Chapter 2
"...huh?"
The words uttered by Gill don’t truly manage to worm their way into Bill's head until a few seconds later. 'Go out'. What did his brother mean by that?
“I-It's okay if you don't wanna tell me", the other growlithe replies with a reassuring voice. "I feel weirdly more comfortable about this than I thought, but if y—"
"You're not saying that, are you?"
A deep, sinking feeling overtakes Bill's chest. He takes his paw off his brother and quickly paces in front of him:
"Please tell me you're not saying that."
"I- I don't know what—"
"PLEASE!"
...
Bill's breathing grows slightly more discernible. Dread, confusion, bewilderment, consternation... it's all lingering and festering in his mind amidst his disorganized thoughts.
The red beast’s expression taps into that uncanny, distractingly human anxiety yet again: “...y-you’re telling me you didn’t die?”
“NO! I… I didn’t…”
Panic and concern for his brother cloud Bill's thoughts before he can reach for his memories. Recalling as hard as he can, dispelling the fog out of every bit of the past he can remember… it all leads him to believe that he was just in his apartment before all of this happened, right? He was biding his time until he fell asleep, as usual… and so he did? Did something else happen during that span of time? Did he suffer some sort of stroke and he wasn’t aware of it? Did some sort of otherwise abrupt crisis kill him? How could he even tell that he passed away quietly when nothing out of the ordinary happened?
“I… I swear I didn’t… I was sleeping and… and I woke up here and… fuck—”
“BILL!”
The maned growlithe had stood up, his visage looking sterner:
“Bill. Hang in there a second for me, okay?”
“You want me to calm down?!", the orange growlithe spits out. "After telling me you’re dead you expect me to calm—!”
“I CAN REMEMBER!”, Gill cuts in, raising his voice and making the other creature flinch slightly. He carries on:
“I can remember. I remember my own experience much more clearly than you… let me tell you about it and see what we can make of this, alright? I-I don’t wanna see you like this. Please.”
After a fleeting moment, the elder brother realizes that he may have fallen victim to desperation much more harshly than he would like to admit. But how could he not? Sheer insanity is what all of this is. Just when he thought he was coming to grips with the vivid hallucination he found himself in, another curveball is thrown his way.
And yet his brother remains there, awaiting his response with a gaze so firm one would think that said person hadn’t recently met his demise. Much less so after turning into an animal of sorts. Said behavior would be uncharacteristic for any human being, let alone his brother of all people.
But... Gill is right. The older sibling didn’t expect this advice from him, but he needs to have a cooler head to process this if he wants to have a chance to digest everything.
It takes him some willpower to calm down and sit on his four legs (trying in vain to ignore the fact that he now thought of his arms as legs). He takes a deep breath.
After a brief pause, Bill does the best he can to school his expression into something more subdued:
“Right... what happened to you before this? How did you… pass away?”
“...there’s nothing much to it. But I remember it clearly”, Gill confesses.
He mirrors his twin, sitting down on the sand before continuing.
“...someone had invited me to a party and I left at around 2AM. No, I wasn’t drunk. It’s just that I didn’t feel all that well that night and wanted to go home early. I wasn’t sick or anything either. Maybe it was the fact that I had work the next day even though I didn’t need to clock in early. Maybe it was because I was already feeling down lately and this wasn’t helping, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What happened was: I wanted out, called in a taxi and fell asleep.”
The growlithe’s expression turns slightly sour.
“So... yeah. I was asleep. And then came a loud sound. And a lot of pain. I was launched to who knows where inside that car, smashing my entire body starting from my head and… feeling several cracks… I don’t wanna go into the specifics, but whatever happened right then and there… vanished. I didn’t have time to react to anything, even if it was agonizing. Nothing sank in for long enough.
I’m drawing a blank at everything that came after that. There’s this empty gap where it feels like I fell asleep and had one of those empty dreams that you immediately forget about after waking up. As in… there wasn’t even a ‘nothing’ to remember. I just… wasn’t.
Well... you know what happened after that. Next thing I know, I’m here.”
…
The elder twin had been increasingly rapt by the tale, to the point where the orange canine appeared no less aware of his surroundings than someone in a trance.
He is at a loss. Completely, utterly preoccupied at the implications. His struggle to come up with anything to say at all is as clear as day.
His brother is dead. And so is he.
Even after several seconds pass, he still needs time to process this all before Gill speaks up:
“Listen, Bill. I have a hunch that you may still be alive.”
That catches his attention. The sibling turns his deeply concerned gaze towards him: “Why do you say so?”
“Heh… think about our situation again. I think that if I was still me, I’d be freaked the fuck out like you’ve got no idea. And… I kinda still am, honestly”, Gill admits, raising one of his big paws and swaying it slightly in the air. “But for some reason, I can’t bring myself to be so shocked. It’s silly, but that’s how I'm... experiencing this. Like this is what was meant to happen for me. It’s hard to explain, you’ll kinda see what I mean but… about you…
…you're not dealing with this the same way, are you? And on top of that, you don’t remember any experience that felt out of the ordinary, right?”
Bill’s expression turns inquisitive as his eyes wander to his side. “Go on.”
“Well… what else is there to say? You're alive because we're experiencing this differently. It's what my gut tells me.
I dunno what awaits us out there… but I also get this strong gut feeling that maybe I can make things right and start over. I feel... liberated in a way. I’ll miss mom. A-And everyone… but if what happened to us is any indication, I’ll probably get to meet them again in some way, you know? This ain’t me being callous, it’s genuinely how I feel. I’m being weird, I know.”
