✓ | 1. subject thirteen [STRANGER THINGS]

seven.

CHAPTER SEVEN:
ALL OVER AGAIN

[ THE MONSTER PART I ]

❖ ❖ ❖

THIRTEEN didn't hesitate. He didn't think. He just turned, and he just ran.

Adrenaline fuelled him as he pumped his legs and raced full-throttle, like he'd floored the gas pedal, into the trees and in the opposite direction of the monster. He dodged between trees like he'd done with ELEVEN after escaping the lab, hoping to God that it would be enough for him to lose it.

So far, not so good.

The thundering, inhuman footsteps pummelled the earth close behind him as the monster pursued him, and another snarl echoed out after him, this one more powerful than it's predecessor. Violent. Livid. Bloodthirsty. Emaciated limbs clawed out at trees, crashing through the undergrowth, bearing down on THIRTEEN like a storm.

But he didn't stop — wouldn't stop for anything. Even though he was tired, afraid — damn well terrified, more like. But for the sake of living, he moved; he picked his good-for-nothing, definitely-cursed ass up and moved, hauling ass through the trees.

Good thing, too.

          Because then, as he ran, a familiar voice broke through the immense darkness, slicing through the only sound in the expanse of blue light: THIRTEEN's panting and thudding heart. It echoed through the towering trees, which were just smudges of shadow that THIRTEEN blurred past as he dashed across the overgrown floor, struggling and stumbling to find solid footing in the soft ground. The voice was loud and familiar, feminine too, yet somehow simultaneously small. Fragile. Frightened.

          ELEVEN.

"THIRTEEN!" she called out, and even from so far away, the desperation and fear in her tone was impossible to ignore, twisting through THIRTEEN like a knife in the gut. "THIRTEEN?!"

          He couldn't see her — but he couldn't see much at all in his desperation to get away, his eyes darting everywhere at once, searching. The hauntingly blue air and the ash drifting through the atmosphere blocked everything from sight aside from the burly shapes of the trees around him, their lowest branches reaching for him like gnarled witches' fingers. He could hear her, though. And that was something.

More than something. The voice of a friend was like the elixir of life in a place like this, and he clung to even the echoes of the sound like her voice was his very lifeline.

          "THIRTEEN!" she was screaming, calling out for him. She must have heard him scream when the monster first turned around. "THIRTEEN!"