Play// Stranger Things

007

Valerie Archer and the group of Hawkins' locals had made their way back inside the school building and into an empty hallway to wait in until the game started, a game which Valerie was dreading greatly.

"So, I told Mr. Mundy, the solution of ten plus Y equals blow me." Carol snickered towards Tommy and Steve as Valerie sat on the floor of the hallway with her head leant against Charlie's shoulder.

She hadn't slept for more than a couple hours last night and the sleep deprivation was beginning to get to her, but she couldn't allow herself to fall asleep. Not when there was a possibility she would awake in that place.

And yet, as she laid her head against Charlie's Polo sweatshirt clad shoulder she couldn't help but to let her heavy lids close every once and a while. "Bull, if you did that, you'd be in detention right now." Steve scoffed as he gave Carol a look of doubt.

"Saturday." Carol corrected Steve as Charlie traced shapes all along Valerie's arm, which was held in between his hands. "Bet Mr. Mundy's still a virgin." Charlie chuckled as he looked up from Valerie's hand but didn't dare stop tracing swirls along her palm.

"Oh, he's so a virgin!" Carol snickered. "Maybe you should blow him, Carol. Help your grades a bit." Valerie quipped as she forced her eyes to stay open. The girl barely noticed Nancy beginning to walk off as she played with the leather strap around Charlie's wrist.

"Whoa, Nance, where you going?" Steve called out. "I totally forgot. I told my mom I would, um, I would do something with her." She tried, receiving an unimpressed look from her brother. She could do better than that.

"Well, what do you mean? The game's about to start." Steve tried to get the girl to stop walking away. "I'm sorry." She spoke before running off. "What the hell's wrong with her?" Steve sighed.

"Maybe she freaked out when you went all psycho on the psycho." Tommy suggested. "Oh, give me a break." The boy groaned, looking over at Charlie who shrugged. "What'd you expect, dating Miss Perfect?" He questioned his best friend.

Valerie forced her legs to push herself off the ground. "I should really get changed." Val frowned as she fought the urge to itch her eye. "As should Carol." She added as she pulled the girl up, giving Charlie one last glance before disappearing around a corner.

"So, you and Charlie, huh?" Carol questioned, a smirk on her glossed lips. "What can I say, a girl has needs." Valerie giggled out as they entered the girls locker room. "And Charlie Wheeler meets them?" Carol questioned as the two went to their lockers, which happened to be right next to each other.

Valerie shrugged before nodding. Sure, Carol just wanted to know if the boy was any good in bed, but Charlie met Valerie's needs in another way. He gave the girl affection and attention and that's what she truly craved. "Yeah, in a way."

"In a way?" Carol wondered out loud. "Is that supposed to be an innuendo that you guys are into kinky stuff or something?" Valerie couldn't help but let out a surprised squeal as she playfully shoved the girl. "Carol."

"It so is." Carol laughed out. "It's not. You're deranged." Valerie insisted as she removed her top and replaced it with her green and grey cheer top.

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Enervated. That was the only word that could begin to explain the level of exhaustion Valerie felt after jumping around in a short skirt for the past two hours while cheering for a team she knew was going to inevitably lose.

"Mom?" Valerie called out as she entered a quiet house, the only noise being static coming from the television a few feet away behind the wall separating Valerie from the Living room. "Hey, hun! Did you have fun?" Rachel questioned from the living room.

Valerie didn't bother answering the woman as she entered the room. "You were trying to reach him again?" Valerie questioned Rachel, who only nodded solemnly. "No such luck, right? Just like always." Valerie frowned.

"Maybe if you tried with the white noise?" Rachel suggested as she took her daughter's hands into hers. She missed the man more than she missed anything else in the entire world.

"Mom. We talked about this. We agreed. Daddy's not there anymore. Whatever that thing living in that place is, it's not Daddy." Valerie tried as she sat down beside her mother in front of the television. "We felt him, he was so close. He's still in there and you're the only one who can reach him. It's the whole reason we came back here."

Valerie gave her mother a frown. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just wanted to feel him so badly I tricked myself into believing I could." The girl frowned as she thought back to all the times she had been in the upside down, as her mother called it.

"Just try it this one time, for daddy, for me?" Rachel begged, causing Valerie to groan. "Only this once." She gave in. Rachel rose to her knees and moved behind Valerie before wrapping a blindfold around the girl's eyes.

It took Valerie a minute or two to push all her thoughts and fears away and focus solely on the sound of static. The louder it became the heavier her eyes began to feel, that is until she felt a jolt of electricity shoot through her. Her skin went cold and her lungs began to burn.

She was there.

Opening her eyes, Valerie was met by what looked like a distorted version of her own living room. She took a deep breath trying to accommodate her lungs needing to take in more of the thick oxygen, which she could practically feel pressing against every bit of free space that it could.

She didn't hear it at first, but after a moment of walking through the grime that was her house it arrived. The crackling noise that alerted her of its presence rung out through her ears, but this time she didn't panic.

This time was different. She didn't feel her throat close in on itself or her heart beat so fast it physically hurt, because this time instead of a monster creeping around the corner Valerie heard her father's voice. "Daddy!" Valerie called back, looking all around her for the source of the sound.

Her body ached from the way the gravitational force had changed so drastically and her ears felt like she was forty feet underwater from the change in pressure, but none of that mattered because her father had called out for help and she had to find him. She had to know if he was alive after all this time.

"Val!" The distorted voice seemed to come from all directions, causing tears to well up in her large eyes. She ran through the woods behind her house, trying desperately to reach the man. Finally, once she had wandered almost all the way to the other side of the Hawkins preserve, She saw it.

She saw an inhuman being standing a few feet in front of her, the creature effortlessly towering over her as it turned to meet her. That was definitely not her father. The girl cried out as she fell back, hitting her arm on a jagged rock.

The pain caused Valerie to jolt back into reality, her mother shouting her name as she held Valerie in her  lap. "It's okay, baby. It's okay. I'm sorry, i'm so sorry. You're okay." The woman cried out as she shushed a tear stained and blood soaked Valerie.

The young girl's blindfold had been removed and used to wipe the blood away from her nose, but that was the least of her worries as she looked down to see a pool of blood streaming down her arm from where she had fallen.

How could she have been physically hurt by a place that she was only mentally projecting herself to, unless she wasn't astral projecting at all.

Maybe she was more like her father than she had realized.

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