The human embodiment of a sigh

---

Eddie dies in the Upside Down and no one comes to save him. But when a demo-bat crawls inside his corpse and makes itself at home, Eddie comes back to life in the worst way he could imagine…

---

The clouds were dark things, heaving and heavy, pregnant with a crackling of blood-red electricity. The ground had opened wide and swallowed the world, and Eddie's corpse was looking up with clouded eyes as the lightning flashed and struck up above.

It was cold. Everything was, since the moment Eddie first took the plunge into the depths of that lake and re-emerged into this twisted dimension. Everything became even colder still when his heart ceased to beat and the blood running through him stilled, then cooled, then coagulated.

Now he was part of that cold—stranded, waiting to rot.

Dustin had been there with him, hadn't he? The corpse could recall his tear-stained face hovering above it as Dustin held and pleaded and cried, for all the good that had done. It was alone. A corpse below a storm.

Those things lost interest at some point. Maybe when the others succeeded, if he was being optimistic. Maybe just when the fun of the kill was over, if he wasn't.

Maybe they were all simply dead bodies now, watching as that cursed storm brewed and brewed overhead.

The corpse couldn't see, exactly. It was dead. But there was… something to its vision. A swirl of dark, a flashing of red, the impression of an image. And then, all of a sudden, there was a shadow in the centre of it all, haloed by that crackling red and rippling cloud.

It drew in close, close enough that the corpse almost expected it to come into focus. Even though it couldn't. Its eyes were clouded and pale, utterly incapable of focusing.

But the creature was there. It swallowed up the corpse's almost-vision as it inched closer and closer and—

It was in his mouth.

If the corpse could feel shock or disgust, that's probably what it would have been feeling as that– that thing crawled and slithered its way past teeth, along its tongue, and deep into its oesophagus. The corpse would have gagged and choked and scrabbled numb fingers uselessly against the slimy body of the thing. And it would have been futile: dead muscle has no strength to it. It would have cried and begged and longed to not feel as the creature tore through muscle and into his chest. Its hands would have curled around the thing's writhing tail and tugged and tugged and tugged to dislodge it, to get it out of him!

But a corpse was a corpse. It didn't do a thing. After agonising minutes of failing to choke, the thing was entirely inside of him.

The corpse of Eddie lay still, all but for the squirming, shuddering movement of the beast in its belly. It would eat his corpse from the inside out, scavenging dead flesh as it rotted from bone. At least then he wouldn't be stuck here, motionless and numb and not truly experiencing anything.

The storm seemed to settle. The flashes of red grew less frequent, and then stopped altogether. It was quiet, and with that came a nothingness which ate at the edges of Eddie's soul.

Then, with a writhing creature pressing up against his heart, Eddie Munson came back to life with an agonised howl.

—

Being like this hurt. His body was dead; there was something living inside his chest; and, worst of all, he was utterly alone.

Oh, he tried to find the others. On trembling legs, muscles half-locked from the chill and the early hints of rigour, he wandered. Wandered the dead, twisted world of the Upside Down. To his trailer—torn open, melted apart, untouchable—to Vecna's house—empty, abandoned, scorched—to the lake where he first came here—hollow… stretching on forever… a loneliness laid bare before him.

There was no one.

At first, he didn't wanted to believe it. Dustin had been there. He'd been there when Eddie died. He'd held him and pleaded and promised to get him out of there. Surely Dustin wouldn't have just abandoned him… Surely everyone wouldn't have surrendered him to rot away, a world apart from his uncle who wouldn't ever be able to bury him.

There was a faint flow in the hollow of the empty lake. The same glow that beckoned him to the cracks and crevices now marring this facsimile of Hawkins. He crouched down, body aching in a strange way that defied description, and peered inside. The glow throbbed along with the twitching of the creature in his chest.

The one he needed out, the one killing him all over again, squirming and flapping and clawing at his insides.

