| Canon Story | ||||||||
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| My Mind Returns To Miller Hill | ||||||||
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| Artist | Writer | |||||||
| David Hopkins | David Hopkins | |||||||
| Previous | Next | |||||||
| Short XXX: Twist, twist, twist | Short XXXI: Fnar On Dating | |||||||
Plot[]
Fnar is visting Jill's personal Heaven, visiting with Farrago when he wanders away to a forested area called Miller Hill. While exploring the area, he stumbles on an abandoned industrial area and is then approached by The Devil, who he doesn't recognize. The Devil promises not to hurt him and shows him an abandoned cabin in the area.
The Devil breaks the fourth wall by saying the cabin doesn't exist in the real world, but that the author, David Hopkins, looked for it when he was a kid as he and several other children believed urban legends that it existed and was the home of a serial killer. Lucifer explains that the cabin does exist in this fictional world, and that Fnar's father had been the victim of an incident here when he was a kid. The Devil that tells Fnar he'll be going back back home soon as he peeked at some of Dave's notes.
When Fnar asks how the Devil was able to get into Jill's Heaven, the Devil just jokes that he can get in through back doors, and the author needed someone to fill in the backstory. The Devil departs, asking to keep this meeting a secret. Fnar returns to Farrago and Jill, and they depart back to Hell to drop Fnar off.
Sometime later in Hell, Fnar takes Jack to a Hellish recreation of Miller Hill, and Jack is surprised to see the cabin, which he is somewhat familiar with but can't remember why. Inside the cabin, Farrago is waiting in a dress she borrowed from Central, and is visiting him at Jill's request. He asks to remember Jill, and Farrago obliges with a healing kiss.
Jack flashes back to his time in a medical facility, being grown in a capsule inside a lab and monitored by human scientists. He's eventually released from the capsule when he's biologically 5 but physically more mature, his release being held up by bureaucratic red tape. Dr. Robert Jaffer introduces himself as Jack's main human contact. He's allowed to live in controlled living enviroment, offered some luxuries but still monitored by the scientists.
Scientists philosophically discuss if they created life, or merely adjusted existing DNA. Ten years pass and Jack is now 15, but more mature for his age. Dr. Jaffer and Jack discuss his aging as well as "God," a name Jack overheard from a security guard. Jaffer dismisses the concept of God as myth humans created to explain the universe, and that Jack is the product of science.
Some time later, Jack uses a fork he smuggled out of his dinner tray to sneak out of his enclosure one evening. He slips past the guards and out of the facilities' exit, finding the portal opens into a hidden trap door in a cabin in the woods. He exits the cabin and explores the woods, finding similar structures to what Fnar saw in the Heavenly recreation in Jill's Heaven. Wanding down a street, he finds a house when he sees a naked human woman. Nearby, he also sees a feral rabbit.
Dr. Wolker, one of the scientists from the facility, discovers him and walks him back to the facility. While heading back, Jack asks if the scientists left some parts out of him. Wolker laughts this off, saying that as a boy he wouldn't have the parts the women he just saw had. As the conversation continues, Wolker lets him know they removed his genitals when he was first grown in the lab. Jack asks why they would need to worry about him reproducing if he's the only one of his kind. Wolker waffles in his answe, and Jack deduces there are other like him. Wolker then introduces him to Jill.
Jack awakens from the flashback, and Farrago takes her leave of him. While Jack is grateful to remember what Jill looks like, when exploring the cabin, he opens the trap door that led to the lab and instead finds a message written on the underside of the plank reading "We don't want to remember. Jack #0." Angered by this message, Jack leaves the cabin.
Characters[]
Locations[]
Trivia[]
- The Devil breaks the fourth wall numerous times early in the story, refering to urban legends that author David Hopkins heard in his childhood.
- This is the first story to depict humans and life before furries dominated the Earth.
- The industrial silos Jack passes will play a part in Bonus Arc V: The Screaming Barrel