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It was the summer of 87’ and Mike Wheeler was playing DnD with the Hellfire club after school. Everything seemed to be going perfectly for a while; he was slowly settling into high school and trying to find new friends. But he missed the old party, he had not seen El in a while, as she was living her new life in California with Will. And he had not sent any letters to Will in almost 6 months.
He tried his best to focus on school and get the grades needed to graduate, but he felt guilty. Guilty for playing DnD with a new group of people and for finding new friends. He missed Will, and El of course. But it was starting to take a toll on him.
Every night, he would wake in a sweat and with shortness of breath. His hand gripping his chest as if his heart was going to explode. He would look around his room, trying to ground himself, and it was always the same thing he would look at, to bring his breathing back to a calm rhythm, The painting. Will had given him a painting on his last visit to California, and although he didn’t understand why, just looking at it made him be able to breathe.
One day at school, he was going to meet up with Dustin and Lucas to discuss plans for the Crawl when his hands started to shake in school. He quickly hid his hands under the table and ‘thank goodness’ he thought, as none of the boys noticed. He carried on eating but lately his appetite was not normal and looking at food for too long made his stomach churn.
That afternoon, he went to hellfire after school and was almost dreading it in a way. The thought of hosting a new campaign without Will made him physically upset. But he walked in anyway, being greeted by Eddie standing on his throne and shouting
“Well, well, well, we surely weren’t waiting for you!”
“sorry, i was in the bathroom but i brought a new dice that i bought last weekend, it has a marble effect and i thought it was cool”
The campaign went fine he thought, it just felt tiring and he could not wait to get to bed and get this day over with.
His bag felt heavy, heavier than usual and he felt like taking it and throwing it across the school yard but he had to be responsible. So he took it off and gently put it in the basket of his bike. Holly had told him earlier that she was going to bike back with her friends so he didn’t need to wait for her. That meant he had to bike home by himself as Lucas was at basketball practice and Dustin had left early to cerebro Suzie.
As he biked home he passed through the forest and through the arched trees. It got dark later in summer but it still didn’t feel ‘comforting’. Then all of a sudden something inside him told him he had to bike faster,faster,faster, until he reached a familiar place. Castle Byers, It didn’t look at all like what it used too. It had taken lots of wood damage due to the constant rain storms and the sign is tilting far more than it has ever done. But either way he pulled back the curtain and went inside.
Hung around the hut were drawings and photos, it was abandoned. No one had come here in a while, they had grown older and moved on. Besides they had a psychotic monster killer on their backs. But it still made Mike upset and his heart started to ache. He left the hut and tried not to look back in fear that it would make him start to cry but he couldn’t resist. He placed his hand on the sign for a moment then pulled away and continued to walk home.
He was 20 minutes from home when he heard it, the sirens, the awful memories flooding back to him of that night. The night where his childhood ended, just seeing the images of his best friend getting dragged up by the police in the quarry made him fall down on the ground. He started breathing quicker and quicker, his heart racing and tears now flowing down his face. But he couldn’t control it, he rummaged in his bag to try and call his mum. He thought he was genuinely going to die.
After 10 minutes of crying and panicking he finally arrived home. He ran down the stairs to the basement, hoping he wouldn’t get caught by Nancy.
He opened the door and slumped on his chair and started doing his homework but he had no energy to continue so he just closed the books and fell on his bed.
He hadn’t realised he fell asleep until he looked at the alarm clock, 1am. He was a bit startled to find out he had slept, he didn’t even realise he was that tired, his body was drained. Although, this was starting to become a regular occurrence. It started just by being once a week, waking up in the middle of the night, and now it was closer to 4 or 5 times. It was making him feel physically ill and exhausted when he was at school. But he would never tell anyone the cause of his sleepless nights. Not even to Max, Lucas or Dustin.
This night felt different, he didn't want to spend another night crying or wallowing in misery. So he climbed up the stairs to the kitchen. It was cold and a window had been left open, the wind howled and he remembered how when they were little he would hug Will and reassure him that his nightmares aren’t real and comfort him till he felt well enough to sleep. But now he was alone.
He opened the fridge and took the first bottle he saw, he didn’t know what he was doing, all he knew was that he didn’t want to feel like this anymore. So he took his dad’s can of beer and poured it into a cup and immediately spat it out, it was bitter and hurt his throat as he swallowed. He looked inside the fridge again, trying to find something else, he saw his mom’s bottle of wine and took a sip, he instantly felt lighter, it didn’t taste great but it made him feel better.
He drank glass after glass, and after his sixth glass he started stumbling back downstairs. As he was on his way to the basement he fell on the stairs, grazing his knee open. He couldn’t feel the pain though, and just wrapped his knee with a hoodie that was lying on the chair. He spotted his phone charging next to his bed and dialled the number.