"Today I'm going to give you some good ol' life advice. If ever you come across a 'mysterious', 'unexplainable', or 'tantalizing' glowing crack- big, small, or the size of a house; in an ocean, in a cave, on your bedroom wall—it doesn't matter the who why where or what of it, please use your common sense and do NOT go exploring. Don't step through it, don't peak through it, and don't you dare even dangle your arm or pinkie through it to see what happens — just ignore it. Pretend you didn't see it. Decide you've suddenly hallucinated, or if you have to think of something else, maybe wonder if you left the stove on or forgot to feed your cat and go check that. Just walk away. Do you want to be that one idiot who didn't listen and is now missing mystically missing a pinky because you couldn't resist tempting fate, and wiggled that pathetic appendage through an obviously ominous and dangerous glowing crack?

No?

Well good then. That at least means you're a little smarter than me if nothing else. Because I was that idiot, and I'm missing a lot more than my little finger."

Kylie & The Rabbit Hole by Emma Waldgrave, Page 1

It all started when I was around about fifteen or so. Years ago now. I was on a camping trip over the summer with my family. Just me, the stars, an annoying know-it-all twelve year old, and a couple of my favorite lovable old farts with some tents and tools. It was my first proper camping trip, to be honest. Till then all my dad would let me do was camp out in our back yard because he was afraid I would get hurt or fall off a cliff or something. Which, well, in retrospect, he was probably right to worry. But back then I thought it was stupid. After all, at the time my little brother was in the boy scouts. I thought he thought that I was fragile because I was girl, and I was upset over the favoritism. After enough begging every holiday and birthday, though, he finally caved. For better or for worse.

It was great, I'll admit. A fine last memory if nothing else. We didn't really live in a city, but that far out in the woods away from anything man made and lit up the stars where a hundred times brighter and stretched miles longer across the dark navy sky at night. My dad and my brother taught me some neat camping tricks, and useless knots I don't really recall, and we explored the woods together, moving camp every so often. My mom had her sketchbook out practically the whole time since the view was so good, too, even if she didn't like the hiking aspect of everything. I remember the smell of the moist air, the blue of the sky, and the feel of cool water going between my toes like it was yesterday. I sweated my ass off, and caught my first fish, and broke a flashlight—I loved every minute of it.

Towards the end of the week we found this cave and parked near it. My dad said not to go exploring without him, and like any good sane kid I listened. That's not where this story goes wrong.

It happens later, when we're actually in the cave, and there's this weird light down the tunnel no one else seems to see. I didn't even really need a flashlight once I saw it. I eventually asked about it at one point, and my brother brushed me off, but I just couldn't stop staring. It didn't give me any sort of good feeling, or tempt me in any way at the time. In fact, my stomach was in knots, twisting like a tense rubber band the longer I stared. My heart speed up, my palms sweated. I don't know why I thought about walking through it. Maybe I was just curious, or maybe I thought some bullshit about 'facing your fears', or wanted to prove to myself it was real since no one was agreeing with me, I don't know. It doesn't really matter anyways what I thought at the time. The point is, I stepped through it.

On the other side of the crack wasn't anything immediately shocking or out of this world, no, that would have been too easy. It was just another long stretch of boring old rock. I remember being relieved that the crack was harmless and even somewhat disappointed that nothing had happened when my initial instincts where proven wrong, wondering if I should climb a little further just to confirm there wasn't anything weird or off, or that I hadn't accidently discovered some old gold mine, or civilization of bat people or something. I stopped when I realized that the tunnel was darker on this end than before, and the lights that had been dancing on the cave ceiling on the other end of the crack where gone. Instead my flashlight was doing all the work at brightening up the dark tunnel.

Sure enough, when I finally gulped and turned around to check, the crack was gone.

I didn't panic, at first. The funny thing about humans is that when something truly shocking happens that we don't understand, or understanding it leads to bad, bad thoughts, we usually don't think about it. We make up excuses, deny that it ever happened in the first place, or shove it somewhere in the back of our minds and try to forget, forget, forget. When we can't do that we rationalize and become sudden optimists. I did the second.

Even if I'd never heard any noise behind me and was only turned around for a minute at two or most, I assumed everything was fine, and that there was a reason that the crack was gone. Like that there had been a normal opening before, but some rock had fallen down over it. Cave-ins are a thing, after all.

So I thought that before the rest of the cave fell through, it was best to find a way out of the tunnel, and then find my mom, and possibly dad and brother if they were out yet. If not, then we had to get them out, too.

It wasn't hard getting out. There was an exit less than half a mile down the tunnel that I climbed out of easily enough, and then I made my way around the mountain, searching for my family's obnoxious bright orange tent.

