The Thing

For Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas, everything was the way it had been before that fateful week—until another girl rode her skateboard into town. Well, almost the way it had been. Sometimes the other boys would catch Mike looking at the pillow fort that remained untouched, a wistful look on his face, but they all knew she was dead. She had to be. They wished she wasn't, but that was just the way it was.

They all knew better than to try and talk to him about it.

He wouldn't listen.

"Hey, Frogface, where's your girlfriend?"

Mike's jaw tightened but he ignored Troy, keeping his eyes trained firmly ahead of him at the school.

"Oh, is the freak not with you today?" Troy taunted, mock-pouting. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen her in a while. I bet she died just like Queer here—" he motioned to Will—"only she's not coming back."

Mike whirled around, and instead of cowering under Troy's menacing glare, he matched it with one of his own, and his was even more terrifying because it held pure fury.

Still, Troy kept pushing. "Where is she, then, Frogface? Is she dead?"

Mike whipped his arm back. His fist collided with Troy's face.

"Mike!" Lucas shouted, dropping his bike.

He drew his hand back again. And again. And again.

"Mike!" Dustin joined the struggle to keep Mike off Troy.

"Mike, please, stop," Will pleaded, and that was what broke through Mike's anger.

He stepped off the whimpering Troy, breathing heavily, before picking up his bike again. When Lucas started to reach for Troy, Mike barked, "Leave him!"

They all looked at him in surprise, Lucas's hand still hovering over Troy's bloody face.

Mike's eyes narrowed. "Leave him," he growled, slowly, dangerously.

Lucas saw the girl first.

"Hey, guys," he had said, nudging Mike and tapping Will on the shoulder before pointing to a strange girl. "Does she remind you of anyone we know?"

Mike had looked up eagerly, only to see a scruffy, long-haired girl riding a skateboard to school. A car peeled away from the sidewalk, probably whoever drove her to school.

"She's not Eleven," he had said flatly. "No way Eleven's hair could have grown out that fast, and besides, she doesn't know how to ride a skateboard. I doubt she even knew what a skateboard is."

"No…" Lucas had said, frowning. "But she… she isn't a normal girl, either. She's riding a skateboard, for one. She's kind of like El in the way she's not like anyone else."

Mike rolled his eyes and returned to paging through his book and Will continued sketching. If it wasn't El then they weren't interested. Will wanted to meet the superhero and Mike wanted his best friend back. But they were more than friends. Way more. Not just puppy love, which is what his mom called it. More than that.

Lucas spoke to the girl first too.

He had been carrying a book, one of his Dungeons and Dragons books, when the long-haired girl appeared next to him, tossing her sheet of dirty blond hair behind her shoulder. "You play D&D too?" she asked, pointing to the book. "I love that game!"

Before long, he was talking with her naturally, as if she were Mike or Will or Dustin. But she wasn't like Eleven in every other way. She knew about friends and promises and normal-people stuff. She had family and she didn't have superpowers. She dismissed the boy's feelings most of the time with a flippant laugh, but she did it in a way that wasn't (too) hurtful.

"I hate my hair," the girl—Max—was complaining one day. "It's way too long."

"Then why don't you cut it?" Will asked politely.

Max shrugged. "My brother says it makes me look cooler. He says all skateboarders have long hair."

"But it's your hair. Why don't you cut it if you don't like it?" Dustin had asked.

Max shrugged. "I don't know. If my brother likes it, then that means it's cool."

"What about your parents?" Mike had asked.

Max shrugged tersely and the subject wasn't brought up again.

The four boys still rode their bikes home from school to each other's houses, but now Max accompanied them on her skateboard. She could keep up, sometimes riding ahead of them.

Lucas could see that although he, Will, and Dustin liked Max, Mike wasn't overly fond of her, probably scared she would take Eleven's place.

"Why doesn't he like me?" Max had asked softly one night after Will had gone to use the restroom and Mike had gone upstairs for some unknown reason.

"It's… complicated," Dustin had said with a sigh. "But it's nothing personal."

"You wouldn't believe us if we told you," Lucas said.

