DISCONTINUED
Alina Fairgrieves-Byers and Gabriel Burton have learned to expect the worst, but that doesn't make things less disappointing.
𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄
( 𝐎𝐂 𝐗 𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐀𝐒 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐑 )
( 𝐎𝐂 𝐗 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐘𝐄...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
the massacre at hawkins lab
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
September 1979
The car rumbled along the silent road, rolling over the occasional pothole with a jolt that nearly knocked Brandon Fairgrieves out of his seat. His hands clenched the steering wheel so tight his knuckles nearly turned white, pops of pearl against the umber of his skin. His window was open a crack, letting in the soft, late-summer wind. The trees that surrounded him—their leaves just beginning to turn orange and red with autumn—seemed to close him in. A bright, cheery pop song played on the radio, far too happy for the current circumstances. Distantly, the few birds still awake sang.
Blood leaked down Brandon's head.
It was everywhere, actually: sunken into his clothes, staining the once flawless white of his lab coat; streaked across the window from a dizzy attempt to wind it down; dripping down his face from a particularly large gash that he hadn't had time to treat; covering his hands. The scent of it invaded his nostrils—as sharply metallic as a copper coin, as pungent as a slaughterhouse. The sight of it burned his corneas—all red, red, red, until every other colour seemed dull in comparison. The feel of it, like warm syrup rubbing against his skin, sent bile rising into his throat.
Twisted limbs. Eyeless faces. Mouths open in silent screams.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
He barely managed to pull over in time before he was emptying his stomach on the side of the road. His stomach lurched over and over again as he threw up, gagging until there was nothing left behind. Tears sprang, unbidden, to his eyes, smudging the world before him even further.
I never wanted this.
It had just been a day. Just any other day of work, even if that work sometimes made Brandon's knees buckle with guilt. Oh, sure, he never dealt directly with the kids—the kids that could be as young as five, the kids that passed him in the hallways sometimes and stared at him with eyes that seemed to bore right into his soul—but he did reorder their files, copy down their vitals. And, to make matters worse, he turned his back to the way that they were being treated; to the collars and the electrocutions and the screams that would sometimes echo their way into his ears, and let his coworkers study them like animals. Like they were subhuman.
