Gravity Rises (S2)

NMS: Part Two

Mabel Pines slept.

At first, it was a deep, solid sleep that started Saturday afternoon and ended late Sunday morning. A sleep that lasted eighteen hours. A sleep that was stopped only by a sudden and intense need to use the bathroom.

Mabel sat up on the couch, disoriented, wondering vaguely what time it was but infinitely more concerned with relieving herself. No one was around. She stood, waited a moment for the vertigo to pass, and staggered to the bathroom. Everything was fine until she was washing her hands, when she looked up, bleary-eyed, at the mirror.

And saw glowing yellow eyes looking back at her.

Mabel cried out and stumbled back, hitting her head against the wall and collapsing to the ground with a thud. She sat there, shaking, her hands dripping on the vinyl floor. She just sat there as the water from the tap ran and ran and ran.

She didn't know how long she trembled there on the cold bathroom floor. She wasn't even sure why she was so upset. Everything was fuzzy, everything was frightening, the world seemed so. . . strange. . .

"Mabel! Mabel!"

Someone was pounding on the door. Mabel started, sitting up straight and staring at the door, breathing heavily in the fear that comes from being unable to think clearly. The door rattled as someone jiggled the lock with one hand and pounded on it with the other.

Then the door swung open, and Mabel's twin brother Dipper burst inside.

"Mabel! Mabel, what happened?"

He turned off the tap and knelt down by her side, staring at her in the echoing silence.

"I was just using the bathroom," Mabel said. But her voice was hoarse, and her speech was thick, and —

And she suddenly realized just how much pain she was in, all over her body.

Dipper helped her get shakily to her feet. She tried to hold up her own weight as best she could, but it was hard. Her legs didn't seem to work right. She glanced at the bathroom mirror — not wanting to, but unable to stop herself — to find her eyes were the normal brown. She was just imagining things.

But then why did she still feel so afraid?

Mabel didn't get up off the couch much after that.

Melody Ramirez brought her food and, at her request, accompanied her to the bathroom. Robbie Corduroy came in to talk to her when she was awake. Dipper almost never left her side.

Stanford Pines was nowhere to be seen.

Or maybe he only came out when she was asleep — which was most of the time. Mabel's sleep faded in and out, deep and shallow, dreamless and filled with dreams.

The dreams. Sometimes they were only flashes of things: a yellow glow — a laptop screen — bright stage lights illuminating fuzzy figures dancing beneath. Other times, they were full reviews of her week of nightmares: staying up all night trying password after password and hearing BZZT! after BZZT! until she cried out for it to stop, but it never stopped, it just went on and on and on — standing in a dark room and jumping every time the shadows moved, fearing something that never showed its face — trying desperately to communicate with her brother, her uncle, anyone, waving her arms and shouting and crying but never getting their attention, never being able to touch them, never being anything but a ghost. . .

She always woke up from those dreams crying. She always woke up from those dreams in Dipper's arms, as he tried to calm her down and soothe her and tell her it was okay.

She tried to forget. But the dreams reminded her. They reminded her that there was no forgetting.

There was no forgetting the terror of being possessed by Bill Cipher.