#dae writes

Steve turns, about to leave when his eyes catch a singular door at the end of the backroom. Steve walks towards it, and opens the door gingerly. It’s a small office with no windows, papers are strewn around and boxes slashed open.

In the corner of the room, up above a filing cabinet is a pot of orchids. It’s sitting on a small pot, barely clinging to life but there’s flowers to it. There’s only two branches, the rest of them faded into wilted brown. The petals are blue-ish at the bottom, and darker purple at the ends. Steve reaches over for it, and stares at it in fascination.

“Well, you’re coming with me.”

Steve takes a five dollar bill from his pocket and leaves it at the table. Because yes— he has looted so much in the last few weeks— for guns, for food, for clothing— but this is the one thing Steve wanted to pay for.

—

The grave is hidden. They hid it for a reason. Dustin was adamant it’s someplace that couldn’t be found by people, but the people of Hawkins are two things: close-minded and relentless and somehow, they still found it.

Steve stares at the red paint— blood— whatever it is they used to write atrocious things at Eddie’s headstone this time. Steve doesn’t speak, just falls to his knees and starts scrubbing. Joyce taught him how to clean her fridge years ago when they put the dead demodog in her fridge and Steve is still using that technique to this day.

He scrubs as hard as he can until the water in the bucket is tinted brown and dirt. He tries not to think of the fact that it’s the same color when he was washing his hands after that night, after he didn’t let them leave Eddie’s body in the upside down.

When he finishes, Steve stands up and dusts his jeans off. His knees creaks and his back ache.

Steve never says anything. When he visits Eddie, he starts scrubbing whatever is written in the stone, he stares and then he goes home. Always unable to say anything. Like if he acknowledged it and the grave doesn’t speak back, Steve will finally realize that Eddie truly is gone.

He stares at the pot of orchids he bought. They’re bright in contrast to the headstone and plot. Before he can think twice, Steve crouches down, snapping one of the two stems and putting the stem just below the headstone. He takes the pot back and stares at the headstone once again.

Steve takes a deep breath. He knows he needs to go home soon. Robin would wake up and panic if she realizes he’s not home. His arms clutch on the pot on his hands.

When he finally speaks, his voice is scratchy and unsure.

“You were gone so fast.” Steve says, to no one in particular. It bounces off the trees and fades into the quiet of the night.

There’s a vest hanging on the back of his door, a ring on his night stand, a newly stolen tape of Metallica in his walkman. Robin notices things, but has never said anything. Just holds on to him tighter and gives him a sad smile.

Steve knows he’s never said it out loud. Never even let himself think of it too much. But tomorrow, Steve might die. He doesn’t know where anyone goes after death, he doesn’t even know if he believes in heaven. But if somehow, it’s someplace he never gets to talk to people again, Steve doesn’t want things left unsaid. He doesn’t wanna go with words lodged in his throat.

“You were here one moment then you were gone so— so fast, Munson.” Steve repeats, his voice cracking as he feels the lump grow on his throat.

Steve thinks of him. Thinks of Eddie. Thinks of the bright, brown eyes, the long, messy hair, thinks of the dimpled smile.

He thinks specifically of that one moment after they went to War Zone, and Nancy and Eddie switched seats. Eddie talks about the kids, and high school, and how he was so wrong. Steve remembers the afternoon sunlight, bathing Eddie into a hue of orange in a way that made Steve’s stomach twist and curl, his hair fluttering against the wind as he says, “You’re okay, Harrington.”

Steve stares at the unmoving, lifeless headstone and speaks the truth into the world.

“I haven’t even loved you yet.”

Steve tries to say more, knows there’s more things pressing on his chest. But nothing else comes out, because what else can you say? What else can you do when the person you’re talking to is six inches into the ground?

So Steve backs away, goes home and fights some monsters. Somehow, he survives. He lives his life. Day by day, but living.

And everyday since that night, Steve waters the singular pot of orchid sitting in his and Robin’s kitchen window sill. Steve talks to it, waters it, cares for it. It survives for another five years.

