Coraline watched as her breath curled from her mouth in the cool Oregon air.

The sky was an inky navy blue, sprinkled with white glittering stars, and the forest in the distance was a jagged black silhouette on the horizon.

It must've been midnight, or close enough. Which meant she had eight hours? Maybe nine? She never knew what time sunrise was meant to be, she never kept track of it and now she was finally starting to regret that.

That wasn't the only thing she regretted however, in fact that was rather low on the list now.

She took her phone from her pocket, and looking past the huge spiderweb of a crack that it had recently been given, she saw that she had eight unread messages. It seemed a bit pointless to check them now though, especially if she ended up having less time than she thought she did. Coraline sighed, and put her phone away again, instead looking to the road which she had been pacing for the last hour or so. That in itself was another waste of time, but it hardly seemed to matter either.

Nothing mattered anymore.

She'd made a stupid mistake, an awful, horrible mistake that had ruined everything, it had ruined her life.

She had had another encounter with the Other Mother.

Being seventeen was not the easiest thing in the world, this was obvious,

And Coraline was not the most well-tempered of people, as everyone knew, more than most, being her close-knit group of friends. Friends who she had recently all told to 'fuck off', some with those exact words, and others by just ignoring them until they stopped trying to contact her.

As of late, her temper had smouldered into a few bouts of rage, bouts which had all caused more than their fair share of trouble when they reared their heads.

It had almost lost her her job at the movie rental store when she had snapped at a customer,

It had gotten her a two-week suspension at school when she had spoken back to and insulted a teacher,

But most worryingly, it had built somewhat of a barricade between her and her friends. Two people who had suffered the most from this were the Pine's twins, after a moment of anger had led to her lashing out at Mabel. Harmless Mabel, who had somehow managed to push all the wrong buttons at once.

As far as Coraline was concerned though, none of it was her fault.

If people would only listen to her, if people only understood her, if people only had time for her. Instead of assuming what she wanted or needed, and assuming how she felt.

It wasn't her fault, it was theirs.

The last straw had come a few days earlier however, during the task of planning her eighteenth birthday party.

Her parents had suggested a gathering at their home, presided over by them of course, but Coraline had quickly squashed the idea, and had decided to arrange it herself.

After only a few hours however, it became abundantly clear that the event was not going to go ahead, as all but three of her invites had been downright rejected within minutes,

In real terms, there was a very real and simple reason for this, but Coraline of course was blind to it,

Her recent bitter personality was the deterrent.

The teen had taken it as yet another case of her being forgotten and left behind, and that was when she came back.

0o0o0

Coraline was just getting home from work. The late autumn sky was dark, and in turn her bedroom became a shadowy space at the top of the house.

She collapsed onto her bed as soon as she got into her room, not even bothering to take off any layer of her clothing- it was cold up there anyway, so she didn't mind.

What she did mind however, was the feeling of a set of eyes on her.

This was not uncommon, it was a feeling many people got just before sleep welcomed them. An anxiety that interrupted their clear minds and made them pause, allowing their imaginations to run wild in the worst possible ways to explain what the watching eyes belonged to.

Being a grown young woman, Coraline was inclined to ignore the unsettling sensation, and instead curled in closer to her covers. She was tired, and in this moment cared more about sleep than anything else. Sleep was a refuge from all the crappy stuff going wrong in her life right now.

She fell into a heavy sleep quite quickly.

When Coraline woke up in the late hours of the morning the next day, an experience unlike that of most people struck her however,

The feeling of being watched hadn't budged.

Coraline sat up in her bed and rubbed at her blurred eyes, pulling at her short but knotted hair, and wincing at the ache in her scalp.

She couldn't determine the location of the odd feeling, but it certainly wasn't subsiding.

After perhaps a minute of looking around, her gaze fell on the culprit however, and she froze solid on her bed, one hand still over one of her eyes, as they widened, and her jaw dropped.

Back lit by the white sky visible outside of her bedroom window, was a small, old chair. It sat away from everything else in her room, rather bizarrely, and it faced her bed perfectly. If it had been vacant, it wouldn't have appeared all that out of place. It seemed like a place a parent might sit, watching over a much younger child, or indeed a seat a young child might take to play alone.

But the chair was not vacant at this time,

It was playing host to a doll, a doll Coraline knew all too well.

It held her visage, as it had last time, but it was completely up to date.

The hair was still blue, but the bob was now asymmetric. The clothes were dark, black trousers and a purple polo t-shirt, her uniform for work. The legs of the doll were crossed, the arms hung at its sides, and the large, shining button eyes were staring over at her.

