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“I’ve brought you both here because I believe if you were to meet people with similar experiences as your own, you may be able to heal.” The Axolotl states, their voice layered as if hundreds of voices were speaking at once, instead of just one.
I glance at Arden, and then back at The Axolotl. “Similar experiences? You mean…” I trail off.
“Speak your mind child, I cannot answer your questions if you do not ask them” The Axolotl chides.
“You mean people who have met Bill?”
“Yes, in fact you’ve read about both of them in those journals you used to have.” And with a wave of their hand they open the door to show two older men. One with a well trimmed beard and a red turtleneck, the other with a much wilder beard in a much more basic flannel shirt.
“Stanford, Fiddleford, this is Arden and Astrid. They also had an encounter with the Well Well Well Being.” They gesture for the two men to sit, “I’ll leave you four to talk. Take all the time you need, it’s not real here anyway.” And with that they quickly leave the room leaving the door to shut behind them.
The silence lasts a few moments before I finally speak. “This is all your fault.” I look at Ford.
“Astrid, don’t.” Arden chides me.
“Well, it is. They are his journals.”
“So would it have been our fault if we had brought him back?” They ask, not waiting for a response. “He manipulated us Astrid, and if you had ever finished the journal you would have realized the same thing happened to him.” They say gesturing to Ford.
“Your friend isn’t entirely wrong, I was the one to bring him back into this world.”
“Well, he's dead now.”
“He came back?” Fiddleford asks, sounding panicked. “Stanford I thought you said that he was dead!”
“I thought I killed him.” Ford shifts in the chair so he can place a hand on the other man's shoulder. He looks back to me and Arden, “I think we need an explanation of what happened to you, you seem to already know what happened to us.”
“I, um, have your books.”
Arden turns to me quickly, “I thought you burned them! Why the hell would you keep them?” Their voice isn’t angry, instead it’s scared.
“In case he comes back. We might need to make the gun again or something.”
“I guess.” They turn back to the two men, “I work at a pawnshop and Astrid came in with your books as well as his book. And I was stupid and summoned him and allowed him to possess me in exchange for his help building a portal that I thought would make me famous but instead would have ended the world.”
“He possessed Arden a few times. I was smart enough not to make a deal with him—”
“Rude!” Arden jokes.
“But,” I continue, “he threatened to hurt Arden unless I did what he said. So I made a deal too, and long story short I almost killed someone.” I say, hoping I don't sound terrified.
“You were being controlled by a demon when that happened, Ari.” Arden’s words are familiar now, they say this anytime I try to blame myself.
“What matters is that you stopped me. But this is when things started to get really bad. Part of the deal was that I couldn't tell Arden why I’d made the deal, so of course they still trusted Bill for the most part, until what happened that night.”
I glance at Arden and mouth ‘Can we tell them?’
“Tell them about your massive crush on me or the other stuff?” They joke.
I glance over at Ford and Fiddleford. “You're not going to judge, right?”
Fiddleford smiles and grabs Ford's hand, “We are definitely not going to judge. I sort of cheated on my wife at the time with him.” Ford laughs at Fiddleford's comment.
“So, we fell in love. But Bill used that against us. A lot. He hurt Arden to punish me.”
“I still have the scars from Bill driving nails into my hand.” Arden whispers, their eyes distant,
“Hey, it's okay.” I take Arden's hand.
“Thanks.” They smile at me, their eyes soft. “Your journal had a blueprint that told us how to build a gun that we, well actually Astrid used to kill Bill.”
“It wasn't easy. I started to leave. Not really leave, but I wasn't all there. And then Bill made Arden go on this…trip, I guess.”
“He still thought I was helping him at the time and made me go get a power core from someone he had trapped in a deal.” Arden continues.
“I stayed home and continued building the gun. Eventually, Bill came to talk to me. I, um, asked him to come back. I was lonely.”
“That’s one of his tactics.” Ford jumps in, “he separates you from everyone you know and gets you so dependent on him. He even convinced me that Fidds here was trying to steal my ideas.”
“And while Arden was off doing whatever, I got really sick for a while.”
“You weren’t eating, you were so far gone at that point.” Arden’s eyes are filled with tears, they lay their forehead on my shoulder, “I should have been there to help you.”
“You would have been, if you'd had a choice. I don't blame you.”
“Well that’s our story.” Arden says, lifting their head. “Anything we missed Ari?”
“I don't think so. But I guess Bill was sort of right about me all along. I did end up murdering someone. Him.” I laugh a little, even though it's not funny..
“You murdered a demon.” Arden corrects firmly..
“You already know my feelings about this. We've talked about it a million times. It's still messed up, no matter what he was.”
“None of us are perfect.” Fiddleford interjects, “heck I started a cult where I erased people’s memories because I thought I was helping people.”
“With a memory gun, right? I think Bill mentioned that.”
“Of course that fucking demon new about that.” Ford mutters.
“Language!” Fiddleford corrects, “yes, I designed it myself. And when everything became too much for me I started to use it on myself. I lost my mind for about thirty years but now I have almost all of my memories back.”
