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Contrary to popular belief, Hell could freeze over. It froze over the vast expanse of stretched time, freezing seconds into a lifetime, minutes into an eternity. Hell was a padded off-white cell where your every move was watched, your every attempt at escape prevented and thrown back in your face with the sole purpose of humiliating and debasing. Hell was a gaudy orange jumpsuit and white trainers that alerted everyone of your whereabouts by squeaking loudly on a glossy white floor.
“The central heating should be back up and running by tomorrow,” a smiling guard – or psychiatrist, it was difficult to tell here1 – told Bill through the letter-box-sized slit in his door. “For now would you like any spare blankets?”
Bill drew a hand slowly down his face, groaning. One year. One whole goddam year in this literal hellscape and nothing had gotten easier to deal with. Nothing.
But Bill had a plan. A year, though not very long for an immortal being such as himself, was still long enough to stew in his own resentment. What he lacked in physical form he made up for in his own bitterness towards the Pines family, twisting every essence of his being into the desire for revenge. His blood boiled bitter, his skin hummed with the prospect of sweet, sweet vengeance. His mind clicked with new methods of destruction of the Pines family, mapping out each scream, scar, and slash he would draw out of their mortal bodies.
In a year he had managed to plan his escape, guarding his future attempt close to him. He would not waste this. He would leave this rotting pit of despair in the dust, he would–
“Patient #323322 also known as Bill Cipher?” The guard/psychiatrist/general nuisance addressed him patiently.
Bill hummed in annoyance. “Yes?”
“Would you like some more blankets?” They held up a blanket with a poor-quality image of a cat clinging to a branch beneath the phrase HANG IN THERE!2
Bill outstretched his hand to be given the blanket. The Theraprism employee’s hand went through the Prism Cell’s door, rippling it slightly. From past experience, Bill knew it only worked for the employees, and that running full force into a door while yelling would result only in his orange jumpsuit being switched out for a white straight-jacket. He shuddered at the memory.
Bill wrapped the blanket around him tightly. The employee nodded at him, and with a reminder that Music Therapy Hour3 would be starting soon, he bid Bill farewell.
“Wait!” He called out, trying not to sound too desperate. “Do you know when ol’ Dextroid will be on duty?”
“Ol’ Dextroid?” The employee questioned.
“Guard, bald green head, kind of wimpy looking.”
“Ah, I know Dextroid!” The employee beamed. They checked their shift rota on what at first glance might be mistaken for a simple watch. “He should begin his parole any minute now.”
With that, the employee finally left. Bill stood, a blanket draped over his shoulders like the world’s most pathetic cape. He waited by the door ready to call out to Dextroid.
From afar, Bill could hear the heavy boots of the guard approaching his cell. They echoed down the sparse hallway, signalling to the prisoners — Prismers? — to be on their best behaviour, one of the rare things Bill didn’t excel at.4
Dextroid came to a stop at Bill’s door. “Stand back please, Mr Cipher, I am here with more blankets.”
Bill sighed. Of all the ways to announce “Hey, I’m doing some sketchy business”... he thought to himself. Regardless, Dextroid was Bill’s garish green ticket to freedom; no matter how ridiculous the stick of an idiot was, he had his uses.5
“You are sure you can do it, right?” Dextroid whispered, looking around warily with large, naïve eyes. He began wrapping blanket after blanket around Bill’s shoulders in a pantomime of productivity for the cameras’ benefit.
“I wouldn’t offer otherwise, kid,” Bill reassured.
If you could count on one similarity between every being in the universe it was that they all had desires. Their desires may vary, but Bill was well-versed in exploiting the wants and needs of those lesser than him.
Dextroid was not an exception to the ruling force of desire. When Bill had first been unfairly6 chucked into Theraprism, Dextroid had been nothing more than a chatty janitor. Bill endured hours of menial chatter before he had hit gold. Dextroid wanted something simple: power. The base of all desires. He hungered for it, waiting not-so-patiently for a chance to sink his teeth into the saccharine nectar of commanded respect and authority. Luckily for Bill, the base of all desires was so very simple to fulfil. After staging a one-man prism riot, ensuring that Dextroid would be the one to capture him, he was promoted to guard.7
He owed Bill. Unfortunately, favours worked very differently in Theraprism.
