Surprise Shitbird

He walks beside the kids, watches his own booted heels carve a groove into the earth because even between the four of them his body is too heavy to lift, so they drag him through the undergrowth like a sack of shit.

Not far. But far enough.

Maybe they do know he's dead. Maybe Max meant to kill him all along.

They get his body away from the house and the road, deep enough into the woods that no one would have a hope in hell of spotting him unless they went looking.

And they leave him there.

"Asshole can walk home when he wakes up." Max pants before they sprint back the way they came without a backwards glance. Billy wants to run after them, scream, demand that they come back and do something, but he knows with a soul deep certainty that whatever force is keeping him in this limbo is also keeping him tethered to his body. Knows this because the second he woke up in this new state he immediately tried to turn around and leave. Got as far as the driveway where the groove of Harrington's ass-print was still visible in the dirt, when he'd realised he had walked through the Byers's front door, right before he then walked into an invisible but impenetrable wall.

He'd gone back inside —through the door again when reaching for the handle had been the same as reaching for air— just in time to see the little shits preparing to drag his body out into the woods.

No one had noticed his entrance or the screaming that followed.

He wonders if they'll drag Harrington out to join him. If they'll remember that the night is fucking freezing and to bring Billy back a jacket. If he wasn't already dead he could've easily died from hypothermia.

They never do.

He hears the distant sounds of cars occasionally, of people, of things he can't quite place.

But no one comes back for him.

Not for a long, long time.

*****

The circle gets wider the more his body decomposes.

He can't stand to look at it. The sockets sunken. His long eyelashes fanning over milky, half-lidded eyes staring unseeingly up at the treetops. Gangly, awkward sprawl the same as the day he'd been left there. The cold winter does a good job of preserving his body. No roiling maggot infestations or flies to drive him more insane than he already feels.

When he stops actively working against it, his apparition changes to match that of his physical body, slowly rotting along with it. Losing pieces of himself.

Every time he feels a loose bit of skin sloughing off, it takes everything in him to force his form back to the one he had on the might of his death. He'd joke about looking his very best that night, that at least he had that going for him, but all it takes is for his mind to wander for a moment and the effect slowly wears off again.

Nowadays, Billy's mind does almost nothing but wander.

He's circled the impenetrable wall more times than he can count, looking for a weakness, a tiny crack that he might dig his rotting fingers into and tug to grant him an extra bit of freedom. Every time he walks out to check again, the circle is a couple of inches further out.

Weeks pass.

The circle gains six feet.

He's going fucking insane.

With nothing but anger and betrayal and his own rotting fucking corpse for company, he stews in a broth of raw, hateful emotions for so long it feels like there isn't much left of him besides the fury and the need to check his circle.

He won't see California again for sixteen-and-a-half thousand years at this inch-an-hour rate.

Billy calculated that.

He cries. He begs. He screams. His throat never tires and he never runs out of air, and the forest simply continues to calmly exist, undisturbed, because Billy Hargrove is a goddamn ghost.

And ghosts can't do shit.

*****

It's a particularly fucked up kind of torture that Billy can hear the louder going-on's at the Byers house, a tantalising break in his monotony hovering just beyond his reach. He can't see the house for the thicket yet, instead he stands as close as the ring allows him when he knows the mother —Joyce— leaves for the day to go to work and again when she comes home. Or when her eldest boy Jonathan plays his music loud enough to be heard throughout the entire area.

Billy hopes every time to hear even just a hint of something to keep him grounded in reality.

It doesn't work. (Jonathan's taste in music is pretentious at best, depressing at worst, Billy almost prefers the silence.)

One time he thinks he hears the kids —MaxMaxMAX— come to visit Will and he howls in anger, throws himself against the circle and claws at the invisible limit to get at them all.

I'm here! I'm here, right where you left me you fucking shitheads!

No one comes to check, which means that no one hears him.

Billy thinks about what he's going to do to them all once his circle is wide enough.

He smacks his head violently against the invisible wall.

There is no pain.

His teeth sure do look white against rotted leaves, though.

*****

By the time Hopper finds him, his circle is about to breach the treeline by the road.

Billy feels the man the second he steps into the circle, like a spider's Web, the very air buzzes closest to where he pushes into Billy's territory, needling at his mind until he goes to check on the intruder and does something to make it leave.

