Act V - Spark
"Dad. Where do people go when they die?"
"What?" Ted Wheeler clearly didn't anticipate such a philosophical question from his young son.
Mike pointed at the photograph hanging on Ted's bedroom wall and spoke, "Grandpa…"
Ted turned his head towards the portrait and sighed, "We don't know son."
Mike scratched his head as if trying to understand the limitation of his father's knowledge. He was clearly uncomfortable about the concept of the unknown. He spoke with a quizzical look, "So they just disappear?"
Ted sat down beside his son, ran his hand through his hair and smiled, "Not completely. They leave something behind."
"What?" Mike was curious about the grand secret.
Ted took a moment to compose himself and spoke with a gentle tone, "When people pass away, they leave memories behind. Like the baseball cap Grandpa gave you. Or when the time he took you to the game last week."
"But what if I lose them or forget them?" Mike seemed distressed at that thought.
Ted held Mike's hand and stood up, "Come with me."
A few minutes later the father-son duo left the house and walked to the shrubs at the back of the residence. Ted kept his palms wrapped around Mike's eyes as he guided him to the spot he had in his mind. Then he removed his palms, and the scene in front of them took Mike's breath away. He gasped at the thousands of lights blinking in a continuous rhythm in their backyard. He spoke with a suppressed excitement, "Fireflies?"
Ted nodded and spoke, "Yes. You see the lights?"
"Yes."
"What are they doing?"
Mike answered the question without thinking, "They are turning off and on."
"That's right, son. Memories are just like Fireflies. At times in life, you might forget his memories, but they will always come back. In the darkest nights, they will provide you the light you need to remember him."
"Ted… TED?"
Ted was suddenly yanked out of his trance by the irritated voice. He spoke in a hurry, "Yeah honey?"
Karen sniffed at her unmindful husband, "Have you finished searching the desks?"
Ted carefully dropped the old photograph inside the drawer and closed it. Then he opened another drawer to search for the useless artifact as time kept running out.
Somewhere beyond the realm of hope, Mike Wheeler stood on a dark ground looking at the thousands of colorful fireflies flying around him. He had already seen a few visions and had discovered a terrible pattern in the memories of Eleven burning inside them. It was now clear that the orange, red, yellow and the other fiery colors were the painful recollections. The red one was especially sickening and made him throw up. He distinctly remembered the fluffy white cat that she could not kill, the punishment room where she had embraced her destructive power, him jerking his head and snapping the man's spinal cord like a twig, Papa carrying her gently as she sobbed and bled from her nose and ears.
He searched for the blue, green and white ones. They were the happy reminiscences, but they were so few in numbers. He touched them one by one and was shocked at each revelation; the lazy boy, the cycle ride, the radio, the eggos, the quarry. It looked like every moment she spent with him was full of glee and happiness. Even the night where he yelled at her near the quarry for lying to him. Mike pondered, 'that couldn't have been joyful, could it?'
'No, she felt happy because she had finally found someone who felt sad when she had broken his trust. In her past life, all she had ever received for betrayal was anger and pain,' Mike felt dizzy as he connected the dots from the memories he had seen earlier.
Out of sheer curiosity, Mike touched a green firefly and was suddenly pulled into a room. It looked like a comfy cabin but was almost run down underneath. He found himself sitting in front of the TV which played static. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Without even looking behind, she opened the door with his mind. 'Damn it,' he was slipping again. He was just the spectator, but he wasn't a girl. 'I AM NOT EL,' Mike shouted inside his mind and turned his head backward. The door opened as Hopper stepped in quickly and locked it behind him. He was utterly drenched from the rain, but he gave a warm smile when he looked at her. Mike felt like puking, but she felt happy to see Hopper. He wanted to hug him. 'That's weird,' he hated that son of a bitch. He had lied to Mike through his teeth about Eleven. Mike remembered the excuses Hopper used to give when the party kept finding him in the woods. He cursed softly, ''Looking for the Mayor's cat. You asshole!"
