Chapter Text
— And the next song that will be pleasing your ears today is the well-known The Chain by the magnificent Fleetwood Mac. A few interesting facts about the album Rumours, on the second side of which our guest is hiding: the album was released in 1977 and contains 11 tracks. The musicians used the recording studio as a place to sort out their relationships, since during the recording of the album all members of the band were going through breakups — two divorces and one relationship breakup. For example, the composition Go Your Own Way is Lindsey Buckingham’s unflattering message to Stevie Nicks, while the song Dreams is her response. Recording the album took a full year, but it was definitely worth it: Rumours was awarded the Grammy for “Album of the Year” in 1978. The Chain is the only composition written by all five members of the band. It was stitched together from several demo tracks. It is also worth noting that since 1978, John McVie’s bass solo from this track has annually opened Formula 1 broadcasts on BBC television. And now, finally, I invite you to enjoy this sports rock hit.
Through the crackle of the radio, a guitar suddenly cuts through — dry, slightly muted, as if it was recorded not in a studio but in a dim room with bare walls. The first chords sound cautious, almost lazy, with that slightly hoarse tone of old vinyl. There is this strange “emptiness” in them, the space between notes feels just as heavy as the sounds themselves. The strings ring softly, with a faint metallic bitterness, and the sound never quite fills the space completely — it leaves shadows behind. Each note stretches out, slowly settling like dust in still air, and for a moment it feels like it doesn’t disappear at all, but simply hides somewhere nearby. There is something stubborn and quietly unsettling in these chords — they don’t demand attention, but they don’t let go either. And in the muted thump of the drums, someone’s awakening heartbeat can be heard.
Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise.
He sees fireworks, bright lights, distant stars, music, guitar riffs and bass solos, someone’s voice, someone’s excited screams, someone’s chthonic screams of terror, cries of joy, and cries of despair. But all of this cacophony falls silent just as quickly as it appears again, like flashes inside a mind exhausted and poisoned by neon-lit chaos.
Break the silence. Damn the dark, damn the light.
He tries to open his eyes, but his head feels like it is splitting into countless shards and every movement of even the smallest muscle in his body echoes through his skull with burning, vicious pain. He cannot move, despite all effort his arms refuse to lift and his legs refuse to cooperate: his own body betrays his mind and spirit. It is a truly horrifying feeling.
I can still hear you saying: you would never break the chain.
He no longer feels an alien presence in his head. Only a calm, pleasant and familiar emptiness of thoughts. A wind, vaguely resembling an ocean breeze, freely dances through his folds of mind, so warm and so familiar. Maybe the uninvited guest is simply hiding too well in the depths of his consciousness, but that can be dealt with later. As long as he hears the blurred, buttery tones of the electric guitar, he doesn’t want to think about it.
Chain, keep us together. Runnin’ in the shadow.
Something is holding him here, something is not letting him leave, as if someone grabbed his ankle and, breaking his own bones, drags him toward the surface of the water. Up and up, up and up, until he rises and greedily gasps for air smelling of seaweed and salt. The song in his head fades out, but unnaturally — not the way it was intended in the recording — as if someone is slowly turning down the speakers until only all-consuming silence remains. He expected to hear conversation, or someone’s outrage that they were left without music, but an oppressive silence gathers around him. Not the quiet peaceful silence of a night forest, not the silence of a desert where there is no rustle of trees and grass, not the silence of a house at night where uneven floorboards occasionally creak, not the silence of a dark cinema hall when for a second before the intro everything seems to freeze, not the silence of an awkward pause when you both don’t know what to say and just stare at each other listening to someone else’s breathing. This silence implies only the absence of everything, as if there is endless emptiness stretching hundreds of thousands of miles in every direction. And everything around is dead, only he is still trying to breathe. Until he opens his eyes.