Make it stay.

Make it pay.

He's been so focused on that widening ring —staring at the last mark he dug into the ground to indicate his limits and checking obsessively for new inches gained— that he hadn't even heard the new car pull up into the Byers' driveway.

He moves back from the treeline —so tantalisingly close to where he might get to see people and cars again— and stalks through tree trunks, branches and leaves without disturbing a single one and finds police Chief Hopper bent over something on the forest floor.

"Hey!" Billy barks, momentarily stunned by the warped tone of his own voice. The man doesn't react, still bent over what Billy now realises is the matching heel grooves from when Billy was dragged into this torturous corner of the shittiest town in America.

Hopper's eyes follow the trail until it disappears behind a tightly knit group of trees and looks tempted to follow it.

Billy almost vibrates with excitement.

"That's it piggy," He hisses, voice the groan of trees cracking in a storm, circling the oblivious man like a starving lion with no teeth or claws to make a meal of him. Blood oozes from his gaping maw like drool.

"Follow the fucking trail and get me the hell out of here!"

The man doesn't hear a word of course, and he sure does take his sweet time. Checking the trees of all things —for what, Billy doesn't know— and using a stick to poke the dirt in front of him like he's expecting it to cave under his weight. Slowly, though, he makes his way closer to where Billy's body lies forgotten.

He's so close.

Just a bit more.

"Don't you leave me here you dumb bastard, don't you fucking leave me here," Billy rattles over and over again, a curse and mantra all in one, anger turned to simmering. If the cop doesn't find him now, it may be months or even years, before someone comes this way again and Billy doesn't know how much more of this hellish existence he can take.

He wonders if Max really could be stupid enough to think he'd wake up and simply run away without the camaro.

She must know. She left me here without even coming back to check. She knows where I am and told NO ONE.

Just a little further...

Hopper stops again.

The anger boils over.

Billy strides right up to the man and lashes out, but his hand connects with nothing. Billy howls in frustration, but watches as a meaty hand comes up to absentmindedly scratch at the place Billy had tried to tear open with his useless ghost hands.

Something cocks it's head in Billy's mind.

But then Hopper turns the corner.

And things go pretty quickly from there.

*****

The chief calls in his find to the station.

He doesn't touch Billy's body, but he doesn't leave him there alone, either. Billy appreciates it in a way, it feels like something he would do when he was alive, yet it does nothing to calm the ever burning pit in his belly.

Hopper sits himself down on a fallen log and stares down at Billy's corpse with tired eyes and Billy can't tell if they're sad or if the man is simply annoyed about the extra hours he's gonna have to pull tonight.

It doesn't really matter.

Billy begins circling him again.

It feels like Hopper is prey, but Billy still can't quite figure out how to eat him.

The pit burns hotter. The anger yawns wider.

Hungry.

He brings up a finger to dip in the blood around his mouth and grins wider than humanly possible, splitting the sides of his face when a bloody B.H. slowly stains black against the dark blue of the back of Hopper's officer jacket.

Billy can work with this.

*****

The morgue is a dismal fucking place, filled with geeks too excited about dead people for Billy to stand hanging around, no longer than it takes for his body to get stored away with a tag around his big toe.

His circle thankfully keeps it's distance and continues to grow.

It almost feels like tending to a garden, the way he runs his palm against the smooth surface of the invisible wall as he walks along it, encouraging it with soft hisses of the names of all the people who are going to pay for what has happened to him.

MAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOMMAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOMMAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOMMAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOM—

On and on it goes.

He checks out the neighbourhood after another round along the circle's edge, weeding out the people all buzzing in his web. None of them ping his radar quite like Hopper did, but they are more than good enough for a little practise.

Billy needs to be ready.

*****

"He appears to have been injected with quite a high dose of sodium thiopental. The extremely high dosage coupled with a quick injection can cause extreme respiratory distress," A bead of the mortician's sweat makes its way down his face towards his nose to hang precariously at the tip.

If it lands on Billy's body, Billy will have another name to add to his garden.

"He suffocated before the drug overdose even had the chance kill him. Then he was left outside with barely any clothes in the winter. This kid was triple dead. If it wasn't one, then it was the other two."

Billy watches Hopper massage the bridge of his nose for a while, his shoulders slumped. Then the man seems to pull himself together with monumental effort and reaches for a folder marked with Billy's name.

