Chapter Text
Cassady Carver wasn’t sure how long she had been in this hellscape covered in vines, filled with monsters of all kinds. This world mimicked her own, even if it looked like it was perpetually stuck in the 1980s. There were no hints of the modern infrastructure that had become commonplace in the 21st century. This world, whatever it was, was just a dark, twisted, evil version of Cassies very own.
For the most part, there was no running water and no electricity. She would sometimes get lucky and one of the buildings, one of the houses that she swatted in would have flickering lights and the occasional bout of running water, even if it was freezing cold no matter how hot the poor girl tried to make it.
She figured out early on in her time here that the creatures, the monsters, had a very complex hivemind that was connected to the vines that crawled on every surface. As long as she didn’t touch something she wasn’t supposed to, she was typically fine.
She also discovered early on that this is where lost things end up. A random sock in the dryer, a can of food in an otherwise empty cabinet. All of the bottoms of the containers that ended up lost, but never the matching lids. The thought nearly made her giggle when she saw cabinets filled with container bottoms without their lids for the first time. The strange thing is, that there were also things that existed in this world and in the other.
Occasionally, something would be moved that she knew wasn’t her or the monsters, like a bike that had moved as if a kid had just thrown it down after riding it. The flickering lights and the faint voices let her know that life existed just beyond reach.
Not much was edible to humans, but Cassie managed to scavenge enough of the lost food from people’s cabinets that kept her going for a while. The backpack that she had run away from home with was filled to the brim with canned goods and other nonperishable items. The rest of her stuff was secured safely in the bags that she snagged and strapped to the bicycle that she was borrowing or in the trailer that she was currently squatting in.
If she was lucky, and Cassie hardly ever was here, she'd find the occasional item from someone’s first aid kit that had gone missing, lost to never be found again.
The most surprising thing that she found since coming here was a young boy. How he ended up here was a mystery to both of them. His name was Will Byers. They survived together for a short time before he ended up disappearing. Cassie's best guess is that he made it back home. Wherever home was for him.
Probably still in Hawkins Indiana, but just wherever and whenever he came from. Their short time together allowed them to figure out some of the intricacies of this world. They could communicate with people on the other side with lights when their two worlds briefly touched. But that had been a while ago. Weeks? Years? Time was meaningless here. Clocks were frozen in time. Nothing ever really changes. There wasn’t even a sun from what Cassie could tell that would indicate whether or not it was night or day. So, this hellscape Neverland is where the only Lost Girl lived surviving on Lost World items.
She didn’t put too much thought into it though since she still had to survive and scrounge for her next meal. She was raiding one of the trailers from the Forest Hills trailer park when she heard it. Metallica. Just the guitar anyway. Like someone was learning to play it.
Okay, definitely someone trying to play it based on the missed or messed-up notes every once in a while. Still, due to the fact that Cassie hadn’t heard music in so long that it was the most beautiful thing that she had ever heard. She followed the faint solo of Master of Puppets to one of the bedrooms. It was messy, just like everything here in this monstrous version of reality. But more so than other places. Like a teenage boy lived in there. To think that someone was so close, but still so far away. It reminded her of the Silent Hill games and movies where the characters were in the same place, but not quite. One side was filled with monsters and shit, while the other was just an abandoned mining town. Except Hawkins wasn’t abandoned.
The girl sat down on the full-size bed and just listened. Closing her bright blue eyes, she tried to picture who sat right on the other side, the person playing. Before sitting down, she had seen the posters on this person’s walls. Pretty popular metal bands and 80s movies, such as the cult classic, Evil Dead. Whoever this room belonged to at least had some decent taste. Cassie hummed along with the guitar, as she laid down. The bed was surprisingly still comfortable, even if it smelt a little old and musty, like everything else in this damned Wonderland.
Curling around on the bed in the fetal position, she allowed herself to get lost in the slightly broken guitar riff of one of her favorite Metallica songs. The comfort that it brought her was something that she had missed from her world. When she first got here, she had listened to all of her saved songs that she had downloaded onto her phone to keep the constant shrieking of those Wyvern Bat things out of her head. But when her phone died as all modern electronics tend to do, she couldn’t exactly charge it.
Or, at least, she couldn't always find a place to charge it. Thinking about it now, when this world was connected to that world, Cassie decided to try. Who knew when she would get another chance like this? She grabbed her bag from the floor where she had left it and pulled out the white android charger that she carried around with her for this exact reason.
Finding a plug wasn’t too difficult since it was right by where the amp sat. She plugged in the charger, and then the phone. The phone’s screen lit up to show that it was charging. A little green circle with a battery charging symbol overlaid on a backlit black screen. She sat the phone on top of the amp to keep it charging. Patience was a virtue after all, and something that one definitely needed to survive this fucked up version of reality.
‘Damn,’ she faintly heard. It was a rather masculine voice. She couldn't tell if it was tenor or baritone due to the fact that it was faint and rather muffled, but it was still pleasant to listen to. The guitar stopped once he had reached the end of the song. ‘Where the hell is that joint?’ she heard him ask no one in particular. He had weed? God, I haven’t had a joint since before I left home without telling anyone, she thought. Her home life had been horrible before she had ran away.