He finds himself in some kind of wasteland, there is not a single light source around, but this place looks like a huge parking lot. He is standing in its very center, the cars that are there do not look rotten, but they are covered in vines and dust, abandoned. Ash-like snowflakes swirl in the air, and he realizes it is hard to breathe. It is clearly night, but there are no stars and no moon in the sky, only a dark ancient blue stretching everywhere he looks. How did he get here? And why does this place reek of despair and pain? The last memory left in his head is a road. He was driving somewhere, but he wasn’t in a hurry. Or is this a memory of something else? Road, path, rearview mirror, a girl in the front seat, a cigarette between his teeth and an open window. Night. No, that’s something else. He presses his hand to his forehead and grips his temples, placing the other hand on his waist. Road, destination, pool, sun, people. Shit. Road, music, mirror, cigarettes, morning, school. Shit!
Trying to remember anything at all, he feels his head begin to crack open again. His temples are squeezed by cutting pain, and the back of his head feels like it is being hammered, and it feels like if he doesn’t throw up now, his skull will simply split like an overripe watermelon. He doesn’t know how much time passes while he just stands there coming to himself, listening to his own breathing, listening to his heartbeat and the sound of blood in his ears. Everything feels wrong, as if it is not in its place. Or maybe it is because he doesn’t belong here? If so, where is “here”? Asking himself this question mentally, he feels all his memories rush over him at once, hitting the back of his head painfully, his vision spinning so hard it feels like everything is rotating, or maybe he is the one rotating. He doubles over from a sudden wave of nausea, leaning his hands on his knees.
California, mom, father, Max, Susan, moving, Hawkins, basketball, school, parties, sex, beer, basketball, school, sex, car, beer, Max, Max, car, basketball, father, fists, bruises, belt, broken bottles, slaps, Max, tears, Susan, tears, pain, fights, Max, fight, syringe, fists and slaps, belt, cliff, lake, tears, Christmas, bottles, school, basketball, alone, loneliness, Max, father, father, anger, summer, pool, Heather, water, sun, whistle, car, date, pool, flirting, hair, car, road, anger, pain, fear, pain, pain, pain—
— Fuck, — he is already losing consciousness, falling onto cold asphalt, when he hears someone calling his name.
— Billy!
— I’m here, — he whispers, barely moving his lips, understanding that no one can hear him.
When he comes to again, everything around him is still dark, as if night never leaves this place forgotten by all gods. He sits on the ground, rubbing his head, and the only thing that is absolutely clear to him is this: he is dead. He remembers crashing into a lamppost, remembers being dragged somewhere, but after that there is nothing. Silence and darkness. He is dead, and he is obviously in hell. From his side, of course, it was stupid to expect anything nicer than this in his afterlife, but still he had hoped for at least purgatory. He gets up, brushing off his knees and ass. Ash-like snow is still swirling in the air, but breathing has become slightly easier. He puts his hands into his pockets, checking what they sent him to the afterlife with to wash away his sins: a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, his Camaro keys, gum, sunglasses, and the house keys to Cherry Lane. He puts on the sunglasses, hoping they might at least protect him from the ash in the air, and begins walking along the road he is starting to recognize. The parking lot where he came to was the place where the new mall was supposed to be built — Starcourt. Except there is no mall, only an empty lot and rows of cars that he did not risk touching and did not try to start. The circumstances of his death grow more and more questionable: for example, how did he end up at Starcourt if he apparently died at the abandoned Brimborn Steelworks? And why does it feel like, just before consciousness left his mortal body, there was a feeling of an uninvited guest inside his head? Was that God? If the afterlife is real, then did God take him and send him to hell so he could repent? His mother always said that God is love. Then why does this presence feel like poison and rage? He walks silently through the empty town, the forest to his left is covered in white mold, black rotten trees look dead, but he feels them watching him, following every step. The scraping of his worn Converse against asphalt echoes through the space around him. He hopes that closer to town he will find more lost souls; friendship never appealed to him, that social construct passed him by, but now, in absolute loneliness in his personal silent hell, he catches himself thinking that if he hears a voice, he will run toward it without a second thought. But the city is just as silent, and there is no one anywhere. The dull bluish streetlights flicker as ash-snow drifts past him. Breathing becomes harder again. He decides to return to the house on Cherry Lane, another of his personal hells, but now the house is empty, and maybe he can finally make it his own home.
