Hellmartyr - Blog Posts

 𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           (hellmartyr​)

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆, 𝐈 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐈 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃, was what eddie would’ve said if his brain hadn’t flatlined. jaw rusted ajar by shock, his vengeance upended into an anemic stare. questions that were more sensation than language stacked themselves on his teeth, his tongue, leeching the dusty moisture from the back of his throat. his head wasn’t completely empty. there was something resembling a thought for a brief, crudely puerile moment when eddie’s suede eyes widened because chrissy cunningham remembered him. even in his state of oozing wounds, matted hair, and a complexion not unlike an autopsy.

      eddie was still playing catch up when chrissy’s arms interlocked around his torso. an instinctive arm swam around her, shocked by how close to nothing she felt against him. his protection amended itself into a firmer circle as her lament tumbled like tears down the chewed remains of his shirt.

      you’re not dead, his thawing tongue willed itself to say, not yet. as if on cue, an alien wail shattered the unnatural peace. pale surprise overshadowed by a sudden sharpness of narrowed eyes and iron-soaked resolve. the hard line of his lips bent at a grim angle at the shadows in the encroaching mist.

      an encouraging pat warned the girl of his intentions. ❝ come on, let’s get you inside. ❞ shuffling awkwardly, eddie eased chrissy into the station, gingerly rotating their position so that if any spawn of the upside down chose that moment to strike, it’d be forced to go through ed before it ever got a chance to even look at her.

      the door closed behind them with a bloated thunk. there were better odds finding the holy grail stashed in powell’s desk than a surface not covered in disemboweled rot. fearing he’d drop her, eddie settled chrissy in a chair that looked like a cramped piece of shit even without the upside down tinge. as eddie slipped his jacket around the despondent girl, he took the opportunity to take in the horror she’d been through.

      how was it possible for her to be even smaller than he remembered? her skin, a glass menagerie tinted by faded shades of livor mortis. and her eyes, maybe it was a trick of light straining through heavy motes. maybe it was because the last time eddie saw them was the last time anyone did. but eddie swore the twinkle that outshone gymnasium lights was still there. with ghost behind it, barricading the way between him and the girl hiding.

      any furniture not strapped to the ground by vines was dragged and deposited roughly against the door. eddie worked as quickly as his tremoring muscles allowed, always craning his neck to keep an eye on the object of his disbelief, replaying their one way exchange.

      was he real? he didn’t feel real, but he sure as shit felt alive. and — if you squinted — so did chrissy.

      panting from the strain of his task, the young man crouched in front of her, swallowing a dry knot of tension as he stumbled on what to say. because what the fuck do you say to someone murdered from the inside out? ❝ i’m, uh, i’m glad to see you too. ❞ despite the blood on his lower lip and the hellscape in the window, eddie smiled.

      realizing he was holding his breath, eddie flickered from side-to-side for a way to make her a little more comfortable. fastened to his back with medical tape was an outdoor first aid kit eddie scavenged from the drugstore. he was forced to clear out most of its contents, spoiled by the taint that permeated the upside down’s mimicry, leaving him with gauze, several bandages, and a tube of off-brand neosporin that passed the sniff test with skeptical colors. he needed to be careful retrieving its contents. a circular bite wound on his lower back was still runny, exploding with mauve-y pus if he touched it.

      placing the kit on a coaster of debris, eddie skittered to reclaim the treasonous ration from before. he returned, his joints ached as lowered himself again to meekly offer the can of campbell’s schlock to her.

      ❝ it’s safe to eat. i promise. just don’t look at it. ❞

forever ago, sometime during sophomore year, chrissy remembered an experiment she’d done in biology. for two months straight mr. stratner’s class had been drilling the ups and downs and insides and out of the human body and it had been a bumbling, awkward mess no matter what he did. but one wednesday, they’d turned to discussion of the heart. wonder of wonders, mr. stratner had lugged out one of the massive boomboxes from the a/v closet and plopped it on his desk wearing a well earned smirk. what followed was an experiment that turned out to be...fun. 

