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Eddie Munson wishes that he’d died in Dustin’s arms.
Waking up in the Upside Down is terrifying; waking up at all is so incomprehensible that he almost tries to die again. Hell, he remembers it well enough to replicate it. The searing pain as the bats tore apart his legs, the guttural sounds that he hadn’t even been aware he was able to make, the way the world didn’t go black at first, but grey, starting from the outside and working its way in. That was the most terrifying part—the knowing. Being unable to move, watching his vision blur and fade, powerless to escape from the cold, omnipotent grey that crawled in from the backs of his eyelids, like something that had been dormant inside him was now taking over his field of vision. Like this, in all its abject terror, had always been an inevitability.
And now, experiencing life for the second time around, he really wishes that the grey had taken him completely. Because living hurts even worse than dying, especially when he’s still unable to move, like those vines snaking all around him are tying him down to the thick, wet floor of the Upside Down. He’d heard, once, as a child, the story of a sailor swallowed by a whale; a great, booming creature with a thick, meaty tongue, and it had terrified him. It had taken him months to fall asleep without the light on after hearing that, but he hadn’t been scared of dying like his uncle had always thought. No—he’d been scared of the dark. The all-encompassing, encroaching dark of the belly of the beast, and the inevitability of death taking its sweet time with him. Having been a child with an overactive imagination, he’d scared himself breathless with the idea of waiting to die in the dark, powerless to move as the machinations of the whale chewed him up and digested him. For some reason, in all his childish fear, he’d always imagined that his sight would be the last sense to go after his ability to feel. Paralysed, unable to hear, in excruciating pain as the whale’s four stomachs toss him, a broken boat on the ocean. But the worst part of the childhood fear had always been the idea of losing his ability to feel pain. To sit there, motionless and unfeeling, with only his sight to place him in the darkness; aware of his existence but unable to ratify it through lived experience.
That’s what it’s like now. To see, but not see. The grey of dying is somehow more potent than the blood red of the Upside Down, and the pain cursing his body is growing less and less with each second he lives. Yes, he exists, but he exists as an oil painting does, a silent observer, his desperation that of a silent coma patient. He can’t move, can’t scream, can’t even feel those human terrors of pain and burning and a desperate ache in his gut. If this is dying, he wants it to be over and done with before the helplessness renders him a shell of a man.
He remembers something else, now. Not a childhood story, or a great whale, or an otherworldly plane of horror, but a girl in middle school, smiling at him as they sat backstage at the middle school talent show. He’d been more concerned with making sure his guitar was tuned for his own performance, but there had been a few acts before his turn, and he hadn’t wanted to come across as mean by denying Chrissy the company. She had taught him something that day. It had been simple—she had him rest his hand on the table and tuck his middle finger in. And, with an all-knowing smile on her face, she had told him that she’d give him a dollar if he could move his ring finger without moving the rest of his hand. As much as he tried, he couldn’t, and it terrified him. The memory is hazy, but he knows that it’s true, because he was always a scared child who grew up into a scared adult, fumbling his way through life. After the talent show, he’d gone home and sat at his desk for an hour, mimicking the hand position from earlier, trying to force his ring finger into being able to move. Of course, it hadn’t, and he’d all but forgotten about the fear it provoked in him until now, when his entire body is the useless ring finger, pinned down by some physics he never quite understood, and still doesn’t understand now.
What he does understand, however, is that being trapped feels so much worse than dying. The inability to move, to feel, to do anything other than stare up into the wet, pulsing Upside Down, makes his whole body feel alien to him. Like there’s a perpetual itch he just can’t scratch. Like the impending sense of doom is overtaking his heart and spreading stone, like the victims of Medusa, through his body. And he’s ashamed, because he wishes that he hadn’t played the hero. What had he done that for? To save the others? To impress Steve? To give back to Hawkins when they would brand him a murderer regardless? Valid reasons, naturally, but it’s hard to justify the helplessness he feels, and Eddie Munson is a coward. A traitor. A weak, spineless thing trapped in the belly of the beast, in the paralysing dark, effectively a living corpse.
God—will he rot?
