Archive of Our Own

Mike Wheeler knew he was dying even before his heart actually stopped.

It wasn’t a sudden realization, like a lightning strike. It was a slow, viscous sensation seeping through his pores, as if he’d spent years standing under a radioactive rain that was gradually burning him out from the inside. He felt his personal clock—the very mechanism that ticked away the seconds of his existence—starting to malfunction. The spring had snapped, the gears had ground to dust, and there was simply nowhere left to run. The wall he’d been pressing his back against for the last few years had finally become tangible—cold, stony, and absolute.

He felt this icy breath of nothingness for the first time on a Wednesday night.

The evening was a carbon copy of thousands of others that had merged into a single gray mass, devoid of taste or color. Everything was exactly as he was used to, and within that familiarity lay the most terrifying trap. Mike returned from work late. The office where he spent ten hours a day felt like a crypt, lined with cheap plastic and flooded with the dead light of fluorescent lamps. He hated this job—hated the reports, hated the fake smiles of his colleagues, hated how the numbers on the monitor were slowly replacing his real memories.

The air in the house greeted him with the scent of fabric softener and the faint aroma of a dinner that had already grown cold. The silence pressed against his ears. With a practiced motion, Mike tossed his keys onto the hallway console—the metallic chime felt too loud, almost sacrilegious in a house submerged in sleep.

He spent an hour in the living room, staring aimlessly at the television. Some generic reality show flickered on the screen: bright colors, artificial laughter, people arguing over trifles. Mike looked at them, but saw only the reflection of his own face in the dark glass whenever the image shifted. A tired man with eyes like extinguished embers.

Finally, he headed upstairs. The steps groaned slightly under his weight, as if they, too, were tired of holding up this house. Mike reached the nursery and froze. His hand hesitated for a moment on the doorknob. He feared the creak—that treacherous sound that could shatter the fragile peace of the little being inside.

He cracked the door open just a few centimeters. A sliver of light from the hallway, thin as a knife blade, cut through the darkness of the bedroom, falling directly onto the bed.

There lay Willow.

It felt as though his heart skipped a beat and then squeezed painfully, as if caught in a vise. His daughter. She was only four—an age when the world still seems like a vast playground and parents are gods capable of fixing any injustice. She was clutching her teddy bear, which was nearly as big as she was. Her breathing was quiet and rhythmic, a sweet, soft whistle that broke Mike’s heart into a thousand shards.

He stood there for several minutes, soaking in the moment. The air in the nursery smelled of talcum powder, lavender, and that specific scent of childhood that is impossible to recreate artificially.

"I’m sorry, sweetheart," he whispered, his voice barely audible and trembling with unshed tears. "Your daddy is truly powerless. Daddy’s tired. Daddy loves you more than anything in the world..."

Closing the door, he felt bitterness flood his chest. Willow was the only true beam of light in the tunnel his life had become over the last six years. She was pure; she was real. And him? He felt like a fraud. A hollow shell that had learned to mimic human emotions.

Walking toward the bathroom, Mike involuntarily began to take stock. He was thirty-four. The prime of life, as psychology books would say. From the outside, his life looked perfect: a successful career, a solid bank account, a beautiful house in a cozy suburb, a beautiful wife. He had provided his family with a future many could only dream of. But at what cost?

Inside Mike, the wind howled. It was a cold, dry desert where nothing grew. When was the last time he had smiled genuinely? Not just stretching his lips for a photo or in response to a boss's joke, but in a way that warmth rose from his stomach and shone in his eyes? He couldn't remember. The answers always hid in the dark corners of his memory, but he was afraid to drag them into the light, knowing there was only disappointment there.

He opened the heavy bathroom door. The tile under his feet was ice-cold, even through his socks. Mike ran his hand along the wall, searching for the light switch, and in that moment, his gaze caught something strange in the corner by the shower.

There, pushing right through the perfectly clean grout of the tiles, was a sprout.

It was unusual. Not green like a normal plant, but a deep, unsettling red—the color of venous blood or overripe cherries. The sprout trembled slightly, though there was no draft in the room. Mike froze for a second.

"Kathy must have bought some new flowers for the garden and accidentally dropped a seed or a piece of a stem," he thought. It was a logical explanation. The only one possible.

He leaned down to pick up this strange creation of nature, but the moment he blinked, the world plunged into absolute darkness for a split second. When his eyes opened again, the corner was empty. No flower. No trace. Only smooth white tile glistening under the lamplight.

Mike straightened up abruptly, his heart thumping in his throat. He rubbed his eyes, pressing on his eyelids so hard that colored spots swam before him.

"Just seeing things," he exhaled into the void. "Just exhaustion. Hallucinations from lack of sleep."

He began his nightly routine mechanically, like a robot. The water scalded his face, but he didn't turn the temperature down, trying to wash away not so much the dirt as the sticky fatigue clinging to his skin. He brushed his teeth long and thoroughly, hoping the mint paste would drown out the aftertaste of the cheap beer he’d had at the station bar before getting into his car. It was his little ritual—a sip of anesthesia before returning to his "perfect life."

Finally, he looked up at the mirror.

A stranger looked back. The exhaustion hadn't vanished after washing; it was his chronic companion, a shadow that didn't disappear even at midnight. It lay on his shoulders like a heavy, damp shroud, affecting every movement, every word. He didn't see a successful man in the mirror. He saw a blurred silhouette gradually dissolving into space.

"Time to sleep," he said to his reflection, but the voice sounded foreign to him.

Mike returned to the master bedroom. He tried to press the handle as carefully as possible, holding his breath. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to explain why he was late again, why he smelled of hops and loneliness.

But the silence was cut by a soft, warm voice: "Mike, I’m still awake. You can come in."

He exhaled quietly, feeling the tension in his shoulders ease slightly, only to be immediately replaced by guilt. He entered the room.

Sitting on the bed with her knees pulled to her chin was Kathy. His wife. The woman who had been with him for the last six years, who had endured his silence, his coldness, and his eternal absence—even when he was physically there. She was holding a book, and the light from the nightstand softly highlighted her features.

"Sorry, Kathy. I didn't mean to disturb you," he said, stopping at the threshold.

"You know you never disturb me," she smiled, but in the corners of her eyes, Mike noticed a shadow of sadness she was trying to hide. "I was just finishing a chapter. Get to bed quickly; you look like you haven't slept in a week."

Mike’s shoulders slumped even lower. Every kind word from her felt like a lash of a whip against his conscience. He trudged to the bed, feeling like a hundred-year-old man.

"You’re right, as always," he grunted, sitting on the opposite edge of the mattress.

He settled in and stared at the ceiling. There, in the light of the night lamp, the shadows from the curtains created bizarre patterns, like long, lingering fingers.

"Tell me about your day instead," Kathy said, gently placing her hand on his shoulder.

The touch should have comforted him, but Mike felt only a slight electric jolt of discomfort. She began her story—something about the garden, about how Willow had painted the sea today, about the neighbor complaining about the noise again...

But Mike didn't hear her. His gaze was fixed on the bedspread.

There, right between his knee and Kathy’s hand, the same sprout was pushing through the fabric.

This time he saw it clearly. A blood-red stem, tiny leaves that looked like clots of dried blood. He could have sworn on everything he owned—a second ago, it had been perfectly smooth. The sprout pulsed in time with his own frantic heart.

Mike felt a wave of cold sweat roll down his back. The air in the room suddenly grew thick, like syrup, making it hard to breathe. He wanted to scream, wanted to point his finger at this madness, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

He blinked.

The flower vanished. The bedspread was perfectly even.

Kathy’s voice was still droning in the background, soothing and warm, but to Mike, it now sounded like radio static. He realized: this wasn't just exhaustion. Something had begun to grow inside his life, and he wasn't sure he could stop its progress.

That night, sleep became not a sanctuary for Mike, but a trap. He lay motionless for hours, staring into a darkness that seemed to have acquired physical density. Every rustle of wind outside the window, every distant rumble of a car on the highway echoed in his temples with a painful pulse. His eyelids, heavy as lead, finally closed, but instead of blessed oblivion, something else came.

At the exact moment his consciousness should have dissolved into slumber, Mike felt as if he were being thrust out of his own skin.

It was the sensation of a sudden fall from an incredible height—as if he’d been pushed from the roof of a skyscraper into the abyss. His stomach lurched into his throat, his breath caught, and an electric discharge of absolute terror shot through his body. Mike snapped his eyes open, expecting to see the hard surface he was about to crash against, but he saw only the ceiling.

It was far too close. Every crack in the plaster, every tiny speck of dust was visible with such clarity it was as if he were viewing them through a microscope. Mike tried to move, but felt no resistance from the mattress. In a panic, he looked around—and his heart, or whatever now occupied its place, nearly ceased to exist at the sight.

He was hovering in the air, weightless as a wisp of smoke. And beneath him, on the large family bed, lay two people. Kathy, curled into a ball, and... himself. His own body lay there, pale, arms splayed, mouth half-open with a barely perceptible breath escaping.

"A dream. It’s just a nightmare," he tried to say, but instead of a voice, only a faint rustle escaped his chest, like the shifting of dry leaves. "I’ll close my eyes now, count to three, and everything will go back to the way it was. I’ll wake up, feel the warmth of the blanket, hear the hum of the fridge in the kitchen..."