While walking through the streets of the town, the feeling of wrongness never leaves him. Yes, Hawkins is not the most picturesque or crowded town, but every time he drove through its streets he saw people on lawns, someone walking a dog in the park downtown, people sitting under umbrellas at the only café, and that was normal. Even at night, in the glow of streetlights, there were groups of teenagers shouting behind his fast Camaro, or elderly couples walking before bed. This Hawkins feels more like a ghost town: forgotten by everyone and abandoned, overgrown with vines and covered in dust and acidic fog. Maybe in daylight, if such a time even exists here, it would look more like a real town, even if it had only one resident.
For some reason, approaching his house and seeing it in this abandoned state makes him feel sick. And not a little. He wonders what he would feel if he saw their house in California like this. For the first time in his life, he asks himself a question he does not want to know the answer to. He slowly approaches the door of his house, listening for sounds inside. But behind the door there is the same silence as outside: cold and cruel. However, something is unusual: his key does not fit the lock.
— Interesting, — he whispers almost silently. Stepping slightly back from the front door, he looks at the building more carefully: it is weathered, wrapped in thick dark vines, mold spreading across the white wall, and the windows are dark as if they have not been cleaned in a very, very long time. The house looks as wrong as everything else, but it is definitely his house: 4819 Cherry Lane. He tries the keys again, but they obviously do not fit the lock currently in the door.
— Huh.
His first thought is to break a window and climb inside, but for some reason he feels that behind this suffocating silence something unpleasant is hiding, and breaking it might cause something irreversibly terrible. He walks around the house and finds the back entrance, which surprisingly is unlocked. The door creaks as he enters. The hallway is dark, but after the year they lived in this house, he knows its layout well and easily finds his way by touch. The layout is the same, it is definitely his house, but everything is still wrong. In the living room there is no weight setup with dumbbells and barbell, the furniture is completely different, and in his room there are no belongings, only boxes, apparently someone used it as storage. He enters Max’s room, her posters are gone, no clothes in the closet, no skateboard, nothing that suggests a teenage girl lives here. Judging by the setup, the room belongs to a boy closer to his age than Max’s. On the wall there is an electric guitar, vinyl records are scattered everywhere, on the desk instead of textbooks and notebooks there is a tape recorder and a boombox, and also a small synthesizer. He likes this place, but obviously even in hell, Cherry Lane is not his home.
He decided he could afford to get some sleep and take a closer look around in the morning—assuming, of course, that the concept of day and night still existed here. He emptied his few belongings from his pockets and lay down in the чужой bed, and only then realized just how cold he was. He was shivering, his teeth chattering, and he couldn't fall asleep. Maybe he didn't need sleep anymore. Or maybe he was so cold he'd die here a second time without ever getting any rest. The absence of light and sound pressed against his exhausted mind like a vise. By the middle of the "night," he began to think he could hear a low growling somewhere in the woods, though for several reasons that was impossible: first, there was no way he could physically hear what was happening in the forest. Oppressive silence or not, his hearing wasn't that sharp. And second, he still didn't believe demons carrying pitchforks were going to show up and torment his sinful soul for everything he'd done. At least not until he met them face-to-face.
When he woke up, no morning sunlight stabbed at his eyes. Outside the window, the same dark blue night still lingered. He lazily climbed out of bed and wandered deeper into the house. His legs ached from the walk from Starcourt to Cherry Lane, and at first he hadn't noticed it, but he was thirsty. He checked the refrigerator and found a couple cans of food, though everything else inside had spoiled. There were a few cans of beer as well, but they wouldn't help with thirst—only make things worse once the alcohol left his bloodstream. The fact that the canned food was still edible, though slightly dry and nearly tasteless, was good news, because he could still feel a faint hunger.
At some point, he started doubting that he was actually dead, because the need for sleep, oxygen, food, water—even the simple need to take a piss—all of it felt far too alive for any higher power that created this place to bother preserving those basic needs inside him. What was the point of eternal life if you still got tired and sweaty after a long walk, if you still needed oxygen to breathe, if you still had to get rid of toxins and waste products through an act as simple as taking a leak? He ran a tired hand over his face, locked the back door, and opened the front door from the inside. The water in the house didn't work, and the toilet bowl was dry, so he ended up pissing outside.
