#plot wise and like

what if billy’s first victim hadn’t been heather? what if he hadn’t gone to work? what if, instead, billy stayed home. he mentions he’d tried to resist the flayer, maybe he stays home to do that. he doesn’t want to go to work, be around people, not with all these violent thoughts he’s been having.

every hour it gets harder to resist the control.

so, yeah, he stays home. he takes more ice baths, strips down with his fan on high, and tries to fight the flayer off.

but then neil hargrove comes home.

he comes home, and hears his son rustling around the house rather than at his job where he's supposed to be. where he promised to be, five days a week, to pay for his college in the fall. or maybe to pay rent to neil since he’s eighteen and graduated. who knows. but, essentially, billy is not doing what neil thinks he should be doing.

and that pisses neil off, so.

so billy’s on his bed in his underwear, face dewy from sweat, eyes clenched shut, and hands fisting the covers as he mentally fights the mind flayer off. he’s exhausted, and hot, and in so much pain. he doesn’t hear neil coming because he’s too distracted, because the flayer won’t let him. 

he’s startled when neil throws open his door. when it bangs into the wall and makes a sound loud enough to ring in his ears. that’s the first straw.

it’s followed by neil yelling that loud and deep military type yell he always brings out when someones going to get hit. billy, who has already been fighting the flayer off, staring at someone who he knows is going to inflict even more pain onto him.

it’d be easy the mind flayer could whisper. neil’s still yelling, billy sees flecks of spit fly forward. they hit his cheek but he doesn’t even blink. i can stop him. i can protect you. and billy’s so tired.

let me help you.

“are you listening to me, boy? billy!”

let me make you strong.

and for the briefest moment, billy breaks. the smallest, most fragile moment. a blimp in time barely longer than a blink. billy stops fighting. billy who’s in agony. who’s exhausted. who's terrified of his father. who hates his father. his father isn’t lonely like mrs. wheeler. or kind to him like eleven. his father is a monster.

and who better to take on a monster than another monster?

but that second is all it takes. one minute he’s there and the next he feels nothing. he feels dark. he is dark. he sees nothing but black and, distantly the image of the real world. like he’s there, watching, but not participating. like he’s trying to watch tv from another room a football field’s length away.

he watches himself fight back. watches him win, wiping away a bloody nose as he drags his father’s unconscious body down the hallway and out the front door, to the trunk of his car. he lays him down at the monster’s feet, and watches as he wiggles back and forth, now awake, trying to break free of his bindings but too slow and sluggish to do much of anything.  for a moment, billy almost moves to comfort him. he feels like he could.