Mike squeezed his eyes shut with all his might, trying through sheer willpower to "dive" back into his flesh. One. Two. Three. Nothing. He was still suspended beneath the ceiling, feeling a strange, unnatural cold piercing his ghostly essence. He tried again and again, flailing in the air like a fish out of water, but his shadow only slowly drifted lower without touching the floor. His fingers passed through physical objects, feeling neither resistance nor texture.

The light in the room shifted. It became dim, phosphorescent, drained of all warmth. And that was when he noticed them.

By the window, where the curtains should have let in the moonlight, stood two figures. They were incredibly tall, nearly touching the ceiling with their strange, pointed hats that resembled crowns or spearheads. Their faces were lost in deep shadows, but Mike felt their gaze upon him—heavy, cold, and timeless.

"It is not yet time," a voice rang out, sending icy needles down ghostly Mike’s spine. The sound did not belong to a human; it resembled the rustle of a thousand dry scrolls being turned simultaneously.

It was the one in white who spoke. His robes didn't glow; they absorbed light, appearing like a void in reality itself. In his hands, he held a long scroll that emitted a deathly, greenish radiance.

"But he is already untethered," the second one replied—the Black Messenger. His voice was heavy, like a blacksmith’s hammer striking iron. The sound made Mike’s spectral form shudder, feeling a vibration that threatened to tear him to shreds. "Look at his roots. They are already seeking the way home."

Involuntarily, Mike looked down at his body lying below. What he saw made him go numb with revulsion and horror.

From his chest, right where his heart should be beating beneath his ribs, dozens of those same lilies were sprouting. Blood-red, with fleshy petals and thin, black stamens, they entwined his torso like a suit of living chainmail. They pulsed in unison with his weak heartbeat, and Mike saw them stretch their long, tentacle-like stems toward Kathy. But every time a petal drew near her skin, it recoiled sharply, as if fearing the burn of her living, solar warmth. The flowers of death could not exist beside her life.

Mike wanted to scream. He wanted to lunge at these creatures, demand explanations, protect his wife from this red plague. He opened his mouth, trying to force out a sound, but only a cold mist escaped his throat.

The figures began to fade. They didn't walk away; they simply dissolved into the air, becoming part of the room's shadows. But before vanishing completely, the White figure leaned toward him. Mike smelled damp earth, old parchment, and ozone.

"Does it not seem to you, Michael Wheeler, that you have met us far too soon?" the Messenger whispered. "You should..."

The final words were drowned out by a sudden rumble, as if a stone in the house's foundation had cracked. The figures vanished. Mike was left alone in the silent room, hovering over his own body, which now looked like a neglected garden.

His spectral heart began to race—or was it just a memory's illusion of fear? He brought a hand to his chest, hoping to feel something, but his transparent fingers passed through the shadow without meeting resistance. How can a shadow have a heart? How can emptiness ache?

He looked down again. The spider lilies on his body were spreading with incredible speed. They were no longer just entwining him; they were spilling from the bed onto the floor, their red thread-like stems snaking across the carpet, filling the space around him. They formed a clear, vivid path leading to the door.

Mike felt an irresistible pull. These flowers were a part of him, and at the same time, they were his guide. He involuntarily drifted forward, his shadow gliding smoothly after the bloody carpet. Perhaps there, at the other end of this path, answers awaited him. Or at least, peace.

He passed through the closed bedroom door, feeling only the slight chill of the wooden fibers. The red trail led down the stairs, through the living room where the scent of the evening still lingered, and outside, onto the street.

Nighttime Hawkins looked different. The shadows on the roads seemed like living creatures; they twisted and played with his vision, resembling monsters from his worst nightmares. Mike flinched at every movement of the leaves, feeling defenseless in this new, distorted world.

The flower path began to branch. One fork led out of town, into the dark woods where the trees looked like the skeletons of giants. The other headed toward the heart of the city. Without hesitation, Mike chose the path to town. It felt right. It felt logical—to seek answers where his life began, not where it might end.

He floated over the asphalt, surrounded by the red glow of the lilies. The scenery changed: familiar streets, closed shops, playgrounds that looked like torture devices in the dark. Finally, he realized where his roots were leading him.

His childhood home.

The old building stood surrounded by silent trees. Mike felt every flower on his path begin to vibrate with excitement. He drifted up to the porch, his shadow reaching for the door, ready to cross the threshold of the past...

And in that same instant, the world exploded.

A violent, inhuman jolt yanked him back. The space around him shattered into a thousand shards, turning into a whirlwind of acidic colors and a thick, suffocating scent of pine. Mike was spun in a centrifuge of sensations where pain mingled with nostalgia, and cold with fire.

Mike bolted up in bed, gasping for air like a man who had just surfaced from the depths of the ocean. His T-shirt was soaked through with cold sweat, his chest heaved in an uneven rhythm, and his heart hammered against his ribs so hard it felt as though they might crack.

He looked around, nearly weeping with relief. The room was ordinary. Kathy slept peacefully beside him, her face calm in the moonlight. No Messengers in hats. No scrolls. No red flowers on his chest.

"A dream. Just a dream," he whispered, wiping his face with trembling hands. "Just goddamn exhaustion."

He swung his legs off the bed, feeling the cold parquet floor that should have restored his sense of reality. But under the toes of his left foot, he felt something foreign. Something soft, cool, and damp.

Mike slowly leaned down and picked it up.

On his palm lay a single petal. Blood-red. Fresh, as if it had just been plucked from a flower. It didn't smell like lavender, like the air freshener in their bedroom. It smelled of damp, raw earth, decay, and something indescribably ancient—the scent of the afterlife that had settled in his lungs.

The next day greeted Mike not with sunlight, but with a heavy, suffocating haze. No matter where he was, no matter how many times he washed his face or changed his shirt, the smell followed him relentlessly. It wasn't just the scent of flowers—it was the sweet-rot stench of raw earth mixed with the sharp metallic tang of blood and ozone. It seemed to have soaked into his very essence, saturated his pores, settled on his tongue like a bitter coating. The world around him turned pale, flat, and uninteresting, like an old, faded photograph.

He saw them everywhere. These flowers—spider lilies, blood-red parasites of reality—appeared one by one in the most unexpected places. On the edge of his office desk among stacks of paper, in his car's cup holder, even in a puddle in the parking lot. They flickered on the periphery of his vision, trembling and alive, but the moment Mike blinked or turned his head sharply, they vanished, leaving behind only a ghostly shimmering in the air and an intensification of that same stench.

His head, which had been his constant enemy lately, was now simply splitting apart. The pain was throbbing, rhythmic, radiating into his eyeballs with every step. Mike tried to remain calm; he clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms, trying to ground himself in reality. Every breath became a challenge. Every inhalation reminded him of the night that should have been a nightmare but had turned into a premonition of the end. He would have gladly believed in his own madness, were it not for that cursed petal he had hidden in his nightstand drawer under a stack of old receipts.

Finishing work earlier than usual—because the numbers on the screen had begun to form patterns resembling intertwined stems—Mike drove to his childhood home. It was a place he’d visited far too rarely of late. Perhaps, subconsciously, he had avoided these walls because they remembered the Mike he so diligently hid beneath a mask of success.

Everything was as it had always been. His welcoming mother, Karen, whose face was now etched with the lines of worry, was genuinely overjoyed to see her son, embracing him with that warmth that had once been his only sanctuary. His father, Ted, looked as eternally tired and slightly detached as ever, sitting in front of the television. The familiar walls, the scent of home cooking, the old wallpaper—it all should have brought peace.

But the visit brought no relief. On the contrary, it intensified the agony. Mike began to see the spider lilies here much more frequently than anywhere else. They sprouted from beneath the baseboards, hung from the ceiling like living chandeliers, and vanished in a fraction of a second. But they were most abundant in his old bedroom on the second floor.

He headed up there, feeling his legs turn to lead. Every step echoed in his memory with the ghost of teenage laughter, arguments, and late-night conversations. When he opened the door, a gust of dust and stagnant time greeted him. The room was wrapped in warm memories that now pressed against his chest with a heavy, almost physical weight.

The walls were still adorned with posters from his youth: rock bands, sci-fi movies, maps of non-existent worlds. And in the very center, right above the desk, hung the painting Will had once given him.

Mike froze. In the ghostly light of the evening sun, the painting seemed alive. He knew what it meant. Rather, he had understood it too late—years after their paths had diverged and their hearts had been coated in the ice of adult life. The drawing depicted a knight facing danger, but the knight's eyes had always reminded Mike of the artist's own pain.

Next to the drawing, a scrawl remained on the wall—an old mark made back when they still believed in monsters and parallel worlds. The words "one way" pointed directly toward the old closet. A painful pressure built in his chest; hot vices gripped his heart, squeezing out the last remnants of oxygen. His vision began to swim.

Mike shook his head violently, trying to banish the ghosts. Too late, pulsed in his temples. It was already too late to think about it. Too late to try and fix the mistakes of youth, too late to return to that desperate-hearted teenager. Now, he was the perfect son. He was the pride of the family. His parents didn't have to feel ashamed of his existence in front of the neighbors. Mike had put in so much effort, had constructed this facade so carefully, that he had slowly begun to forget who he actually was.