At first, he didn't understand what had happened. Embarrassing as it was, he spent several seconds staring at the head of his dick, waiting to see even the slightest hint of a stream, but the moment the urine came into contact with the local atmosphere, it evaporated instantly. He zipped up and went back inside, immediately heading for the refrigerator. He opened a can of beer but didn't hear the familiar hiss or feel the pressure change. It wasn't empty, but whatever was inside clearly wasn't beer anymore. Finding a kitchen knife, he carefully cut the can in half as quietly as possible. At the bottom was a substance resembling tar. Thick and dense, the dark amber mass still carried the smell of malt and hops. He poked the sludge with his finger and, against his better judgment, licked it. It was obviously what remained of the beer once the water was gone, some kind of concentrated residue. It didn't explain anything, but it did confirm his suspicion that water didn't exist here in any form, and if he didn't want to start drinking gasoline or vegetable oil, he'd need to find another source of liquid to quench his thirst.
Almost all the clothing in the house had rotted halfway through. Finding an old T-shirt in one of the boxes, he checked it for mold, tore it into strips, and wrapped it around his mouth and nose like a bandana. His sunglasses reduced visibility too much, so he searched the house for something better to protect his eyes from the ash-filled air, but unfortunately found nothing. What he did find was an old school backpack that looked almost new and didn't smell like death, so he took it with him when he left. If water couldn't exist in this place in any form, where was the mold coming from? And why were things made from natural materials rotting away? Nearly all the linen and cotton crumbled apart in his hands. The only exceptions were items made of polyester. Even clothes labeled fifty-fifty blends looked almost brand-new. Relatively speaking, anyway. Meanwhile, his own clothes were in perfect condition and hadn't changed at all since he'd arrived here. He had no idea what to do with that information yet, so he filed it away mentally and decided to come back to it later.
He knocked on houses without success, hoping to find anyone at all, but the activity quickly grew boring because it became painfully obvious that he was alone here. With the exception of whatever creatures were growling somewhere deep in the woods and never stepped into the dim glow of the town's streetlights. He still wasn't convinced about the demons with pitchforks, but decided that until he was better prepared to meet them, he wasn't going into the forest. He had never been afraid of the dark. Even when his father locked him in the bathroom for hours, he sat there calmly, crying only at first—more out of resentment and anger than fear. But here, in this wrong universe, he was painfully aware of an animal terror when it came to those woods, as if every instinct he possessed wasn't merely warning him but screaming at him: don't go in there. The irrational fear of the unknown. How primitive. Considering everything that had happened—his own death and the existence of his personal hell in the form of a godforsaken Indiana town buried beneath ash, dust, and mold—his fear of the forest left him with mixed feelings. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. On one hand, he could agree with that sentiment if not for a few complications. He had no idea what the known evil lurking in those woods might be, much less the unknown one. Evil was evil. All the same. Proportions were arbitrary and boundaries blurred, and truth be told, if he ever had to choose between two evils, he'd rather not choose at all. In this situation, the philosophy hidden within the Serenity Prayer seemed more appropriate. His mother wasn't deeply religious, nor was his father, but they still went to church every Sunday. He himself had never believed in God, never believed in some higher power dictating what was right and what was wrong, but if he approached scripture and sermons as contributions to philosophy and human thought rather than divine truth, he might have found it in himself to believe all that holy bullshit his parents fed him every Sunday.
— Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
As he approached the grocery store, he kept turning the idea over in his head. If there was anything he could influence, then he needed more information about this place. Because right now, the entire problem with that philosophy was that he couldn't tell the difference between what was inevitable and what could be changed. It was hard to understand the limits of your influence when, up until this point, you'd had influence over almost nothing. He couldn't influence his death, and he certainly couldn't influence ending up here. But he was here, and he existed on some level of consciousness he had never known before, which meant there were still things he could affect. Obviously, he could interact with the environment around him, an environment that was undoubtedly hostile, but what else? If he was a spirit, pure consciousness without a physical body, maybe his need for food, water, and sleep was nothing more than habit. An instinct greedily clinging to him after years spent as a pile of bones and flesh. Could he influence that? Or, if he really was a bodiless spirit, could he influence the real world he had left behind?
