Chapter Text
Will panted as the creature lurked outside of Castle Byers. He held his breath, hoping that the monster wouldn’t notice. The low growl made Will want to whimper, but he held it in. Footsteps crunched the leaves. Getting closer, and closer. Until…
They passed by, the hulking mass walking away.
Will let out a sigh of relief. He can do this. Just live until he could get home.
Will's shoulders relaxed. He rolled to his side and curled up on their ground. Will shivered as he desperately tried to stay warm.
It was so cold here. Why was it so cold here?
It made some sense, he supposed. The sky is as dark as night, with no sun to warm the land.
His sweaty skin clung to him regardless. It felt gross and foreign. Will hoped that this wasn’t because of the weird air here.
Be bites his lip trying to keep from trembling. However, he must have bit down too hard because his teeth took a chunk of skin. Will yelped and reached to his lip to assess the damage. The area was wet. Was he bleeding?
He gathered the liquid in his fingers and raised it to his face. It wasn’t blood. It was clear and slimy,
What?
He played with it with his finger for a bit. It reminded him of mucus. Ew. Where did it come from?
Will felt along his lip again. The place the mucus came from had a flap of dead skin where he bit his lip. With not much else to do, Will pulled the dead skin off.
And pulled.
And pulled.
The skin tore away. From his lip, and to his rising horror, down his chin, his neck, and finally stopped in his mid-chest.
Will shivered. He held up the string of skin he still held in his hands. It hung limply, covered in the same slime. Will screeched and tossed it away, then investigated his chest. The gash where his skin tore wasn’t even bleeding. There was a layer of pale, tender skin underneath. He touched it and shivered as it was proved to be much more sensitive than before. There was more dead skin around it, ready to be pulled off as well.
What would happen if he…?
Will Byers spent the rest of that night tearing off his skin.
It has been weeks since Will woke up in that hospital with his family by his side. His mom, Jonathan, and his friends all cried over him at the sight of Will being awake. They spend those first few days at the hospital telling Will about El. A girl who had psychic powers.
Soon after Will started having “appointments” at the lab. At first, it was trivial things. Appointments a kin to a therapist.
But then they started hooking him up to a strange machine.
The doctor said that the device reads his brain waves so that they could see what’s going on in his head.
Will wonders if they used the same thing on El.
Eventually, Will had to go to school again. It brought both relief and anxiety being back with his classmates. On one hand, being at school gave him a sense of normalcy, but the relentless bullying from his peers never ceased. They became worse. Instead of being called gay or queer, the kids now took to calling him Zombie Boy.
He never told his mom.
Months have gone by. And soon the events of the upside down ( the running. The wretched smell. The wrongness in his body ) began to fade away.
When spring came along, Will was just excited to finally be out of school. His friends came together to make some summer plans.
Bone fire, arcade games. The one Will was most excited about was the summer-long D and D campaign that Dustin was planning. He has not been able to DM their last couple of campaigns so Will is excited (and scared) about what he will come up with.
“Will? Can you help set the table?” His mother called. Will pried himself from his desk to come into the kitchen.
“Sure Mom.” He said. Will walked over to the cabinet to gather three plates. “What’s for dinner tonight?”
“Just leftovers,” she replied. “Jonathan should be here soon.”
Will nodded. “I’m going to go to the bathroom real quick.”
His mom nodded as he turned to the hallway. Will closed the bathroom door and locked it with a clink .
Will scratched the back of his neck when it started to itch. Things have been going well lately. The visits to the Lab even became less frequent. Johnathan was finally able to take some time off of work early enough to join them for dinner. Things have been going well.
Will was about to smile when he felt something catch under his fingernails. He flinched and stopped scratching his neck. His finger had something on it. Something familiar.
Frantically, Will checked the same place he was scratching, to find a chunk of peeled skin.
No.
No no
No no no nonononononono
He reached to the back of his neck, and his fears were confirmed.
“Will? Are you ok in there?” His mom called.
“I’m ok! Just… I’ll be out in a minute!” He hoped his voice did not sound as shaky as it felt. Will turned his attention back to the mirror.
Why was this happening? It’s over. He’s out of the upside-down. So why was this still happening?
Will shook as he gripped the edges of the sink.
What was happening to him?
It's been weeks since the bathroom incident. Will never mentioned it to his mom, or Johnathan. He probably should have. But then they would freak out. Especially with all the other Upside Down business.
His new skin felt soft and tender. Like before, it felt like every new stimulus was louder. Whenever his friends would punch him in the shoulder, or when his mom would ruffle his hair (how he was able to keep his hair was beyond him, but he was grateful) everything was just too much.
“Byers?”
Was this going to just keep happening? What does shedding one’s skin even mean? Dustin would know.
“Byers.”
But he couldn’t tell Dustin. He can’t tell any of his friends. They’ll just hover over him again. Things have just started to get back to normal.
“BYERS!”
Will jumped and looked up at the teacher. “W-what?”
“Nice of you to join us.” Mr. Clark said. “Can you tell me the main motivation for Evolution?”
Will shook his head. “No, I don’t know sir.”
Mr. Clark nodded. “Ok. Can anyone in this class tell me?”
