Risky Business ｡ Stranger Things

28 : Valley Girl

Hot air from a pedestal fan tumbled around Prue's shadowed room. Her skin was balmy, damp with sweat, but her dream world was cold with the chill of winter. Snow drifted around her, falling from the night sky like stars. She was outside the Hawkins Lab, the concrete under her feet was dusted with snow. Prue looked around, scanning the lab's carpark that was once familiar to her—she had been their a few times in reality—but the place wasn't familiar now. It was abandoned, eerie, forgotten. The massive building rose before her, with locked doors and busted windows. It looked like a monster, all those jagged edges and deep shadows that were now moving. A growl broke on out, curling like fog through the cool air. Prue shuffled around, trying to locate the sound. To many, it sounded like a normal predatory animal, like a wolf or a mountain lion, but to the teenage girl, it sounded foreign, alien and otherworldly. It sounded like the very thing that had haunted her dreams and footsteps for six months. Prue searched the shadows that wrapped around her, swallowing her whole. The deep growl grew louder and louder, drumming away in her ears, spiking her heartbeat. It came out of the blackness swiftly and mighty, leaping with talons made for tearing, for ripping, for destroying. The inky, black demodog with fluid-like skin took her down easily, took her down like prey. Prue's back slammed against the snow-dusted concrete, her breath knocked clean from of her lungs. Her scream warred against the snapping snarl of the monster as it drags its razor-like claws down her torso, shredding through her clothes and skin like a knife through butter. It continued to slice at her skin, turning her flesh to bloody ribbons. The carmine colour was a sharp, sickening constant against the pure whiteness of the snow. Prue's scream was so loud, so shrill that it nearly shook the walls of her bedroom.

"Prue!" Grey was calling out her name in the darkness as she shrieked, tossing and turning, kicking out her legs like a demodog really did have her pinned down again. "PRUE!"

Her eyes flashed up and she lashed out, pushing Grey's hands away from her shoulders; he had only been trying to wake her, shaking her gently. She could feel wetness on her skin and frantically searched her torso for blood, for wounds, but she only found scars and sweat. It was then she realised the hot air in her room and not the cold air in her dream.

"Grey," she whispered, eyes adjusting to the dimness in her bedroom.

"You're okay. You're okay. You're here with me, in your bedroom," he ensured her, his hands finding hers, seeking to comfort his older sister. Prue clutched at her brother, her chin wrinkling as tears pooled, leaking down her flustered cheeks. "It was just a dream."

"No." She shook her head harshly but her words were soft, fragile, broken. "It wasn't a dream," she sobbed. Grey tightened his arms around her shoulders, knowing she needed the pressure as a way of reassurance that she was awake and talking to him for real. Reassurance that this wasn't another nightmare.

"Yes, it was," he told her. Prue could feel his pulse through his skin, thumping away. It matched the speed that hers was racing, smashing against her ribcage. His heartbeat echoed her own: scared and lost between two worlds.

"It was so real." Tears dripped off her trembling chin. The blasting fan was working to cool her hot tears, drying the sweat that covered her like a second skin.

"They always seem real," Grey replied in a broken voice all of his own. A broken voice riddled with empathy and shared trauma. He had his fair share of nightmares too. Nightmares were commonplace in the Owens house now. Grey untangled himself from his sister to turn on her lamp; the light chased away the shadows. Again, Prue checked herself for blood, her fingers fumbling over her pyjamas, so convinced that she was being torn to shreds by a demodog, like she nearly had been, like Bob Newby had been.

"Stay with me?" Prue asked, needing the comfort, needing the presence of another person.

"Like you even have to ask," Grey noted, crawling up beside Prue. Their shoulders were pressed together despite the heat. The siblings sleeping beside each other was another thing that was now commonplace in the house on Kerley. Their little tiff at the pool was long forgotten, for that was nothing compared to plaguing nightmares of alien monsters.