He made it to the grocery store's glass doors and awkwardly tugged on the handle. Locked. The presence of unknown entities was almost obvious at this point, but he needed to check the shelves for any kind of liquid because, truth be told, even if he could somehow train himself out of eating and drinking, he still didn't have the guts to find out whether dehydration could kill him. And judging by the way he felt, that possibility was a lot closer than transforming into some immortal being that no longer needed mortal necessities. He circled the store looking for a stray paperclip or pin, anything that might help him open the door, and when he found nothing useful, he settled for a simpler solution. Picking up a rotten branch that felt far more disgusting than any piece of wood had a right to feel, he smashed the glass door with one sharp swing. For several seconds he froze, expecting hordes of vicious creatures to come for his ass, and when the silence around him chose to remain mute and suffocating, he climbed inside.
Just as he had expected, only canned goods had survived, though to his surprise the frozen food in the freezers didn't reek of rot. Not all of it, but some. Taking a few cans with him, he stuffed them into his borrowed-not-borrowed backpack and tightened the strap so it wouldn't swing around his legs. Standing in front of the refrigerated drinks section, he almost started praying to whatever higher power might be listening for the cans to be at least half full. But either he prayed badly, prayed without sincerity, or higher powers simply didn't give a shit about his complaints, because every bottle of water was empty, and the soda cans were just like the beer cans—nothing but a tar-like residue at the bottom. He took a few of them anyway. There had to be water somewhere, even if it wasn't conveniently packaged inside a glass bottle with a cap. Some kind of liquid had to exist here. Otherwise, the existence of other living creatures in this world immediately fell apart. No matter how monstrous, terrifying, or evil they were, nothing could survive without water. And if he found that source of life in this miserable place, at the very least he'd be able to turn soda concentrate back into an actual sweet drink. Assuming the local water wasn't just as rotten as everything else.
As expected, this wrong version of Hawkins had no day-night cycle, so he had no idea how much time had passed since his last trip into town, but his internal clock suggested roughly a day and a half, and thirst had begun tormenting him badly. No matter how hard he tried to use Jedi mind tricks on himself and convince himself he didn't need water, he still needed water. Preferably right fucking now.
Pulling himself together, he left his shelter once again and headed toward a small creek north of town. Apparently, before waking up in the middle of Starcourt's parking lot, he had already spent some time here, because his dehydration symptoms had long passed the mildly concerning stage and entered the phase of "if I don't drink something within the next day, I'm dead". His head was spinning, his saliva felt thick and dry in his mouth, his tongue stuck to the roof of it, and if he'd had a mirror, he would've seen the sunken look in his eyes. His own skin felt stretched over his muscles like a tight sack, as though someone had poured sand underneath it. He dragged himself toward the creek, mentally cursing himself for worrying about food before water, because there was a very real chance he would simply drop dead in the middle of the road. When he finally reached it, he couldn't hide the cosmic-scale disappointment that washed over him when he saw there wasn't even the slightest trace of water. The creek bed was tangled with black vines that seemed to pulse with life. They mocked his stupidity.
— Oh, hell no, — he muttered, his voice dry and exhausted, barely louder than a whisper. — No fucking hallucinations.
A reckless idea flashed through his head for only a second, but it was an incredibly tempting one. He walked to the nearest hardware store he'd broken into earlier and found an axe with a plastic handle. Anything made of wood had a high chance of losing its structural integrity due to processes he neither understood nor could explain.
Driven by desperation and the need to get rid of the thirst strangling him, he stepped outside and swung the axe into one of the vines growing across the brick wall of the building. Just as he'd suspected, there was liquid inside. It seeped from the wound in the "plant" like black sap, splattering everywhere as the vine writhed in convulsions.
