Page 84 of Elemasters

“Go easy on him Lo,” Bailey said in her sweet timbre as she fell in step with them, adjusting her neon purple frilly skirt, “you know how easy he gets distracted. Especially when his brother’s around,”

Bailey nodded toward where Chris was standing, in front of the sign-up sheet for basketball try-outs on the other side of the lobby. He looked completely different than the last memory, and Dustin was forced to recall the growth spurt they both hit. He was much taller now, with a head of bleached golden blonde hair and broad shoulders. Usually, they’d be attached at the hip on the first day, but it seemed like Chris had been going out of his way to avoid Dustin since they got to school that morning.

After he was done signing up, Chris turned and briefly made eye contact with Dustin, offering him a nonchalant nod before slinging his backpack over his shoulder and heading off to find his locker.

Dustin remembered that moment vividly, much more than the other memories he’d been forced to relive. That was the first moment he truly noticed the distance that had grown between him and Chris. It wasn’t permanent, there would still be intermittent moments of warmth to come, they could never hate each other after all… but things definitely weren’t like they used to be.

Seeing all these things back to back made the message abundantly clear; while Dustin had been focused solely on the ways he’d been made responsible for absorbing Chris’s impact, he never truly realized how much Chris had felt… left behind. Abandoned. Treated like a human bomb instead of a person with feelings.

No, it didn’t make up for all the shit he’d put Dustin through, but it certainly made it more… complicated.

“Hello? Excuse me, Mr. Duck Butt, are you even paying attention?!”

The sudden child’s voice caused Dustin to turn around, seeing the kid version of himself impatiently tapping his foot.

“Hey, there you are. Sorry, I lost you in, well, all of this,”

“It’s okay, I think that’s the way out!” the kid pointed past him, where the high school lobby had now been replaced with yet another swirling portal of flames, this time pulsing a brilliant blue instead of hellish orange.

Chris had to be on the other side of that gateway.

“Alright little guy, hop on. We’re getting out of here,”

The kid hopped on Dustin’s back again, and he took a deep breath.

It was time to end this once and for all and finally pull Chris out of this hellscape.

Chapter 33

Alive Again

Sapphire firelight washed over Dustin like a peaceful wave the moment he stepped through the vortex. No heat came with it though, just a feeling of turmoil that made his stomach twist.

The space he found himself in… was a bedroom?

But it wasn’t just a bedroom, it was the one him and Chris used to share, back when Dustin’s current room was Charlotte’s home office. Everything was exactly as he remembered it; LEGOs spilled all over the floor like a crime scene, the rhythmic digital music of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Sega game humming in the background, the bunkbeds… oh man the bunkbeds! Identical in every way, except for the top bunk’s disheveled sheets, in sharp contrast to the pristine presentation of the bottom.

“Damn… I mean, dang,” Dustin corrected himself, remembering that he was carrying kid-Dustin on his back, “I thought this might get us out of here, but it looks like we just walked into another memory,”

“No, this is exactly where I needed you to come,” the kid hopped off, suddenly sounding… mature. Even with his squeaky voice, it was like he’d aged ten years, “this is where I’ve been hiding out. The only place that feels safe in all this bullshit,”

“Hiding out? What do you mean?”

The kid didn’t immediately reply. He just sat down, cross legged in front of the TV, staring at the pixelated White Ranger as he faced off against a purple goo monster. Then, without warning, flames started licking at the edges of his little overalls. Dustin immediately lurched forward, instinctively moving to douse the flames with something, but they consumed the boy’s body far too quickly. Within seconds, the flames grew larger, changing in shape rapidly until they finally blew out… leaving Chris, current 18 year old Chris, sitting in the kid’s place.

He was naked, thinning, hair unkempt…

But he was alive.

And Dustin could immediately sense the difference. This wasn’t a memory or a manifestation, and it damn sure wasn’t the emperor.

This was HIS Chris.

Not a word was spoken between them. They simply fell into each other, embracing so tight that it felt like they both might pop.

“It was you? The whole time? Why didn’t you just come find me?!” Dustin sobbed, his face full of Chris’s undyed roots as the words just spilled out.

“Any time I leave this place I turn into a fucking kid! The same shit happened to me during your Lotus Garden trial! One minute I was with the group, trying to yell out to you while you were drowning, and then I was a fucking kindergartener trapped in the water with you, screaming about wanting to go home!” Chris explained, his voice wavering as he tried to fight back his own tears. Instead of letting them fall, he just buried his face in Dustin’s shoulder, “I knew you’d come for me though. The second I told you to take the ring… I didn’t know how, but I knew you’d get here,”