Chapter Text
"THIS, AS YOU MAY RECOGNIZE,
IS A MAP OF THE UNITED STATES
AND THERE'S A LITTLE TOWN
THERE CALLED PEAKSVILLE.
ON A GIVEN MORNING
NOT TOO LONG AGO
THE REST OF THE
WORLD DISAPPEARED
AND PEAKSVILLE
WAS LEFT ALL ALONE.
ITS INHABITANTS WERE NEVER SURE
WHETHER THE WORLD WAS DESTROYED
AND ONLY PEAKSVILLE
LEFT UNTOUCHED,
OR WHETHER THE VILLAGE HAD
SOMEHOW BEEN TAKEN AWAY.
THEY WERE, ON THE OTHER HAND,
SURE OF ONE THING... THE CAUSE.
A MONSTER HAD
ARRIVED IN THE VILLAGE."
- The Twilight Zone; Season 3, Episode 8
The first time Wilbur had told him he was the Peaksville monster, Techno had been doubtful. Anyone would be.
Wilbur was tall and lanky. He was the kid in Geography that would chew on his pencil during tests and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made by his dad at lunch. He was the only other kid (besides Techno) that went to the school library for more than just the computers.
Honestly, Techno had seen himself in Wilbur. Simple. Bookish. Loner.
He couldn't read minds. He couldn't force Peaksville into an anomalous isolation. He couldn't cause a quarter of the town's population to disappear overnight.
There was just no way. Wilbur confessing to being the Peaksville monster was just another one of his eccentric jokes. It could be nothing else.
Then, a few months later after he had forgotten his friend's confession entirely, Techno's parents disappeared. Gone, without a single trace. Just like all the monster's other victims. Just like the rule breakers.
The police had promised him that they would continue to search for his parents. But even Techno could see the glint of fear in their eyes, hidden under concerned brows and placating smiles. They were going to abandon this case. No one wanted to be connected to those that had disappeared by the hand of the mysterious monster, lest they themselves vanish.
It was for that same reason that no one wanted to take him in either. Peaksville didn't have child services, not after getting cut off from the world. So instead, the police would try to send some townspeople from a list of public community volunteers.
Just see if you like him , they urged. Consider being his new guardian , they pleaded.
Techno doesn't remember much of the visitors he got in those days. Instead, he remembers a cold, empty house, staying up on his phone or playing video games, only falling asleep when his eyes could no longer stand the dryness and their watering forced him to shut them. He remembers waking at odd hours to eat the casseroles and leftovers that the community mandated visitors gifted him, not even caring how late or early or whatever time it was. Afterall, why would it matter? It wasn’t like there was anyone around to scold him anymore or remind him or care.
He tried so hard not to care.
Because when he did care about how his parents were gone— gone, they weren’t coming back the monster took them— an unbearable dread would possess him. The dread would consume his entire body, fill his mind, work its way into his heart and root itself there like the sturdiest of weeds. So obstinate was his dread, that when he tried to get rid of it and return to the safety of his hazy ignorance, he felt a sharp pain throughout.
The dread whispered to him, mockingly reflecting his own fears in the small pathetic voice of an orphaned child: What is the monster going to do to me?
It was a question he would agonize over for hours. In a feeble attempt to abate his paranoia, he recalled the rules that the monster had first set when it first made its presence known.
The rules had been given within the first few days of the monster’s arrival in a foreboding series of events. The townspeople had just discovered they could only leave the town for so many miles before a thick, white fog turned them right back around. It isolated the town completely, so some brave townspeople set out to test the borders in hopes of finding a “hole”. One of them was a pleasant farmer named Andrew Mason, more affectionately known by the townspeople as “Andy”. While most of those who entered the fog safely returned within five to ten minutes, Andy was lost to the fog for three days. The day he re-emerged from the fog, he was practically inhuman. He screamed and bit and clawed at anyone who approached him, and only after five people managed to pin him down were they able to wrest from his possession a crumpled note written in elegant cursive. It was titled “MY RULES” and it read:
- I am not leaving until I desire to. I want a nice, normal life here with my family.
- I will not be dismantling or moving the Fog.
- Any who attempt to find me or hurt me will be punished.
- Any who get between me and my desires will disappear or worse.
When Techno had first seen the rules, he had thought them ridiculously childish and doubted their authenticity. The first two rules weren’t even rules! They were just statements of intention. To him, it was entirely possible that Andy had simply gone mad and written them himself whilst he was trapped in the Fog.