Whatever was beyond had been hastily covered over… Either that or Eddie had been dead for much longer than he realised. Reaching through with pale, trembling fingers he was met only with the unyielding press of metal on the other side of that slimy, glowing membrane.

There was little choice, now, but to wait. Dustin would be back for him. Or maybe Robin and Steve. Someone. Someone would be back for him. They wouldn't leave him here. They wouldn't.

For a long time—hours? days? weeks?—he sat where they left him, trying to remember how it felt to breathe without a pressure in his chest, without something living there. Cross-legged and alone in the middle of the road, eyes screwed shut as if he could imagine it away if he only tried hard enough. No matter what, it was always the same when he opened his eyes again.

Whenever he thought that maybe, finally, he was getting used to the feeling of it, whatever it was would squirm and shift. At times, it almost felt like it was rubbing itself up against his spine from the inside. Like it was trying to keep his attention at all times.

Or like it was wriggling its way into position for something.

No one came to save him. The creature pushed harder against his spine.

His body was stiff, slow to respond to the ways he wanted it to move. Rigid. Eventually, he realised that he had never fully warmed back up.

—

Eddie was hungry. Something other than a simple growling in his stomach. No, this hunger was more. It needled its way into his mind, unfulfilled and screeching down his throat with its desperate desire, belonging not to him but the thing inside.

He found things—little things, hardly even mouthfuls—to tide him over. After realising no one would find him before he starved to death, he wandered off and found a vending machine. The entirety of it was overtaken by those awful climbing vines. They twined and gripped around it, each one as thick as his forearm. It didn't seem wise to touch them, but Eddie was starving.

They tore apart easily under his hands; stiff, dead flesh gripping their cold squirming bodies and pulling.

The vending machine's glass was next—that broke easily. It wasn't as if he had the money to pay for anything inside it, not that anyone would even care in this place. Who would he even be robbing? Vecna? Yeah, he wasn't exactly feeling all that torn up.

He ate crouched over his pile of glass shards and packaged snacks. His knees crunched into the glass, sharp edges scraping his skin raw as he gnawed on candy bars and shook stale chips into his waiting mouth.

When the snacks ran out, he turned to the vines. Slippery. Slimy. Cold. They tasted bitter and diseased and Eddie was so very hungry.

That hunger tore at his insides, urged on by the beast inside of him. His insides twisted up with the pain of it; a scraping, squirming pain. He was hollow, emptied out for that thing inside him, making room for its food. And he could feel it. A gnawing that hurt so badly it brought tears to his eyes, even as he raised another vile handful of dripping, dead vine to his lips. A pain so bone-deep he could feel it in his teeth, aching like they were pushing up against each other too tight, making room for his frantic mouthfuls to slide straight down.

Whatever was inside him, his body desperately needed fuel to fight against it. But instead it seemed to channel everything into making this change—into becoming little more than a host for that thing inside—as easy as possible.

He only wished that easy and painless meant the same thing.

—

He was hot. He was so hot. His skin was burning, scorched, turning liquid and melting right off his bones.

It was getting in his eyes. Hot, stinging moisture. Eddie had spent the last few days wishing for moisture, for something to drink. Not like this. Not himself, burning up and clammy and– and–

Feverish. He was feverish. This was a fever.

Eddie laughed into the stale comforter he was laid atop, muffling his voice so that nothing else would hear him. There were things outside. Tall, almost human things plodding around on two legs.

He'd been so happy to see them at first. He thought he'd already given up all hope of being rescued, but even just a glimpse of something human sent his heart rabbiting with a sickening longing.

"Steve," he'd mouthed, so unused to speaking that he couldn't quite get his throat to form the sounds. "Nancy. Robin."

The things had turned to face him, faces peeling open to reveal rows of drooling, razor-sharp teeth.

No. Not human. Not his friends.

Worse than that, Eddie knew those peeling faces. His body shuddered with the memory of those teeth tearing through skin. And then he gagged—the phantom sensation of his throat being invaded, the impression of a slimy body crawling across his tongue.

