《Chapter Eleven》
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Tally didn't quite remember when he fell asleep. It must have been around the eleventh time he contemplated giving Eddie back his pencil.
He wasn't quite sure why the pencil was so present in his mind now, when it hadn't been for years. He supposed that if the Mind Flayer were to kill him, he wouldn't want there to be anything left undone.
It was really a miracle that he had fallen asleep at all, considering how uneasy he felt.
He wasn't 100% he was sleeping, seeing as his dream was fairly tame—he was sitting in the boathouse, though Eddie was notably absent from his side—until something very strange happened. A girl appeared.
She had a dark brown buzz cut. Her eyes were a deep, unsettling brown. Her brow was contorted into a concerned expression, like she was just as confused as Tally was.
Tally had never seen her before in his life. She seemed familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. She almost seemed to mirror his actions. When Tally tilted his head, so did she. When he tried to wave, she did too.
"Who are you?" Tally asked, finally realizing that he could use his voice in dreams.
"My name is Eleven," she said slowly. "Who are you?"
Tally thought it was rather blunt of her to march into someone else's dream and then demand to know who he was. He decided that he'd tell her anyways.
"Tally Parker," he said firmly. Dream Tally clearly didn't struggle with speaking as much as real-life Tally did. "Are you real?"
"Yes," Eleven stated confidently. "Why would I not be?"
"You're in my dream," Tally said, trying not to feel stupid for talking to a girl who probably only existed within his imagination.
"Oh," Eleven turned in a slow circle. "Where are we?"
Tally frowned deeply. This was getting far too eerie for his liking. For a brief moment he tried to will himself back awake, but it quickly became apparent that wasn't going to work.
"Where are we?" Eleven prompted again, raising both her eyebrows while managing to somehow keep them crinkled together.
"A boathouse," Tally said slowly, hoping that he wasn't making a horrible mistake by telling her.
He felt an odd trust towards this girl. Almost like the way he felt towards Max, though he had a good reason to trust Max. Eleven was a complete stranger to him.
"Boathouse... where?" Eleven winced, as if she was straining to do something.
"Hawkins, Indiana," Tally said without a hint of hesitation, immediately cursing himself out in his head. Great, he thought to himself, now the dream lady knows where you live.
Eleven nodded slowly. "Hawkins... how do I know you?"
Tally felt his face contort into a scrunched-up expression that met Eleven's. "You don't."
"I must," the girl said, turning in another slow circle. Her voice was thick with an emotion that Tally couldn't quite recognize. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here."
Tally could actively feel his heartbeat getting faster. He suddenly felt like he was about to pass out. Was it possible to pass out in dreams? Well, he figured that he was about to find out.
"This is just a dream," Tally said firmly, trying to convince himself more than her. "There aren't any... rules here."
Eleven looked at him in such a way it made a lump form in his throat. "There are rules for people like us."
The word us made him freeze. What did she mean? They didn't even know each other, how could she clump them together so easily?
Tally opened his his mouth to question her, but the world quickly began to swirl away in front of his very eyes. He shook his head rapidly, he wasn't ready to wake up yet.
The sense of vertigo that overcame his body sent him falling to the floor with a loud thump. The impact forced Tally to close his eyes.
When he opened them, Eleven was gone. He was sitting in the boathouse, sunlight trickling through the windows shyly. Eddie lay next to him, still fast asleep.
He was awake.
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