Hopper took out a bag and brought out two boxes of Eggos, and her eyes lit up for a second. Hopper coughed, "I checked up on Mike today."
Mike's heart jumped. 'What? What the actual fu...'
"He's doing okay. I met the two bullies, Troy, and his partner. They'll never touch him as long as they are alive."
Mike felt dumbfounded as he recalled the strange incident. While searching for Eleven in the Woods one day, he met Troy and proceeded to get severely beaten up. He came home with split lips and a blackened eye. He never told the truth to anyone except Eleven over the radio. He wasn't ashamed to say these things to her. 'Friends don't lie.' But only after a day troy had started avoiding him, and never laid hands on him ever again. But Mike still wasn't convinced that Hopper gave a damn, he probably arranged it to ensure Eleven didn't come running to protect Mike.
"Mike is crying. I NEED TO SEE HIM." She shouted at Hopper.
Hopper sighed, "El. He cannot always depend on you to save him. He needs to learn to fight his own battles. Don't worry, I'll look after him."
Mike looked down as he felt terrible shame creeping inside him. He berated himself silently, 'You weak ass piece of shit.'
Hopper sighed again, "Okay kid, take the TV to your room and visit him. But no talking okay? Max ten mins? Are we clear?"
'Yes,' Mileven felt ecstatic. 'God damn this split personality,' Mike cursed under his breath as he was pulled away from the sweet comforts of the vision into the terrible darkness without an end in sight.
At that same moment in the real world, in a city situated a long distance from the town of Hawkins, a woman was briskly walking down the street towards her home. She had a strange feeling at work and taken the night off to reach her home as quickly as possible. She arrived at the door to her house after a few minutes and opened the lock with shaky hands. Then she went inside, closed the door behind her and turned the latch to secure it. A few seconds later she entered a room and shrieked as she saw her sister sitting on a chair like a sculpture made of stone. It was not an unusual phenomenon, almost a decade earlier Terry Ives had lost her sanity and dexterity to Fate. So her strange appearance should not have unsettled her sister, Becky Ives, at the least. But what shook Becky to the core was the streaks of tear that kept running down from her paralyzed sister's eyes. It was an incredible display, ever since Teresa suffered a stroke and became paralyzed, no one had ever seen her eyes twitching, let alone crying. Becky ran to her sister, held onto her shoulders and shouted, "Terry? What's wrong? Terry? Can you hear me?"
There was no response but drops of tear kept falling down her eyes in a constant stream. It spoke volumes. Becky felt a sudden knot in her stomach, what if something had happened to Jane? She knew about her strange abilities, and she was afraid of her niece. That girl was the only family they had and losing her was probably the single event that could have sparked a response like that in Teresa, Jane's mother. Teresa ran to the telephone and dialed a number from memory. The call was never answered.
In the field of lost echoes, Mike was looking for other good memories when suddenly he saw a bright firefly. It was the brightest he had ever seen in this void. It glowed like the sun and nearly blinded him. He reached out and caught it in his palm. He was excited. Which one was this? The kiss? The make-up session? That must've been good. No one had ever told Eleven that she was pretty before Mike randomly blurted it out one day. He gave in and was thrust into the tunnel.
Mike suddenly felt a terrible pain radiating throughout his entire body. His heart was pounding as if it tried desperately to send blood to his brain which was tearing away in agony. He gasped and wanted to scream his lungs out, but his jaws didn't move an inch. He opened his eyes with great difficulty and found himself looking at a glaring light. A face was speaking to him with a compassionate voice, "We'll go to the Snowball together… You can come live with us... My mom will make food for you..."
Something rattled his core as Mike looked at himself delivering a eulogy.
'FUCK!'
As the doppelganger kept speaking, Mike could only utter one word. "Promise?"
With her hand held in a resolute grip, the doppelganger replied, "Promise."
The perspective switched in an instant. Mike got pulled into the persona he knew like the back of his hand, and the world turned upside down.
