Chapter Text
Bill Cipher was sick.
It was something he had never felt before. Not in his over trillion years of existence. Nothing this sudden. This intense. Not the way it took over every molecule of his body, every day and every night. Not the way it made his insides churn and churn, his vision blur, his limbs grow weak. Not the way it made him so unspeakably scared.
He tried to make it stop. Tried to believe it to be something miniscule and insignificant. He had already died once; this was no big deal.
But the sickness couldn’t go away.
This place makes me sick, he would think. It was certainly true, the Theraprism did make him sick. Every room, every patient, every nurse. Days passed into weeks and the reality of everything trickled in deeper and deeper into his static. It was all the same. The days blended into one another. The crafts and the games and the films and the three meals and the one snack and the fifteen-minute exercises and the group therapy and the personal therapy and the morning medication and the night medication. It all dripped into the carpet and the walls. At night, he would lay in his bed, watching the ceiling and counting, One Two Three Four. . . until he got to Sixty, then he would start over again. Sometimes a patient would scream and scream and scream and Bill would lose count and start from One thirteen times. There were clocks located in the central room high on the wall. A few of them were for Earth. Sometimes he would stand and watch them, let his mind run blank and watch the hands move.
The food was laced with salt. Bill didn’t necessarily need to eat – especially didn’t want to in this place – but the nurses would watch him and make secret notes. Not Eating, they would probably say. He’s protesting or He’s trying to starve himself or He doesn’t care about all the great work we’re doing to help and house and feed him because he is so horrible and we are so wonderful and do nothing wrong ever and then he would have to stay locked up for an additional thousand years. This stuff is GROSS he wanted to yell at them. One time he did and they wrote his outburst down. That was probably another six-hundred.
But now he couldn’t eat it, no matter how hard he tried to force it down his mouth. He was too sick. Maybe the food is the cause, he had hoped. But nobody else was affected.
He finally decided to tell someone about his sickness.
“And how does that make you feel?” his therapist would say.
“BAD!”
“Hmmm.” And then she would make a note and nothing would happen.
7:00PM said the largest clock. Night medication.
“Cipher,” said a nurse, handing him a tiny white cup filled with pills.
“I’m sick,” he would say.
“I’ll make a note,” they said. “Now take the medication. I can’t leave until you do.”
Sometimes a note would be made, sometimes not. Two hours later – once the patients were herded to their rooms – Bill would be curled over the toilet, retching out the almost nonexistent bits of food. He tried to stop it, to contain it, but his mouth would form on its own and he would vomit, blind and frustrated. That was something that had never happened to him before.
Nobody believed him. Bill Cipher is a liar read his notes.
But he continued to be sick.
It was a month until someone finally listened.
The skies had begun to grow dark. Maybe only for an hour or so, but the nights began to feel more like nights again. The earth was turning and autumn was making a home in the Arctic skies.
Ford watched the tender darkness as the boat set off once again into the unknown waters. Stan steered them away from the shores of Svalbard, the two rejuvenated from a week on land. Everything was clear and calm. Stars glittered through. The frozen air bit Ford’s skin and he breathed it in.
Things had finally begun to feel normal. Here he was, on a boat with his brother, safe and home. He smiled. It was nice to feel normal for once.
“It says here that you haven’t been feeling well?”
Bill held himself as he sat in the worn-down chair, arms curled over his front and body hunched forward.
“And what gave you that idea?”
The nurse glanced over his paper to Bill. “Right. Well, our specialist doctor will be in later today and you can have a word with her if you’d like.”
Bill knew he didn’t believe him. Could hear it in his voice and see it on his pen. There were a million things Bill wanted to say and a million pieces of paper he wanted to throw. He held his tongue.
“Maybe she’ll actually listen.”
But he couldn’t fully hold back.
The nurse sighed and placed the paper back into Bill’s file. He took off his glasses, wiping his face with a claw.
“Look, Bill. We all know how much you don’t want to be here. But even in the off-chance that you are sick, we have the facilities to medically take care of you. There’s no point in faking it.”
