- SMOKE AND MIRRORS
in which the town of hawkins, once
shrouded in the mask of triviality and
detachment from manner of
importance, is home to the birth of
transcendent experiments, inquisiti...
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"It's Hawkins. Nothing of any interest really happens in this town."
"Who knows, you might regret saying that down the line."
IF YOU WERE TO ASK MATTHEW AND REBECCA JOSEPHS WHAT THEY EXPECTED ON THE NIGHT OF 1973, THEY WOULD HAVE SAID NOTHING.IT WAS A NORMAL NIGHT.
For them, it was a normal night-as most were. The couple had recently returned from a reunion with a group of friends from their college years, reminiscing over the days of their youths as they sped down dark hulled roads of a small town in Indiana called Hawkins that they had called home for five years. It was a normal night.
But there was nothing normal about that night. Not as the couple stumbled out of the guide of their convertible, eyes cascaded by a farrago of emotions to varied to name as they stared out before them. Caught under the blaze of vibrant fluorescents and deep setting panic derived from near death impact, a girl no older than six stood, shivering and alone.
A complete mystery, said many. With no reports of adolescent disappearances, no rewards and desperate pleas of reunion from families throughout the town, it was safe too say that the girl simply appeared from nowhere. Draped in the cloth accustomed to the nature of hospitals and head shaved, with only a marking to her name. A number to her identity that read, 002. That wasn't enough for the Josephs, who quickly gathered the young child in their clutches and deemed her as their own daughter, safe in their care and to be unaware of any torture her past may have carried. Under the guise of a new identity, Natasha Josephs, that was sure to carry.
HER ARRIVAL WAS HAWKINS FIRST CLUE. A CLUE THAT THEIR SMALL, PERFECT TOWN WASN'T WHAT IT SEEMED. BUT NO ONE LISTENED. SHE WAS JUST AN ANOMALY, SOMETHING SHE HAD ALWAYS BEEN, EVER SINCE SHE WAS BORN.
002, or Two, couldn't forget her past, as much as her parents had hoped for her too. It was too much, it was the only thing she had ever known in the beginning. Most enter the world shrouded in a warm embrace and gentle words. Two only remembers screams and coldness. Those first memories, foggy and desolate, are the least gruesome of her fears, one she wouldn't have bothered to forget nor attempt to remember. It's the other fears-the memories that lurked in the darkness of her mind, plagued with the power similar to one written into the product of her birth, something she knows nothing about.
Even at the age six, Two had understood how the rules worked. Her powers were a tool to be used in the first path of her life, meant to undergo test after test, trial after trial. She was different than the others, her Papa made it clear to tell her so everyday. She had been different then, but no longer wanted it now. There was a reason she had run from the lab, even just barely. A reason for the lies. It was all an escape, an escape from her past and the horrors that followed. With her escape came change, and so, the disappearance of her powers bloomed. Hidden in the darkness of her mind where all bad things go.
