Chapter Text
When Steve Harrington woke up, the first thing he noticed was how quiet the world seemed.
Even when he was at home and his parents were gone for an extended period of time (like they usually always were), the house buzzed with the sound of the fridge running and the pipes groaning. The silence was his first clue.
The second clue was the more obvious lack of total recognition in his surroundings when Steve finally mustered the energy to open his eyes. He was in the woods somewhere, and all he could see were trees. He lay on the ground, and watched as flakes of ash floated through the air.
Steve’s third and final clue was the throbbing pain in his left shoulder. When the teen finally mustered the energy to investigate said pain by touching it gently, his hand came away with blood.
He sits up suddenly, instincts finally starting to blare with alarm. Where was he? What had happened?
The last thing he remembers was driving away from his parents in anger after a particularly unpleasant evening. The Harrington couple had stopped by the home for a quick visit before they planned to leave again the next day. Somehow, they’d found out about Steve’s D minus in English class. One thing had led to another, and Steve had stormed out. (More like ran away).
A bruise forming on his cheek from the impact of his father’s ring, Steve had been blinded by rage, and by his own stupid weakness. He’d driven down the old road that headed into the woods and then…. He didn’t know. But now he was here.
Looking around, Steve couldn’t make out anything except forest. But the forest seemed wrong. The trees seemed to groan, and the little sky that he could see through the canopy was red. And it was raining ash. What the fuck.
Steve stood slowly, knees wobbly from disuse, as if he had been on the ground for some time. He tried to twist around to see the wound on his shoulder, but the pain was originating from the shoulder blade and he couldn’t get a good angle on it. For now, he decided to give up on the wound and get home where he could treat it in the bathroom mirror. Hopefully without his parents discovering.
Before Steve could decide what direction to begin walking that may lead him back to his house, a low growl sounded behind him. Steve froze, then slowly turned toward the noise. It sounded like a wolf. He hadn’t thought Hawkins had any wolves in the area. Perhaps a stray dog?
But what stepped out from the trees wasn’t a wolf or a dog. Not even remotely close. The only way Steve could think to describe it was monster. It was a fleshy, grey beast with claws deadlier than any known predator and a head like a closed flower bud. The creature growled again.
Steve was frozen. The beast stood only feet away, but he did not dare move. Suddenly, a jolt of pain from his shoulder wound caused Steve to wince. In response, the creature opened its entire head, which was actually a mouth filled with rows upon rows of teeth and let out an ear piercing shriek.
Steve ran.
Steve tore through the woods, barely managing to avoid tripping over tree roots and getting hit in the face with branches. The creature was hot on his heels, and continued to shriek and growl.
Suddenly, Steve felt something grab hold of his ankle and yank him down. Quickly looking, he saw that a grey vine had somehow wrapped itself around his leg and was moving upwards towards his chest. What was happening!? Thrashing violently did nothing to loosen the vine and suddenly the monster-dog-thing was on him. Its claws sunk into his hips, and the man could swear he felt it hit bone. The beast lowered its head, mouth agape, as if to bite into Steve’s throat. Steve, in a moment of adrenaline, yanked the vine that had found its way up to his ribs and shoved it in the creature's mouth to hold it back, using it as a sort of bit- like in a horse bridle.
With both the creature and the sentient plant stunned for a moment, Steve managed to quickly yank up more vine and wrap it once around the beast’s neck and pull with all his might.
The monster started to thrash violently. In doing so, it managed to bite through the piece of vine still in its mouth, but Steve did not relent his grip on the noose. The dog continued to struggle, until finally after many minutes, it gave one last defeated shriek and collapsed into the dirt.
Steve let out a breath of sheer relief before untangling himself from the vine, which had stopped moving after the monster had bit it in half. The teen took a minute to let himself breathe. What the fuck was going on? And what was that creature?
Steve weakly poked the monster with the tip of his shoe, but was too terrified to get near it and its massive teeth and claws again. Thinking about its claws suddenly had Steve focusing on the wounds in his hips. Each side had four distinct puncture holes, for a total of eight gouges, and they were losing blood fast. He suddenly felt a little light headed and leaned on a tree for support.
