The Brownie

The dice flew through the air. It landed on the floor, spinning, before settling down on a...

"14!" Max cheered, putting her hands in the air.

Mike grinned, though Will could tell it was forced. "It staggers back, clutching a hand to its chest! It reaches out a clawed hand… and…"

"And we win," Lucas supplied dully. "Yes, we know already. Hasn't anyone else noticed that there are no twists in the ending? It's always 'it reaches out a clawed hand' and then Mike slumps over and we win."

"Well, would you like to lose then?" Mike asked, bristling. "I can arrange that."

"No!" Lucas snapped. "I just want you to get over what happened! It's like you care more about a girl than us! We've been your friends for years! You knew her for a week!"

Mike had that look on his face, the one where it was just guarded and angry. His eyes were narrowed. That was the face he had had when he had punched Troy, breaking his jaw. That was the face that made you feel like he didn't care about you, didn't care if he hurt you.

"And its clawed hand grabs for Lucas, slits his throat, and then the two bodies fall to the ground. Max the brownie, victorious, raises the Hydra's head with one hand as the army cheers in victory."

"Fuck you, Mike!" Lucas yelled, upending the board.

Mike shrugged. "I guess you should have cast a protection spell, then."

Lucas stormed off without another word.

After an awkward pause, Will and Dustin went after him.

Mike closed his eyes, ignoring the twinge in his heart as he heard his friends all leave and leaned back in his chair. Hanging his head back, he squinted one eye open and stared at the fort upside down. "I need to take that down," he said, mostly to himself.

"Why?"

Mike jumped, the legs of the chair crashing down to the floor. He had forgotten about Max.

"Never mind," he muttered.

"That was where she slept, wasn't it," Max said.

He stared at her. "How do you know about that?"

She looked down at her watch almost guiltily. "Oh, my brother's supposed to pick me up right about now. See you later!" She ran up the stairs without looking back.


Mike.

Mike jerked his head around to stare at the pillow fort. What?

Mike.

"Eleven?" he whispered, half hoping it was, half hoping it wasn't.

Mike.

Mike.

Mike.

Then suddenly there was silence.

"Eleven?" Mike yelled, out of his chair now, spinning around. "Eleven, where-"

MIKE!

"Eleven!" Mike yelled.

Mike help me!

"Where are you?"

Silence. Then sobbing.

I don't know...

Mike?

The horrible sobbing, desperate quality of her voice made Mike's chest cave into itself, face screwing up as he tried to push back the tears. The hushed whisper continued to wail for him while he yelled, spinning around, trying to see the owner.

Wrong... forget...

Silence.

FRIENDS HELP EACH OTHER! HELP ME!

Then the voice was gone. Gone like a leaf being blown by the wind.

"Eleven?" Mike sobbed. "Oh god, Eleven, we are friends, please tell me what to do, where are you, please…" The comforting feeling that he felt with Eleven's presence had been ripped away, leaving the gaping hole in his chest even more prominent.

But she didn't respond.

"ELEVEN!" Mike bellowed.

Can't remember…

Who's Eleven?

Who are you?


In the darkness, the eleventh experiment, the first one to have successful powers, watched in dismay as something, like a memory, somehow, floated out of her mouth. She tried in vain to catch it but she couldn't move her arms.

Looking down in frustration, she realized she didn't have arms. Her body was slowly dissolving, getting swallowed up by…

She screamed, the sound ripping through the nothingness and making the water on the ground explode in a blast.

"No! No! I won't go back!"

Mike screamed along with her, up until the very end until it was cut off abruptly.


Max swept back her sheet of long hair with a sigh and plopped into the passenger seat of her brother's Camaro.

"Why couldn't you spend the night over here?" Billy grumbled.

Max sighed. "Because I'm a girl, and my friends are all boys. Do you have any idea what their parents would think?"

"That you're screwing?" Billy shrugged as Max buckled her seat belt and placed her skateboard gingerly on the floor. "No biggie. I don't care."

Max crossed her arms and glared out the window as Billy started to drive. "That's 'cause you and Blossom fuck every night now."

