The Monster Used My Secret Crush Against Me, So My Best Friend Kissed Me To Shut It Up

The side of Will’s hand was black with graphite, a gritty dust coating his skin and lodging beneath his fingernails. He was barely aware of it. His entire world had shrunk to the clean, white rectangle of the page in his new sketchbook and the furious, desperate lines he was carving into its surface. The image had to come out. It was a splinter in his mind, a constant, nagging presence left over from Vecna, and if he could just pin it down, trap it in charcoal and paper, maybe he could finally pull it free.

He sketched with a frantic energy, his hand flying across the page. The figure that took shape was tall and gaunt, its limbs unnaturally long and thin. Where its face should have been, there was only a smooth, featureless void. It wasn't just a lack of detail; it was an active emptiness, a patch of nothing that seemed to absorb the light in the room. He surrounded it with the familiar shapes of Hawkins—the twisted branches of a tree, the corner of a house—but as the faceless figure grew more defined, the background seemed to pale, the colors leaching away as if the shadow itself were a drain.

His jaw ached from how tightly he clenched his teeth. He could feel a headache building behind his eyes, a dull throb that matched the frantic rhythm of his heart. He drew another figure next to the first, this one shorter, hunched, and then another, and another, until the page was crowded with them. A silent, watching mob of faceless things. He could feel their blank gazes on him, a cold, heavy pressure that made the skin on his arms crawl. They knew him.

And then he felt it.

It started as a faint prickle at the base of his skull, a familiar and unwelcome chill that spread like a spiderweb of ice across the back of his neck and down his spine. His hand stopped moving, hovering just above the paper. The pencil was suddenly heavy, held in a grip so tight his knuckles were white. He held his breath, straining his ears, listening for anything beyond the sound of his own blood rushing past his eardrums.

The house was silent. Utterly, completely still.

It’s just paranoia, he thought, forcing the words into his mind. It had to be. A phantom sensation, a scar left behind. Vecna was gone. They were safe. He was safe. He tried to make himself believe it, to use the logic as a shield against the cold that still clung to his skin. He forced his hand to lower, to press the pencil back to the page and resume the frantic shading. He had to finish. He had to get it out. But the feeling didn’t go away. It remained, a low, persistent hum of cold against his neck, a quiet promise that he wasn't alone.

A sharp rap on his bedroom door made Will flinch so violently he nearly snapped the pencil in two. His head whipped around, his heart hammering against his ribs as if trying to escape his chest. For a wild second, he expected to see one of the faceless things from his drawing standing there, its empty gaze boring into him.

The door creaked open, and Mike Wheeler’s head appeared in the gap. "Hey," he said, his voice hesitant. "Your mom let me in. You okay? I called a couple times."

Will scrambled to his feet, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He felt exposed, caught. "I'm fine," he said, his own voice sounding foreign and rough. He quickly turned back to his desk, using his body to block the sketchbook from view.

Mike stepped fully into the room, a stack of VHS tapes held in one hand. He was trying for casual, but Will could see the concern pinching the corners of his eyes. "You kinda dropped off the face of the earth for a day," Mike continued, setting the movies on Will's dresser. The Thing. Poltergeist. A Nightmare on Elm Street. "Figured we could have a movie night. If you're up for it."

"Yeah. Sure." The words felt like sandpaper in his throat. He just wanted Mike to stop looking at him, to stop scanning the room with that perceptive gaze that always seemed to see too much.

But Mike’s eyes had already found the source of his focus. The desk was a disaster of charcoal sticks, smudged erasers, and half-empty cups of water. And in the middle of it all, the open sketchbook.

"Is that what you've been working on?" Mike took a step closer, his curiosity piqued. A small, hopeful smile touched his lips. "Can I see?"

Panic, cold and absolute, seized Will. Before Mike could take another step, before his eyes could properly focus on the monstrous, colorless figures crowding the page, Will lunged forward. He slammed the sketchbook shut with a crack that echoed in the sudden silence of the room. He snatched it from the desk, clutching it to his chest with both hands, his knuckles white.

Mike stopped dead, his hand, which had been reaching out, frozen in mid-air. The smile vanished from his face, replaced by a look of stunned confusion that quickly morphed into something else. Something that looked like hurt. He slowly lowered his arm to his side.

"Okay," Mike said softly, his voice strained. He took a half-step back, creating a physical distance that mirrored the chasm that had just opened between them. The air grew thick and heavy, charged with all the things Will couldn't say and all the things Mike didn't understand. The cold on the back of Will's neck seemed to intensify, as if feeding on the sudden, awful tension.

"Sorry," Will mumbled, the apology weak and useless. He didn't loosen his grip on the book. He couldn’t. It felt like the only thing holding him together.

Mike shoved Poltergeist into the VCR, and the awkward silence was finally replaced by the movie’s opening credits. They sat on the couch, a careful foot of space between them. Will could feel the tension radiating from Mike, a mirror of his own. Mike kept glancing at him when he thought Will wasn't looking, his brow furrowed with a worry that felt too loud for the dimly lit room. Will kept his eyes glued to the screen, focusing on the mundane details of the Freeling family’s life, trying to ignore the sketchbook he’d shoved under his bed, its dark images pulsing in his mind.

He pulled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. The familiar movie should have been comforting, but every shadow in the corners of the room seemed to stretch and deepen, and the cold spot on his neck throbbed with a faint, rhythmic pulse. He could feel Mike’s unease as Carol Anne pressed her hands to the static-filled television screen, her small voice announcing, "They're here."

It happened at that exact moment.

The lamp on the end table flickered violently, once, twice, before dying completely. The TV screen dissolved from the film into a roaring blizzard of black and white static, the sound a deafening hiss that filled the entire house. Will jumped, his muscles coiling tight, his breath catching in his throat. Beside him, Mike cursed under his breath, leaning forward as if to get a better look.

And then, through the wall of white noise, another sound bled through.

It was not a voice. It was the shape of one, a sound so cold and distorted it felt like it was made of broken glass and ice. It was a whisper that wasn't a whisper, seeming to bypass their ears and manifest directly inside their heads. It was faint, almost buried beneath the electronic shriek of the static, but it was undeniably there. And it was personal.

Michael…

The name was drawn out, a low, guttural vibration that made the hairs on Will’s arms stand on end.

…William…

The sound of his own name was a physical blow. The cold on his neck exploded, no longer a tingle but a searing, freezing brand against his skin. He felt his blood turn to ice water in his veins.

Just as quickly as it began, it was over. The lamp flickered back on. The VCR whirred, the magnetic tape catching, and the movie snapped back onto the screen. The static and the voice were gone, replaced by the film’s frantic score and the concerned faces of the actors. The entire event couldn't have lasted more than three seconds.

The silence that fell between them was heavier than the static had been.

"Did you hear that?" Mike’s voice was thin, strained. He wasn't looking at the TV anymore; his wide, dark eyes were fixed on Will. His face was pale in the flickering blue light from the screen.

Will couldn’t answer. He could only stare back, his heart hammering a frantic, terrified rhythm against his ribs.

"It was just… it was the static," Mike said, but he wasn't convincing anyone, least of all himself. He shook his head, a quick, jerky motion. "The surge must have messed with the audio track. Made it sound weird. That's all it was." He was trying to build a wall of logic against what they’d just heard, brick by rational brick. But Will could see the fear in his eyes, the way his hands were clenched into fists on his knees.

Will didn't hear the logic. He only heard the echo of that voice, that cold, dead thing that knew their names. It was a sound he knew intimately, the sound of a place he was supposed to have left behind. It was the sound of the Upside Down. And it was here.