REWRITTING INTO ANOTHER BOOK TO START FRESH!!!
1980'S. HAWKINS , INDIANA .
the most typical, uneventful little town that lives up to all small town stereotypes. at least, until one little boys goes missing. it's safe to say that shit hit the fan...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
WAITING AROUND SUCKED, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOUR FRIENDS WERE POTENTIALLY DYING. So when a car's headlights came into view, Sam perked up. "Sam, incoming." Steve walked to the girl and pulled her off the ground. Johnathan's car sped by, not stopping or slowing down. Then, Hopper's police cruiser skidded to a stop in front of them. "Let's go." The chief ushered the group. "Go, get in." Sam pushed the kids ahead of her and Steve. "Come on, get in!" Lucas agreed. "Let's go, hurry up!" Max jumped to the back. Dustin followed suit quickly. "Samantha, what the hell happened?" Jim pinched his eyebrows together at the girls state. "Long story, Jimmy." Sam sighed, doing her best to climb in quickly. Steve was right behind her, holding his hand lightly on her lower back to spot her. "Alright, let's go!" The Harrington teen glanced back at the lab once he was sat in the front seat. Glancing back at the Henderson girl, Steve sighed in sympathy. "You're knee okay?" He asked, glancing at the makeshift bandage that was soaked through in blood. "I'll be fine." Sam nodded with a thumbs up.
Pulling up to the Byers house, everyone unloaded from the cars and rushed inside. Will was laid out on the sofa, Johnathan and Nancy looking over him. The kids sat at the dinning table in silence while Jim yelled at someone over the phone. Sam was sat on the counter, leaning back against the cabinets with her knee over the sink as she tried to remove the shirt strips used as a cover for her wound. She kept stopping, however, as her pain receptors refused to let her take the bandage off. Steve walked over to her slowly. "I'll help." He told her quietly. Sam just nodded and took her hands away from her bloody knee. "I'm sorry." He told her. "For what?" She managed to get out before Steve yanked the flannel strips away. Sam hissed in pain and took a deep inhale of the cold air. "For that." The Harrington teen grimaced in sympathy. "You're an asshole." Sam winced out. "Yeah, well..." The brunette just shrugged. Grabbing a bottle of rubbing alcohol, he removed the cap. "This is gonna hurt like a bitch." He warned her gently. "I'm a big girl. I can handle it." Sam chuckled softly and grimaced when her knee slipped slightly. "Alright." He shrugged. "On three?" Sam nodded. "Three.." She counted softly. "Two-" Steve poured the liquid over the wound suddenly. Sam yelped out and grasped the teens hand tightly. Everyone nearby turned at the sound and stared at the two worriedly. "What happened to all that confidence?" Steve teased. Sam laughed outright. "Such an asshole." She leaned her head back with a sigh. "Guys, I'm fine." She sent a small smile to those around them. Steve silently grabbed some fresh, real bandages and began wrapping them around her leg. "Is that too tight?" The Harrington teen glanced up quickly. "No, no. It's fine." Sam took a deep breath. "You know I really liked these jeans." She tried to lighten the mood. Hopper slammed the phone into the receiver with a huff. "They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin questioned from the dinning table. "We'll see." Jim said gruffly. "'We'll see'?" Mike repeated loudly. "We can't just sit here while those things are loose!" "We stay here, and we wait for help." Hopper dismissed the boy quickly. He turned without another word and walked down the hallway. Joyce had locked herself away in her bedroom to process her grief. Once Steve secured the bandage, he helped Sam shuffle to the end of the counter where she stayed to rest. Mike abruptly stood and walked to a pile of puzzles in the living room. "Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" "Wait, really?" Sam perked up as Mike turned to face the group. "He petitioned the school to start it and everything." The Wheeler boy explained. "And then he had a fundraiser for equipment. Mr. Clark learned everything from him." The raven haired boy slowly walked back to the table. "Pretty awesome, right?" "Yeah." Dustin and Lucas acknowledged. Mike placed a blue cube on the table. "We can't let him die in vain." He stated. "What are we gonna do, Wheeler?" Sam shook her bangs out. "Jim's right." "Yeah, we can't stop those Demo-Dogs on our own." Dustin bounced off. "Demo-Dogs?" Max repeated with her eyebrows pinched together. "Demogorgon...Dogs...Demo-Dogs." Dustin explained with his hands. "It's like a compound. It's like a play on words, you know-" "Okay." Max cut his rambling off. "I like it, Dust." Sam picked up a piece of paper from the counter and tossed it at her brothers head. "Thanks." He mumbled to her. "And, I mean...when it was just Dart, maybe we could take them down..." "But there's an army now." Lucas piped in. "Precisely." The Henderson boy sighed. "His army." Mike muttered. "What do you mean?" Steve finally added into the conversation. "His army." Mike said louder. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too." Simultaneously, everyone jumped up and rushed to Will's room. Albeit, Sam and Steve got there a little later. Mike picked up a drawing and showed the ground. "The Shadow Monster." Dustin confirmed as they passed the piece of paper around. "It got Will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him." Mike informed the group. "And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max questioned. "To the tunnels, to the monsters, to the Upside Down, to everything." The Wheeler boy clarified. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down, slow down." Steve cut in. Sam held the paper up so he could see it better from behind her. "Okay, so, the Shadow Monster's inside everything. And if the vines can feel something like pain, then so does Will." Mike reestablished. "And so does Dart." Sam picked up. "Yeah. Like what Mr. Clark taught us." Mike glanced at her. "The hive mind." "Hive mind?" Steve repeated. "Basically a collective consciousness, like a super organism." Sam explained steadily. "And this is the thing that controlled everything. It's the brain." Mike pointed to the drawling in the Henderson girls hands. "Like the Mind Flayer." Dustin compared. Lucas and Sam snapped their fingers as a lightbulb went off. "The what?" Steve and Max voiced. Sam grabbed Will's D&D book and motioned everyone back into the kitchen. Dustin opened the manual to the correct page and slammed it down for everyone to see. "The Mind Flayer." He told them. "The hell is that?" Hopper sighed. "It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient, it doesn't know it's true home." Sam leaned back, her arm propped up on Steve's shoulder lazily as he gently rested his arm on her waist. "Okay, so, it enslaved races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly developed psionic powers." Dustin continued confidently. "Oh, my God. None of this is real. This is a kids game." Jim rolled his eyes. "No, i-it's a manual and it's not for kids." Dustin countered. "And unless you know something we don't, this is the best metaphor-" "Analogy." Lucas corrected quickly. "Analogy? That's what your worried about?" Dustin scoffed. "Fine, fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is." "Okay, so this mind flamer, thing-" Nancy jumped in from next to the boy. "Flayer. Mind Flayer." Dustin quickly corrected. Nancy sighed. "What does it want?" "To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race." Dustin informed. "Like the-like the Germans?" Steve compared. Everyone turned to him with confused stares. "You mean the Nazi's?" Sam asked rhetorically. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Nazi's." He waved them off. "Uhm...if the Nazi's were from another dimension, totally." Dustin nodded. "Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself." "It wants to spread, take over other dimensions." Mike spoke up. "We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." Lucas added on. "That's great! That's great, that's really great." Steve removed his arm from around Sam and stepped back, running a hand through his hair. "Jesus." "Okay, so, if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, and we kill it..." Nancy picked up the book and moved to stand next to the Henderson girl. "We kill everything it controls." Sam confirmed. "We win." Dustin nodded. "Theoretically." Lucas sighed. "Great. So, how do you kill this thing? Shoot it fireballs or something?" Hopper walked up, snatching the book from Nancy's grasp. Dustin chuckled. "No. No, no...uh. No fireballs. Uh, you summon and undead army, uh, because...because zombies, you know, they don't have brains and the Mind Flayer it, it...it likes brains." Sam grabbed her brothers shoulder and pulled him towards her. Gently covering his mouth with her hand, she signaled he needed to stop talking. "It's a game. It's just a game." Sam smiled tightly. "What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper slammed the book down and walked to the living room. "I thought we were waiting for your military backup." Dustin shoved his sisters hands away from him. "We are!" Hopper turned back to them. "But even if they come, how are they gonna stop this? You can't just shoot this with guns." Mike rose his voice. "You don't know that. We don't know anything." Hop yelled out. "We know it's already killed everybody in that lab." Mike countered. "And we know the monsters are gonna molt again." Lucas added in. "And we know that it's only a matter of time before before those tunnels reach this town." Dustin spoke back up. "And we know we are no match for this. We need backup." Sam crossed her arms. "El. We need El." Mike nodded to her. Sam tilted her head in agreement. "They're right." Joyce's rough voice came from the end of the hall. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it." "Me too. Me, too, Joyce. Okay? But how do we do that?" Hopper stepped closer to the woman. "We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here." "No, we don't." Sam motioned to everyone in the group. "But Will does." "She's right. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will." Mike walked over to the unconscious boy. "He's connected to it. He'll know it's weakness." "I thought we couldn't trust him anymore. That he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now." Max reminded them. "Yeah, but...he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is." Mike realized. "The shed." Sam piped in. Mike and Hopper walked outside while Sam attempted to move around the kitchen. Steve came up behind her and stopped her. "Hey, no way. You can't help us with this." The Harrington teentold her. "Sure I can." Sam glanced at his face. "I can move just fine." Hobbling around the kitchen, she held her arms out. "See?" "Sam-" Steve groaned. "Nope, I will hear no argument." Sam held her hand out to stop the Harrington teen from speaking. "You're not my mom. When I say I got it, I mean I got it."
Steve made sure he kept an eye on the Henderson girl as she limped around the yard. He hadn't wanted for her to help them, but she was damn stubborn. Inside the now empty shed, Steve stapled a tarp up while Nancy silently ripped pieces of duct tape off the roll. "Hey." She finally spoke up, the tension getting to much for her. "What you did, uhm, helping the kids...and Sam...that was really cool." "Yeah." Steve took a deep breath as he glanced up at where the tarp hung loosely. "Those little shits are real trouble, you know?" "Believe me, I know." Nancy chuckled softly. Steve climbed back up on the chair he was on and continued stapling. "I don't know how Sam keeps up with them...willingly." "Yeah..." Nancy stopped short. "When did she become Sam?" "Hmm?" Steve furrowed his eyebrows. "You always called her Henderson, and now she's Sam?" The Wheeler girl smirked. Steve chuckled humorlessly, waving her off.
All together, the group made sure to cover every inch of the shed, even overlapping in some areas. When it was finally over with, Johnathan carried his unconscious brother into the shed and they tied him down. As Sam was walking back to the house, she stopped her close friend and pulled him into a hug. "You got this, Johnny." She whispered reassuringly. "Bring him back."
