✨Bell✨

Stan only crosses path with Fiddleford after he's completely lost it? Let's say something like the early 90's. (I don't think there was a date on the newspaper saying McGucket was found completely amnesic in front of the museum?) He's completely unrecognizable, people in town only know him as the crazy old hillbilly who lives in the dump. Stan only rarely goes into town (he probably only goes for groceries and to steal shit he can't buy that he needs for the portal/his attractions).

So it's entirely possible they never meet until then. Fiddleford is not shown around the Shack much (he's there when there's an event in the show, but when he's shown eating out of someone's trash, it's in town).

So then imagine Stan runs into him one night when he's out stealing some shit (man, the stuff he needs for that stupid portal is so expensive and some of it's he's pretty sure is not even man-made). He's crocheting the door of the hardware store when he hears a noise, his heart picks up speed, thinking he's caught. He stops breathing to better listen and... That's the sound of someone looking into the trash. He should know, he's done it before. Not his proudest moment but a man's gotta eat sometimes.

He goes to investigate because whoever that is, they're 1) doing a poor job at it and 2) going to get caught with all that noise.

He rounds a corner and he sees this guy wearing... a scarecrow hat and just a pair of dirty brown overalls. An absolute hillbilly cliché, right there. At this point he shouldn't be surprised with this weird ass town.

He stops McGucket, who's immediately ready to pick up a fight because that's HIS trash right there, excuse you? Go find your own!!

Queue Stan convincing McGucket to help him steal some electronics in exchange for a warm meal and they become kind of partners in crime for a while because it's much easier to do all this with two people instead of one.

Stan's pretty sure McGucket won't try to double cross him because he's just a crazy old man who wants free meals out of the deal and McGucket... Well, sometimes Stan lets him take the spare parts he doesn't need so he's getting free meals AND extra scraps. He feels like he's struck gold. He must be the luckiest man in the world! When he tells Stan about it though, Stan just laughs it off, having no idea that what McGucket builds ACTUALLY works because this man right here is somehow still the smartest person in town.

Fast forward a few months, it's getting cold and Stan feels bad that McGucket still lives in the dump, so he offers him to sleep in one of the spare rooms in the Shack, since he helps Stan out so much. But then something super weird happens. McGucket looks at Stan in fear. The kind of fear that pushes a man to do unfathomable things. The kind of fear that pushed Stan to eat his way out of the truck of a car, because he thought what was about to happen to him would be worse than death.

"I can't do that." McGucket says, "This place is Bad."

"What do you mean? You've been around my kitchen for months now." Stan asks softly, the way you'd talk to scared animal.

"The kitchen's fine. An' during the day it's fine. It's the rest. The... I can't recall. But it's Bad." He rambles on stubbornly before looking up at Stan with his big, scared eyes. "Please don't make me."

Stan's heart breaks a little at the sight, so he doesn't think when he agrees to drop the subject. They go on with their day as normal and Stan offers to drive him back to his dump in the evening. McGucket's back to his jolly self, happy to get a ride and babbling on about his inventions.

That's when it hits Stan. There's something more going on here. The only person who's ever lived in the Shack was Ford. That's why the townsfolk were so curious about it in the first place. He remembers Ford's face, the bags iunder his eyes, the paranoia. He thinks how there's two buttons to push at the same time on the portal's console and he looks at a crazy old man who's scared of the Shack and loves to build things.

He stops the car and McGucket looks at him in confusion.

"That's not where mah dump is."

"McGucket, how long have you lived in this town?" Stan asks, looking at him, hoping to find anything.

"Oh I don't rightly know. At least a few years."

"So you're not from here."

McGucket takes a moment to think about it, it seems painful to do. "No. I'm from... I... I can't recall. But I came here because- There was something. Or someone? I could help. I-"

Stan thinks he's going to keep going but instead his eyes unfocus and his face becomes completely blank. It's the scariest thing Stan has ever seen.

"Don't worry about it," he says, and just like that, McGucket's eyes focus on him and the spell is broken.

He looks around them and looks at Stan in confusion, "That's not where mah dump is."