Bill burned. Hatred and anger and humiliation pounded through his body. He wanted to wrap his hands around the creature’s stupid neck and snap. Glancing to the side of the desk, Bill spotted a bin and desperately needed it, but he figured him vomiting now would seem all too forced. He willed for his mouth to not appear.
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Sure it’s not,” said the nurse and made a note.
Something weird and confusing and stupid was playing on the television set. It glowed against the purple hew of the common room, lighting the tops of the furniture. Bill tried to ignore it, but the garish blobs jiggled around the screen and screeched about something incomprehensible. One of the patients was loving it though. He laughed and loudly proclaimed his opinion on the film and Bill wanted to kill him. But instead, Bill curled himself up in the far corner, a bundle of papers stretched out from his lap and onto the couch. It was hard and plastic and had no pillows – too dangerous, the staff had said. The film was too loud and Bill felt sick. He scribbled on the papers in an attempt to distract himself from the nausea. The crayon quivered in his hand, red and blue red and blue red and blue scratch scratch scratch scratch. The lines filled the pages – three red three blue, three red three blue – and he colored them in with hast – red in the red lines, blue in the blue lines. Once a sheet was filled, he moved on to the next one. Again and again and again.
The patient laughed and Bill wanted to hurl.
“Will you shut up,” he mumbled under the scrape of crayon.
From the open doors of the room appeared a creature. It was white with glowing eyes and almost looked like a pair of pants. “Mr Cipher?” it said.
“What.” He kept scribbling away.
“I’ve been told that you would like to see our doctor?”
That got his attention. “Yes! Oh god, finally!”
“Great. I can take you to see her now, if you’re ready.”
He snatched up his papers – tossing the crayons to the nearest table – and followed after it as quick as he could manage.
The nurse led him past doors Bill had never been through. It tagged in with its card and the door lights dinged green. They went down one corridor then another, the nurse rambling on about whatever and asking him questions neither really cared to know the answer to. Bill found it embarrassingly difficult to keep up. The nurse didn’t say anything – likely read somewhere about Bill’s snippy attitude – but began to walk slightly slower. Bill both hated and was glad about that.
They eventually stopped at a new room, the nurse ringing the door open.
“If you can just take a seat, Mr Cipher, the doctor will see you shortly.”
And the nurse left. Bill was grateful for a moment of silence.
The room was stark white and smelt of rubbing alcohol and cleaning products. Nothing about it was striking, just a basic medical room filled with the typical requirements: a sink and cabinets, a plastic bed lined with paper, a couple of chairs and a metal table with wheels, bottles of cotton balls and flat sticks and clear liquids and pink liquids and black liquids that seemed to bubble and shine. There was a poster with a smiling family of bull-like things reminding everyone about the risks of Phaos disease, Light For All Can Be Damaging! Get Tested Today!
Bill’s insides spun from the walk over and he sat in one of the chairs, placing his crumpled papers in the seat next to him. He could feel the now too-familiar tug behind his eye, urging it to twist back inside his body to allow for his mouth to form. He stared at the poster to keep his body occupied, but he couldn’t hold on for long. Soon enough, he was flinging open the bottom cabinets to find a plastic bin and hurled inside.
“You know, there are perfectly good waste bags on wall.”
Bill jumped at the voice and almost dropped the soiled bin.
“Well, you don’t make it easy to find!”
He awkwardly fumbled for a paper napkin to wipe away the puke from his lips before he brought back up his eye, turning to the doctor once he was clean.
“Masha?!”
“Hello Cipher,” she said. “Long time no see, yes?”
The cat smiled in front of him. She was old and grey and fluffy and her muzzle pressed into her face. Her teeth were cracked and almost as yellow as her eyes. To a human, Masha would look like an average house cat if it weren’t for the four eyes and two tails or for the fact that she was the size of a horse.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Our old friend called for me.” Her voice was gravelly and deep with age. Each word thick, coated with her guttural accent. “If Axolotl calls, I come – especially considering you were mentioned by name, and I always crave a challenge.” She licked her lips.
“Easy there, fluffball. Just scan a thing and get me whatever pill so I can get on with my day.”