Dustin never says anything, but knows it’s been Steve.

There’s always one singular stem of orchid in Eddie’s grave.

‘Before?’

Not understanding the comparison, they sit alone with the word and it’s implications. More colors spring forth to their eyes, unbidden. A lone figure on a hill, his back to a ruined land. Red and grey and black. The gold-tinted-orange of a dying sun, bleeding out over the empty horizon.

A vast expanse of dying grass, crowned with innumerable gravestones. Grey earth, grey sky, grey stone. An aftermath, a finale. A beginning. A single swatch of green, kneeling before a headstone. Life among death.

A hole in a gnarled tree, leading down, down, into the recesses of the world, swallowing life and soul and self.

A call.

A name.

A word.

Link.

The connection, the void.

Everything and nothing.

The colors swirl before their eyes in an infinite flash of space and time.

THUD.

Memories? Visions? They try to close their eyes against the current of impressions and find them to be already closed.

THUD.

Mind racing, as if fighting through the muddy currents of a storm-bloated river. They can’t understand. Thoughts begin to feel impossible. Even the whirling forms within their mind’s eye start to close in on them, oppressive and threatening. Moving so quickly that the sound deafens their ears, crushing the blunt silence with an overwhelming pressure.

They crack open their eyes and find no relief in the cold darkness that envelops them, somehow moving even faster than the nauseating colors that threatened their closed eyes moments previously.

THUD.

THUD.

Thud.

Thoughts begin to slow, finally finding relief in the void beyond cognition. The intangible shapes and patterns flow languidly now, a comforting caress to replace the constant barrage on the senses. Blue. Like the shallows of a river that stretches to the horizon, through which can be seen the blue sky above, falling off into infinity. Above and below. An all encompassing finality to contain the world. Blue and green and the serenity of the day’s end.

Gradually, they become aware of a clenched fist repeatedly making contact with a thick pane of glass in front of them.

Thud.

A hand. An owner. Belonging. An emptiness to once again overtake the soul, blotting out the essence of the previous inhabitant to make way for new images to stamp their impressions on its walls.

Confinement.

A separation in the everything.

The e v e r y t h i n g

thud.

n e v. e r e n d. i. n g

thud.

thud.

thud

The quieting pulses are forced to one final crescendo as the hand, unbidden, makes a last desparate strike against the unmoving surface, shattering the barrier of the world.

Heavy glass bursts outward from the threshold along with a surge of viscous liquid, pouring out toward the ground; the draining substance revealing a limp, convulsing pile of limbs and torso, frantically coughing up fluids from their burning lungs. The sound of draining pressure coincides with the roaring in their ears and the desperate cacophony of retching and wheezing before falling uncomfortably silent; the only sound the steady ooze of solution falling to the ground far below in steady droplets. Drip. Drip. The solitary rhythm of measured time.

A heartbeat passes and they stir, blue eyes opening slowly as if wading through still water. Weakly, they try to raise their head to the glow of intense light radiating from above; their muscles strain tensely before falling limp again, exhausted.

Trapped.

The walls seem to close in again, threatening their inhabitant once more with darkness and manic imagery that still flashes before them when they close their eyes to blink. Forcing limbs to move, straining for something, anything but the paralyzing numbness that binds them. One motion at a time; but their muscles won’t obey, their mind won’t respond. Pain. Stagnation.

A hand passes through the right side of the eyes’ range of vision. Slender, pale fingers to match the hand from earlier.

Their own hand.

Panic sets in amid a tangle of flailing limbs.

Coughing, gasping for air, the pallid figure claws against the side of the cramped enclosure, hands scrabbling to find purchase on the smooth interior. Shaky fingers finally make contact with the shattered remnants of a glass wall in the side of the tank and grip weakly to the edge of the hole in the room, still dripping a slow current of colorless liquid onto the empty stone floor far below. In between ragged breaths, they start to pull themself desperately toward the edge of the enclosure. Muscles quivering from disuse, chest heaving from exertion. With a final effort, their body clears the opening and slides down to the floor below, landing with a quiet splash that shatters the silence in the cavernous chamber beyond the broken tank.

