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Michael Wheeler stands in a void of pitch black. The poor boy doesn’t know which way is what, or how to get out. A personal hell of endless darkness to keep him stranded with nothing but the clothes that hang off his lankish frame and the rampant sound of his back-and-forth pacing as he thinks of a way to get out.
“Ted!” calls an offending voice from the beyond. The voice is and has been taunting Mike for a good twenty minutes by now, gravelled as it spouts off nonsense and secrets that only Mike should know, as those thoughts were kept only in the confines of his mind and spoken to no one other than maybe the full body mirror that hides inside his bedroom closet, coated in dust from a lack of cleaning.
“Ted!” The voice calls again. Mike knows whose voice it is, but refuses to engage with it, having already attempted to get an answer out of the grotesque being from the corners of darkness. Mike can feel him lurking there, everywhere. Vecna.
Mike brings a hand to his mouth in thought; his pace quickens. He’s been walking in circles, he’s pretty sure, and has been for the better half of the time he’s been in here, but who is he to know? It’s too dark to know which way he’s going, and there’s no wind or sound to guide him in any direction. Only the voice of his enemy from all angles can be heard.
“Do they know you’re a fraud, Michael?” the strangling voice begins, though the name sounds like his father's instead, “And do they know about your other secrets?”
A sharp inhale is all that Mike can hear; it came from himself.
Mike isn’t sure when he was taken into one of Vecna’s visions, but he does know that he only realized it after everything had already seemingly happened. The battle, the graduation, the campaign, the lasagna. That’s all he remembers before slowly, the world unraveled before him at an achingly slow pace, matching the beat of his heart as he lost his mind over grief. Grief for a lot of things. The world came undone like when a record starts to scratch and repeat itself over and over again, saying the same few words in a short succession with no continuation.
The days had begun to blur into one, repeating the same day again and again before Mike finally realized, too late, what was happening. He was too lost in himself to take note of the way his friends and family said things wrong. Got information mixed up. Wore things they had thrown away a long time ago.
Mike should’ve realized the world was wrong even before all that began to happen. After all, Will said a lot of strange things at the WSQK on the day of the battle. Mike knew him like the back of his walkie-talkie, and he should’ve listened to the words that Will had said that day. He knows damn well that his best friend doesn’t like getting lost in the woods, but he was too focused on himself to realize what Will had even said and what it had meant.
He should’ve paid attention.
“Ted!” There it is again, his father's name being echoed across the expanse of nothing before him. Why? What was the point of this?
Maybe if Mike answers, he’ll get a response from the heinous man that resides above.
“What do you want!?” Mike shouts. He thinks he sees something, maybe, or hears something. Maybe smells something in front of him. Everything is dark; not even black. Just nothing. He’s hallucinating.
“Michael, how long would it have taken you to realize what was happening if I hadn’t brought you here?” The slimy words coat Mike’s mind. The rustling of the fabric of his jeans abruptly stops as he stands still, awaiting more, but no more comes his way. This bastard wants a conversation, not a self-monologue.
“I don’t know,” Mike responds, heaving a breath, “But your world was a pretty shitty copy. It didn’t even make any goddamn sense.”
“Yet you fell for it anyway.”
Mike breathes, listening to the softness of the sound and trying to imagine that it was someone else's breathing next to him and not just his own.
“What do you want? Why do you have me here?” Mike asks at the nothingness.
“There are many reasons why you’re here, Michael. You should know what they are,” Vecna’s voice rumbles over the pixel of where Mike, and only Mike, exists. The sound is deafening and booming right into his ear, yet at the same time, so far away.
“..What?”
“You can continue to deny your flaws and urges as much as you like, but they’re the reason you were taken. Your profound amount of struggles and the fact that you are the center of everything,” the disembodied growls flatten into nothing, leaving Mike alone for the first time since he realized he was in the dark.
“Wait,” he quickly swallows and feels a shift in the air, “Wait. Wait, wait!” Vecna is gone.
