The Rabbit, The Storm, And The Wardrobe
When Howard had asked her how she landed in this dimension, she had given him a variety of excuses from different story books. All sarcastic, and obviously jokes, but they were still there. Printed in black lettering on a pink background. And that was enough to grant them weight.
“I fell in a hole chasing a rabbit!”
Rabbits in New York were never wild. They were only kept as pets. And this rabbit in particular was Alice’s pet. She had brought Snuffles The Horrifying along on a LARPing adventure, to act as Mellie, her character’s demon-bunny companion.
“I, Lu, have decided to take Mellie the demon-bunny companion as her prize for winning the duel!” Gwen cried out dramatically. Alice laughed, manhandling her bundle of fluff over to Gwen.
“Oh, Mellie, I do not know how I will continue on without you!” She wailed, “But I cannot backtrack from the sacred pact of this duel. Someday, however, I will earn you back!”
Gwen stuck her tongue out at Alice as she took hold of it, “Good luck besting me. I will always be better than you, Celia. That is just the honest truth.” She stuck her nose up and put on a ridiculous voice.
“Keep a good hand on her, will you?” She whispered to Gwen, breaking character for a moment, “Snuffles has a tendency to run, and he’s special to me, you know?”
“Of course!” Gwen saluted, also jolted out of character to give her a private smile, “Don’t worry. We’re best buds, remember? I bet he can sense our strong psychic connection, and already knows that I’m a friend. Now…” She slid her face back on, “Begone with you, Celia!”
Celia gasped in frustration, stomping away, “I’m going to earn my companion back, if it’s the last thing I do!”
“Good luck with that!” Gwen called to her, “I need to take a break.”
She let the others continue with the story, even as she sat and sipped her orange juice. Snuffles began fidgeting around that time, but she had a solid grip on him. At least, she did until he managed to get a lucky hit into her gut.
“Ugh- hey!” She hissed, vice loosening for just long enough to let him go sprinting into the distance. Oh God. This couldn’t be happening.
She cast a look around to see if anyone had noticed anything, but it didn’t seem like it. Jackson and Diamond were talking in that weird way they did that everything seemed to melt away from them, and Alice and Riley were locked in an epic… fantasy lawsuit case? She wasn’t sure what had happened in the few seconds she had taken her eyes off the plot.
That was fine though. It meant no one had noticed Snuffles being lost. She could take advantage of that and… simply bring him back!
As sneakily as she could, she went off into the woods after Snuffles. She caught flashes of his white coat here and there, and he didn’t seem to be that interested in getting away from her, so she thought she had a decent chance. Until she finally found him at the edge of a giant tree, poised on the lip of a hole leading deep into the underground. No doubt made by whichever rodent this part was infested with, and filled with easy escape routes perfect for any rabbit.
If he went in there, Alice would lose him forever. And it would all Gwen’s fault.
She didn’t think twice about barreling forward and simply yanking him out of the hole, not caring if he got a little too jostled in the ride.
And then she was falling. Into the hole that suddenly seemed a lot larger than it had any right to be.
She fell and she fell and she fell until… there was sunlight all around her, a solid pavement under her feet, and a superhero battle raging in front of her.
Beside her, Snuffles hopped away nonchalantly. She didn’t even bother going after him, too shaken as Iron Man whizzed past her nose, as real as the earth itself.
“I don’t know. A tornado brought me here.”
Just to clear the air, the tornado did not hit New York City.
It just so happened to be one of those few days of the year when Gwen wasn’t living up her city girl life and was actually visiting her grandparents in Kansas, of all places.
Nothing good happened in Kansas. They should rename to avoid all the bad press because this was just embarrassing.
But at the time, she didn’t have time to make this observation. With the tornado alarms blaring and her family rushing for the bunkers, it was… terrifying.
Gwen and Teddy weren’t in the bunkers, though. They were stuck in a wardrobe on the third floor, clinging to each other for dear life as the building quaked and shuddered underneath them.
“We’re going to die, Gwen!” Teddy sobbed, and Gwen tried her best to shield him from the door as it rattled on its hinges. No doubt debris from the ceiling was showering down catastrophically outside, and the way that the floor was shifting underneath her, it might very well be thrown inside once the door came loose. And she would be damned if Teddy would be the one shouldering the burden of it.
“We’re not going to die.” She managed out, trying to stay calm. What would Ms. Marvel do?
Maybe it was a stupid thing to think of in the middle of a disaster situation, but the fantasy of her superhero idol kept her safe and stable, even as the world got torn apart around her.
Quite literally, she realized, as the solid foundation of the wood gave one last meek protest, before breaking into shards, sweeping them away into the hell of wind and chaos that would surely kill them.
In the confusion of it all, she lost Teddy.
And when she landed in this new, fictional New York, she didn’t dare to believe that Teddy had survived too. One person making it through was unbelievable enough. But two?
“Portal in the back of my wardrobe.”
“Alright, some of this stuff has to go.” Her mother announced, “You need to get rid of all these childish distractions and get into the mindset of being an adult.”
Right. Because she was nineteen years old, without a high school diploma, any career prospects, or special talents, stuck in a depressive state for the past two years for no good reason.
“Mom, I can’t right now.” Gwen told her, eyes fixed on the newest issue of Secret Wars.
“I know you think I’m being ridiculous, but I think the change in environment will be good for you.” Her mother continued, “We’ve tried everything to get you back into the headspace where you had all that passion and energy, but it’s just not working. Maybe, if you put aside your comics and focus on your present, then you can indulge in your very expensive hobbies after.”
There wasn’t a present, she didn’t say. There was no future and no hope for Gwen. She was a freak and a monster who couldn’t connect with people like she was expected to, and it was awful. All she had right now were her comics and her mother refused to acknowledge how much they meant to her.
“Pack away what you can, young lady. We’ll have to trash or donate the rest. Maybe sell it, if it’s salvageable.” Her mother announced, putting her foot down and yanking the comic out of Gwen’s hands. Gwen glared at her, a look which she met head-on with a dry, “You don’t need all this stuff, Gwen. It’s holding you back from the real world. Just keep the special ones. Be more minimalist.”
And then she walked out of the room, comic still in hand.
Gwen rolled over to her other side and began to sob. Great, heaving wails of grief that seemed out of place for where she was just moments ago, but she couldn’t help it. She cried and she cried, until she had wrung herself out of anymore tears.
By that point, she was standing back up, shoving things desperately into garbage bags and moving to stash them in the back of her wardrobe. Like hell she was letting her mother get rid of this stuff. It was her beloved collection, built up of nearly a decade of Marvel obsession.
She reached her hand forwards to feel out the back of the wardrobe, just to be certain that it was at the very back of the place.
Her hand met nothing but void, even though she was certain that this had to be the very back of the place. She frowned and leaned forward, searching deeper and deeper until… sunlight appeared on the other end.
She crawled out of the back of her wardrobe, and into a NYC street. There was chaos raining all around her, and a board advertising a… battle spandex store? With reviews from Daredevil, Captain Marvel, and Spider-Man.
When faced with the option of choosing the pink laser monster battle or the person who apparently made Peter Parker’s suit, she knew exactly which one she was going to take.