He had started to forget his old hobbies, which now seemed like childish trifles. He forgot the jokes that only their little group in the basement understood. Most terrifyingly, he had begun to forget the facial features of his first and only true love. He didn't even have the right to think about that now, with a wife and daughter waiting for him at home. But here, in this room filled with memories, his heart was simply breaking apart.

He couldn't allow these thoughts to return. It was too dangerous. As soon as the numbness broke, he bolted from his old room, slamming the door so hard the frame shuddered and dust rose from the posters like ash after an explosion.

The visit to his parents' house hadn't helped. Even his mother’s warm goodbye hug couldn't warm him from within. That heavy cold he’d felt during the night still sat upon his shoulders. The last image from the room burned in his mind: for a moment, it had seemed as though the entire space was covered in spider lilies, consuming the wallpaper, the furniture, and memory itself like parasites, seeking to erase everything in their path.

That same evening, upon returning home, Mike saw them again.

He was in the bathroom, splashing his face with cold water. When he looked up into the mirror, his heart momentarily stopped. Behind him, in the reflection, stood two figures—one dark and one light. They didn't move; they simply stood there, filling the bathroom with their inhuman presence. The Messengers.

Mike spun around instantly, ready to scream or defend himself, but the room was empty. Only the curtain at the window fluttered slightly, and a sudden gust of cold wind burned his skin to the bone. The air filled once more with the scent of damp earth.

That night, it all repeated with even greater intensity. The moment he closed his eyes, he felt that same unbearable jolt. His essence flew from his body again, suspended in weightlessness. Now he knew for certain: this was no dream. This was a reality far more real than his office job or gray evenings in front of the TV.

But this time, he didn't head toward the city. The flowers on the bedroom floor were thicker, pulsing brighter than before, and their trail led in a different direction. Mike yielded to the pull. His shadow glided over the ground, passing through the walls of the house, moving beyond the manicured lawns of the suburbs.

The flowers led him out of town, toward the woods, through tangled paths he had once known by heart. Eventually, he found himself on the shore of the lake. "Lovers' Lake"—as the teenagers of Hawkins called it. A place where laughter usually rang out and romance reigned.

But now, the lake looked like an entrance to hell.

The only thing reminding his essence of love now were millions of vivid red lilies. They weren't just growing on the shore—they were sprouting directly from the water, covering the entire surface of the lake in a bloody hue. The water looked like a thick, black liquid in which petals were drowning. The scent of the afterlife was so concentrated here that ghostly Mike felt as if he were beginning to turn into one of the flowers himself.

He stood on the shore, staring at this sea of crimson, and felt the roots deep within his shadow begin to stir, responding to the call of the dark water. Here, among the flowers of death, he felt a strange, painful, yet sweet relief. Because only here could he stop being perfect and finally become who he was—a man who had long ago lost everything dear to him.

The next day began just as the previous one had: anxious, painful, and with a new red petal found right in his fist upon waking. It was still damp, as if just plucked from the otherworldly lake. Mike squeezed it so hard that a dark liquid seeped from under his nails, but he felt no pain. The entire day at work passed as if in a thick, gray fog. The figures in the reports drifted, turning into the crooked stems of lilies, and his colleagues' voices sounded like the distant whispers of the Messengers.

However, today he didn't linger at the bar, trying to drown his fear in cheap alcohol, nor did he sit for hours in the parking lot, staring into the void. Something inside him had shifted. If time was short, if the hourglass of his life had nearly spilled its last grains, he had to give that time to the person who deserved it more than anyone else in this cold world.

Mike arrived home just as the clock struck six. Kathy looked up in surprise when he entered, but he only gave her a weak smile and headed to the nursery.

He spent that entire evening with Willow. He sat on the floor among scattered toys, playing with her new dolls—whose names he usually forgot, but today remembered instantly. They watched the cartoons she adored, and for the first time in years, Mike didn't think about deadlines or bank accounts. He simply looked at her pure, joyful face and felt his heart tear with love and guilt.

As night approached, he tucked his daughter in himself. Willow asked for a story, and Mike, instead of reading a pre-made book from the shelf, began to tell one of his own. He had written it himself—it was his secret project, little tales he’d prepared for her so she could tell amazing stories at preschool about a brave knight and a magical forest.

When his daughter finally fell asleep, her breathing steady and calm, Mike sat beside her for a long time, holding her small hand in his. Then he stood up, gently kissed her forehead, and headed to his study.

There, under the warm light of the desk lamp, he began to do what he did best, but what he had forbidden himself from doing for so long. He began to write.

His first task was to finish the book of fairy tales for Willow. In the moments his pen touched the paper, his ravaged soul seemed to come alive again. It was one of those hobbies he had buried deep within himself along with his youthful dreams and his true identity. Now, under the pressure of the inevitable, words flowed from him like blood from an open wound.

The story on the paper swirled with a hundred colors. He wrote of a world where brave heroes always find their way home, where unicorns gallop through meadows filled not with spider lilies, but with delicate forget-me-nots. He described birds that sang the sweetest melodies for little girls, and a sun that never set below the horizon.

Mike wrote and felt tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn't want to die. He wanted to see Willow go to school, to see her fall in love for the first time, to see her become an adult. He wanted to be there for this pure soul, to protect her from the shadows that had now become his constant companions. But the sense of the inevitable, hanging over his shoulders like a heavy lead cloak, would not vanish. It whispered in the back of his neck, reminding him that there was no way back—that the deal had already been signed in the phosphorescent light of the scrolls.

Kathy had entered the study several times. She brought tea that he forgot to drink and caringly suggested he finally go to bed. "Mike, you’ve been working all night. You need to rest," she said softly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Just a little longer, Kathy. I have to finish this," he replied, without looking up.

That night, he never closed his eyes. There were two reasons for this. First, the irrepressible urge to manage to leave Willow his voice in these fairy tales. And second—a wild, paralyzing fear. He was afraid that the moment he closed his eyes, the spider lilies would again pull his essence out of town, to that lake, to where memories hurt more than physical torture.

The next day, the shadows around Mike began to thicken even further. When he stepped outside, the world seemed populated by more than just the living. He began to notice something strange: behind some of the people passing by, odd shapes trailed. These weren't the Messengers in hats. They resembled formless souls, translucent clusters of sorrow that simply hung over the living.

Mike could have taken this for another illusion of an exhausted brain, but he noticed a pattern: these shadows weren't over everyone. They resembled the deceased who refused to leave this world because of a bond that was too strong. They were eternal passengers on the shoulders of their loved ones.

A terrifying thought pierced his mind: "What if I die... will I become a hideous shadow over my daughter? Will I be an eternal burden, draining the joy of life from her by my presence?"

He imagined his translucent figure looming over Willow while she played in the garden, or when she walked down the aisle. It was unbearable. Or, perhaps, his shadow would choose a different person? Someone whose name he feared to utter even to himself, but whose image was always before his eyes whenever he smelled ozone and rain. He knew whose shadow that would be. And that thought made him feel even worse.

Mike felt an unbearable shame toward everyone. But most of all—toward Kathy. He looked at her during breakfast and realized: this woman did not deserve such a husband. She deserved someone who would lay the world at her feet, who would look at her with the same fire he saw in books. Not a man who couldn't even truly love her.

Mike valued her. He sincerely cared for her well-being; she was his friend, his reliable sanctuary. But that specific flame, that unrestrained pull that once burned him to ashes in his teens, had never been there for her. His heart was already occupied by the ghosts of the past, and he felt like a thief who had stolen from Kathy the chance to be truly loved.

"At least she won't have to worry about money," he thought, checking bank documents. After his death—or whatever the Messengers planned—she and Willow would have the large house and a balance in the account sufficient for the daughter’s university, for a wedding, for a peaceful old age for Kathy. He had provided for them. It was the only thing he could do as the "perfect husband."

He was certain that Kathy, this wonderful, warm woman, would find someone better after him. Someone who would give her his whole heart, not the parts that hadn't yet rotted away. It was only a pity that he himself could never do that.

He smelled the lilies again. They were somewhere very close, perhaps already behind his back, preparing to become his own shadow.

That night, Mike fell asleep almost instantly. The sun hadn't yet fully disappeared behind the horizon when a heavy fatigue, multiplied by the sleepless night in the study, washed over him like a black wave. His brain shut down, giving him no chance to resist.

And it all repeated. The familiar jolt, the sensation of weightlessness, the lack of friction against the air. He was outside his body again. Strangely, Mike had distantly begun to get used to the feeling. The absence of a physical shell no longer caused panic; it was replaced by a cold, analytical indifference. He had become an observer of his own curse.

Tonight, the flowers didn't lead him to the water. They sprouted through the floor again, forming a vivid, bleeding path that called him somewhere far away—to places where memory was most vulnerable.

The road turned out to be shorter than he expected. Flowers bloomed thickly on a playground just a few blocks from his house. This was the place where Mike spent almost every weekend with Willow.

There they were—the swings with blue seats. In the light of the spectral dimension, they looked like rusted skeletons. Mike froze. He remembered his daughter's voice: "Daddy, I'm flying! Daddy, look, I’m like a bird in the sky!" He saw her spreading her tiny arms, laughing with pure delight. In the real world, Mike’s heart always skipped a beat in those moments, worrying she might fall. Here, in the shadow state, he felt only a phantom pain in his chest.

A little further was the sandbox where Willow built castles that other children destroyed in a second. And there, closer to the trees lost in the impenetrable darkness, Mike noticed them.

