PRETTY SICK!
— moment of clarity ☆

The Earth kept spinning on its axis no matter the people, what said people did, or what said people didn't do — its job and abilities were set in stone the moment the big bang happened and created the universe as people knew it. It put the world into perspective for Angelica when she pondered on it, she was an insignificant speck in an existence that loved to smother her until she choked up whatever word vomit she could manage to make out from her racing thoughts.

A mild confirmation of Pete's death threw her through the loop of some stress induced high that made her think it was a good idea to break into a government facility; a potentially evil one, she wanted to add. Even through the 2-day sleep deprivation, she started to sober up; and as she stood in front of the imposing concrete building, her fight or flight tried to kick in.

Her head told her to run, but her heart told her to keep going. Just keep walking until she found proof of foul play — then she could bolt like hell out of there. Angie could finally relax for the first time in a year once she got her hands on those files. Or, what she imagined were files. If she was being honest, she didn't know what she might possibly be looking for... a part of her wished she'd grip onto a miracle and find Pete and Barbara trapped inside. But she knew better.

They were both more useful dead than alive, Will got lucky.

Raymond, who stood next to her, gave her a hearty shove towards a group of people while he muttered about hurrying up — which she did. It was like when you spun a hand cranked flashlight; her bulb finally burned and her legs carried her up the stairs and inside of the Hawkins Lab.

He hurried ahead of her and spoke to the guard at the front, flashing his badge as he rambled about police mumbo-jumbo. Angie kept a confident stride when she pretended to flash him an ID in passing (with her wallet shut just enough he couldn't see), and she carried on past the lobby with a group of people who she assumed were just coming back from their lunch break.

Once she got past the glass, she let out a breath of relief and just barely glanced at Raymond, who stayed cool and collected as he left the building to go back to the Pinto. So far, so smooth, but in her head, she screamed like a banshee, just inconsolably anxious — Outwardly, she held her head up high and walked through the hallways in a way that said "I know what I'm doing.".

Angie repeated the next step in her head alongside the blood-curdling mental screams that came along with anxiety, to find the file room, except there were no directions or pointers. Hell, even labels on the doors. They had more fire extinguisher boxes and axe cases to free them from their glass prison than directions, which she found counter intuitive, seeing as if there was a fire, you'd want to get out too.

There was something about the lab that made her skin crawl under its surface, the LED lights that buzzed in her ears, or the way the employee's looked just as anxious as she felt. Maybe it was a bad idea to go inside, did she walk right into the gaping maw of hell?

She chewed her bottom lip anxiously, definitely smearing her lipstick all over her teeth as she glanced through the blinds of the room's windows every-so often. Would she keep secret files on the first floor?

No. That's stupid. So she carried on up into the second floor, only to immediately recoil and back up in disgust. It smelled like a hospital, it had to be a medical floor, or something close to it because she could smell the difference from the first floor. Faintly of rubbing alcohol and some kind of disinfectant that stung her nostrils. Someone else on the stairs gave her an odd look, which she returned with a polite smile before she hurried up the next flight of stairs.

The atmosphere of the third floor suffocated her, each white tile uniformly fastened to the wall reminded her there was no quick way out — Angie was trapped within Hawkins Laboratory, and she was in far too deep to turn back now.

Angie's sleek, black heels clicked against the linoleum flooring, and her eyes scanned each hallway that she passed but something was wrong — she noticed. Most, if not all of the people she saw on that floor had on lab coats, or important badges pinned to their suit jackets, she ducked into a room after too many suspicious looks worried her to no end, she hoped none of them suspected anything out of line. At least she was on the right floor... probably?

She adjusted her purse that hung off of her shoulder and furrowed her brows when she stood in what she thought was a file room, there were file cabinets everywhere, and each of them were labeled with a letter, but a whiteboard with a bunch of unrecognizable lingo made her think that they used it for more than files. Angie stared at the board, something about tunnels? Tunnels to what? The blonde didn't have time for that to be deciphered, she reasoned as she headed towards the 'B' section and opened the metal cabinet as quietly as she could.

