Through the Cracks - The Mouse Was the Only Proof the Field Existed
#1 of Through the Cracks
As is by now usual, this is a piece of fan fiction, rated Adult because the source work is Adults Only.
Perhaps it's in a theatre. Perhaps you click play on some video platform or streaming service. Perhaps it just began playing, on a screen that was supposed to be switched off. Wherever and however you watch it, it begins and
The Title Says: Through the Cracks
And then the title leaves you in the dark for a moment. When it comes back
The titles say: Introduction - The Mouse Was the Only Proof the Field Existed
A couch sits under a window. Outside a distant line of mountains creeps underneath a sunset sky.
After the sound of some shuffling, a scruffy looking bat slouches into the frame. He tosses a hooded sweatshirt, the sleeves torn off, the kind that could easily double as a raincoat for those who can't be bothered with an umbrella, onto the arm of the couch, and takes a seat. Stares defiantly into the camera.
And talks.
"It took me a while to remember, when I woke up. I just had the sense of, like, needing to get something done, but I couldn't remember what, you know how some dreams are like that when you wake up. Usually it fades, you wake up a little more, you start to realize that no, there's no crisis, that was something you were dreaming about. Not this time. This was getting worse, like it was trying to drag me back into the dream, and maybe it did, cause I started remembering."
"So I was crossing the sound from Bremerton, on the ferry. None of your business why. I was on the passenger deck, staring out the window, ignoring all the people who had cars to drive onto the boat, to get out of, to wander up here to gawk."
"I didn't mean to fall asleep."
"Someone touches my shoulder, and I hear a voice, and part of me tries to jerk awake cause I think I'm getting yelled at by the crew for nodding off, but my body doesn't wanna move. But then the voice is just talkin, calm like, and I can't make out what he's saying, it's like his voice is coming through a badly tuned radio. And at the same time, I realize this is a dream, and that the person is, you know, him."
"I'm still on the boat. All the lights're off, but on a table a ways away there's some people with like a kerosene lamp, and they're playing cards. Dressed like it's the civil war or something."
"The only thing I can remember him saying is that he's 'Glad to see I'm ok'"
"I want to ask what he means, but instead I have to get up and go look out the window, you know how you just have to do things in dreams, and when I do I see..." The bat pauses, shrugs. "I dunno. It's all legs and arms, all pointing the wrong ways, too many joints, and not connected to a body at all just all coming out of this... hole, in the air. Big enough to be standing on the sea floor. Bigger than the mountains on the horizon. Face in the wrong place, could barely tell it was a face at all, but I was still sure it was looking at me."
"I really want to wake up, now. Then suddenly he's standing right next to me, looking past me, and smiling. He's holding, like, a ship's anchor, like the kind from an old fashioned cartoon. Way too big, he shouldn't be able to hold it by himself. 'Don't worry,' he says. And before I can ask about what, he drops it right through the floor."
"The whole boat lurches, so hard that I get tossed out of the seat where I'd been asleep. There's some kinda alarm going off, and there's yelling through megaphones for everyone to go down to the lifeboats."
"On the way down, through a window, I could swear I saw it again. Whatever it was."
"I still have no goddamn idea what it was."
"But as soon as I was outside, and in the lifeboat, it wasn't there anymore. As far as I've ever heard, nobody else saw anything."
"They don't drop the lifeboats. Ferry limps to shore. The official story is that it struck a piece of submerged wreckage. Never mind that it'd been making that crossing six times a day for years and this wreckage had never been there before. Never mind that they could never find this wreckage after."
"I don't know what did happen, but I know something did. And I know I'm never setting foot on a boat again. And I know that whatever did happen, nobody can explain it, or they wouldn't have put out that nonsense about submerged wreckage."