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He’s not sure how he ended up here. Here being distinctly other in a way he never quite found out how to articulate. It was cold, and damp. The very air seemed to squeeze the oxygen out of his own lungs, even if he had learned long ago that air was not supposed to do that.
He had no real way of telling how long it had been. At this very moment he can't say he knew how old he was or what season it was supposed to be. Everything was at a standstill. Not literally. He wished they were. That would be less scary. Those things, oh how he hated those things.
Monsters in the most primal sense of it all. He didn't want to name them. Giving them a name would mean acknowledging that this was actually real. That he'd biked home, took Mirkwood, and ended up in some alternative version of Hawkins where he was alone.
He spent a long time crying over that. Lonnie would've had a field day seeing how many tears he’d shed since arriving. Hell, he’d be happy to see even Lonnie right now. Everything was just so quiet and cold that he'd be happy to see his piece of shit father, because at the very least it meant that he wasn't alone in this.
But he was alone, and that was something he had to come to terms with. And eventually he did. He's not sure what led to him waking up. In a way it felt kind of like something was poking at his head. All he knew was that he’d woken up with something down his throat, feeling like death warmed over.
He'd hyperventilated, as any rational person would, and then he ran. Given what he knew now (granted it wasn't much), that was the best idea. Because a while later (weeks or months, he's not sure) he'd coughed up something, many things over time really, all resembling a slug, with teeth the same as those things.
He’d been terrified to learn that his hunch was right. That he’d been used as some sort of incubator for whatever those creatures were. But he didn't dwell on it for too long, because at the moment surviving was more important than anything. Mom, Jonathan, Mike, Dusting, Lucas, even Nancy. They had to be somewhere out there waiting for him. Right? He just had to make his way back somehow.
Make his way out. That's what he told himself. His name was Will Byers, he wasn't sure how old he was, but he knew that a very long time ago he remembered being prodded in the brain and waking up with something down his throat. He knew that his hair grew out to the point that he'd started nabbing hair ties from around this version of Hawkins to tie his hair out of his face. He knew that he’d outgrown his clothes a long time ago.
Was it really a long time ago? He had no real way of knowing. There was no day or night, no cycle that activated his biological clock. He slept when he felt like he was about to crash, usually in small spaces those things weren't able to reach.
He shook his head, freeing himself from his thoughts. His eye covering shifted, and he frowned, tugging the things back into place. The stupid thing had always annoyed him, but it was either the eyepatch or gouge his own eyes out. Not to say he hadn't tried, after one too many occasions of things chasing him down, reeling as he tried to differentiate between what he was seeing and what it was seeing.
Those days had been difficult to say the least, until, like some knockoff pirate, he took a scrap of his old shirt and tied it around his head in a manner you'd imagine a six year old would when playing pretend. Glancing in the partially shattered mirror from the makeup counter, he made sure his entire left eye was covered, brushing his bangs from his face.
He’d noticed a while back that the hair at the forefront of his face seemed to grow at a slower rate, but at a certain point where it was in between awkward and getting in his eyes every other second, he decided to keep it trimmed. He supposed he could've pinned it back or cut the rest of his hair, but frankly it reminded him of his mom. And any reminder of what was waiting for him when he got out was something that kept him going,
Like Jonathan's clothes that he was tall enough to fit into now, if only a bit too skinny. The d20’s he’d nabbed from Mike’s room, his moms favorite necklace, some of Dustin's comics and a handful of Lucas’s favorite cassette tapes. They were useless, sure. From a logical perspective they took up space in his bag, something he'd grabbed from the sports goods section at Melvalds, but they were important to him.
Damn it, he’d gotten lost in his head again. It happened frequently, given there was no one else to talk to, but he usually managed to snap himself out of it before too long had passed by. He shook his head and carefully stepped over vines to make his way to the canned goods aisle.
At first he’d taken food from his house, then the Wheeler’s home, then eventually he'd gotten brave enough to make his way to Melvalds. Obviously things like produce and fresher foods had long gone bad, and he'd made his way through a good portion of the canned foods over time, but hey, his heated up cans of spaghetti-o’s weren't all too bad.
Looking, he found that he’d probably grabbed the last can of said spaghetti-o’s the last time he was here, and resigned himself to whatever generic brand canned ravioli he could find on the shelf. Things weren't looking good for him to be honest. Food was running low. And despite him having to fight for his life once a week or something resembling that vague timeline he still wasn't any closer to finding a way out of here.