“If only it were that easy. Now up, get on bed before I have to lift you myself.”
Bill grumbled but complied.
Why out of the endless multitude of medical doctors this stupid clinic had to bring in that cat?
The paper of the bed crinkled as Bill made his way on top and he felt stupid, his legs dangling off the edge. Masha lifted her front paws up into the sink to give them a wash before collecting a variety of items from the cabinets.
“What was it,” she said, clinking different tools on the metal table. “Earth? About 2200 BCE or so? You bragged about how those humans built your likeness.”
“The pyramids are still loved by everyone, you know.”
“Yes, yes. But was I not the one to remind you, it was cat that was sacred, not pyramid shape.” There was a twinkle in her eyes. “Now, if I remember right – and I am but old molly after all – you just wanted to distract me as ghouls you call ‘friends’ try to steal my supplies.” Something long and sharp was placed on the table and she smiled that yellow smile. “Of course, I am smarter than ghouls.”
“Yeah, yeah, you managed to outsmart Keyhole and Teeth, big whoop! A half-dead snail has more brains than those two.”
Masha proceeded to pull out a file. Cipher, B. read the top. “And how are ghouls? Visit often?”
The churning in Bill’s stomach burned. If he had teeth then he would have gritted them. “Yep. Practically every day.”
“I am sure.”
She noted something.
“Alright,” she continued. “Axolotl said Mighty Cipher not well. Tell me about it. What do you feel?”
Bill hated this: vulnerability. It was like an allergy. Just the thought of it made his flesh crawl and fingers twist.
But he was so tired of feeling sick all the time.
With an attempt to make it easier, he looked away from Masha, trying to avoid all four of her eyes. There was an old stain on the ground. He pointedly stared at it, half wondering what mysterious fluids it could be.
“Well, if you used any of your eyes for once, you would know I was just puking my guts out.”
“This is often?”
“Constant.”
She made a note.
“This nausea, it’s always there?”
“Yep.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know! I’m weak, I’m dizzy, I can’t eat – that good enough for you?”
“Hmm.” She wrote something else down. “Long time?”
Bill tried to reach back in his mind. Time was practically nonexistent here – technically outside of it. He felt a wave of exhaustion and desperately wanted to close his eye.
“Weeks, I guess. Maybe a month.”
“Good, good,” she nodded as she continued to write. “Now, before you come to Theraprism, were you exposed to any sort of chemicals? Radiation? Anything that should be of note?”
“Please,” Bill laughed. “Even if I was, it’s not like that crap would follow me in this physical state.”
Masha clicked her tongue. “You be surprised. In all my years, I have seen strangest of things stick with patient. No matter what different physical state they are in. But moving on, are you sexually active?”
Bill’s body burned red. “What? Why the hell should I tell you, you freak!”
“Because I am doctor, stupid shape! I don’t care lick what you do on personal level, but as doctor I care about your health – that includes the sex. As I said, I have seen strange things and many of strange things come from being sexually transmitted. Please just answer question, Cipher.”
He needed to puke again. As clear as day, Bill thought of his last day on earth, physical and alive. He thought of Ford. Thought of the way he went down on his knees and peeled him open. Thought of his lips – hot and firm – on his thighs. Thought of how he pierced him like he did when he was younger. But only that last time did Bill really feel it. Feel how Ford finished inside of his body. Feel it inside of himself even after Bill closed up his hidden flesh. During every moment after, Ford was still inside of him.
Bill squirmed. He hated Ford so much.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just before I got to this stupid place.”
Masha made a note. “Any protection?”
He could practically still feel Ford in him now. “No.”
And another note. “See? You were just making big hiss out of nothing. Now, if you can undress, I will examine.”
Shaking himself, Bill took off his jumpsuit. “This is stupid,” he grumbled.
As Masha rubbed her paws with a squirt of sanitizer, her whiskers quivered in a smile. “Funny how clothing here makes you seem butt-strip naked normally. Just stupid bowtie to cover the self!”
“Yeah, ha ha, that was so funny.” He tossed the garment on a chair and sat down on the paper-clad bed.