It wasn’t so much an I scratch your back you scratch mine situation as guards, the self-absorbed fuckers, did not believe in doing prisoners favours. Instead, Bill had to play a subtle game of manipulating the biggest fool you could find, gaining their trust, before finally screwing them over as the grand finale. And gods would this be a grand finale.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Listen, Dextroid, we’re pals, right?”
Dextroid looked unsure. “Yes?”
“Think about it. I’ve been in Theraprism for a year. I’m a changed triangle! All that’s going to happen is a quick possession, then you’re gonna fight me off like the hero I know you are, and finally, bam!” He snapped his fingers for effect, though the sound was muffled under the amount of blankets currently piled on top of him.8“Hello, brand new Captain of the Guards!”
Dextroid hesitated for a split second before holding his hand out, shielded from the cameras by the blankets. “Deal.”
Sucker. Bill grinned before sinking into the guard’s mind easily, certain he wouldn’t be able to use his feeble little mind to fight off Bill. The moral of the story, Bill mused, don’t pick fights you can’t win, loser.
Bill stumbled out on unsteady legs, knowing that he’d have to work quickly if he wanted a chance at escape. He got to the door and paused. Would he be able to glide through as easily as Dextroid had or would he be thrown out of his body, forever contained in his Prism Cell? A year's hard work gone to waste. He’d have to start all over again, and he’d probably do another month in solitary to boot.
Deep breath, Bill thought to himself. He felt Dextroid’s lungs fill uncomfortably with oxygen, crowding his chest. Mortal bodies were, quite frankly, disgusting. Still, it was nice to have a more physical form after his time spent slowly losing whatever semblance of sanity he had left in that cell.
He had come so far that he couldn’t let this all be for nothing. If he failed he’d try and talk his way out of it with Dextroid. I was trying to make the fight more believable. The lie was already on the tip of his tongue as he crashed through the barrier between him and freedom.
It worked.
“YES!” Bill laughed to himself manically, brain almost static with disbelief. Almost. It was imperative that he move now or else risk capture.
He raced down the hallway with the grace of a drunk panda at the end of a pub crawl, clumsily searching for Dextroid’s gun. While Dextroid was the only guard on duty on this floor, the other floors would be teeming with guards. As his hand latched around something he tripped, falling flat on Dextroid’s face.
“Sorry, Big D,9it seems I’m a little out of practice with the whole ‘having a body’ thing.” He pulled himself up, continuing down the winding hallway.
Where now? Bill wondered as he finally neared the end of the hallway. If he went down the lift he’d be at risk of being caught. There weren’t any other viable exits…
Well, no viable exits Dextroid would survive at least.
Backing up to give Dextroid’s form a little more oomph, Bill flung himself out of the tenth-floor window, successfully escaping Theraprism to a background chorus of alarm bells set off by the security system.
Dextroid plummeted down at an alarming speed before slamming against the concrete with a wet splat and the crunch of shattered bone. Blood spilt slowly from his head, warm and metallic.
“Huh, you didn’t turn into meat jam,” Bill observed aloud as he exited Dextroid’s body.
“You… lied.” Dextroid managed.
“Way to state the obvious, dimwit,” Bill chuckled. “You’re more stupid than I thought.”
Bill reached down to loot Dextroid’s soon-to-be corpse. Aware he was on a tight schedule, he rummaged through the uniform’s pockets quickly, shoving every item he found into his hat without registering what it was. He’d figure it out later.
“You will not get away with this,” Dextroid gasped wetly, shuddering. “You will not escape. We will find you.”
Bill ruffled his hair before turning away. “And I’m sure the Reaper’s about to find you. Say hi for me. We have a ‘standing date’ as they say.”
He snuck over to the portal gate, praising Theraprism’s shoddy security team for never thinking to guard his means of escape, and entered in the one place Bill knew they’d never look for a triangle on the lam: Gravity Falls.
~*~
Little did Bill know, a being knew of his escape. Had counted on it, in fact.
From behind the velvet curtains of reality, the Axolotl watched as Bill fled to his final resting place to plot the Pines family’s demise and smiled softly to themself. They could work with this.
