollect themselves, only to notice that-
"Robbie," Wendy sighs, glancing around, "where'd you scamper off to?"
"I'm, uh, sure he's around," Dipper brushes off. And, knowing the bullet he's narrowly dodged with the older boy, segues into: "I'm actually the one who needs to shove off."
"What! Why?" Wendy's bangs whip back towards him so fast they look like the rippling of the Red Sea.
"Oh y'know," he says as he looks around, inching towards the door, "just got a... bad feeling... in the core of my being."
"Are we talking like, a li'l indigestion from Soos' unrefrigerated Lunch Bag of Tricks or are you gunna momma-bird all over our boots? I totally understand either way, but I was so stoked to show off our costumes together."
"Oh, uh, wow," he stammers, "thank you. But mine isn't that great and you definitely don't need me for yours-"
Dipper's tongue quits working as Wendy jerks a thumb to her left. Dip's eyes go to the mirror hanging above the snack table. The lights continue to flicker, and when the darkness blankets them in those short seconds, he cringes at his own face.
She had been egging him ever since the party planning committee voted on his black light suggestion. Show off your birthmark, let your freak flag fly! You flaunt yours, I'll flaunt mine!
He had protested, of course. It wasn't a fair trade-off. There's nothing freakish about her now, how could she even think that? But she had pleaded with him to do it, actually pleaded. Granted, in her very own ironic and Wendy-ish way, which was repeating 'please' about as many times as you'd get if you multiplied all the digits of Pi.
And so it's because of her, that in the black light, you could see that every 'star' of his birthmark, from Alkaid to Dubhe, is highlighted like the biggest freak show advertisement in the Virgo Supercluster.
He tells himself that he would have never caved to her begging had it been any other setting. At least with the face paint, he can excuse the gross constellational blob as part of his costume.
No longer being able to stand the sight of his own forehead, Dipper's eyes swing back to Wendy. The lights continue to flicker, and in the drab glow of the chandelier, Wendy lifts up her bangs. When blackness returns, her own forehead burns hot as lightning.
As effeminate as the forming analogy is, he suddenly feels like Pleiades, the seven sisters scooped up by Zeus and hurled into the sky, becoming the eternal carrot chased by the exceptionally tall and exceptionally hunky hunter, Orion.
Now normally, tapping into his mental database of Greek mythology is a painful reminder of his own level of attractiveness compared to, say, Hercules, or really even just the friggin' centaurs.
But what he sees in front of him amazes him. He even looks back to the mirror, to confirm it's not a hallucination. But there it is: right beside his own namesake constellation, is Orion's constellation. That legendary godfather of hunting has been painted onto the freckled forehead of the (equally legendary) princess of lumberjacks.
He's weightless in this moment, swearing that he's actually been catapulted by Zeus (that jerk) into the beating heart of the cosmos. He hasn't been this moved by someone's kindness... in quite a long time. To know that someone cares enough to also infect themselves with his social leprosy or even... even that they might've actually admire it enough to imitate it alongside him, is something that will always stick with him. Whether or not he ever marries Wendy.
The lights return, this time for good. Dipper turns to Wendy, a light in his eyes too. "I'm healed," he professes. "It's a Chrismanukkah miracle. In June."
Tambry's voice rings out: "BUTTS TO THE FLOORBOARDS, BOYS AND GIRLS!"
Wendy saunters over to the forming circle, Dipper following on his invisible leash. She plops herself down, cross-legged, and looks up to Dipper, patting the spot next to her encouragingly. Dipper falls to his knees, wincing briefly as he then clambers into his sitting position, his idiot-smile almost breaking his face.
Wendy's gaze suddenly darts to the side. "Oh. There he is."
Dipper's head swivels to see Robbie sitting directly across from them, his eyes smoldering like an abandoned campfire.
Tambry walks around the circle, holding up a trash bag. "Everyone's phone off and in the bag! No photographic evidence! Now, who'd like first honors?"
Robbie, eyes still stabbing Dipper, shoots his hand up into the air.
Dipper's own eyes are those of the farmer seeing the approaching twister, about to destroy everything he's worked for.
INTERMISSION