He couldn't remember getting to this house. All he knew was that one moment he was in the street, hand pressed to his mouth to keep down the bitter rise of bile in his throat… the next he was here, cowering beneath this rusted old bed frame, breaths short and shallow with panic.

He hadn't left since. When he pressed his ear to the door, when he cracked open a window as silently as he could manage, there were still too many strange, unexplainable noises off in the distance.

Instead, he drew the blinds, pilfered any scraps from the kitchen, and set up a fort of old pillows and blankets on the bed. Sheltered. The memory of safety.

When Eddie was small—when Uncle Wayne first took him in, a snivelling brat with skinned knees and a hatred for any type of authority—he used to make forts like those on the sofa bed Wayne let him crash on. It was partially just messing around… But part of him had just needed his own safe space. A way to hide away with his own stale breath, a packet of chips and a book, and if he wasn't going to be given one then he'd have to make do with creating his own. His fortress of safety, reading the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and his party of Dwarven friends.

Before long, Wayne moved himself out of what was once his bedroom and handed it off to Eddie instead. Because maybe Wayne knew, even back then, that Eddie needed somewhere to himself. His own rules and the safety to keep his own belongings.

Safety and stability.

He supposed it made sense that he needed it now. Only this blanket fort didn't offer the same impression of safety. It felt like a remnant of some past life, intangible and out of place.

There wasn't anything safe here; a blanket fort was as good as anything else. So he stayed. Curled up on an old, creaky mattress and burrowed under a pile of pillows and rotting blankets.

Days passed. The storm roiled on outside and Eddie watched it cast flickering shadows onto the bedroom blinds with dispassionate eyes. Peeking out hopelessly from underneath the covers, his stomach roared in desperation for a substantial meal.

The thing inside him thrashed, writhing and rumbling inside the confines of his chest. Maybe it was the fever talking, but Eddie swore it was growling inside of him. Muffled shrieks that fizzled along his nerves and ate at the edges of his mind. Needling along his skin from the inside out.

It was a unique sort of pain.

Maybe he was finally dying. Maybe death had come back for him.

It was overdue, Eddie thought. He'd already been marked for death, maybe from the moment he met Chrissy in those woods. Their fates entwined then and there and both of them were meant to die. Instead, Eddie had been brought back to this. Loneliness and pain and hunger. Always hunger.

It hit him then, mind fogged with sickness and body burning up: it was hungry, too.

The thing inside him, it was starving along with him. Eddie ran out of food two days ago, just before the fever truly sunk in. The last thing he'd choked down was the halloween-sized bag of M&Ms he'd found stashed at the back of a desk drawer. Nothing enough to feed himself, let alone mollify the creature trapped alongside him in Eddie's fear-induced solitude.

Was that the cause of his sickness? It wasn't like he could pry open his ribs to check in on it—probably would be too freaked to look even if he could. For all he knew, it could be dying. And having a dying creature living within you would surely make anyone sick.

Then again, having that thing inside him at all should probably be killing him. Being alive was a miracle. Maybe Eddie should appreciate that more.

He laughed again, pressing the sound into his sweat-soaked pillow. It made his jaw ache, hot pain radiating from the bone at every little movement. The creature shrieked in annoyance as the move jostled its position in Eddie's chest.

Yeah, well, it's not like I invited you in, Eddie thpught viciously, maybe a little delirious too. So forgive me if I'm not exactly a considerate host.

Still, if it was killing him to just wait around here to starve, maybe it was time to bite the bullet and try his luck outside again. Hadn't he died wanting to take more of an active role in his life?

On shaking arms, he heaved himself upright. The motion dislodged the blankets where he had kicked them off down to the end of the bed. With a whump they tumbled into a hapless pile on the ground. For a second, Eddie just stared at them—his destroyed nest of blanketed safety.

It was time to leave ideas like that behind. They had no place in this world.

