BILLIE JEAN ( eddie munson.. ) ✔

025. Master of Puppets..

Somewhere in a Surfer Boy Pizza restaurant, four teenagers knelt around a freezer box, filled with water and salt, in which a fifth member of their group floated, in a trance. The lights flickered and though the scent of the pizza previously made in that kitchen lingered, no one cared about it anymore. Tension was crippling and the silence was killing them... Mike especially.

His hands grasped the edge of the improvised tub.

This was supposed to be a nice spring break. This was supposed to be a Californian getaway, a dream come true where he could live beside Eleven and forget all about Hawkins, about loneliness, about his doubts that he was even worth the amazingness she brought into his life. The last few days have been the opposite of that though. The last few days have been a walk through hell that left him doubtful, confused and worried sick until his voice only came out in shivers.

"What are you seeing?" Words trembled out of him the second the lights flickered and he watched, helplessly, how Eleven's mouth moved into a grimace. Whatever she was seeing wasn't good and all of a sudden, he regretted not having insisted a little harder on finding a way to get back to Hawkins rather than just let Eleven do all the fighting while they just stood there, and watched.

Mike was glad at least that he wasn't alone. Will was there with him, right beside him as the scent of melancholy for simpler times when their only worry was how exactly they were going to defeat the next campaign to happen in his basement. There had been some months in which Mike thought he had had enough of Dungeons and Dragons, but if high school taught him anything... If this trip taught him anything at all, then it was that he wished nothing more than to go back to the days in which he didn't have to live with the fear of losing the people he loves. But there laid the conflict: he didn't want to have a life without Eleven either.

Jonathan was there as well... Jonathan's friend, Argyle, too. Mike was glad he wasn't alone when these lights started flickering and with them, his heart too fluctuated its scared heartbeat.

"Henry has her," Eleven answered him.

"Who?" Mike was left to be the only one asking the questions. "Max?!"

"No." The numbness of El's answers sometimes gave them all shivers. She spoke so nonchalantly that if someone who didn't know her heard her for the first time, they'd believe she didn't care at all. "Billie..."

"Billy?" Will tensed up, eyes widening.

"No," Eleven corrected him. "A girl," in a break in her speech, she hesitated, lost in vision, lost in traveling across the country. "She's pretty..."

Mike's mind could only remember a single girl with that name. That day at the cafeteria flashed before his eyes, the day before the end of their campaign with Vecna. Eddie Munson was once again looking at this redhead girl he had at least half his classes with, a girl he was whipped after so obviously, but she ignored him completely nevertheless. He called her...

"Billie Jean?!" Mike exclaimed. "What is she doing there?"

"Henry...," El gulped and grimaced again. The lights flickered so violently that for a moment too long, it was pitch black in that kitchen. "He's going to kill her."

An hour before the freezer box even became a bathtub for Eleven, deep into the Forest Hills Trailer Park of Hawkins, everyone was ready for battle. The sun wasn't even close to setting, but clouds had gathered and no one had hope of meeting anything but eternal night on the other side, into the Upside Down.

Billie watched, arms hugging her chest and palms pressuring under her armpits for warmth, how Barry and Robin got Devin into the car. Robin pulled on the holy water dripping ropes, tested their sturdiness, but Billie was more interested in not blinking. She took a good look at her brother, at Devin: how the demon struggled, the marks the possession left on his skin, a whole spectrum of bruises, burns and scratches. Blood tears were falling out of his rotten eyes and his gagged mouth spit dark blood out with every struggle. Gray smoke left the still forming burns.