✓ | 1. subject thirteen [STRANGER THINGS]

five.

[ LOOK AT HIM !! LOOK AT MY FUCKING SON !! LOOK AT THIS SOFT BOY WHO IS JUST TRYING HIS BEST !! FUCK ]

CHAPTER FIVE:
THE RADIO

[ THE BODY PART I ]

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          ELEVEN sat with her legs crossed neatly beneath her, her slim shoulders hunched over her lap and her frown pulled down by concentration. She had returned home through the door from the garage with Dustin ten minutes or so after Mike had arrived)

THIRTEEN dozed in and out restlessly beside her, shuddering occasionally in his nightmare-plagued sleep, his legs curled into his body. Whenever he shook more violently than most, ELEVEN reached over, squeezed his elbow or bicep, held until he relaxed and stilled and his breathing grew steady again.

Across the room, Mike sat on the sofa that ran alongside the staircase, looking through various pictures drawn onto sheets of paper. Drawings of dinosaurs, of great purple dragons breathing fire, of Star Wars characters and the Ghostbusters. Will had drawn most of them, being the only one in their small group of boys who was a talented artist. THIRTEEN glanced between them every now and then, in the spaces between his sleep.

           In his hands, ELEVEN held what Mike called his supercom, which was merely a radio used for talking with his friend's. White noise crackled and burst from the radio and voices slipped through, the words recognisable as English, yet unable to be distinguished clearly. It was the only sound that disturbed the quiet of the night, aside from the pattering of rain outside the small, high walls built close to the ceilings, covered by drawn up curtains.

           Mike sighed abruptly and looked across at him. "Can you please stop it?" he drawled, before returning to eyeing each picture.

          ELEVEN was quiet for a moment, her focus on the object in his frail hands ceasing as she watched Mike silently flip through the sheets of A4 paper. When THIRTEEN flickered open his eyes and glimpsed silently between them, guilt ate away at his heart.

           He soon looked back down toward the radio, similarly to the way he had done earlier that afternoon, in the kitchen with ELEVEN. The muscles in her jaw clenched and stood out, and a moment later the object crackled again.

         "Are you deaf?" Mike snapped, looking up and catching THIRTEEN's wide eyed stare with his own glare. He held the stare for a moment, before he sighed again and suddenly burst from his seat, exasperated. "It's just . . . I'm so frustrated! I thought we were friends, you know?" The two subjects nodded dumbly. "And friends tell each other the truth. They definitely don't lie to each other. You made me think Will was okay, that he was still out there! But he wasn't! He wasn't."