**Say What You Mean Out Loud**

~ E I G H T ~

The Wicked Witch

Greyson Elliot was shoved the tiny turtle shell in her pocket,wringing her hair out and walking up the steps of the hotel.
Bill ran out past her, and she turned around.

"Bill?" He was running away. "Bill stop, where are you going?!" She yelled at him but he kept running.

Reluctantly, she didn't pursue him.
Instead she trudged inside, wiping what was left of the blood on her face.
Though it was gone, the red stained all down the front of her face and the front of her shirt.

When she got in, Bev was running her hand through her hair and Ben was running down the stairs. "Did Bill just leave?" He asked.

"I couldn't stop him, everybody's leaving and I..."
"It's alright it's... oh my god Grey." He looked at the girl trudging in with water dripping from her hair and blood stains all down the front of her.

"Are you okay? What happened?"
She pushed past him and walked up the stairs.
"I don't want to talk about it."

He sighed. "Are you leaving too?"
"No I'm not leaving!" She walked up to her room and hit her head on the door in exhaustion.

She wasn't really all that tired, she was just emotionally drained from her harrowing experience.
Behind her someone else opened their door, and a suitcase clatter was evident.

Grey turned around to see Stanley pulling his suitcase out of his room, putting his glasses in his front pocket. He turned around and looked a Grey, startled by her appearance.

"Where are you going?"
"Are you okay?"

Her eyebrows furrowed in frustration and she groaned, grabbing his arm and pulling him into her room.
She pulled his arm until the were inside, and she sat down on her bed.

"Stanley where do you think you're going?"
"Home. I'm going home, are you okay?" He repeated.

Grey laughed as if that was the funniest thing in the world.
"No you're not." She giggled.
"What?"

"You're not going home! What do you have at hoe that you don't have here?"
Stanley rolled his eyes. "Safety."

"You don't have any safety at home. You go home, you take your own life. You said it yourself, you almost did it and you didn't have control. So no Stanley you're to going home, because I'll be damned if I let that happen to you."

He stared at the woman, who so often resembled her child-like self, from years past.
She was still cheerful, and confusing, and so confident in Stanley all the time.

He kept staring at her, the indescribable force pushing them closer together, like it had done before. Except this time, he closed the gap himself, holding her head with one hand and pressing his lips to hers.

It wasn't awkward or weird, it was like years they spent apart had been mended in a single moment, by a single kiss.

She pulled away from him, wearing a smile more cheerful than he had ever seen it.
It had him smiling too.

"I, uh..."
He was interrupted by a scream outside, that sounded like Eddie.
"Guys!!"

They jumped up and ran out, to see Eddie slowly stumbling out of his room, a long horizontal cut on his cheek.
Bev ran up and screamed at the sight of him.

"Oh my god Eddie!" Grey screamed.
He opened his mouth and blood poured out. "Bowers is in my room."

Bowers. Henry Bowers.
The kid who made Grey and all her friends' lives constant hell.
The kid whom she was deathly terrified of for years.
Why wasn't he dead? Or in prison?

Ben ran in, followed closely by Grey.
There was blood splattered on the floor and a broken window.

They raced to it and peeked out, seeing the gross man with a knife in his chest, stumbling away from the building down below.
Ben shook and Grey pinched her nose.

He smiled at them, pulling the knife out like it was nothing and jogging back to his car.
He looked even worse as an adult.
And he still had the same shit, blue car.

Ben turned around and grabbed a towel from the rack, running out of the bathroom.
"Grey, come on."
She stared at the shit car leaving, shakes racking her whole body.

"Grey!" He shouted, startling her from her racing train of thought.
"Come on, let's help Eddie."

She let go of her nose, and nodded.
"Yah... yah o-okay."

She grabbed the little box with the medical red cross on the front, from the mirror cabinet, and followed Ben out to their bleeding friend in the hallway.

Just when they got away from one monster of traumatic reminder, there was another one waiting for them around the corner. Down the road. In the fucking sewer, who knows.