Apocalypse, Steve Harrington

Chapter Seventy-Three. Stranger Danger

SEVENTY-THREE
— stranger danger

       SHE'S BEEN HAVING SOME SICK FUCKING NIGHTMARES, RECENTLY.

        Now, don't get it twisted, because Lucy is no stranger to night-terrors. Besides her first real memory, the one of her and Danny on the monkey-bars, all she recalls is nightmare, after nightmare, after nightmare. She remembers being, like, seven-years-old when she'd wake up with a pool of sweat collecting on her lower-back. She remembers Jim waking her, holding her tightly by the forearms so she'd stop thrashing and punching in her sleep. She remembers the bunkbed she shared with her brother, and how she'd scurry down the wooden-latter so she could rush to her parents room and squeeze right between their sleeping bodies so she could feel safe. She really, really isn't a stranger to nightmares. They've kind-of consumed her entire being, even up into her teenage years. What other seventeen, eighteen-year-old girl wakes up with her clammy palm clutching at her pajama shirt . . . no-one she knows, that's for sure. And they're always the same — she's always been in that fucking void. She really hates the void.

      That's why these are different. She's not dreaming of herself in a dark and endless room, with watery floors and a coldness that she can feel deep in her bones. She's not dreaming of strange men and a pretty brown-eyed woman, she's not dreaming of the Shadow Monster or the Mind Flayer eating her soul. She is not in the void. It's not her normal.

      Lucy's nightmares are typically disoriented and disgustingly confusing. She always stumbles through them with a weird haze covering her eyes, some sort-of misunderstanding deep in her brain that makes it impossible for her to comprehend what the hell is going on. These, though, the new ones . . . they're always so clear, so hyper-realistic that it's genuinely horrifying. She can hear every breath, she can feel every movement, she can literally taste the dryness in her mouth even though she's in a goddamn dream. She confuses it with real life every single time — and that's never happened before. There have been times where she has to stand there and interrupt whatever terrifying nightmare sequence is going on to slap herself across the face, hoping she doesn't feel a burn across her cheeks. But every time, whether it's that or a pinch on the forearm, she does. She feels it, even if it's not reality.

       Today, Lucy dreams of her family. Surprise, surprise, like that hasn't been the content of her night-terrors since it all happened in July.

      She dreams she's in Starcourt before it "burnt down". She's in her old Orange Julius uniform and her hair is in a purple-scrunchie, and she can smell that she's wearing the kind-of expensive perfume she used to wear. She can hear every footstep, she can feel the tile of the countertop against her fingertips, she can smell smoke and burning flesh somewhere off in the distance, but it mixes with the fumes coming off her own body. Why can she smell everything? It's not normal — this isn't normal. Anyway, to spare you of the horrifying details, she stumbles across her Dad and Daniel. She shrieks so loudly it makes her throat raw, and her cries are so intense it literally hurts to inhale. They're chanting her name, and they look so dead, and she's cupping her hands so tight over her ears, it feels like she's suctioning her brain.

      They don't have eyes, her brother and her father. It's a detail that repeats itself every time one of these different nightmares rolls around — whether she sees Bob, Danny, Jim, hell, even Billy, their eyes are gouged out. It's a strange element she can't seem to shake.