for almost 45 minutes the entire class experimented with the way music and sound affected the speed of a heartbeat. chrissy and her whole table bent over stopwatches, fingers on pulses and pencils flying. their smiles grew as 4/4 and 6/8 time signatures almost magically bloomed in the tattoo of their heartrates, responding to the music. thoughtful, melancholic strains of chopin eased their pulses to a tranquil putter while tchaikovsky and his cannons sent it sky high. a-ha, the doobie brothers, christopher cross, john waite, starship, spyro gyra, wynton marsalis, all with different rhythms but the same result; parallel rhythms. synchronicity. 

in the spiderweb-fragile moments between embracing what was left of eddie’s mirage, him grasping her back, and the eventual ripping of shrieks from somewhere too close by, there was silence. sweet, strange, then sour. the music of absence. emptiness. and chrissy’s heart paused to match that nothing rhythm. synchronicity in death, where nothing could truly exist. it was everything, everywhere. an ugly, inevitable peace. he’d promised my suffering would end. 

like a vhs struggling over a kink in its tape and then suddenly righting itself to rewind much too fast, time sped itself up again. the un-pause was quick but violent. only a blink and chrissy had been hastily rotated then ushered inside the police station. large hands were still firm over her arms, so she wasn’t going to fall, but she might as well have lost all sense of direction and balance. until a chair was under her. or she was on a chair. had the chair come to her or the other way around?

❝ ah - oh!  ❞  an unexpected face appeared out of nowhere. except it was just eddie, pale white, with muddy gray streaks. like the moon behind clouds. that was fine. five minutes ago she’d have wanted any friendly face at all and if - if only - leaping lizards why wouldn’t her heart rate go down? her breath was coming too fast and shallow, which didn’t calm the sloshing inside her head. all her presence of mind, melted. 

but....breathing. that was something only an alive person could do. eddie was breathing. he was. exhaled air was gusting around her ears as he adjusted something over her. unaware, shaking hands searched it out almost sans chrissy’s awareness or permission. looking down once her fingertips hit canvas, she registered a savaged jacket. 

then he was gone. a volley of thuds and clatters rent the air behind her, but the strawberry blonde didn’t turn to look for causes. instead, she shivered beneath a pile of army surplus as eddie barricaded every possible ingress point in the room, judging by the many slams and grunts in her peripherals. she’d help, but...what help would she really be? 

minutes crawled past. chrissy became one with the chair. behind her, legs of tables turned to splinters and desks became walls in lieu of any real barricade. the sound of metal denting peppered the air now and again, matched by the horrible squeaks of file cabinets digging into the floor with a last gasp of obstinance. 

nothing in hawkins ever did fold easily. 

and there eddie was again, this time at eye level and heaving like he’d forgotten about air during his rushed renovations. this wasn’t a dead man after all, she considered at long last, staring into the last real pair of eyes she’d seen before falling headlong into that...creature’s clutches. friendly then, friendly now. maybe more now because he was smiling. or giving his all in the effort. chrissy tried to offer him the same, although she had very little idea of what her face was doing. honestly, she might have started crying instead. it was hard to tell. maybe both. 

❝ th  —  ❞  her throat rebelled, spiraling her into a brief coughing fit. salt water kept getting in her mouth as she clumsily gulped down air. smiling and crying, then.  ❝ sorry. ❞  but he was skittering raccoonishly out of reach then back again, now proffering a raggedy can of goop. chrissy couldn’t exactly smell through her unattractively running nose, but she could imagine. her gut entire writhed and shrank away from the sight, petrified, but she commanded her shaking hands to reach for it anyway. inside looked like an extension of the vomitous wreath cloaking this nightmare land in every direction. the outside benignly announced “campbell’s”.

❝ thanks. i, um, don’t think i’m hungry, but thanks?  ❞  still, she clung to the aluminum as an anchor. unwanted as its contents might be, the gift she still understood.   ❝ so  —  you’re actually alive. right? you are? if you are, then i am.❞  teeth absently tugged at peeling skin across her lips, where another drop of salt water crept into the soft, red valleys and stung.  ❝ where are we? i don’t understand. what happened or how i got here. how did you get here?  ❞  one long, fierce swallow around a gordian knot inside her throat halted all progress, but not for long. even if she had to whisper to pry the words free. 

