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When Ford came back home through the portal, he didn’t know what to think. First there was this bright light, the swirling colors- all a tale-tell sign that there is a dimension opening up and sucking him through its maw. He was, of course, furious that he couldn’t defeat Bill, again. He was also shocked by the setting’s apparent familiarity. The dark, dusty old lab that haunted him like a bad dream. Bill was one thing. Someone to pin the blame on. But the lab itself was something he built for his false idol. It was an objective mistake he had no choice but to own.
Within the lab stood his brother, standing there in that same place since the last time he has seen him. Like he never even left.
But of course, that would be physically impossible. Stan wouldn’t have stayed inside this place for three whole decades, would he? Toiling away, wasting his life and wellbeing all for one person. Ford has hurt him before. He knows that. Ford has spent enough time to ruminate on their collective past and pains. No one is foolish and pathetic enough to give everything up for the small chance that someone might be alive.
Right?
But no. No one but Stan would do that.
“Finally. After all these years of waiting, you’re finally here!”
No one but Stan would spend thirty long years rebuilding his mistakes just to save him. Doesn’t he realize how ridiculously naive he sounds? Ford is not some pure, innocent soul who has been sent to hell without reason. Maybe Stan did push him into the portal, but even the socially-inept Ford knows that it was an accident. And more importantly, that portal wouldn’t have been built if it weren’t for him in the first place. Why didn’t Stan just take the journal and toss it away like he asked him to?
“Brother!”
Ah. That’s why.
Instinct took over. If he had fur, Ford would feel it bristle as he was placed on the figurative pedestal. While he feels guilty over punching Stan across the face, maybe it would finally wake Stan out of his delusions.
God, so much has changed.
Stan is in charge of two kids now, at least for the summer. He is well-acquainted with a young man, someone even more naive than Stanley. And when they all walked through the house to steer away the federal agents, Ford was able to glance about the place and see how truly shackled Stan was to his goals.
Much like Ford.
It was bad enough to be obsessed over at the cost of the obsesser’s well-being. It was another when the “obsessee” was imagined as this weird, kooky Mad Scientist. While it was dark and maybe Ford can just brush it off as misunderstanding his visual stimuli, the agents made it clear what his old home has been transformed into.
A kooky nickknack house. A tourist trap.
Well, Stan has always been great at pulling a crowd in. He was popular for a reason and if he applied himself as a teen, he could’ve gone to any college he wanted to. Unlike Ford. Being smart was never enough after all. No, there are these silly essays that write about “dreams” and how “great your childhood was” and “your fondest memory that inspired you.” While Stan could weave countless tales as if they were facts, Ford could never tell a lie to save his life. Not until his multiverse travels forced him to do so, literally speaking, and even then. He did far better at misdirecting than spitting falsehoods.
In short, a conman running a cheap and amusing tourist attraction was all well and good. The trouble was that it was at his own house. Under his name.
While he never planned on returning home during his college vacations, he sympathized with his college-mates on how their childhood bedrooms were suddenly transformed into guest rooms or study rooms. What was once a home became a utility place. A person who was figuratively thrown away.
And yes, Ford had no choice but to return home at times. And yes, even his room had been changed. But his mother was at least thoughtful enough to save some items which were then gifted to him. And he must admit, he was a little relieved at the change. What’s the point of having a bunkbed when only one bunk was used while the other collected dust? The room was so barren and plain now that it all felt like a bad dream.
Everything had felt like a bad dream. But now he has found himself in another one he can’t seem to wake up from.
Usually, his dreams, if he were unfortunate to have them, would consist of Bill taunting him in some way.
When he was a kid, it would involve Crampelter or his father cutting off his fingers, one knuckle at a time. Or a sea of a thousand eyes that watched his every move. Or speaking a language no one understood and the more he spoke, the angrier everyone got.
As he had gotten older, it became his hands detaching from him and attacking Stan. Or a stage of bespeckled businessmen and scientists watching him throw his brother into the trash. Or attempting a conversation with someone only to choke on shards of glass.