Walking to the door was hard. Stepping outside was harder. Eddie's body seemed unwilling to stop shuddering in horror; horror of the pain that was it was in, horror at the thing inside him that seemed to wriggle in anticipation at leaving Eddie's nest at last, horror for whatever may still be stalking the streets beyond.

But, it was that or dying of sickness and hunger in a pathetic curled-up pile of blankets. Leaving was the only choice. So, with no small amount of willpower, Eddie forced his aching body over the threshold and out into the Upside Down beyond.

The vines went down easy, as easy as anything that disgusting can go down. Slimy and cold and familiar. Thick and plump with oozing black blood. The next thing he found to force down his throat was much less palatable.

It had been dead for only a short while. The blood pooling around it was dried and flaking, so whatever killed it was probably gone by now, but the meat was fresh.

It took a great deal of strength to rip it from the carcass. Its muscle was thick and corded with strength, even as lean as the creature was, and Eddie's fingers ached from the force of his grip as he held on and tore.

Each strip he pulled free went straight past his lips. Perhaps he should have cooked it—he should have lit a fire and tried to make this putrid flesh at least somewhat easier to consume. Hell, maybe it would have made it safer to consume. Who was to say that eating this thing raw wouldn't poison him? For all Eddie knew there could be some bacteria that thrived on these things…

But he just didn't have the strength. It felt like his body was shutting down around him, slowly but surely. He was in a race against himself to put in more fuel, and it wasn't like the creature in his chest was protesting. If anything, it seemed to settle the moment that bitter meat slid over his tongue.

It was waiting for it, to be able to eat from Eddie's stomach, to satiate itself at last. And Eddie could only manage to comply, tearing piece after piece from the thing to consume.

Despite the toughness of the meat, the way he had to gnaw it apart with his aching teeth just to be able to swallow it, it wasn't long at all before Eddie had eaten the entirety of a rear leg and moved on to its body…

His hands finally slowed. The food hitting his stomach turned him lethargic and heavy.

Each blink he took seemed longer and longer as he scrabbled halfheartedly at the gore before him. Then, before he knew it, he was slumped over the carcass, body worn out past his ability to keep going.

Maybe this would be it; he'd close his eyes and never open them back up, dead to the Upside Down like he was supposed to be from the very start…

—

He woke screaming, searing pain in his jaw and a terrible tearing agony along his back. This time, he didn't have to guess what the thing inside him was doing. He could feel it.

Its wings, thin and bony and deceptively strong, were shredding through the muscle in his back. Squirming and pushing and ripping. Breaking past the muscle between his ribs until they were settled and shuddering from the effort, wings laid just beneath the skin.

Or maybe it was him trembling, his body spasming in the aftershock of pain

He slumped, tension going out of him in a rush as the worst of it stopped. His body hurt all over, but it was duller now. He breathed deeply through his nose, jaw clenched against it all. Then he swallowed, a thick mouthful of his own blood running down his throat.

He must have bit his tongue. He was trying so hard to choke down those involuntary noises; he must have bitten himself without noticing…

But when he soothed his tongue around his mouth he found no wound. Just that same, stubborn ache in his jaw and his gums, throbbing as the tip of his tongue probed around in a meagre self-diagnosis. And then it pricked against something.

Two sharp points on each side of his mouth. His canines, sharpened and vicious. Each one was accompanied by a new, second point. Following it up underneath his lip, he discovered that it had seemingly forced its way out in front. At the root of the tooth was a stinging split in his gums, giving way to the smooth, blood-slick length of fang.

The perfect teeth for tearing apart the monsters around here. The perfect teeth to feed the beast inside of him, the one that seemed to purr in contentment now that it had gorged and evolved. The perfect teeth to make Eddie a monster, too.

He was hungry again. Already. Stomach growling, body shaking with the need of it.

And even still, he couldn't bring himself to swallow another mouthful of the thing beneath him, not if this is what it would do to him. He would sooner starve than take another bite. He would sooner die than relinquish what little of his old self he still had.

So he pushed himself back up onto shaking feet… and wandered. The cold of the Upside Down rushed in to wrap around him like a second skin.