❝ is there a way to get out? ❞

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                              ( hellmartyr​ )

𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐋𝐀𝐊𝐄 with no intention of coming back. that’s how it felt listening to the violet-grey sadness that slowly flooded his insides with a dreaded sense of déjà vu. like listening to an old recording of his thoughts, spoken out loud in a crunchy, distorted voice. ideas eddie would’ve drowned in if wayne never took him in.

      calloused fingers curled into a loose fist. he had to, to keep from reaching over the barrier to hold her back from going any further. it wouldn’t be the first time they searched for each other in the dark, someone’s fingers feeling for a brush with skin that bore similar scars from the same place. eddie wanted nothing more than to be that reassurance again, but he hesitated. scared that if he moved too fast, whatever ledge chrissy was hanging onto would crumble.

      and who could blame her? not like eddie read her autobiography, but her life wasn’t hard to see when she wasn’t surrounded by faces with herculean expectations. chrissy cunningham’s picture perfect life was the exact reason vecna targeted her. a like a picture, it was a two dimensional facade that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. eddie first noticed tiny holes in his own assumptions when the unorthodox pair sat across from each other at a rickety picnic table. then the road trip when they were both supposed to be healthy … -er. yet sitting next to her for hours on end, chattering away, his dark eyes reflectively slipping from the road to her under an array of lightning. living in a drifter’s version of domesticity as the van hauled them ever closer to california. it was during those hours, destined to be carefree, that eddie learned laura cunningham had no right to be called a mom.

      ed didn’t want to answer. terrified of pushing her any further in a foreboding direction. seeing her eyes like the bottom of a well, unable to tell if it was the light or tears that made them shine. his mouth went cotton dry. ❝ a s-southpaw? ❞

      chris. the plea never cleared eddie’s throat, stuck like a rock in a hard place behind his tongue’s treacherous reply. it took several silent tries to dislodge it. when it did, her name scraped his throat like it grew claws. eddie felt like he was floating, even as the polyester sheets grazed his skin. he’d wanted the quiet to last longer, preferring it to hang over them like distended as he tried to figure out chrissy’s destination to prepare himself to deny their arrival.

      instead eddie cornered himself to think on the fly. panicking in the seconds between his and her respond with race to dredge up every synonym and tidbit he knew about lefties. he knew some people had a religious hang-ups. and it wasn’t too long ago teachers were still allowed to crack a leftie’s hand with a ruler, encouraging them to switch. that’s what wayne said happened to his brother, and that al went home everyday with a teacher’s brand till the bastard finally dropped out of high school.

      thinking of his old man sharing any similarity with chrissy made eddie’s stomach flip. if she was a mess, how fucked was  he ?

truth be told, chrissy had asked the question with no real expectation of an answer. the query was as rhetorical as it was sincerely curious. there was no way of knowing if eddie would catch her drift, especially not with sleep dancing just out of reach in the corners of her bedroom. but, not unlike the first day the two had made real conversation, looking at each other less like classmates and more like friends, eddie munson had so valiantly offered up anything he hoped might be a solution for what ailed her. a habit that became a consistent phenomenon from the previous march, through the last gasps of their school year, over the summer, all the way to the first anniversary of their deaths. or if it wasn’t death, no life had ever felt like swimming through the humidity-choked air of hawkins’ moldy, parasitic mirror, every step seemingly futile. even if the upside down and death couldn’t accomplish the same goal, they left the same scars.

the cheerleader had been all alone in that purgatory, left to suffer the consequences of mere happenstance  —  a not so miraculous resurrection. until eddie munson appeared. at school she’d felt forgotten among the aftermath, the real her with her real twisted limbs and real blank eyes left behind in the rubble. until she saw eddie in the hallway. since then, they’d left each other alone only by necessity. 

of course that’s where eddie’s head was. to assume he’d do anything else but pull her back home with oaths of understanding was honestly stupid. she should have that part of him memorized now, just like everything else he let her see. it’s why she knew the twitching in the valley beyond the pillow mountain was a contained urge to reach for the hand she’d dangled too closely in reach. 

evidently, he wasn’t holding it against her much if the next thing she felt herself do was snort at what might have been a joke.

all the stacks of emotion building a dam in her throat abated in brief as her body shook with silent laughter, no sobs or sniffles in sight. chrissy considered herself the kind of girl who cried regularly, although she never began her night hoping to curl into a ball and gasp her way to the middle of the mattress only to woozily drop off and wake up sore and salty. so, maybe this was a good replacement. even after her worst day in a long while, and that was saying something considering the spring break depression.

her lingering left hand flapped at the wrist just slightly over their all-but-pillow-fort. beyond it somewhere was his, and she aimed to fish it out again in a burst of watery grin-fueled nerve. 