Two figures. Black and White. The Messengers.

They stood motionless at the exact spot where once, an eternity ago, a different swing had stood. The very swing where he had first met him. The one whose name his daughter now carries. Mike felt the space around him begin to vibrate with the intensity of this memory. The Messengers watched him, their outlines seeming carved out of darkness itself. Mike wanted to ask something, scream in their faces, demand an explanation for why they were making him go through this. But he had no voice. It was a soundless scream that shattered against the cold silence of the night.

The spider lilies did not stop. They continued their path, moving past the playground and toward the city center. Mike flew after them, bypassing closed shop doors, passing through the walls of buildings like a ghost.

The roots led him to the grand building of the shopping mall. To most residents, it was just a place to shop, but for Mike, the entire mall was filled with flowers for a reason. Another piece of his pain was hidden here.

This was a place of memories of friends with whom he once shared the whole world. Now, each of them lived their own distant life, and those lives intersected only in the form of short messages on holidays.

Mike floated to the second floor. There was a women's clothing store—once bright, now plunged into gloom. He remembered how Max and Jane had dragged them all here. They were picking out prom dresses, laughing, arguing. Another time, they were preparing for a summer trip—a week on the road with the whole group, when it seemed like adulthood would never come.

Descending lower, he saw the bloody flowers tightly entwining the arcade machines. There, in the flickering neon light of memories, he and the boys could hang out for hours. Dustin, Lucas, Will... They forgot about food, about homework, existing only within the pixelated screens and a friendship that seemed indestructible.

The cinema was not spared either. Flowers filled only the back rows—the very ones where they always sat as a group. Here, the lilies seemed most aggressive; they seemed to bleed with their threatening tendrils, leaving dark stains on the seat upholstery. Mike’s heart—or what was left of it—bled along with them.

He realized how long it had been since they had truly talked. The promise to meet every month, which they’d given each other in their youth, had drowned in the routine of colleges, new acquaintances, and ambitions. From time to time they called each other, once a year or six months they might meet for coffee, and even then never the full group. Adult life didn't allow for the free disposal of time; it demanded sacrifices, and the first sacrifice was their shared history.

Suddenly, the space around Mike began to warp again. The familiar, inhuman jolt that turns one inside out.

He woke up in his bed. His eyes were filled with tears, and his cheeks were wet with salty trails. In his palm, he felt the familiar cold again. A new bloody petal.

Mike sat up in bed, breathing heavily. The morning light barely broke through the curtains, but in his head, everything was clearer than ever. He couldn't just disappear. If the Messengers had come for him, if his fate was already determined by these flowers, he had no right to leave without a trace.

"I have to leave a few words for them, too," he thought of his friends. He couldn't just evaporate from this world. He had to find a reason to meet or at least talk. The feeling of losing his "self" over the years of a "perfect life" had become unbearable. Mike realized that he missed his party to death. But most of all, he missed himself—the boy who wasn't afraid of the darkness because he knew he wasn't alone.

The next day for Mike Wheeler passed in a state he mentally called "the in-between." The world around him had finally lost its solidity. The shadows he had begun to notice earlier were now so distinct it caused nausea. They were no longer just formless clusters of fog or blurred spots on the periphery of his vision. Now, human features began to emerge in these translucent figures looming over passersby: cheekbones, empty eye sockets, mouths twisted in silent screams or frozen in infinite sorrow.

It was terrifying not because they looked like ghosts, but because Mike was seeing them with increasing clarity, as if his own vision were tuning into the frequency of the afterlife. He felt himself gradually becoming part of that spectrum. His heart didn't race in panic—no, it beat steadily, heavily, and monotonically, like a metronome counting down the final minutes to the finale. It was simply performing its duty: leading Mike to the threshold where the blood would stop and the petals of the spider lilies would completely consume his being.

He returned home immediately after work, avoiding any unnecessary contact. Even a brief "good afternoon" from a colleague sounded to him like a noise coming from deep underwater. On the way, he did something he hadn't done for a very long time without a specific reason—he stopped at a flower shop.

The scent in the shop was too sweet, almost suffocating. Mike chose a massive bouquet of white roses for Kathy. He remembered she loved those specific flowers—a symbol of purity and peace that he himself could never fully give her. When he walked into the living room and handed her the bouquet, Kathy froze. A spark of hope flashed in her eyes, mingled with a deep sadness. Mike gently kissed the crown of her head, inhaling the scent of her shampoo, which felt like his only anchor in the real world. But even in that moment, he felt the cold behind his back. The Guides were there. They didn't disappear; they only became less noticeable in the warm light of the floor lamps, as if waiting for him to be alone with his fate once more.

He spent the entire evening with Willow, trying to shield her from his own demons. He built towers with her out of building blocks, even though he could see spectral red lily tendrils sprouting between the plastic cubes. Every smile of his was a victory over horror, every word a barricade against the darkness. When his daughter finally fell asleep, clutching one of the fairy tales he’d managed to finish, Mike felt his own strength failing.

He went to his study. He locked the door—not against thieves, but against the life swirling outside that room. Pulling a clean, leather-bound notebook from the drawer, he placed it on the desk. Tonight, the words could not be typed on a cold screen. They had to be carved by hand. With the marks of the pen’s pressure, with accidental ink stains, with the trembling of his fingers. It had to be a sincere, truthful account. His last letter.

First, Mike decided to record the present. He began with that evening when he first saw the red flower on the white tile in the shower. He described it in detail: how the cold sweat ran down his shoulders, how he didn't believe his own eyes, how he initially thought it an accident. His hand traced lines about how the spider lilies became bolder, how they occupied his space, how he began to see them on the roads, in the office, in his own bed.

Next, he moved to the sensations. Mike tried to find the words to explain what it was like to be outside his own body. He wrote of that terrible weightlessness, the absence of heat and cold, of how he saw himself from the side—sleeping, vulnerable, nearly dead. It was a feeling of absolute helplessness. To see everything, to know everything, but to be unable to move even a finger in the physical world.

He didn't forget to mention the Messengers. Describing them on paper, Mike suddenly realized they no longer seemed like mere executioners. Now, under the light of the desk lamp, they looked more like shepherds or guides whose presence was an inevitable part of a natural order he had once broken—though he didn't know how. They pressed upon his soul, yes, but it was not so much their pressure as the pressure of his own fear, bloating to incredible proportions in the emptiness of his heart.

Then he began to return to the past. This was the most painful part. Mike wrote about his friends. Every name on the paper echoed with phantom pain. He told them how much he loved and valued them, recalled the warmest moments: laughter in the basement, shared victories over monsters both real and imagined. He wrote that their voices were the only thing that had warmed him during the coldest evenings of his gray, adult life.

"If they take me," Mike wrote, his handwriting becoming jagged, "please, visit Kathy and Willow. Visit my parents. Just so they feel I’m still close by somewhere. That I cared for them until the very end."

The further the narrative went, the more his true essence was bared. The layers of the perfect husband, the successful employee, the balanced citizen fell away like old skin. And when he reached the point where he had to write about himself—about the Mike Wheeler he missed most of all—his hand hesitated.

He began to write about his dreams, about his creativity, but suddenly felt his fingers, of their own accord, begin to trace a distorted truth. He began to lie again. He wrote that he had been happy in this life, that he had found everything he was looking for. It was a perfect lie, convenient and correct. But even on paper, in the face of death, he could not bring himself to write that one name. That one confession that would negate his entire life.

At that moment, the air in the room turned ice-cold. Behind him, they appeared again. The Messengers.

This time, their presence was physically palpable. Mike felt a cold breath near his ear, the weight of the dark figure behind his right shoulder and the blinding purity of the white one behind his left. They said nothing, but the pressure was unbearable. It was as if they had placed their invisible hands on his shoulders, pinning him to the desk, forcing him to look at his own lie.

Mike laughed—a bitter, racking sound. The laughter turned into a wheeze. "It’s because I’m lying even to myself, isn't it?" he whispered into the emptiness of the room.

There was no answer. Only a sudden draft, though the windows were tightly shut, swept through the study, slightly shifting the sheets of paper on the desk. It was a sign. A warning. A final warning from those who do not accept falsehood in the final hour.

Mike laughed again, dropping his head onto his crossed arms right on top of the notebook. His shoulders shook. "Fine..." he rasped into the desk. "I hear you. I understand."

It took him several minutes to raise his head and take up the pen again. He looked at the crossed-out lines of his "perfect truth." The paper had to know everything about Mike Wheeler. He hoped Kathy would never find this notebook, because what he was about to write next would break her heart into a thousand tiny shards. At the same time, he knew: if he didn't write it now, his soul would never find peace. It would remain wandering between worlds, entangled in the spider lilies of its own lies.

He took a deep breath, feeling his lungs fill with the scent of ozone. The pen touched the paper again. "The truth is," he began, and this time his hand did not tremble, "that I was never fully here. My heart stayed there, in Hawkins, in the 1980s. It stayed in the basement, in the laughter of my friends, and in the eyes of the person I never dared to call mine until the end..."

The words began to pour onto the paper like black bile, clearing space for something pure. Perhaps, for at least once in his life, Mike Wheeler would speak the truth aloud, and it would cease to be a heavy stone on his chest. Perhaps this was what the Messengers were waiting for—not his life, but his truth.