Worst of all, he was starting to get used to it.

—

Before, when he still held out some hope for rescue, Eddie didn't wander out quite this far.

Maybe it was because he was scared, maybe because he wanted to stay where someone might expect to look for him, maybe he just wanted to be near the closest thing to home this damn place held. Either way, it meant that there was much in this place for Eddie to discover now.

The vines were everywhere. Eddie tried not to look at them. He didn't like how they would squirm and shift, almost moving towards him as if seeking him out. And he hated the way his stomach twisted with hunger at the mere sight of them.

They wouldn't be good for him.

They wouldn't be enough, the thing inside for him seemed to think.

He wasn't sure if he actually knew that was what it was thinking, or if he was trying to make a companion of it. He was alone, after all. And, as fucked up as it was, that thing using him for shelter was the closest thing to a companion he'd had for…

It must've been over a month now. Two, even.

He didn't want to be alone anymore.

It was selfish to wish someone else was trapped here with him, twisted in the same way or not, but he did. He wanted companionship more than anything. More than real food, more than fresh water.

Anyone.

It seemed no sooner than he had thought that when a silhouette appeared off in the distance. Whatever it was—and Eddie was wise enough now not to assume it was human—stood on two legs. It span slowly on the spot, observing its surroundings.

That made Eddie wonder.

Could the monsters here, with their awful eyeless faces, see at all? It might just be spinning on the spot to… hear in different directions. Listening out for prey—a role that Eddie himself could fulfil all too easily if he wasn't careful.

But he wanted it to be human. He wanted it to be a person so badly that he couldn't move. That hopeless longing, that desperation, rooted him to the spot. Eyes wide. Staring and praying that, if he looked for long enough, that shape would step forward until he would see clearly that it was another human.

Eddie imagined a shocked face, taking him in for a long moment. Lips parting to whisper the words 'we came for you' 'we thought you were dead' 'we'll save you now'. In Eddie's imagination they would be flushed with emotion, choked by tears and so relieved to find him almost in one piece. It would be Steve or Nancy or Dustin or Robin. It would be the police, sent in to save him.

The face that came into view was covered up by a mask. Their suit was green and covered the whole body, and Eddie thought briefly that it was probably zipped up so tight, encasing every inch of skin, to keep them warm. Because they were human.

He slumped to the ground, knees colliding with the cracked pavement beneath him, and let them approach. There was nothing he could do but stare with wide eyes, vision blurring with tears of relief, as a person walked up towards him.

"Holy shit," they said, voice muffled through the mask but still so clearly human that Eddie– Eddie couldn't take it anymore.

The tears broke, rushing down his face as he sobbed and sobbed, great heaving things that made his whole body spasm with the force of them. That thing inside him shrieked in warning as it was jostled but Eddie didn't care. He didn't even care when it hooked claws into him from the inside, gripping on to hold itself steady. That pain melted in the warmth of his happiness, dripping away with the tears that collected and fell from his chin.

The person was speaking into a walkie-talkie but Eddie couldn't make out a word. His ears were ringing and his crying was too much, taking up all of the energy he should be using for other things.

Even as a hand grasped him around the bicep and dragged him up to his feet and then along behind the stranger as they walked, he couldn't stop. A litany of thoughtless thanks and pleas and sobs spilled from him as he stumbled blindly along after them.

"Please— Thank you— Alone— Help— Hungry— Please—"

If they said anything back to him, comforting or otherwise, he couldn't make any of it out. He was barely together enough to be aware of them guiding him into the back of a truck, which he climbed into without protest.

"Where—?" he choked out. "Where are—?"

"Calm yourself, everything will be fine."

And for the first time since he woke up down here, Eddie thought that just maybe it would.

—

The room they had him waiting in was small and sterile. It was only furnished with a table and chair pushed up against a wall, and a hanging curtain sectioning off one corner. That was where they directed Eddie to take off his crusting, blood-soaked hellfire shirt and gave him a soft—god, Eddie had almost forgotten what soft felt like—white replacement with the instruction to only put it on 'after examination'.