"The hell d'you know 'bout that?" Billy growled, his eyes never leaving the road.

"You think I can't hear?" Max snorted. "Please." She didn't elaborate. After a lengthy pause, she asked, "'S she here tonight too?"

"Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours," Billy snarled.

"So she is."

"I should have left you with-"

"Shut the fuck up." Max opened the car door while he was still driving and grimly smiled when he braked with a jerk. Smoothly, she jumped on her skateboard and rode the rest of the way home, ignoring how her brother shot her death glares from the car.

Blossom, Billy's whore girlfriend, was waiting outside when they pulled into the driveway. She was okay, but she treated Max like a baby, and her climaxes were way too loud.

"Max!" she squealed, enveloping Max in a huge smothering hug. She was choking on some of her tightly curled blond hair. When she finally pulled back, she examined Max with critical blue eyes. Max had always thought those eyes were pretty, but the mascara she wore made her eyelashes look like spiders. Her hair was too tightly curled to be natural, and everything she wore was designed to get Billy horny.

"Blossom," Max said with far less enthusiasm. "How've you been?"

"Pretty good," Blossom giggled girlishly. "Are you… erm… spending the night here?"

"Don't worry, I've gotten used to you by now," Max assured her. "Though your orgasms are a bit loud. If you could tone those down a teensy bit, I might actually get some sleep tonight."

She flounced inside, leaving Billy red with rage and Blossom saying something about his 'absolutely precious little baby sister'.

Turns out, Blossom could keep it down. Huh.

The next day, Max woke to an avalanche of books raining down on her face, falling from the bookshelf above her small bed.

"What the-"

Blossom and Billy were talking in hushed voices outside Max's room.

"You tell her."

"You're her sister!"

"Blossom…"

"Fine…"

Max sat up, hugging her knees to her chest as she waited for Blossom to burst into her room.

The door banged open, showing Blossom and Billy standing outside, surprised looks on their faces, Blossom's hand still reaching for the doorknob.

"Max!" Blossom quickly recovered her poise. "You'll never believe the good news!"

"I'm going to be a dad!" Billy said, almost, but not quite, beaming with pride. He settled for a slightly less angry sneer.

"You're… pregnant?" Max asked slowly, looking at the whore and her brother.

Blossom nodded, beaming.

"That's great," Max said through gritted teeth. "Really amazing."

"Isn't it though?" Blossom hugged her. "You're gonna be an aunt! You'll have to help me with the baby, because I don't know a thing about them, we can work together and go to workshops, and-" She was waving her hands around until Max noticed something completely earth-shattering. She grabbed Blossom's hand and stared at the colossal diamond ring.

"You're engaged?" Max spat. This was even worse than the baby! She had just been figuring they could dump it at the nearest orphanage!

Blossom nodded eagerly, her bouncy curls hitting her shoulders. "We'll be married in a month, because we don't want anyone to think the child's a bastard-"

"Even though it is," Max pointed out.

"But no one will know, so that's what matters!"

In the kitchen, a pile of Eggos floated in the air, only to fall back onto the plate seconds before the three walked into the kitchen.

"What will you name it?" Max asked.

"We're not sure yet," Blossom said, frowning. "If it's a boy, then probably Carter- we both like that name. If it's a girl, then-"

"Ella," Max said quietly. "El for short."

"Ella…" Blossom pondered. "That sounds nice. Okay, Ella it is!"

Max smiled weakly and glanced at Blossom's stomach. The name had popped out of her mouth without her consent, but now she wondered how the boys would react to this news- her brother was engaged to a whore, and the bastard child might be named after a mysterious psychokinetic girl that Mike was in love with. A girl that had saved all their lives. A girl that had sacrificed herself for them.

Yep, this was gonna go over well. Not.

But for some reason, this whole situation seemed like…

Oh God.

Oh fucking Lord above.

No.

No.

This was not happening.

She couldn't remember her parents all that well- just screams and curses and the sound of breaking glass, dark hair and blue eyes for her mom, sandy brown hair and green eyes for her dad, the horrible gun night, and her mother soothing her while she cried, rocking her back and forth, singing a lullaby to her.