Mike wrote. The ink on the paper seemed thicker than usual; it soaked into the notebook's fibers like blood into bandages. The Messengers behind his back no longer pressed—they froze, like interested spectators in the front row of an anatomical theater. The room filled with the scent of ozone and damp earth, and the shadows of the lilies on the walls began to move, intertwining into bizarre patterns.

He no longer tried to be careful. Every word was a knife stroke with which he cut open old scars, letting all the pus and pain flow out.

"I named my daughter Willow, Will. Kathy thinks it’s just a pretty name, but every time I call her, I am actually calling for you. I stole your image, cut it into pieces, and tried to paste them into my new life, hoping they would take root. They didn't. They only festered inside, turning every 'I am happy' of mine into ash that grinds in my teeth every time I smile at my wife."

Mike stopped. His fingers cramped, but he didn't let go of the pen. On the contrary, he gripped it so hard the wood nearly snapped.

"Remember our basement? Remember how I said being with you was the best thing I’d ever done? That was the only truth I’ve uttered in thirty-four years. Everything else—this house, this office, this expensive blazer I wore to a meeting today—is just scenery for a play I performed for an audience I never loved. I built myself a golden cage and convinced everyone around me it was my castle."

He turned his gaze to the mirror in the corner of the study. In the dim light, he saw not a successful man, but the shadow of a boy lost in the woods of his own fear.

"I told myself I was saving you. That if I left, if I became 'normal,' I would free you from the burden of my love. What irony—I simply condemned us both to a slow rot in different cities, under different blankets. I looked in the mirror all these years and saw a successful man, when in reality I saw only a coward who was so terrified by the depth of your eyes that he chose to go blind. I chose the darkness because the light of your love was too bright for my pathetic soul."

Mike felt something warm drip onto the page. They weren't tears. A thin trickle of blood began to flow from his nose, blurring the letters he had just written. He didn't wipe it away.

"You know, the Messengers are watching me now. I can feel their approval. They like the smell of blood on paper. And that’s exactly what this is—I am cutting open my chest with this pen to finally pull your name out of it. I’ve been afraid to say it out loud for fifteen years. I smothered it inside me, I hid it under reports and bills. Will. Will Byers. The person who was my home before I even knew what homelessness was. Without you, I became a wanderer in a desert of my own making."

He began to write faster, as if afraid the Messengers would take the pen before he could finish.

"Forgive me for making our love a crime I tried to conceal. Forgive me for choosing a convenient lie over a painful freedom. I’m not dying because my heart is stopping—medicine will say it’s an arrhythmia or something of the sort. But I know the truth. I am dying because my heart is tired of beating against the walls I built around it. Those walls are crumbling now, and they will bury me beneath them.

If you ever find this—know this: every smile I gave to another woman was a search for your laughter. Every step I took was a step away from you, and that is why I reached the finish line so quickly. I just wanted it to finally end. I just wanted to stop running."

Mike turned the page. His gaze fell upon the reflection of his own face in the glass of the bookcase. He addressed the Mike he had become.

"I look at my past self and I hate that boy. Not for loving, but for becoming ashamed of it. Will was my mirror. When he looked at me, I saw myself for real—a hero, a protector, a Paladin. I felt a strength I didn't actually possess. And then I broke that mirror. I thought if I didn't see my reflection in his eyes, I could become someone else. Someone simpler. Someone who didn't feel so painfully.

But without him, I simply vanished. I turned into noise, into static on a television screen.

Will was the color in my black-and-white world. When I left, I turned out the lights with my own hands. I lived fifteen years in the twilight, convincing myself that this was real life, that this was 'adulthood.' But now, as the flowers grow through my bones, I see the horrific truth: I haven't lived a single day since the last time I let go of his hand at that cursed station. Everything since then has just been a lingering obituary."

Mike set the pen down. His hand was covered in ink and droplets of blood. He looked up. The Messengers drew closer. One of them, the one in black, reached out a long, bony hand and touched the edge of the notebook. Mike didn't flinch. He felt only relief. The heavy burden on his heart grew a little lighter, though the heart itself beat slower and slower, as if agreeing with every written word.

He knew that tomorrow these flowers would bloom in full force. And he knew it was too late to fix anything. But at least now, the paper knew the truth. The Paladin had finally shed his armor, even though nothing remained beneath it but ash and red petals.

The next day at work for Mike Wheeler turned into a series of simple but utterly meaningless frames. He didn't remember this day—not at all. The lack of sleep, multiplied by the emotional meat grinder he’d put his soul through in the study, made his consciousness resemble an old canvas from which the paint had been washed away.

The only things he could distinguish amidst the gray office haze were the two constant figures standing side-by-side in the corners of the hallways, and the bloody spider lilies sprouting directly from his computer keyboard. To be honest, Mike wasn't even sure of that anymore. It seemed that over these days, these images had seared so deeply into his retina and memory that he would see them even in total darkness or with his eyes gouged out. They had become his new reality, displacing reports, deadlines, and the fake smiles of colleagues.

He felt as if he were submerged in water—his movements were viscous, sounds reached him as if through layers of cotton wool. But strangely, beneath this depth of exhaustion, a new sensation was born: lightness. Almost weightlessness.

What held him now? He had done everything that depended on him. He had vomited the truth onto paper; he had cleaned the wounds that had festered for years. Before leaving for work, he had hugged Willow as tightly as he dared without scaring her with his desperation. He had inhaled the scent of her hair, trying to memorize it like a final prayer. Now that the secret had ceased to be a secret, at least to himself, the shackles on his soul had loosened.

The next night, relentlessly descending upon the city, no longer seemed frightening to Mike. It wasn't a dark abyss; it was a promise of peace.

When Mike's soul left his body again, it was surprisingly light. It was strange, because even before, the spectral substance had no actual weight, but today he felt as if a lead plate had been lifted from his ethereal shoulders. He couldn't describe the feeling in words—it was something between euphoria and total numbness. He simply found it easier to breathe, even though he no longer had lungs.

He followed the bloody flowers again. They no longer led him in circles, nor did they return him to past mistakes in the city. Today, they snaked in a long, vivid ribbon toward the exit of Hawkins. Mike soared above the road, feeling the presence of the Messengers behind his back. They didn't rush him, but their silent pace was as inevitable as the tide.

He didn't have to go too far. The road leading out of town looked like an infinite artery in the spectral dimension. The flowers on its shoulders bloomed with incredible vigor, their long red petals trembling in a non-existent wind, filling the air with a sickeningly sweet scent and a distinct metallic aftertaste. It was the smell of blood mixed with pollen, the smell of death itself, finally coming for its own.

Mike didn't know how long he soared over the asphalt. Time had no meaning here. Eventually, he stopped amidst a thick thicket of lilies and simply lowered himself to the ground. Though he tried to sit, his ghostly essence still didn't touch the surface, hovering a few millimeters above the cold stone, but for now, this illusion of support was enough.

He looked at the road running into the darkness, beyond the limits of the familiar world, and wondered.

How many times had he dreamed of escaping this town? In his youth, Hawkins seemed like a prison to him, and later—a graveyard of hopes. How many times had he been ready to sacrifice everything he had just to be rid of these invisible chains, to change his name, erase his memory, and start over?

A younger Mike Wheeler suddenly surfaced in his memory. That boy with messy hair and burning eyes who stood in the center of his party, waving his arms and laughing loudly as he declared he’d be the first to escape this place. He promised he’d forget even the name of the town, that he’d build skyscrapers or write books that would change the world. He said he’d only visit for his parents, but ideally—he’d take them away too, to somewhere they’d finally see real life, not this eternal provincial twilight.

What would that boy say to him now? Mike smiled bitterly. Looking at his translucent hands, he could say with certainty that the kid would lunge at him with his fists. He would despise this "successful" man for his cowardice, for his convenient lie, for letting the colors fade.

Mike laughed, and his laughter sounded like the dry rustle of leaves near the empty road. It seemed even the trees standing alongside mocked him with their twisted branches. You are a Paladin who grew afraid of his own heart. You are a leader who got lost among the trees of his own indecision.

The shadows behind Mike began to close in. With each of their steps forward, the wind at his back grew stronger, colder. He didn't turn around. He just waited.

The Messengers passed in front of him. They moved in sync, smoothly, not looking back at Mike, as if he were just a stray pebble in their path. He watched them—the White and the Black—and thought: how did these two, so opposite, become such a steadfast duo? They were like light and shadow, like the beginning and the end. Where did they find the patience to stay beside his pathetic, torn soul all these days?

Did they know why and how he would truly cease to be? Because now, sitting on this road, Mike was already saying goodbye to life. He felt the bloody flowers slowly consuming his energy, drinking his memories, turning them into red pollen.

Perhaps they wouldn't just take him. Perhaps the afterlife doesn't work like a taxi. Perhaps he had to take that final step forward himself, to make the decision so that his life could finally reach its logical, albeit tragic, conclusion?

But certainly not today.

Mike felt a sudden jolt of panic beneath his spectral ribs. He hadn't called Dustin and Lucas yet. He hadn't written to Will—not in the notebook, but for real, in a way that he would feel it. He hadn't held Willow to his chest one last time, knowing it was the end. He had debts left to reality that he had to settle.

The two figures ahead came to a halt. They stood with their backs to Mike, staring into the darkness beyond Hawkins. The flowers began to follow them, stretching their stems in the same direction.

