yun

If you still even remember that name. Try, try to remember.

Life has been so unfair to you.

I know what it is what you have been trying so desperately to do. Forget the bad, remember the good. Deep inside your darkened heart, a young boy bleeds vivid red. The bullet wound on your palm is still raw and open and hurting and it had never stopped.

Try to remember. March twenty-second. Your sixth birthday, the last before you lost yourself: racing your best friend down the asphalt road, blowing candles off a too-sweet cake. This is why you’d chosen Will Byers. To remember. His memories morph into yours, his body a reminder of what your hollow shell had once been. You chose him and you hurt him, Henry. You are selfish, you are cruel, you are pathetic. Will Byers will one day break free and you will let him.

Try to remember. No, not the first time It consumed (the stray cat you'd feed your leftovers to, eyes gauged and whimpering) and no, not the last time (Max Mayfield, eyes gauged and begging). Try to remember. Eleven—Jane. You were afraid she'd end up just like you, weren't you? Your blood in her veins, energy thrumming at her fingertips. You're not the monster. But she isn't like you. Your blood in her veins yet she never succumbs. Your blood in her veins yet she is nothing like you.

Try to remember. Mother and Father around the dinner table, hands held in prayer. Holly Wheeler is a spitting image of your sister. Alice Creel is a faraway dream. He was only trying to help. Stuck inside a body on puppet strings, you hide and you cower but you send her a tape through the mail. A song, a way out.

Try to remember. November sixth. The day it started. The day it ends. Half-way across the country, a woman crouches by her mother’s bedside. She sings a drifting song and thinks of you, Henry. I'm not afraid. She sings a drifting song and reads headlines of the cursed town she'd escaped a lifetime ago. I'm not afraid. She sings because Patty Newby has never forgotten.

Try to remember. But you don't know where you end and It begins. The crawling mass of darkness inside your veins. It wasn't your fault. You accept the cruelty because you deserve it. You were just a kid. And you do. There is no running away, not after everything.

Try to remember. You call off the soldiers, severe the monsters until the land is barren. The cold of the axe lands on the bare of your neck and it is relief you feel when your darkened heart stops its bleeding.

They could certainly have been siblings. They could have been twins. 

And Will Byers, himself—you’ve heard of him, surely—incredible artist, exhibitions all across the country. People lined up for hours to see them, you know. Anyway. It took him long for him to forget. And thank god he took his sweet time or they would have surely missed each other. They’d been immortalising each other into art on two ends of the country for five years before someone had the decency to call them out on it. 

No, I don’t remember who—a mutual friend, maybe? Max? Lucas or Dustin or something or the other—wait, hold on, maybe it wasn’t someone from their childhood after all. Oh, yes, for Mike it was a co-worker he’d met two years after the accident and for Will it’s a classmate, a roommate from art school—because the world is bigger than just Hawkins now. The world is so much bigger than Hawkins now. 

I saw them—I think last year? Two years ago? No, at Vick’s wedding. Yeah, Vick got finally got married. Robin’s always going to be my favourite, she’s such a joy to be around. Nancy… never got married I don’t think. Travelling around the country—no, just last month she’d flew to Brazil or something or the other—no, she’s a journalist now, she’s gone for some journalism stuff. Oh, right, Jonathan’s movie won at some film festival last year, and something came up so I didn’t go but I heard there was a party and everything. Steve was there, yeah. He’d moved briefly to NYC but he’d moved back a couple of years ago, I think. Too fond of this place.  

Oh, I hardly hear from Dustin. He’s always at work, or writing papers, or doing some experiment he isn’t allowed to tell. You know how it is. But he did say that he was working on some particle accelerator last I heard, so. Maybe. Lucas and Max? They’re still teaching, of course. Oh, didn’t their eldest just graduate? Oh, I saw the pictures, she’s beautiful. You know I practically watched her grow up. 

And Jane—Jane. Well, she’s in somewhere in Iceland now, but a few years back she’d been travelling around the world. Discovering the world, discovering who she wanted to become. She never really got to do that, you know, around here? And she’s got her own little cat now, last I heard—a cat with a name that isn’t a number. She’s got her own style now, her signature hairdo—and it’s good, I wish you could see. I’m really happy for her. I really am.