Breathin》Stranger Things

Twenty-Five

Mike had all of us surround the kitchen table as he brought one of Will's drawings of some shadow monster. Apparently, that creature is what got Will the day of the field. According to Mike, the doctors said it was like a virus infecting him.

"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max questioned.

"To the tunnels, to the monsters, to the Upside Down, everything," Mike rushed out.

"Whoa. Slow down. Slow down," Steve, who can't even look at me, said.

"Ok, so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will."

"And so does Dart," Lucas concluded.

"Yeah. Like what Mr. Clarke taught us. The hive mind."

"Hive mind?" Steve asked in confusion.

I began explaining to him, "A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism." Dustin gave me a proud smile.

"And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain," Mike said as he pointed to the shadow monster.

Dustin's eyes widened. "Like the mind flayer."

Lucas snapped his fingers at Dustin like he just figured it out while Mike gasped.

"The what?" Steve and Max wondered.

"The mind flayer," I repeated slowly. "It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. It enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers."

Hopper groaned. "Oh, my, God, none of this is real. This is a kids' game."

I raised a brow at him. "And vampires aren't supposed to be real, yet, here I am."

"She's been alive for a long time so if we didn't have a manual then we got the next best thing," Dustin pointed out. "And unless you know something that we don't, then this is the best metaphor -"

"Analogy," Lucas corrected, which ticked Dustin off.

"Analogy? That's what you're worried about? Fine. Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

"Ok, so this mind flamer thing -" Nancy began.

"Flayer. Mind flayer."

"What does it want?"

"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race."

"Like - Like the Germans?" Steve stammered. Nancy and I gave him a look.

"Uh, the Nazis?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis."

"Uh...If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally." I held my hand behind my mouth to hide my laughter from Dustin's response. "Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."

"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions," Mike stated.

"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas said.

Steve stood up. "That's great. That's great. That's really great. Jesus!"

"Ok, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything," Nancy began as she grabbed the drawing, "then if we kill it..."

"We kill everything it controls," I finished.

Dustin beamed, "We win."

"Theoretically," Lucas commented.