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O soul, be changed to little water drops
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found.
My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
- Christopher Marlowe
+
They say there are people out there who, if they wish hard enough, can make anything come true.
He thinks, maybe, he could be one of them.
He dreams of going to other worlds.
Everyday, he wishes for it.
He sits by the windowsill in the attic where he sleeps. He stares at the stars. He wonders if there’s a world out there he can go to, and he wonders if someone out there could help him fly to it.
+
Dipper dreams of darkness.
He dreams of a boy in a black cloak.
He knows the boy’s face, but he’s sure that the face’s owner and the boy in the cloak are not the same person.
Black hair, blue eyes.
“Why do you look like him?” Dipper asks.
“Because he’s the only living human who understands.”
“That’s all?”
“And we love him.”
The reply is said with no emotion whatsoever, but Dipper believes it without question.
“Are you sure about what you’re wishing for?” the boy in the cloak says.
Dipper stops.
He goes with his instinct.
“Yes. I am.”
+
He wakes up the next day to the sound of sobs and screams.
He sits up to find his sister sobbing on someone’s hand. He notices, later, that it’s his own hand. Except, it isn’t. It can’t be.
There is a body under him, and he realizes it’s his own. He realizes that his sister can’t see him sitting up.
Indeed.
This is it.
He got his wish.
+
He guesses, though, that it really isn’t that bad, being dead.
Norman isn’t crying when he sees Dipper’s body, and as he sees his sister cry on Norman’s shoulder, he can’t help but wonder if Norman sees him. If he does, he’s doing a great job at hiding it.
+
It’s curious, seeing everyone crying about him.
He never knew anyone in his family was even capable of crying. His great uncle Stan sheds some tears, proving that he does in fact have feelings. His mother cries for him, cries for her baby. His father cries beside her, quietly, trying to hold back as much as he can.
His parents can’t look at Mabel. He doesn’t even try to imagine how that must feel like.
Norman, on the other hand, still isn’t crying. And he wants to punch him in the face.
+
His face is pale and drained of all life. But he’s handsome, for sure. For sure.
At the burial, he stands right beside Norman who is dressed in a suit and tie. He’s holding up a black umbrella for Mabel, who stands at Norman’s left wearing a black dress and sunglasses.
Norman is frowning the whole time.
And that piques Dipper’s interest.
Norman shuts his eyes when the dirt is thrown onto the coffin.
“Can you see me Norman?”
He doesn’t flinch.
“Can you see me? Tell me, Norman. Can you?”
This apparently does it, because Dipper sees Norman’s tears.
Dipper simulates a sigh. It isn’t as enjoyable as he thought it’d be.
In fact, he may even feel horrible.
He’s not sure, but maybe he’d cry too, if he still had a heart.
+
There must not be any other worlds out there for his wish to have him end up in this one.
He’s in a world where he talks to people who have so much to say, but at the same time so little. They have so much history, but he finds that he doesn’t care.
He really wonders if this is all there is.
He remembers how he felt on his last night alive: despondent, unsatisfied. He wonders if that’s how being dead works. That last thing you feel in life is the only thing you’ll feel in death. The idea sucks so much. Dipper hopes that it isn’t true, because after all, he still knows what sucking is and he still knows what hoping is.
+
The house is the same, essentially.
He decides to appear two months after he faded.
He sits on his old bed, which has not been tidied. He notices his old things: the book with the town’s secrets, the journal where he wrote about all their living days, his cap, his belt.
Just like on his last day alive, all the things in his room make him want to leave. Dipper wants to kick everything and throw everything away. But he can’t. Instead, he sits back on the windowsill and looks at the stars. He wants, again, to be taken away, to another world that’s far away from this one. He cannot and will not accept that this – life and death – is all there is.
At first he doesn’t realize that the door has opened. At first he doesn’t realize that Norman’s there, frowning.
“You’ve got a lot of gall showing up here,” he says.
He doesn’t think he has any gall at all. His being a ghost took that away.