He lay unmoving for a moment, save for another round of violent coughing.

It takes everything they have to lift their shoulders off the floor, still-bowed head following suit. Hunched over, their weight barely supported by quivering arms. They try to lift their gaze and immediately retch again, a repulsive mix of bile and clear fluid spilling over the exposed skin of their legs and onto the panels of the already wet floor beneath them.

Bony fingers clutch at an emaciated throat.

Can’t—

The room spins and they fall the short distance to the floor.

Unconscious.

Unmoving.

Sodden, pale hair clinging to a thin frame. Skin, and bone, and earth. A birth or a battlefield.

The last gasps of echoing sound die alone in the vast recesses of that empty room, smothered by the endless labyrinth of tubes across the vast ceiling.

***

He woke.

A thick darkness suffuses the room, broken only by the cold blue light flickering through the thick haze that obscures the edges of their vision. The trembling figure pushes himself up on weak arms, bleary eyes surveying the landscape before them. Fallen pillars on the ground, crumbled beyond recognition until they snaked across the cold stone terrain and beyond to the edges of the horizon, starlight glinting off them in irregular patches. Beyond, small shapes protrude from the ground, obscured by fog and distance. Shrines? Homes? Some even show a faint glow of light that cuts through the mist.

Their head spins.

Blue eyes hazily follow the swirling patterns from the base of a row of short pillars up to the top where they meet the sky, seamlessly melding into the azure heavens.

An endless expanse of sky and clouds, above and below. All encompassing. Lightning without rain.

With effort, he directs his gaze to the pinnacle of the sky.

Six identical moons above, surrounded by a myriad of stars, trailing constellations back down towards the earth. Blue. The blue of the night sky, whose weakly blinking stars, too, are never strong enough to illuminate the land below. The blue of the deep ocean, where forgotten kingdoms sleep in disrepair, the same as the dilapidated landscape they see before them. Remnants of a broken empire. An unnatural blue, made worldly only by age and disuse.

Ages of….

A heavy weight overwhelms them, as centuries of water carving deep fissures through mountains; and they collapse to the ground, exhaustion reclaiming its hold on the figure once more. Cold. The void of the cracked tile below shoves daggers into their skin, leeching what little strength they had and reducing them to a crumpled heap on the frigid stone floor; the repetition of choppy, shallow breaths the only sign of life.

Another wasteland, empty as before, piercing white. Scattered glass upon a vast field. The cracks between lead down, down into the black oblivion of eternity, where all things are null, as time itself, as life, as identity, as color; and above, the frozen world. Colorless, unbroken.

Silent.

Melancholy; the soul of the interloper. Convergence. Concurrence.

Passed beyond knowing.

A lone tree in a grassy field.

Faces obscured behind titles and grand deeds.

Stories.

Legends.

“The face in the glass… is that the real you?”

They felt they should know… something. A past, a future. An identity. Surely they’d had one before?

…Before?

It’s empty; like walking a corridor lined with doors made of possibility that turn to dust at the moment of approach. A glass room bounded by mirrors and crystal vases filled with water. Tangible but hollow. Repeating in on itself with every refraction until the thin lines of light and shadow mean nothing to the perception of an observer.

Connections.

Thoughts.

Disorientation as one thought reflects back above the others.

Resonance.

The impression of a name. Link.

They felt sick again, and then they felt nothing.

***

The stars still shine above when they wake, crowned by those too-consistent moons. Not moons and stars, Link realizes as their vision steadily begins to clear. Too perfect to be….

Gingerly, they try to uncurl themself from their position on the floor and find that their body does work, though made none the easier by their atrophied muscles. He stretches out a trembling hand, placing it against the smooth floor and pushing himself upright. The air smells stale and slightly damp as Link looks around, cataloguing the shapes that their eyes hadn’t been able to make out before.

Strange figures in the fog solidify themselves into derelict machinery.