Her slim fingers raked over each label. "C'mon... Bell..." muttered Angie, her heart pounding inside of her ears whenever she heard movement outside of the room. Her eyes widened slightly once she found a file with her name on it, then one on her mom, then her dad, Pete, and Vincent after. Her lips tugged downwards when she pulled out Pete's file, as well as the polaroid camera she hid in her purse. The words flew from the page into her brain while she read it — her haste didn't make it sloppy, however. She stayed thorough in her research. Always. Her darting irises stopped suddenly, and Angie nearly felt her pupils shrink to the size of pinpoints.

It felt wrong, almost.

To see the words 'Deceased' under the status section.

She knew it'd been coming, but instead of dropping to her knees and letting out a throat-gnawing scream before she bursted into tears like she'd done after Raymond left on that fateful Friday... Angie felt... well, she didn't feel it. There was nothing. No build up. No downfall. Just pure emptiness as her eyes swept over the sheet and stared blankly at the words it contained — none of it made sense.

The words. They didn't make sense to her. There were pictures of his belongings and his car that swerved off of the road and into the ditch, which no one mentioned had happened — but everything written was covered with some kind of code. Not like morse code or ciphers that she could crack easily; they spoke in tongues about 'The Upside Down' and something named 'The "Demogorgon"' which was specifically in quotes (did it have a real name?). Angie's hands shook as she placed the file in her purse and frowned once she realized that wouldn't be nearly enough evidence.

The code they used could easily be disputed as something else, something less sinister, Angie reasoned in her head. She went against Raymond's demands to "just get the fuck out of there as soon as possible" and opted to really dig deep, for justice, she told herself. Not to ease the new anxiety that gnawed at the pit of her stomach upon reading his file.

She tiptoed over towards the 'T' filing cabinet and eased it open, swallowing thickly when it made a loud screeching noise until she stopped pulling. Angie peered over her shoulder at the shadows that lingered behind the blinds and crouched down as she went through each label, stopping only when she found one labeled 'The "Demogorgon"'. Her trembling hands paid her no mercy as several photos fell out of the file and onto the floor.

Her voice caught in her throat when she cursed under her breath and scrambled to pick up the photos, but as Angie flipped them to show her the image, she wished she had just minded her business. Really. She really wished that she knew when to slow down.

Gore, horror, sci-fi, and anything of the sort put Angelica on edge for as long as she remembered — between the times Steve forced her to watch Alien, or when Vincent would put on obscure horror movies she happened to catch a glimpse of; it etched in her memory for weeks after the fact. Sometimes the fear got so bad she had to sleep with the light on, or at someone's house. But those were movies, sure, it had special effects and flashy stuff that made it seem real, but at the end of the day, the fear was all in her head. So when she stared at that thing in the photo, Angie felt this odd sinking feeling in her chest.

It wasn't the prim colored blouses, perfectly ironed to take their shape, or uniform white lab coats that gave Angie the chills the moment she stepped foot in the four fences which surrounded the facility. It was whatever the hell this thing was. This Demogorgon.

Her hands felt clammy as the pads of her fingers smudged the glossy finish of the photo, her lacquered nail traced over its... no... there was no face to trace over. The Demogorgon's face looked flat, almost, no features besides bumpy ridges that came over the skin and a cross indented onto it. The image was too blurry to see much else, even its body seemed distorted as she tried to get a closer look at it — her lips quivered at the sight of a hand belonging to the photographer. Their fist closed around a large gun that looked to be doing close to no damaged against it when she flipped over the next image.

This was... the same creature, she thought, as she moved it out of the glare from the overhead lights. Except this time, the cross in its face disappeared and revealed four flaps that opened and held rows, and rows, and rows of tiny sharp teeth. The sole reason she imagined they had those was to rip and tear at anything that got in her way — people, she thought, people like her brother.

Angie, despite her upbringing with her God-fearing mother, wasn't religious; not that she thought nothing existed, she was sure something out there had a higher power over them, but she just never put a lot of thought into it. Too preoccupied in her own head to care what some (possibly) mistranslated book had to say about what she did with her life. However, in that split second of anguish, she prayed. She prayed that the thing in the photograph came nowhere near her brother, or Barbara, or little Will Byers — she prayed that this was some sick break room joke at the expense of the people who suffered because of it... because of them. Did the lab create The Demogorgon? Or was it some sick spawn that God created as a laugh.