This had to be some sort of cruel joke,

Not many people knew about the events from her youth, since it had happened, she had only told a few more people, including Dipper, Mabel, Norman and Neil, whose own adventures made hers seem somewhat tame.

Norman often joked at how odd it was that they had all found each other.

Regardless of anything that had happened as of late though, they wouldn't have brought this back to haunt her, would they? As some awful punishment for being such a horrid bitch. Or rather, a 'misunderstood teenager' as she saw herself.

Coraline stood from her mattress and quickly went to pick up the doll.

She clutched at it and brought it closer to her face, and immediately all suspicions of her friends' involvements melted away.

The doll was just like it had been before.

It smelt of ancient must in the same way, it was the exact same proportions, it even weighed the same in hand,

Overcome by a terrified chill suddenly coursing down her spine, Coraline dropped the doll and backed away quickly. It really was her, there was no mistaking it.

After an unsettling silence, the teen finally moved again, picking up the doll but refusing to look at it.

It was very simple, she would stop this ordeal before it even began again.

Coraline yanked on a thick jacket to combat the cold on the way out of her room, and tucked the doll away in her bag. She rushed down the stairs, skipping as many as she dared, and barrelled from the back door, to where her old, rusted and unloved bike lay on the decking.

Without hesitation, she hoisted it up and sat on the firm, unyielding seat. There was no time to complain however, as she began to ride swiftly up the hill at the far end of her garden, her destination clear in her mind.

It wasn't long before Coraline had to ditch her bike at the treeline, as it became too thick to ride through, and she instead continued on foot, mud now encasing the soles of her shoes and low tree branches pulling at her clothes.

No one had passed this way in a long while, or at least if they had, they hadn't cared to make the path clear.

When Coraline broke into the clearing where the well had once rested, she was taken aback, even falling again into a catatonic state.

The area was grey and black, but not left colourless by the bad weather. It was more like she'd wondered into an old black and white film, save for a small house that sat at the centre of the clearing, standing right where the well once had.

The house was in colour, and looked like a caricature or an illustration from a child's book.

The proportions were off and the colours weren't quite right,

Regardless, warm orange light poured from the windows, and ignoring the unsettling obscurity, the place was nothing but welcoming.

Coraline knew better than to fall for tricks like this though.

She swallowed deeply to push down any creeping fear and cautiously started towards the house, treading lightly as she went,

The closer she got to the place, the warmer she felt, and she briefly even considered removing her jacket.

When she got to the door, she paused and strained her ears to hear anything from within,

For a second, she thought she might have heard humming, gentle, musical humming, but it was gone as soon as it came, and she was left in silence.

Coraline placed her hand on the door handle, and the cold metal made her fingers feel numb, she persevered all the same however and pushed the handle down until she felt the door give. Taking another deep breath to steady herself, she then pushed the door open with a surge of strength.

She let go of the handle, and it hit the inside of the wall, making the metal clatter on the wood, and birds in the distance craw and flap away.

The inside of the house was empty.

The place was a regular shack, the outside wasn't colourful or house like, there was nothing casting light out of the windows, in fact they were too murky and dust covered for anything to be seen through them.

The only thing held within the small wooden box was the muddy floor, the open mouth of the well cut into it.

Sense overcame Coraline, and with a sigh she realised that the shack had likely been built to stop people from stumbling down the well. What she had seen was simply her fear fuelled mind conjuring up an image that would scare her, the same way the feeling of being watched did when you were trying to sleep.

At that moment, a gust of wind rolled by, and Coraline looked behind her, as a cluster of leaves were scooped up and rattled along the ground.

She then turned back to the open door of the shack,

The white, cracked and pealing face of the Other Mother was an inch in front of her own.

Before her body could react, before it could even process what was happening, a sharp, tight grip clutched around her waist, and Coraline was yanked forward and down, down plummeting into the pitch darkness of the well.

0o0o0

Coraline woke in the darkness, briefly having forgotten what had happened.

She had become unconscious sometime on the way down the well, perhaps when she hit the ground, and was now sprawled across the wet, muddy floor,

She sat up, attempting to make not a single noise and looked deep into the blackness, squinting at the void.

After a minute of looking about, Coraline concluded that there was absolutely no way she would be able to see anything around her, as the only light source was the thousands upon thousands of stars twinkling above her.

A sky full of stars in the middle of the day.

Coraline then remembered that she had her bag with her, and after a few minutes of rooting around in the dark, her hands becoming slick with mud, she found it. Immediately, her hand brushed the unmistakable shape of the doll, and she flinched. She then shook her head and gritted her teeth, ignoring it, and retrieved her phone instead.

She turned the device on, and found the button for the torch, casting a white beam of light across the uneven floor.