                  ❝ no. i mean - yeah, that is one name for it. but not the one i’m talking about ❞  a deep sigh whistled through chrissy’s nose before her thoughts lined themselves up again in a neat, sensible row. only this way could she make him understand her debt to him and her fear for him. 

finally, softly,  ❝ sinister. ❞  the shape of the word hung in the air like the ghost of a tattered highway billboard, no context left but a single word. yellowed lights and all. if they looked out her tiny bedroom window, they might even see one.  ❝ lefties are sinister. because being left handed means you’re unlucky. or that you’re weak. sometimes both. most of the time, actually. and, that.... ❞  two hard swallows did nothing to help her breath and the harsh sound of chrissy helplessly clearing her throat seemed to shatter what remained of their cocoon.  ❝ that there’s darkness inside. ❞  

it was so easy to imagine when it shouldn’t have been: every lethal critique her mother levied against her, the thousand faults chrissy bore like ill-fitting clothes along with disgusted or jealous glances that cut truer than shattered glass on bare feet, all streaming from eddie’s face, eddie’s eyes, eddie’s mouth. an imagined nightmare questing to outpace the memory of vecna showing her why death was altogether better than the agony of living. 

                   ❝ i just don’t want to be the next person that hurts you, eddie. that’s what i’m scared of. ❞  all the tears she’d been pushing back finally crested the surface of grey ocean eyes, drizzling down her cheeks to splash mutely on an over-squished pillow. between burning droplets she could only offer a pitiful whisper in addendum,  ❝ i don’t want you to hate me. ❞

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           (hellmartyr​)

you do realize you don’t have to do this alone right ? — @greenscrunchy / confrontations

❝ 𝐈’𝐌 𝐍𝐎𝐓, 𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐌𝐄. ❞ the dial clicked as eddie tuned to channel 6 before placing the plastic-sheathed walkie in chrissy’s hand, ❝ just, from the comfort of the van. ❞

      his 1970s fossil-guzzling monstrosity was a shabby stand-in for her hi-tech mobile unit cousin. no reinforced chassis, no double-armored moulding, no supercomputers with crash resistant casing. and her engine? oh, her engine, a chain smoking banshee with tuberculosis on speed. yet for all her inorganic flaws, she was an ornery steel heifer who never failed to bulldoze eddie out of a pinch.

      the hollow bumps popped underfoot as eddie manically pranced from one corner to its parallel. he rifled through several pouches before locating a tablet shoved into the abyss of an overstuffed duffel. speakers chirped in greeting as the handheld booted through a logo to the menu. a few taps populated the screen with an empirical application with a plain royal background. the mechanic set the device beside the young woman before tampering with the componentry on the shoulder strap of his vest. twin beady red lights blinked to life on the front and back of his right shoulder. a high definition projection of the van’s insides engulfed the tablet screen, mimicking eddie’s jostling.

      ❝ you can switch views. be the eyes in the back of my head, ❞ indicating the navigational options in the lower corner, ❝ there’s a three centimeter blind spot on either side. not sure it’s darwin award winning, but, uh, something to keep in mind. ❞

      hesitation burned like bile in the gullet. chris wasn’t a meek little fawn ready to drop at the first sign of struggle. there was no questioning her intelligence either. she was leagues beyond his bell curve but even the brightest could be overwhelmed under maddening pressure. and it wasn’t just tasks, he was asking for her to have a hand in his safety. shit was bound to go south, and if it went far enough to t-bone the equator, eddie wasn’t keen on the young woman feeling responsible if he was ripped apart.

