CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
GLORY & GORE
El continues to wail in pain. Hot tears spring to her eyes as she thrashes around. Abby can only stand and watch petrified. Isla stands rigid beside Abby, her breath is hitched in her throat as she stares down at El with wide, terrified eyes. Alex is kneeling next to El, there's a look of pain on her face as with a loud scream, El squeezes her hand tightly, but Alex raises no complaints. There's a squelching sound as the thing just beneath El's skin continues to move around inside.
"What is that thing?" Erica questions.
"There's something in there," Mike answers.
"Yeah, no shit," Isla remarks.
"Jesus Christ," Dustin murmurs.
The blood darkens. The screaming grows louder. Isla's hand jumps to Abby's wrist and squeezes hard. Jonathan, surprisingly calm, despite the screaming and wailing, despite the blood that continues to soak the ground, despite the awful squelching takes charge. "Keep her talking. Keep her awake, okay?"
"Jesus Christ," Dustin repeats.
El's pained screams start to fade away as her eyelids droop, but Mike is quick to shake her softly, "Hey, hey, hey. Stay awake, stay awake. Let's get her on this side, on this side."
"Easy, easy, easy," Steve warns as they begin to pull Eleven up. She lets out another whimper as she leans back against Mike, almost upright. Her bloody leg is stretched out in front of her, and she only seems to whimper more as she takes in the atrocious sight before her.
"You know, it's not actually that bad," Robin says. Her voice is several octaves higher than normal and it wavers as she continues, her chest heaving and eyes wide. "There was a ... the goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slide into her leg, and like the bone came out of her knee, six inches or something, it was insane."
"Robin," Steve interrupts.
"Yeah?"
"You're not helping."
"I'm sorry."
Abby grimaces. The human body is fragile. She knows this. The integrity of one's bone structure, the density, the way it's aligned is unreliable. It only takes one wrong step, one punch aimed a little too high or thrown a little too hard and suddenly you can hear a snap. It only takes one cut, one bite for something worse than you could have imagined happening. Abby knows all of this, but she hopes that she never has to see anybody in this state of pain again; pained screams that echo and bounce off of the walls, blood dripping, and falling, pale skin, the sickly feeling of nausea.
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.
The girl continues to scream, unfazed by the shattering of the glass behind her. With one final, feral screech, the thing inside of her leg is yanked out of the wound. It flails in the air as El holds out a hand, still screaming, still bleeding as blood flows out of her nose and drips onto her shirt. Finally, she thrusts her hand out and sends it flying several feet away where it lands with a pathetic bounce on the tiles. It chitters and attempts to scurry away, leaving a trail of blood behind it, but before it can get far, a black boot slams down on top of it splattering blood and guts across the ground.
Abby's gaze travels up from the boot and rests on Jim Hopper. He looks worse for wear with a gash above his left eyebrow, and a bruise forming beneath his right eye. There's a tiredness that rests in his eyes, accentuated by the crease in his eyebrows as he gazes at the motley crew of teenagers. Flaking him are Joyce, whose hair is touseled and her shirt wrinkled, but otherwise in much better condition than Hopper and Murray Bauman, the town conspiracy theorist who had helped to shut down Hawkins Lab, dressed in a white tank top and blue shorts.
Abby allows a smile to spread across her face.
✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*
Abby and Isla sit side by side on the rim of the fountain. The water is still, the only peaceful thing amidst the insanity that the world has fallen into. Isla leans her head on Abby's shoulder while Abby snakes an arm around her friend's shoulders and pulls her a little bit closer. Her eyes travel to Steve and Alex who sit on the bench across from them with along with Joyce and Hopper who supports El who sips from a soda cup and then to the rest around them. Robin sits on the space next to them, her knees are drawn to her chest and she rests her chin on her folded elbows, Will and Lucas occupy the space next to hers, and Erica leans against one of the small pillars. Dustin, Jonathan, Nancy, and Mike all stand in a line nearby in various positions.
The past few days have taken a toll on everyone. Arms hang limply, eyes are dull, everything seems so dull, so hopeless. There are no interruptions as each group relays the trials and tribulations they had suffered; from the Scoops Ahoy group cracking the Russian code to the death of the Russian scientist that Joyce's group had kidnapped.
Abby bounces her knee in anticipation as horrid thoughts rush through her head. Her parents could easily be a part of the Mind Flayer's army. For all she knows, the Mind Flayer had already planted its seed in them during her absence, and it only grows inside of them the longer that she spends away from them. But she knows that her friends need her here too. In order to uproot the seeds, they have to first defeat the Mind Flayer.