Eleven knew right then that she had gotten everything she had ever wanted in her life, everything. Well maybe not everything, she was starving, perhaps she could get an Eggo? Eggos were excellent, so tasty. She was so hungry. But there was no time to eat because it was time to save Mike one last time. She apprehended her fate at the exact moment Mike made the promise to take her to the Snowball. Eleven was never destined to be happy, and the Snowball would have definitely been the brightest moment she would have ever experienced in her life.
'Sorry, Mike. I'm so sorry, but I won't be able to go to the snowball with you. Do you Ummm... have an Eggo? Okay, if you have one, I'll only take half, you can take the other half,' the thoughts spread through Mike's consciousness like ripples on a surface of the water. He could clearly hear Eleven and her last words that she could not articulate on that ominous night. The jumbled thoughts raced through Mike's mind; Eleven felt so hungry that she could have probably given away everything for an Eggo. 'Everything except Mike.' Dustin might be hungry too. She didn't like Lucas that much, but she'll give him a piece, a small portion because Mike liked him. He was Mike's friend, and that meant he was also her friend. Eleven tried to focus her eyes on Mike, but his face was getting blurred. He kept staring at the ceiling and heard the guns outside die down one by one.
Joyce looked worried as she kept rubbing Mike's face with water.
"I don't get it. If he's simply passed out, he should've been up by now" Joyce spoke in a somber voice.
Nancy was looking gravely worried now. Even Jim tilted his hat to look at them. The face beneath it belonged to a man who was, at the very moment, enjoying a guided tour into his special personal hell. Dustin was outside the room crying silently while Lucas and Max stood nearby, their faces shadowed by a dark mask impossible to decipher.
A few miles from the cabin, in a rundown motel, the telephone started ringing and woke the receptionist. A few minutes later the guest came down to answer the call. The man with a faceful of black beard picked the receiver up and pressed it against his ear. A calm voice echoed from the aether, "Murray Bauman?"
"Yes. Who's this?"
"That's irrelevant. I am calling from Hawkins National Lab."
Murray hissed through the mouthpiece, "And what can I do for you? Kidnap some children?"
The voice replied calmly, "Murray Bauman, aka Michael Brown. The relentless hound who went after a prey too difficult to find and lost everything."
The earth started shaking under Murray's feet as he bent over the counter and roared through the handset, "YOU BASTARD. You're working with him? I'LL DRAG YOU TO HELL…"
The voice of steel replied, "There's no time for your games Mr. Bauman. The world is about to end, and I am on your side."
"WHAT? But he's…"
"He's not dead. He has finally executed his trump card."
Murray snickered, "Huh. And you want me to find him for you?"
"No. I don't want you to find him."
The voice paused and continued, "I want you to find Jim Hopper for me. Right now."
Murray let out a small sigh, "And why would I do that for you?"
"Because three years back I returned Lisa to this world. I took away her nightmares and gave her a life that you always dreamt of."
Murray clutched the receiver and spoke breathlessly, "You? But you… How can I be sure?"
"Sixteenth November 1982. It was the last session when her curse was finally lifted. It was the first night she could sleep for more than three hours."
Murray breathed a sigh of relief and spoke earnestly, "Thank you for everything Doc. I am so grateful..."
The voice interjected, "No time Murray. Where's Jim?"
"I am sure you know where he lives. But he also has a cabin in the woods."
The voice spoke excitedly, "Get into your car, come to the lab and pick me up. I have something that needs to be delivered to Jim right now."
Murray ran towards the door leaving behind a bewildered receptionist who went back to sleep promptly.
At that very moment, in a city far from Hawkins, Becky Ives was walking in circles inside her room. She had no idea what to do or whom to call for help. It was evident that her niece was in trouble, but the policeman wasn't picking up the phone either. Of course, she could just drive to Hawkins and make a ruckus at the local police station to find that idiot, but she couldn't leave Terry alone in the house, crying all by herself. Suddenly the doorbell rang and startled her. Without thinking, she ran to the door and opened it in an instant and gave a muffled cry as she noticed the strange looking girl standing in front of her door.
"Who are you?"
