ITS A MANUAL
November 4th, 1984
⏰ 8:30 pm, 📍Hawkins, Indiana
༺♥༻ No one knows what to do.
Hopper is on the phone calling for some doctor, while also occasionally yelling at the person on the other end.
Jonathan is talking to Will, who's still sleeping.
Steve's pacing.
Mrs. Byers is sitting in Will's room.
The party is sitting at the kitchen table in silence, listening to Hopper.
"I am the police! Chief Jim Hopper!"
When he yells, Stephanie slightly jumps. It reminded her of when her parents would fight all the time. Mostly about her and Steve.
Hopper eventually hangs up the phone.
"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin asks.
Hopper sighs. "We'll see."
" 'We'll see?' We can't just sit here while those things are loose!" Mike yells back, he's the only one who is this worked up.
"We stay here, and we wait for help." Hopper says roughly, then he walks away.
The party, again, is left with just silence.
Thinking about Will.
Thinking about the monsters.
Thinking about Max. Well, Stephanie's thinking about Max.
Mike stands up and walks over to the table in the living room. He picks up a blue cube that is rubber banded together. "Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?"
Bob was Mrs. Byers boyfriend who never made it out of the lab. The monsters got there before him.
"Really?" Lucas asks.
Mike turns around. "He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fundraiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?"
"Yeah."
Mike sets the cube on the kitchen table. "We can't let him die in vain."
"What do you want to do, Mike?" Dustin snaps. "The Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own."
"Demo-dogs?" Max questions.
"Demogorgan. Dogs." Dustin puts a hand out for each word. "Demodogs." He puts his hands together like he's putting the words together. "It's like a compound. It's like a play on words-"
"Okay," Max interrupts while giving Stephanie a look.
Dustin continues. "I mean, when it was Dart, maybe...."
"But there's an army now," Lucas finishes.
"Precisely."
"His army," Mike interrupts.
Steve looks up. "What do you mean?"
"His army," Mike repeats. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too."
The kids look at each other before getting up to follow Mike, who's running to the living room.
Mike picks up Wills drawing of a big black monster.
"The shadow monster," Dustin says.
Mike holds out the paper. "It got Will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."
Max tilts her head. "And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?"
"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything," Mike concludes with a sharp nod.
Steve puts his hands up. "Whoa. Slow down. Slow down."
Mike rolls his eyes. "Okay, so, the shadow monsters inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will."
"Thats insane," Stephanie says, shaking her head.
"And so does Dart," Lucas continues, ignoring Stephanie.
"Yeah. Like what Mr. Clarke taught us. The hive mind."
"Hive mind?" Steve repeats.
Dustin turns to Steve. "A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism."
Stephanie crosses her arms. "Shouldn't you know that? Mr. Clarke was your teacher."
Steve rolls his eyes.
"And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain," Mike says as he points to the shadow monster.
"Like the Mind Flayer." Dustin's eyes widen, along with Lucas and Mikes.
Stephanie knew of the Mind Flayer from playing D&D for hours on end with the party, but she assumed it wasn't what she thought it was. She hoped it wasn't what she thought.
"The what?" Max and Steve say at the same time.
Stephanie and Max watch the boys as they crawl around in Will's room, looking for something.
Steve goes to tell the others to go to the kitchen.
Dustin slams a heavy book down on the table and starts flipping through the pages until he lands on a black and white drawing of some creature. "The Mind Flayer."
"What the hell is that?" Hopper asks, in what Stephanie thinks is the nicest tone he's ever used.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know it's true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers."
Stephanie thought of El when Dustin started talking about psionic powers. For the first time since El left, Stephanie missed her.
"Oh, my God," Hopper sighs. "None of this is real. This is a kids' game."
"No, it-it's a manual. And it's not for kids." Dustin raises his voice. "And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"
"Analogy," Lucas corrects.
"Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" Dustin points at Lucas with an accusatory finger. "Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is!"
Nancy picks up the book. "Okay, so this Mind Flamer thing-"
"Flayer. Mind Flayer," Dustin corrects.
"What does it want?" Nancy sighs.
"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race," Dustin says, using his hands.
"Like-like the Germans?" Steve asks, totally serious.
Stephanie couldn't help but burst out laughing, which was probably not the best idea, as Hopper gives her a glare as she does so.
"Uh...the Nazis?" Dustin gibes.
"Ye-yeah the Nazis," Steve stutters, obviously embarrassed.
Stephanie pats her brother on the back and whispers, "this is why you don't have a girlfriend."
Steve just shrugs her off.
Dustin tries to find a way to connect the Nazis and the Mind Flayer. "If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally. Uh...it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."
"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions," Mike adds on.
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." Lucas hits the table with each word.
"That's great. That's great. That's really great. Jesus!" Steve turns around as he runs his hands through his hair.
Stephanie zones out on the rest of the conversation thinking about what would happen if the Mind Flayer wasn't stopped.
She only zones back in when Hopper yells again. "We are!"
She slightly jumps and Max takes her hand to try and comfort Stephanie.
"You can't just shoot this with guns!" Mike shouts.
"You don't know that!" Hopper motions towards the door as he shouts back. "We don't know anything!"
"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab."
"And we know the monsters are gonna molt again."
"And we know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town."
Then, a voice appears. "They're right."
Stephanie sees Hopper turn around and his face soften.
I barely know this man but I had no idea he was capable of looking happy.
It's Mrs. Byers. "We have to kill it." Hopper walks towards her. "I want to kill it."
"Me, too. Me, too, Joyce, okay?" Hopper grabs her shoulder. "But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."
Stephanie sees Mike look at Will. For a second, she feels bad that Mike had to see Will like this because she knew Mike cared for him so much.
"No. But he does." Mike walks up to Joyce and Hopper. "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will." Mike walks to the couch, where Will is laying. "He's connected to it. He'll know it's weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore. That he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now," Max says, although more of a question.
Stephanie could practically see the lightbulb go off in Mikes head. "Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."
༺♥༻
almost done with season 2?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
i'm shocked
4-3-23