"The Mind Flayer, it built this monster in Hawkins," Mike explains, "to stop El, to kill her and pave a way into our world."
"And it almost did," Nancy adds. "That was just one tiny piece of it."
"How big is this thing?" Hopper questions.
"It's big," Jonathan answers. "Thirty feet, at least."
"Yeah," Lucas agrees. He sends an apologetic glance to Hopper as he adds, "It sorta destroyed your cabin." Hopper lets out a sigh and slouches. Lucas winces and whispers, "Sorry."
"Hey, it's looking a little crushed, but I'm sure that it's nothing that we can't fix," Isla assures the chief, though it's clear that all hope to restore Hopper's cabin is null and void.
"Okay, so, just to be clear ... this big fleshy spider thing that hurt El, it's some kind of gigantic weapon?" Steve asks.
"Yes," Nancy nods.
"But instead of, like, instead of screws and metal, the Mind Flayer made its weapon with melted people."
"Yes. Exactly."
Alex nods. "Yeah, it's basically Frankenstein, but worse."
"Frankenstein's monster, actually," Dustin is quick to correct.
"Does it matter?" Alex retorts.
"Are we sure this thing is still out there?" Joyce wonders, intervening before any arguments can be started. "Still alive?"
"El beat the shit out of it, but yeah, it's still alive," Max answers.
"But if we close the gate again—" Will starts.
"We cut the brain off from the body," Max interjects.
"And kill it," Lucas finishes.
Abby shifts in her seat but keeps her arm around Isla. She depends on the comfort that her friend brings her. "And how do we know that this will work again? I mean, last time it worked, but this time, the Mind Flayer's probably expecting it this time around. How do we know it hasn't found a way around it?"
"This is where trial and error comes in, my dear friend," Isla answers.
"It's not like we're going to get a second chance if we screw up," Alex responds.
"Yoo-hoo!" Calls a loud voice. They whirl around to see Murray rushing toward them, waving papers in the air above his head to catch their attention. "Yoo-hoo!"
He slams the papers down on the surface of a nearby table as they all gather around it, revealing a small badly drawn map of the Russian base. He points to a familiar-looking spot where four hallways seem to converge into a much bigger room which Abby instantly recognizes as the main room where the Russians were bustling about. "Okay," Murray starts, "this is what Alexi called 'the hub'. Now, the hub takes us to the vault room."
"Okay, where's the gate?" Hopper questions.
Murray points to another spot on the map that vaguely resembles the observation room and the gate. "Right here. I don't know the scale on this, but I think it's fairly close to the vault room—" at this, he taps another spot on the map "—maybe fifty feet or so."
Erica steps forward with her hands on her hips. "More like five-hundred." Murray looks up from the map to stare at her with his mouth agape. Erica seems unfazed by his gaze as she continues, "What? You're just gonna waltz in there like it's commie Disneyland or something?"
"I'm sorry, who are you?" Murray questions.
"Erica Sinclair, who are you?"
Murray blinks. "Murray ... Bauman."
Erica holds up a hand and continues, "Listen, Mr. Bunman, I'm not trying to tell you how to do things, but I've been down in that shithole for twenty-four hours, and with all due respect you do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die."
"I'm sorry, why is this four-year-old speaking to me?" Murray asks.
"Um, I'm ten, you bald bastard!" Erica retorts.
"Erica!" Lucas exclaims.
"Just the facts!"
"She's right," says Dustin as Erica grins smugly up at Murray. "You're all gonna die, but you don't have to. Excuse me. Sorry. May I?"
"Please," Murray responds through gritted teeth and a forced smile.
Dustin takes the maps in his hands and sits down in the nearest chair. "Okay, see this room here?" He asks, circling one of the squares. "This is a storage facility. There's a hatch in here that feeds into their underground ventilation system." He draws a line from the circle, across the map to the square that represents the gate. "That will lead you to the weapon."
"It's complicated down there, you could get lost, but Dustin, Erica, and I can show you the way," Abby adds.
"You can show us the way?" Hopper repeats with his eyebrows raised.
"Don't worry, you can do all the fighting and all the dangerous hero shit, and we'll just be your ... navigators," Dustin responds with a smile. Both Abby and Erica look up to the chief with wide innocent smiles on their faces.
"No," Hopper answers firmly. Dustin's face falls, and soon after, Abby's and Erica's smiles melt away as Hopper shakes his head. "Nope."
author's note: hey sorry for forgetting to update, shit happened and i had to deal with that, but i think i'm better now and will try to maintain an updating schedule. anyway, the way i was listening to the oh hellos while writing the scene with el's leg, which is like the complete opposite vibes of the scene, but like, it kept me from puking, so