One: Like you, I didn't fit in with the other children. Something was wrong with me. All the teachers and the doctors said I was... "Broken," they said. My parents thought a change of scenery, a fresh start in Hawkins, might just cure me. It was absurd. As if the world would be any different here. But then... to my surprise, our new home provided a discovery. And a new found sense of purpose. I found a nest of black widows living inside a vent. Most people fear spiders. They detest them. And yet, I found them endlessly fascinating. More than that, I found a great comfort in them. A kinship. Like me, they are solitary creatures. And deeply misunderstood. They are gods of our world. The most important of all predators. They immobilize and feed on the weak, bringing balance and order to an unstable ecosystem. But the human world was disrupting this harmony. You see, humans are a unique type of pest, multiplying and poisoning our world, all while enforcing a structure of their own. A deeply unnatural structure. Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket. A cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before. Wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die! Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for it all to be over. All while performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day. I could not do that. I could not close off my mind and join in the madness. I could not pretend. And I realized I didn't have to. I could make my own rules. I could restore balance to a broken world. A predator... but for good.
