#and I'm not even sure the plot of those last two chapters has attained its final form

[marypsue]

A year and a half, 13 notebooks, 9 playlists, nearly 250,000 words, and I will not admit how much writerly angst later, I am proud to be able to say (and unable to believe) that the first draft of the monster Stranger Things longfic I started in July 2020 is finally finished! There is still so, so much editing to do, but now I can edit it as a whole! 

And, in honour of it finally being drafted, here is a tiny little teaser:

...

El stands in the middle of the cabin, turning a slow circle as she takes in all of the things that have become so familiar in all the days she lived there. The mugs that had hung on the wall still lie in shards on the floor. The mounted deer’s head stares down at her with beady black eyes. Sunlight filters down through the broken roof, catching on motes of hovering dust. The wind whistles mournfully through the holes in the walls, halfheartedly ruffling the mismatched curtains.

The damage the Mind Flayer’s meat-body had done hasn’t been fixed or cleaned up. The whole place will be left to rot. No one, after all, was supposed to know it was there.

Behind her, there’s a click, and a buzz of static. El turns. The television set is on, the screen fuzzy with grey-and-white snow. The lights on the radio blink on, one by one, and snippets of words spill through its higher-pitched crackle.

“No,” El says, and storms over to the radio. She turns it off with one sharp motion and stands staring at it, breathing hard.

The radio clicks back on, with a hiss. El reaches out and turns it off again, but it turns itself back on before she’s even pulled her hand back. She yanks the plug out of the wall, and the radio falls silent for just long enough that she can catch her breath.

Then it clicks back on again.

El lets out a short scream of frustration, and grabs the radio with both hands. “I can’t! I’m trying! I can’t!”

The voices continue, oblivious, relentless. “Hel- El - -el- -elp -”

El pulls the radio off the shelf and throws it, as hard as she can, at the floor. It crashes down with a crunch and a grind of metal, and lies there twisted on the bare boards. One dial pops off and rolls away across the floor with a little rattling sound.

For a moment, the only sound in the cabin is the quiet hiss of the TV static.

And then the radio crackles back to life. “-even? Jane? – find -”

El screams, and screams, and the roof tears off.

The walls peel back. The floorboards fall away. The TV and the radio both dissolve into swirls of colour and disappear into the blackness, the last echoes of Hopper’s voice going with them. El reaches out, but she can’t do anything. In seconds, everything’s gone. Vanished into a vast, empty, silent darkness.

Leaving El alone.

She drops to her knees, with a faint splash, the sob she’s been holding back for so long tearing at her throat. El wraps her arms around herself, digging her fingers into her shoulders until it hurts, and gasps and shudders with a grief that feels too big for her body.

“Eleven?”

El freezes.

The voice hasn’t changed. Kali was able to call it up so clearly because it’s always been burned deep into El’s memory. He doesn’t sound angry, only curious, a little surprised, as though he hadn’t expected to find her here. Somehow, it’s worse than El imagined it. It would have been easier if he’d been angry.

El doesn’t want to look. She can’t stop herself.

He’s standing a few paces away, looking at her – looking at her as if she’s some kind of stray pet. Or a specimen out of its cage. Something interesting but unpleasant, unexpected, pitiful. Something that needs to be cleaned up and put back in its proper place.

He smiles when her eyes meet his, that same old familiar smile. The scars that rope across the left side of his face twist it into a sneer.

“Papa,” El breathes.

“Eleven,” her papa repeats, taking a step closer, his shiny shoes plashing loudly in the echoing silence. El scrambles to her feet, tries to back away, but finds herself frozen to the spot. “Where are you…?”

“Papa, no,” El says, but she can’t stop her bedroom from swirling into sight all around her. Her papa pauses, near enough to reach out and touch her, and looks around. Then his gaze settles, once again, on El.

El backs away as her papa steps forward, but the backs of her legs hit the bed. There’s nowhere to go.

She can’t move as he reaches down, almost fondly, to cup her face in both hands. Can’t do anything.

“Don’t be afraid, Eleven,” her papa says, in the voice he always used to ask El to do something that wasn’t really a choice. Almost kind. His thumb skims over El’s cheek, cold as dead flesh, almost gentle. His smile is as cold as his hands. “You’ve been made entirely obsolete. But you’ll always be my Eleven. And I will always be your Papa.”

El wakes up screaming.