The walls are lined with rounded devices that give way to wide panels above, decorated with carved patterns of lines and circles evoking myriad constellations in a night sky; the points of the stars glowing faintly with ethereal blue light. Most of the light in the room, however, comes from the six identical skylights crowning the apex of the chamber. The “moons” Link had noticed previously. The large round lights form a circular pattern around the top of a singular central pillar in the room. A pillar which was not, in fact, a pillar; but the shaft of the massive incubation tank that, Link realizes with growing horror, they themself had occupied until just recently.

With difficulty, he shifts his position from where he sat on the floor, gradually turning around until he sits fully facing the massive apparatus. It is made of a hard material, more akin to stone than metal, and cool to the touch; an ominous column that bows out as it reaches the floor to make room for the cavernous space inside like a gaping maw. Link shivers as they reach out their hand to place it on the raised pattern of the tank, rough and almost porous in contrast with the sleek underlayer. It reminds him of a stomach, he thinks, or perhaps a tangled mass of intestines, with its maze of uneven lines twisting and curling in on themselves. They feel vaguely sick again but curiosity forces them to keep looking anyway, noting that the center of each circle in the pattern houses a window of varying sizes, some seeming to lead to other tanks, adjacent to the main belly but many times smaller in size. Empty.

Empty, too, is the largest chamber of the incubation tank, looming above their thin frame like a drooling mouth, with shards of shattered glass forming the teeth at the edges of the main window. Link hasn’t the strength to stand and look inside. He doesn’t think he could stomach the sight anyways; flashbacks to the manic fervor of trying to escape already rising to the surface of his memory.

Their eyes drift instead to the base of the structure, where thick tubes as wide as Link’s own torso run out towards the edges of the walls, joining with other machines and even to the wall itself. The tubes glow faintly where patches of the outer material has peeled away to display the translucent membrane beneath. It’s apparent that they would have been used to transport the clear liquid into, or out of, the massive cistern. There’s no current running in either direction, but Link wonders if they house the vile solution even now. They force themself to look away, swallowing hard.

From his vantage point in roughly the center of the stone floor, Link can make out precious little else about the darkened room. More tubes cross the ceiling, traveling again the distance between the walls and the central pillar and meeting it, Link presumes, at the top; though they aren’t going to risk passing out again to crane their head to see. More strange shaped rubble gathered around the corners of the room. Link can’t even begin to guess its source, as none of the constructs nearby seem to be crumbling or missing pieces.

Their wandering gaze solidifies on an incongruous shape sitting amongst the wreckage. Curious, and without any other course of action, they begin to crawl towards it.

The object in question reveals itself to be a small ring about the size of the palm of their hand. It appears to have once been a perfect circle, adorned in symmetry with the same constellation pattern as the walls of the cavernous room; now sharing in its fate. Broken and discarded, dust and other refuse clogging the fine grooves in its surface. A crack runs across the rounded surface, culminating in a sizeable chip missing from one side.

Link picks up the ring with a trembling hand, fumbling it once before gaining a steadier grip. It’s made of a similar material to the tank in the center of the room, but judging by its size must have once been a piece of something larger.

The image sticks in their mind as they continue to scan the room for anomalies among the mess of machines and wires running the perimeter of the vast space. A forgotten tool lying alone in the wreckage of a desolate land, buried with the past.

The parallels to his own situation seem significant somehow.

He finds his fingers curling around the ring instinctively, though his eyes now look past it, focusing on a dark gap in between some of the panels on the wall to his left.

The exit.

Or so he hopes. A brief flash of fear crosses Link’s mind, imagining a passageway closed off with more of the rubble before him. Trapped. Apprehension washes over him, imagining the suffocating embrace of the water inside the tenebrous vessel. Why was he even here? Alone? The rest of the room is empty, the machines deteriorating and, as far as Link can tell, inactive. Is there more to this place? The sheer number of control units along the walls suggest there should have been a sizable number of people to operate the facility. His mind balks at the implications of his solitary confinement to this place. The sole inhabitant of the tank, the sole inhabitant of the room. How long..? Memories of the interior of the tank are replaced by thoughts of a sealed chamber, no doors to be found on the smooth interior; or a narrow exit blocked by collapsed rubble. His breath quickens and new images flash before his mind. Bloody fingernails capping raw fingers, scrabbling at the walls, bruised and bloodied knuckles; and still the harsh, unmoving stone of the enclosure, one person unable to do what only time can accomplish, unable to tear down the boundaries, to free themself. An agonizing death by starvation. He doesn’t want to think about the alternative.

