3-27 (A Stranger Things AU)

Chapter 21

I opened my eyes.
The static inside my head turned on again.
I became unanchored from my body.
My spirit hovering just above the skin like a drawing that was coloured outside of the lines. There was no coherence inside. No ability to form a thought. Not enough room for the firework display between neurones and for consciousness. The static travelled down into my arms and legs, settling in each finger and toe, crackling and numbing. And then then my muscles began to twitch.

"Lee... Lee?" I could hear him calling for me, but I couldn't move. I was locked into place. Looking upwards in a blank stare at the ceiling. Black spots danced in my vision, the never ending flicker of the fluorescents echoing inside my skull. I was suffocating. A deep pressure tightening, squeezing, pressing down around my throat. He came into my field of vision, his face vaguely recognisable.

"Can you hear me?" He asked me in a clear clipped voice, trying to determine if I could answer. When I didn't respond he settled down beside me, the weight of his body depressing the mattress I lay on. Gravity rolling my limp limbs towards him. I wanted to scream, kick, hiss, scratch, bite, destroy, kill but I was locked inside of myself.
A hollow prison.

Taking my hand into his, he rubbed at the cold skin, gentle yet firm; working the blood into my fingertips. My hand twitched again beneath his and then finally the spell was broken. Disorientated, I moved my head slowly, taking in the familiar metal collar that was welded around my neck, laying at rest against my heaving chest. I was back at the facility. My old room. Wrists and ankles bound to the hospital issue bed.

"Back again?" Dr Gellan smiled down at me. The world still warped around the edges, twisting the edges of his outline until the colours broke down into each individual light spectrum. I was no longer experiencing tingling in my feet and hands. I had yet to settle back into my bones, the static in my head, quieter but still lingering. I pulled in a deep breath and then suddenly emotion overcame me, fear and despair all at once like a dam bursting. I broke out into the most gut wrenching sobs I had ever screamed before. Scorching tears rolled down my cheeks. I roared. Fighting the restraints that anchored me.

Suddenly there was an almighty bang. The bulbs overhead shattered. Glass sprayed down upon us. Rivers of blood ran across my hailed flesh. Hospital gown shredded.
Within seconds, armed personnel burst into the room. Barrels of their guns aimed at my head. Dr Gellan shouted at them over the noise that gurgled in the back of my throat, blood streamed from my nose, dripping down the back of my nasal passage, lining the inside of my lungs. He slipped his hands across my face. Screaming at me to stop.

"GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF ME!" With one last hard swing, the sound of webbing tearing, crackling through the room like lightning, I tore myself from the bed and slammed my fist into his face. He was sent flying backwards. Spine hitting the concrete wall. A sickening crack as his skull followed. The light behind his eyes switched off. He went limp. Before I could even think about diving after him to finish the job I was tackled by 6 foot men in full Kevlar and brutally beaten into the bed. Fists at my face, knees at my ribs, knuckles around my throat.

I couldn't breathe.

And as I was pinned there, stuck beneath the bodies of three others, suffocating on the carbon dioxide that rapidly filled my bloodstream, I started floating again. Up higher and higher and higher. I could see myself now. Skin turning from a scarlet flame to a deep mottled purple, spit foamed thick and white at the corners of my mouth, curdling on my tongue. There was no noise. The blood vessels in my eyes burst violently. Crimson liquid spraying out across the surface of my sclera.

And then like Micheal fucking Myers, Dr Gellan rose from the shadows. His hands slithered around his waist, locating the glock he carried beneath his jacket. I watched as his insidious form glided across the tiled floor in the dark. The first one he pulled off me heads' span around as the spine snapped in his neck. The second one rolled off the bed in an explosion of brain and blood that pissed from the hole in his skull, spraying up into the ceiling. Raining down on me. The third ran. Not fast enough. He stayed where he lay. In the doorway.