And then, after the impossibly worst had happened, he would have dreams of Bill.
Bill using and abusing his body in unsavory ways. Finding blood on his hands and desperately doing a DNA test to find out whether it’s his or someone else’s only to wake up before the results would come in. People running away from him in fear or even justly attacking him, mistaking him for his monster.
But the worst one was when nothing terrible would happen. He and Bill would walk on a small planet, so small that it was like standing on a beachball. They would talk for hours and hours, laughing and trading jokes as if they had never stopped being friends. And Ford would wake up only to realize that in his dream, that planet was home to millions of formerly alive beings who were now crushed under the weight of his boots. While Bill’s shoes would remain clean.
Insomnia is a common problem for him, but that dream in particular always made it difficult to fall back to sleep.
But that was nothing compared to his more recent dream.
It happened the night when he came home. While he planned to do some work, his body said otherwise as he passed out on his desk. As usual.
In his dream, he was an apparition. He traveled through his old home, now known at the Mystery Shack. On each wall he traveled through, there would be pictures of him in gold robes, with medals and plaques of his hanging next to them. Each accomplishment listed was more amazing than the last, like discovering how to harness the energy of stars and the cure for cancer. Climbing Mt. Everest in less than two days. Bringing people back from the dead. Turning ashes back into wood. It would go on and on.
Then he would find Stan leading a faceless crowd of people, all smiling and giggling at his charms and antics. Stan would brag about Ford’s accomplishments, taking the credit for it as he had no choice. With each compliment, Ford could see Stan’s smile growing more and more tense, his eyes getting darker and darker.
Every once in a while, a kid that looked remarkably like Stan would tug on his older counterpart and whisper “I wanna go home.” And Stan would push him out of the way, walking the crowd to the next attraction.
Then they would all be in the basement, the portal decorated in strings of lights and banners with a sign draped across its head that reads “STANFORD PINES, THE MAN OF MYSTERY, AND HIS GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT EVER.”
Ford would try to stop him, but instead of protests coming out of his mouth, garbled screams and shattered glass would spill out, getting shriller and shriller by the second. The excited and curious questions from the crowd drown out his cries while Stan desperately tries to keep his ruse up, answering each one as best as he can.
Telling him to stop doesn’t work, so he would instead grab Stan, trying to pull him away from the crowd. But instead, he would push him right into the middle. He would try again and again, but he would fall each and every time. And the crowd would laugh and laugh. Stan would no longer be smiling. Tears would run down his face and then he would finally turn towards Ford and acknowledge his presence with a question.
“Why’d you do that, Ford? I did everything you wanted.”
And sadistically, Ford would laugh. He would laugh a shrill, screaming, glass-shattering laugh as his pawn would tremble beneath him.
“AND YOU DID A DAMN GOOD JOB AT THAT, IQ. I CAN’T WAIT TO SHOW YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE HOW GRATEFUL I AM.”
Then he would snap his fingers and watch his brother catch on fire as the portal activates, sucking a screaming universe inside and unleashing a roaring, vicious tirade of monsters.
When he woke up, Ford no longer felt such gleeful, bloodthirsty excitement. He felt the urge to throw up instead, but was unable to make it to the bathroom in time, much less the hallway, clamping his mouth shut with a shaky palm as he dashed back up to the house from the basement. That dreadful basement. He managed to hold it in long enough to throw up outside, retching up only bile.
No one woke up from the loud and disgusting sounds of his groans, gags, and vomit spilling everywhere, thank goodness. Perhaps the stress of the prior day had everyone conked out.
Still, nagging thoughts of paranoia poked at him as he gathered himself, so he snuck about the house, checking in on everyone’s sleeping forms.
They looked so peaceful, even Stanley.
Ford doesn’t know how Stan managed to stay here for so long. Did he ever take vacation days? Did he ever have fun entertaining the crowds? Had he discovered a new hobby in taxidermy?
Or did he just do everything for one person? A false idol?
Ford has never wanted to punch and hug someone so badly before. He settled for closing the door on him, letting him sleep.