the monster in mike's house

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

Alina leaned against the wall in the basement of the Wheeler household, her arms crossed over her chest. After the accidental fire they'd set in the AV Room, Alina, Mike, Lucas and Dustin had to wheel Eleven out of the school on a cart, as she had been too drained and exhausted to even move. She'd ridden on the back of Mike's bike after that, drifting in and out of consciousness, her face pockmarked with bruises. Maybe Mike had been worried about her, and Dustin, and even Lucas, but Alina's mind kept rattling with the same three words, over and over again, her mind too full to even think of anything else. The tips of her fingers were stained with blood from her nose as she looked down at her shaking hands.

Eleven lay on the couch, still wearing her disguise. Her eyes were half-closed, and Mike sat beside her, occasionally rubbing her back. If Alina had been in a better mood, she would've laughed, but instead she looked away, closing her eyes.

Focus, she thought to herself, holding out her hands, trying to force the other thoughts out of her head. She'd been trying this since they'd arrived here, with no results. But she kept trying anyway, because the only thing worse than a monster was an uncontrollable one. She didn't want to hurt anybody, didn't want Lucas and Dustin to abandon her because she was a freak.

Focus. Alina clenched her fists and imagined the itch, the feeling of something building up inside her every time she got angry, sad, or afraid. Focus. Come on. She clenched them tighter, trying to let something form, whatever it was she could do. Was it fire? It could burn things, she knew, but for some reason, it was linked with her energy. When she had adrenaline, it made it easier.

Unless this was all bullshit. But it couldn't be. She'd burned James. She'd turned the doorknob black, drilled holes through tree trunks. This was all very real. Real and impossible.

But nothing was impossible anymore. Not since the day she'd found Eleven at the Lab. Not since she'd first felt the pull inside of her, tugging her towards her. Not since Will's disappearance and fake death.

Concentrate. Alina tried, willing her palms to spark like they had in the gym. Come on. Come on. Come on.

Something wet dripped down Alina's nose. She opened her eyes, the world seeming too bright for her eyes for a moment. Her nose was bleeding. But she hadn't done anything. She'd been trying too hard.

Stop trying, a voice seemed to whisper in her mind, but Alina couldn't even tell if it was her own self-doubt. There's no point. It's uncontrollable. You're uncontrollable. And a monster.

Mike spoke abruptly, dragging her from her thoughts. "What was Will saying? Like home... like home...but dark?" he stood up, beginning to pace the room.

"And empty," added Lucas, who was sitting on one of the chairs, his head in his hands. It must've been quite the shock for him to realize that his best friend was indeed alive, that he was still out there. Especially after all of the grieving him and Alina had done this morning.

Dustin, who was sitting on the stairs, let out a sigh. "Empty and cold... wait, did he say cold?"

"I don't know," said Lucas. "The stupid radio kept going in and out."

"He did," said Alina tiredly. Lucas whipped around to face her, as if he'd forgotten she was even there. "He said cold."

Dustin just shook his head. "It's like riddles in the dark."

Alina used to love riddles like she loved mysteries. Riddles were mysteries—you had to piece together the information given in order to find a conclusion. Yesterday, she would've been eager to solve the riddle, to discover where Will really was. And although she still wanted to find him, all of her enthusiasm had been drained away by the two realizations she'd made at Hawkins Middle School.

One, Hawkins Lab had most likely created a fake body of Will Byers, which meant that they were somehow involved with his disappearance. Which meant that her father had been involved in Will's disappearance. He'd lied to her yet again, this time with fake sympathy for a boy he knew was alive. This could be the worst thing he'd done.

If she had been the one who disappeared, would Brandon Fairgrieves try and save her? Or would he create a fake body for her just as he had for Will, before simply forgetting she existed?

And two, the other realization she'd made. She somehow was like Eleven. She somehow had strange abilities, but unlike Eleven, she couldn't control them. She was just as dangerous as her dad had claimed Eleven was.

Mike continued to pace. "Like home..." he muttered. "Like his house?"

Lucas sat up. "Or maybe like Hawkins."

"Or maybe like this world." Despite everything, the wheels in Alina's brain were turning. "Like, a parallel universe or something. Or... I don't know, maybe he went back in time."

"Time travel wouldn't be the weirdest thing that's happened," Dustin muttered, just as Eleven spoke up from her position on the couch.

"Upside Down."

Alina whipped around to face her. Eleven looked exhausted, but she had evidently been listening to this entire conversation. She stared back at Alina with secrets hidden in her big brown eyes.

"What'd she say?" Lucas asked.

"Upside Down..." Mike repeated.

"What?"

"Upside Down!" Just then, a lightbulb clicked in Alina's head as another mystery's solution lay itself out in front of her. Upside Down.

Mike stood in front of the Dungeons and Dragons board, speaking quickly now. "When El showed us where Will was, she flipped the board over, remember?" He flipped it again now, showing only the black underside of the game as Alina, Lucas and Dustin crowded around him, intrigued. "Upside down. Dark. Empty."

"Do you understand what he's talking about?" Lucas asked the other two, but while Alina nodded, Dustin shook his head, confusion written all over his face.

"Guys, come on, just think about it," Mike urged. "When El took us to find Will, she took us to his house, right?"

"Yeah," said Lucas slowly. "And he wasn't there."

"But what if he was there?" said Mike. "What if we just couldn't see him? What if he was on the other side? What if..." he flipped the board back over, "this is Hawkins..." he flipped it again, "and this is where Will is? The Upside Down."

Dustin's eyes lit up. "Like the Vale of Shadows," he said in awe.