Max raised one eyebrow coolly. "Try me."

So they did. In whispers and broken segments, Max began to get the story behind Mike's coolness, behind why the boys had no Demogorgon in their D&D set, and why there was a pillow fort, untouched, in Mike's basement, of all places. She began to figure out why she had secretly found the missing Demogorgon piece, sooty like it had been burned, and thrown behind a couch as if trying to be forgotten. She began to find out why the Chief of police would go out on Sunday nights and leave Eggos in a box and why the Chief had made her promise not to tell the boys. She began to figure out why Mike would sometimes cradle a box of Eggos, a pair of sweatpants, and a radio when he was having an especially hard day.

At first she'd laughed in their faces. "Nice try, guys," she'd snorted. "If you don't want to tell me, that's cool, I guess."

"We're not lying!" Dustin exclaimed.

Max looked inbetween the two serious faces, disbelief slowly melting off her features. "You guys're serious?"

One day Mike came home in tears.

"What's wrong?" Max had asked, instantly switching from 'tough skateboarder' to 'compassionate friend'.

"They left," Mike hiccupped. "They closed down the facility and left. They locked the doors and left."

The other three boys exchanged glances.

"I saw that man—her Papa—he just went and left. Like she didn't matter at all."

The next year at school the boys had the misfortunate of having their science class in the same room where—it happened.

Mike walked into the room and stood stock-still, his eyes unblinking, his face white.

"Is this some kind of fucking joke?" Dustin had whispered when he and Mike were put at the table they had put El on when she was too weak to walk.

Mike hadn't responded.

Now, as crazy as it was, even with Mr. Clarke teaching their science class, it was their least favorite class. Sometimes Mr. Clarke would wonder why the four boys who so loved science seemed to hate the class. Why did Mike stop every time he walked in and look like he was almost crying?

Whenever Mr. Clarke rolled up a poster, Mike would inhale and look away quickly, not being able to bear looking at the spot on the wall where—it had happened.

Sometimes Mike would touch the place his spine had hit the wall when Eleven had shoved him backwards. The bruise had long since faded, but the memories hadn't.

Sometimes when he rode his bike he could almost feel her arms around his waist.

Whenever he had to swerve in the road for a coming car he would instinctively assume it was the bad men and Eleven was going to flip the van again.

Sometimes when all four boys rode, Dustin and Lucas would look over at Mike, expecting to see a frail figure in a pink dress hugging him close.

Sometimes Mike would wake in the middle of the night sobbing because he had just seen Eleven disappear again. Whenever that happened Nancy would be there, whispering quiet words of comfort until he fell asleep again.

Whenever it snowed Nancy and Will refused to play outside.

Sometimes Mike could almost see something flash in the corner of his eyes, and his heart would leap, but when he turned there wouldn't be anything there and his heart would sink even lower than it had been before.

Sometimes, on the really bad days, the other three boys and Max would come down into Mike's basement to see him screaming "Eleven! Eleven, can you hear me?" into his SuperComm. They would stand, silent, as he would punch and rage and kick everything except for the precious pillow fort when she wouldn't answer, because they all knew, but he didn't, that she was dead and she couldn't hear him and she wasn't coming back.

They would all creep back to the door and close it with a snap to let him know they were there, and the screaming and frustrated sounds would stop suddenly, and when they came down and asked him what had happened, he would say unblushingly, "I think Holly had one of her friends over today," and shrug and his friends would pretend to believe it. Then Mike would go upstairs to put medicine and a Band-Aid on his bruised and bleeding knuckles his friends pretended not to notice and when he came back down he would be Mike again, cheerful and friendly and their expert Dungeon Master.

Mike knew they didn't believe it, but lying was still easier than the truth. If he lied to himself and said Eleven was alive, she was coming back, safe and sound, then for a few days he could search for her without feeling angry—at himself, at the Demogorgon, at Will, at even Eleven herself, for saying she was going to the Snow Ball with him and then going and fucking dying.

Sometimes he would catch himself looking at Will, and actually thinking, Why couldn't you have saved yourself? And then he would catch himself and remind himself that this was one of his oldest friends, this was one of his closest friends. But he never felt sorry.

