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It hadn’t been easy to convince Wendy to let him see Bill in the old abandoned cabin, but this was something Dipper needed. He simply couldn’t accept that Bill had returned, human or not, without seeing it with his own two eyes. So, after taking one last deep breath, he finally pushed open the door and let himself in.
Though it wasn’t that big of a place, it did take Dipper a second to spot the strange man huddled up in a corner, looking decidedly uncomfortable. Could this really be…?
“Cipher?”
A hauntingly familiar eye shifted up to look at him from beneath the mess of blonde hair. When it was accompanied by a small laugh – the same one that still haunted his nightmares – he found himself taking a step back.
“Pine Tree.”
Well, the voice was unmistakable, that’s for sure. But after the initial shock wore off, he noticed something off about it. It wasn’t…happy. It was a bitter laugh, even if it was in his voice, and it felt more and more out of place as he contemplated it further. Furrowing his brow, Dipper took a step forward again, trying to stand tall. He wasn’t sure what to say though – what did you say at a time like this? There were a million things he wanted to ask, but right now the strange, almost out of character demeanor of the man before him was too distracting to parse them out. What was going on?
“What’s your problem?” he blurted out at last, coming off far more callous than he’d meant to. He didn’t bother to correct that though, not with Bill. The initial response was another laugh, much louder and colder than before, one that made the small man’s entire body shake. Just as he was starting to second-guess all of this (maybe there was no conversation to be had?), Bill’s expression changed to a scowl.
“My PROBLEM is I’m stuck in this STUPID body!” he snapped, so sharply that it almost made Dipper jump. “Do you have any IDEA what’s it like to be so limited? It’s SUFFOCATING, it’s –” After cutting himself off, and pausing a moment, Bill sighed and shook his head.
“Forget it. You wouldn’t understand anyway.”
Dipper wanted to say ‘fine’ and leave that be, but his curiosity was piqued now. Certainly, he could think of reasons why Bill would say that, not being able to jump into the mindscape anymore or whatever it was he liked to do but…was that really all there was to it?
“I mean, I dunno man, I remember you really liking being in a human body before. You know, when it was mine.” Dipper made no effort to hide the animosity in his voice here, nor the sarcasm. “Actually I seem to recall you leaving a note for my sister talking about how you missed burning, and drowning, and other weird shIT–"
His voice cracked a little there, and Dipper could already feel the color rising in his cheeks as Bill smirked about it. Ugh, he told himself he would play it cool, he told Wendy that he wouldn’t freak out! She’d warned him Bill would do this, and he knew it too. Ugh. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he should just…
“You’re right.”
That grating voice immediately changed Dipper’s irritated expression to one of confusion.
“What?”
“I did miss all those things. Those were things I couldn’t really feel in my true form. I can now.”
“So you’re just…overstimulated?”
“Understimulated.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. How can you be understimulated if your senses are heightened?”
This was met with another small laugh from Bill, and a wide, toothy grin. Actually, what was up with his teeth? They looked inhumanly sharp, almost like a shark’s. What the heck…?
“I can’t really explain it to you, kid.”
Dipper sighed, and rolled his eyes. He should have expected that, this guy lived to play games. Whatever, it wasn’t like he wanted to know anyway. It’s not like he was curious what the stupid demon of a man meant. It wasn’t like he was going to lie awake thinking about this for the next few nights.
“But I can show you.”
Immediately, Dipper went on the defensive, giving Bill a cold scowl. He could see where this was going a mile away, and he was NOT falling for it. Bill was probably going to try and get him back into the mindscape or something, to ‘show’ him what it felt like to…to…actually no, that still didn’t make sense. Sure, he was relatively impervious to injury when there, but that didn’t help Bill’s point at all. If anything, it helped his own. What the heck was Bill trying to pull now?!
“I’m sure” Dipper quipped icily, earning him another laugh from the demon. But surprisingly, Bill didn’t SAY anything else – he just continued staring at him, as if waiting for something. It started to make him uneasy. He really shouldn’t ask, he shouldn’t humor this, but…
“And how exactly do you plan to do that?”
