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━━━━ " 📂  "

𝙋 𝘼 𝙍 𝘼 𝘿 𝙄 𝙎 𝙀

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"JESUS! JESUS! WHAT THE HELL was that!" Steve couldn't help but shout out his confusion as they jumped the trap set up midway down the corridor and the four went hurtling into Will's room. They could all understand the shock of seeing the Demogorgon for the first time, considering it was the same for Nancy, Jonathan and Sadie - however Steve had no idea of it's existence, whilst the three had come to terms with it, as well as settling on the idea that they were going to very much kill it for doing what it did to Barb and Will.

Nancy and Jonathan, both facing the door with weapons raised already, didn't even turn to give their reply. "Shut up!" They hissed, listening as the monster screeched outside.

"Sadie - come on, you've got to give me some answers here." Steve mumbled, making sure to keep his voice low and quite. "Are you not freaking out  - why are you not freaking out? And why do they have bandages on their hands."

"This monster killed Barb and took Will. We want to kill it." There was absolutely no point hiding it now that Steve had seen it, and Sadie wasn't planning on dressing up the facts. "They both cut their palms to attract the monster here."

"Okay." Steve gulped back the explanation, glancing at the door. "Er.. why?"

"Many predators have evolved with a unique olfactory relationship, and the olfactory bulb in their noses have adapted to smell blood." Sadie replied. "In the case of the Demogorgon, this is particularly strong and it can smell it from miles away. Or.. other dimensions."

"And.. what's a Demogorgon? And did you say other-?"

"It's a creature from the alternate universe that now has a gateway into this world." Sadie said. Her voice was quite but the explanation was laid out diplomatically and seriously. "It finds victims in our world and drags it back to it's home to attack and kill. Like the shark in Jaws.

Steve understood that reference most out of anything she had said, and nodded.

"We dont actually have a proper name for it.. but a Demogorgon in itself is both a creature in Dungeons & Dragons, a role-playing game that was used to.. map out the attack in a way - and in mythology a Demogorgon is a god or a demon associated with the underworld." Sadie continued.

Nancy shushed them for a minute, trying to figure out whether or not the monster was still there.  The lights flickered above their head, before the electricity jolted and suddenly.. nothing. When all seemed quiet, her and Jonathan began to discuss their next routes.

Steve's eyes flickered back to Sadie. "So its basically a made up creature." He looked somewhat hopeful, a hand pulling back his hair.

"Sure, it's named after a creature from mythology and D&D lore. But it is very real and you just saw ir jump out of the ceiling." Sadie's gaze drifted to the side as she saw Nancy and Jonathan approach the door. "Steve, if the monster isn't here when we leave, I really advise you to just get out. We can handle our own here. You haven't even got a weapon, and had me explain to you what the creature was in two minutes."

"I..." But he didn't have anything else to say, instead falling silent and following them out of the bedroom. There were so many questions whirling around his mind. Barbara was dead? But how - and Will had been taken to an 'alternate dimension' that this Demogorgon thing called home? It seemed like something he would have enjoyed reading in comic book format when he was younger, and had they not just been chased by the actual monster he wouldn't believe their story.

But now he had no choice but to, and he knew that. And he knew that Sadie knew what she talking about. And she was right - he couldn't defend himself against a creature he didn't understand. But it didn't feel right leaving them behind, especially not after all the trouble caused with Jonathan that afternoon.

Jonathan kept the bat raised but it was ultimately unnecessary; the Demogorgon was gone. It wasn't in the house, nor trapped in the trap set up in the corridor, which their carefully avoided once again. The living room was empty, the Christmas lights off and the lamp letting out the warm comforting glow.

"This is crazy." Steve muttered, unable to stand still. His body moved of its own accord, spinning him in tight, quickly-paced circles. It seemed that the quick explanation had done nothing to quell his new found fears. "This is crazy." He repeated. "This is crazy. This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!"

He launched himself across a small gap, pulling the phone off the hook. Steve stumbled to dial the numbers even as simple as 911, and as soon as he lifted it to his ear Nancy was snatching it from his hands and launching it across the room.

It shattered upon impact with the wooden floor, broken plastic crunching sickeningly.

"What are you - what are you doing? Are you insane?" He exploded, eye searching Nancy's face.

"It's going to come back." The girl replied. "So listen to what Sadie told you and leave. You need to leave, Steve. Right now."

Steve hesitated only for a minute, looking past her to see Sadie nodding her agreement. If he stayed there, he was only going to get hurt.

It was only moments after Steve had run out of the door and pushed it closed behind him when Sadie's attention turned to the ceiling again. Their breath quickened in terror, sticking close together and circling the room as the electricity pulsated and flickered above them.

The Henderson didn't want to see another Christmas light in her life ever again.

"Where is it?" Nancy asked, voice right in her ear.

"Come on." Jonathan muttered. "Come on, you son of a bitch." The lights flickered quickened. "You see it?"

