Complicated • Stranger Things

22 - The Flayed

A/N:

If you haven't read chapters 19-21 since they've been edited (on 6/1/22) I suggest you go back a read through them because I've changed a few things.

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We continued to fall for what seemed like forever, us all screaming the whole time.

"We're going down! We're going down!" Steve shouted.

"Yeah, no shit, Harrington!" Robin shouted back.

"Why don't these buttons work?" Dustin screamed as he frantically pushed all the buttons.

We all continued screaming and arguing over the buttons until the elevator came to an abrupt stop, causing all of us to fall.

"My groin. It fell on my groin." Steve groaned. I looked over at him to see him trapped under a box. "Dustin! Get this off me!"

Dustin walked over to Steve and struggled to lift the box, so I went over to help him.

"Is everyone okay?" Robin asked.

"Yeah, I'm great now that I know that Russians can't design elevators!" Steve shouted as he shoved Dustin out of the way to get to the buttons.

"Hey, calm down," I told him, but he shrugged me off.

"I think we've clearly established that those buttons don't work," Robin stated.

"They're buttons. They have to do something." Steve shouted.

"Yeah, if we had a keycard," Robin said.

"What?" Steve asked.

"It's an electronic lock. Same as the loading dock door. If we don't have a keycard, it won't operate, meaning–"

"We're stuck in here." Dustin finished.

"Yeah," Robin confirmed.

"Just so you nerds are aware, I'm supposed to be spending the night at Tina's, and Tina always covers for me.  But if I'm not home for Uncle Jack's party tomorrow and my mom finds out you four are responsible, she's gonna hunt you down, one by one, and slit your throat." Erica rambled on.

"I don't care about Tina! Or Uncle Jack's party!" Steve yelled as he hit the box he was leaning on. "Your mom's not gonna be able to find us if we're dead in a Russian elevator!"

"Hey," Dustin said and we all turned towards him. He was pointing at something on the ceiling. It was a trapdoor. "What if we climbed out?"

We moved the table and stacked a few boxes under the door and Steve and Dustin climbed onto the top of the elevator. About a minute later, they came back down, saying that it was too far to climb, which was expected considering how long we were falling for.

Robin, Steve, and I stayed up all night, trying to find a way to open the door while Erica and Dustin went to sleep.

Once it was morning, Dustin and Erica woke up and we decided to actually try to open the door while Dustin went back on top of the elevator to try and contact someone with his radio.

"I need to pee," Steve stated and Robin and I turned to look at him.

"Well, you're not going down here," I told him after a moment.

"Where am I supposed to go then?" He asked.

"I don't know. Go up there." I pointed to the roof of the elevator. Steve reluctantly sighed before climbing up there.

Robin went back to working on the door. She was playing with the wires, trying to see if she could get the door to open.

"Can you redirect your stream, please?" She shouted. I looked over to where she was looking to see a dark spot on the wall, where I assumed was the place Steve decided to relive himself.