“I'd have done something similar if Arden hadn't been so careful with me.”
“Of course, I need you just as much as you need me.” They press a kiss to my forehead.
“How did you two end up together, anyway?”
“Well we were college roommates.” Ford starts.
“This guy barges into our room after I got laughed out of a class for proposing a theory that the professor didn’t like and he stayed up all night helping me prove that my theory was indeed correct.” Fiddleford continues.
“We were separated for a long while after that, Fidds got married and had a child.” Ford states before being interrupted by Fiddleford,
“It was never a marriage of love, mostly of convenience. So technically what happened next wasn’t cheating.” Fiddleford interrupts face red with embarrassment.
“Anyway.” Ford continues, laughing slightly, “I summoned Bill and he had me build a portal for him, but I never took very many engineering classes so I called Fidds up to help.”
“Ugh, if I never hear anything about a portal again it'll be too soon.” I groan.
“I second that.” Ford says, “well we built the portal for a while but we weren’t making progress fast enough, so I let Bill possess me during the night and allowed him free access to my mind. For a while it was fine, until he started to say things to Fiddleford to try and scare him off.” He reaches over and takes Fiddleford's hand in his, “when we eventually tested the portal Fidds got pulled in and saw something. He then quit the project saying that the portal was dangerous, and he was right.”
Fiddleford cuts in, “That was when I formed the cult to try and help people forget and eventually went mad myself.”
“Yes, and while that was happening I slowly started to realize Bill did not have my best interest in mind.”
“That’s an understatement.” Arden mutteres.
“That’s true, when I finally refused to continue to build the portal he started hurting me and sociologically manipulating me. He would leave videos of me calling my estranged twin brother, telling him that I was going to kill myself only to reveal that the line was never connected. Or he would switch the meanings of certain words around in my head without me realizing. Eventually I called my twin brother for help, but we ended up getting in a fight and I accidentally got pushed through the portal. So I spent the next thirty years of my life dedicating myself to killing Bill because I thought there was no way for me to get home.”
“He could really do that? Mess with how you thought?” Arden asks, their eyes panicked.
“Yes, but only if you deal included giving him access to your mind for more than possession.” Ford explains.
“Oh thank god.” Arden sighs.
“I gave him access for things that weren't possession, but I don't think it ever got that bad.”
“Well, I’d say have Arden keep an eye out for anything that doesn’t make sense. You can usually fix whatever he’s switched in your head if you realize what you were thinking was wrong.” Ford explains before continuing, “My family, being my twin and my great niece and nephew, managed to get me back home. Eventually Bill got back into our dimension but we were able to kill him, or at least we thought we did, by my brother and I switching places and letting Bill into his mind then erasing my brother's mind with Fiddleford's memory gun. He eventually regained his memory’s and I can’t help but wonder if that’s what allowed Bill to return.”
“That could be, or maybe Bill can’t be killed. The Axolotl told me that he’s being held in some sort of maximum security prison slash rehabilitation program here because he called upon the Axolotl in his dying moments.” Arden adds thoughtfully.
“So I couldn't even kill him properly?”
“I think it’s sort of like you killed him and The Axolotl brought him back, or maybe Bill summoning The Axolotl brought him back? I’m not exactly sure how this place works.” Arden says
gesturing towards the room around us.
“So I'm not a murderer. I meant to kill him, though.”
“You were never a murderer Ari, if Bill had been a person it would have fallen under self defense.” Arden says placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Self defense is still killing someone.”
“If that’s true then I’m a murderer as well.” Ford says, “I killed Bill too, or at least I think I did. I’m not exactly sure what I actually did.”
“And I'm still not sure I'm fully sane,” I joke.
“I don’t think any of us really are.” Fiddleford's voice cracks slightly, drawing out more of his southern accent.
“Bill compared me to you once, I think.”
“Really, What did he say?” Fiddleford asks.
“He basically offered me blueprints for one of those memory gun things.”
“You didn’t take it did you?” Arden asks.
“Of course not.”
“Good! I honestly would have found a way to break into wherever Bills being kept and kill him again if you had.” They sigh with relief.
“I almost did, but I doubt he would have given them to me anyway.”
“He probably would have just so he could manipulate you further.” Ford adds.
“I probably shouldn't have involved Arden in the first place. He never would have tricked me, I'm very paranoid.”
Arden turns to me, a flash of anger in their eyes, “what the fuck would you have done then, just waited in the basement of the diner for Bill to come kill you?” Their eyes soften, “No. I’m glad you came to me. I don’t care that we gained a hell of a lot of trauma from it, at least were together now.”
I turn to look at Ford. “Does it ever get better? Or are we always going to be like this?”
“I wouldn’t say it gets better, it’s more like you learn how to deal with it and you find the people to help you through your bad days. And I think you’ve done a pretty good job on that second one.” Ford says, smiling at Arden.
Suddenly the Axolotl appears before us, “I apologize but we are currently having an issue with one of our inmates, I would love to let you keep talking but I must ask you to leave.” And with a smile and a snap of their fingers me and Arden are back home again, safe.