Mike understood: today, they didn't intend to return him to his body so easily. Today, they wanted to show him something. Something that lay beyond the town, beyond his own small tragedy. Perhaps there, in the twilight of the road, lay the answer to the question: "Why now?"

He slowly rose, feeling the Messengers' wind catch him and carry him forward, following the crimson trail of lilies. He was destined to see something greater than just his own death.

The road led Mike further than he had ever dared to dream in his boldest fantasies of escape. He didn't just cross the borders of Hawkins; he became part of the wind itself, racing over the nighttime states. He soared over endless highways that shimmered under the moonlight like the scales of a giant serpent, bypassing thousands of houses in whose windows lay the ordinary happiness of strangers. The Messengers ahead moved with implacable speed, their silhouettes unwavering, as if they were laying tracks through space itself.

Until, finally, their figures stopped before one of many houses.

Mike hovered in the air, feeling the inertia of his spectral flight slowly fade. He didn't know their geographic location—town names and road numbers had been erased from his memory like useless clutter. But he was certain of one thing: they were very far from Hawkins. And at that realization, his ghostly heart felt lighter, as if the distance itself could wash away the remnants of guilt.

The house before them looked remarkably comfortable even from the outside. It was a small building finished with dark wood and stone, surrounded by thick bushes that, in the spectral dimension, looked like frozen ocean waves. A soft, warm light emanated from a side window—it looked so alive and real in this kingdom of phosphorescent shadows that Mike wanted to close his eyes.

He looked questioningly at the Messengers. Their figures stood in the middle of a vast field of blood-red spider lilies that had managed to sprout there in a matter of seconds. No answer followed—the Messengers never explained their motives. Only the figure in white slowly extended a long, thin hand, pointing toward the lit window. It wasn't a command, but rather a silent invitation to peer into a stranger's life—a final chance to see what he had so diligently erased from his daily existence.

And what else was left for him to do but obey? He had clearly been brought here for a reason. Every step of this journey was calculated by a higher, cruel logic.

His shadow drifted slowly, almost weightlessly, toward the window. The glass felt thick and cold, but through it, he saw him.

Will Byers. The real Will.

Not the teenager with frightened eyes, not the image that had crumbled into pieces in his memories, but a grown man. Mike didn't dare pass through the wall immediately. He leaned against the glass, enchanted, trying to catch every movement, every detail.

Will sat with his back to the window in front of a large easel. His figure was illuminated only by a pair of lamps that cast deep shadows around him. Mike watched as his hand confidently yet gently traced dark lines on the canvas. They connected with others, intertwining, creating the amazing magic of art—the same magic only Will was capable of. Even from behind, Mike felt that same focus, that same vibration of creativity that had always made Will something more than just a person.

He could have stared forever at this figure he was afraid to approach, were it not for the crimson sea of flowers relentlessly advancing from behind, flooding the garden beneath the window. The lilies were already touching the foundation of the house, their petals trembling with hunger. Mike wanted to see those eyes one more time. Just one look, even if it wasn't directed at him.

He turned back to the Messengers. They stood motionless and only nodded in sync, as if giving permission for this final act of self-torture.

Mike took the final step forward. His shadow passed easily through glass and wood, and he was inside.

The room was filled with scents that instantly brought an avalanche of memories crashing down on Mike. It smelled of fresh oil paint, turpentine, old paper dust, and... pine. Will always brought that scent of the forest with him, even if he lived in the middle of a desert. Mike’s heart—or the phantom organ pulsing in his chest—ached sharply. This aroma was too real, too alive. It was a portal to the days when they hid in the basement, when the world was simple, and when Will was his only truth.

Mike approached step by step, trying not to make a sound, though he knew his gait was silent. Suddenly, Will's hand stopped abruptly. He slowly turned toward the window where Mike had stood just a moment ago.

A voice rang through the room—so dear, so familiar in its intonations, but changed by time, deeper, more mature. "There's a draft... I should check the frames later," Will whispered.

His gaze lingered on the window a little longer than people usually look into the empty dark. Will didn't know Mike was there. He didn't see the transparent silhouette frozen in the middle of the studio. But Mike saw Will shiver slightly. Mike had brought the cold of the afterlife with him, that same frozen breath of death that had now become his essence. Will felt this cold on his shoulders; he felt the foreign, invisible presence.

Mike's heart wrenched so hard that he simply couldn't hold himself up. His legs gave way, and he collapsed to his knees right in front of Will. He was so close he could have touched Will's knee, if only his fingers didn't pass through the fabric of the trousers like mist.

Mike wanted to scream. He wanted to beg for forgiveness for every minute of silence, for every unjustified escape, for naming his daughter after him in an attempt to patch the hole in his soul. He wanted to say how much he missed him, how he died every night from the realization of his own worthlessness. He wanted to tell a hundred stories he had gathered all these years to share with him. But not a single sound escaped his throat. Not even a sob could be heard. He had no way to express anything—he was merely a silent witness to his own ruin.

After some time, Mike finally found the strength to stand. He tore his gaze away from the face of the person who was once closest to him—a face that now bore new wrinkles near the eyes, the imprint of years of loneliness and work. Mike stood behind Will, following his drawing.

Standing there, he suddenly felt like one of those ghosts he had seen behind the backs of random passersby in Hawkins. A chilling wave of self-loathing washed through his essence. No. He would never burden this man with his presence. He would not become a parasite clinging to Will's life. His love had already brought enough pain; it must not become a curse reaching out from the grave.

Meanwhile, on Will’s canvas, a figure was taking on clearer features. Mike recognized it. It was him. Only younger. A boy in a striped T-shirt, seen from the back, looking into the distance toward the forest. It was an image from that summer when everything began to fall apart.

At that exact moment, Will slowly ran his fingertips along the edge of the canvas, as if trying to feel the texture of the memory. His voice rang out in the silence again, but now it held so much despair that Mike wanted to vanish on the spot. "Mike... I'm really starting to forget your face," Will whispered, his voice breaking. "Please... remind me of yourself. Somehow. Any way."

The man who a moment ago seemed a strong, focused creator suddenly just doubled over. He covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders began to shake with silent sobs. It was too much. Seeing Will Byers crumble because of the void Mike had left behind was worse than any torture the Messengers could devise.

Mike lunged toward him. He wanted to embrace him, hold him close, transfer even a drop of his spectral warmth, to assure him that he was here, that he had never forgotten. But the bloody flowers caught him.

The red petals of the spider lilies began to sprout directly from the studio floor, entwining Mike’s legs like white-hot chains. A sharp, inhuman gust of wind snatched him up, tearing him from the warm room. The space around him began to shatter. The last thing Mike saw before being thrown back into the darkness of the highways was the back of Will’s head and the scent of pine, gradually being replaced by the smell of iron and raw earth.

He woke up in his bed with a scream stuck in his throat. His face was wet with tears, his T-shirt clinging to his body with cold sweat. He gasped for air, trying to heave the sickening sweetness of the lilies out of his lungs.

But today, something strange happened. Mike lowered his hand to the floor, expecting to find another petal, but there was none. Under his fingers was only dry parquet. Mike didn't understand why. Did this mean the connection was broken? Or had the Messengers decided he had seen enough?

He didn't know that at that very moment, hundreds of miles from Hawkins, Will Byers raised his head from his hands. He wiped his tears and was about to take up his brush again, but his gaze fell upon the floor near the window.

There, in the middle of the perfectly clean studio where there had been nothing thirty minutes ago, lay a whole flower. A blood-red spider lily. It looked as if it had just been plucked, its petals still retaining a strange, phosphorescent shimmer.

Will slowly leaned down and picked it up. An unearthly cold emanated from the flower—the same cold Mike had carried on his shoulders from the other world. Will stared at it, and in his eyes, for the first time in many years, appeared fear mingled with an incredible, painful recognition.

That morning, for the first time in ten years, Mike Wheeler did not show up at the office. He didn’t call his boss, didn’t invent an excuse about illness or family circumstances—he simply turned off his phone and left it on the kitchen table next to a half-finished cup of coffee. The world of reports, deadlines, and fake smiles ceased to exist. Now, in his universe, there was room for only two colors: black and white, diluted by the unsettling red glow of petals.

He spent the entire day in his study, but not working. Mike had turned into a researcher of his own curse. He surrounded himself with every mythology book he could find in the house and opened dozens of browser tabs, diving into the darkest corners of the internet where occultists, folklorists, and near-death experience survivors shared their stories.

He was looking for them. The Messengers.

Information came in fragments, through translations from Latin, Japanese, and Ancient Greek. In some texts, they were called "Psychopomps"—guides of souls. But Mike was looking for this specific pair. The White and the Black.

On a forum dedicated to rare cases of "borderline existence," he stumbled upon a description that sent a familiar chill down his spine. It spoke of the Duae Custodes—the Two Guardians. The White Messenger personified what could have been: lost opportunities, the purity of unfulfilled dreams, the light a person had turned away from. The Black Messenger was the embodiment of what actually happened: the weight of guilt, the rot of secrets, the inevitability of choices made. Together, they were perfect scales. They weren't punishing Mike; they were simply showing him the balance of his own life.

Then he moved on to the flowers. Higanbana. The Red Spider Lily.