The girl replied in a British accent, "I am Kali. Jane's friend."
Becky felt the knot tightening inside her stomach. She knew that Jane left her house to find Kali, but she was alone now. Has something really happened to Jane? Becky prayed as she addressed the newcomer in a shaky voice, "Is she alright? Tell me, please."
Kali replied in a soft tone, "I don't know. She returned to her friends tonight. I came here to meet her mother. She wanted her daughter to find me. I want to know why?"
Becky sighed, "You won't get any words out of her. She can't speak since she had the stroke."
"I know. But I want to see her. Please."
The girl did resemble the photo in the album that Becky had found today. She held the door open as Kali entered the home gently. Before closing the door, Becky noticed the four unusual forms standing at different corners of the street. Before she could speak, Kali raised her voice, "Guys. Keep watch. The attack could come from any direction."
Four indistinct voices affirmed the order and disappeared in the shadows as Kali smiled at Becky, "They are my friends. Mine and Jane's. They will keep watch tonight."
"Watch out for what?"
Kali entered the room where Terry sat and declaimed vehemently, "The man who did this to her."
Then she left a confused Becky Ives and moved to where Terry was sitting. Kali wrapped her arms around Terry and assured her, "Everything will be alright. Jane will make it through, she always has, and she always will. She will save us one day."
Then she wiped the drops of tears from Terry's face and sat down at her feet and tightly clasped her hand in her own.
Little did Kali know that her faith had already been shattered by a swift strike by Fate itself only a few hours ago. Now, it was one the verge of consuming the soul of Mike Wheeler, the boy who had stopped believing in fairy tales. Two personas struggled to take control of his mind inside that endless vision of Eleven's tragedy; Mike, no, Eleven, no it's Mike, no...
'NO,' Mike screamed inside his subconscious. He didn't give a fuck anymore. He was Eleven, and he embraced the fact. He needed to see it, he needed to live through it even if it annihilated his heart to go through the next moments.
Eleven looked at Mike keenly and kept uttering a lot of words inside her head. But she couldn't pronounce them as she didn't know those words. Papa never taught her so many words. She desperately wanted to tell Mike what she was thinking about him before she would be gone forever. But she couldn't, and tears streaked down her cheek as she kept staring at the face of the boy who had cared for her, who had given her a shelter, who had given her food, who believed in her when no one else did, and who said she was 'Pretty.' She was helpless, and she could only cry.
'But I can,' Mike lend his voice to Eleven.
"Mike, I really like that funny looking chair, if... if I go live with you can I sleep on it?"
"And the toy you showed me? That looked like a lizard that made that strange sound. Can I keep it when I'm alone in the tent?"
"Oh, the tent, I really wish to stay there, can I stay there? I promise I'll never go out, will…will you still bring me Eggos?"
"Mike, will… will you come to stay with me in the tent? I feel so scared sometimes, I'm afraid Mike, if I'm not with you, Papa would hurt you."
"Do you think I'm still pretty Mike? I'm sorry about losing the hair, but once it grows long like yours, then I'll be pretty again."
"That box in Nancy's room that played music? That reminds me of Mama. No no no, you don't have to give it to me."
"And that thing you did back there, in the Gym, just before the bad men came, will you do it again? I don't know why, but it felt different, I felt happy."
Mike listened in awe as he started to realize what Eleven tried so hard to tell him. He began to feel what Mike Wheeler, an ordinary boy from Hawkins, Indiana, genuinely meant to Eleven, a girl with supernatural powers. Words came rushing out as it found an outlet, she could finally let Mike know what she felt. Eleven felt satisfied now. She tried to smile at Mike, 'I'll go away now, Mike.'
Mike screamed in a panic because he knew what is going to happen next. He shouted the warning aloud to warn all of them, but none reached to his doppelganger and his friends.
"Run," he kept screaming, "Run, go, get out now."
But different words came into his mind. He was living Eleven's last moments, and he wasn't allowed to interfere.