Mike begins to run now. The sounds of his footsteps remind him of the pool. He used to go there all of the time with Will and the others when they were little, running around the edge and getting yelled at by the lifeguards. The tapping sounds of their footsteps and the occasional sharp skid of skin against the concrete, followed by a thump… the sound of one of them falling down.
Tap tap tap tap tap
Michael runs. The hope of seeing a doorway, or some sort of portal, as Max described it, as the exit in these places, kept him going.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap
What were the reasons he was taken? Why was he forced into a vision, and when had he stopped seeing reality? Wouldn’t it have been noticeable? An obvious distortion of reality beyond a small slip-up in conversation?
Was Mike the only one who was trapped right now? The thought that the others are trapped too was too big to think about; he shakes it away and keeps running.
Tap tap tap tap
Had any of it been real? The battle? The Squawk?
El’s death?
How far back did it go?
When had reality stopped?
Tap tap tap tap tap tap
When had the daydream begun?
What was the last real thing that Mike had seen?
Suddenly, Mike is falling.
Thump
He lands at an awkward angle, sprawling across the wet-sounding ground beneath him. The sounds don’t match the texture of nothing, confusing his senses.
“Shit!” It only took a moment for him to notice what he had done by acting so stupidly, “Shit, shit, shit!” Pain in the shape of an icepick shoots down from the base of his thumb to the midsection of his forearm.
Breathing heavy, he stands before toppling back down and onto his knees, cradling his injured left arm.
Mike is sick. Not being able to see anything, not even his own body, is making him sick.
He closes his eyes and almost sees white; the colors around his eyelids mix and become expanding images of fuzzy static.
His arm is hot.
“You won’t want to go back,” Vecna is here again, “I know how much you despised them.”
“That’s, that’s not true.” Mike stammers, eyes shut tightly.
“Lucas Sinclair,” Vecna begins, “Always whining over Max when she was asleep. You found his attentive nature to be annoying, and his demeanor to be aching.”
Mike shakes his head.
“Max Mayfield. She’s a lot like you. I know you were shocked to know that anyone could love someone like her.”
Sniffling, Mike holds his arm closer.
“Dustin Henderson. He never was the same after the death of his best friend. Always avoidant, always quiet, always late. It really angered you.”
Mike curls forward, sitting on his knees and tucking his head down.
“Eleven. She never wanted what you wanted. She never wanted what anyone wanted,” there’s hate in his voice.
Mike sniffles.
“William-”
“Stop!” Mike has had enough; his voice is warbling. He doesn’t move from where he is, in the nothing.
“Don’t you dare say his name!”
He doesn’t want to be Vecna’s carnival act.
“You already know what I had to say, Michael? Or are you afraid of what you might hear?”
“None of what you said is true, you piece of shit!” his voice cracks, “None of it!”
Mike had to find a way out, but was there even a place that the way out would lead to? Was there anything waiting for him? Was there anyone waiting for him?
“You despise them. All of their fatal flaws are just too much for you to think about. You despise them, and they despise you. You are the center of all of their plights, and you know it.”
“Stop.”
“If you had begged young William to stay over on that horrible night, maybe none of any of this would have happened. Or maybe some other poor, weak child would have taken his place. Who knows what would have happened?”
This guy is playing mind tricks. That’s what he’s doing.
“You’re the leader of your group, the brother to your sisters, the boyfriend to your girlfriend, and everyone knows you, don’t they? Everyone knows you, Michael. You’re the boy who cried and yelled about saving your best friend, no matter what anyone said about how he was a rotting corpse who had been stolen and pushed into the quarry. You’re that child who led the charge again and again, while somehow contributing nothing to help your friends. How are you the leader if you’re such a coward?”
“Is that why you have me here? Because I’m the only guy with all the stupid connections between all our friends and families?” Mike stresses.
“You’re about to see what happens, Michael. What happens when they have no “leader”. When they all lose somebody.”