      snow compacted with a crunch as ed leapt down from the tail. keys jangled as he slid them towards her foot along with further instructions, ❝ keep the doors locked. fuck it, even it’s me. i knock more than three times, something’s wrong. you get to the wheel and just, ❞ his lip curled inward uncomfortable, hand frozen mid-gesture as eddie considered how request she leave him for dead. he settled on a halted hand-chop and wan smile, ❝ drive. ❞

      eddie was about to seal the doors when an eerie cry humbled the dense night air. his spine jammed into an uneasy curve. nothing moved aside from the motes of snow in the moon’s bleached reflection bouncing off the frozen earth. the low timber carried overhead, slipping through the trees like phantom waves. nerves estranged, eddie fished a pistol from his belt and offered it to her, grip first, ❝ live rounds. safety off. don’t go for the head, aim for the gut. ❞

                  ❝  eddie munson, that’s not what i meant and you know it! don’t leave me in here, ❞  but this was the munson way, to dig his heels in to the point of no return. the mad metalhead had pure concentrated decision writ across his narrow face and it frightened chrissy more than she’d be willing to put to words. at least, not in front of eddie. not when he’d spent so much of his prior time around her ensuring he didn’t fumble his way across all of her tripwires at once. she couldn’t very well tell him that after months of pure care and concern, he was waltzing his way through all of her worst fears like a blindfolded ballerina dancing through a bank vault robbery: being left completely alone in a dangerous place, being left behind in general, being stuck IN THE DARK, being told things were fine when they weren’t, being a person she liked doing something unquestioningly stupid, and the list could have rambled on. 

numb disbelief forced her to watch every sharp movement eddie made while booting up the ranch’s surveillance tablet and syncing it to his shoulder-mounted camera. this wasn’t helping. all chrissy could associate with her bonus eyes was a 360 degree (minus six centimeters) view of all the bad bad bad that was surely waiting for ed out in the blackness. 

                    ❝  great, i can watch you get mauled, ❞  she muttered down at the screen with its heralding rotating ‘SWR’ in the top right corner. mocking her. such a paragon of safety and in its name eddie munson was about to rank-and-file like a tin soldier out into a field of unknowns containing creatures as big as those four-legged star wars machines and worse. at least those armored walkers had no teeth, and the institution both she and eddie worked for dealt with very real quadrupeds that absolutely did. littered with teeth of all kinds, they were, and more deadly than hunks of moving metal.

all the accessories and steps to go with them were supposed to make her feel active in whatever this little expedition was meant to be, but chrissy’s tongue tangled around the truth that it was making it worse. oh so much worse and creating a bigger sense of helplessness than mad-eye munson had set forth to author. but here they were and by the time keys hit the crumbling rubber floormats, she was done.

                   ❝  so i have to sit and wait until something with two legs and two wings knocks on the window?? eddie, you’ve got to be kidding. don’t you dare close that door, don’t you  ——— ❞   exactly then the call of the wild trumpeted its primal prerogative and all words ceased in favor of divining the source and distance away. absolutely impossible within the copse of trees eddie had parked them, but painfully human instinct demanded they try. eddie’s confounding response was to, once more, arm her instead of himself. 

                   ❝  you want me to try and shoot something? ❞  she squeaked.  ❝  nuh-uh, not happening. ❞  the seatbelt pinning her to the faded front seat flew apart, released into god’s hands now. chrissy cunningham would not just be van loitering like a fluffy little duck in a kiddie pool while 1) terrifying monsters circled her without her knowledge and 2) eddie traipsed into the jaws of death without at least a little backup. the matter was settled in her book.  ❝  i’m coming with you before you’re too far into the next clearing and realize maybe four eyes are better than two. okay? ❞  with great haste she gingerly slapped the pistol across the empty seat and back to eddie’s vicinity, all too eager to get it away, away.  ❝  just... don’t make me use that.  ❞

the air was cold, actually cold in hawkins for december. chrissy could be fooled into thinking that the place where she’d grown up was a place that made sense, where right side up really was the right side, and seasons were as black and white as they were supposed to be. but that illusion couldn’t be anything but fleeting. california fit more like a home for the past five months than hawkins ever had, even though it was fractionally warmer than what she was used to in winter, to the point that the beginning of december hadn’t felt real there until she’d arrived back in hawkins. where all the old, familiar places had shrunk into pitiful, sad imitations of what younger chrissy lived with so willingly.