It’s too much.

He tries to fight through the rising alarm, shoving it down to the pit of his stomach along with his nausea. Deep breaths. Clenching his fist further, driving nails and the imprint of a stone circle into the palm of their hand. Forcing themself to lift their gaze once more to their destination.

Link shakes their head to clear it and immediately regrets it, the throbbing in his head only intensifying with the movement. I need to leave this place.

***

The hallways beyond the central tank chamber are more of the same in appearance. The now-familiar constellation pattern decorates the upper part of the walls, while the lower portion is tessellated with the twisting pattern of curved lines in chunky relief, boundaried by a single line of the same raised, rough material running unbroken down the length of the hallway. It is this conformation that Link clings to as they make their way down the dim corridor, leaning their weight on the wall as they half stumble, half pull themselves along the wall with shaky arms; making up the difference for their protesting legs. It’s the fourth hallway like this they’ve encountered, though there had been only one exit from the incubation chamber. The path had split often, at first, and he had needed to retread the same paths multiple times in places as he met with many dead ends in the labyrinthine halls. They had passed other compartments on their quest to find the exit; small rooms bare except for a couple sparse beds with thin shelves jutting from the walls beside them. An impossibly tall chamber with a vaulted roof that seemed meant for storage, but held nothing but dilapidated shelves and crumbled debris. A locked door at the end of an agonizingly long hallway for which Link did not have the key, nor the strength to try to open. They fervently hoped it didn’t lead to the exit. The door had felt cool to the touch, but Link had been forced to abandon it to continue his search down the previous passageways.

This whole place is abandoned.

Though he knew it already to be true; the deafening silence betrayed no signs of life. Link’s own shuffling footsteps, quiet though they are, are the lone sound in the eerie gloom.

He feels more lucid, now, though his head still pounds and his vision still swims even from this slow movement down the corridor. They try to recall anything about themself, but find nothing to betray their past in their memories. Link. He feels that he ought to know something about the owner of that name. About himself. But any attempts to recollect further are met with failure and the feeling of trying to lift water through a sieve. Meaningless, obviously, but they are far too exhausted to feel frustration. And they can feel that their body will need to eat soon, even through the lightheadedness and nausea that still blanket them like thick fog.

A blue aura ahead signals the room at the end of the hallway; too far to make out, but steadily coming into view. Narrow panels hang along the walls, framing the doorway as Link draws near. Smooth and blank, but placed as though a sign to indicate the path. It would have seemed significant if not for the fact that every door prior had also been marked in a similar manner. Link’s fingers catch on the edge of a panel and they stumble, crumpling to the ground as they enter the room at last.

Not the exit.

But this room was different to the others they had encountered previously. Link swallows bile as he raises his head from the floor, dizziness returning in full force while they reposition their legs beneath them and reach for the edge of a low shelf to pull themself to their feet. Rows of glass tanks line the walls at the edges of the room, more uniform by far than the singular pillar shaped tank in the chamber Link had awoken in, with its divots and knobby carvings surrounding uneven windows. These seem almost sterile by comparison, though each window was still rimmed by twisting patterns of stone. They had no apparent function, as they lacked the tubes that had connected the larger tank to the machinery and walls of the huge cavern. There also didn’t seem to be anything inside. It was hard to make out whether the clear liquid contained within differentiated from tank to tank, and even that would have been to difficult to see if some of the tanks had not been cracked and partially drained. A high table spanned the length of most of the chamber, rising up from the ground like a solid plinth.