But after the first disappearances, and now the disappearances of his own family, Techno found them more credible and his thoughts lingered upon them. His parents had not been seeking the monster at all, they didn't have a death wish. That could only mean that the monster believed his parents were in its way and decided to dispose of them. But...What had they been in the way of?
Without knowing what the monster wanted or how his parents had inconvenienced it, it was impossible for Techno to know whether he was on the monster's blacklist or what he could do to ensure his own safety.
In the far future, he would remember his paranoia and laugh.
There is one cardinal rule of reality: Time will always continue to move on.
Time will not stop for anything, and so the sun will rise and set, the seasons will shift. The trees will bloom and bear fruit that will drop to the ground below. Then that fruit will decay and flies will buzz about it, voraciously picking away at the rot that humanity has so graciously allowed to fall to waste.
Time will remain whether we like it or not. So even as Techno devotes himself to living from moment to moment in a perceived sense of timelessness, time eventually delivers a new family to him.
Which is how he winds up living with Phil and Wilbur.
Phil drops by his house on one of the few days that Techno has actually tried to put effort into dressing himself— it really isn’t much, just a pair of black sweatpants and his nicest hoodie. Phil explains to Techno that the town has allowed him to be his legal guardian and that he’s there to bring Techno to his new home.
It’s not strange that it’s Phil who’s taking him in, Techno thinks as he packs whatever essentials he needs— Phil told him he could always come back if he wanted to grab anything else— into an old duffle bag. Phil is Wilbur’s adoptive father and Techno was close with Wilbur. He even visited their house to do projects and slept over a couple of nights, playing Minecraft and bitching about the required readings in English late into the night.
It occurs to Techno that it shouldn’t be strange at all, but then if it isn’t strange, then why is Phil acting so weird?
For one, Phil’s movements are all off. He pauses every time before he reaches for a bag or commits to any sort of action. He’s absentminded too. Accidentally cut his own hand when handling a knife in the sink. Most of all though, as they move about the house, doing whatever chores need to be done in a house when its owner doesn’t plan to return anytime soon, a look will come across Phil’s face. It reminds Techno of the face his mother would pull when she had to choose between a particularly hard bargain at the farmer’s market, or the expression that his father wore when he had to admit that he had forgotten to get an anniversary gift.
When they’re in the car and well on their way back to Phil and Wilbur’s home, Techno begins to open his mouth to ask Phil about it all but he’s unexpectedly cut off.
“Wilbur’s excited to see you again, Techno,” Phil starts. His fingers tap at the steering wheel. It must be a habit.
Techno shrugs but Phil doesn’t seem to notice it, his eyes focused on the one-lane road ahead of them. As the car pushes forwards, they whizz past rows and rows of orchards.
“He was worried when you stopped showing up to school.”
“You mean he bitched?”
It slips out of Techno’s lips before he can stop it. There’s an abrupt pause in the conversation. Phil seems stunned, and Techno sinks down into the passenger seat in shame.
Before he can begin to feel even more embarrassed for himself, Techno is startled by sudden laughter. It’s Phil’s laughter. Techno cussed and Phil is laughing.
“Well,” Phil manages to break through his giggles, “that’s certainly one way of putting it.”
Techno relaxes again, and turns back to the passenger window. He thinks he can make out some beehive boxes further out in the orchards before the car moves onto a grassy hillside spotted with houses and barns.
“Now, I can see why Wilbur chose you,” Phil grins.
“What do you mean ‘chose me’ ?”
“Oh, uh…” Phil wets his lips and shifts the car gears before he rounds a corner up a slope along the hillside. Techno waits for him to continue.
“I just meant that he- that you- Well, I can see why he wanted to be friends with you.”
“Oh,” Techno replies.
The car falls back into silence. For a moment, the only sounds are the crunch of the wheels on the gritty old road and the purr of the engine. Then, Phil speaks up again.
“It’s not long before we get home. Maybe five minutes. Wilbur’s been planning for your arrival so he’ll probably be waiting outside for us.”
It wasn’t long until Techno was completely settled in at his new home. Wilbur and Phil were generous to help him with anything he needed and they soon fell into a comfortable routine.
It was nice… For the first time in a long time, Techno remembered how it felt to live normally again. To not live in fear of a monster.
And Phil and Wilbur were so kind. He truly enjoyed their company.
Phil turned out to be one of the most reliable adults he had ever known. While it was true that Techno had met the man before, he had not known that the man would ask his children how they were doing each day. Or that he would go out of his way to make whatever food the boys wanted, given they asked him in advance.
