Dipper's Labyrinth
Chapter 1: Back to the Shack
To brave the depths of horror and scale the peaks of wonder. To do battle against strange things, and in so doing, become strange myself. To seek truth in a fairy-tale kingdom. To risk life and limb looking for things no one was supposed to see. Not just to stumble into new revelations, but to knowingly stick a knife in the back of everything I thought I knew. Why else would I want to go back to Gravity Falls?
Dipper's eyes passed lazily over the words on the page like a hawk that had already eaten its fill. A story about magic, mystery and adolescence seeped into his mind through osmosis, translated by lethargy from coherent, linear sentences into abstract globules of emotion which bounced around aimlessly inside his skull.
The day had settled into that long, comfortable limbo between the time when there was nothing left to do and the time when it became reasonable to fall asleep. The lingering summer sun refused to set; even the chirping birds sounded lackluster.
"Dipper! Come see this!" He glanced up at Mabel, befuddled—she'd been sitting at the computer for the past several minutes, and her presence had faded into background noise.
"What is it?" he asked, silently plotting various ways not to get up from his bed.
"I made a cartoon!" Mabel gestured towards her chest with a flourish. "As of now, I am officially an artiste de l'animación." An awkward pause transpired. "You should come see."
"Show me from there."
Mabel frowned. "You can't see it from there."
"Bring the computer over here."
"It's not a laptop."
Dipper sighed as he struggled out of the vice grip of comfort. Planning is essential, he thought, but plans are useless. As he labored towards the computer, Mabel smiled, obviously savoring her victory.
Once he was in position, she pressed "play".
"Who are those two people supposed to be?"
"It doesn't matter. Just watch."
"Why are they talking in computer voices?"
"Shh."
Dipper watched as two androgynous characters with the same face and different clothes took turns reciting jokes he was sure he'd heard before. His eyes slowly wandered to Mabel, who was replying to his disappointed expression with one of her own.
"You didn't like it," she said slowly as the animation came to an end.
"Well…"
"What was wrong? Was it too pretentious? Too low-brow? Too formulaic? Too self-aware? Tell me what is wrong with my art!"
Dipper sighed. "Well… it was kind of stilted—which is surprising, since you made it. The only thing that moved was the characters' mouths, they both have the same expression, the robot voices were annoying… I don't know, it didn't feel alive."
Mabel crossed her arms. "I find that to be an elitist assessment."
"I'm sure you can do better. You're great at coming up with wacky ideas."
She shook her head, ignoring him. "You have your ideas about the direction modern animation should go in, and I have mine. We may be twins, Dipper, but my vision is mine alone."
Dipper turned around, moving towards the foot of his bed. "You know what? Let's make this fair. You showed me your animation, so I'll show you mine."
Mabel raised an eyebrow as he pulled a small box out from under the bed. He carefully opened and tilted it, sliding a neat stack of note cards into his hand.
"Hand-drawn… so, you're a traditionalist. You seek to maintain the old ways, as Master Kricfalusi does. Interesting."
"Just watch."
He held out the cards towards Mabel, meticulously positioned his thumb on their edge, and began flipping. He watched her comically impassive expression melt into genuine wide eyes. She opened and closed her mouth, chewing words she wasn't quite ready to string together. As Dipper's animation neared its climax, she began to lean in, peering through the cards like they were a portal into a world stranger and more poignant than the one she knew.
As Dipper reached the last card, pulling the others away from it in his left hand, he spotted a single tear welling in her eye. She slowly lifted her gaze to meet his, her eyes expressing something almost religious, between reverence and shame. "Dipper… I had no idea your soul was so beautiful."
He smiled. "See? These things turn out better when you don't take shortcuts.
…
Later, after the afternoon's torpor had settled into night, Dipper awoke from a sleep he'd slipped into by accident. He clumsily batted a book off of his face, blinking furiously until he realized it was supposed to be this dark. The only sources of light shining through the window were the moon, and—
He squinted and rubbed his eyes. Something from the ground below seemed to be flickering. A flashlight? As he stumbled out of bed, the lingering inertia of his sleep struck him, forcing him to brace himself against the wall for balance.
As he reached the window, he spotted someone creeping across the Mystery Shack's front lawn with a crouched gait. The light seemed to strike the visitor at an odd angle… but where was the light coming from?
He nodded to himself as his eyes adjusted and he realized he was looking at a brightly glowing, naked humanoid with blackened, empty eye sockets and a gaping, lipless mouth. The creature squatted down, bending its knees at grotesque angles, and began sniffing the ground. It let out a soft, high-pitched trill, bobbing its head up and down and alternately sliding each of its slender hands across its misshapen face.
Dipper yawned. "All right. That can wait 'till morning." He dragged his feet back to his bed, wobbled for a second as his shins hit its edge, and then collapsed face first on top of the sheets, where he fell asleep within seconds.