▶️ Hotel California by the Eagles
We're safe. I can't believe it. I don't even know what just happened or why I did what I did.
Why did I do that? What was that thing? Was that the cause of the mall fire?
I hear the sound of rockets and I cover my ears, dropping down into a crouch. But then I get up take a peek out the window and realize they're fireworks.
Why would there be fireworks now? July Fourth was ages ago.
Then it hits me.
It's the 4th of July.
So I did go back in time. I really went back in time, and quite far back too. Everything I did last month, gone in an instant. Not that I did much, mostly took on some odd thief jobs and learned a bit more Italian. I still remember the Italian, thank goodness.
My heart sinks as I look at Billy and my stomach jolts. Billy is passed out on the bed, he doesn't have any lethal wounds (hopefully) but he looks pretty bad and he'll definitely bleed out if I don't do something fast. However, if I don't make the same mistake as last time, I should be able to patch him up. I run into the bathroom and quickly throw up, the nausea fading away as I do.
I feel like crap, but I have to act quickly.
I root around for my stitches kit, blink to my storage unit for my other supplies, and get to work. What have I done? I haven't talked to this boy in over a year and we didn't even date a whole year. What am I doing, why am I doing this?
I let my mind wander for a little bit and then push those thoughts aside. Sure, I might've done something reckless and stupid but I can't waste too much time obsessing over how reckless and stupid it was. The only thought that prevails is: I can't let Billy die again.
I carefully cut away his clothes with my pocket knife, there's so much blood stuck to him they're impossible to just slide off. Every time I see fresh blood, I stop cutting and pulling and start cleaning and stitching.
I find a big, nasty, gash in each of his sides even though I barely let the monster touch him. I sew him up, crying the entire time, hoping I'm not putting too many or too little stitches in him. The wounds are hard to sew because they're not very small, but I stitch what I can and bandage the rest. There's so much blood. I inject him with painkillers and the blue liquid I found inside a top secret scientist lab that's supposed to promote cell growth. I have to pause halfway through to go throw up in the bathroom again, dry heaving because I don't have anything left in my body. Once Billy is stitched up I wrap gauze all around his torso and I blink him onto the bed.
I touch his face slowly and pull back quickly, he's really cold. I check other parts of his body: his hands, his legs, his feet, he's freezing. I wrap him in as many blankets as I can and then I lie down next to him, exhausted. I get a good look at him, he's breathing, which is a good sign. His hair is longer and curlier than I remember. I run my hands through his curly mullet for a second.
I watch him for awhile. He seems to be doing okay.
What have I done? What if he doesn't want me anymore? What if he has a new girl? Why oh why did I do that? Have I rewritten the future? What exactly are the negatives of a time blink...?
Oh no...
Black spots swarm my vision so I close my eyes. The adrenaline is wearing off, I feel the full effect of my blinks.
I pass out.
***
I wake up to something shaking me awake.
"Seraphina, SERAPHINA!" I jolt upwards, and away, nearly falling off the bed. It's Billy. According to my calculations, he shouldn't have had the energy to move around for at least another week. I guess those meds worked. I'll have to see if I can get more sometime so I have a stock of them.
"Where are we, what's going on?" He asks accusingly. "How did you get here, how did I get here?"
"We're in a safe place. You're safe." I say, trying to read his expression for any sort of emotions that might tell me what's going on. He just looks scared, and confused.
Billy starts crying. I never see Billy cry, I can count the times on my fingers. On the contrary, Billy has seen me cry a lot.
"Stay still Billy. You have to not make any sudden movements because you're going to rip the stitches." I say, tearing up. Every muscle in my body is on fire, but I try to ignore it. I awkwardly wrap my arms around him and he lays down, I hold him and run my fingers through his hair. I sigh.
This is how it used to be. Well, kind of.
"That...that thing..." Billy's eyes look glazed.
"Shhh, it's okay. It's not anywhere near us. We're safe." I murmur.
"You don't understand. It knows where I am. It can find me."
A chill runs through my body.
"What?" I ask him.
"It can find me." He sobs.
"Billy are you sure, can you feel it?" I ask him, panicked.
Billy licks his lip and stares off into the distance. He looks focused, but also blank. "I...I...I can't feel it anymore. I mean I can remember it but I...I'm not sure..."
I choose to believe that Billy's 'not sure' means the monster is gone. I hope it is.
"Maybe the military can come and take it down before it finds us."
Silence.
"It was controlling me." Says Billy.
"What?"
"You don't understand, it's like I could see what I was doing but it wasn't me." Billy cries. His face is twisted up angrily. "I couldn't escape, not until the very end."
"Start from the beginning." I say. "Just tell me what happened. Quickly."
He seems to have enough energy to at least give me a rundown of what's going on.
"It's going to sound insane." He says.
"I was there too remember? I saw the monster." I say.
"I was driving out, and something...something hit my car and I crashed into this steel manufacturing plant. The next thing I know I get dragged down and I see the monster and it...it..." I've never seen Billy this terrified.
I instantly regret asking him.
"It's okay Billy, we can talk about it later, right now I just need you to lie down." I say.
