Byler- The Unwanted Return of Everything (And How It Finally Ends)

The Feeling of Life

Max Mayfield was supposed to be dead.

She could feel it in her bones. They felt hollow and unused. Her stomach growled like she hadn't eaten in years. She was dry, dirty, and pale. She hadn't tried using her voice yet, for fear of what it would sound like. Everything felt light. The overwhelming feeling of being dead, she thought.

But despite this, she was moving. She moved, she walked, she stepped, and she knew where she was going.

She had awoken in the Upside Down, from what it seemed. The dark blue atmosphere, the vines, the air particles. She was in the woods, but then she saw a crack. And opening to the real world, and she'd walked through it.

Now she was in Hawkins, and not sure what to do with that information. First, she thought to find Lucas but decided her top priority was to figure out what year it was because she had a feeling it wasn't the year she had last remembered.

Walking past a pond, she nearly shrieked upon seeing herself. She looked dead. And older. The most frightening part was her eyes, lacking pupils. They were just white, as if she were blind. She wondered how she was able to see anything at all.

Now her top priority was finding a pair of sunglasses. If she was going to be walking around town, she wouldn't want people freaking out about her white eyes. She didn't want to draw attention to herself. Luckily, she came out of the woods by a convenience store. No one even noticed as she snuck in with her head down and crept over to a rack of glasses.

She picked out some red ones that reminded her of a pair she had when she was thirteen. Thirteen must've been so long ago because Max sure didn't look thirteen anymore. It made her feel sad, wondering how much she'd missed out on. Or if her friends were even alive anymore. Hawkins seemed okay, so perhaps they'd solved the problem.

Well, actually, they couldn't have solved the problem. Max had just come through an Upside Down gate, so obviously they hadn't been closed off. Maybe she'd ask a local.

Max ripped the tag off of the sunglasses and put them over her eyes.

Perfect disguise.

She walked up to a woman shopping in the produce aisle, observing a rack of overripe bananas.

"Hi there," she said. Her voice sounded older too, but she tried not to let it surprise her. Max cleared her throat since it was slightly raspy.

The woman turned. "Hi! Do you need something?"

Max nodded. "Yeah, this is a really weird question, but what year is it?" She decided she'd just get that one over with, however strange the question was.

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Nineteen-ninety-one," she said. "Why?"

Max's stomach dropped to the floor. That was five years since the last year she remembered. She'd been gone for five years. Lucas probably had a new girlfriend. God, Eleven and Mike were probably married at this point or something. Bleh.

"Are you okay, dear?" the woman asked. "You look pale."

Max shook her head. "Oh, yeah. I'm fine." She thought. "I'm just... doing this little social experiment. Seeing how people respond to weird questions like that." The best excuse she could think of.

The woman nodded. "Oh, well, glad I could help you out then. Did I do well?"

"Great, ma'am." Max smiled and walked away with an awkward wave. She walked out of the store, finding another person to ask her second question. The old man with a bag of groceries would do fine.

"Hello, sir," she started. "Do you know anything about the... incident in Hawkins." She wasn't sure what to call it. No one knew it was the Upside Down. Or maybe they did now. Max was slightly lost.