If this dude had lost his joint, maybe I could…
There! She spotted and swiped the neatly rolled, little white joint from where it had gotten lost in the folds of the messy sheets. No wonder he had lost it.
“Hello, beautiful,” she said, before holding it to her nose to smell it; the rich, earthy tones of it were pleasant in a strange way. To most, this smell would be very off-putting. But to her, it smelled like heaven.
‘Hello? Is there someone there or am I just really high?’ The boy asked, but unfortunately, she didn’t have the chance to answer as our brief connections between the two worlds broke apart. Meaning that not only would she probably never hear him playing his guitar again, but she missed out on her chance to charge her phone. She let out a high-pitched groan as she went to check on it. Only one measly percent! God, damn it.
Cassie kicked the stupid amp as if it had personally offended her. But nothing happened rather than a dull pain blooming in her toes. She grumbled as she searched the boy's room for anything that she could find. She didn’t want to take anything of his since Cassie still didn’t know if it would be swiped from the other world as well. But one t-shirt shouldn't hurt, right?
Searching through his closet, she tried to find something that he probably hadn’t worn in years. Something small or torn. Luckily, she found one that was smaller than all of the other shirts; a small band t-shirt when everything else was large or extra large. This suggested that he was probably in his late teens or early twenties. There wasn’t much in the room that could tell anyone definitively who this room was and who this trailer belonged to.
Moving on, she searched the rest of the trailer. She found an almost expired beer that had those old-style pull tabs as well as a single can of ravioli. She didn’t dare to check the fridge since the electricity was so finicky here. There was no telling if it would be all gross and moldy or still fresh and edible.
Best to stay away in case it’s the former.
She checked the other trailers as well. The next one that she checked clearly belonged to a smoker. Or even a family of smokers. The previous trailer smelled like a combination of weed, cigarettes, and mildew. But this one smelled so strongly of stale cigarette smoke that it covered up the natural scent of this world. She found a young girl's room that was filled with skateboards, skates, and other sporty objects that indicated that this girl was a tomboy through and through. The thought, strangely, put a smile on her face.
Unfortunately, there was nothing in there of interest. She found another room that belonged to the tomboy's brother or her father. But either way, the person had an alarming number of wife beaters in his closet. In there, as she searched the room, she found half a pack of cigarettes hiding under the bed as if they had gone to bed with them in their hand. And wasn’t that a concerning thought?
Also, unfortunately, there wasn’t any food for her to scavenge, so she had to move on. She biked around for a while, avoiding the vines as she went. There was a half-built mall that she liked to check out sometimes. She remembered hearing about this mall in one of her classes. The Starcourt mall had burned down in the mid-80s and the causes were still unknown to this day. It had been rebuilt in the 90s, but in this version of the mall, there was no Hot Topic. Which was sad, but it told her that this mall was probably pre-1990. Wait, when was Hot Topic founded? She couldn't exactly look it up either since there was no internet for her to access.
But, it didn’t really matter.
Realistically, Cassie knew that nothing would steal her bike, but she still locked it up to one of the proffered bike racks that had been outside of one of the entrances before she grabbed her scavenging bag. There was usually a thing or two that she could find. A tool from one of the contractors here. Some merchandise that had been lost in the storage room there.
Today was different though. Because when she entered the half-built Starcourt Mall, something was instantly different. Something in the air was dark and chilling. Chills ran up her spine as she entered the building. Nothing was out of place, at first glance. But that meant nothing. She readied the only weapon that she had available. A baseball bat that had nails spiked through it. The girl had found it in one of the nicer houses that she had scavenged a while back. She wasn’t sure if it was a lost item or if it was a replica of one from the other side.
Either way, it made her feel safer to have it on her at all times. Even though she tried to avoid the monsters of this world doesn’t mean that she still doesn’t run into trouble every once in a while. Walking through the building slowly and carefully, the eerily silence was starting to get to her. With trembling hands and a shaking breath, Cassie continued her search.
Today is one of the days that made her grateful for the nail bat because those evil fucking bats and a fucking humanoid things with the fucked up faces were there surrounding something laying prone on the ground in the middle of the central plaza of the mall. Right next to the fountain. As she looked closer to the scene in front of her, she noticed that it wasn't something, but rather someone laying next to the mall fountain.
Her feet were moving before she could even fully think. Using some of the skills that she had learned since coming here, She attempted to scare off or fight off the monsters. She let out a loud scream, that had gotten the attention of the monsters. That humanoid thing screeched and lunged toward the Lost Girl. But she was ready for it. She swung the bat right at its face, knocking it away from her. It crashed against the linoleum tiles but quickly shook off the attack. It was back up and running towards her in a moment. Most of the bat things flew off as the big monster attacked. She wasn’t really sure if she was going to win this one, but she had to try because if she didn’t then that denim-clad figure laying there would die as well. And the amount of blood surrounding them wasn’t a good sign already.