He didn't protest. He simply slipped behind the partition, wriggled out of his old top, and handed it off to the soldier who was keeping watch over him.

Now he was waiting, sitting on the edge of the lone table in the room. His foot tapped a rapid pace against the linoleum.

His eyes stung, eyelids swollen and sore. But even then, he felt like he could burst out in tears again at any moment. He'd cried all he had to give and there were still more pressing behind his eyes.

If.. If these people could help him… if they could fix him…

He'd be able to see his friends again. He'd see Uncle Wayne again. Hellfire, the band, his family, the ragtag group of heroes who came together to stop Vecna… Eddie wouldn't be alone anymore. In the balm of their company, he'd be able to heal from the horrors he faced here.

When the door opened, a stern-faced woman strode in. At her side was a cowering young man with glasses and a binder of notes.

"How long have you been down here?" she asked without preamble. "Days? Weeks? How did you get past our security?"

"Security?" Eddie croaked.

He couldn't tell whether the way his throat ached and scratched as he forced out each syllable was because of his earlier crying, the after-effects of the creature crawling down it, or just plain disuse.

"Don't play coy with me. We have every open way into this hell dimension guarded twenty-four-seven."

Maybe that's why no one came to rescue him. They didn't forget, they didn't give up hope, they physically couldn't.

"So," the woman pressed on. "You're going to tell me how you got through, and then you're going to tell me how long you were out there so that I know what severity of treatment you're going to require."

"…What day is it today?"

"The twenty-third."

"Of May?"

That would mean he hadn't been here for a full two months. Perhaps it hadn't been quite as bad as he thought, it only felt that way while he was suffering through it.

But the woman shook her head at him slowly, a strange expression on her face.

"August twenty-third."

All the air in Eddie's lungs left him in a sudden whoosh.

August.

Five months.

He'd been stuck here, alone, fighting to stay alive, for nearly five months.

"It was March."

The woman made an impatient sound, but Eddie couldn't find it in himself to care.

Five months of choking down vines. Five months of a creature tearing up his insides. Five months of a changing body, completely rewriting who he was. All that time he had thought, somewhere deep down, that it hadn't been too long, that any day someone would come, that he was keeping his wits about himself and keeping track of the days and…

They left him here, stranded and living-dead, for five months.

"I died here. In March."

Eddie didn't say much more. He gave one-word answers to the odd question, but that was all: Yes, that hurt. No, he wasn't cold anymore. No, he'd not seen a girl in this place.

Yes. He knew he should reasonably be dead.

They poked and prodded and scanned. He laid still and hopeless as they did x-rays and MRI's or whatever the fuck it was that they were doing. The thing in his chest shifted around in worry but he didn't care. Its wings tried frantically to flap where they were trapped beneath the surface of Eddie's skin and he didn't care.

They cut away and took blood and stared. They talked about him like he wasn't there, like he couldn't understand them. And when they said they wanted to test something dangerous, Eddie let them.

When they burnt that thing in the glass cage, it felt like he was being ripped apart all over again, only this time death's arms were cloaked in smouldering phoenix feathers. They singed against his skin as he sank into an embrace that was too cruel to be comforting. The world went black, his body hit the floor. Death would not take him, for he belonged to the cold and the beast in his chest.

—

He woke alone, locked into another small, sterile room. The light of a camera blinked at him with its beady, red eye.

"You can't save me, can you?" he asked it, dispassionate.

It didn't say anything back, just continued to blink at him. Monitoring. Learning about him but not making any move to help him even when he curled in on himself, tucked away in the corner. He grew hungrier and that thing inside him squirmed in anger and everything started to ache fiercely once again.

Laying there, on the floor, with his hand over his abdomen, he could feel it more clearly than ever before. His muscles and organs shifted and pushed under the point where his hand rested. Still moving, still changing, still making room for a monster inside him that Eddie had the sinking feeling was still growing.

