✓ Adventures In Babysitting / Steve Harrington ¹

𝙭𝙭𝙞𝙫. glory & gore

Jonathan returns then, sprinting as fast as he can.  In his shaking hands, he clutches a sharpened knife with white-glowing edges, a thin clear glove, and a wooden spoon.  He crouches next to El and rests a hand on her shoulder.  He whispers to her in a soft, sugar-coated manner, trying to mask the atrocities behind the softness.

"Okay.  All right, El?" He asks.  "This is going to hurt like hell, okay?"

El, through wails of pain, her face screwed up in pure agony manages to choke out, "Okay."

Jonathan nods and slips the glove onto his hand.  "I'm gonna need you to stay real still."  he holds out the wooden spoon to El.  "Here, you're gonna want to bite down on this, okay."

"Jesus Christ," Dustin murmurs again as Mike takes the spoon from Jonathan's hand and places it in El's mouth.

Jonathan hoves the blade over the sore, just inches El's leg, and hesitates.  Suddenly, with a small strangled gasp, Abby realizes what he's about to do.  She feels Isla's grip around her wrist tighten substantially as El's eyes widen and she lets out another whimper.  Abby feels a lump in her throat rise as all the negative outcomes flood into her head, the thought of blood splattering, the thought of the knife cutting in the wrong direction, torn muscles, a river of blood.

Mike only looks directly into Jonathan's eyes and nods.  "Do it."

"Okay," Jonathan breathes shakily.

He lowers the knife and makes the first cut.  El's pained wails fill their ears once more as more blood begins to well at the first incision in her leg, overflowing and spilling onto the tile as it runs down her leg.  Abby wants to look away from the blood that's being spilled, away from the girl who is screaming, from the pained expressions, and screwed-up face, but it's a morbid fascination that keeps her eyes pinned to El's leg.

El lets out a sob and then Jonathan, face pale and nauseated takes a deep breath and reaches his gloved hand into the gaping wound.  Abby recoils but keeps her eyes pinned on El's leg.  The girl's cries grow steadily louder the longer Jonathan's fingers remain in the open wound.  Suddenly it's another game of cat and mouse, the thing that has festered within El's wound evades Jonathan's fingers every time.  The longer that he searches for the thing, the more El screams, the more bile rises in Abby's throat, the tighter Isla clings onto her.

El spits the wooden spoon out of her mouth and screams, "Stop it!  Stop it!  Stop it!"  Nancy reaches out a hand to Jonathan and with her urging, the boy stops.  The spoon clatters to the ground as Jonathan retracts his hand from the wound.  The knife drops and clings against the bloody tiles.  El sits up straight and takes a deep, grounding breath.  There's pain shining in her eyes, but she takes another deep breath and readies herself.  "I can't do it," she tells them in a shaky whisper.  "I can do it."

The next few moments are filled with a tense silence as El readies herself.  She takes a few more deep breaths before she unlaces her hand from Alex's and reaches a shaking arm out right above her open wound.  There's a low vibrating, almost a pulse as the thing inside of her leg quivers.  There's a sizzling sound as more blood erupts from the gash in her leg, followed by more of El's pained wails, but despite the obvious pain that shoots through her leg and the trembling in her arm, she continues to hold it there.

"God!" She wails. 

The thing inside of her leg chitters as it's dragged closer and closer to the open wound.  El throws her head back as she lets out a long scream of pain that reverberates around the space that they're in.  Abby can feel it in resonating her bones, the longer it lasts.  The creature draws closer and closer to the wound, it starts to wiggle out as El's scream increases in volume.  Behind them, the glass display case shatters and rains down upon them almost like snow.  Abby ducks and tries to keep Isla out of the trajectory of the glass shards, a few shards of glass into her skin and the back of her neck, catching in her hair and clothes, but the sting must be nothing compared to the pain El is in.