In case you don't live forever

Chapter 14: Let me go

Peter's Pov:

Hopper pulled up to Joyce's house and stopped the car. Steve got out with me in his arms, still crying in pain and everyone else got out. We went inside the house where Jonathan and everyone else was already here. Steve put me on the couch and left for a moment. My dad came up to me and got down on his knees beside me. "What happened?" He asked. "Monster... bit... leg" I managed to get out through cries. "Oh shit" My dads eyes widened and Steve came back with a first aid kit. Steve looked at my leg and saw that the monster had bitten so deep that my bone was visible and had a crack in it. "Holy shit" Steve mumbled. "Holy shit? What's holy shit?" I asked him through tears. "Uh... Nothing you need to worry about, Peter" He told me and gave me a painful smile. He pulled out some gauze and started wrapping my leg in it to attempt to stop it from bleeding. but Max stopped him. "No, no. First you need to stop the bleeding, then clean, then disinfect and then bandage" She told him. She went to the bathroom and came back with a bowl of water, soap and washcloth. My dad pulled out a gauze pad from the first aid kit and held it onto the cut. I cried more as it hurt so much. "Hey, hey its okay" Steve looked at me and held my hand tightly. My dad kept the gauze pad on the cut but had to continuously change it from how much it was bleeding. I started to feel light-headed and dizzy from the blood loss and before I knew it I was passed out.

I woke up to my dad next to me. "Hey, how ya feeling?" He asked, softly. I tried to sit up but forgot about my leg. It felt like a bunch of knives shot at my leg in every direction. I laid back down, whimpering in pain. "It hurts so much, dad" I told him. "I know honey. Just relax" He said walked into the kitchen. I heard yelling from the kitchen but couldn't make out what they were saying. I saw Joyce come down the hall and walk into the kitchen. "They're right. We have to kill it. I want to kill it" I heard her say. "Me too. Me too Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here" Hopper said. "No. But he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, its Will. He's connected to it. He'll know its weakness." Mike said walking into the living room, looking at Will. I looked over at him and frowned. I really hated seeing him in this state. "I thought we couldn't trust him anymore. That he's a spy for the mind flayer now" Max spoke. "Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is" Mike explained.

They all went outside. I sat on the couch and looked Will. I hated not being able to help everyone else. I wanted to help Will. Joyce came inside holding a pair of wooden crutches. "I found these for you" She gave them to me and I smiled softly, carefully getting up using the crutches. I stood up with them and bend my hurt leg so it didn't touch the ground. It hurt my arms but it was better than not being able to move at all. "Thanks Joyce" I thanked her and she nodded going back outside. I heard Max and Mike talking in the kitchen and I hopped towards it. I heard a little bit of the conversation and then watched Mike storm out, flashing me a small smile before going outside again. Max was left on the floor frowning and I hopped over to her. "Hey Max, it will be okay. He'll warm up to you soon. And when he gets over El" I reassured her. "Thanks Peter" She stood up. "No problem" I said to her. Max started to go outside and I followed her out, being very careful. When I finally got to the shed there wasn't much I could do so I stood by the door watching everyone else. When they finished Steve, Nancy, Max, Dustin, Lucas and Jonathan went inside. Jonathan came back with Will slinged over his shoulders and he put him in the chair, tying him up so he couldn't escape. "All right. You ready?" Hopper asked Joyce and she nodded "Yeah." He swished something around in the bottle and put a little on a cotton ball. He held the cotton ball up to Will's nose and Will opened his eyes, gasping.