Having regained his footing, Link starts once more down the rectangular room, supporting his balance on the intermittent tables or walls. They are struck once again by the sheer hollowness of the place; the tables, the shelves, the jars embedded in the walls- even the room itself, he realizes, lacks the network of tubes crossing the ceiling that had so defined other rooms in the labyrinth. It isn’t so much that the room is empty so much as… devoid of habitation? A strange… desolation that they hadn’t registered until now, even despite the layers of dust that coat every surface. He passes a small, round alcove in the side of the wall, housing yet another barren container, this one free standing but otherwise matching the others in the room; the only thing setting it apart being the myriad “arms” that protrude from all sides, each containing a channel that points toward the central chamber.

Trying to combine something? It looks like it was built to fit this space. Or the other way around…. Link shudders again, contemplating the purpose of his presence in this place.

It’s a short enough distance to the other end of the vault, but it takes them several more agonizing minutes to cross the expanse. Step by step, feeling the omniscient gaze of the empty tanks on his back. his legs refuse to increase pace, however; continuing his uneven gait towards the far door, and at last steps into the small antechamber beyond.

Carvings in twisted stone relief completely cover the interior of the round room, only serving to highlight the closed door opposite him. He’s reminded once more of the bowels of a giant beast, the writhing pattern enclosing him, constricted; waiting to be digested. It’s cramped and oppressive compared to the previous rooms, and Link feels the walls start to close in around them. Reliving. Clenching his fist on the circular charm he had picked up from the floor earlier, he focuses on the sole thing keeping him in the room. Fresh air. It creeps in from the edges of the door, fighting a losing battle with the dank, musty scents of the broken down facility. Giving its life to promise freedom to another.

The door doesn’t budge when Link turns the handle so they throw their weight against it clumsily, falling upon the access with a dull thud. They are forced to repeat the action again and again before the door relinquishes its hold and creaks open, heavy stone scraping aside as Link slides to his knees. He is moving forward again almost instantly despite his exhaustion, spurred on by the faint breeze he feels across his skin.

It’s the longest hallway he’s encountered so far. Not even a pinprick of light can be seen ahead; the corners of the wall all converging to a single point in the darkness. The tunnel ascends at a gentle slope that wears on his legs after just a few minutes of walking, though Link already uses the wall to support their weight. they long to sink to the floor and rest, to give in to the deep exhaustion that has plagued them since they awoke. His throbbing head is at odds with the gnawing pangs of his stomach. He feels as though he has been wandering the deserted passages for hours, days. Sense of time degraded and fractured beyond recognition. If he could see what his state of mind looked like, he imagines it would be like the stone lines on the wall. Twisting, sinuous, ever moving forwards but slowly, painfully. Doubling back or circling around before continuing on. None of them connected. Fragmented. His breathing is getting heavy, and they can tell they’re moving slower than before, their movements less coordinated. If he stops walking now, the floor will swallow him whole. Returned to the void.

He walks on.

The dragging of footsteps is joined at last in its lone refrain, accompanied at last by the soft sound of a wayward breeze.

Blue eyes raise once more toward the outlet of the passage, confusion registering with the recognition of an inky chasm past the walls. Startled, their mind summons once more an image of cramped rooms and overbearing machinery waiting beyond, wandering forever; before the solution snaps them back to sentience.

Oh.

It’s nighttime.

Footsteps quicken and they stumble the last few steps toward the exit, relinquishing his grip on the wall as he rushes down the corridor. Frantic. Wind whipping through the tangle of long hair at their back and rushing through their ears, deafening. The slapping of feet on stone is replaced at once with the dry rustling of grass, and he falls to his knees as the world opens up before him at last; vast forest rising up around him as he emerges from the cavernous hole in the ground, long overgrown with flowering vines that herald the changing of an era.

Link feels as though they kneel before the precipice of a dreamscape.

Thick forest, the vast swath of trees forming columns under a vaulted ceiling of branches, starlight pooling off the leaves and filling the cool night air with energy. An infinite expanse of world surrounding. The ethereal made manifest amid the verdant sanctum of possibility.

Freedom.