FILLER VISION | Mike Wheeler

P r o l o g u e

October 16, 1984
Hawkins, Indiana

The Month of Halloween, Halloween, the holiday on which children dress up creepy and move from house to house to collect sweets. A girl, 13 years old, brown hair which was short just a bit over her shoulder and fawn brown eyes. Trembling from head to toe, wears nothing more than underwear and an old hospital shirt. She wandered through the woods and that already a few months. She managed to survive after she got rid of the place called upside down. There she was a year and had to fight for her life against creatures that still today gave her cruel nightmares and let her scream every night.

She managed to find food and a place to sleep for a few months. Mostly she slept in lonely huts that are there for families in the holidays. Family...she didn't know that word. She never had one or rather said she doesn't remember it. But she remembered one, the Hawkins lab in which she was her whole life and with her powers she was exploited for something she wasn't even allowed to know about.

She released her left arm from her other one, who had she crossed infront of her chest to keep her warm, and looked down at her wrist for her tattoo. 010. She sobbed and felt the tears forming in her eyes like every night.

It was quiet when she suddenly heard something and winced. This caused her to hit a branch that broke and made another noise. Due to the fear, she kinked with her foot and didn't notice that she just ran on a hill which she then slipped down.

"Did you hear that?" She herad a boy who was very close. Mike, Lucas and Dustin were on their way home. after they were with Will in the acarde, who was already picked up. The girl was getting more than just scared. "Something has fallen down or something" said Lucas. "I still don't know what we do at night in the woods we have learned nothing from will's disappear" said Dustin.

"Guys come with me I see something" said the boy from the beginning who was Mike as he saws ten. He and his two friends on his side run to the girl who was totaly in fear and just wanted to disappear.

The people came closer and ten tried despite an awful pain in the ankle to stand up and run away what she could get.

"Take the bikes the person run away!" She heard one of the guys call what's let her heart racing, it was dustin. She is being followed. She heard bicycles coming up behind her and ran to a cliff when she reached the top, she looked down and gasped. She knew when she jumps she would be dead.

She looked behind her and saw the three boys. She flinched as the boy in the middle with black hair and pale skin took a step closer to her and automatically she took a few steps back, closer to the cliff. "Hey, Hey wait please..!" Mike said worried as he saw her steps.

"Can you please come to me? I don't wanna hurt you" he said. The brown haired girl shaked her head and looked still at the boy.

"Please trust me ok? Come with me.." he said gently. She flinched slightly as a few rocks fell down the cliff. She widened her eyes before she ran immediately in the boys arms and a piece, as big as her foot, broke off the cliff and splashed into the sea.

Both kids looked at each other with big eyes. That could have ended badly. "Everything ok?" Asked Dustin who was behind them.

Both nods slightly, not to much and ten clawed at the boy's top as she gazed fixedly on the broken-off cliff top. "We're ok um...h-how-" He interrupted himself when he realized how close he pressed the girl to himself and she clawed in his shirt with her hand.

She was terribly afraid, not only of what had just almost happened but also so half of him and his friends and especially everything around her. For some reason, a protective instinct in Mike turned on for the really pretty girl in his arms. Maybe just because a person almost wanted to jump off a cliff in front of him but also something else in him activated but he didn't know what it was.

"Ok um...h-how about this, we can go to my house and if you decide not to trust me after a few hours, you can leave. I just wanna help you get cleaned up, ok?" The shy, totally terrified girl stared at the boy in whose arms she was a moment in his beautiful brown eyes before she nodded slightly.

"My name is Mike, it's short for Michael. What's your name?". She swallowed and was not sure if she should show him that's why she shook her head. She was too scared, even if she had the strange feeling of trusting him, she just couldn't do it.

"You don't have a name?". She shook her head again and then nodded. "You have a name!" He said. She nodded "But you don't want to tell me, right?" He asked. She nodded again and looked slightly down to her foots. "You don't talk much, right?" He slightly laughed, what led her to look him in the eyes again a bit shocked and release her hand from his shirt as she felt his chest vibrate briefly as he laughed.

"Come on, let's go to my house or you'll freeze to death" he smiled slightly and thought for a moment before he took off his jacket and put it over her shoulders, keep holding her in his arms while he go to his bike with her.