Alexithymia | STRANGER THINGS [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

seven | the bathtub

With a lit cigarette in his mouth and a newly bought lighter in his pocket, Matthew Wheeler was walking down the street and headed back to his house with Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song loudly playing on his walkman.

After looking around at the other houses around himself, Matthew went to take the cigarette out of his mouth, only to stop when a white van with blue letters on the side of it had suddenly come to a halt in front of him and a couple of people had gotten out of the van.

One of the people being a tall man with white hair that was wearing a suit.

After looking away from the man with white hair, Matthew looked over at the van and saw the words 'Hawkins Power and Light' written on the side of it.

It wasn't until he looked back at the man that he could see that the man was now standing in front of him and motioning for him to take off his headphones.

With a roll of his eyes, took his headphones off of his head and asked the man, "What the fuck do you want?"

In turn, the man said to him, "My, my. That is some very colorful language to come out of your mouth, young man."

When Matthew only blankly stared at him, the man took a manila folder out of his coat and held it out in front of himself.

After watching Matthew glance down at the folder that he was holding and then look back up at the man, the man told him, "I just need you to take a look at the photographs in this folder and tell me if you've seen any of these people recently."

With yet another roll of his eyes, Matthew took the folder out of the man's hands and opened it to see a picture of his own brother sitting inside of it.

While forcing himself not to show any sort of reaction upon seeing a picture of his own brother, Matthew looked through the rest of the pictures to see that they were Mike's friends Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair and El.

After staring down at El's picture for a couple of seconds, Matthew glanced up at the man, who was simply staring down at him and waiting for him to say something.

When Matthew didn't say anything to him, the man asked with a shake of his head, "Did you happen to see any of them recently?"

Instead of immediately responding to the man's question, Matthew took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew the smoke coming out of his mouth right into the man's face.

After blinking to himself, the man tilted his head when Matthew asked him, "What the fuck does it matter if I've seen any of 'em? I mean, you came out of a fucking power and light van for fuck's sake. Why would some mechanic or whatever the hell you are care about kids, anyway? As far as I can tell, kids are nothing but a pain in the ass. So, I'm just wondering why an old man like you— one that looks like he's already got at least one foot in the grave— is wondering if anyone's seen a group of kids."