Bill glanced around thoughtfully, eyeing some clothes that had been tossed into a messy pile at the corner of the room.
“Do you trust me?”
Dipper blinked. Was this a trick question? How could he possibly trust Bill after all that had happened? This guy was probably the least trust-worthy person he knew!
“No….?”
To his further puzzlement, this almost seemed to be the answer Bill wanted. With a bigger grin, the former demon muttered a quick ‘good’, before moving over to the corner and grabbing one of the shirts off the floor.
“You don’t have any scissors, do you? A knife, maybe?”
Dipper gave him a look. Of course, why did he expect anything else?
“No.”
Bill shrugged, and promptly took the shirt into his mouth and tore off a sizable piece of fabric from it with his own abnormally sharp teeth. Needless to say, Dipper was even more lost now than he had been before, and it didn’t help when Bill moved back toward him and held out the fabric.
“Put this over your eyes.”
OK, now he had to be joking, right? Dipper took the cloth, but he just stared down at it, and then back up at Bill, wearing the most unimpressed expression imaginable.
“I said I don’t trust you” he sighed, wondering if he’d somehow been misunderstood. Or maybe Bill just didn’t care?
“I know. That’s why this will work” Bill retorted, as if that somehow cleared up this bizarre and honestly worrying request. Dipper hesitated. He should just walk away right now. He should just turn around, head out the door, and just…just….
“Fine.” Dipper snatched the makeshift blindfold out of Bill’s hands, getting one last glimpse of his super-satisfied grin before blocking out his own vision. “But if you do ANYTHING, I’m gonna kill you.”
“Uh-huh” Bill replied distractedly. At this point Dipper couldn’t see what Bill was doing, which was pretty unnerving in and of itself. He could hear Bill’s footsteps though – they seemed to be moving away from him, first changing direction to beside him, then behind him, the growing fainter. After this he heard what sounded like a drawer opening, and then….nothing.
“…Cipher?”
“Hm?”
Bill definitely sounded like he was at the other side of the room now, and Dipper slowly turned to face the direction he was fairly certain the voice was coming from.
“What are you doing?”
No answer.
“Cipher??”
“Come over to me.”
“I can’t see you.”
He waited a moment or two for a response, slowly listening more and more carefully to everything around him. He could hear a faint sort of something that he couldn’t quite place, not in source or direction. Movement maybe?
Something brushed against him.
It was soft, gentle, but still so sudden that it made Dipper yelp and jump back away from it, nearly losing his balance in the process.
“B-Bill?!!”
Nothing.
After another several agonizing seconds, he began to reach up to take off the blindfold. This was getting ridiculous.
“Don’t touch it.”
The voice was soft, almost a whisper right in his ear, but still unmistakably Bill’s. It was indescribably uncomfortable to hear Bill Cipher whisper, and it sent a shiver up the teen’s spine. When did Bill get that close anyway?? He hadn’t heard the footsteps come back. Feeling strangely frozen in place all of a sudden, he heard a low, breathy chuckle that made the hairs at the back of his neck stand on end.
“I’m…I’m warning you…” Dipper began, trying (and failing) to sound more in-control than he felt right. No, he was in control, wasn't he? He could take the blindfold off right now, if he wanted.
“If you take it off now you won’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
Again, no answer. With a frustrated sigh, Dipper returned his hand to his side, assuming that Bill was just being difficult until he got his way. He was right.
“Listen, Pine Tree.”
“I am listening!”
“No, I mean really listen. And tell me what you hear.”
Well, he heard Bill’s voice, but that probably wasn’t the right answer. He could hear his breath too, actually, now that he listened a bit more closely. Bill’s and his own. It was strangely unnerving, paying this much attention to your own breath – in a strange way, it almost made him feel self-conscious of it. Was that weird? That was probably weird. It’s not like there was a wrong way to breathe.