"Nope. But the bastard's here. I can feel it." Sadie clutched the gun tighter. She didn't even know how she could sense it - they all knew it was around because of the constant flickering lights, but there a creeping sensation of something surrounding her and perhaps Nancy and Jonathan. Considering the stress and time constraints they were under, she certainly didn't have time to ask them about a goosebump-inducing sensation crawling up her legs and around her arms.

"Where." Nancy asked, the continuous turning of the group keeping on and on until the lights flickered to a stop and they froze, everything silent albeit their hurried intake of breath.

And then the sensation around Sadie's leg became solidified as a low growling echoed within the room and she was pulled to the floor. "Sadie!" Someone yelled as she let out a scream,.

Sadie had no idea what was going on; the gun had fallen out of her hands, there was a slimy feeling tightening around her ankle and difinitively heavy presence above her that she couldn't see due to her eyes clamping shut upon harsh impact with the floor.

Something was digging into her ribs, an almost hand-like item pressing down over her heart. It was larger than life. Her eyes flickered open and she willed them to stay that way, widening as she stared up into the face of the Demogorgon. Nancy was firing shots at the monster but it didn't move, and somewhere in the midst of Sadie being thrown to the floor Jonathan's bat had flown out of his hands.

Flashes of Barb's shadowed face just a few nights before appeared in her mind and Sadie struggled. She couldn't face the same fate, and her arm reached away from her arm she tried to find the gun she had dropped.

But wherever it had been discarded, it was too far away for her to reach and she struggled in the grasps of the monster instead. Ultimately, it failed, and she was left frozen as she stared up into the unfurling, horrendous triangular petals that made up the Demogorgon's teeth-covered mouth.

A glob of spit drooled from one of the corners and her nose wrinkled. Of course, at a moment of her utter despair and inevitable demise, she was disgusted by Demogorgon spit.

Of course.

It had been mere moments since she had been dragged to the floor, but it felt like forever, time moving in slow motion. Thoughts were flurring through her mind and she wondered if the term 'life flashing before one's eyes' applied here. Of course, the common trope could easily be attributed or linked to cortical disinhibition and her brain under stress was producing a series of mental impressions and-

She couldn't breath.

It was a harrowing thought, that somehow she had managed to lose herself amongst the most nugatory of scientific thoughts she kept stored away for a rainy day and now she couldn't breath. The Demogorgon was pressing down on her chest, unaffected by Nancy's shouting and simultaneous shooting and Jonathan's futile attempts to retrieve his bat.

It was getting heavier and heavier, the breaths she did take becoming quicker and smaller, a desperate need to haul oxygen into her lungs becoming the only thought in her mind, clouding any others that lead her towards the idea of saving herself and killing this monster.

She didn't care about killing the Demogorgon anymore. She just needed to breath. Needed to take a deep breath in and lift the pressure becoming heavier and heavier over her stomach. She couldn't feel anything else, couldn't think of anything else.

And just as quickly as she had been dragged down, the Demogorgon wasn't on her anymore and there was a hand - a human hand - hauling her to her feet and out of the way.

Sadie blinked, suddenly able to breathe, and with splutters and great number of coughs , she could see in the half-darkness.

It was Steve.

He had come back - maybe heard her scream, or decided that whatever insane events ongoing within the Byers house was worth risking his sanity for. And now he was using the nail-studded baseball bat to launch heavy-handed hits into the monster's flesh, putting all his strength into the movements.

Nancy's gun clicked uselessly, and Jonathan, whom Sadie had been thrown into upon being dragged from her possible death, watched as Steve directed the Monster towards the corridor with a number of blows to it's torso.

The Demogorgon roared as a resounding click secured the trap around his anke, the yo-yo alarm in Will's room no doubt pulling tight against the positioned chair. "It's in the trap!" Steve yelled, and Jonathan and Sadie hurried over, joining Nancy and the Harrington as they watched it writh. "He's stuck!"

"The lighter!" Sadie urged, a spluttering cough following quickly as she watched him roll his thumb over the spark wheel to press the ignition pad town and a flame appearing, remaining alight as he threw it into the gasoline.

All of a sudden, the hallway was enveloped in flames, licking at the monster's human-like body in a ravenous fashion. The warmth was unbearable, the screeches of it's pain too loud and the light glowing brighter. Sadie shielded her face with her arm, keeping it at an angle to ensure she could still see what was going on.

As Jonathan rushed off to retrieve the fire extinguisher so he didn't burn his entire house down, she had ended up balanced on Steve's arm, the Harrington not hesitating to help hold her up as she coughed and watched the flames consume the monster.

And then it was over, her nails gripped into the material of his shirt on his arm as she covered her mouth from the cloud of dry chemicals exploded over the hallway and smothered the fire. When the fog cleared and they tried not to choke too much, their gazes turned towards the ground.

"Where did it go?" Nancy asked.

"It has to be dead." Jonathan said, leant against the wall. "It has to be."

Around the trap was a large area of singed carpet, and from the metal itself, a covering of thick, sizzling goo.

There was no corpse left to confirm it.

✧

Sadie had never been so happy to be able to take another breath, leant against the now somewhat warm walls of the hallway they had trapped and perhaps killed the Demogorgon in.

