𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙼𝚈 𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙳? ⇢ ʙʏʟᴇʀ

november sixth, 1985

                   

"What about this fella here?"

Every muscle in Will Byer's neck ached thoroughly as he lifted his head to see whom the elderly doctor standing by his bedside was referencing, his hand outstretched as though he was presenting an entertainer to an audience. It did feel like this, even subtly: like some morbid talent show, the people surrounding him each giving dismal attempts at trying to bring the boy back to some distant memory they had once shared together. None of them fell into place, however. They wouldn't.

He'd been in that bed, only moving to go to the washroom and to stretch on occasion, for two days at that point. The white of the wallpaper was starting to become off coloured the more he stared, and the flowers he'd been gifted were starting to wilt. He couldn't find pity in any of this, however. He just watched. He just noticed these things dying, decaying with his train of thought. He just watched. What else was there to do?

--

The last thing he remembered that wasn't tainted like water splotches against old photographs was the few peaceful seconds of his bike ride home. He'd been pedaling so hard, the doctor had told him (or, he supposed, suggested) that he had veered off of the manmade path through the woods that he had been taking and flung himself face first down into the dirt, splitting his head open in an electric flash of pain that Will could only compare to what he imagined it was like to have been shot.

Everything from then on remained black and fuzzy, indistinct and distant like it was a memory that was years away, years past. He wouldn't know, though. He wasn't able to tell years from minutes in the memories that did remain, however few.

Hell. He couldn't remember anything.

--

Each memory proposed to him had felt like looking at a picture through an out of focus lens, desperately trying to make out the fine details of what once was a picturesque time in his childhood. Will fell short every time. He knew he would once more, as his dark eyes settled on the sight of a tall, thin boy standing at the foot of his hospital bed. The boy looked older than he was, Will suspected. Older for all the wrong reasons.

Something told the Byers boy that this wasn't entirely not his fault.

"Do you know who he is?"

--

He remembered going skating once, with the older woman who had brought him dark pink flowers and slept with her head resting against his hospital bed, just past his left kneecap. She never left, only once or twice to bring him a toothbrush or his lunch, on occasion. Joyce. He knew this was his mother, and he knew this mostly by logic, though he wouldn't admit it to her. He could sense the pain this was causing her, the stress and tired hue that she was radiating. Why would he tell her such a thing, what good would that bring him? She was the first one who had come in to see him, following a frail looking gentleman who was older than him but not by much. Johnathan.

Joyce. Mom. Jonathan. Brother.

The young man at the foot of his bed, the boy who looked about his age physically, with dark hair framing his face and violently dark eyes that told of stories the two once shared. He had been the second to his mother, to Joyce. It'd been almost two days. He hadn't left.

"Take your time."

Will stared at the boy, and the boy stared back. There was something sorrowful in his gaze, something reflective of secrets and evenings spent awake and stories that he knew Will would find blank. Something broken sat deep inside the young man, something that ached. Say my name, Will, it said. Will wanted to, to remember. The lens grew more out of focus, and the more he struggled to try and focus on the blurred lines that traced out his fallen memories, the more he felt like he was upside down, trying to retrace his steps back to infancy.

Say my name. You know my name.

Will spoke, and his own voice sounded as foreign as he felt.

"No, I don't."