Chapter Text
Four boys, all around twelve years old, are sitting around a table in the basement of a house. Three of them are waiting for the other to take his turn at the game they are playing. They each hold a folder.
On a smaller table to the side is a pizza box, with only a single slice left inside, and next to it, a fifth folder bearing the words Dungeons and Dragons.
“Mike, your action,” says one of the boys, his hair cut in the famous bowl cut, over his folder, which is inscribed in yellow crayons— Will.
On the table stands a figure, a figure of a monster—the Demogorgon.
Mike, whose name is written in blue on the folder in his hands, brushes his dark hair over his ear, and looks at the other two boys, “what should I do?”
“Fireball.” Says the one on Mike’s right, dark skinned and face serious. His folder is marked Lucas in green.
“Cast Prote’tion!” Counters the other, with brown curly hair and a slight lisp to his voice. His name, as in red on his folder, is Dustin.
“Fireball!” Repeats Lucas.
“But I’d have to roll a thirteen or higher,” Mike protests.
“Too risky,” Dustin insists. “Cast a protection spell.”
“Don’t be a pussy.” Mike looks at Lucas. “Fireball him!”
The boy is clearly distressed. It’s obvious that the game is important to them all. He looks back at Dustin who says, “Cast protection.”
Will says, “The Demogorgon stomps towards you! Boom!”
Mike gets overstimulated and chucks the D20 shouting, “fireball!”
But where is the dice? Mike can’t see it anywhere. “Shit!”
The four boys begin to search on the floor.
“Where is it?” Dustin asks, his head under the stair case.
“Is it a thirteen?” Lucas’s voice is raised as he searches under a chair.
“I don’t know!” Mike shouts, from another place on the carpet.
“Mike!” Calls a woman’s voice from the top of the stairs.
“Mom, we’re in the middle of a campaign.” The boy looks towards her, up the stairs nearby.
“You mean the end? It’s a quarter after eight.”
Mike, with Will just behind him, follows his mom into the kitchen, while the two other boys moan and continue searching the carpet.
“Mom, wait, just twenty more minutes!”
“It’s a school night, Michael. I just put Holly to bed. You can finish next weekend.”
“But that’ll ruin the flow,” Mike protests. “Will spent two weeks planning it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know it would take so long.”
“Yeah, mom. How were we to know it would take ten hours.”
“You’ve been playing for ten hours!?”
Mike licks his lip, shooting Will a look of disappointment. Then he turns to his father, who’s fiddling with the TV in the living room across from the kitchen.
“Dad, don’t you think that twenty more minutes—?”
His father, still fiddling and cursing the faulty appliance, interrupts, “I think you should listen to your mother.”
While Mike’s mother stops Will, passing him a book to give to his mother, Mike returns to where the two other boys are. When he reaches the top step, he hears Dustin call, “found it! It’s a seven. Come on, Lucas, let’s go. Mews barfed this morning and my mom… well, you know what she’s like.” Lucas says, “yeah, I do.”
Mike turns back around, and finds Will putting his coat on by the back door, the book sticking out of his coat pocket.
Dustin shoots up to the second floor with the final piece of pizza.
Mike passes Will his scarf, “what book is that?”
“Dunno,” mutters Will, retying his shoe lace.
Once outside, Will checks his bike tyres, while Lucas sets off saying, “my mom wanted me back twenty minutes ago!”
Mike shakes his head at Will, “he lives one street away.” Will chuckles.
Then Dustin reappears, “didn’t find the dice,” he lies to Will. Mike opens his mouth but Dustin continues, “There’s something wrong with your sister,” he says, pulling out his own bike.
“It’s because she’s dating that douche bag Steve Harrington,” says Mike, pulling out his own bike.
“She used to be cool.”
“Years ago!” Mike shouts after his friend who’d zoomed off already.
Will looks into the darkness; Lucas and Dustin had completely vanished.
“I’ll go with you. Your mom would kill me if I let you go alone,” Mike says. It is an excuse—an excuse to stay up later, to go out after being inside for ten hours, and an excuse to race Will somewhere. Last time they’d raced, Will had won and Mike had given him his X-men comic, but he is hoping to get it back.
“I don’t know—” begins Will, but Mike has already began cycling off, calling, “Race you!”
“Hey! Wait for me!” Will takes off after him, his foot almost slipping off his pedals in his haste to catch up.
Fifteen minutes later they reach the Byers’ little house.
“You better go,” Will whispers nervously. “Your mom will wonder where you are.”
“Yeah, okay. But you owe me your X-men 134.” For Mike had reached the path to the bungalow first.
“I’ll give it to you tomorrow,” promises Will. Mike smiles gratefully. Will never lies.
Will turns to go into the house, unlocking it with his key.
Will never lies, thought Mike.
“Will?”
Will turns back around, “yeah?”
“It was a seven.”
“What?”
“The roll. It was a seven. The Demogorgon got me.”
Will smiles softly at his friend, his best friend. “Okay.”
Mike slings his leg over his bike and starts to pedal away, calling, “see you tomorrow!”
Mike pauses, looking back over his shoulder, and watches as Will shuts the door behind him, before he sets back off, shivering due his lack of scarf—he’d stupidly given Will his blue scarf instead of Will’s own orange one. They often wear each other’s which is probably why Will hadn’t commented earlier on.
Mike cycles down the roads, pedalling fast to warm himself up, back the way the two boys had just cycled, passing the woods. They are exactly how they normally are, so Mike ignores them.
However, near the other side of the woods, not too far from Dustin’s house, Mike blinks as a tall giant of a figure flashed in front of him.
He tumbles down the side of the pavement, crashing his bike. He’d been pedalling too fast.
He looks nervously over his shoulder, and sure enough the gigantic…thing is following him. He sets his bike on the pavement and begins to cycle once more, mercifully unhurt.
However, shooting round the corner near Dustin’s house, the tyre hits a stone on the pavement.
Again Mike falls off his bike. This time, leaving his bike where it is, he runs to Dustin’s house, knocking excessively on the door.
“Dustin! Mrs Henderson!”
The car is gone, but Dustin’s bike is still there.
“Dustin!”
About thirteen feet away is the…thing. Mike tries the door. It will not budge.
Thinking fast, he runs to the shed, pushing hard on the door, which gives away immediately.
His hands tremble on the shot gun that he picked up from its place behind a pile of cat litter bags.
How do you use it? Thought Mike.
Will would know.
Lonnie Byers, his father, is a son of a bitch, as Dustin says, for a number of reasons which Mike has no time to think of at this moment while being chased by a… thing—perhaps from Hell, thought Mike. But at least Will would know how to use a gun. Mike is useless.
The light flickers above him. The hair on the back of his neck rises, and he spins around, long slimy finger-like projections from the… thing digging into his shoulder blades.
Before he can scream, everything goes dark.
And cold. Much much colder.
He blinks. Where the hell was he?
Back in the shed, the light flickers back on.
The boy is gone.