I walked around the outside of the cave twice before I accepted that it wasn't there. By then, I was finally panicking a bit. But I rationalized. My family had to be playing a prank on me. I had given them a hard time about going camping, so maybe they were getting back at me. Trying to make me scared. At that I got angry, and refused to move from the cave entrance we had parked our stuff outside of before.

Let them find me, I thought bitterly.

And then the sun set, and the stars came out, and they were gone for too long for it to be a prank.

I worried that they'd forgotten and left me, which didn't make sense considering how my dad wouldn't leave me on my own all trip. I worried that someone had hurt them, but why would they take all our stuff? I worried that maybe I was by the wrong cave, lost, but I hadn't walked far enough for that.

You can only survive so long without food or water. After the second day, I had to leave my spot. By then, yeah, I was panicking. Scared. Lost.

The hiker trail seemed so much longer by myself, but I was lucky to find it in the first place. I don't know long it took me to go back because I kept having to take pit stops to cry or try and rest or eat or find a river to drink from, but by the time I found some other campers I'm sure I was a mess.

I still didn't know what had happened so I cried, asked for help, and didn't care if they were strangers that could kill me. Told them my family went missing, and cried some more. They were nice people, a couple out in the woods for holiday, one that I'm sure I ruined by making them paranoid some killer was out in the woods. The police came eventually, and I spent more time crying and blubbering until the officers told me to sleep in their car while they took me to a nearby ranger station.

There was a search and everything at first. Everyone was very helpful, asked me questions, and I told them what I could remember. Why I was out here, who with, where I went, my home address, phone numbers, the names of my parents and brother, any relatives I knew, their contact information, or even some close friends, their parents' names, contact information for them again, etc, etc…

And then in that same calm and soothing tone they'd been using for every question and reassurance they apologized. Told me I was unwell. No one lived on this or that street, or it was a different person. The phone numbers where faulty, names wrong, and excuse me miss we didn't find any people or abandoned camp sites in the woods.

I got angry, told them to search harder, I certainly wasn't crazy, and then they decided to tell me a really, really funny joke.

"I'm sorry, but an Emmeline Waldgrave, born 1990 on April 15th doesn't exist."

The people I've met over the years have come up with all sorts of ideas for why I was in those woods in the mountains. Maybe I was born up there to some kind of hippy family living off the grid, and went crazy after they died. Maybe I had some sort of abusive family I was running from who'd hit me in the head one time too many, and built up some fantasy identity while escaping them. Maybe I was some kinda of serial killer or rapist or what have you and this was my cover story.

I know the truth of what happened, but I made the poor decision of trying to tell it to people.

In some ways, I was lucky. As a minor, I was taken in by the government as an orphan. A soon to be kicked out orphan, but I started out with a roof over my head, and a place to shower.

Unfortunately, though, my obsession with proving I existed and fighting against the reality before me landed me in hot water pretty quick. I got to see a therapist who gave me all sorts of lectures about his theories, and because he didn't think my real name was Emmeline Waldgrave, I eventually started having fun and gave myself a new name every session. Sometimes I'd even make up a different background story or spoke with an accent just to fuck with him. He wasn't impressed.

I will thank the fucker, though. He never believed a word of the bullshit or truth that I spoke, but he did help me to stabilize myself. He also constantly questioned my logic, and made me doubt myself, which helped me to figure out what has really happened even if he didn't believe it.

I was in a parallel universe. I'm not sure where down my old family line some ancestors decided not to fuck each other, but even my grandparents didn't exist. A lot of famous shows were different or didn't exist. Other series were really popular. Different politicians, wars, etc. Some stuff was the same, but a lot of small cultural and popular media was just ever so slightly off. Dr Dickhead was actually impressed for once at how deep in my 'delusion' I was when I told him this. I think he wrote a paper on me once.

But while the sneaky fucker might have almost tricked me into thinking I was actually nutters at times and gave me panic attacks, his recommendation to 'write down my thoughts and feeling, it might help' is actually what began my career.

My therapist had a field trip with the material (aimed at middle schoolers, often about dimension holes, characters named after old family members and friends… it was Freud's wet dream, I'm sure), but I kept writing. Poems at first, then short stories, and finally adventure books. I'd always liked reading, and in a way it was like I got to breathe life into people who didn't exist anymore and actually be able to talk about things without people calling me crazy, so it was a great way to vent and be creative. I was no master author, but I bargained with my therapist that I'd let him read my stories and tear into my psyche if he'd edit for me, and eventually he was actually putting his PhD to use.

After a wasting my teenage years working instead of going to school like I used to, and spending all my spare time writing and hanging out with a guy like three times my age who constantly berated me, I actually got published, too.

It didn't take off right away, but I got a decent readership after my third book. I was no J.K. Rowling or Steven King, but I actually went to book signings which was really weird. I'd never expected to actually need a specific signature for anything outside of paperwork before, and wow was mine ugly.