People came and went, peering at him through the door's window, stepping inside to draw more blood and take more tests.

"We're working on it," they promised, but Eddie didn't believe them any more.

The door was always locked. He wasn't allowed visitors. The doctors often forgot that he could read the notes they left out about 'awaiting dissection' 'deterioration inevitable'.

He was a cadaver, walking and breathing still but counting down the days until his expiration. The moment he was gone, they would jump at the chance to cut him to pieces, breaking away his ribs to watch in morbid fascination as the monster within chewed him up.

He wondered if they would spit him back out again in the real world or just dump him outside for the monsters to eat as soon as he was done with. Eddie hardly cared either way anymore, even as that thing inside protested wildly.

The hunger got worse, steadily and unavoidably.

"I'm hungry," he would croak out as he was pushed and pulled into position, letting them lift up his shirt to see the raised edges of those wings under the skin on his back. Stethoscopes were pressed, cold and careless, into his abdomen and over his heart.

His brow was slick with sweat, a fever threatening to break.

"Rules are rules," they'd shrug. "You're only allowed the same rations as everyone else staying here."

Except he wasn't staying here, he was imprisoned here. Just because he didn't have the strength of will left to attempt a jailbreak didn't make the fact he was held without any say in the matter any less truthful.

"I wish I could see Uncle Wayne again," he told the thing inside him, staring up at that blinking camera light again, caught in his perpetual stare-off with whoever was watching on the other side. "I miss him."

The thing wriggled and Eddie nodded as if it was responding to him.

"You just wish you'd picked a body that wasn't trapped in here, right? I couldn't take you to Wayne, though. We wouldn't want an Alien situation."

It wriggled again, rumbling along with the growling in his stomach.

"I know," he snapped. "I know! They don't listen. We're starving. I think they might actually be waiting for that to happen."

The latch on the door clicked as it opened but Eddie didn't tear his eyes away from the camera.

"Mr Munson?" the man with the binder squeaked.

The door hadn't shut behind him. Eddie slowly dropped his head to the side to look at him standing there, framed by the open hallway beyond.

It would be so easy to run, but Eddie didn't want to. He was so hungry. He didn't want to find out if he would run to the room where they kept those things in glass cages and find himself, crouched and gorging over them, just like he had with the vending machine so long ago.

Saliva slickened his tongue as he thought about the taste of that disgusting, bitter meat. That would make the pain and the ache go away. It would keep the starvation at bay for just a little longer.

Without realising it, he caressed the tips of his new fangs with the edge of his tongue. They scratched across the muscle in a way that sent shudders through his body and had the beast in his belly jolting with anticipation.

The man took a terrified backwards step, raising his binder between them as if that would be enough to ward Eddie away and keep the beast at bay.

Crosses for vampires, knights for dragons, a binder full of notes for a monster.

"U-Uhm, Mr Munson? Did– Did you hear what I said?"

He came back to himself, blinking harshly through the fog in his mind. His spine straightened, body turning and giving the man his full attention.

He made a vague noise, and the man seemed to interpret that for what it was: Eddie not having a clue what he was supposed to be responding to.

"They want to do another scan. To, uh–" he glanced down at something noted on a sheet of paper. "To see if there's a way they can approach to surgically remove it."

If they were really considering that, surely they would have already tried it by now. It wasn't like Eddie could deny them, though, stuck at their mercy as he was. So he simply nodded, walking forward when instructed and trying to appear unfazed by the armed guard that followed only a few paces behind them.

—

There was no way they found to remove it yet. Supposedly, they were still looking and doing everything in their power to find a solution.

Eddie stole a look at their whiteboard. In a corner was written 'alarming rate of growth' and 'postpone dissection?', which should probably have been concerning. He didn't feel concerned, though. The only thing Eddie was aware of for more than a few minutes at a time was the hunger.

It worsened as they shut him away back in his little room. Days must have passed again, that red light still blinking, camera still observing. Eddie didn't even bother staring back anymore.