Steve’s moment of respite didn’t last long, however, before he heard a warbled howling noise pierce through the ashy sky. Icy-cold dread slithered through his body and brought along a fresh wave of adrenaline spiking into his tired limbs.
The sound of rustling leaves and pounding feet became audible, and rapidly getting louder. Steve began running again. If he could just get home, maybe he could shut the door and pretend this whole thing was a dream. He could call Chief Hopper at the station and he could take care of this whole mess.
As Steve ran, a terrified mantra of what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, ran through his head. There were definitely multiple of the creatures chasing him. Steve had barely survived one, he knew he stood no chance against a whole pack of them.
Steve continued to run, until he found himself falling over for the second time of the evening. Only this time, he had run right off a small cliff and splashed right into a deep river.
Steve sucked in a breath of surprise, but instead, his lungs filled with water. In a desperate bid for air, Steve fought his way up through the current, his head breaking the surface, and took a desperate gasp of oxygen.
He has no time to rejoice in his being still alive; as the sounds of the creatures gaining on him urged Steve to continue moving. Steve had never been more thankful to have been on the swim team than at that moment. Fighting the current trying to pull him away downriver, Steve managed to swim across the water and onto the bank at the other end.
Shaking and exhausted, Steve continued to run. His head felt woozy, and his wounds throbbed angrily, but still he ran for his life.
After what seemed like minutes, but was likely only seconds, Steve found himself at the edge of the woods and stumbling onto a road. Wait. He knew this road. It was the one he’d been driving down however long ago it had been before this nightmare began. Steve knew how to get home from here.
Steve glanced behind him, but was surprised to see nothing. He concentrated, trying to listen for the sound to the monsters following, but the night was dead. All was quiet. Steve slowed his run to a jog, listening over the sound of his footsteps. Still, nothing. He didn't trust that the demons were truly gone.
Steve runs the five miles back to his house, ignoring the pain and the darkening of his vision.
When he finally makes it to his front door, he nearly cries with relief. He was safe. Steve intended to go directly to the phone and call Hopper and the police to report the attack. But he only just managed to close and lock the door behind him before he passed out in the foyer.
In his pain-induced haze, Steve never noticed that his house was covered in vines and seemed to be rotting on the inside.
__________________________
Time has passed. Steve isn’t sure how much time, as the days never end. The sky remains always red. The ash is ever-falling. The world he thought he knew is gone.
Somehow, Steve has found himself in this alternate dimension. Or at least, that's his working theory right now. That night in the forest that seems so long ago was his first night in the Upside Down (as he’s taken to calling the god awful world).
This place is the exact same town of Hawkins that he grew up in, but it is also entirely changed. Vines grow all around and cover the buildings and streets. The entire city remains abandoned of people, but not of life. Creatures that only Steve’s worst nightmares could have conjured rule this dystopian world. Not only the Demon Dogs that Steve first encountered, but also Demon Bats, Demon Gorgon things, and Evil Vines. There may be more. If so, Steve is thankful not to have discovered them. But hence the name the Upside Down. Because everything looks the same, but the world is wrong and backwards.
Steve had come to realise that he had been incredibly lucky to escape the pack of Demon Dogs that night. The river he had fallen into had carried the scent of his blood away, and led the Dogs the wrong direction. It had been a stroke of pure luck.
Steve has struggled to survive since that first night, and learned much in that time. He’d had to learn, in order to survive.
Steve quickly discovered that Demon Dogs smell blood, and that there were a lot of them. Too many. In his first few weeks, Steve had many encounters with the Dogs because of his open wounds. It wasn’t until he had hidden out in the local hospital and sewed his wounds closed with a needle and medical thread that he finally escaped. At least for a little while.
Steve learned to avoid stepping on the huge masses of vines growing all over the buildings and streets because all of them were alive, and all of them would strangle you if disturbed.
The most important thing Steve learned was how to defend himself:
It had been Steve’s second week in the hellscape. He’d been running from a particularly nasty Demon Gorgon - he really needed to think of a better name for all the creatures.
