Her Psychic Powers Saved Me From A Monster, But Now She's The Only One Who Can Heal My Scars

The air in the physical therapy room always smelled the same: a flat, sterile scent of disinfectant that failed to cover the underlying odor of sweat and rubber mats. It was a smell I had come to associate with failure.

“Just one more, Max. Focus on a point on the wall,” Janice, my therapist, said, her voice relentlessly cheerful.

I focused on a crack in the plaster, trying to will my right leg to hold my weight. It trembled, a weak, disobedient thing that no longer felt like my own. My arms were out to my sides, my hands shaking with the effort of keeping me upright on the low balance beam.

Across the room, Eleven sat on a stack of folded mats, her knees drawn up to her chest. She wasn't looking at her hands or the floor like most people would. Her dark eyes were fixed on me, her focus so absolute it was almost a physical pressure. She didn’t offer empty platitudes or forced smiles. She just watched, her presence a silent, unwavering anchor in the sterile sea of my new reality. When my good leg ached in sympathy, I’d glance at her, and the small, determined set of her jaw was all the encouragement I needed.

I took a shaky step, my sneaker squeaking on the vinyl surface. My vision swam for a second, the edges blurring into a gray haze. It happened sometimes, a souvenir from my time in the dark. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to clear them, but the movement was a mistake. My balance evaporated.

I pitched sideways, a choked gasp leaving my lips as I braced for the familiar, jarring impact with the padded floor.

But the impact never came.

Instead, warm, strong hands clamped around my arms, steadying me. Eleven. She had moved so fast I hadn’t even seen her get up. Her grip was firm, holding me upright as my legs threatened to buckle completely.

“I’ve got you,” she murmured, her voice low and close to my ear.

The moment her skin touched mine, the room vanished.

It wasn’t a memory or a dream. It was a flash of something else, something terrifyingly real. For a single, heart-stopping second, we weren’t in the PT room. We were somewhere dark and cold, surrounded by the dry, rustling sound of decay. Gnarled, black vines, as thick as my arm, pulsed with a sick, internal red light, the glow faint but alive. It was the color of old blood.

Then, just as quickly, it was gone.

I was standing on the floor, leaning heavily against Eleven, the scent of disinfectant sharp in my nose again. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, panicked rhythm. I looked at El. Her eyes were wide, the same stark terror I felt reflected in their depths. She had seen it, too. I knew it.

She blinked, and the fear was gone, tucked away behind a carefully constructed wall of concern. “Are you okay?” she asked, her hands still gripping my arms.

I swallowed, my throat dry. It was nothing. It was a hallucination. A side effect of having my bones snapped and my mind invaded by a monster. That’s all it could be.

“Yeah,” I managed, pulling away from her touch, though my body protested the loss of her support. “Yeah, I just… lost my footing.” I didn’t look at Janice. I couldn’t. I just stared at the crack on the wall, pretending the world hadn’t just cracked open with it.

Later that afternoon, I sat on my bedroom floor, sketchbook open in my lap. Drawing used to be an escape, a way to make sense of the world by recreating it in graphite and ink. Now, it was just another reminder of what I’d lost. I tried to sketch the bird feeder outside my window, a simple shape, but my hand had other ideas. A persistent tremor, a souvenir from Vecna, made the pencil skitter across the page in jagged, uncontrolled lines. The bird feeder looked like it was being electrocuted.

My vision kept blurring at the edges, the crisp details of the world softening into an impressionistic mess. I blinked hard, rubbing my eyes with the heel of my hand, but it only made it worse. A hot, acidic frustration rose in my throat. I was so sick of this, of being a passenger in my own broken body. With a growl of pure rage, I slammed the sketchbook shut. The motion was too sharp, too violent. My elbow caught the base of the lamp on my nightstand, sending it tumbling to the floor in a sickening crash of ceramic and glass.

I froze, staring at the glittering shards scattered across the wooden floorboards. The anger drained out of me in an instant, replaced by a hollow, aching shame.

The door creaked open. Eleven stood there, her expression unreadable. She took in the scene—me on the floor, the shattered lamp, the sketchbook lying face down. I expected a question, maybe an admonishment. Instead, she disappeared for a moment and returned with a dustpan and brush from the hall closet.

