sparks | henry creel

011

1979.
Henry's POV. Age eleven.
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I lay on the floor, not even fidgety from all the medicine Dr. Brenner has me on. He had just finished beating me up with what me and the other kids call the "torture device". Not really creative, I know. But when you've only been educated to second grade level, there's not much you can do with your limited vocabulary.

I've been trained not to cry, even if I'm going through the worse beating ever. We all call Dr. Brenner "Papa" to his face, but in our minds we all call him Dr. Brenner.

Kids with dad's call them Papa. And Dr. Brenner will never be my dad. Ever. He will never even come close to it.

I want to go into the rainbow room, which is where everyone goes during the day if they're not being tortured or experimented on. I really hope some day this guy is caught and all of his other sadist friends so I can be free.
The only other way of getting out of here is either by escaping or if Brenner decides I'm too old. Dr. Brenner doesn't like his kids too old. Sounds like a nutcase, or a pedophile to me.

I realize I'm still sitting in the corner of the room, and I look like a real freak, like a scaredy cat. So I slowly stand up so I don't fall right back down.

I grab onto the railing on the side of the wall for support, pulling myself up. I wince in pain, wishing my brain wasn't so scattered that I forgot to come to the rainbow room to then go and get experimented on once more.

I decide to toughen up and walk, but more like wobble, over to the door. To my surprise it's unlocked, and so I twist the knob open and walk outside into the hallway.

I don't know why I was expecting things to be different, as if Brenner was going to randomly decide to add wall decorations onto the walls for kids to glance at before they go and get experimented on like test subjects you'd see about to get chopped up in circuses.

I look down the hallway and begin my walk to the rainbow room, which, isn't a long walk realistically, but it is if you have to see it everyday three times a day. I see a child walking down the hallway, and I wince, knowing she just had to go under the same "treatment" I just had. They came out of the room eleven, so they're several rooms down. They look a little younger then me, maybe nine. It's strange that, I have no idea who this person is, but I can relate so much to them if I really think about it.

Eventually I reach the rainbow room, where I recognize a few kids playing with the "toys" that are really for Brenner to spy on using the security cameras to see if we're good enough. I push open the door and walk through. A few kids look over to me and then look back to whatever they were doing.

I limp over to the chess table, sitting down. I never usually choose chess, I just wanted to sit.

I could've stayed in my room longer if I wanted too, but if I'm being honest I didn't want to be alone. Even if Brenner's goonies wanted to come and take me, I know they'd be less harsh on me because their are younger kids here who Brenner cares more about then me. It feels like the more older you get, the less he stops caring about me.

I remember when I was seven, so I had hardly been there a year, I was having a really bad headache, so Brenner let me lay on his lap until I fell asleep. If it had been a concussion, that would've ended deadly. But it wasn't, and he cared for me. I didn't get my first punishment until I was eight. Like I said, he cares more for the younger kids.

I had forgotten to clean up the toys I was playing with, and Brenner didn't like that. So, he ordered a couple of his guards to grab me and take me to the torture room. There I was tazed a few times before I couldn't handle it anymore and passed out.

I had figured Brenner was having a bad day. I was severely... Manipulating myself into thinking I had actually done something so wrong I deserved the pain I was going through.

It took me two years until I realized the ability I had. That you've seen only a little bit of. That I can do things with my mind, but I can do so much more than that. You see, Brenner knew I had the ability all along. So when I saw the way his eyes lit up whenever I first used my powers, I knew it was his plan all along. I knew he wasn't just keeping me for nothing, I was smarter than that.

I was let out on my sixteenth birthday. I knew I had been in there since I was seven, and I was captured and took there on my birthday. So I knew how old I was because everyday I'd sneak into Brenner's office when he wasn't looking to see the calendar and make sure I wasn't getting off track. I was put into the foster system because a random mother and daughter had seen me walking in their backyard and called the cops. I told them I didn't remember who my parents were and none of my information was in the system because the community thought I was dead.

Now, I know what you're thinking. If you're in the system and you have foster parents, why are you camping out in Dustin Henderson's backyard? The honest answer is, my foster 'parents' only cared about the money, and that's it. They could care less if I was home or not. In fact, they wouldn't even let me in their house. So, they put me into school, Hawkins High, and kicked me out into the curb. The only reason they put me into the school system is because if they didn't they wouldn't get paid.

So, there you go. There's my story.