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Will noticed something was wrong the second he gained consciousness. He felt empty, like someone took something from him, but he didn’t quite know what it was yet. Laying in the hospital bed, he opened his eyes carefully only to see his older brother and his mother looking at him with pitying eyes.
No one said anything for a couple of seconds before Jonathan finally raised his voice carefully, “Hey Will, how are you?“
Will took a moment to think about his answer. He wasn’t quite sure how he was. It seemed as if one moment ago he was in the shed behind his house, watching the lights flicker violently and in the next moment he was here, tucked in a hospital bed, attached to a beeping machine while a sterile smell burned in his nose.
“Uh, I‘m okay.“ He croaked out. It was the truth. Nothing hurt, but nothing felt particularly good. “What happened? Why-… Why am I here?“
His mother jumped to answer him before Jonathan could. “Will, baby, you went missing for- for a week.“
Wills eyebrows furrowed. This was all wrong. He must’ve been transported into some sort of parallel universe, because there was no way that was true. He would surely remember going missing. “I- what?“
This time Jonathan spoke. “You went home from Mi-, uh, Mike‘s place, remember? And something took you. We looked everywhere for you.“ Will couldn’t help but notice how Jonathan struggled to get the words out.
There was a headache blooming in Will‘s head and he suddenly felt like nothing was okay at all. So many questions were swarming his brain that didn’t allow him to think straight. The distraught look on his brother‘s face and the fact that his his mother was barely able to look him in the eyes certainly weren’t helping.
He tried sitting up, the sheets that might as well have been silver chains pulling him right back down. Looking at Jonathan or his mother was no use, they looked downright depressing. His mother’s hair was tangled and the shirt she was wearing was stained with something Will couldn’t make out. Jonathan had deep bags under his eyes, a bandage around his hand and his hair looked greasy.
It wasn’t that Will thought they didn’t care for him, christ, sometimes he thought they cared too much. But waking up in a hospital bed and having to choose between watching his distraught mess of a family or the sterile walls only left the option of closing his eyes.
For a few minutes nobody said anything. Jonathan, ever the observer, sensed Will was uncomfortable. “Your friends are here.“
Something in his tone was off, but Will didn’t have it in him to ask about it.
“Can I see them?“ He asked hopefully. He missed his friends dearly, even though to him he had only seen them a few minutes ago, though he supposed that if he had any memory of the past week he would miss them even more.
Jonathan nodded before his mother could interfere. They both knew that their mother only wanted what’s best for Will, or rather his health and safety, but sometimes that didn’t quite align with what Will actually wanted or needed.
“Yeah, I‘ll, uh, go get them.“ Jonathan said, ignoring the frown on his mother’s face.
Just a few seconds later Will heard the sound of feet hitting the floor. His friends were running to see him and all of the sudden he regretted asking to see them. Will still felt as if it was impossible for anyone to want him around, no matter how much his friends, or rather Mike, had insisted that he was an essential part of the group.
The door swung open and Will could immediately tell that something, or rather someone, was missing. The emptiness that Will felt initially had grown by a million when he only saw Lucas and Dustin. Mike was no where to be seen.
Neither Lucas nor Dustin were smiling when they ran to his bed and engulfed him in a hug. It felt like a millisecond and a year at the same time until they let go. There was a frown on their faces too and the emptiness quickly transitioned to all consuming dread. Will‘s eyes scanned the room, still desperately searching for Mike, but he was nowhere to be found.
“Where is Mike?“
Tears sprung to Dustin‘s eyes while Lucas turned his head slightly, trying not to make eye contact.
“Guys, where is Mike?“ His voice, much like his searching eyes, grew more desperate, frantic almost.
“He’s… gone,” Dustin whispered, his eyes now fixed on the ground.
“Gone?” Will repeated, his chest tightening. “What do you mean, gone?”
Lucas exhaled, a quiet, heavy sound. He looked at Dustin, but he wouldn’t meet his gaze. Their friendgroup, the party, had changed into something unrecognizable in the matter of a week. Mike’s guilt for leaving Will on his own had become Lucas‘ and Dustin‘s guilt for not being able to stop Mike from dying. They had fought before he died. Mike died thinking Lucas hated him, thinking Will was dead.
“Will… he jumped.”
The world tilted, its colors fading to gray, and the hospital beeps became unbearable, loud and mocking. Will’s stomach dropped, a void opening inside him. “What?” His voice was a broken thread. “What do you mean ‘he jumped‘?”
Dustin’s voice trembled. “The quarry. I was there. I was with him. Troy and James, they cornered us. They said if Mike didn’t jump, they’d-” He choked. “…they’d cut out my teeth.”
Will blinked, trying to hold onto something solid, but the room spun with the weight of the words. This had to have been a bad joke. Or an awful nightmare. “That’s not real,” he whispered. “You’re lying. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t…”
“Yes, he did,” Lucas said softly. “He thought if he didn’t, they’d hurt Dustin. He didn’t want to, Will. The whole week you were- were gone, he never stopped looking, Will. He believed you were out there.”
“No!” Will shouted, his voice cracking, raw with disbelief and anger. “No! Stop it! Stop telling me he—he’s gone! He didn’t die! You’re lying! You’re lying! He wouldn’t leave! He wouldn’t jump!”
Dustin shook his head violently, tears spilling down his face. “I swear! I was there! I saw it! I tried to stop him, Will! I couldn’t!”
Will’s hands clawed at the sheets. His mind screamed against the impossible, against the world that insisted this tragedy was real. “You’re making it up! You’re trying to make me believe something that didn’t happen! He’s here! He’s alive! Stop it!”
His chest heaved, sobs tearing free, violent and jagged. He felt like a boy ripped open, hollowed out by a loss that refused to make sense. His friends, his family, all of them were actors in a nightmare he refused to accept. A nightmare that might as well have been his own personal version of hell. Will never believed in god, was never religious and had never prayed, but right in that moment he prayed to all the gods that they‘d wake him up from this nightmare, take him out of hell.
Lucas knelt beside him, voice trembling, soft and brittle as dry glass. “Will… we’re not lying. He loved you more than anything. He believed in you, even when everyone thought you were gone. He didn’t want to leave you.”
Will shook his head violently, tears streaming freely, hot and blinding. “I don’t care! You’re lying! You’re all lying!”
The room held its breath, a fragile universe trembling on the edge of collapse. The machines beeped steadily, indifferent, as if life and death were simple arithmetic. But inside Will, the world was unraveling.
He pressed his face into his hands, shaking, screaming, trying to claw back a reality where Mike was still there, where the world had not taken him so cruelly. His sobs rattled the walls, rattled his own bones, and somewhere, deep in the hollowness, a tiny spark of fury burned not at Dustin or Lucas, but at a universe that had allowed the cruelty, the fear, the impossible choices.
“I don’t believe you,” he whispered, broken, raw, defiant. “I won’t believe it. He’s alive. He has to be. He has to-“
And in that moment, the room was full of grief, rage, and impossible love, all tangled together like the roots of a tree ripped from the soil. Will didn’t know how to survive this loss, didn’t know how to understand a world where a friend could be taken in an instant, forced by cruelty, and vanish like a star snuffed out before its time.