"What is this? What is this? Why am I tied up?" Will asked, looking around and shaking the chair a little. Joyce, Mike, Hopper, Jonathan and my dad all stood in front of him. "Will, we just want to talk to you. We're not going to hurt you" Joyce told him softly. "Where am I?" Will shouted. "Do you recognize this? Do you recognize this?" Hopper got down on his knee in front of Will and showed him his drawing of the shadow monster. Will shook his head. "Hey, we wanna help you. But to do that we have to understand how to kill it" Joyce told Will calmly. "Why am I tied up?" He shouted making me almost fall back but my dad caught me. I managed regained balance on my one foot and crutches with his help. "Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up? Let me go! Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!" Will screamed as he tried to get out of the chair. The lights flickered and Mike, Jonathan, my dad and I all took one step back. Will continued to scream saying to 'let him go' until he finally managed to calm down and the lights stopped flickering. Joyce sat down on the chair in front of him and started talking. "Do you know what March 22nd is? Its your birthday. Your birthday. When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons. Do you remember that? It was 120 colours. And all your friends, they got you star wars toys, but all you wanted to do was draw with all your new colours. And you drew this big spaceship, but it wasn't from a movie. It was your spaceship. A rainbow ship is what you called it. And you must have used every colour in the box. I took that with me to Melvald's and I put it up and I told everyone who came in, "My son drew this" and you were so embarrassed. But I was so proud. I was so, so proud" Joyce told Will. "Do you remember the day dad left?" Jonathan spoke and came up on his knees in front of Will. "We stayed up all night building Castle Byers... just the way you drew it. And it took so long because you were so bad at hammering. You'd miss the nail every time. And then it started raining but we stayed out there anyway. We were both sick for like a week after that but we just had to finish it, didn't we? We just had too" Jonathan said, sounding like he was going to cry. "Do you remember the first day that we met?" Mike came up to Will with tears rolling down his cheek. "It was... It was the first day of kindergarten. I knew nobody. I had no friends and... I felt so alone and so scared, but I saw you on the swings and you were alone, too. You were just swinging by yourself. And I just walked up to you and... I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. You said yes. It was the best thing I've ever done" Mike was now crying and so was I. I hopped closer to Will and looked at his face. "Remember when the two of us first met? We were both three and at the park. You were sitting alone and looked so sad because some kid took your cars. I came up to you and asked if you wanted to play with me and my cars and you said yes. We played for the rest of the day until it almost was dark and our parents had to practically pry us away from each other. That was the best day of my life. Because it was the day I met you. And then I left for a year when we were four almost five but came back. I wanted to come back because I hated being apart from you. I had to beg my dads to let us come back and they let us come back because they knew how much I missed you." I said, through a waterfall of tears. "Will, baby... if you're in there, just please... please talk to us. Please, honey, please, can you do that for me? Please I love you so much" Joyce said and Will took shaky breathes.  "Let me go" He mumbled.

I slowly followed Hopper inside the Byers house, completely clueless on why he told us to follow him. Hopper grabbed an empty, open envelope and a pen and sat down at the table. "What happened?" Dustin asked. No one answered him and everyone gathered around him. "I think he's talking, just not with words" Hopper told us and drew some lines and dots on the envelope. "What is that?" Steve asked. "Morse code" Lucas, Dustin, Mike and I all said in sync. "H-E-R-E" Hopper said writing all the letters on the paper. "Here" Everyone said. "Will's still in there. He's talking to us" Hopper explained and looked at Joyce.

Jonathan left the kitchen and went to a different room and came out with his boom box. He along with Joyce, Mike, My dad and Hopper started to leave the house and go back to Will. Mike looked back at me and gave me an 'are you coming?' And I said "I think I will stay in here this time just so I don't have to walk down the front porch steps with these stupid crutches" I told Mike and he nodded going outside. Hopper took a walkie talkie with him and when Will started to use Morse code, Hopper copied his actions using the walkie talkie. "Dash, dot, dash, dot" Dustin mumbled, drawing the signs on the paper. We looked at the chart we had for Morse code. "C" Lucas and Max told Nancy and she wrote it on a piece of paper. We did this until we stopped getting anything from Hopper and all looked at Nancy's paper. "Close gate" We all read aloud and the phone started ringing. We all looked over at it. "Shit. Shit" Dustin went up to it and hung it up so it would stop ringing. The phone rang again and this time Nancy pulled it off the wall and threw it to the floor. "Do you think he heard that?" Max asked. "Its just a phone. It could be anywhere. Right?" Steve said. We heard monster screeches in the distance that sounded way to familiar. "That's not good" Dustin mumbled as we made our way to a window and  looked outside. Everyone else came back inside, Hopper last with a shotgun. "Hey, get away from the windows" He told Max, Mike and Lucas and they backed away from the windows. "Do you know how to use this?" Hopper asked Jonathan as we all gathered in the living room. "What?" Jonathan asked. "Can you use this?" Hopper raised his voice a little. "I can" Nancy spoke up and Hopper threw her the gun. We all stood in the living room, weapons in hand. Well, my weapon was my crutch because I didn't really know what else to use but my dad was standing in front of me so he could protect me. There was more monster screeching in the distance. The monster must have come closer as a large thud noise was made in front of the house. "What are they doing?" Nancy asked and there was another thud. There was a few monster growls followed by screeching which stopped abruptly. Everything was silent until a demodog came flying through the window, shattering the glass. "Holy shit" Dustin muttered. "Is it dead?" Max asked and Hopper moved its head with his foot a little. "That looks dead to me" I said. The door creaked a little and we all shifted our attention to it. The door unlocked itself and everyone raised there weapons. The door opened slowly revealing a person. She had a black jacket and jeans on. Her hair was slicked back and she had a heavy amount of eye makeup on but I knew exactly who it was. El.

Word count: 2190