“Well?”
“I hear…you talking. And breathing. And me breathing.”
“Anything else?”
“Well…I guess I can hear the wind outside. It’s not very loud, but…do you have a loose shutter, or something?” How had he not noticed that before? The more he strained his ears to zero in on it, the more sure he was that there was a faint sound coming from over by the window. At least, he was pretty sure that was where the window had been.
“Wondering why you didn’t hear it before?” Bill asked, drawing Dipper back out of his thoughts once more. Before he could respond, he felt Bill’s hands close around his wrist, nearly causing him to yelp in surprise again. Instinctively, Dipper tried to pull away, but Bill’s grip was surprisingly firm. And the more he struggled, the tighter it seemed to get.
“Let go!”
“It’s because you couldn’t hear it.” Bill continued, as if Dipper hadn’t spoken at all. “When one of your senses is taken away, the others get more acute to make up for it. For humans, this is a literal, biological thing, but the principle still applies to me.”
“How do you figure?”
“I could see everything, Pine Tree” he replied, sounding almost wistful now. “The reason you didn’t hear that stupid shutter earlier is because you weren’t listening. You didn’t have to listen. When you can see things around, you, there’s no need.”
“OK…?” This was all fascinating and everything, but he still didn’t see how this applied to Bill. Was he saying his other senses were dulled when he could see so much?
“I could see everything” he repeated, further tightening his vice-like grip around Dipper’s poor wrist. “And when you can see everything, what’s the point of feeling anything?” In the silence that followed, Dipper let that sink in, trying to process the full implications of this. There were a lot of ways to take that last statement, and none of them were completely irrelevant to Bill. Unfortunately, he wasn’t given a lot of time to think through them all before the lecture continued.
“I did enjoy being in a human body sometimes, yeah. Just like your kind enjoy using blindfolds to get their kicks. They get a thrill from being able to be so acutely aware of things they wouldn’t otherwise, just like you are right now. The sound of that shutter, the smell of my laundry in the corner…” Actually, now that Bill mentioned it, something did stink. Gross.
“And most of all, the feelings. What do you feel, Pine Tree?”
“Well, I think you’re starting to bruise my wrist, so there’s that.” As soon as the words left Dipper’s mouth, Bill’s grip finally let up a bit. Before he could be properly relieved about this though, he felt a new sensation: cold hard steal against his throat.
“What do you feel now?”
For the second time since they started this conversation, Bill’s voice made a jarring deviation from his loud and obnoxious norm. It was a whisper, a genuine, dangerous whisper that sent chills through him that no scream could. Not even the demon’s laugh freaked him up quite this much.
Dipper’s mind raced – what was he supposed to do now? Ugh, how could he have been so stupid?! Of course Bill was up to something, he was always up to something! And now he could feel the cold chill of what was undoubtedly a knife pressing against his jugular.
In something of a panic, Dipper made a quick, rash decision to shove Bill away, and by all accounts, it seemed to have worked. He felt the blade leave his skin, and heard the man holding it fall back to the ground with a small ‘oof’. Wasting no time, Dipper took several steps back, and practically ripped off the blindfold to glare down at Bill.
"I knew it! Do you ever think about anything besides trying to kill–”
Bill was looking back up at him with a mildly curious, but still largely bored look, making no attempt to get back to his feet. In his hand, he was clutching a single metal spoon.
"A…spoon??”
"You afraid of spoons, kid?”
“No! I…I thought…”
“Exactly.”
Now Dipper was just confused. What was even the point of all this? And how the hell had he mistook a spoon for a knife anyway? Sure, they were made of the same material, but the shape was completely different! Bill would have had to be holding it at just the right angle…
"When you can’t take the blindfold off, there is no spoon. Everything is a knife.”
“No…spoon?” Was that a movie reference? Was this a bad dream?
“Everything is a knife.” With that, the smaller man finally got to his feet, dropped the spoon on the floor, and turned around to go back to his corner.