Wordlessly, she knelt on the floor and began sweeping the larger pieces of ceramic into the pan. I just watched, paralyzed by my own uselessness. She moved with a quiet efficiency, her small hands carefully picking up the slivers of glass that the brush missed. When she was done, she stood and disposed of the mess, then returned and sat on the floor beside me, her knee almost touching mine.

Her eyes fell on the sketchbook. Gently, she reached out and turned it over, opening it to the page with the spastic, angry drawing of the bird feeder. She didn’t say it was good. She didn’t say it was okay. She just looked at it.

Then, she picked up the pencil from where it had rolled under the bed. Her movements were slow, deliberate. She took my right hand—my trembling, traitorous hand—and enclosed it in her own. Her skin was warm, her grip firm and sure, absorbing the frantic shaking of my muscles until my hand was still within hers. I could feel the faint impression of her calluses against my knuckles. My breath caught in my chest.

Together, with her hand guiding mine, she lowered the pencil to a fresh page. She didn't try to draw the bird feeder. She just drew a line, straight and clean, from one edge of the paper to the other. I watched, mesmerized, as our hands moved in perfect unison. For that single, drawn-out moment, there was no tremor, no blurred vision. There was only the whisper of graphite on paper, the warmth of her hand, and the absolute focus of her will lending me its strength.

She lifted the pencil, leaving behind a perfect, unwavering line. A tingling heat spread from my hand all the way up my arm, a phantom sensation that was both foreign and deeply comforting. I looked from the steady line on the page to her face. Her dark eyes were fixed on mine, and in their depths, I saw an understanding so profound it stole the air from my lungs.

I didn’t move from my spot on the floor for a long time after she left, just stared at the single, perfect line on the paper. Eventually, the chill from the floorboards seeped into my jeans and I forced myself up, crawling into bed without bothering to change. Sleep, when it came, was shallow and restless.

I woke up to a flicker.

The light from my bedside lamp stuttered once, twice, then died. I sat bolt upright, my heart kicking into a frantic rhythm. Outside my window, the entire street was black. No streetlights, no porch lights from the neighbors, nothing. The power was out. All of it.

The sudden, absolute silence was a physical weight, pressing in on my ears. My eyes strained in the gloom, trying to make sense of the familiar shapes of my room. But they weren’t familiar anymore. The darkness twisted them. The pile of clothes on my desk chair became a hunched, skeletal figure. The posters on my wall warped into leering faces. The shadows in the corners weren’t just dark; they were deep, and they were moving, creeping toward me like thick, black sludge.

My breath seized in my lungs. I was back there. In the red haze, with the floating debris and the twisting vines. I could feel them, phantom tendrils wrapping around my ankles, my wrists, pulling me down into the suffocating dark. A scream built in my throat, hot and sharp, but it wouldn't come out. I was paralyzed, pinned to the mattress by the sheer force of my own terror. My body was slick with a cold sweat, and the only sound was the frantic, useless hammering of my own heart.

The door to my bedroom opened with a soft click.

A figure was silhouetted against the slightly less oppressive darkness of the hallway. I flinched, a choked gasp finally escaping my lips.

The figure stepped inside and quietly closed the door, plunging the room back into near-total blackness. I heard the soft padding of socked feet on the wood floor. The mattress dipped beside me.

I felt, more than saw, Eleven lie down on top of the covers. She didn’t touch me, not at first. She just settled next to me, a small, warm presence in the vast, cold dark. Then, the weight of my comforter lifted and settled over both of us, tucking us in. The gentle pressure was grounding, a shield against the menacing shapes that still lurked at the edge of my vision.

A sound started, low and quiet. A hum. It wasn't a song I recognized; it had no tune, no real melody. It was just a sound, a steady, soothing vibration that seemed to emanate directly from her chest into the mattress, into me. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to focus on it, on the rise and fall of her breathing so close to mine.

Slowly, the vise around my chest began to loosen. The roaring in my ears subsided, replaced by her quiet hum. The reaching shadows receded, becoming just a chair, just posters, just a room again. My ragged gasps softened into shaky breaths.

In the dark, under the heavy blanket, my hand moved on its own, a desperate, searching gesture across the sheets. It met another hand, already there, waiting. Her fingers were warm as they curled around mine, her grip gentle but firm. Unshakeable. I held on, anchoring myself to her as she hummed me back from the edge.