“Bah. You have no humor, Cipher.”
She started her examination – tapping a leg or poking his static scar or getting him to make a mouth. More questions were asked. The angle of the bed was surprisingly comfortable for Bill’s back but hell for his queasiness. He just hoped the dumb cat would pick up the pace. She then began to draw vile after vile of blood.
“Silver,” said Masha examining the vile. “It is very pretty.”
“Weird thing to say.”
“And why? Euclidian blood, I have read, was unique. And here I stand, it warm in my paws.
“You know,” she continued as she pulled out a paper ruler and began to measure his sides. “Never would I have dreamed I would have Euclidian as patient. I remember back as kit learning the day of the Second-Dimension Incident, whole dimension wiped – poof! – like that. All life, everything, just gone.” Bill stayed as still as he could. His hearing started to ring. “As kit, I was so scared. Thought my own home would burn too.” She wrote down Bill’s measurements. “Learned there was one survivor and I had felt so bad. Could not imagine, being the only of my kind. No other like me in any dimension.”
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty. One. Two. . .
“The pictures on my chair, it is them?”
Seven. Eight. Nine. . .
Masha began to pull the ruler down the front of Bill – from the bottom of his eye to the top of his base – and stopped. She set the ruler to the side and started to gently press a paw over the top of Bill’s bricks.
“On your body, it is normally just your eye that is rounded, yes?”
The ringing started to clear. “Yeah, why?”
“Are you feeling pain here? Besides nausea, of course.”
But the ringing came back. He started to sit up. “No. Will you tell me why?”
She wrote a note. “There is slightest curvature to your body here-” she ran her paw over his front “-it is so minuscule though, most would have missed. Has it ever curved in past?”
He thought about it for a second. Sickness prickled under his skin and he felt dizzy. “No.”
Another note.
“Alright. You can get dressed and I send you on your way. I will have results by tomorrow – I am good doctor even if you think not, right Mighty Cipher?”
“Right.” And he proceeded to almost make it to the puke bags.
The day lingered on. The night was even worse.
For so long, Bill had wanted some sort of clarity, some sort of resolution to his sickness. But the reality of it all made him wish he could go back to when he was simply just complaining.
Visions of cancerous tumors and disintegrating innards plagued him. A funny image to put onto someone else, but if it’s happening to Bill himself? There was nothing funny about that.
He was scared and he hated that. He was Bill Cipher, he shouldn’t be afraid of some dumb stomach ache.
But he was. He didn’t know what was happening to his body. He wished it could’ve just cleared on its own, but it wasn’t. His thoughts of pain and permanent death couldn’t stop. Death. Actual death. Dying sick and scared and alone in this hell of a place where nobody cared about him.
Alone in his room he scratch scratch scratched with one broken crayon he managed to hide away. Three red lines scratch scratch scratch color it in scratch scratch scratch three red lines scratch scratch scratch color it in scratch scratch scratch. . .
The group therapy session ended and Bill was annoyed. One of the patients yapped on about something vapid and pointless, another kept trying to leave the room and they had to stop everything to get him back to his seat without causing a fight. The worst was a patient who reeked of a fish hatchery. They sat centimeters away from Bill’s personal space and it took everything in him to not spill his insides all over the carpet. He was concentrating so hard that he couldn’t even speak in group. The therapist made a note of his silence.
He was the last to leave the room, moving slow and with effort. Bill planned to just go lay on one of the common room couches and pray to anything out there that would listen to not have anyone bother him, but he startled as he found a huge grey cat sitting just outside the doors.
“Good morning, Cipher,” said Masha. “Good session?”
“Boy, I must really be dying if Her Majesty is here to take me herself.”
Masha hissed. “That is whisker-lips! Now come.”
He followed the doctor down the same corridors as the prior day. Masha’s claws clinked along with the tap of Bill’s shoes on the linoleum floor while they walked in silence. During the last few weeks, Bill had even found floating to be an exhausting act and simply decided on walking everywhere.
“We will go to my office first, much nicer than yucky medical room.”