— Doesn't look like resin. Too watery. I can survive the smell, so fuck it, — he whispered.
He grabbed the severed tendril and lifted it above his head. He drank for as long as he could tolerate the taste of swamp water and rot coating his tongue before he threw up right where he stood. Then he drank more, and threw up again, and kept drinking until there was nothing left in his stomach to bring back up. His head still spun and his thoughts remained clouded, so he decided not to stay out in the open any longer, especially after hearing that familiar growling somewhere in the darkness of the woods. He returned to his fortress, barricaded every door and window as best he could, and eventually sleep swallowed him whole, carrying him off into the realm of Morpheus.
That "night," he woke up and stepped out into the backyard to smoke his first cigarette before they rotted away. Or rather, he assumed they would rot away. His knowledge of this place was still lacking, and he himself existed in a strange state of suspension: Schrödinger's ghost, as he'd taken to calling himself. He was exactly as certain that he was dead as he was that he was still alive, and that this place was either an incredibly detailed hallucination or some kind of coma dream. There were other possibilities, but they were even crazier, and he decided he hadn't been here long enough to allow himself to lose his mind. Yet.
As his eyes drifted across the black sky where no stars shone, he noticed a faint flash of light far beyond the horizon. Maybe someday he'd find the courage to see what was out there, but he already had too much to deal with, and time... time was beginning to feel like a relic of the past. What was the point of time in a place where eternal night reigned? Where he didn't have to pick his sister up from school, be home in time for dinner, or wake up at the same hour every morning to make coffee for his father. He could say he had all the time in the world, or that there was never enough of it—it didn't matter. He had defined the limits of his influence here and accepted that he had no control over the existence or absence of "time." He could sleep less or work faster, but time itself wouldn't move any slower or faster because of it. If he was dead, he'd remain here for exactly as long as someone—or something—needed him to. If he was alive, he'd stay here just as long until an opportunity to escape presented itself. Or until he died. Again. The only thing he hoped was that if he died here a second time, his real hell wouldn't look anything like this place.
He crushed the cigarette butt against a vine that had crawled up the wall of the house on Cherry Lane and onto the roof, but it refused to accept the injury quietly. It went berserk, writhing along the wall and trying to wrap itself around him.
— Jesus. Touchy, aren't we? — he smirked. — Don't like fire, huh? Is that why it's so damn cold here?
It was hard to say what drove him in that moment: curiosity or yet another stupid impulse his father had spent years trying to beat out of him, but he flicked his lighter open and held the flame to one of the plant's slimy veins. It caught fire instantly, and he immediately realized just how fucking stupid that decision had been. He couldn't afford to look for a new shelter, so he shrugged off his jacket and started beating at the writhing tendril. The growling came from the woods again, but this time it was much closer than he would've liked. Two creatures slipped out of the darkness on four legs, twitchy, unnaturally fast, with wet dark skin. They had no eyes, no ears, no mouths. Their heads were shaped like ostrich eggs, and he almost snorted at how ridiculous they looked until one of them unfolded its face like a tulip blooming open and hundreds of needle-sharp teeth stared back at him from inside a five-petaled head. A quiet, broken chitter rose from somewhere deep inside their bodies, wet and choking, as though the creatures were trying to breathe and growl at the same time, and between those sounds came brief clicks of teeth, nervous and impatient. Both "dogs" lunged at him without hesitation, but he managed to slip behind the back door of his shelter. He knew that wouldn't stop them for long, and honestly, he would've preferred the door stays intact. He barricaded it with the nightstand he'd prepared beforehand and went back for his axe. Stepping outside through the front door, he spotted another one of the creatures: slimy, cold-looking, eyeless and earless, but when he opened the door, it knew exactly where to turn its head. He braced himself to defend both himself and his house from the thing, but it didn't move. He could hear the dogs slamming into the back door, hear the wooden boards splintering beneath their weight and the force of the impacts. His mouth went dry, and a bead of cold sweat rolled down his temple. Slowly, he started edging toward the back door without taking his eyes off the black hound, which