Alina drummed her fingers on the table. "Exactly," she said. "A parallel universe. Home, like this world. Like this universe, even. But dark. Cold. Empty."

Dustin immediately stood up, finding a gaming book, which was really a file folder that Mike had filled with information about Dungeons and Dragons. He set the book down on the table and flipped to the designated page. "The Vale of Shadows," he read, "is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world. It is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters. It is right next to you and you don't even see it."

"The Demogorgon," said Alina, her mind spinning. "El said that Will was hiding from something. If the Upside Down is like the Vale of Shadows, it means that Will's hiding from the monsters there. There was this faint growling I heard on the radio just before Will's voice cut out."

"But... how do we get there?" Lucas asked. "To the Upside Down?"

"We cast Shadow Walk," said Dustin.

Despite everything, Lucas found time to roll his eyes. "In real life, dummy."

"We can't shadow walk," said Dustin, "but... maybe she can."

All eyes went back to Eleven, the she Dustin was referring to. "Do you know how we get there?" Mike asked her. "To the Upside Down?"

Eleven shook her head, and that was that.

Later, just as Alina was packing up to go home, Lucas stopped her. "Are you okay?" he asked. "Seriously. Don't lie and say you're fine."

"I'm... I'm a monster," Alina whispered. "You saw what I did to James. What if I do that to you, or Dustin, or El? What if I—"

"Al." Lucas raised a hand, and Alina stopped talking. "You're not. You're not a monster and you're not a freak, or a weirdo, or whatever I call Eleven. I just... I don't understand. You're not from the Lab, are you? I know your dad works there, but did he ever—"

"If you're asking if I was ever experimented on, Lucas, the answer's no. I'm not... I'm not from the Lab, like El. I swear. I don't understand any of this either, but... but do you remember when we were nine? It felt... it felt kind of like that when I used... when I used whatever it was on James today. I think... I think that's when it began."

Lucas rubbed his temple. "This is all so confusing," he said. "But I believe you, Al. It's just... between this, and Will—"

"It's a lot to take in," Alina finished. "I know."

Alina parted ways with Lucas, Dustin, Mike and Eleven, biking home in the dark, her hair blowing in the wind. It was only when she was alone that she let the tears fall, letting out a half-choked sob as her bike flew down the streets of Hawkins.

And when she got home, she wrote everything that happened, everything she'd found out about Eleven today in her notebook, before putting it back in its usual spot, unaware of the danger she did in doing so.

"Dad, you're pulling my hair," Alina complained, as Brandon Fairgrieves attempted to twist her curly hair into a braid. "I can do it myself, and without becoming bald, either."

She still tensed at her father's touch, the previous comfort she'd had from it faded away. Whenever he touched her now, to give her a hug or to help her with things like this, she felt as comfortable as if a stranger was doing it to her, a stranger wearing her dad's face. The face of someone she had once trusted.

Luckily, Brandon let go of her hair, the half-finished braid he'd been attempting flopping back down. "Alright, alright," he surrendered. "I just wanted to help. Sorry if it wasn't satisfactory."

"No offence," said Alina, smoothing out her hair and trying to ignore the goosebumps rising on her arms, "but I think Skywalker could do a better braid than you could."

"How could I not find offence to that?" Brandon clutched a hand to his chest. "You wound me, Ally."

Alina and her father stood in front of her bedroom's full-length mirror, preparing to attend Will's funeral. It was strange to be attending a funeral for someone she knew was alive, but she did it to avoid suspicion. She knew that her friends (and Mike) were also preparing themselves right now, suiting into tuxedos and practicing their sad faces (although they would always be terrible actors).

Alina wore a lacy black dress that fell to her knees, one that had belonged to her mother when she was a kid. The sight of it had made Alina recoil visibly, not wanting to touch anything her mom had, but Brandon had convinced her to wear it. She could barely look at herself.

Sandals adorned her feet, a compromise between her and her father (he had wanted her to wear heels to the funeral, while Alina argued for the right to wear sneakers). They had a braided gold middle between her toes, along with strips of gold at the side.

Alina hated this. Hated the stupid dress that Linda had worn, hated the sandals on her feet, hated the face that stared back at her in the mirror. So it was that Alina managed to braid her hair without once glimpsing her reflection, something that made her dad's eyebrows raise, but he didn't comment.

She even added a little lip gloss and blush to her face, before finally lifting her eyes to look at her reflection. Perfect. She looked like a stranger, a stranger wearing clothes Alina Fairgrieves would never be caught dead in. Alina was skipping this funeral. Ally was going.

"You look beautiful, Ally," said Brandon fondly, and the nickname made her feel better. He himself was missing the funeral due to work, but he was wearing black, anyway, with a tie that sat neatly on his chest. "I'm glad you made friends, even if you did lose a potential one. Will was a very nice boy, you know."

"I know," said Alina dully. "But I'm not beautiful. I don't need to be. This is a funeral, dad, not a wedding."

A funeral for a living boy.

"Of course," said Brandon. "I'm sorry. But are you ready now?"

"Yeah," she said quietly. "Yeah, I'm ready."

The monster wearing my skin is, thought Alina, but I'm not. 

. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧

a/n: so, tomorrow is gonna be the start of 'acatalepsy week', where i'll be updating a chapter once a day (and if i for some reason forget, you'll get two the next day). i'm really enjoying writing this series and i'm really excited for you guys to get where i am now (i'm currently writing book two), so that's why i'm doing this!

thank you so much for 1k reads, too! i really appreciate each and every comment/vote i get, it really makes my day. i love you all :)

'till next time!