idiot - steddie

Six

Swimming with my eyes open in saltwater was exceptionally worse than using those goggles that suctioned to your face whenever you put them on, but as long as my hair was out of my eyes— I was fine to go on swimming.

My jeans bagged up at the ankles, full of water and sand that had been drizzling over my shoulders and slowly slipping downwards given the gravity pulling me closer and closer to that red light that shined brighter then any fish or light source in that lake. Large canopies of seaweeds wriggled beside black tentacles that slithered out of the crevice between our world, and the Upside Down.

My eyes widened at the sight, and my immediate attention grasped onto the swelling noise of growling. Bones of dead fish and some unrecognizable skeleton were right in front of the peculiar scene as I swam closer, all up until I was right above the gate. The gate that when I touched it, a tentacle met my hand through the bright red barrier. I immediately retracted my fingers back to my side, and my hold on the flashlight dropped as I swam upwards as fast as my waterlogged jeans could take me. Bubbles surrounded me and the same low growl from before greeted me the second I broke the barrier between underwater, and above ground.

My head popped out with a loud splash, and ripples of small waves came out all around me, causing my hair to flick water onto the dry passengers of Reefer Rick's boat. "I found it". I breathed out, taking quick, easy breaths as fast as I could. Eddie came to the side of the boat, looking down at me with a worried expression crossing his moonlit face. "You found it?" He asked, surprised by my discovery. I swam closer to the boat, grabbing onto the side and pulling it slightly downwards to me, just to calm the nerves in my legs down a bit. "I found it. Yeah. I found it." I panted out. Eddie smiled reassuringly at me, and I set my hand right beside his as I fully brought myself up towards the boat. Robin drew the radio closer to her face, looking at Nancy, who was sitting beside her with her head resting just beneath her shoulder. "Dustin, you are a goddamn Einstein. Steve found the gate—," she was cut off by a loud crackling, then a radio cut off. I looked up to Eddie, who looked away from me at the teens on the shore, flashlights lit up behind them, and you could see a glimpse of Max's red hair pop out of the log they were hiding behind.

I looked away from the dazed male, "It was pretty wild. It's more of a snack size gate than the mama gate." I took a breath and looked at Robin, my arms crossing over the ledge of the metal boat, my elbow brushing against Eddie's ring-filed hands. "But still, it's pretty damn big." I said afterwards, and suddenly a yank that started at my ankle began a clamor between everyone, but it only happened once. I looked at Nancy, who was wearing the same confused expression as the other two. I looked down at my ankle, and once again whatever was there pulled on me again, and carried me away from the boat, and my loose grip on the rusty metal wall faded away as I was fully submerged underneath the water once again. Yells from my friends came from above, mostly Robin's though. She screamed like a pterodactyl.

"Shit, Steve!" Eddie yelled, crouching over the side of the boat to look at me, and I could barely make out his face through the water I was being pulled down into. I screamed the best I could, struggling to get free from the hold the tentacle I saw creeping out from underneath the gate's barrier had on me as I got dragged deeper, and deeper to the bottom of the lagoon, towards the same gate I had even dared to touch in the first place.

"Steve! Steve!" Eddie's muffled voice came again, desperate as ever. Separate clamors came from Robin and Nancy, most curses and yells that got mixed together and withered away from my hearing as I was led further down the rabbit hole I got myself into.

The tentacle brought me straight into the gooey portal to the other dimension, and the second I made eye contact with it, it was too late. I was already being spat out into the other side of the world, and let me tell you. It was disgusting. Even more disgusting than Eddie's boat, and that's saying a lot. Snake-like vines that were alive covered the drained lake as I was brought further away from the gate and towards a converted space, where there were no vines, only a few crossed the terrain. Almost was there beside the tentacle that had brought me there in the first place and the black vines that I was slowly making contact within my road trip across the land. I continued screaming, grasping for anyone's help, but my voice got weak and my eyes slowly turned to look around at where I was, and again, another shocker came. My back stopped being dragged across the concrete, and I was thrown into a pile of vines. I definitely had some form of rug burn on my back, and it felt like the end of my life was coming the five seconds I sat there catching my breath, the five seconds before I heard the awful growling of some kind of creature in front of me. I crawled out of the pile I had been thrown into, still panting and shaking from the adrenaline rush. I brought myself upwards very slowly, cautious of the newfound limp I had gained from that race with time. Thunder rumbled, and a red lighting struck somewhere behind the dark gray clouds that stuck to every corner of the sky in this place. Electricity sparked in sync with another snarl, and I turned around to meet that noise, only to see a faraway silhouette of a bat flying descending towards me through the red skies. I took a step back, a knot growing in my stomach that made my breathing become more and more manual. I walked backwards, wary of the many vines covering the ground, where I heard another snarl, from another direction. The same went for the south, and the east. All until I saw a group of bats coming straight for me. I grunted as I picked myself up and snapped out of whatever trance I was in to grab an oar from our abandoned boat in the overworld that ended up here, covered in the same tentacles that were everywhere around this deserted lake. I gripped it tightly, slapping another hand onto it just in time for the first bat to come my way, I met eyes with the furry figure, and slammed the wooden oar down as hard as I could, bringing the creature straight to the ground beside my feet. The other 3 came as quickly as the first, and I ducked underneath one of them, only for the one I had knocked out to recoil and find group in the other two's company.

I tried keeping eyes on all of them for the time being, waiting for one to come closer to me so I could pull off another strike, but the one I had previously ducked under came back for a second try, and it got me.

It's long tail wrapped around my neck, holding me in a chokehold. I screamed as it tightened around my neck, panting loudly as I grabbed it where it had gotten me with my hands, trying my best to pull it away from my throat so it wasn't putting as much pressure as it originally was trying to. I swatted at it as it dragged me across the concrete slowly, screaming helplessly, making incoherent noises that not even I could make sense of even though they were coming from my mouth. Another bat swooped down from above, and bit down on my stomach.

It took me a second to realize the gravity of the bite, but once I did register the crunch noise it gave off, my eyes shot down to it, and I strained the best I could to suppress the pain.

I tried my best to swat that one away too, but to no avail. It was hard when I was already trying to get one off of my neck. The creature holding onto my neck squealed as I dug my fingernails into it's tail, and the one attached to my lower abdomen made a feast out of my flesh, making loud, wet feeding sounds as I felt the blood from there rush out of my body and a sharp pain kicked in after my attempt at straining the attack.

Another one nosedived into me, attaching its small, but sharp teeth into my skin, sucking out every bit of life I had left in my body. I felt tears coming out along with my strained screams, but I knew I couldn't do anything. I knew that if a miracle didn't arrive soon, my life would be over. That would be that. But I didn't give up on the hope that somehow, someway I could save myself from the chokehold these monsters had on me. I kept swinging at them with my open hand, and they kept coming back every time I managed to get them off. A loud chittering came from them, and I screamed with all the air I had left inside of me. I fought the last bit of willpower I had in my body I had against those bats, but all I could do was wriggle my legs and try to keep breathing through the authority it had on me. I was just trying to get this goddamn bat off my neck so I could fight the problems below. Trying to keep fighting for what could my last breath.

But by the time I stopped, all that I could hear besides the ringing in my ears was the loud rumbling of thunder above me, and I silently hoped that someone would come through to save me from this Upside Down hellhole I had gotten dragged into. Because otherwise, I wasn't sure I would have a chance at life anyway but that.