The nights she spent kneeled in front of her bed until her knees became blushed with red meant nothing to the man in the sky. Her small hands folded together neatly on the duvet in front of her, with her mother's hawk-like gaze pointed at her daughter who prayed for peace, love and safety to be granted upon she and her family. When Julie Bell would weep into the emptiness of her home because her children were not children of God; he did not care for their cries.

No child of God came from Hawkins, Indiana. Nothing holy stemmed from there.

Things like that weren't meant to exist, they were meant to stay in scary movies and comics and not roam around her poor town —

Oh God, was that the bear people saw in Steve's backyard? Was Steve in danger? Her eyes watered at the thought of someone else getting taken by it, especially someone close to her... not again. Angie sniffled quietly and shoved the photos into her purse, trying to fight her hands that shook and trembled wildly. Her breathing became uncontrolled and she forced back the nausea creeping around her head, if she didn't calm down, then she couldn't leave the room and she wouldn't be able to get out of the lab. What if they kept that thing in there?

She needed to cry, but then her makeup would be ruined — but if she didn't then she might break down before she could get to her car, then people would ask what was wrong. But if her makeup looked messy then everyone would be suspicious anyway, lose-lose. Every situation Angie came up with resulted in her getting royally fucked... like, what if they killed her for knowing too much? No one would know what happened to her besides Raymond, and the lab definitely had more power over things like that than he did. What the fuck was she going to do?

Maybe she had it all wrong, maybe it was all an accident? Or anything that could ease her mind just a little as she still struggled to get a handle on her emotions.

Angie couldn't think.

She couldn't fucking think again and all she could focus on was how helpless she felt, and how the stiff, navy blue suit jacket clung to her arms and bunched up her blouse underneath around her elbows. Her hands came to unbutton the jacket when she started to dry heave, hunched over and uncomfortably hot once she realized what the hell she just dragged herself into. She was going to pass out, surely, she remembered the last time she fainted like it was yesterday — it felt just like this.

Footsteps pounded throughout the hallways just beyond the four walls she'd trapped herself in; Angie attempted to stagger towards the door perpendicular of the one she entered in, her hands grazed the tin filing cabinets along her path, a below par idea that resulted in the metal echoing against the confines of the room. Her breath caught in her throat at the noise, the rustling outside became even louder than before and the stupefied expression on her face froze in place.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, her chest restricted any noise that could have possibly escaped her throat — she waited, still as a statue, for the noise to pass... and it did, the footsteps quieted into a non-existent shuffle, and she had a moment to calm down.

That was, until the door bursted open; it slammed against the wall beside it and scared Angie so badly that she fell over onto her butt, she was sure her irises looked like stormy blue bullets with how wide her eyes went. "Hands up!" The blonde froze up at the sight of a gun pointed at her, several guns,  and she tried to raise her hands, God, did she try, but her entire body felt like heavy lead. "I said hands up!"

Maybe she raised her hands, or something like that, because she moved and her vision started to get spotty with a familiar lightheadedness that she felt whenever she forgot to have something sweet after a while, or when she stood up too fast. This time though, there was no relief after a moment of sitting still, or even a conclusion. The world spun around her in streaks of bright white light and metallic olive, people's voices faded out from earshot and she felt blinded by fear while she tried to keep her body up.

Two metal prongs latched themselves into her lower abdomen and her body went slack as the electricity coursed through every nerve in her body, through the meat of her muscles and down each crevice of bone — it created an indescribable ache in her chest, one that never ceased nor continued, as the moment her back slammed against the cool tile, Angie passed out from the volts of the taser.

—————
——— AUTHOR'S NOTE
sorry for the slow update, ive been anxious
about school starting next week. that also
means overall slower updates and less
activity, sorry!! i also apologize for the
poor chapter quality, this one was harder
to write than like, all of the rest of them

things are getting rolling 😝 sorry in advance
angie... bc girl this is just the start

TYSM FOR 5K READS?? THATS
LITERALLY INSANE!!!! i love all
of my readers (especially the non-ghost
readers 😉) and im so happy i get to
share what i create

don't forget to vote and comment!! 😚

PRETTY SICK!
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