And Wilbur was incredible. Sure, he was a dick about getting in the shower first and he stole the good pillows that Techno brought with him. Initially though, Techno was concerned that living with Wilbur might destroy their friendship, but now he could see that it had only brought them closer together.
A few weeks after living with Wilbur and—
"You and me, Techno," Wilbur told him, "We're brothers now."
They were on the soft grassy hillside playing soccer— though now they were sitting down— maybe a quarter mile from the house. Though it was April, it felt like it could be the middle of July. Humidity hung in the air and the sun’s harsh rays felt particularly difficult to escape. Even the darkest shadows cast by the oldest, grandest trees could not banish the heat. At least the cicadas seem to enjoy it, Techno glumly remarked to himself, their incessant drone hadn’t stopped since he woke up that morning and had become a background noise throughout the day.
“Sure, but being my legal brother still won’t mean you share my elite gamer genes.”
Wilbur scowled at him from where he was sitting cross-legged on the grass but there was no real heat in it.
“I’m being serious here, Techno. We’re brothers now. Do you know what that means?”
It means we live together? Techno withheld the sarcastic response and instead fed into what he suspected Wilbur wanted him to say.
“No, I don’t. What does it mean?”
“It means that we share everything with each other,” Wilbur exclaimed as he took the grass that he’d ripped up and threw it into the air. A slight breeze pushed some of it back into his face and he spluttered.
Techno smirked and threw more grass at his new “ brother.”
“Wilbur,” he stated calmly, after the other teen had wiped all the grass off his face, “I’m sorry, but I refuse to share my toothbrush with the kid that gets grass and sand into his mouth on a daily basis.”
“Oh, har har, Technoblade . How clever and original of you,” Wilbur rolled his eyes, then continued more seriously, “Techno, I’m not just talking about material possessions. I’m talking about secrets. ”
What?
“The way I see it, Techno, brothers share everything with each other,” Wilbur began to count off on his fingers, “What they like, what they hate, what they want to do, what they can do…”
Wilbur fixed his gaze on him, he looked intense with the sun shining in his eyes, “Do you remember what I said in the library that day?”
Techno laid back on the grass and pressed his palms to his closed eyelids, and watched the afterimages— fireworks and stars and streaks of all colors— as he searched for an answer.
“...No,” Techno lied.
It couldn’t have been true. It had to have been a joke. Wilbur must be talking about something else he said while they were in the library. Maybe some girl? Wilbur didn’t seem like the type to do anything like that to a girl, but he was handsome and nothing could be done about a tear or rip.
Wilbur hummed, “Do you remember what you said? I remember you laughed. ”
The air felt so much thicker now. Did it get more humid? Techno’s hands felt all clammy and
and each breath he took felt like more of a struggle for air. He didn’t dare open his eyes to look over at Wilbur.
He rasped, “No, I don’t remember.”
Wilbur sounded disappointed, “You said—”
Techno could feel the blood pounding in his ears and with each beat of his traitorous heart he could feel a familiar dread seeping back into his body through his veins.
You can’t be Peaksville’s monster.
“—that I couldn’t be Peaksville’s monster.”
Everything clicked together.
Techno’s head hurt. It was him . He was what the monster had wanted all along. And the monster , a wave of nausea washed over him but he fought against it, the monster was Wilbur .
Wilbur was it. Wilbur was Peaksville’s monster.
His eyes were still screwed shut. He breathed in. Then out.
In .
Out .
Distantly, he registered the drone of the cicadas.
Wilbur, who had been silent until then, spoke up gently, “If you have any questions, feel free to ask. We’re brothers now after all.”
Techno lifted himself into an upright position and turned to face Wilbur.
Wilbur looked… like a normal teenager, though Techno now knew that he was anything but.
“You got rid of my parents,” He whispered.
“I did,” admitted Wilbur, “But only because they got in the way.”
“Of me? Why me ? Why did you want me?”
Wilbur shrugged and brushed his bangs out of his eyes, “You aren’t boring. I hate boring people, but you’re fun . And I wanted a brother.”
“So all this time… you were readin’ my mind? Is that why you were so good at guessin’ what I liked all the time?”
Wilbur scoffed, “God no! Not all the time that’d make things far too easy. Besides, I promise that I will never read your mind ever again. Here.”
Wilbur held out his pinky. Techno blinked in disbelief before he raised his own pinky up to Wilbur’s and their fingers interlocked in a pinky promise.
Wilbur swears to Techno that he will never read a single one of his thoughts.
“Besides, I won’t need to read your mind,” Wilbur grins at him, amusement and something more sinister sparkling in his eyes, “ We’re brothers now and brothers share everything .”