Bill caught that. First. That meant there was something found. His stomach twisted.
“Through here.”
The office was dark and wooden and lined with framed degrees and honors. Here and there were photographs, but most were certifications all filled with Masha’s name. Bill silently laughed at how it made Ford’s degrees look like an elementary school badge of participation. He took a seat in the leather chair in front of the desk as Masha sat behind it, her tails curling around her paws.
“How has day been? Any ghouls visit?” she asked. “Heard from nurses you made paper boats in crafts.”
“Cut to the chase, fluffs! Just tell me what I’m dying of so I can do it faster.”
She laughed a hoarse thick laugh. “Oh please, Mr Cipher, you are not dying.” She reached into the desk’s drawer and snatched out his file. “I mean, perhaps we are all dying, but what I have for you is not that.”
When she opened the file, Bill glanced down at the papers but they were all in unreadable scratches.
“No, no. I ran everything triple and you are quite healthy, my friend.”
Bill couldn’t tell if he was happy or angry. On one hand, he didn’t have some rare disease slowly digesting him from the inside out, but on the other? He was so done with feeling this way. All Bill wanted was a cure, and without a diagnosis there could be no cure.
“Now, I did find something – honestly believed it to be misreading – but no, it was definitely a positive.”
Maybe he spoke too soon about wanting there to be something.
Everything seemed to move in slow-motion in that moment. Bill wanted to hold his breath but he had no lungs so he pretended to just to make himself feel better. He watched Masha’s paws as they ran along the surface of the paper then brought it up enough to peak down at it. She already knew the result, this seemed like theatrics. He wanted to twitch a leg up and down but he couldn’t quite move.
She looked at him and spoke.
“You are pregnant, Cipher.”
A joke. That was a joke.
“Funny,” he said.
“I tell no lie. And neither do results.” She turned the paper around and handed it to him. Strange, thought Bill, the paper’s all blurry. “Your bloodwork all come back positive for pregnancy.” Huh, so are his hands. “And what you complain of – the nausea, dizziness – all line perfect with first trimester symptoms.” Was that the room spinning too? Maybe someone should do something about that. “Confuses me. How, I thought, can the only one of kind create child? This, I ask you. Curious Cat, and such.” Wait, are the walls shifting? Yes, yes they are. Have to be. They’re getting closer and closer and closer and the wall is getting closer and the floor is getting closer and they have to be turning how is nobody else feeling that turning it is so obvious everybody needs to leave now this whole damn place is collapsing in on itself and
“Cipher!”
“What?”
“I asked you if it was human? I read all about your little fun on Earth that brought you here. Was it human you slept with?”
“Why would I. . .?” But he saw a man with six fingers and felt each finger curl inside of him. He needed to sleep. Why wouldn’t she just let him sleep? “Yeah.”
There was a scratching sound. Masha was writing a note.
One. Two. . .
“Fascinating, fascinating.”
Can I leave now? I’m tired.
“Alright,” she continued after folding up the file. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to do quick ultrasound, in part to see full confirmation of growth and other to see how hell your body can house child.”
Why is she talking about a child? That doesn’t make sense. I’m so tired, just let me sleep.
“Right this way, Cipher.”
Bill didn’t know what they were doing but he followed her anyways. Something buzzed in his head.
The room was the same and the bed was the same. He laid down on it and she asked him to open up his jumpsuit enough to get to his front. He didn’t know why but he did it anyways. A long machine on wheels was tugged over to him. It dangled with a couple of thick wires and atop was a screen.
“With your body, I should be able to get reading just fine without anything invasive. Okay, this is cold, many apologies.”
He didn’t know why she put clear gel on his stomach but he let her anyways.
One. . .
She dipped the tip of the probe on the glob of gel and twisted it over his body, watching the monitor as she did so. With a perk of her ears, she paused.