Sometimes Mike would even sprinkle blood from the meats his mom made for dinner on the ground, thinking that if the Demogorgon was attracted by blood, maybe Eleven could find him by blood as well.

The thing snarled in uncertainty. It was at war with the other mind, the less animal one, at war whether or not to attack the Thing in front of him.

It's head drew forwards, almost a 'start' signal when it jerked backwards. Two minds controlling one thing was hard to maintain. Sometimes the other mind would disappear into the depths of It, letting It kill whatever It wanted, but sometimes, like this time, the mind would be so persistent that the first mind had no choice but retract.

The second mind pushed forwards so urgently, the body almost flickered into the second mind's form- almost, but not quite. The first mind never let go enough for that to happen. The second mind wasn't even sure what it had looked like before the Joining.

The Thing in front of It was familiar. It's voice was oddly soothing to the second mind, while the first mind hated it, hated it had been there for the Joining. The first mind was reminded of the disintegrating, the horrible screams, and the flashing small suns whenever it was near the familiar Thing in front of It.

The second mind knew instinctively that this one Thing, this precious Thing, in front of It was something to be taken care of. When It heard this Thing's voice, It thought of comfort- odd now that it was Joined forever. Normally the two minds would have converged, but something different had happened and now they were two separate minds, eternally fighting for control. In agony forever—or at least until one gave up. And neither mind was anywhere close to giving up. The first mind didn't know what comfort was, while the second only knew that it had something to do with the Thing.

The Joining had been a terribly long and painful process as the second mind had been ripped from its original body and placed in this one, as some specific things were torn from it, like why the Thing was so familiar, why it liked the sound of the Thing's strange noises. And even now, sometimes, the agony would consume the minds, and they would clash together but not quite because they had not completely Joined. It was a terrible thing to not be completely Joined.

Sometimes the second mind had a feeling that It was missing some things from Its memory- all It could faintly picture was darkness, roaring, white walls, and hurt. But yet somehow the Thing in front of It was familiar.

The Thing moved suddenly, and It jerked backwards into the shadows. Better to stay hidden until a puncture appeared in the Thing's soft covering. Punctures signaled that the vessel was injured. The first mind would consume those vessels, but if there was a puncture in the Thing's covering, the second mind wouldn't let It consume the Thing. If that ever happened the second mind had an idea that It would be very, very angry. Very angry. It would probably eat whatever had caused the puncture. And then some.

It followed the Thing until the Thing met up with four other Things- three of them also familiar, one not. It did not like the unfamiliar one instinctively. The unfamiliar Thing smelled different from the others- a different sex, It realized.

It stifled It's growl and retreated farther into the shadows, so far it was back in Its home, where the second mind retracted for a while and tried to connect with the familiar Thing.

When the second mind could see again, It realized that It had no form. There was nothing to call its own in the black void of between Its home and the Things' home.

But yet It could see and hear, so It continued on through the nothingness until It found what It was looking for: the familiar Thing. The Thing's mouth (was it a mouth? It looked so different from It's own) opened and closed and made strange noises that It couldn't understand, yet could at the same time.

"I swear I saw something move," the Thing insisted, probably communicating with another Thing, though the second mind could only see the Thing. "It's skin was like… scabbing and pale…" the Thing went quiet for a while then made a few more strange noises. "If she really did die in vain… if all she did was transport it back to the Upside Down and kill herself with the effort, we'll have to finish the job. I'll make sure Eleven—"

And then It was being whisked away from the Thing, the shock of hearing another familiar thing jolting It back to It's body.

The first mind had pushed Its way forward and was consuming another bloody Thing, one of the Things that was covered with fuzz and that had some kind of branches sticking out of its peculiarly-shaped head.

The second mind pushed farther back, ignoring the sounds the first mind made when consuming that reminded It of fear and hurt and for some reason, the familiar Thing.

As usual, when It realized that It connected fear and hurt to the Thing, It would wonder why It was so determined to protect it.

Instinct, It assumed.

Edited!