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Lenora Hills, California, 1985
Friday night, 11:54pm
El couldn’t sleep. She had been trying now for three hours, and it was almost midnight. She missed Hopper, she missed Mike, and most of all, she missed Max.
She hated not being able to sleep, hated it so much she felt sick. The frustration sat in her stomach like poison. Being awake when she should be sleeping reminded her of Papa.
It wasn’t often, but sometimes he would make her stay awake, stay awake until she was dry eyed, exhausted and nauseous, and then he would test her. She’d sit obediently in that cold, almost empty room, wired up to machines she didn’t understand, and he’d ask her to crush the damn coke can again. Hopper had called it – what was the word? Dep – ree – vay – shone? She sounded it out in her mind. Sleep dep ree vay shone is what he had said. She should have suggested it as their word of the day that day.
El turned in her bed and faced her open, dark room. The longer she tried, the worse it got.
“Some things aren’t about effort,” Joyce had told her, when she had confided that she wasn’t used to this room, this house, that she wasn’t used to sleeping here, so her brain just didn’t want to do so. “Sleep isn’t about effort.” It had helped initially, to think of sleep of something she couldn’t fail at. But it was cold comfort when her thoughts swam back to Hawkin’s Lab this night.
El sat up in bed. She was not going to stay here, letting Papa take something else from her, not in California, not in a place where it’s always sunny. No. She would get up, go downstairs, read or – that’s it! The Atari! She could play! Keep the volume down so she didn’t disturb the others. Will wouldn’t mind, they played together all the time lately. She threw the comforter off and jumped out of bed.
She came to a sudden halt in the hallway, stopped, turned back around and scurried to the bathroom first. She closed the door behind her gently; the handle had been wobbly for weeks, and it made such a racket if one did not close it softly.
It wobbled as she locked the door, the sound of metal grating on metal clamouring around the small chamber. She paused, but the house was silent. Since they were all sleeping soundly, she did not want to cause them to wake up.
Once she was done, she took longer than she needed to when washing her hands. The water was warm, the light was bright, and she felt her nauseousness fading away, getting better. This isn’t Hawkin’s Lab. This is the Byers’ house, in a place with permanent warmth. Even Will was feeling better out here.
A dull thud sounded from behind her, and she spun around. The wobbly handle sat on the bathroom floor, looking lonely, glinting in the overhead bathroom light. El looked at the door. The exposed metal core of the handle’s mechanism jutted out from the door. El’s eyes fell back to the floor, and she flicked her head up.
Nothing happened. The handle lay on the floor limply, mocking her.
Mike had said her powers would return. He had said so.
El dried her hands and threw the towel back down in petulant anger. She picked up the handle, forced it onto the metal spindle, and it fell back to the ground.
She tried again. Again, it fell. She tried a third time, this time holding it steady, turning it, trying to make it work against the inner mechanism and unlock the door. But it would not work.
She tried again. And again. And again. And again.
Panic erupted down her spine. Why had she even locked it? No one else was awake, it wasn’t like she needed to keep sleeping people out. How could she even be so stupid?
The cold, empty, tiny chamber that Papa had thrown her in swam before her. Being thrown in, crying, banging on the door, left for hours at a time. This is worse she thought to herself. This time I did it to myself.
El pounded on the door, screaming, crying, red-hot fear gripping her, her stomach turning, and she hammered at the stupid metal spindle with the handle, and the bastard thing slit her hand open, and she cried, and she was calling out for Max, for Mike, for Hopper.
It was forever, and no time at all. The room was shrinking, the walls crashing in on her, smaller and tighter and more confining than the closet in Mike’s bedroom had been.
It never mattered what she did or said. It was never good enough for Papa. Nothing was ever good enough. The isolation, the forcefulness, the almost total sensory depletion, the loneliness, the rage and pain turning inwards, cascading out of her in tears and fears.
She could hear voices. Her hands were gripped tight to her head, the handle still in her right hand, pressed against her head painfully.
“Let me try.”
“I already tried it!”
“I know, that’s why I said let me try.”
There came a low, metallic sound, followed by soft, dull thuds.
El opened her eyes.
She was huddled on the floor, her knees drawn in to her chest, her hands to her head. There was blood on the floor. There was blood on her bare feet.
“Here, move aside,” came a voice. Was that Jonathan?
The door vibrated and a loud booming sound filled the room. El dropped her hands from her head and watched as it happened a second time, and the door swung open.
“El?”
It was Jonathan. Will stood behind him, looking over his shoulder, his face a ghastly white.
“El!” gasped Jonathan again, his face dropping at seeing her, concern and terror shaping his features. He darted into the room and knelt down to her.
“Holy shit,” said Will, his eyes on the floor, looking at the droplets of blood.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey, hey,” said Jonathan softly, reaching out to her. “What happened?”
“What does she have?” asked Will. Jonathan looked down and saw the handle in her hand.
He took it from her gently, and then looked back up at her, eyes wide and alarmed.
“Hey,” he said again softly, “is that what happened, hey? Did this break off?”
El nodded, and she realized she was crying. Must have been crying the entire time. Must have woken the entire house up from screaming.
Jonathan looked down again and turned over her bleeding hand.
“Is it bad?” asked Will, stepping over to them.
“No,” said Jonathan, but El wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. “Hand me than towel.”
Will handed him the nearest towel, and Jonathan pressed it into her bleeding hand.
“You’re alright now, it’s going to be okay,” he said to her, soothingly, “here. Can I hug you?”
El nodded and moved into him. As soon as she did, it felt different. It didn’t feel like how it did with Mike, or with Max, or with Hopper. This felt like a word she never had cause to use before. The felt like how it looked when Jonathan talked Will down after a bad day at school, or when he was frustrated when something in his paintings wouldn’t turn out right.
This felt like a big brother.
But the room was still small. The pain still large. Papa still present.
Blood was nothing to her.
Memories were everything. He had thrown her in that room because she could not get out. Because he could trap her there for as long as he wanted. And now, thanks to his cruelty, no matter what she did, no matter where she went, no matter who was with her, she was still trapped.