𝐔𝐍𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐃. ˢᵗᵉᵛᵉ ʰᵃʳʳⁱⁿᵍᵗᵒⁿ ²

010

▬ 010. 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐏𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇-𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 when Lori sat up in her spot on the couch. It was too dark to tell the time at first when she did, but with one glance at the alarm clock hoisted atop the desk in the corner of the room, she could tell that it was far after midnight. Envelopped in darkness and silence, she rose from the rock-hard pillow and leant back on her hands— eyes light and active. She didn't need to take in her surroundings because she'd been awake for a while already. Her eyelids were not dragged down with exhaustion. Her body didn't yearn to lie back down. She'd already been lying down, for about an hour, tossing and turning restlessly. Maybe it was the discomfort of the couch, the painful and eery silence in the room, or the day's events that made sleep a challenge. But even so, it was hopeless.

Lori could not, for the life of her, fall asleep. She'd closed her eyes when she crawled into bed and tried to make herself drift off, but the further she got down the path towards sleep, she woke herself back up again. Because the farther down the line she got, the closer she was to having another nightmare— this time about whatever the hell this Vecna thing was. Or something of the sort. And as soon as she shut her eyes, images of last fall slipped into mind each and every time. Like a broken record. And so she tossed and turned to try and rid herself of the discomfort, but Lori was a broken record. An endless, looping, broken record. And after an hour of restlessness, she had enough of the horrible tune keeping her awake. She had to lift the damn needle.

Carefully, she pushed herself off the couch. It was hard to see in the darkness of the basement, but she slid her bottom to the end of the couch and inched her foot closer to where she knew the ground was. All while keeping her eyes pinned on the floor, where the others were sleeping peacefully. All she could make out was bumpy outlines of their sleeping bags, and very vague silhouettes of some heads. Quiet. All quiet. Nobody moved an inch as Lori placed her feet on the soft carpet of the floor, hands taking the blanket over her legs along with her. Slowly, keeping her eyes on the others to make sure she wasn't waking them, she found her footing and stood up straight. The next few steps were easy: she tip-toed towards the door and slid on her shoes. And then she reached for the door, nearly hit herself right in the face with it while trying to keep an eye on the others, and creaked it open to step outside.

The door closed with a faint creak, masking the sound of a body shuffling awake in the basement behind her.

She didn't hear it as she turned to face the soft wind. There was a single step outside the basement door, one slab of concrete rooted to the ground to ease the grandeur of the threshold. It would have to do. For a long moment, she stood on the concrete slab with the blanket held at her stomach, eyes staring forward at her car parked across the culdesac. She contemplated about going up to her car and sleeping in there for the rest of the night, or maybe driving away and coming back the next morning. Anything to get her out of that suffocating basement. Not that the basement itself was stale or gross, just that the stories shared in that room, the people in that room, and the unresolved issues hanging in the air between bodies was beginning to hurt her chest. She needed a breath of fresh air.

So, she inhaled a long, slow breath through her nose and let the cold breeze tiptoe all the way into the edges of her lungs. She shut her eyes for a moment as her lungs expanded, and then opened them back up when the air drifted from her body in a slow exhale. Moving as though the world was leaning on her shoulders, she stepped forward until she was at the edge of the single step, and then bent her knees to lower herself down. She placed her bottom on the concrete, knees folded up to her chest. Her breath evaporated into a fleeting cloud before her, as she wrapped the blanket around herself to shield out the chilly midnight air. It was spring and the days were getting warmer, but during the night, outside and in the dark— frigid air seemed to rise from the ground despite the season. And with the stars above, it made the whole thing colder.