“Ah!” Masha chirped. “Yes, just as results said. You certainly have little embryo inside, Mighty Cipher.” He didn’t know what she was talking about but he glanced at the screen anyways. It was black and white, pixilated and fuzzy. It was weird. “It seems when you made physical form on Earth you made little womb here-” she made a circular motion over the majority of the blurry image. “This here is the gestational sack-” she pointed to the darkest blob “-and this teeny tiny little blur is embryo-” her claw tapped over the dot tucked in the dark spot. She mewed out a laugh. “Look at you, Big Mighty Cipher growing teeny redcurrant! I would not believe my words if I had not seen it myself.” And she chuckled again, wiping an eye. “My, my. Now, I know you must have many questions – honestly so do I! – so please, ask what you need.”
“Questions?” Why am I not sleeping right now? “Why would I have questions?”
“Must be shocking. I understand. Who could think, Euclidian and human!” Masha began to clean up the equipment. She flicked off the monitor and wiped off the lingering gel. “Well, most important for you to know is make whatever decision you want. If not keep? No problem. You tell me and I get it out, easy afternoon. If keep? That is lick more complicated.”
“Keep what?” He didn’t know what she was talking about.
“If you keep child. There are two options in your situation. Either we contact other biological parent and see if they want child, or we give to adoption agency. I know it may seem harsh, but you have to understand it is not possible or safe for child to stay in Theraprism.”
“There’s a bug on the ceiling.”
“. . .What?”
Bill felt frustrated. “There’s a bug on the ceiling, you stupid cat! That’s really unsanitary.”
She glanced upwards to what Bill was looking at. “That is just spot.”
“Can I go now?”
“One moment, we still-”
But he got up and left before she could finish her sentence.
The clocks on the wall ticked away. Bill walked past them. There was a texture in the carpet he never noticed before and he stared down at it.
Bill was sick and he didn’t know why. His eye curled into a mouth and he retched and retched. As he sat on the floor of the toilet, he pressed a hand to his stomach for a moment but quickly took it off. He retched again and counted to Sixty.
There was a man with six fingers in his mind. Bill ignored it.
“Would you like to join us, Bill?” said a nurse. The group was preparing for another game. What a joke. It was pointless. It did nothing to help.
“Get away from me,” he grumbled.
She sighed but nodded. “That’s alright. Maybe next time? I know we all have such a great time when you join us.”
Why was she acting so soft? Nobody has ever treated him like that here. He wasn’t dying. Nothing was wrong with him.
“Fuck off,” he said.
Scratch scratch scratch three red lines scratch scratch scratch fill it in scratch scratch scratch three red lines scratch scratch scratch fill it in. . .
His therapist smiled a kind and gentle smile. She was happy to see him, she had told him. He hated seeing her, he told her.
“The doctor had a word with me before you came in,” she said. “Would you like to talk about it? I’m sure you must be experiencing a lot of emotions right now.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Nothing happened!”
“Nothing?”
“YES!”
“Okay.”
She smiled and made a note.
He needed to hold himself, he hurt. But every time his hands went near his front, his vision blurred and he stopped.
The patients lined up in the cafeteria for dinner. Bill stared at the back of a new resident. The stitching on his jumpsuit was perfect. Bill wanted to push him to the ground.
He eventually got to the front.
“Hello, Bill,” said the worker. “I know it’s difficult for you to eat at the moment. Here-” he handed Bill a packet of something hard and dry “-this would probably be easier for you to handle.”
“Why would I need this crap?”
“Well, the doct-”
Bill left the line, crushing the crackers in his hand and chucking them in the bin.
The couch was hard and it hurt. The television played and it was loud. He wanted to sleep. The patients droned on and on near him. Nurses walked in an out of the common room, seemingly as loud as they possibly could. His eye hurt. His body ached. He wished there were pillows. He was so tired. He tried to close his eye but he saw a man with six fingers. He opened his eye but saw a red light. He closed his eye and the red was still there.
“Cipher,” said a nurse, handing him a tiny white cup with pills Bill didn’t recognize.
“What’s this?”
“The doctor noted your condition. Unfortunately the pills you were previously taking aren’t safe during pregnancy, so we had to change them to safer options.”
“Why does that matter? I don’t have a ‘condition.’”
“Please just take the pills, Bill.”