Before continuing, the red growlithe brings a paw to the nape of his neck, wistfully smirking at the sand once more. Even beneath the silver hair partly covering his gaze, Bill can notice the shimmer of his suddenly glassy eyes.
“You’re saying you don’t feel like that? Then I’ll do what I can to see if we can find you a way back. It’s the least I can do for you. Yeah?”
For the first time this week, Bill has a strange urge to smile.
His muzzle appears to suppress the feeling, however. He exhales deeply as he stands up on his four legs a bit more confidently. As though readying himself, his stare grows just as assertive. The calm, raspy voice that comes out of him is completely non-confrontational:
“You listen to me now. Do you want to know what I think? I think that this is all still bullshit. Unfortunately you’ll be hard pressed to change my mind about it. The way I see it, there have to be two outcomes: either we’re both dead or we’re both alive. I’d rather believe that a bomb went off inside my apartment and I died painlessly. I’d also rather believe that this is all a fabrication of your mind as EMTs haul your body to Intensive Care in one piece. Occam’s Razor works better for me on the latter.
You said it yourself. You claim that there’s a large gap in your memory where you felt like you were having an empty dream? I could say the same exact thing myself. As far as I can see, I cannot call our circumstances any different. Until I can confirm that hypothesis, there’s no way I’m going to call you dead. Not a chance.
I’m not letting you go, okay? It’s sink or swim for me now and I choose to swim. So right now, I choose to believe that we’re still alive. We’re going to live through this inane dream together and no matter how long it takes, we’ll find an answer. You understand me?”
Their gazes remain locked.
…
“...heh… I really did miss you, Bill”, the younger twin states as he raises himself from his sitting position.
“...you don’t believe me, do you?”, Bill presses further as he inches closer to his brother. He sways his tail slightly on impulse, trying to dust off some of the wet sand on his body.
“All I’m going to say is… I hope we can pull through together.”
“We have to.”
"...uh..."
Bill tries a very awkward attempt at a hug as his big foreleg hooks itself on his brother’s head. With a chuckle, his brother clumsily does the same.
Everything is alright.
“This is so fucking weird...”, Bill mutters under his breath as he feels his sibling’s warmth. “I swear to God… if anything more screwy than this happens I think I’m going to snap…”
“Heh… how about we go to that town-looking-thing way over there? Maybe we can find some Digimon to get ourselves some sidequests…”
“Shut up.”
“Then we can go shopping to the nearest fantasy market for something nice and magical. After all…
…you know the one thing I’ll never forgive you for.”
Bill remains silent as his eyes widen slightly. A lump starts forming in his throat.
“...you kept my kazoo, didn’t you?”, Gill finishes.
“Oh, fuck off”, Bill answers with an exhale, pulling away from his brother and wandering onwards to the mysterious-looking city deeper inside the gulf. Gill trots behind him at a faster pace:
“Haha! I’m serious!”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“You must’ve taken it back when you moved out of our place! I felt like playing that thing for old times’ sake but I couldn’t find it anywhere! You know I loved to play it…”
“Oh, the humanity, I accidentally took away your five-buck toy. Fuck off, you knew what you were doing when you said that…”
“Come onnn, that one was a birthday gift! You dared deprive me from the one instrument I liked to play the most... Yeah, yeah, you hated it whenever I played it, but it’s not like you were home to hear it, anyway! You got me looking all sad now…
…Bill?”
The orange growilthe’s eye had caught a quick glimpse of something that seemed off in the ocean. For a moment, he looks to his side to give it a better look.
There is something out there.
Something is staring at him from miles away.
It dots the empty sea on its own. Unmoving.
The small figure is just barely resting below the horizon. Even the most discerning of eyes would have trouble describing what the silhouette could possibly be from this distance. In spite of the sunlight, its waning image appears slightly darkened as though by a shadow cast from a wayward cloud.
But the blue skies are as clear as can be.
How can Bill even tell that it’s staring at him?
It looks wrong.
It evokes a deep-seated sense of impending doom.
Dread.
Despair.
There is something out there.
…
The figure moves.
“...!”
All muscles tense!
Heartbeats drum faster!
Every inch of his being screams!
Bill wants to RUN!
“Okay, I’m sorry! That wasn’t a cool thing for me to joke about, alright?”
“Wh-what?!”
The orange growlithe violently turns around to face his sibling, his breathing turning heavier. But he can't linger on Gill for long! He needs to watch out for—
—nothing at all.
There is nothing out there that he can see.
Try as he might, he can't find it anywhere. The figure hadn’t just disappeared—it looks like it was never really there to begin with. As if its appearance had been nothing but a mundane trick of the eye coming from the endless blue corrugations.
"What was that all about?", Gill nervously asks. Some of Bill's energy appears to have bled on over to him: he's anxiously observing the blue horizon all around, trying to catch sight of what his brother saw.
"Did you see it?!"
"Not yet...?!"
...
The horizon remains as mesmerizing and vast. Just like it always seemed ever since their mysterious arrival. Not a speck contaminates the boundless blue expanse.
Though Bill's worry fades, it lingers ominously. "I... I overreacted, I think there's nothing wrong there", he claims, knowing full well that he's lying to himself.
Gill lacks an immediate response.
Their eyes keep themselves affixed to the scenery.
"If this is what the sea looks like in person... then it's kind of beautiful isn't it?", the scarred growlithe curiously comments.
Like his brother before him, Bill too lacks an immediate response.
He eventually answers back:
"...let's go."