Her dad was- well, he wasn't an alcoholic, but he wasn't all there either. The gun night was the night Billy had taken her, her only seven and him fourteen, and all she had was her dad's last gift to her, her precious skateboard, and the locket that she had ripped off her mother's cooling throat, trying not to look at the hole in her mother's chest, instinctively knowing that it was over, it was all over.

Running away probably wasn't the smartest move ever. They'd only had their parent's credit cards and a handful of cash and change. Still, Billy had helped her, saved her, and Max knew that that old Billy was still in there somewhere.

But then when he started growing up, finding out he was a bastard (because their mom had been raped, and had only married Max's dad when she found out she was pregnant again, with Max) he changed.

And now there was another bastard, another poor child living with them, along with Billy and Max.

Max recalled all the nasty accusations that were pointed at her at her old schools, at how one bitch had called her a bastard, and she had flinched, and then her secret was out.

And then they moved. Again and again until they moved to Hawkins, where there were weird marks on the wall of one hallway, the whiteboard in her science classroom, and claw marks not made by your average bear on the gym floor. Where sometimes, if you were lucky, you would walk by that hallway and you would see a bullet imbedded in the wall that the custodians missed.

Where she had four friends who believed in monsters and superpowers and one girl everyone else presumed dead. Four kids who flinched every time they heard static on the Heathkit, who flinched whenever they walked into the science classroom, flinched when the weird marks on the wall in the science classroom were revealed, flinched when something fell to the floor. Flinched when they went to Will's house and jumped over a burn mark on the carpet, ignored an alphabet painted on the wall, and a hole in the ceiling and other wall.

With older siblings who also flinched at all those things, and that Steve guy who would actually leap over the burn mark on the hallway.

Max was almost normal compared to those kids.

Four friends who were total geeks, harmless and nice, but still idiots like Troy would flinch whenever they walked by. Four friends who would comfort each other when Will would totter out of the bathroom looking green, four friends who would walk in and see Mike and Nancy sobbing, embracing each other as they grieved for both their lost friends.

No bodies actually, surprisingly made it harder, because Max could see Mike wanted actual proof she was gone, so he could move on and not be scared that the girl would come back and hate him.

Then again, he didn't want her to be dead. Not at all.

And out of all the grownups, only Joyce and Hopper understood. They were the only ones that the four could turn to for guidance.


Eleven stood in front of him, pressing him against the cabinet as she advanced on the Demogorgon.

But this time, he felt the weight of her pressing release against him and he scrambled forwards to grab her as the monster disintegrated. Once the ashes were gone, he was still holding Eleven.

"El," he tried to say but his mouth wouldn't work.

Then he felt like she had wrenched her hand out of his grip. Looking down, he saw that her body was disintegrating too, only more slowly.

"Mike!" Eleven screamed. "Mike, I thought we were friends! Why did you leave me?"

"I haven't left you!" Mike tried to protest. "I would never leave you!"

Her body was now just a swirling vortex of ashes, but her face remained the same.

"You left me," she said, her voice echoing as if spoken through a tunnel. "Now I'll leave you."

Her face disintegrated and she swirled away, out of the school they were at, and Mike chased after her until he woke up, cold sweat and tears on his face.

Mike.

Mike.

Mike.

"Eleven?" Mike screamed. "Where are you?"

Who are you? Who's Eleven?

Mike's door slammed open, Nancy in the doorway. Mike can't make out her exact features right now, both from his eyes, blurry from tears, and the light burning behind her head and casting his sister's face into shadows.

"Mike? Are you all right?"

"No," Mike sobbed. "I want Eleven."

Nancy hugged him and rubbed his back soothingly. "I know. I know."

Unseen by Mike, she looked at the pictures still in her hands before placing them carefully behind her—one of her and Barb, the other of the three boys as they watched Eleven be taken away by the Demogorgon's ashes.

For the first time, she was glad that the school had security cameras.

She frowned, looking at it closer. Were those… two blue lights, clashing together? What were those doing in the middle of an ash cloud?

Edited!