The symbolism of this flower was so definitive that Mike wanted to close the tab instantly. In Eastern traditions, these lilies were believed to grow along the paths souls take into the underworld. They were flowers of death, flowers of forgetfulness, and flowers of a final meeting. It was said they sprout where people part forever, feeding on the pain of unspoken words.

"The flower sprouts from a heart that could not let go," Mike read on one site. He looked at his hand. He knew the lily in Will’s studio was a part of himself. His soul had literally begun to bloom with death, trying to reach the one person who still held him to this earth.

Mike also learned about "The Road." What he had seen—the endless highways glowing under a spectral moon—was "The In-Between." It wasn't heaven or hell. It was a path of purification, where a soul was forced to return again and again to the places of its greatest pain until everything superficial burned away.

He felt time slipping through his fingers. The sun set slowly, painting the study walls the color of clotted blood. Mike picked up his notebook. His hand no longer hesitated. Now that he knew the rules of the game, there was no need to lie.

He flipped through several pages filled with his previous confessions and began a new chapter. This entry wasn't meant for Kathy or his friends. It was for Will.

"Will, if you are reading this, it means the flower of death has sprouted in my heart. The truth is, I am dying. But not the way the doctors say. I am crumbling into petals, trying to find my way home. The Messengers are already here, and I am no longer afraid of them. They showed me you, and I am grateful to them for this last chance to see who you’ve become.

I know my time is running out. On the other side of the road, there is a place I read about today. A place of peace. But if it is my fate to leave before I can say all this to your face, I promise you one thing.

I will wait for you on the bridge before Auntie May’s. Do you remember that spot in Hawkins where we once hid from the rain? In the afterlife, there is a bridge of its own. I will stand there, and in my hands, there will be no red lilies—only silence.

But I beg you, Will, do not come too quickly. Do not seek to meet me before your time. Live a full life for the both of us. Paint your masterpieces, feel the sun on your skin, love, breathe deeply. Live so that I have something to listen to when we finally meet. It is not hard for me to wait for you, even for a hundred years. Where I am going, time does not exist. There is only the waiting and my bridge.

Remind yourself of me when you see the wind in a pine forest. I will be there.

With love, Your Mike."

Mike slowly set down the pen. The ink still shimmered wetly on the paper, absorbing the last drops of his confession. He felt that with every written word, his inner weight grew smaller, but the emptiness that replaced it was even colder. He raised his eyes and met the gaze of the shadow in the corner. The Messengers did not move, but their presence pressed against his eardrums with a high, barely audible ultrasound.

"I’m ready," Mike said. His voice sounded surprisingly steady in the silence of the study. He expected the walls to part now, or the floor to turn into a stream of red lilies to carry him into oblivion.

But no answer followed. The figures in black and white simply took a step back in sync, dissolving into the thick twilight of the room. It wasn't a disappearance—it was a withdrawal. A silent message that the clock had not yet struck its final hour. Mike’s breath hitched at a sudden realization: if they had retreated, it meant he had a sliver of time left. A final chance for an act that wouldn't just be a vision in a spectral dimension.

He ran out of the study, nearly knocking over Kathy as she was bringing Willow home from preschool. The house was filled with the scent of evening—warm, cozy, so painfully "alive."

"Daddy!" Willow rushed to him, arms outstretched.

Mike scooped her up, pressing her to his chest so tightly as if he wanted to hide her inside his own heart. He tried to breathe steadily so the child wouldn't feel the icy cold still clinging to his skin. He closed his eyes, drinking in the scent of her hair—the smell of baby shampoo and a sunny day.

"My sweet girl..." he whispered, kissing her soft cheek. "Daddy loves you so much. You are my heart, do you hear me? You are the best thing I’ve ever encountered in this life."

Willow laughed genuinely, tickling his neck with her tiny fingers. "Willow loves Daddy too! So, so much, all the way to the sky!" she chirped, leaving a wet toddler kiss on his cheek.

Mike gently set her on the floor, feeling his knees tremble. He affectionately ruffled her blonde hair, trying to smile. "Go play, sunshine. Daddy has to go somewhere for a very important matter. I’ll be back soon, I promise."

At the doorway, Kathy stopped him. Her gaze was full of anxiety—she saw that strange fire in his eyes that boded nothing good. "Mike, where are you going? It’s almost evening, I was about to start dinner... Are you going back to the office?"

Mike didn't answer immediately. He walked to her and embraced her—not mechanically as usual, but with the desperation of a drowning man. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her warmth. "I need to visit an old friend, Kathy. While there’s still time. I tried to be a good husband... forgive me for everything I didn't manage to do. I’ll try to be back as soon as I can."

Kathy hesitated for a moment, then wrapped her arms tightly around him. "Be careful, Mike. Please. We’re waiting. Willow said she won’t go to bed without you."

"I know," Mike pulled away, looking at her one last time. In his memory, this frame was etched forever: the warm light of the living room, Kathy in her house sweater, and the small figure of Willow with her toys on the rug.

He burst out of the house, feeling every second of delay lash at him like a whip. He truly had become too slow. Why hadn't he set out this morning? He had heard that silent call in Will’s studio. He felt Will drowning in forgetfulness, his image being erased from the memory of the only person who should have remembered him forever.

Mike jumped into the car, the key trembling in the ignition. The engine growled quietly but steadily, filling the cabin with vibration. Mike automatically glanced in the rearview mirror to back out of the driveway, and his heart nearly stopped.

Sitting in the back seat of his car were them. The Messengers.

The sight was so absurd that Mike wanted to laugh hysterically. The massive, otherworldly figures were wedged into the cramped space of the cabin. Their tall, pointed headpieces literally pressed into the roof of the car, crumpling and disappearing into the upholstery—or perhaps protruding above the roof of the vehicle like bizarre antennae. They sat motionless, like two statues carved from night and frozen light.

Mike looked at them again through the mirror, checking if this was another trick of his exhausted brain. But no—the White Messenger gave a barely perceptible tilt of the head, and the Black one tightened his grip on his invisible scroll. "Well, if you're going to be everywhere, so be it," Mike thought, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. "But I have to take this chance. I will get to him, even if I have to drive Death itself in my back seat."

The car tore away from the curb.

The road flew by, mile after mile. Mike drove hard, ignoring signs and rules. The landscapes outside the window began to change in strange ways. Familiar suburbs dissolved, giving way to the endless highways he had seen in his spectral flights. Cities flashed with lights like distant constellations, and along the shoulder, a thin red line invariably stretched—spider lilies sprouting directly through the asphalt, pointing the way.

Evening quickly turned into a thick, impenetrable night. The shadows of trees grew longer, reaching for the car, trying to catch its wheels. Mike felt time flowing differently inside the cabin. The Messengers in the back made no sound, but such a cold emanated from them that the windshield began to frost over from the inside, despite the heater running.

He thought of Will. About how he would say "hello." Would Will recognize him? Could Mike find words that didn't sound like the delusions of a madman? "Will, I brought you a flower from your future. Will, I never stopped being that boy from the basement."

The road grew narrower; fog thickened around them. Mike could see only a few meters of illuminated path ahead. Suddenly, a bright, almost blinding light flashed before him. It wasn't the headlights of another car—it was a glow emanating from the very fabric of reality itself.

Mike's car jerked violently to the side. The steering wheel was torn from his hands, the tires shrieked against the wet pavement, making a sound like the cry of a wounded animal. The world around him turned into a kaleidoscope of sparks, metallic grinding, and shattered glass.

When everything finally stopped, Mike found himself standing on the shoulder. Strange—he didn't remember getting out of the car. He felt an incredible rage. "Damn it!" he screamed into the darkness. "I’m in a hurry! I don't have time for accidents! I need to get to him!"

He saw another car thrown far into the ditch. It was smoking, its front end reduced to a heap of scrap metal. "The driver must be hurt," Mike thought, rushing to help. "I’ll help them and keep going. I’ll make it."

But something stopped his arm. The cold was so intense that his hand instantly went numb. He turned around.

The Messenger in White stood directly before him. For the first time, in the voice that echoed in Mike’s head, there was pity—a deep, ancient sorrow. "Mike... Come. Others will come for him. Your path ends here."

Mike froze, confused. "What are you talking about? There’s a person in trouble! I need to..."

He turned back to look at the scene behind him, and the world finally shattered into a thousand icy shards.

His car hadn't just swerved. It had been literally crushed by a massive pole and an oncoming truck he somehow hadn't noticed before. The metal was crumpled like a cheap tin can. And there, behind the web of shattered glass, pinned between the steering wheel and the seat, lay a man.

Mike looked at the body. At the familiar jacket, the broken face, the arm hanging limply, and from whose fingers the last petal of a red lily was falling onto the asphalt.

It was him. Mike Wheeler.

He hadn't made it. He was too late. His heart was no longer beating—it had finally bloomed red in that mangled cabin. He stood on the road, a ghost among ghosts, watching his own death, while the Messengers behind him straightened their tall hats once more, preparing to lead him to the bridge where he had promised to wait for a hundred years.

The world around Mike Wheeler ceased to be pain. It didn't happen instantly, but smoothly, as if the sound on an old record was gradually fading until only a perfect, crystalline silence remained. When the last roar of mangled metal died in his ears, and the bloody lilies growing through his spectral body withered into dry, weightless ash, he didn't even notice how he ended up on the bridge.