Demon Gorgons were the meanest, standing on two legs like a human, but with the same mouth piece as a Demon Dog. They were faster, smarter, and stronger than all the other creatures of the Upside Down.
He’d encountered the Gorgon while scrounging for food at Melvald’s General Store. It was hard to find anything edible in the Upside Down. All the non-parishables had rotten, and most of the canned items had been trashed by the monsters. Steve ate what he could, but he’d soon learn that Demon Bats, while entirely unappetizing, made for good protein.
Steve had been lucky enough to find an unspoiled can of peaches tucked away in the store’s storage room when the Gorgon had entered the store. At that time, Steve hadn’t seen a Gorgon before, only the Demon Dogs and Bats. He’d rightfully freaked out. Thankfully, the Gorgon hadn’t noticed him, as it was more attracted to the dead Demon Bat in the corner which Steve had killed earlier with his bare teeth. Steve was on the opposite end of the store, where a broken window facing the street could act as his escape route.
As cautiously as he could, the teen began to creep behind a nearby shelf towards escape. But Steve’s wounds from his first night still weren’t fully healed, and they had the tendency to pop stitches at the most inconvenient of times. Of course, with his luck, that’s exactly what they did.
Immediately, the Demon Gorgon’s faceless head was locked on Steve at the smell of fresh blood. There was a tense moment of stillness, where the two regarded each other. Then they moved all at once.
The creature lunged for Steve, knocking over shelving units as it leapt across the small space. Steve had only moments before the Gorgon was on him. That's when he saw the baseball bat. It leaned innocently on the shelf he had tried to hide behind. Without conscious decision, Steve grabbed the bat and swung with all his strength. More stitches along his hurt shoulder popped, but his swing was true, cracking the monster across the face. The creature roared in pain, toppling through the nearby cash register station.
It was down only a moment, before it rose up on its two feet again. But Steve noticed the slight jilt in its movement. He had wounded it.
What followed was a deadly game, where the monster would lunge, and Steve would time his swings perfectly, hitting the demon again and again on the head. After twenty three mighty strikes, Steve was fatiguing. He wasn’t sure he could fend off a twenty fourth attack. When the Gorgon launched itself again, Steve deployed his last defense mechanism: he ducked. The monster soared over his head and crashed into the shelving unit behind him.
But, it just so happened that this shelving unit was the hardware section. The creature had landed right in the nails, and Steve could see about four large nails sticking through the Gorgon’s hands and one notably in the side of its head. Black blood oozed from the wound as the creature gave a mighty shriek. Steve prepared himself for another strike of his bat, but instead, the monster retreated, using the broken window Steve had been aiming for as its own escape.
Steve was caught completely off guard by the retreat. No other demon creature had ever tried to escape. Clearly, the Demon Gorgons were the most intelligent.
Once Steve had caught his bearings, an idea crept into his head. The baseball bat had worked well for the teen, he was a natural at using it, and it was the best weapon against the creatures thus far. But…it hadn’t been enough. It was the nails that had really defeated the creature. So what is Steve combined the two?
Thus was born Steve’s mighty nail bat, a baseball bat with nails pounded through the front end to form a makeshift mace. It became his most trusted ally in the months to follow, and would spill the blood of many more demons.
A few weeks later, Steve set up a base camp in a residential house that was not too far from the hospital and close enough to the local grocery store. He fortified the home and reinforced it, making it practically demon proof. There, he lived for weeks, until he eventually gave up counting.
Sometimes Steve could swear he’d hear voices of children talking about rolling dice, or music echoing in the walls, but he always chalked it up to hallucinations and lack of a proper diet.
His entire body became riddled with scars and an always rotating plethora of healing scrapes and bruises. Steve considered them victories. Proof that he was alive and holding his own against the evil that was this place.
But the most challenging part was the loneliness. The never ending despair that was not knowing what had happened to him, or if he would ever go back to the normal world again. The loneliness that crept up on him after a particularly brutal battle or an unsuccessful search for food. Sometimes, Steve thought about giving up completely and letting the demons have him.
But one day that all changed, when a young boy by the name of Will Byers was dragged into hell with Steve.