there was one last place that still managed to make her feel welcome when all else fell through, one place that felt innately warm: the munson stoop. an emphatic middle finger to the blustery chill shooting shards of wracking frigidity through chrissy’s coat. eddie would be proud to know.

he was why she was there in the first place, rocking on her toes after knocking at the door. it had taken a minute to work up enough assurance that this wasn’t a mistake before her knuckles hit metal, but it happened. she knocked. and now she’d wait for the door to open and for just the right greeting to float down from her brain when it did. 

except when it did open, chrissy stalled. 

five long months of nothing but notes and letters and phone calls since summer ended, and there was eddie munson just a few inches away. in the flesh.

                      ❝ hi? ❞  what a way to sound the opposite of confident, but when chrissy meant so much, almost too much, by her announcement-free arrival, it was hard to know what to say first.  ❝ i hope that....   —  oh, forget it. merry christmas, eddie. i thought i’d try to surprise you. ❞

                       SURPRISE! merry christmas, @hellmartyr​ !

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           ( hellmartyr​ )

you deserve better than this … better than me … — @greenscrunchy / angsty prompts

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐃𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐔𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐒 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐒.

      at first eddie thought her sadness was a detail in a dream. a specter of the subconscious, summoned by whatever bullshit mayhem his beer-battered brain was slathering across his cortex. bad trip without the high, when senses got so convinced that reality was just a suggestion right up until your eyes split open and the lucid imagery turned a slippery mess.

      awareness emerged from a cloudy pool, prodding floaty nerves with tingling pins and needles. chrissy was a silent echo ringing in his ears, her words too old to be strung together were now indiscernible water drops dispersed into the corners like shades.

      dark eyes fluttered open to an even darker room. a backlighting of blue cut through the gap between the curtains and the window. the back of his hand, stationed beside his nose, soaked up the cobalt. eddie’s fingers retracted from the temptation to reach over and prove to himself that his friend was still asleep. that the lonely lie had not been real, just a figment of a morbid imagination. but the sour knot in his gut warned that the moment his warmth met hers, she’d betray them both with a wince.

      ❝ whose voice told you that? ❞ he asked the deep blue, ❝ vecna’s? ❞ venom coated the name. two thousand miles was not enough to stall a fresh the anger felt each time eddie recalled his unseen enemy. the lich survived, the chorus of heartbeats buried in his honeycomb scars reminded him that the promise of retribution at the climax of a hero’s tale was a fantasy, not a guarantee.

      crisp sheets rustled as the young man twisted around and peered at the soft outline balled up on the other side of the barrier. eddie hovered, searching for an explanation too private to see.

      ❝ yours? ❞ gingerly he sat up to project his plea over the fort, ❝ chris? ❞

      the headboard creaked against his weight as eddie propped himself against the frame. his perspective switched between the popcorn ceiling and the vortexed donald duck on his nightshirt.

      ❝ y’know, for a really long time, the only friends i had were in books. i, uh, i think middle school was the first time i hung out with someone and not because we were sent to the principal’s office together. so, can you level with me? because this isn’t exactly my field of expertise, ❞ the back of his skull clocked the wall as eddie fixated plaster clusters above, finding cohesive shapes were there was none, ❝ and fuck if i know what can be better than the best. ❞

a turned back was small defense from the wave of honesty soaking the darkened bedroom. chrissy had balled herself around a swelling hurricane of inferiority masked by a now faded silhouette of tweety bird, its cheery yellow emblazoned across her nightshirt faded into black shadow. her formerly upward mood had faded with an equal ferocity earlier that afternoon. being hopeful, even happy, something like truly happy, around eddie had become nearly as easy as breathing. natural. but it was as easy and natural to watch her bright little world closing in around her after listening to a crazed and caustic telephone message from none other than laura cunningham.

if nothing else, laura was consistent. there wasn’t a word in the message chrissy hadn’t been pierced by a thousand time before. she knew the cadence of her mother’s derision almost better than the sound of her own private thoughts. but it wasn’t a mother’s ire that bounced around her mind at the speed of a rogue basketball, or even a mother’s doubt.