Apparently, though, what he doesn’t lack is the ability to offer a smile.
+
He sits on the couch in the living room, Norman right beside him.
Norman watches a zombie movie on the television, silently. Usually, he pinpoints failures with the special effects, but today he says nothing of the sort.
“Everyone wanted to know if I could still see you.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
“Did they believe you?”
“Yes.”
Dipper tries for a snort.
“Norman,” a voice says.
“Mabel,” Norman jumps.
Like how Norman stood frozen at the attic door, Mabel stands frozen by the living room’s entrance while she tugs at the blanket around her shoulders.
“He’s there, isn’t he? Dipper’s here?”
Norman visibly gulps. And then, he nods.
“Well, tell him to fuck off.”
She leaves the room then and there.
Dipper stares at where she stood, suddenly feeling more hollow than he already does.
“You heard what she said?” Norman says, with hardness and with focused eye contact. “Fuck off, Dipper. Fuck off and never come back.”
“Fine then,” Dipper says.
“Fine.”
+
He fades. He flies away. He flies away until he is stopped.
It’s frustrating; it’s unfair. Why can’t he reach the stars?
He stays up in the air, and he punches everything – the wind, the falling leaves. He screams, wanting the whole world to know he’s right there. He’s dead but he’s there.
He wants so much to be whisked away.
+
He whisks himself away, far away, for a while.
But nothing makes sense.
These ghosts that can’t do anything but talk about how much they regret and how much they think the living are stupid—
They don’t make sense.
+
“I didn’t mean to do it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
On Norman’s bed is where he is, because he really doesn’t feel like going anywhere else.
They lie face to face. He might look green, to Norman. He hopes he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to look ugly in front of him.
“Tell me what to do, Norman,” Dipper says.
Norman takes Dipper’s hand, or at least, he tries to. Dipper pretends that he can feel Norman’s hand on his. He pretends while Norman tells him, “Wish for it. Wish for it as hard you can. Remember what I told you before? There are people out there that can wish for things and have those wishes come true, as long as they try their hardest. So you try, Dipper. Try your hardest.”
Dipper starts feeling hot.
Norman is leaning in to kiss him, though Dipper knows Norman’s well aware that they can’t have contact.
Nothing stops them, however.
Norman’s mouth is tightly shut, but he has it against the outline of Dipper’s mouth. Norman closes his eyes.
“I love you so much.”
Dipper hears his whisper, and he swears it makes him shiver.
+
Again, he dreams of darkness.
But he’s wrapped in it. Enveloped.
Again, the boy in the cloak is there.
Dipper can’t move.
“Let me go!” he yells. “I don’t want this anymore. Let me go!”
The boy in the cloak holds a finger against his lips.
“Shhh.”
Dipper is hardly breathing.
Dipper wants to be set free.
Dipper is hardly breathing.
Breathing.
A long inhale, a long exhale.
He’s breathing.
He has lungs.
The boy in the cloak smiles at him.
+
He wakes up to Mabel shaking him awake.
“Dipper, Dipper, Dipper,” she says.
Dipper sits up, alert. He puts a hand on his chest, then on his stomach, on his legs, on his arms, on his face, on his dick, and on his hair. His eyes are open wide. He smirks.
Mabel arches an eyebrow.
“You okay, Dipper?” she says.
“Where is he?” Dipper asks her.
“Who? Norman? Outside, sweeping the leaves,” she says. “But I made breakfast. Bacon and eggs.”
He goes down with her, but he doesn’t go to the dining room. He goes right outside to look for him.
Of course he’s there. Dipper sees him from the porch. Norman just stands there, with a broom in his hands. He’s staring up at the sky, looking like he’s just experienced something traumatic.
Dipper readies himself. After being dead for more than a month, he wants to know what it feels like to scream from his lungs. He already feels it coming. He already feels his voice trying to set itself free.
He feels it.
He shouts Norman’s name.
It’s only then that he knows for sure that he’s alive and not dead.
fin.