He Who Controls the Flame (001 fanfic)

Chapter Six- Electric Currents

I woke up and cried.

I hadn't meant to do it, I hated crying, detested it actually. But I had dreamt of Hawkins, Indiana. I had dreamt that Manuela was braiding my hair and I reluctantly agreed after her begging, though in reality I always loved when Manuela braided my hair. She was so gentle, and she always told me I had the prettiest hair she had ever seen. Not quite brown, but not quite red.

Huh, come to think of it, maybe I was just having a stress dream about my hair after the great scare of the buzz cut.

Anyways, Manuela's affection always stoked at that motherless part of me. The part that craved for someone to kiss my brow and hold me and tell me how much she loved me. I didn't have any of that, and it probably led to some deep psychological issues, come to think of it, but mommy issues did build character. That and daddy issues, and I had plenty of those. At that point then, I should've been the poster child of character.

I also dreamt of Will Byers, whom I hadn't thought of ever since I got to the lab. He had been in his car, talking to his mother. He was disappointed that I hadn't shown up to the last art-mentor meeting at the high school. And the look on his face....God, I had no idea how my brain conjured that one up. It was so heartbroken, so...let down. I felt like a monster.
So when I opened my eyes and saw that I was still in my God-awful white room, the only other presence being the blinking camera in the room, I cried. I couldn't remember the last time I cried, maybe after winning the role of "Valedictorian" at my high school graduation and looking into the crowd and seeing only Manuela. Not that it wasn't great to see her, but there was no tall man with white hair and dark eyes accompanying her. It was just Manuela. But at least I held it together till we got home and I showered. If you cried in the shower, nobody was the wiser.

The alarm blared and I cried harder, burying my face into the pillow. I wrapped my arms around it and held it to my chest, imagining that it was Will, so that I could say I was sorry. That it was Manuela, to say that I missed her. Imagining that it was my long-lost mother, to say that I needed her.

As I cradled that fucking limp pillow to my chest, I realized I had never felt so alone. There was no one here who was in my corner, no one kind enough to comfort me. No one who loved me. Not even my own father. I wasn't sure I had even ever heard him say he loved me. Maybe when I was younger, but then I grew and maybe...maybe I disappointed him or something. Didn't grow up into the woman he wanted me to be. Well fuck him. He probably wanted some kind of demure, submissive, only-speaks-when-spoken-to housewife, and well I'd rather go stick my hand in a jar of acid before I did that.

"Let's go, Zero!" someone said, knocking on my door loudly. Well...more like banged. I groaned and buried my head into the bed.

"That's not my fucking name!" I hollered back, or at least I wanted to holler back, but then my voice cracked and it came out all wobbly and whisper-like and then I cried some more. Cried and cried until my door opened and the same guard from yesterday yanked me to my feet and shoved me out.

"You need to start listening, stupid girl," the guard said, marching us down the hall. When I didn't answer him he stiffened behind me. "You're not going to...you're not going to say anything?" I still didn't answer him.
We stopped moving.

The guard suddenly came around and stood in front of me. He caught sight of my face, which was probably red and puffy, and it wasn't exactly like I had a box of tissues or anything.

"Here," he said, stiffly pulling out a little plastic package of something. He handed it to me. A package of kleenex. I felt something poke at my heart. "I have um...seasonal allergies, pretty bad, I have tons of those lying around. You can have one."

"Isn't that against the rules?" I rasped, but I pulled one out anyways, if only because snot was dripping down dangerously close to my mouth.

He shrugged. "I think I'll be able to take the punishment for giving out tissues to..." He scratched at the back of his neck. "To someone who needs them."