                        ❝  mine. i say so. ❞

after all his kindness that he’d brought to her doorstep, this is what she had to offer. doubt.

                        ❝ i’m not just saying that, eddie. you –  ❞  god, what was the point? what was the point of her, being such a bottomless pit on whom generosity was wasted because she couldn’t even grasp it long enough for a chance at absolution? honestly, she must not deserve a drop if she was as watertight as a sieve. 

                        ❝ you came all this way and i’m a mess. ❞  the vise of her jaw clapped shut as how she truly sounded dawned upon her. belated good sense whispered the danger of what eddie might think she meant, right after the words marched out of her mouth.  ❝ scratch that. having you here…. it’s more than anyone’s done before? i guess i feel awful for wanting you to stay but i really don’t want you to leave. ❞

all the sequestered pain she’d been carrying like buried shards of glass since eddie arrived flayed her insides on the way out, dragging stringy regrets and shriveled, acid-burnt hopes along with them. a piteous river of entrails with so many shameful secrets on display, knotted beyond any hope of detangling and none of her tossing and turning in the middle of the night would sort her out. 

in the midst of her disquiet, chrissy eased to her other side where the pillow wall waited. her stupidest idea possibly ever. just over the top she could see eddie’s head, but that was all. it was a protection and a taunt all at once. a joke she'd cracked at her own expense. her left hand lifted almost without her permission to skate the top of the farcical wall and tug it down, just a little, to pull eddie’s presence a tiny bit closer. maybe this way he could hear what she was really trying to say in between all her bouts of lunacy. 

                        ❝ do you know what left handed people are called?  ❞

if she were completely honest, chrissy hadn’t expected colorado in the summer to rain quite so much.

a riotous violet and crimson sky wrung down torrents of raindrops that lost their speed halfway down the hatch, landing on pavements and roofs with tepid, pathetic splats once they met resistance. trapped june heatwaves sizzled beneath clouds of steam that rose all the way up to the motel’s second floor window. it must have been an hour ago that eddie’s van had skidded into the parking lot before the storm rolled over them with a vengeance, effectively trapping them below liquid curtains of pelting rain.

since then chrissy had opted to change out of her sodden clothes and into much drier ones. one end of her duffel became soaked during the mad dash for the reservation office, but not enough to be disastrous. she was, however, still wringing out her hair when she joined eddie in looking out their window. 

the room’s two armchairs had been hauled together to make a kind of enclosed bench that could almost pass for cozy if it weren’t for the startling palette of threat-coloured weather on the other side of the wall. chrissy gingerly lowered herself into the empty seat across from eddie, collecting all her limbs tightly together to save room, though the edges of her flip flops still knocked against his feet and her arms skated against his jeans whenever she made a slight movement. but it wasn’t uncomfortable. it was just.....still. 

a peal of thunder rolled almost lazily through the passing clouds, followed by scattered electric pitchforks visible for long moments. “god’s bowling,” her dad used to theater whisper with a grin. in between noise and light the harshest downpours seemed to have moved along, changing to a thoroughly soaking but altogether gentler rhythm.

already thick humidity grew heavier with a deeply pocketed dread chrissy hadn’t dared examine since the close of last spring. there was nothing wrong with the motel - or the company. the culprit responsible for all the goosebumps pocking chrissy’s skin was nowhere to be found in the room. no, it was the carbon copy of hell outside, in the color of the clouds, the lightning. in the distant crash of thunder that sounded like the shout of an angry supernatural entity.

chrissy shut her eyes, but neither the dark omens of sound around her nor the weather could be erased. they dwelt in her own private darkness, too, subsumed in forced surrender. when her lids flew open again, the comfort of reality was almost nil.

