Clean cut American kid ~ Stranger things

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"DON'T TAKE ME BACK THERE!" I scream as I trash around. I'm kicking and flailing as much as I can but Hopper is just too strong. He's vice like grip on me is slowly tightening and can crush me like a snake.

"Jesus kid, give up," he groans. He's struggling to not fall on top of me, something that would probably lead me to my death. Maybe that's it.

"Please just kill me instead!" I whine. "Anything but take me back there!"

I feel Hopper grip lift. He flips me over so I'm on my back and grips my chin. I can't see him through the tears mixed with dirt covering my face.

"I would prefer if you killed me." I whimper pathetically.

"Hey hey listen, I'm not sending you anywhere."

I still.

"What?"

"I'm not sending you back anywhere, I just want to talk to you."

I don't know what to say. Hopper scoops me up and place me to my feet. Without his tight grip on the top of my arms my weak knees would've made me topple over. I reach my hands up and rub the crap from my eyes.

"I'm on your side kid, I just want to help you." Hopper says as gently as his voice allows. Once my eyes are clear I look up at him. His eyes are kind and sincere. I trust him. I nod.

"Let's talk in my car, I have some business to take care of so we'll talk on the way." Hopper wraps an arm around my shoulder and lead me towards his car. I climb into the passenger seat and he gets into the driver seat.

"Do you want to talk about what happened back there?" He asks once we're out on the road.

"I thought you were sending me back to rehab," I say with a shrug.

"Well you're clean aren't you?"

"Yeah but..."

"Then that's it, I don't want you to waste away in rehab, I want you to live your damn life."

I look over to him and smile timidly.

"Why did you react so strongly?"

My smile turns into a frown and I avert my gaze to look trough the window instead of at him.

"Can you tell me about rehab? What I've gathered is that it was horrible and you ran away from it, right?"

I nod but keep my gaze at the houses passing the car as we drive.

"Please Sherry, you know I only want to help you, it's me, ol' Hopper." He nudges my side. I look over at him. He raises his bushy brows in expectancy. I take a deep breath to brace myself and start to collect my thoughts.

"At first..." I begin, "At first they gave us drugs."

"They gave you drugs?" Hopper interrupts sceptically. "What kind?"

"I don't know. It was hallucinogens. And me being the naive little shit I was was like 'cool'. But they were strange. I didn't really see things during the sessions. There were more like feelings. You know how when you're dreaming and when you wake up you're hit with a specific feeling even though your dream was super generic?"

Hopper nods.

"Firstly I was happy. I got free drugs and I felt great. There was a doctor and a therapist there during the high. They would take my vitals and ask me questions. Study my breathing, my blood pressure and take a bunch of blood samples. Afterwards I would feel weak and strange. As if I had been gone for a while and missed a few days. I don't know how long it actually lasted."

I take another deep breath.

"After a while it wasn't pleasant anymore. The lack of control over my body while others were working on it would give me panic and anxiety. I woke up out of breath with strange bruises on my body. They told me the point of the treatment was that my body was going to start rejecting the substances I was addicted to. It sounded reasonable so I trusted my therapist. It got so much worse from there. The sessions felt like torture. The drugs got heavier, I would loose sight of everything around me and they did things on my body that felt worse than taking blood samples. They insisted that it was all they were doing. I asked if I could leave since there was no chance I would fall back after everything I had gone through. They obviously didn't want to release me, told me that there was more things that had to be done before my treatment was complete without giving me any information. So I decided to run away. I planned on a stupid Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption escape, telling myself it was the only way. Obviously that would've taken years but I was out of my mind then. But then one night it just happened. The right door just happened to be open and I got out."

We sit in silence for a while. Both of us processing what has been said. It's the first time I've admitted everything that happened.

"I'm going to tell you something now," Hopper begins after a while, "and when I'm done I will ask you a few other questions. Okay?"

I nod, "okay."

"So the thing that happened last year..." He starts, and goes on to tell me about so much strange things that my head threatens to implode. About Will Byers and Barbara Holland disappearing, Joyce Byers learning to communicate with her son through lights, Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers discovering another dimension, the up side down, the demogorgon, how they found Barbara dead but Will alive. He tells me everyone who knows about this, my brother being one of them. Then he goes to tell me how Will is having some sort of fall back and is acting weird right now.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" I ask.

"I think the fact that you're probably believing me is the answer to that question. I think you're already part of this."

My t-shirt is clinging to my back in cold sweat. My hands are shaking. I wasn't going mad. This has all been real. Getting it confirmed makes me a lot more anxious and a lot less satisfied than I thought it would.

"Me and Joyce met a woman while we were out searching for answers. She took LSD for science experiments and eventually got really messed up. She gave birth to a child who was taken away from her to a laboratory because she was born with special abilities. That girl came to Hawkins last year after escaping from the lab. She helped us using her powers. Her name was Jane."

Hopper carefully reaches for my arm and tugs my sleeve up. We both look at the ink on my wrist. 237. I hear him let out a heavy breath.

"She was number eleven."