His room was quieter than normal. There were no creaks or taps or distant yells. Bill stood there, staring at the bed. I’m so tired, he thought. He went to the bed but stopped. He stared at the blankets – red. They were only allowed two blankets, no matter how cold a patient was. More than two is against the rules, they said. Bill trembled. I’m probably cold, he thought, that was it.
Slowly, he peeled back the blankets and slid inside. The bed was just as hard as the couch and the floor. He pulled the blankets up to the bottom of his eye, his hand gracing his front. It made his stomach twist.
Something had happened today but his mind blurred. There were words. There was a screen and something black and white. There was a cold gel. There was a doctor with a claw who tapped the monitor and touched him with a probe. There was something happening to him. There was a man with six fingers. There was a blanket over him. It was red. Something was told to him. Something was inside. Something was inside of him. There was a man with six fingers and he curled his six fingers inside of him. There was a man with six fingers and he curled his six fingers inside of him and placed something inside his body. There was something growing inside his body because of a man with six fingers. The blanket is red. There is something. There is a redcurrant.
Bill screamed. He screamed and screamed and tore the blankets from his body. He screamed and screamed and ripped the blankets in half then ripped them again. He screamed and moved onto the single pillow and ripped that apart too. Polyester filling spilled from the pillow as guts. He screamed and cursed and looked at the drawings that lined his walls. They were red and blue. Bill burned. He reached for the closest drawing and ripped it to shreds. He grabbed another and ripped that too. Another and another and another and another. His feet and the floor were covered in colors.
Stanford Pines was going to die. Bill was going to find a way to escape from this hell. He was going to get back to Earth and kill Stanford Pines. He was going to possess someone or become physical or reincarnate as a rattlesnake and kill Stanford Pines. He was going to find him. He was going to reach inside the body of Stanford Pines and rip apart his organs. He was going to strip each layer of his skin and peel out his nervous system and hang his body upside down to drain his blood. He was going to snap his bones apart and use the splinters to stab out his eyes. Bill was going to slaughter Stanford Pines.
He shouted out his intensions, not caring if the nurses heard and added another billion years to his sentence. He cursed the name of Stanford Pines. He was going to kill him.
Bill trembled and retched. He didn’t care about making it to the toilet. His eye was forced into a mouth and he vomited in the snow of red and blue. He cursed Stanford Pines and vomited more. He shook and shook and shook and shook. There is a redcurrant. There is a redcurrant. There is a redcurrant.
And he stopped. He looked down at the vomit, at the red and the blue, at the carpet, at his hands. He crawled backwards until his back hit the wall. There was a bundle of blanket pieces next to him. They were red.
He cried. He cried because the blankets were red. He cried because his room was now a mess. He cried because he was so tired of vomiting. He cried because his insides wouldn’t stop churning and his body wouldn’t stop shaking and his legs could barely carry his weight. He cried because he tore apart the blankets. He cried because they were red.
He wanted his mom.
Bill was scared and he cried because he wanted his mom. He cried because he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be held by her. He cried because she would have held him now, told him it was going to be okay, that he was so brave, that she knew he could do anything. Oh my sweet Billy, she would say, I love you so much.
“Mom,” he sobbed into the pieces of blanket. “Mom, I’m so scared.”
I know, she would have said, I was scared too. But I’m here. It’s going to be okay.
“I need you. I can’t do this.”
The blanket was red, but it was silent.
He cried because he was alone. Because in the whole of every universe, of every dimension, he was the only Euclidian.
But he took a shaking hand off the blanket and reached down. It hovered for a moment. He pressed it to his body, just below his bowtie.
There is a redcurrant and that redcurrant is Euclidian.
Bill cried because for the first time in a trillion years, he was no longer going to be alone.
“Masha?” said a nurse as he popped his head into the doctor’s office. “I have Bill Cipher here to see you.”
“Oh?” She perked up.
Bill was let in and the nurse said his farewell.
“It is early, Cipher. You have question?”
“No,” said Bill. “A decision.”
He saw a light on the wall. It was red.
“I’m gonna keep the kid.”
She nodded, took out her pen, and made a note.