Henry Creel- Ever After

In your home with Henry in 1950s Hawkins, the sun was always shining. You felt the warm glow of the perpetual late afternoon, except when you wanted to rest. Then the sun would fade into an explosion of a billion stars in the darkness. You'd go outside and lie in the grass and watch the sun fall and the moon rise, the other way around when you woke up.

It was your world. You and Henry could last forever here. You were safe, you were happy. You had everything and more. The universe didn't exist anymore outside of this. Outside of him. He'd come sit with you, read his book as you watched bumblebees fly around the flowers, birds sing and relaxed in sunspots all day like a lazy cat. In this world, Henry wasn't a monster, the scarred commander, he was just yours. He would wear his crisp, clean button-downs and stay with you.

When you wanted to be alone, he'd watch you from inside the house as he read. If you needed attention, he’d dance with you to old records. He’d hold you and tell you everything he loved about you in slow detail. He’d kiss you, he’d cook for you and spend all the time you wanted. He seemed to love it just as much you did, being there for your every need seemed to give him purpose.

Sometimes, the dream would fade. You’d feel dizzy, heavy, your throat would ache and your lungs would feel like it was filling with water. He would rush and bring you tea and the feeling would fade. Over time, it slowly stopped working. You were sitting in the grass, watching the birds build their nests when you started feeling a sharp spike in your chest, stabbing through when you tried to breathe. You tried to call for Henry, but your voice was muffled like you were speaking underwater.

He rushed over, as if he sensed you calling him and he handed you the tea, like usual. You sipped it, but it didn’t go away this time. Over time, it just got worse. You’d wake up with the sheets of your bed feeling damp from your cold sweats. You often woke up clutching your throat, rattling coming from inside of your chest. You spent more and more time asleep, trying to escape the pain. In your dreams, you looked in the mirror and saw that the whites of your eyes were threaded with black veins like cracked porcelain being filled with ink.

He brought you more tea, a different flavor this time. You tried to hold it, but your hand spasmed. The cup shattered on the floor, and instead of tea, the liquid looked like thick, black sludge.

Henry tried to clean it up as fast as possible. In the real world, he was watching the spores of the Upside Down flourish in the warmth of your internal organs. It was eating you, turning your cells into cold, dead mulch. You were dying and he didn’t know how to fix it and still keep you with him.

Later that week, you were in the kitchen when a coughing fit hit you so violently that you fell to your knees. You coughed into your palms, half-expecting blood with how badly you had been feeling, but instead, it was clumps of something that looked like mold, pulsing in your palm. You shook your hand, desperate to get it off. You felt panicked and sick.

The kitchen walls began to melt. The yellow wallpaper sizzled and turned black, revealing the squirming, wet vines beneath. The sun outside the window faded, replaced by a dark red sky and flickering lightning.

Henry stood over you, but he was changing, too. His skin was rotting and he turned slowly into the person that everyone else saw when they got lost in his world. Not your Henry anymore, but Vecna.

"The air is poison to you," his voice was gentle, but no longer human. He sounded upset, kneeling to meet you. "I tried to hide you from it. I thought I could keep your mind away while your body succumbed. But the rot is faster than I anticipated."

You looked down at your legs. They were pinned to the wall by thick, calcified vines that had stitched themselves into your thighs, feeding your bloodstream with the toxic essence of the Upside Down.

"You're dying," Vecna touched your cheek. His touch was cold. It had never been cold before. "But I will not let you go. If you cannot survive this world as you are, I will fix you."

He didn't wait for your consent. He dove into your mind and your body simultaneously. It didn’t matter, he knew the trust was gone, destroyed by the realization that he had watched you rot, but that didn’t matter anymore. None of it did if he couldn’t save you.

Everything went black, the pain being the only thing you could feel and think. You felt like you were suffocating. Your mind was swimming and you could swear you were drowning. Even as the fire inside of you started to fade, you heard whispers as the Hive Mind attached itself to you. When you finally could see again, you looked down at yourself to see your new form.