She couldn't quite believe she was alive, couldn't believe their sheer, dumb luck that Steve had decided that he didn't live by Tommy's thoughts and could form his own opinions (which mostly consisted of him thinking what he did was considerably wrong).

If it hadn't been for him, Sadie most likely wouldn't have been alive. She had been close to losing conciousness, and without Nancy and Jonathan's ability to help free her, she would have joined Barb in the list of victims whose deaths had been in the hands of a interdimensional monster from an alternate reality.

"Hey - uh - Steve." Sadie cleared her throat, pushing herself up from the wall and glancing at Nancy and Jonathan as they crouched by the trap, trying to figure out whether the goo was the remains of the Monster, or simply what it left behind.

"Sadie, hi." Steve looked up, his nose wrinkled as he picked off chunks of.. well - something - from the nails on his bat. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good, actually." She nodded, arms wrapped around her stomach. "I might - er - need a new pair of socks and definitely have to get new shoes but.. pretty good."

"Yeah, it got a lot of slime on you." His eyes were on the items of clothing she had mentioned. "Your throat fine? Lungs don't feel squished?"

"If they did it would be a problem.. if my lung collapsed it would be just a bit more painful." She chuckled, swallowing as she felt her throat dry again. "But I'm pretty sure I'm fine, might need to get checked out anyway but.. fine. I just wanted to thank you for saving my ass."

"Yeah, well you told me about everything going on. And advised me to leave, which I then ignored but the sentiment is remembered."

"You've heard nothing yet." Jonathan commented, also looking somewhat appreciative that Steve had managed to save one of his closest friends from across the years. For a moment, everything that had happened outside of the past twenty minutes were forgotten. "Sadie and her brother, as well as Nancy's brother and their friend Lucas have been habouring a runaway from Hawkin's Lab."

"Eleven." Sadie looked almost proud. "She has powers, opened the gate that allowed the monster to get in and take Will and Barb in. Mrs Byers and Chief Hopper are in there now. Oh - and you can't tell anyone about this."

"Yeah, I thought so. You say this Eleven had powers?" Steve decided it wasn't the time to ask questions, attempting to make a mental list to ask either Sadie or Nancy later on. "What - er - what kind of powers."

"Can do crazy shit with her mind. I haven't really seen much of it, but earlier today she flipped a van over whilst running away from Dr. Brenner - you probably haven't heard of MK Ultra but it's were test subjects were paid to be injected with shit like LSD to try and achieve mind control and well, one of them got pregnant - a woman called Terry - and the product was Eleven, who was taken away from the lab and made people believe Terry had a miscarriage and then fried her brain with a very high voltage of electricity and-"

She fell silent, a flush of pink across her cheeks. Steve blinked. "And?" He asked. He couldn't even lie and say he wasn't interested in what had suddenly became Sadie's rambling. "I've heard of MK Ultra, I think anyway."

"Steve." Sadie's eyes were tilted upwards, towards the ceiling. She had the same pink on her cheeks, except it seemed a little more.. red.

"Oh shit." Steve saw the lights above their head turned on once more, the expletive causing both Nancy and Jonathan to look up and get to their feet, hands clutching at their weapons and the baseball bat quickly raised.

Stood behind Steve, they crept forward as they watched them turn on one by one, leading them towards the front door. Cautious, they continued down the hallway and into the living room.

It was almost.. beautiful.

A complete contrast to what they had seen minutes before, the series of Christmas lights flickering on in front of them a sight they would usually see in people's front yards. There was no denying the somewhat sense of comfort the calm brought her. It was much less hazardous than how it had occured when they were signalling the arrival of the Demogorgon.

But now, it was slowly and somewhat magical again. Jonathan stepped past Sadie, their shoulders brushing. His expression read something of confused recognition.

He came to a stop in front of the front door. "Mom?" He whispered, and the Henderson's head turned towards him. "Is that you?" He asked. "Mom?" He repeated.

There was silence. And then there, right by where Sadie and Jonathan stood, the confused voice of Joyce Byers echoed in her ears. "Jonathan?" Tears crinkled in the corner of the Byers' eyes for just a moment before he swallowed them back, reaching for the door handle.

The three of them followed him out, the bat resting comfortably on Steve's shoulder as they stood on the front porch. Everything outside seemed so quiet, so normal. It was like the world they had lived in until Sunday night once again.

Except Sadie didn't think that she would ever be stood on the Byers' porch alongside Steve and Nancy - Jonathan was much more likely, but the other two was somewhat unheard of. She couldn't even imagine Steve knowing the smaller, rundown house was there, even if it was just a few roads away from his own.

Across the grassy lawn, the amber street lamp crackled and flickered, the four watching intently as it came back to it's full glow.

"Where's it going?" Nancy asked.

"I don't think that's the monster." Jonathan breathed out, their eyes filled with visions of street lights flashing a path in front of them.

And now, Sadie, Steve, Jonathan and Nancy were alone. The lights were on, the monster seemingly dead.

They could only hope it actually was.