When she was sure that her surroundings were clear -even if they seemed to be unending, as if she were in a field of some kind- she stumbled to her feet.

As soon as she did, she heard the scuttling of feet.

Half a dozen pairs working through the mud.

The light from Coraline's phone fell on something shiny for a moment, and she paused.

The light found it again, only a few feet away, and she was able to make out what appeared to be a long metal pole sticking out of the ground.

Realisation dawning on her, accompanied by the feeling of bile rising up her throat, Coraline slowly panned the light upwards,

Standing over her, looking down with those large, round eyes made of polished, painted wood, was the Other Mother, indescribably twisted and malformed.

Coraline squealed and fell, dropping her phone as she went, and making it cast the light directly upwards, illuminating the Other Mother perfectly, and creating a shadow twice her already gigantic size.

"Miss, me? You, little, bitch" the creature rasped, each word laboured by a painfully desperate breath,

The teen attempted to shuffle away, but she couldn't take her eyes off of the monster, and as such, she only got closer to the girl, stooping more and more so that their faces were level.

"This isn't real" Coraline tried to assure herself,

But it only earned a sickening laugh from the Other Mother.

Her movements held a sound similar to a pair of scissors cutting through fabric, and in that moment, the noise sounded, as one of her sickeningly long and sharp hands came up to Coraline's face, taking it with just enough pressure to hold it steady, but not pierce the skin,

"Oh it is child" the Other Mother told her, "This is so very real" her voice had now turned to a whisper, and it filled the teens ears, as each word slithered in, "You thought you'd killed me, but you gave me an in-" perhaps more worryingly, the Other Mother's voice then took on a musical tone.

"What?" Coraline had asked, quivering,

"You're unhappy, so unhappy, and you want things to change" she explained, "And all I want to do, is make things better for you",

"By sewing buttons into my eyes?" the young woman had replied, finding a little more courage, "By feeding off of me?",

"Death" the Other Mother laughed, thrusting her face closer again, "You're describing death. And yes, that's what I'm offering to you",

This left Coraline confused, never had the creature been so forthcoming about her motives and intentions, there was always a trick, always a game- so what was the game this time?

The monster chuckled as the look of confusion fell over the girl's face, "I know you've thought about it",

Coraline felt the pit of her stomach turn to ice and drop out,

She couldn't dent it. She had thought about it. Just once or twice, just in moments of weakness.

She had thought-

"And who would notice if you did?" the Other Mother then asked, as if reading her mind, "I'm offering you a week of blissful paradise, and then the sweet, succulent release of death, what could be better?",

"A week?" Coraline asked,

"You're no use to me as an adult. In eight days everything will be over one way or another, so why not give you one last wish?" the beast hissed,

She then loosened her grip on the girl's face, but scuttled closer still, her voice dropping even lower in volume, "It's the ultimate escape. An escape from family, friends, work and all those other things that make life unbearable. Life is unbearable, and I'm offering the opposite",

In the following hours, Coraline had come to regret this moment more than anything she'd regretted in all her life.

"Would there be pain?" she asked, the colour having fallen from her cheeks,

"No" the Other Mother answered, and a malformed smile twisted up her black lips, making the cracks in her face deepen,

Coraline had for a moment, shown weakness, and the beast before her knew exactly how to take advantage of that.

"I'm making you a promise"

The teen finally looked up to stare the monster in the 'eyes' "You'll give me eight days?",

"We'll call it a week" The Other Mother replied, "I vow, from sunrise tomorrow, seven days of wonder here, with me, and then freedom from this mortal coil, no more worries…"

0o0o0

Coraline woke at dusk by the open well, the wooden shack and all traces of it gone.

She went home, ate dinner with her parents, told them that she loved them, and went upstairs to her room, entirely numb to everything that surrounded her as she drifted through.

She lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, until the house became dark and quiet enough to let her know that her parents had gone to sleep.

This was as long as she could stand it.

Tears started to roll down her cheeks from her eyes, they were in a constant stream that wouldn't stop until an hour later when she had literally been run dry.

What had she done?

She'd made a horrible decision, a horrible, inescapable decision to allow an awful thing to happen to her. It was as bad as killing herself outright, in fact it was worse.

Coraline stood from the bed after a while, choosing to make the most of whatever time she had left, even if the rest of the world was sleeping through her last hours.

She left her house and began to wonder, following familiar and unfamiliar roads to their turns and conclusions.

The air was cold and the sky was dark, and she was sadder than she'd ever been.

A thousand plans ran through her mind, each less helpful and likely than the last, there was no hope, Coraline doubted that there was a single place in Oregon she could escape to that would stop the Other Mother- if anything, the mysterious stretches of Gravity Falls seemed even more dangerous, there were probably burrows and warrens that the beast could use to find her there anyway.

