Secrets // Steve Harrington

Chapter Twenty-One - The Bath

Word Count: 2,522 words. 

Warnings: None. 

Hawkin's Lab...

"Now number Two," Brenner spoke, placing his hands on the metal table.

I sat in a chair opposite him, knees pulled tight to my chest in fear. I was only six, maybe seven, and I had been there long enough to know that I had to do everything I was told, but I hated this the most. I hated hurting people.

"All I need you to do is what you've always done, alright?" he posed. I only nodded. "Answer me Two." His voice was sterner as he spoke again.

"Yes Papa," I muttered, voice tiny.

"Good. Now, I'm going to go behind that door and a man is going to come in. You use the power from the lights to tickle him."

He said tickle and although I didn't know what a tickle was, I knew that he was lying. It was pain that those men felt and those woman. I never saw the same one more than once and Papa has simply said that was because I had cured them of their sadness and that I had helped them.

Papa stood from his chair, quickly hurrying to open the door. A man was shoved inside the room with me, stumbling forward as the guards made sure he couldn't leave. Papa left me alone with him.

Taking a deep breath, I stood up to do as I was told. The man, a face that I didn't care to remember or didn't want to, turned to me, wide-eyed and scared, backing himself into the corner.

As I took in the energy around me, the crackling of the lights above me scorching my skin and moving through my body, I watched his expression carefully.

Papa said that I was helping him. That I was making them better. Happier. I had thought that for a while, but as I got older in there I got used to a single expression. One that they all faced me with. The unmistakable face of fear. Of pure terror as they looked at me. As they looked at their monster.

When I opened my eyes, the memory fading, I wiped underneath my eyes, not having noticed the tears falling. They were all like that. The small bits that came back to me. The missing pieces of a puzzle that I didn't understand. One that wasn't important right now.

They were gathering materials. Something about a bath and putting pounds of salt in it. Something to do with a deprivation tank, a memory Eleven has of being able to see into the Upside Down. I tried to pay attention as Dustin explained it, but I couldn't.

Pain blazed through my mind, something that I would usually push down with the medication Brenner had given me, but I couldn't take them. Not when I knew now who gave them to me.

Joyce sat in front of Eleven, putting duct tape on the front of a pair of lab goggles. They were to make it dark for her. Somehow that was going to make it easier.

I didn't remember a bath or salt or darkness. It wasn't a memory that was familiar to me, but the sight of Eleven sitting in a chair, watching silently as someone talked, that was familiar. She was always so quiet. I mean, she was a child but even the others would talk or try to. There was no one there to teach us to speak because there was no point. We weren't children, we were experiments. Lab rats.

"Are you okay?" Joyce asked me, approaching my side.

I stood by the door to the classroom we were in, staring out the small window. Smiling, I shook my head. "I'm scared," I admitted.

The woman sighed. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I sent a quick glance towards Eleven before replying. The girl was picking at the tape that Joyce had put on the goggles.