And then, the pain that had before ceased to be comes back in impossible waves. Like time is playing backwards, and he is up and out of the whale, back onto the choppy rowboat in the middle of a vast, empty ocean. Point Nemo. So, great. Drowning instead of being swallowed—it’s death either way, isn’t it? His whole body burns with transformation, and although he still can’t move independently, he feels himself being lifted into the air, suspended as a marionette in the cold heat of the Upside Down. His legs, where before they had been stripped of flesh, pulsate with new muscles—strange, alien things that don’t belong on the body of any human. His fingernails elongate, but not in the way that nails normally grow; the keratin pushes through his skin, splitting it through sheer stretched tension, and blood seeps out where bone now grows at the ends of his hands. Although he still cannot scream, he feels his throat grow cold as if he’s swallowing ice, and it constricts, preventing him from breathing. The hyperventilation takes over, but no air gets in or out, and yet he still does not die; he opens his mouth, gasping for the release of air, but he is suspended in animation, unable to breathe while not needing to do so. All he can hope for is that he will die soon, because existing in the liminal is searingly painful; while he suspects that he does not necessarily need air, otherwise he would be dead by now, he still feels as though he’s one moment away from drowning. Helplessly gasping, yearning for the comfort of a deep breath of oxygen, and yet living despite not getting any. Perpetually breathless, always choking. His eyes bulge and pop before sinking back into their sockets, and the worst part is that he can feel them. It’s strange, the things the mind focuses on in times of crisis, and he remembers Steve joking around with the rest of them that they were now aware of their breathing and could see their noses in their peripheral vision. Eddie’s eyes are like that now—he’s aware of the fact that they exist. He can feel them—hard, wet lychees always infinitesimally moving, slick and fine against his eye sockets like snakes curdling his mind. Discomfort is worse than outright pain, and he, right now, is experiencing both of them. And his vision— god, his vision—is both sharp and dulled. He can see more than he ever has before, but it’s all tinged dark red, as if his eyes themselves have suddenly changed into creatures with a mind of their own, born in the darkness and able to see it where human eyes would need to adjust. His mouth, too, burns with a searing pain, like each tooth is being extracted one by one, pulled from the gums, but he’s rational enough to see that no teeth fall to the ground. What, then, is happening in his mouth that can be explained in simple terms? A dentist’s trip, a crying child, a lollipop for his troubles. Braces, from age eleven to age seventeen. He’d always hated the way the orthodontist would tighten them and leave his mouth sore afterwards. He’d hated even more that his uncle could barely afford them, and his refusal to wear his retainer had left his teeth more crooked than ever. Now, it’s like his teeth are being elongated, shaved down. The Upside Down has taken an industrial sander and is grinding the enamel to dust, shaping him into something he so desperately doesn’t want to be; a monster, a creature, a freak.
And then he drops to the ground, panting. Still unable to get any air into his lungs, Eddie clutches at his chest, confused and scared and in pain, knowing that he’s been changed by this terrible place into a beast doomed to live in agonising desperation. But he can move now. His hands run over his own body, carving it into a testament— I was here, I am here, I wish you’d killed me. Nothing about himself feels familiar; not the sharp teeth that would prick and draw blood from his fingers were there any blood left in his body to begin with, not the elongated limbs that hang just a little too low, not the scars on his legs that burn with new muscle underneath. He has legs, and arms, and a face, but he is a little to the left of being human. Even with all his memories, his middle school talent shows and friends who no doubt believe he is dead already, he is still a pariah, outcast not just from the popularity of society, but from the human condition itself.
With nothing else to do, he stands up. It takes him a few tries; his legs are shaky and don’t entirely feel like his own, but he manages it. And what now? He can’t stay here and wait for another death, because he’s got a horrible, static feeling in his chest that tells him dying will never be easy for him, nor will it be offered anymore. While his mind knows itself, his body can’t keep up, and he is effectively a prisoner sharing a cell with a demon, no longer in power over his own flesh.
So he walks through the Upside Down, and the bats do not attack a second time. Satisfied, they swoop down, circling his feet, their mouths full and wet with the blood that used to belong to him. He knows that he has command over them now, but he is still clinging onto his humanity, and will not take his place as lieutenant. And he walks. And he walks. And he walks. No gate appears, no way back into Hawkins, nothing except the vast expanse of darkness that he can now see. He has poached the whale while he is still inside it. He has capsized the ship in calm weather. He has moved his ring finger; snapped it clean off. The story has ended, the book has been closed, and he craves death more than he craves resolution, for he is nothing more than a character in the sad tale of Hawkins; the brave sailor, the Jonah, the whale. The plot device. He had been loved, for a moment, and it had been beautiful, but tainted, and never built to last. Bitterly, he laughs. He should have known. The Eddie Munsons of the world don’t get happy endings. They get the darkness, and they either die or learn to live in it.
Yes, Eddie Munson wishes that he’d died in Dustin’s arms. Or that he had simply died .
Because this—existing in the darkness—is not living.