~*~
“No, no, no, no!” Bill yelled. He’d returned to Gravity Falls hoping to find the Pines family all together. What he didn’t count on was Sixer and Stupid-Sixer off researching the Bermuda Triangle and the twins trapped in some boring US History lesson. He needed them together. Why could this not be easy? Didn’t he deserve to catch a break? Didn’t he deserve to make each member of their cutesy little family watch one another get physically torn apart atom by atom until there was nothing left but a pile of bone, sinew, and blood? He deserved to make them pay.
If Bill had had his physical form, he would have kicked the nearest wall in rage. The Pines’ had moved on, left Gravity Falls — left him — in the past. And where was he? Stuck. Stuck in the same nowhere town and getting nowhere with his revenge plans.
He slumped down next to the statue holding his physical form. So this is what those flesh sacks felt like when I possessed them? Bill thought unhappily. Trapped outside of his physical form and with no real power left to exploit the physical world, Bill had nothing. Well, nothing but two choices: one, remain tetherless for all eternity and catalogue the Pines’ every failure for his own enjoyment, or two, go back to Theraprism with his tail between his legs.10
He sat down and searched through Dextroid’s possessions. Wallet. Useless. Photo of his father.11 Yeesh, he really should’ve invested in plastic surgery. Gun. If he had a physical form then perhaps. Janky old time tape.
Bill paused. Why did Dextroid have time tape? He examined it, noting all its flaws. It looked as though it had been through a battlefield twice before taking a swan dive off the nearest cliff, but if it still worked…
“Boy, oh boy!”12 Bill exclaimed. “Think of the possibilities of this bad boy.”
Bill examined the machine. Now how far do I go back?
To Weirdmageddon? He could warn his past self of the trick Stan Squared would pull on him? But would that solve anything? He’d still be trapped in that parochial purgatory with no easy method of escape. To the beginning then? 13
“Well, I’m definitely not going to regret this choice,” Bill told himself before — without another thought — pulled the tape back to the year 1980.
1. Every employee had the same grey uniform in Max Security. Personally, Bill thought it was so they could blend into the walls, making it easier for them to sneak up on innocent, unsuspecting prisoners like himself. He had tried to spread the word about this conspiracy with his fellow inmates, but had been quickly shut down due to his group apparently "seemed more like a cult". It was then Bill came to realise that his fellow inmates were undeserving of his company and knowledge of how cracked the system was. Perhaps Bill's reasoning was why he hadn't made many friends in Theraprism yet, upon further reflection.return to text
2. Theraprism had a database dedicated to motivational posters across all galaxies. Noting Cipher's time among humanity they had opted for a human motivational blanket to encourage engagement to the programme outlined for him by the great Axolotl.return to text
3. Truly a new level of tone-deaf torture to be performed upon him. return to text
4. There were actually a great many things Bill didn't excel at, but at this current point in time, his ego couldn't handle that. The Axolotl decided to pencil that discussion in for a later therapy session. Baby steps after all. return to text
5. Can't put a dent on Sixer though, Bill banished the thought. Not the time. return to text
6. "Unfairly" being very debatable within this context. return to text
7. A low-ranking guard at best, but everyone had to start somewhere.return to text
8. If anyone had been monitoring the cameras they would have grown rather suspicious that one of the max security inmates' form was completely shrouded in blankets. The only way to guarantee that Cipher was still in his cell was the distinctly triangular shape the blankets had taken upon him. return to text
9. Yes, he was aware of the innuendo. And yes, he thought himself the pinnacle of unappreciated comedy. return to text
10. The first option would lead to an admittedly pathetic unfulfiling life, whereas the second made Bill roll his eye and scoff at the very notion. return to text
11. Dextroid had been the only family his father had left. How was Bill to know that though? And more to the point, why should he care? Of course, Bill knew nothing about losing family members. He didn't care at all. He didn't. return to text
12. Yes, dear readers, I also cringed reading that. return to text
13. Not the very beginning, obviously. He wasn't about to open the dawn of the creation, evolution Vs. unmoved mover can of cosmological worms. Jeez. return to text