The last words echoed through the surface; "I'm sorry Mike, but you won't be able to keep your Promise, I won't be there anymore, for the Snowball."
"You said you'll go with someone you liked, but not as a friend."
"Am I your friend Mike?"
"Will you go with someone else?"
Mike felt a searing rod entering his heart, and he felt the pain that followed. It was better not knowing what she was feeling at that moment. He knew, he always knew, but refused to acknowledge the truth; 'Eleven, an angel from Heaven, had loved Mike Wheeler, the biggest loser in Hawkins middle school, like no one, ever had and no one ever will. Mike need not have worried, Eleven would have definitely gone to Snowball with him, this year and the lifetime that followed.'
The tape recorder played through the last words as it slowed down; "Mike it hurts. It hurts so much. But you're okay, the bad men are gone, they cannot hurt you anymore."
"Will you smile for me? Why are you crying?"
"Runaway Mike, everyone please run away."
"Lucas, Dustin. Please take care of Mike when I'm gone."
Mike wanted to shut his mouth now. He couldn't continue listening to this recording anymore. It was crushing his soul in a firm grip. Then he uttered the last words that Eleven thought of while she laid on the table, "Mike, will you touch your face with me one more time? It felt so different. I don't know what it means. Just one more time?"
'Mike Wheeler will never kiss another girl again as long as he lived,' he made a promise to himself. Tears came crashing down his face as he kept begging his doppelganger to kiss the girl who was going to go away forever.
Suddenly there was a loud crash at the door. Eleven didn't need to see because she already knew. Papa had come back to take away everything she had cared about, 'He's here to take away Mike.'
The boys frantically tried to shield Eleven from the horror that was slowly advancing towards them. Eleven didn't see the demo-gorgon, she noticed Papa, and instantly Mike knew what she had to do. With the last fragment of her strength, she rose up and climbed out of the table. Mike was standing in front of her at only an arm's length away. She wanted to hug him one last time, but time, there was no time. She didn't know how long she could endure; her head was splitting apart with the pain. Lucas launched a rock at the monster, it was fruitless until it wasn't. Eleven pushed it with all her strength and pinned the beast to the wall. Then she started marching towards her Fate.
Pain, hunger, tiredness, Mike didn't feel anything anymore. He felt sadness for a life which will never be, for a flower that will never blossom, for an Eggo that will never be eaten, for a dinner that will never take place, for a Millennium Falcon that will never do fly, for a D&D game which will never have its mage, for a child who will never get to grow up, for a girl who will never become pretty.
'For a promise that will never be kept.'
He couldn't see anything because her vision was becoming clouded. She barely held on but kept moving forward with a slow and steady pace. Eleven was determined to end this... and save Mike. Mike came running to rescue her, she tried to smile at his courage, but her face didn't work correctly, 'so much pain.'
She knew what he was prepared to do. 'No, Mike,' She flung him back with a push from her mind. She winced as Mike crashed against the wall, she wanted to help him but she couldn't. He laid there stunned, too shocked to react.
Eleven reached the monster and slowly raised her head. It knew what she wanted, and she knew what it wanted. It was possible to fulfill both their desires, but she needed to go away alongside it. The monster wanted to steal away her happiness, it tried to take away Mike Wheeler from her. Papa didn't like her to be happy because it made her weak. But she knew that at that very moment, she was the happiest person alive, and she was far stronger than she ever was.
She turned her head towards Mike. He was still lying against the wall where she had thrown him. She couldn't discern his face anymore. Her vision was slowly fading away as blood pooled around her eyes. But then she saw him, one last time. Mike was safe. And that's all she wanted.
"Goodbye... Mike,"
'I'll never forget you.'
She was happy because she'll never forget him now. Then she looked back at the monster and raised her arm.
"NO MORE."
A/N: This chapter was extremely difficult to write. Moreover I played the 'Terminator 2 Judgement Day - It's Over' soundtrack alongside it and got swept away by emotions. Hope I had managed to transmit some of those emotions to my readers as well.
Next up is the final chapter, titled- Phoenix.