It wasn't the same bridge in Hawkins where he and Will had once made plans for a future that never happened. Yet, in its outlines, one could glimpse everything Mike had ever loved and what had kept him afloat during his darkest times. The rough stone of the railings felt real under his fingers—it was cool and reliable. The scent of rainwater, mixed with the subtle aroma of damp pine, filled lungs that no longer needed oxygen but still craved sensation. The fog, thick and white as warm milk, softly enveloped Mike's ankles, giving him a sense of security, like a warm blanket on a cold night.

The Messengers were here. The White and Black guardians no longer loomed over him like harbingers of inevitable catastrophe. They stood on either side of the bridge entrance, motionless and majestic, like pillars supporting the very sky of this in-between world. Now, in this wordless space, they seemed to Mike like old companions who had completed their difficult work. They weren't enemies; they were the ones who held the door open.

In the middle of the bridge, near a small stone table that seemed carved from a single piece of moonlight, sat a woman. She looked both old as the earth itself, with a face etched by river-like wrinkles, and eternally young, with eyes in which the stars of primordial chaos sparkled. Auntie Meng. She was slowly stirring something in a large clay bowl, and the steam rising above it had a strange aroma: notes of July grass, the dust of old books, and a sweet, beckoning oblivion.

"You have come a long way, Paladin," her voice didn't cut through the air with sound. It flowed directly into his thoughts, warm and thick as honey. "Many give up while still on the road. Many beg for the end before they even see the stone of this bridge. You, however, held onto your petals until your last breath."

She held out the bowl to him. "Drink. This will set you free. It is the gift I give to everyone who crosses the threshold. You will forget the cold of the lilies, forget the bitter taste of guilt that gnawed at your heart for years. All your mistakes, all the 'what ifs,' all the nightmares—everything will dissolve. Your soul will become pure and weightless, like the first snow on the hills of Hawkins."

Mike looked into the bowl. There, in the dark, mirrored liquid, he saw the reflection not of his face, but of his entire life. It played before him like frames on an old film strip, but with incredible clarity.

He saw Willow. She was his greatest, strongest anchor. Even here, on the threshold of total dissolution into nothingness, he felt the phantom warmth of her small palm in his hand. He saw her future unfolding before him in Lady Meng’s bowl. He saw her growing up, transforming from a little girl into a beautiful woman. He saw her first prom, where she would look so much like Kathy; he saw her wedding, where she would hold a bouquet of white flowers—not lilies, no, never those. He saw her first steps in the adult world. Most importantly, he saw her occasionally stop in the middle of a room, catching a faint scent of pine, and a sad but gentle smile would appear on her face. She would whisper, "Hi, Daddy," and Mike knew she felt no fear—only quiet love.

He could not forget her. He had no right to. Every moment spent with his daughter was a precious stone in the foundation of his being. To forget her meant betraying the only real thing he had created in his life.

And then he saw Will. Will was his second heart. The same one Mike, afraid of his own vulnerability, had once tried to rip from his chest and hide in the darkest corner of the basement. But that heart continued to beat. No matter where they were, no matter what distances fate drove between them, they always pulsed in unison. Mike saw Will in his studio; he saw his loneliness, his genius, and his pain. To forget Will would be to kill himself a second time—and this time for good, erasing the very reason he had ever become who he was.

"No," Mike stepped firmly away from the bowl, his voice echoing off the stone railings of the bridge. "I don't want to forget. I promised to wait. I have... too much here," he pressed a transparent hand to his chest, where there were no longer bloody flowers, only a pure, pulsing glow. "I have too much love here, Lady Meng. Too much memory to just let it dissolve. My life was complicated, it was full of mistakes, but it was mine."

Lady Meng nodded almost imperceptibly. In her eyes, which had seen billions of souls, a flicker of deep respect appeared for a moment—a rare emotion for one accustomed to the silent submission of those facing oblivion. She slowly set the bowl aside. "Then wait, Paladin. But be careful with your desires. Waiting here is not a matter of minutes or hours. It is epochs passing in silence. It is a loneliness that not everyone can endure, even with a heart as large as yours."

Mike said nothing. He simply walked to the very edge of the bridge, where the fog was thickest, and slowly sat down on the cold stone floor. The Messengers—his White and Black guardians—did not disappear. They quietly sat beside him, like faithful hounds guarding their master's sleep. They became his only companions in this timeless silence. Mike looked down into the dark waters of the river beneath the bridge. They did not carry water—they carried time.

And he began to watch.

Decades passed. For the world of the living, these were years of change, wars, inventions, and declines. For Mike, it was merely a shift in the hues of light within the surrounding mist. Sometimes he would stand up, once every few "years," to exchange a word with Lady Meng, who continued to stir her bowl just as she always had.

He saw everything. His connection with his daughter was not severed by death. He watched as Willow lived a long, incredibly beautiful, and full life. He saw her joys and successes; he saw her first wrinkles, which she wore with pride. He saw her become a wise woman, the matriarch of a family, and how she passed on the memory of the "hero daddy" to her children, and then to her grandchildren. Mike felt every one of her successes like a warm ray of sun on his spectral skin. His love became her invisible shield: he protected her with a ghostly breath of wind when it was too hot, chased dark shadows from her bed when she was ill, and became that very comforting silence that came to her during life’s darkest nights. He was there when she closed her eyes for the last time, and he knew her path would be easy, for she was walking toward the light he had preserved for her.

And then there was Will.

Mike watched Will grow old. It was painful and beautiful all at once. He saw Will's hands—the same hands that once held a brush with such confidence—now covered in age spots and beginning to tremble. He saw the once-straight back of the artist bend under the invisible weight of lived years and unspoken words.

Will changed. He no longer painted Mike as that teenager from the basement. Now, his canvases were filled with something else. He painted light breaking through the fog. He painted bridges connecting shores that do not exist on any map. He painted meetings that never happened in reality but felt to him like an inevitable truth. Every stroke of Will’s brush was a prayer addressed to Mike, and Mike heard every single one.

Mike waited. He learned to love the void around him because it was no longer empty—it was filled with his patience and loyalty. He spoke with the Messengers about trivial things: the scent of rain in different dimensions, and what it meant to be human.

And then, one day—a day no different from thousands of previous "days" in this timelessness—the fog at the other end of the bridge suddenly shuddered. It wasn't the wind; it was a pulse of new energy entering the space.

Mike stood up instantly. His spectral heart, which he had long considered a frozen artifact of the past, suddenly skipped a beat and then began to thrum with such force that he felt the vibration through his entire body. The Messengers rose as well, drawing themselves up to their full height.

Far, far away, between two new figures escorting another soul, he saw a face he knew better than his own.

The man walked slowly. Very slowly. He leaned on an old wooden cane, and every step seemed to be an ordeal. His face was entirely aged, resembling parchment etched with the deep wrinkles of life experience. His hair was white and weightless, like the very fog surrounding the bridge. He looked incredibly tired of life—a life that had been long, perhaps even happy in some ways, but which always, until the very last second, lacked one single, most important detail.

But in this place, the rules of reality did not apply.

With every step the man took across the bridge, a true miracle of transformation occurred. The wrinkles on his face began to smooth out, as if under the gentle touch of invisible hands erasing years of exhaustion. The grayness gradually vanished, returning his hair to that same soft chestnut color Mike had once loved to ruffle. The old man’s shoulders straightened; the cane fell from his hands and dissolved into the mist before it even touched the stone. His gait became lighter, more confident. Time retreated here like a defeated enemy, giving back everything it had stolen over those long decades.

When only a few steps remained between them, it was no longer an old man standing before Mike. Before him stood a young man. The same Will Byers. The boy with those same large, slightly frightened, surprised, but incredibly gentle eyes that always looked directly into the soul. The same boy who had never ceased to be Mike’s only true home.

Mike took a step forward. He saw in Will’s gaze everything he himself knew: he saw that first red flower in the studio, saw the years of loneliness surrounded by paintings, saw the notebook found in a drawer with the final message. He saw how Will, having become a second father to Willow, walked her down the aisle in Mike’s stead, swallowing tears of pride and pain.

The Messengers behind Mike finally began to fade. Their tall silhouettes dissolved into the radiance emanating from the two reunited souls. Their mission was officially complete—the Paladin and his Cleric were together again. Lady Meng, standing by her table, gave a faint smile, picked up her clay bowl, and slowly walked into the fog, leaving them alone in this eternity.

Mike opened his mouth to say everything he had rehearsed for thousands of years in his head. He wanted to tell him about every day of waiting, about how proud he was of their daughter, about how he saw every stroke of every painting Will made. He wanted to tell him how ridiculous the Messengers looked in the back seat of his old car. He wanted to finally hear Will’s voice—not as a distant rustle of wind or an echo of memory, but as a real, living sound vibrating in his very heart.

"You made me wait," Mike finally said, and there was so much love in his voice that the fog around them began to glow with gold.

Will smiled—that same smile that had always been the beginning and the end of the world for Mike. "You were the one who said... that it wasn't hard for you to wait even a hundred years."

Mike took the final step and embraced him. It wasn't a spectral touch—it was the collision of two universes that had finally found their anchor. Ahead of them lay a very long conversation, thousands of stories they hadn't managed to live together on earth, and an entire eternity where there would be no more lilies, no more partings, and no more fear. Only the bridge, only them, and a path leading far beyond the fog, into the light they would finally share between the two of them.