Shutter [Jonathan Byers] Stranger Things I

XXXIV: Insanity

in·san·i·ty

noun

the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness.

Emilia was still staring at the moon when she heard the noise in the woods; her heart began to race as if she'd just run all the way here from her house. Eyes peering into the woods, she told herself that the monster was part of her mind and nothing more. Perhaps it was time to face it, and so she slipped her backpack over her shoulder and put it on the ground. Without taking her eyes off of the forest, she reached into her bag and felt around for her camera. When it was within her grip, she pulled it out and took off the protective cap from the lens. Bringing it to her eye, she took a picture; future proof that nothing was there.

Even though her heart was racing and her mind began to spin with nervousness, Emilia was going to prove to herself that this monster ordeal was complete and utter insanity. So she stepped off of the road, where civilization gave her a false sense of security and safety. Down the small, rounded ditch that had a shallow amount of water at the bottom. It lapped at the edges of her boots but did not soak through. Though she didn't have much at home, she had good clothing that could withstand the weather. With one hand clutching her camera against her chest, she placed the other in the soft soil to pull herself up the steeper half of the ravine. Once level, she stood among the tall trees and looked around before taking another snap.

She knew the images would come out as a blur, and her mind might trick her into thinking that in those blurs there was a monster. But the woods were silent, and she saw nothing was stirring. Adjusting her camera so the light would flash, she took a deep breath to calm her ever running nerves. Holding it to her blue eyes, she looked through the lens and saw nothing; when the camera shuttered and the light flashed brilliantly, her hands released the grip upon her camera. Frozen for a moment, Emilia was only stalled until her camera slammed hard against her chest. The strap protected it from falling and breaking, and the thud against her body made her realize the danger that she was truly in. The monster was not her mind running wild; it was right in front of her.

Taller than any man she'd seen, it was a biped. With long, gangly arms, it resembled a human in almost all ways except the face. Where one should have been, it did not have. Emilia realized, as she stared at this creature that was not of her imagination as she so hoped it would be because insanity would be easier to address, that she had stumble right into its territory. She was the foolish rabbit, nibbling the foliage and vegetation until it faced a wolf den. Taking a step backwards, she saw that the monsters face began to crack open like an egg. The face parted, spilling open from the sides and revealing a grotesque sort of flower; teeth and gums, an unimaginable foe Emilia knew she could not win against.

So she turned and ran back towards the road; even though she felt it would no longer offer safety, she hoped someone would be driving down the road and save her. No scream managed to escape her lips as she began to run, the monster making its own noises as it followed her rapidly. It moved faster than she did, but she had a head start. It appeared both of them had startled one another, only the monster was like a Grizzly bear; it knew that it would win the fight. While most predators would not engage in a fight with a human, a Grizzly would because it was aware of its odds, its strength. But Emilia did not think this monster saw her as a threat it knew it could deal with; as she ran, she felt like food.

The growl the monster made was enough to finally get Emilia to shout, something that resembled the English 'no' escaped her lips, but it was incomprehensible and no one was out there to hear her. Her eyes began to blur with tears, tears she wished she was strong enough to fight, and she put her hands out to stop herself from hitting any trees. Her hands wrapped around a trunk and she used it to propel herself as fast as she could towards the road. There were no street lights, and she couldn't see if she was going in the right direction anymore. A large tree stood in her path, and she intended to run to the right of it, sure that the road was in that direction. When her hands planted against the tree so that she could slow herself down and then push off of it, she sunk right into it.

Her entire body was enveloped in something, in something like mucus. When she pushed through the mucus-like barrier, she shrieked and wiped the residue off of her as if she'd walked through a thick, gag-worthy spider web. Only the spider was a monster, she was sure, and she was the fly. When she tripped, Emilia fell to the ground and it dusted up around her like an old attic that hadn't been cleaned in a decade. Powered ground floated all around her as if gravity had no place here. She shuddered as she looked around, seeing the very forest she was in but different, somehow. Standing tall, she looked around, studying what she was looking at and momentarily forgetting her fear and the chase that had been happening before she slipped into this...

Insanity. You've completely lost it.

She cleared her throat, and brought the camera to her eye, turning around and noticing that the normal world was just behind her. She lifted her camera to her eye and snapped a picture, but the flash that had been on shattered instead of functioned. The glass crackled and then fell just in front of her, making Emilia gasp, turning the camera to look at it. The lens was intact, but the bulb had shattered. She cleared the shards, slicing open her finger in the process, and pushed the little light back down into the camera. She made sure that there was no glass in her finger, then stuck it in her mouth like she was five years old.

"Where am I?" She asked herself, "What is this place?"

"Help!"

Emilia looked around, she swore she'd heard a voice, but it brought her back into the reality that there had been a monster behind her only moments ago. She turned to look at the opening where the real world was, and then back at this false world. The echo of someone calling for help came again, and Emilia wanted so badly to locate the voice, but it also reminded her of how badly she needed to get out of there, how far from safety she was. The fact that the voice was indeed calling for help, it only made her desire to get out even deeper set.

Until she realized whose voice it was.

"Will?!" She shouted, not caring anymore how loud her voice was or what it attracted to her.

"Help!"

"Will, where are you?!" Emilia shouted, peering through the haze, but seeing no movement. She began to move, and then froze on the spot; she couldn't leave this location, it was the only place she knew that she could get back into the real world. So she shouted, "Will, follow my voice! I'm over here!"

But there was nothing, no reply.

For minutes she waited for any noise, anything at all.

And then, "Emilia, run."

Question of the day, do you have a specific place where you write/read?