Dépaysement | Stranger Things: W. Byers

Ch. 1

Count Down:                                       Day 18;

Oct. 18th 1983,

Tuesday.

On the right side of town, a beautiful home of aged brick stood beside the rest of the wealthy houses in Hawkins. One side faced the busy part of town, loosely clustered by buildings and businesses, the other side only metres away from the welcoming forest fringe. There lived a family of three, James King, Ruthe King, and their son, Clayton King.

To the public eye, this wealthy family lived happily with their cat, Queenie. A kind, hard-working therapist as the head of the household, a beautiful, socialite as the emotional carer, and a kind, intelligent, quiet boy at the centre. They were the most picturesque family and nobody would have ever believed a single negative rumour about them considering their role in the public. However, this just made thirteen-year-old Clayton all the more troubled and quiet.

One cold October morning, a young boy lay, snuggled under his blankets as his alarm began to blare throughout the spacious room. Despite having moved into the large house at the beginning of the year, the room was decorated sparingly: his bed sat by the door, a set of white drawers on either side contrasting pleasantly against the matching blue of his duvet and walls. On the other side of the room sat a desk with more shelving on both sides, each surface empty barring the limited amount of books, a bulky computer, and a small box radio. In his latest years, the teenager had found his desire for material objects dwindling, so aside from the necessities, there wasn't much else. The only other notable things littered neatly around the room were cat toys, an expensive cat tower, and a bed for the point-coloured Ragdoll to nap on.

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Drifting around in my subconscious, I was blissfully unaware that the new day had arrived. While the warmth of my blankets protected me from the harsh temperatures that threatened to ruin my morning, the contrast was something I lived for. It made me want to forget everything and I knew if it were an option, I would have stayed in bed forever.

Unfortunately, my cat was trained to respond to my alarm for the occasions that I didn't. Generally, the sound was loud enough, but on some occasions, it would blend into the background and I wouldn't recognise it on a conscious level. This was where Queenie would help me out.

My cat was the love of my life, the only creature in the whole world I would have been proud to call my friend. She had been with me for as long as I could remember and helped me get through all of the hard times when I thought it to be impossible.

When I was diagnosed with congenital deafness, I was too young to understand what that meant for me or how it made me differ from the people around me. My parents acted as though they were fine with my disability, but at the same time, they told me how lucky we all were that I was only moderately hard of hearing and not completely deaf. I believed it to be them trying to look on the bright side of life, but it just left me feeling down.

As I grew older, I began to understand better what being partially deaf meant. Around the same time, I was also introduced to my hearing aids. From then on, things became a lot louder. Everything from the cars speeding down the road to the constant humming of people talking in the streets below my window- it all went from zero to a hundred. It was extremely overwhelming for me. I thought I had lived just fine up until that point, so I didn't understand why I had to wear something that made things that much harder for me.

Without the hearing aids, I could hear people talking, I just didn't always understand what they said. This was never a problem for me, I was happy like this, however, the issue was the people around me. I noticed very quickly the look of impatience on a person's face when I asked them to repeat themselves more than once. Their eyebrows would furrow in annoyance, their lips taking a downwards turn the longer they were around me. Eventually, it was just easier for me to put up with all the loud sounds than to constantly ask people to speak up or repeat themselves.