Dustin raised his hand. “Yes, Henderson?”
“Natural selection.” He answered.
Mr. Clark nodded. “Exactly. Though it’s not that simple.
“Let’s use mice as an example. Let’s say there is a colony of mice with tan fur living in a volcanic environment, with dark rocks. What do you think would happen?”
He tried to envision the scenario. A prey in an environment it did not belong to. “The predator could see them,” Will answered.
“Exactly!” Mr. Clark exclaimed. “The mice would quickly die out since predators would be able to see them. But then a small miracle happens.” He drew a DNA strand on the chalkboard. “A mutation that makes a mouse’s fur black. Now what happened to that mouse?”
Mike raises his hand. “The mice blend in, right?”
“That’s right, Wheeler. And so that mice survive. And then it mates. Then its children have black fur. And since the mice with white fur are more vulnerable to predators, they start to die off. And after many years, only black mice remained. That is the basic idea of natural selection.
“And as more mutations come along, nature selects which would survive the best. This is how we all evolved. This is why animals are suited for their environments.
“When an animal has been in an environment long enough, it changes over time to adapt.”
“Are you alright?” Mike asked during the passing period.
“I’m fine,” Will replied.
A beat of silence went by. “Are you sure? I mean… you were totally zoning out there.”
Will nodded his head. “Yeah, just zoned out.”
Mike did not look convinced. “Alright then.” They walked to their lockers to grab books. “If you need to copy my notes, just let me know, ok?”
Will nodded again. “Yep. Totally.”
They both grabbed their books. Mike took one last look at Will. “Did you get taller?”
Just then the bell rang and Will ran away, leaving Mike.
Will bolted it to the bathroom. Mike’s question haunted him. He desperately tried to gauge how tall he had gotten. He hadn’t noticed anything, right? Maybe Mike was just trying to make conversation. Yeah, maybe he was just…
Were the bathroom sinks always that low?
He gripped the sinks again. It felt like he was back at his house.
He was changing. Whatever… this was… it was changing him.
How much would it change him?
Will then heard footsteps enter the boy's bathroom and he quickly composed himself.
“Hey, man.” It was Lucas.
“Hi,” Will replied. Lucas gave him a weird look before entering a stall. Will took the opportunity to take his leave.
The rest of the day went by without incident. Though he felt eyes burning into his back. Will hated the looks Lucas gave him. Like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
The final bell couldn’t have come sooner. As soon as Will heard the shrill shriek, he packed his bag, said a quick goodbye to his friends, and biked away as fast as he could.
Soon, he finally got home. “Hey, Will. How was school?” Jonathan greeted with the dish towel in hand. Right. His mom was at work.
“School was good,” he replied. Jonathan nodded in acknowledgment.
“Well, Mom is at work, but she’ll be home by dinner time. Do you have any plans until then?” He asked.
Will shook his head. “No. Just going to… get some homework done.” He then made a B line to his room until Johnathan called again.
“Will, wait.”
Will stopped.
“Is everything alright?”
Will’s body went rigid. No. He was not alright. He was shedding his skin like a snake. “Yea. I’m fine.”
Johnathan set down the dish towel. “Are you? Or do you just not want to talk about it?”
“Nothing wrong! Ok?” Will snapped.
Johnathan backed away slightly. “Ok. But if you do need anything, just let me know. Alright?”
Will nodded. “Yeah.” He then darted to his room and shut the door.
If he needed anything? What would Will even say? What would Johnathan say back?
They’d freak out. And then tell the lab. And then what? Be a lab rat forever?
No. He can figure this out. On his own. No doctors.
Will discarded his backpack by his desk and plopped down on his bed.
“Will! Dinner’s ready!” His mom called. He does not want to get up. He felt tight. Constricted. His limbs ached something awful too. Will curled up in his bed tighter. Then…
Rip.
Will froze. His knee, when it used to feel tight, now felt cold. He quickly ripped the covers off and saw that another tear in his skin formed. This time on his knees.
Again? Why now? Before it was months between his first and next shedding (Will hated that he started calling it that. He was human. Not some kind of reptile)
With no time to waste, Will bolted out of his room and into the bathroom then locked the door. If he can get it over with quickly, then no one would notice, right?
“Will?” His mom’s voice rang from outside the door. Not now. Oh please, not now.
“I’ll be a bit. You guys can eat without me!” He called back. Will got to work. First, he finished the tear on one of his knees so that it went around his mid leg.
“Will, honey. Is everything alright?” His mom’s voice was shaking. No no no.
“Everything’s fine!” His voice started to shake too. No matter. Will started trying to tear off the skin on his foot. It was like taking off a sock. Except it was much tighter and more delicate.
Will threw the dead skin into the trash can and then moved onto the skin above the knee. It tore and tore until his thighs. He had to roll up his shorts.
Threw skin into the trash.
His mom said Johnathan’s name.
He moved onto the other leg. Gotta hurry. Get it done and over with, no one can see. No one can find out. No one-
Will froze when he heard the sound of the bathroom door unlocking.
It felt forever before the door opened. Though it must have only been a moment before his mother swung open the door.