It was all he could do to sit upright when someone brought his rations in and left them carefully on their tray, placed on the floor in front of where he sat himself back in his corner. He wasn't sure if it was just his imagination, so desperate to alleviate this constant tearing ache in his stomach that nothing ever seemed like enough to even tide him over anymore, but… as the meals kept coming it seemed they were giving him less and less to sustain himself.

He tried to resign himself to it. After all, he had been anticipating this. They wanted him weak and hungry and dying so that they could strap him down and slice him apart. He knew that, had been expecting it for a while now. But that fact which he had been so willing to accept became harder and harder to deal with as desperation started eating away at his mind.

It wasn't just that thing inside him anymore; Eddie was becoming every bit the feral monster that the creatures of this dimension were supposed to be. He watched with clouded eyes as people came in to place and retrieve his food trays and take his temperature and look at his blood pressure, each time feeling something in him chip away.

His strength of spirit, perhaps. Or his humanity.

And then the dam broke.

The next time that door opened, Eddie was ready. For what, he was hardly sure of himself. All he knew was that his body was tense and prepared, angled towards the path he knew they would take to remove the plastic plate of untouched gruel they'd left for him a few hours ago.

It was a man, hair cropped short, face harsh and irritated to be stuck with grunt work like this. He ducked down to reach towards the tray, fingers outstretched…

Eddie's teeth were in his throat before he could so much as touch it. There wasn't time for him to fight back, Eddie's jaw was already locked. His hands shoved at the man's chest as he dragged his head backwards.

Human flesh tore so much easier than the thick skin of the monster he'd eaten before. It was like plucking cotton candy, easy and sweet. The bitterness of the upside down was gone, too.

The blood was warm as it coated his tongue and dripped down his chin, soothing away something vicious and snarling within him.

He wished he could say he came to his senses then. He wished he could say he was horrified at what he'd done as the man slumped, body going limp and hot crimson blood pooling across the pristine floor of his cell… All he felt, though, looking down at that growing mess, face speckled with another man's blood, was that it was such a waste.

So he dropped to his knees, lowered his face down to the ground, and lapped it up. It was like he was in a trance, called to its warmth and its iron tang.

The blood cooled too fast for his liking. Even as his tongue cleared streaks in the mess on the ground, leaving tracks of pinkened saliva before the red pooled back into the space he left, it was losing its appeal. That's when his eyes lifted back to the body—thick, plump, waiting to be ripped apart and dug into.

He was even reaching for it, crawling forward on hands and knees, when he registered the shrill shriek of alarms blaring and dozens of footsteps rushing towards the room he was in from down the hall. They were coming for him now. That camera blinked at him in horror but he couldn't care anymore.

He'd finally, finally found a way to chase off the hunger. He could feel it abating already, could feel as the thing within him was finally mollified, gulping down that blood that he could still taste between his teeth.

Eddie wasn't ready to let them have him when he'd finally found a way to save himself.

With one last look at the meal wasted on the ground before him, Eddie got to his feet and ran.

A chorus of shouting and gunfire followed him. Bullets tore apart the walls around him as he dashed for cover around a corner. He slammed a door closed behind him, one that had so carelessly been propped open, and brought his knuckles down on the keypad again and again until they bled, hoping blindly that it would slow them in catching up to him.

Then he was running.

It was the first time he exerted this much effort in so long, and it felt good. His muscles were practically humming as he gave in to the animal desire to run and hunt. His lungs puffed air, keeping him going, round corner after corner and through any door he could find.

He didn't know where he was going, exactly, all he knew was that he was getting out. He would save himself.

Panicked shouts came from ahead of him. He dove into the first open door on his left, slamming it closed behind him and ducking beneath the window. He heard as three sets of footsteps ran past and down the hall in the direction he'd come…

They were gone, now, but Eddie couldn't move. He didn't dare breathe.

There, right before his eyes, was the broken corpse of Chrissy Cunningham.

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