It was really getting to a point. What were the chances that the next town over existed in this realm? In this warped version of Hawkins, the place he called home. Would people exist there? Would there be food if it did? He shook his head again. He couldn't get caught up in this. There were just too many hypotheticals to bother.
Was the off chance of seeing someone worth the risk of getting hunted down? Besides, the next town was forty minutes away minimum when in a car. He doesn't want to know how long that is walking. Traversing through town was hard enough with the vines and the stupid bipedal monsters.
He sighed and finished grabbing what he would need for a few sleeping cycles. Food, check, some new bandages (just in case), check, a couple bottles of water because he wasn't even going to try the water from the lake, also check. He huffed and tucked a strand of hair behind his ears, and he tugged his makeshift mask over his face.
It was really just a bandanna tied over the lower half of his face. It was all that he could manage. He always told himself one day he would go to the hospital and actually get medical grade masks, but the noises coming from inside always deterred him. He was resilient enough to survive, but he was nowhere near brave enough to dare confront whatever was in that building.
“A guy has to have his limits.” He mumbled under his breath, slipping his bag over his shoulders. He found that he didn't talk much. Maybe he was scared of hearing how much time had passed in his voice. He already saw it in the mirrors, but hearing it made things a little too real.
Hiding behind the hope that this was all a sick dream and that he would wake up in his bed the morning of November 7th, 1983 was cowardly. But a guy could dream. He catches one last glimpse of himself in the mirror before walking out of the hole in the wall that he'd used to get in. The front door was broken and stepping in from there would risk him stepping on broken glass and damaging his shoes. And while he had an entire town of shoes to pilfer, the ones he was wearing were Johnathan's, his work boots. He wanted to take care of them.
Still, that last glance in the mirror sparked a small bit of joy in him. In the fact that he’d grown to look a lot more like his mom. Despite the desperation he currently felt for human connection, he did truly despise Lonnie. The only good thing that came from him was learning how to use guns. That came in handy. Though he hated to know that he was dwindling down on his supply of bullets.
He groaned internally as he made his way down the street behind Melvald’s. More of an alley to be frank, but Hawkins was a ‘nice suburban town’ and ‘didn't have dirty things like alleys’. So they called them backstreets. Though in all honesty that didn't sound much better in his opinion. Still, right now wasn't the time to think about Lonnie.
He had to get to the library. He couldn't tell you about anything much past seventh grade english lessons, or god forbid history, but he figured his way out of here had to be science related, which also led him to advanced mathematics to make sense of certain things. Mr. Clarke would be proud. He thinks.
He’d read a good majority of the books. There didn't seem to be a real scientific answer yet, at least not one that he had. The closest he could think of was maybe a wormhole, but that made the implication that this reality was a bridge, and he's not sure he wants to know what's on the other side.
He made sure his gun was loaded. A handgun, the shotgun was too big to carry around along with his book bag, so he'd taught himself how to properly load and shoot something a lot easier to carry around. He’d admit, more than once when he'd been getting chased down he was tempted to shoot something that wasn't one of those things.
It was simply that they seemed to want him here. They wanted him here.The thought of it alone made him not want to make it out sometimes. Because if he made his way back, what was to say that they wouldn't follow? He would be putting his family at risk.
But the creatures did follow him around. Hunted him down prior to him figuring out the whole thing about his left eye. He’d looked at it a few times. His left eye that is. It was like his entire left eye was swallowed by his pupil, kind of like David Bowie. That thought was meant to comfort him but David Bowie’s eyes were as such for a medical reason, he was just possessed. It seemed at least. He didn't want to test that theory.
It was the only thing that convinced Will that they had some form of limited sentience. They seemed to understand chasing him down. Though they seemed mostly driven on instinct Or maybe on orders. That was a scary thought, a puppet master of everything here was not something or someone he wanted to face any time soon. And the smell of blood. They were very attracted to blood. He shuddered at those memories, not eager to relive them any time soon.
He made his way inside the library, careful to avoid vines as he made his way over to the science section. He once tried his hand on the paranormal activity once or twice but all of those books were about ghosts or the supernatural in a manner that didn't apply to his situation. Those were all speculation based on rumors. This was real.
But science was real. And science helped him fend off monsters and gave him a small smidgen of hope that he would get out of here somehow. It just had to happen. It didn't matter how, or when (though he hoped it was sooner than later), he was going to get home somehow. He was sure of it.