Perhaps the only solution would be to get out of state?

It took just over seven hours to ride up to Seattle from Ashland if she took route five, there had to be that many hours before sunrise, if not slightly more, but how the hell would she manage that anyway?

She couldn't drive, not a car at least, she'd tried and been terrible at it,

Motorbiking on the other hand, she was better at, or so she was told by her ever faithful instructor,

But she didn't own a motorbike.

Coraline paused in the middle of the road,

She didn't own a motorbike, no, but her instructor did, and he didn't live that far from where she now was.

Anything was worth trying at this point, she was desperate,

She picked up the pace and made her way further down the road, making two rights and a left, until the house she was aiming for came into view, dark and as quiet as it's secluded surroundings,

The teen went to the garage door first and pulled on the plastic handle mounted to the middle of it, but the metal sheet would not move. For the first time in months, he'd locked it, probably under instruction from his grandmother.

Coraline sighed and made her way around the side of the garage, coming to the old, slanted wooden fence that separated the thin forest land from the back garden. She climbed over it with ease, as she had many times before, and as she found her footing on the grass, she noticed a dim glow cast upon the garden,

The upstairs window above the garage was slightly ajar, the curtain wavered with the slight breeze, and a light stood on within the room.

Coraline looked about the garden once more.

There was no sign of the bike, it must have been in the garage- so that was it, there was no chance for to her to even attempt to get away.

She felt the tears well up in her eyes once more, and her legs gave out beneath her,

Who was she fooling anyway? There was no way she could get away from this, she'd dug her grave, and now she had to lie in it, forever and quite literally.

For a while, the only sound to be heard in the garden was Coraline's laboured breath as tears streamed down her face, and her body convulsed with each hiccough. The only other noise came from the house; the open window with its flaked white paint, that clicked as it swayed in the wind,

Once the worst of the tears had subsided, the teen sniffled and looked up, catching sight once more of the illuminated window in question, her eyes narrowing slightly the longer she looked at it, a thought dawning on her,

If she was going to die, why not really live?

Coraline stood very suddenly, strength building in her legs, and determination now surging through her. She approached the drain pipe that ran along the side wall of the garage and pressed against it.

It was the old kind, not made of plastic, but made of clay, and it was securely attached to the wall, with brackets holding it in place dotted frequently up it, like vertebrae,

She placed one booted foot on the first of the brackets and she gripped the pipe just above her head,

Within a few minutes, Coraline had scaled the clay pipe in almost complete silence, and she now stood atop the garage, face to face with the window she was heading for.

Within she could see the room, still quite dark save for a dim yellow lamp standing on the desk, that threw a warm glow over everything else, and cast long, dark shadows.

She reached her hand through the gap into the room, taking hold of the small latch that held the window open at a set distance,

Coraline lifted it with force, and it nearly snapped off in her hand,

She dropped it however, more pressing matters in the forefront of her mind, and she let the window swing open as far it could go.

Taking just a final moment to watch the stream of warm breath leaving her mouth, Coraline then placed her foot on the windowsill and lifted herself into the silent room.

0o0o0

Wybie woke with a shiver.

He had fallen asleep far earlier than he had meant to, and was still half dressed, with a lamp standing on in his room, throwing off dim light that cast long, haunting shadows across the walls.

That was not the most unsettling thing however, as he instantly felt a presence in his bedroom upon waking, one that caused him to freeze on the spot.

Usually, he believed that he wasn't like his friends, he didn't deal with ghosts and ghouls, that had been a onetime thing, and despite the connection his grandmother had with 'the spirit realm', he was usually oblivious to the things his friends and family could see and hear.

So if that was the case, what was in his room with him now?

He tilted his head upwards a little, looking down his chest and over to the fluttering curtains of his window, which were obscuring a dark shape,

He held his breath, entirely unsure of what to do, but after a few seconds, the shape spoke,

"It's me Wybie" Coraline said, moving further into the light, so her face was just visible,

"Oh-" he sighed, shifting to sit up a little, "W-what're you doing here? It's so late",

The girl did not answer him however, and after an awkwardly long pause, she very slowly began towards the bed.

Wybie watched curiously, sitting up further still, that was until Coraline got to the foot of his bed, and did not stop, instead clambering over the frame with ease, and pausing atop the bedcovers on her hands and knees.

He felt his mouth grow dry at the very sight of her on his bed, let alone in the position she was in, and found that he could not move, even as she began to crawl towards him, her expression very vacant.