"Billy Hargrove. Age 17. Lived with his father, step-mother and step-sister at 4819 Cherry Lane. Last seen by Karen Wheeler on the night of November 5th getting into his Camaro and heading out to the Byers residence to pick up his step sister Max Mayfield. According to the family, the car has been outside of their residence since the day after he was last seen."

"Last seen by Max Mayfield, dead in the fucking woods," Billy spits. A tiny droplet of blood sprays onto Hopper's face. The man absentmindedly wipes it away, unaware of the streak it leaves behind on his cheek.

He flicks to the next page. Clears his throat.

"Drag marks at the crime scene indicate he was dragged from the road into the forest and then dumped..."

"Liar!" Billy roars, "they led into that goddamn house, you know they did!"

He sweeps a hand over the scalpels and instruments lying on a tray next to the guerny and watches in fascination as they all go tumbling to the floor.

Hopper and the sweaty mortician freeze in place.

Oh.

After a second of stunned silence, Billy pounces.

Hopper takes the full brunt of his attack right to the chest, toppling backwards and landing half on top of Billy's corpse while Billy's spirit sits on his chest and squeezes down on his throat.

"Liar!" Billy wails, "you fucking LIAR! Why are you lying?! They killed me! You know they killed me!"

Liar Liar Liar Liar

Liar Liar Liar

Liar Liar Liar

Liar Liar Liar

Beside them, his corpse opens it's mouth and screeches with whatever vocal cords it has left.

"LIAAAARRHGG."

"Jesus Christ!" The mortician stumbles back into the corner of the room where he cowers in fear. "Chief Hopper, are you--"

The lights start flickering.

"Let's see how you like it," Billy hisses and squeezes down as hard as he can.

The hunger is worse than ever, he needs to...

All of a sudden, whatever source of power Billy manages to tap into vanishes, leaving him standing half inside the guerny and half inside Hopper who is gasping for air and clutching at his throat.

Billy reaches out as if on instinct and plunges his claws into Hopper's very soul. Latching on like a fucking parasite and begins to feed on the fear he can feel coursing through him.

Billy laughs.

Oh yes, this he can definitely work with.

*****

MAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOMMAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOMHOPPER—

*****

His circle is still there. Ever-growing. Calling out to him, but Billy can leave it now if he attaches himself to someone else, someone living who leaves it.

He digs his claws into Hopper with a fierce cruelty, sits on his shoulders and hopes the man can feel the weight pressing him down like gravity.

Like a bad conscience.

Hopper knows something is wrong, but he seems to be determined to power through the incident at the mortuary. Billy can feel the weariness. Maybe he's been through something like this before?

Billy doesn't care.

He can manipulate his world now, as long as he maintains his hate with every fibre of his being, he can do whatever the fuck he wants.

Easy fucking peasy.

*****

Hopper drives to Cherry Lane and Billy howls with hunger the entire way there, digging his fingers deeper into Hopper with excitement, enough to have the man rubbing at his shoulder every few minutes.

They're almost there.

He can't wait to stuff his fingers into Neil's mouth and rip his jaw from his face. Tear his heart out and smear it along the walls with dents in them that perfectly match parts of Billy's body. Maybe make Susan scream before he rips out the tongue she never did find a use for when it counted.

And Max...

She answers the door when Hopper knocks, looking so fucking normal it burns Billy to look at her.

You killed me and left me where no one would find me and told NO ONE.

He decides she will be first after all.

And slowly let's himself be revealed to her.

She stares at him, perched on Hopper's shoulders, coiled around his head, twisting his neck unnaturally to whisper spitefully into the man's ear.

Hopper rubs at his neck.

Billy makes sure to catch Max's gaze, lets her see his form morphing, slowly rotting to match that of his corpse, blood dripping from his mouth down onto Hopper's shoulder, milky eyes staring at her with all the hatred she left him to stew in, boiled down to a lava-like sludge in the pit of his soul, about to set hard like glass and shatter just as sharp.

Max gasps a sob.

Billy smiles and lets a few teeth scatter to the floor.

This is where it'll start.

MAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOMMAXNEILSUSANHARRINGTONSINCLAIRHENDERSONWHEELERKARENMOMHOPPER—

They're all going to fucking pay.