"He made me build an army. He made me build an army so I could build him." Billy says, eyes haunted. The tears keep flowing down his face and dropping onto the bed.
I am not understanding a word Billy is saying, but I'm not going to interrogate him right now while he's hurt and on a bunch of medication.
Billy starts shivering, I need to find this boy some clothes. I can't exactly run to the store right now, I'm literally covered from head to toe in blood and they'll think I killed someone. Also, my powers won't be able to take me very far at the moment.
I wrap him up in the blankets again and hope for the best as he falls back asleep. I however, am restless. I sit with him, crying and running my fingers through his hair.
About an hour later, Billy wakes up again with a jolt. It scares me and I blink away from him before he sees me. Once I realize that it's just him, I tentatively walk back over to him and hop on the bed.
"Seraphina?" He asks. "Where am I?"
"Shhh Billy, go back to sleep." I caress his jawline like I used to do and he nuzzles my hand and kisses it, like he used to do.
"Seraphina I haven't seen you in forever..." his eyes go blank again.
"I can still see it. I can still see all the pathways. All the people." He says, in a different voice.
I wipe my tears away "you need to focus on getting better."
Gently I lie him down. "Go to sleep Billy, please."
I hum softly to him as he falls asleep again.
Billy doesn't sleep very well. One time he wakes up screaming and I hold him close as he cries. Another time he wakes up lashing out at everything and starts to hit me. I blink away from him and lock myself in the bathroom as I sob.
He'd never hit me before.
The realization struck me right as I turned that lock. But then I reminded myself of his trauma, and tried to calm down. He stood at the door for at least thirty minutes, pounding and yelling profanities.
Another time he just curls up and cries, and pushes me off the bed when I try to touch him. He rips his stitches four or five times and every time he rips them I redo them. I'm so scared of hurting him, he whimpers and cries out when I stick him with the sewing needle. And then, he wakes up sobbing about his little sister Max, and how his father will beat him half to death if she dies and begs me to find her and make sure she's not dead.
"He's going to kill me. He's going to kill me."
At first, I think Billy is just exaggerating about that but in half a second, my brain compiles about a year of information and organizes it in a logical way. The random bruises and cuts. The fear. The constant need to assert his dominance. In half a second, I unlock Billy's whole psyche. I cry over his sleeping body that time, holding him close to me.
His sister, he said he needs to know if his sister is okay.
I go to the mirror and look at myself. Battered and bloody already from being thrown around by my ex.
It's probably wrong of me, but I'm glad he hasn't mentioned another girl.
How frivolous of me, how silly that I drop everything that I've been looking into, every intention of finding on what's going on at the lab for the sake of helping this boy I dated for a year. But, something tells me that Billy is connected to my past, and now the only way to unlock that is by figuring out what in the world is going out in Hawkins.
I have got to find out if that thing is still there. I quickly wash some of the blood off of my body.
I close my eyes to blink, but it doesn't want to work. I take a deep breath and try again. With a jolt, I blink.
*
I look around, I've blinked to the spot where Max fell off her skateboard and I helped her.
Even from here, I can hear the sirens. I run and chase them, sprinting until I end up at the mall. The mall is still on fire hours later, and firefighters are fighting to put it out.
My heart sinks.
If the girl is dead I'm going to have to blink back again because I cannot let her die.
I'm exhausted but I'm wired.
I stumble around, there are people looking on. I blink past a barrier into the scene and I start looking in the ambulances.
I blink into a couple of them to steal some supplies for Billy, and I stuff them into the pockets of the jacket I've thrown over me.
"Ma'am do you need help?" A paramedic approaches me just as I'm about to raid another ambulance.
"No, I'm okay." I say, pretending like I was doing anything but stealing from emergency vehicles.
"You're covered in blood."
"It's not my own."
"Okay, well tell me if you need anything." Says the paramedic, turning to leave.
"Wait!" I say. "I'm looking for my cousin, she's a teenager with red hair, her name is Max, she and her friends were in the mall earlier and I think she got caught in the fire? Do you know if she was there or?"
That was the lamest explanation ever.
"Uhhh." The paramedic thinks for a second. "Yeah I think there was a girl with red hair. Is her name maybe Maxine?"
"Yes! That's it!"
"Yeah, her mom came to pick her up."
"Oh, thank goodness for Auntie." I sigh and put my hand over my chest.
"Yeah, thank goodness for Auntie." Says the paramedic. "By the way, you really shouldn't be here."
"Okay, yes, I'll leave." I say. I stumble off to a secluded location. My head is pounding and my heart as well. I try to focus. California. I was just there. It's a long ways away but I can see it clearly in my mind.
I imagine the bedroom and all the little details of it, the bed, the dresser, the windows, and I blink.
*
I open my eyes to the room. I'm standing near the doorway.
"What the FUCK?" I hear Billy exclaim.
I don't really care about him at the moment, because right away I notice something is wrong with me. I'm spent, at least I think that's what it is.
My head feels horrible, I touch my face and find that my nose is bleeding like it used to when I was a kid.
I'm really, really spent.
"Where the hell did you come from?" I hear Billy but I can't see him. Everything is black.
Billy can't help me now.
At some point I think I fall to the ground, and the darkness takes over.