Hawkins wasn’t the same anymore. The sky always looked bruised—gray even at noon, heavy with clouds that never quite rained. Half the stores downtown were boarded up, the parking lot of Bradley’s Grocery cracked and overgrown, like the earth itself wanted to swallow what was left of the town.

Steve tightened his grip on the grocery bag in his hand. He still came out here every week, half out of habit, half out of stubbornness. Maybe if he kept acting like things were normal, they eventually would be.

That’s when he saw her.

You

Standing a few cars away, earbuds in, humming to herself as she tried to wrestle her keys out of her pocket. She looked… normal. Too normal for this broken place. It caught him off guard, that little glimpse of something ordinary.

And then his stomach dropped.

Behind her—low, shifting, wrong—a shape moved. One of them. Its limbs scraped against the concrete, head tilting in those jagged, unnatural twitches he’d never forget. “Shit—” He breathed, heart kicking hard.

He didn’t think. He just ran.

The bag hit the ground, cans rolling across the pavement as he lunged forward, grabbing her by the arm just as the thing leapt. She gasped—didn’t even have time to scream—before he yanked her behind the car, pressing her back against the metal, his palm covering her mouth.

Her eyes were wide, terrified. His weren’t much better.

For a moment, the only sound was her breath against his hand and the slow, wet drag of the creature sniffing the air just a few feet away. Steve could feel his pulse pounding through his fingertips.

Please don’t look this way… please don’t look this way.

When it finally retreated—melting back into the fog at the edge of the lot—he exhaled shakily and looked at her again, his hand still hovering near her lips.

“You can’t—” He started, voice low and urgent, “You can’t be out here alone. Not now. Not in Hawkins.”