Soon I was turning about 22, had an apartment, free to ignore any calls my therapist gave me, and for once it seemed like I had everything together.

And then I woke up to a crack in my bedroom wall.

At first, I assumed I was just in a really, really vivid dream. I'd certainly had nightmares about the 'glowing crack of doom' before, and even written about it. It was certainly just as eerie and unsettling as I remembered it being, but staring at it certainly wouldn't change anything, so I eventually convinced myself to ignore it and went about my routine. Got dressed, showered, checked if it was gone while I put on my shoes but nope it was still there. I loitered for a bit, but soon grabbed my laptop bag and wallet, and firmly decided to spend a day at the local library and get some research and writing done. You know, away from where the weird possible hallucination I was having was.

I was distracted the whole day, though, and anything I'd written worthless, mindless dribble. When I took out a book to read, I kept reading paragraphs over and over but not really processing them. Spilled coffee on this poor dude at one point, probably burning him. I don't even like coffee, either—I normally get sweets or a shake when I bother to visit the local café— so I don't even remember why I ordered it in the first place.

When I tripped over my shoelaces for maybe the fifth time that day, I considered seeing my therapist for the first time in months. Maybe I was really crazy, and he could convince me the crack wasn't real. Or just give me a nice shoulder rub, I don't know. Something.

But instead I walked back to my closet of an apartment to confirm that, yep, the crack was still there. Still glowing radioactively and making my knees shake in fear. I briefly wondered if it would close if I threw a pen through it, and tested it, but of course it wasn't that simple. I considered testing if other people could walk through the crack, or see it- my dad and brother never had—but decided against it. It was cruel, and I didn't really have friends to test that on, anyway. I was a miserable hermit.

After fiddling with my phone I learned that pictures didn't work on the crack, which didn't board well for my sanity. When I videoed throwing a pen through the crack it just disappeared, though, to my relief. Kinda hard to disprove that, after all. I even uploaded it to online just for laughs, though no one would get the joke but me.

Then I went to sleep, and tried to forget, forget, forget.

After a week, the crack still wasn't gone, in fact it was getting bigger, and more… glowey-er. I wasn't getting any closer to finishing a draft of my book, either, but the deadline was still approaching. Even sleeping in a hotel one night didn't help much. It was just expensive.

To make things worse the crack was tempting me now. Well, not on purpose— it wasn't, like, serenading me or something, it kept to its original pulsating and threatening nature—but I was wondering if maybe I could go back home if I stepped through it again. I was starting to hope that maybe the past few years where some weird ass trial by God or something and now I could go back. I mean, he liked doing shit like that right? He'd practically drowned earth just to teach a family a lesson before making them repopulate earth. But, knowing my luck, I'd end up 22, homeless, and paperless in another foreign dimension where Justine Bieber is an up-and-coming politician. Where does a person who doesn't exist even go if they're not a minor and can't earn pity points with their youth? Maybe I could bring my papers from here but I still wouldn't be in any databases. People would just assume it was faked, and who knows if the legal language is even the same. I already have trouble proving my identity sometimes even now.

But could it really be any worse? If there's just a small, small chance I could get my life back, wasn't that worth the risk of stepping through the crack? And what happens if I leave it and let it grow? Is it somehow dangerous? Am I the only person that can stop it?

I finally ended up making my decision after around a month of bullshitting and pacing later. Or rather, had it made for me, just before the deadline for a recent script for a chapter of my book, while I was completely smashed and depressed. I'd made all sorts of plans up till then about how I'd withdraw most of my money in the biggest bills they'd let me use in case the money was the same wherever I went, bring my laptop so I could republish my stories, and shove all kind of miscellaneous things in a backpack to start off on, but in the end my cross over was pretty simple—I fell in. Tripped. Stumbled. Didn't see the post of my bed in time, and paid the price. At the time I had my wallet and phone on me, maybe some lint in my jacket pockets, but that was it. Didn't even get to leave a joke note saying 'the crack is real' for all my conspiracy theory fans.

But before I could start thinking clearly enough to regret all the shitty booze I'd drunk in a poor attempt to 'take my mind off things' I heard a noise. A weird, popping noise. Like someone's joints where cracking while they moved.

And then I realized that I'd broken into someone else's house. Flat out appeared out of thin air. I hoped they were looking for a midnight snack and hadn't noticed me. Explaining this would be shit sober, let alone drunk. I didn't want any police on my ass, either, so I'd have to stumble to a door or window or something. Preferably door since I remember my apartment had been on the third floor.

With a groan of effort I detached my face from where it was sticking on the floor, and began inching my way towards where I believed the kitchen or hallways was. When I looked around I noticed there was surprising lack of furniture, or really anything in the room as far as I could see.

But just when I was starting to think maybe no one lived here, after all, hands shot out from behind me, gripping me around the shoulder and covering my mouth.

AN: Hope you enjoyed.