Shutter [Jonathan Byers] Stranger Things I

LVIII: Survive

sur·vive

verb

continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship.

Emilia sat in her bedroom with her back against the door, hands over her ears. The shouting penetrated her best attempts to prevent herself from hearing it. Every word came through, hardly muffled, and she heard how much her parents hated one another. The curse words, the accusations, the fire burning in their voices. Thinking back on it, Emilia knew that her parents never should have met, they never should have slept together and conceived Emilia, they never should have carried the pregnancy to term, and they never should have attempted to raise a child together. Neither of them were meant to be parents; Emilia knew that now, she understood that her father just dealt with her, and her mother never truly wanted a child. Her mother, however, took responsibility and did what every mother should.

But her mother should never have been a mother; she was meant for greater things. She was meant to travel the world, join a hippie convent for a short time, grow her hair long, then shave it all off just to see what it felt like. She was meant to have lovers, not fight the worst fighter of all. She was meant to stick her thumb out alongside the road wearing jean shorts that she'd made herself. She was meant to get a small tattoo at some back alley shop, and regret it later in life. Arlene Roth was never meant to die in a car accident caused by a drunk driver.

She said it, she said it all. "I could leave, and what you would do, William?"

"You won't leave, not with the kid here."

"She's the only reason I stay! You are a sickness, you ruin everything you touch. I know you'd ruin her if I was gone. You'd forget about her, you'd let her wither away. The only reason I didn't leave you years ago, is because of that girl."

"Oh go ahead and blame me. That's mature, Arlene," her father snarled back. "You won't take her either, will you? Because you want to live out your life without the strings attached."

"You think I won't take her?" Arlene rose to the challenge, she turned around on her heel and walked towards Emilia's door. Emilia heard the footsteps well in advance, and threw on a pair of headphones and picked up a text book to pretend as though she wasn't listening to what they had just said. Neither parent wanted her, but at least her mother would leave with her. Her mother was calm when she asked Emilia if she wanted to go to the grocery store with her that cold, snowy December night. Little did she know it would be her last hour alive; had William and Arlene not fought, they never would have gone on that drive, and Arlene would still be alive.

Different voices filled Emilia's mind; she realized that she was not dead then. Eyelids fluttered open, but only one was able to see. It took a moment, but she found herself in a hospital bed and thought she was waking up from the accident. As if the two years after the accident never happened, and she'd dreamed them in some coma. But her brain wouldn't have come up with all the crazy things she had seen, things like that had to be real. She blinked, feeling something over her left eye. When she reached up to feel it, she noticed that her arm was heavily bandaged with gauze. A subtle but not entirely unpleasant pain throbbed on her left side, she recalled being in far more pain when she had been in the Upside Down.

"I'm..." She realized she was back home, or in the real world at least. "I'm alive..."

She tuned into the voices, just outside the door.