Stranger Things: Beyond the Silver Rainbow

[35] (Jonathan)

The soft spot below Jonathan's adam's apple, at the base of the throat, where the clavicles met each other: that was where the monster wanted to come out. He could tell because that was where it maintained a polite and persistent tapping. He tried humming Brahm's Lullaby to help Elle concentrate but every note came out wrong. The glue in his mouth made him sound like a swamp creature.

"Mike," Elle burbled, snotty. "Mike."

Her struggle swung from enveloping aches to targeted pains and back again without rhythm, offering no periods of relief, no inner sunshine for Jonathan to anticipate. The flashlight moon, nested in its circles of gold, shined streaks across his rattling eyes.

"Monster," Elle whispered. Her pseudo-fist shoved him violently, swaying the flashlight moon from side to side across the sky, yanking cemented chunks of his hair from a puddle of glue on the floor.

Stop it.  He was about to choke on a ball of crumpled sticky-tape.  Leave me alone. I quit.

"Murderers," said Elle's little bell. The creature answered, flexing, shaking, plucking at the place where Jonathan would gag if only he could remember how to do it. His fingers and toes were numb from cold, as if he lay prone in a pile of snow, or underground, numb because the worms were eating the littlest parts first. Fingers, toes. Ears. Nose. Eating away at him like frostbite.

The snow, that was it. That had to be it: after saying goodbye to Nancy he had slipped and fallen off the Wheelers' icy garage roof and hit his head on the step-up bin, and now he lay in his own footprints, hidden between the snowdrift and the wall, just this side of knocked out. Luckily Nancy had already closed the window so she hadn't heard him fall. That would have been awkward.

As soon as he fully came-to he could grab a handful of snow to nurse the swelling, then drive home, sneak back into his bed like nothing had happened at all and wait for Will to come drag him out of it again, marking the official start of Christmas morning. By the time he got to work on breakfast he would forget all about his new friend Elle and the monsters eating him alive from the inside, and next month Nancy would be back in the caf again, safe and whole like always, stealing his carrot sticks one by one while he scanned his mangled excuse for history notes and pretended not to notice.

And he would definitely, definitely take the gun back and either bury it in the woods or drop it off at Lonnie's. Lesson learned, thank you dreamland.

"Mike." Elle punched him again. It didn't feel like help. It felt like he deserved it.

Jonathan's eyes warmed. The flashlight moon blurred, multiplied, honeycombed. He couldn't bluff his way through this one either.

I quit this. Go away.  A warm hand cradled his heart, consoling it, and then bit down and shook it like a dog with a new toy. No, forget it. Don't bother.  He hated carrot sticks. Fuck you.  He packed them every day. This isn't happening.

"Mike. I'm sorry too."

The rattling switched off. It was the release of a tether, freeing Jonathan to float up into space in airy silence, but instead the floor changed shape, curving under his weight, sliding him down into a groove.

The dark shadow that was Elle wiped its nose in triumph. "I did it." Her velcro sleeve ripped apart once more, illustrating her point: "It's unstuck." The moon haloed her head off-centre, outshining her face and rendering her expressionless, thumblike.

A carnivorous breath exhaled from the dip below. Jonathan patted at the floor until he found her―a flap of fabric, a fleecy flannel hem hanging from under her coat―and held on with all the might of a rat in a storm drain. "But it's not out," he rasped, "Don't. I can't go back yet. Don't."