Before he knew it, Coraline was over his legs, stopping him from getting away, and her hand was reaching forward, catching the zip of his hoodie and pulling it down to reveal his plain t-shirt and releasing all the warm air that had been had clinging to him. Wybie licked his bottom lip nervously as her hands then came up to his shoulders, pushing his jacket off and down to the bed, trapping his wrists at his sides. Coraline's legs brushed against his, and he realised very suddenly that he wasn't wearing any trousers, only a pair of pinstripe boxers, and a burning blush crept across his face.

Wordlessly, Coraline placed her cold hands on Wybie's bare thighs, making him flinch and sink lower into his mattress. He could feel each of her fingertips casting down pressure on his flesh, all but holding him in place.

The girl's eyes were shaded in darkness, and her expression was blank, entirely impossible to read, even as she began to move closer to him again.

At first Wybie slunk his head back, afraid of whatever was happening literally in his lap, and wanting to keep Coraline's face in sight,

She was persistent however, and he gulped as her hot breath hit his throat, closely followed by her gently pursed lips.

The sensation made his hair stand on end, and his hands gripped the bedsheet all the tighter, a mixture of resistance and elation coursing through him

Despite the sheer bizarreness of the situation, Wybie couldn't help but revel in the feeling, letting it go on just a little longer than he thought he should, before finally untangling his hands from the sleeves of his hoodie and pressing them to Coraline's shoulders, pushing her away,

"Jonesy, what're you do-"

The words were caught immediately however, as the girl darted forward and captured his lips in a kiss, her hands coming to his chest and gripping his t-shirt, so he couldn't move back again.

The teen found that he didn't mind all that much however,

It was not as if this was something that Wybie had not thought about before, he had, and in detail, but something wasn't sitting quite right with him. Why now? And why was she acting this way?

He faltered again as Coraline's hand started to tug his shirt from the bottom hem however, and they briefly separated so that it could be yanked off, over his head, and discarded instead on the floor. Their lips didn't meet again however, as she instead went back to paying mind to his throat, her lips wandering to his collar, which was now uncovered. Wybie squeezed his eyes shut, and let his arms reach out and encircle Coraline, not wanting the moment to stop, even if he wasn't entirely convinced that the outcome to encouraging all this would be a good one.

Soon enough, her blue hair brushed his face as she reached up once more to kiss him on the lips, and this time he found himself kissing her back, holding her close.

To his surprise, Coraline was then the one to pull away next, and Wybie briefly worried that he had pushed it too far, as if she only wanted anything to do with him, as long as he made absolutely no indication that he was interested in her in return.

It seemed that he was wrong though, as it then became clear that she only moved away to give herself more space to undress, her jumper and then her shirt being tugged from her body and then cast to the floor.

Wybie wasn't sure where to look, there wasn't much choice,

Coraline was sat on top of him, dressed only in her underwear from the waist up,

He considered averting his eyes all the same, and almost did, until her hands suddenly came up and took his jaw, forcing him to look at her,

She guided him into another kiss, this one far more tender and sweet than those before, which were all passion and need,

Wybie was stunned to silence again, watching Coraline as her own silence finally broke, a deep sigh gushing out of her throat, and the words, "I want this, I want you" rasping out with it.

The boy winced slightly at hearing her speak, she sounded sincere at least, like she was in need, but he couldn't help but worry, she'd never said anything like this to him before,

"I- I don't understand" Wybie frowned, as she went to kiss his hammering pulse point on his throat,

"I don't want to think about anything else" she said in reply, shaking her head, as though it was enough to explain, and as such, she didn't need to say anything else.

Before he could speak again, Coraline attached her lips to his, her knees tightening around his hips as she barred down on him, his back nearly meeting the mattress as she pushed him further and further,

"Why now?" Wybie managed to ask, once the kiss finally rounded off, and the girl pulled back,

"It needs to be now" she answered quickly, looking down at him,

"But Coraline-"

Coraline winced and squeezed his arms, which she had rested her hands on, "Please Wybie… please" she said, shaking her head.

Wybie didn't want it to be this way. He wanted her, more than anything, but it seemed wrong somehow, she didn't seem herself,

All the same, when else would he get the chance?

He swallowed, and nodded, allowing her to press down against him once more, attacking with another onslaught of her lips,

"But Coraline-" he said after a second, his voice wavering as her hands found his hips, resting on the waistband of his underwear,

"Stop talking" she snapped in response, cutting him off, before she took purchase of the elastic, and began to pull it down. Her eyes drifted back up to meet his after a few agonisingly long seconds, "No words" she said softly, "Yes or no?",

Wybie swallowed thickly, before squeezing his eyes shut, and nodding his head vigorously.