He never liked thinking back to the day when everything burned down before his eyes.
Back then, he wasn't tainted. There was that, the only positive for looking into the past.
The day he lost his family, his 'friends', almost all of his belongings. He hated himself for grabbing his backpack before running off into the woods. He probably could have saved them, He chickened out. He was a coward. And he left everyone to die.
Beneath the rubble of the old shack.
He'd tried to call out to them, tried to free them, but flinched and cried when the flames flickered and danced along his sleeves. So he ran. He ran and tried to block out the cries for help, as the world fell apart beneath his feet.
He had no choice but to leave. It would have been foolish to allow the world to swallow him up, too. And he couldn't shake the feeling that there was someone watching, hoping for him to stay behind. To hesitate just long enough for his demise to catch up.
He left just in time, as well. Everything closed away behind him, and he never got a final glance.
He wandered, and once came upon a strange iron platform in the middle of the woods.
"We would appreciate some help down here," something had said, startling Dipper out of his thoughts.
He didn't feel to be conversing right now.
"What.." He mouthed, anyway, staring at a sickly looking creature tethered to half a pole sticking out of the ground. Its face was littered with needle-like teeth as if its entire face was a mouth. "What... are--"
"You are competent enough to help us? Or will you continue to wallow in your own selfish sorrows?" it chorused.
He hadn't thought to answer. But something else revealed itself through the rubble, anyway. A reddish-brown mass with two eyes and two ears. Something like a dog, or a cat. But it's entire body was melted and mutated, like some sort of mishandled experiment.
It made a sound, something similar to a bird, but with an unearthly pitch to it, as if it couldn't breathe, or it was suffering.
"Bones and mass of those back home, you weep for them, do you not?" something else had said, but had not revealed itself. "Your sins are unforgivable. Run away, child. Leave us to wither away."
Dipper choked.
"A human, Seventy-Three." the first creature said. "Vicious, pernicious creatures. They dug our own graves and soon their own, Seventy-Three. We will not dare tamper with their emotions. For I have heard death would come upon those who irk it."
"A half-face...?" It replied.
"No. But where the humans walk, we must stay void of. We will not suffer again. Or we will be sure to resolve anyway other than peacefully."
His legs quivered beneath him. "I-I don't mean any--"
"Then run, human child. Scatter, and never find yourself here again."
Dipper found himself running again. Not from his family, or a licking fire. But from a plate of iron in the ground.
"Run, little rabbit. Run. Before the setting of the sun."