still hadn't moved and continued watching him. Turning your back on an enemy was always a bad idea, but he was surrounded, and while the third creature seemed undecided about whether or not to eat him, he figured he could at least deal with the two that had already decided his bones would make a fine snack. He was trembling—whether from the cold, the adrenaline, or the fear, he couldn't tell—but he kept a firm grip on the axe with both hands. The moment he rounded the corner, one of the creatures seemed to have been waiting for him and immediately sank its teeth into his forearm. Sharp, searing pain shot through his entire body, as though hundreds of needles had pierced his flesh all at once. The hound knocked him onto his back, and he had to wield the axe one-handed while the other arm was being flayed alive, flesh stripped from the bone. He clenched his teeth as hard as he could and hacked at the creature's neck with all his strength. Its skin was dense, as though hundreds of years of evolution had prepared it for this exact moment. He kept chopping and chopping until the second creature sank its teeth into his calf, until tears rolled from his exhausted eyes, until he finally screamed from pain and desperation. The hound chewing on his arm finally began to loosen its grip, and only then did he notice its claws buried in his side. At last he managed to throw it off, and with one final effort he drew back the axe and brought it down into the creature's thick neck. The thing staggered, letting out something that was almost a whine in its ghostly voice. He decided he'd come back and finish it off if it chose to continue the fight. For now, he focused on the one devouring his leg. Fighting the urge to scream from the agony in his forearm, he gripped the axe with both hands and brought the blade straight down through the creature's head. It died instantly, but prying its flower-shaped face off his leg required physically forcing apart its petal-like jaws. He breathed heavily, choking on tears he couldn't afford to shed. Once he was sure both creatures were dead, he picked up his jacket and realized something: the third one had simply run away. The world around him sank back into its deathly silence, broken only by the sound of his ragged, wheezing breaths.
— Holy fucking shit, — his voice cracked halfway through the sentence, making him flinch. It had been far too long since he'd heard himself speak. He went back inside and boarded up the back door and every window while he still had the strength. He didn't want to thank God for finding a first-aid kit and a pile of bandages among the boxes in his old room, so he simply whispered:
— Thanks, Billy.
He froze. Billy? Was that his name? The memories crashed over him again in a wave. All those emotions he'd felt before no longer seemed foreign. They were his.
— Shit, — he whispered again, barely louder than his own breathing. — Shit. Yeah. I'm Billy Hargrove. I live at 4819 Cherry Lane. My father's Neil. My stepmother's Susan. My stepsister's Max. I have a car. A blue Chevy Camaro. I'm... I'm eighteen years old.
He repeated the words like a mantra until his mind slowly settled back into place. Somehow dragging his battered body into the bathroom, he lowered himself onto the tiled floor and began examining his injuries. The wounds on his leg didn't look too bad. His arm had taken far more damage, and that was a problem. Billy seriously doubted he'd be able to stitch himself up, especially considering that even if he managed to limp all the way to the hospital, every bottle of morphine would probably be empty. He'd deal with that tomorrow.
Clamping his leather belt between his teeth, he meticulously poured rubbing alcohol over the wound on his leg. Apparently it had been pure enough not to evaporate like every other liquid in this place, for which he was profoundly grateful to its previous owners. He wrapped the injury tightly with bandages and turned his attention to his arm. He pulled two of the creatures' teeth out of his flesh and was fairly certain he could see his own tendons, so in order to avoid passing out—and having to worry about a concussion if he cracked his head on the way down—he carefully got to his feet and focused on breathing. The house still wasn't his, and Billy had no idea where anything was, but he got lucky and found a stapler fairly quickly. Biting down harder on the belt, he squeezed his eyes shut so tightly he nearly saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He managed to drive three staples into his skin before he staggered sideways and slammed his hip into a wardrobe, hissing and grunting through the pain. He wrapped his arm just as tightly as his leg and stumbled into the room he now considered his own, collapsing onto the bed. Somewhere between sleep and unconsciousness, Billy thought he heard someone knocking at the door, and barely managed to mumble, "Come in," before immediately slipping into darkness.