Birds Of A Feather // Eddie Munson

025

Eddie broke away from the kiss and leaned his forehead on mine, continuing on. "I'm serious Elaine. I wont let anything happen to you." I smiled at him and put my arms around his neck. "Yeah, I wont leave without you either."

When we caught up to the rest of the group it had turned nightfall. Eddie and I had been holding hands but as we got into eyeshot of everybody else, he let go. The coldness on my hands felt colder than what I thought it would've. I looked over at Eddie and he smiled at me, acting like that was totally normal. I get it though, he probably doesn't wanna upset Dustin, I don't either.

Robin and Nancy looked over at me, concerned about the look on my face but didn't ask questions.

"Okay so, when the compass starts going crazy, that's most likely where the gate is, so one of you should go look for it and do not go in there!" Dustin said, nodding toward Nancy, Robin, Eddie and Steve. "Why'd you nod at them and not me?" I say confused, crossing my arms. "Because you're not going. It's too dangerous. You've been cursed by Vecna and what if he takes you while you're looking for the gate?" I shake my head. "I don't care about any of that. I'm going, you can't stop me." Dustin throws his arms in the air and sits on a tree log that was laying down by the boat but didn't verbally protest, knowing that once my mind was made up there was no changing it.

"Okay, let's get this over with." Steve said, kneeling down by the boat with Eddie. Robin got in first, using the boys heads to get herself in steadily, which me, Max and Lucas all laughed at. Eddie stood up and helped Nancy in, holding her hand to make sure she didn't fall. Eddie got in next, then Steve and then Steve helped me in. I looked at Eddie in confusion at the fact he had helped both Nancy and Robin in, but didn't bother to help me.

Steve leaned over, pressing play on my Walkman. "Remember to keep this playing, at ALL times. If something happened to you, I don't know what I'd do. I don't know what Dustin would do to me either." He laughed and nudged me with his shoulder.

As we began rowing our way out Dustin yelled "Please be careful guys." I smiled back at him over my shoulder and put my thumb up to him, he shook his head and grabbed the binoculars out of his bag to keep watch.

I rest my head in my hands and watch Nancy and Steve talk, same with Robin and Eddie. I cant get out of my head the fact that he ignored me and helped basically everybody else in, not only that but he dropped my hand as soon as everyone could see us, now he wasn't even making an effort to speak to me? What is going on with him? "Hey, Elaine." Robin tapped my leg. "We're here." She held out a plastic sealie bag for me to put my Walkman in so that there'd be no water damage.

I put the device in the bag and stuffed it into my jacket, hoping that it wouldn't break. Steve stood up and took his sweater off and threw it to the floor of the boat. "Be careful Steve, come back up as soon as you see it." I say. He nods and dives out of the boat, Eddie tries to light a cigarette and Robin swats it out of his hands and into the water earning an offended look from him.

After an what felt like an eternity of waiting, Steve came back up, gasping for air and trying to catch his breath. "Yeah, there's a gate down there for sure." Everyone looked around at each other in shock. We didn't expect to actually find one. "You're sure?" Nancy said, furrowing her eyebrows and looking at Steve cautiously. "Uh yeah, big scary hole where there's another Hawkins but like way emptier. I'm telling you theres-"

Steve screamed, cutting himself off. I swung around to see that Steve was now gone from the side of the boat. He had obviously been dragged under by something. Adrenaline coursed through my body as I tried to think about what to do. I had never seen the Upside Down before, I'll be honest; I was terrified to look. Nancy wasted no time in jumping in after Steve. Robin looked around and then followed basically straight after.

"What the fuck, what the fuck? Holy shit." Eddie was mumbling to himself, clearly horrified by what had just happened. "Eddie, you don't have to come if you don't want to but I'm going in." Eddie looked up at me, seemingly forgetting that he wasn't alone on the boat. "What? No you can't! You heard Dustin!" I scoffed
"Yeah and you heard me. I'm going in there. I'm not leaving them. I cant make your decision for you so you aren't making mine for me." 

I stood up and jumped into the freezing cold water, it burned my skin due to the contrast of the temperature. It took my breath away almost instantly but I swam straight down, wasting no time. Steve could be in trouble and I would never forgive myself if something happened to him.

The water was suffocating and went deeper than I thought it would, the only thing that kept me swimming was the red glow I could see, assuming that it was the gate.

When I got to the gate I climbed in, how strange, it was like getting out of a pool. I wiped my face and my eyes to clear them of the murky water that had been there moments before and looked around for the group. That was when I saw around 20-30 birds? Bats? They were all attacking my friends. I looked around for something and saw an oar lying on the floor. Picking it up and running toward the others, the only thoughts in my head were if Eddie would come join us and if the others were okay.

As soon as I got to them I started to hit whatever bats I could as hard as I could. It felt like a scene from a movie where there would be some kind of epic soundtrack playing but the only thing to be heard were our heavy breaths and the screams of the bat like creatures. More of the bats had started to come over and me, Steve Nancy and Robin all looked at each other in despair.

They ignored Steve.
They ignored Nancy.
They ignored Robin.
I was not so lucky.

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two chapters in one night after being gone for almost two weeks😧I rly am a whole new person damn /j
Elaine ... girlie ... run pls ...