                     ❝ it looks like the upside down. ❞  this was supposed to be a grand vacation: chrissy and eddie’s cross country adventure to rival the best buddy movie of all time, and in one burst it felt like running again. away from monsters they’d never been taught to fight because no one believed a place like the upside down could exist. but the two of them ran. and ran and ran and ran to get anywhere close to free. 

the air kicked on, disturbing the fine hairs on the back of chrissy’s neck. if reality became anymore flimsy, she might've thought it was vecna breathing down her neck again, running his claws across her cheeks and telling her don’t cry, don’t cry. 

it was only a week, but it was the longest year of my life.           /          @hellmartyr​ 

don’t cry, chrissy. 

a pale hand snaked forward to root around in the dim room for one of eddie’s hands, gripping stiffly when she found one. were she with anyone else it might be crossing a line, but she and eddie were well past that. they’d had to be in order have a crapshot at coming out of the void alive. some days, it felt like part of their very souls had been seared off and scraped away down there, with no hope to regain what was lost. no one else seemed to understand that but the person everyone thought had killed her.

                    ❝ yeah, it felt way longer. ❞  like a lifetime, if she was frank.  ❝ i still have the nightmares. sometimes. i don’t know why i thought they would go away after a while, but they haven’t. i still see the bats. i see him, ❞  she heard herself rattle aloud.  ❝ for a long time, i think i’m okay and then....and then i can’t stop thinking about it. like i’m afraid real life won’t be real and i’ll be gone again. ❞  the hand wrapped around eddie’s began to tremble but she kept holding.  ❝ ....do you still have the nightmares? ❞  does he still scare you, too?

𝔼𝔻𝔻𝕀𝔼 𝕄𝕌ℕ𝕊𝕆ℕ'𝕊 𝕄𝕀𝕏𝕋𝔸ℙ𝔼  X  𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒸𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓎   ( @hellmartyr​ )

i just want you to know who i am ( iris - goo goo dolls )  /  chase the water racing from the sky ( under a glass moon - dream theater )  /  i can tell that you notice all the things i keep down ( free them - one ok rock )  /  city in the rearview and nothing in the distance ( next in line - walk the moon )  /  i promise that i’ll never let you feel alone ( won’t go - snuffles )  /  tell me your love is still only mine ( eddie my love - the chordettes )

                      ❝ i think you’d make a great cheerleader. ❞  chrissy sensed the oncoming blink before it ever surfaced and plunged forward, oddly insistent on her point getting across. she’d envisioned this whole mischievously alluring setup for too long not to lay it out for him. continuously warming air fluttered in puffs at her back, almost like taps that encouraged her to keep going.  ❝ it’s like this: your voice carries without you even trying. you’re really tall and could put cheerleaders on your shoulders. you’re a musician so your rhythm is perfect. and you’re always..... ❞  finally, finally, she could present her own cheeky reference to the first  meeting here at their table, the pièce de résistance. with some pride in the perk of her chin, chrissy cunningham flopped her arms from side to side as wildly as possible without colliding against him or herself or the tabletop below, threatening splinters aplenty if she so much as considered bumping it.  ❝ .....doing that naturally. like you’re always excited! we wouldn’t even have to give you pom-poms. ❞

        ❝  well, it’s not good, but it’s a reason.   ❞             /           @hellmartyr​

                      ❝ they are too good reasons! think about it. you’d be such a hit at pep rallies. ❞   of course she’s kidding. him worming his way onto that court for a rally was more likely than her ever acing french. and she’d tried.

far above, afternoon sunlight grew shy behind passing clouds. chrissy drew herself in tighter, finished with her joking but still wearing a happy grin. summer really was coming despite stubborn chills from an unfinished and bitter spring. she was so grateful. for a safe place like this, namely.  ❝ plus......you’re naturally encouraging. did you know that? that’s probably the most important part about being on the squad. ❞

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ 𝔼𝔻𝔻𝕀𝔼 𝕄𝕌ℕ𝕊𝕆ℕ,                               (hellmartyr​)

𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐃𝐀 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐘 𝐀𝐖𝐎𝐊𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃-𝐒𝐎𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐃𝐀𝐘. three bodies fished from the east end of the bay were breaking news on every local station. each of the gruesome trio were in varying stages of decomposition, alluding to an unspeakable verdict that the beautiful berkeley-oakland shoreline had been a dumping ground for some time. images of police boats, thick-bodied men in wetsuits, and figures cocooned in white shrouds looped the screen as a done-up broadcaster delivered a sobering report in vivacious fuchsia lipstick. kgo’s on-site reporter was interviewing the most hang ten looking dude. he wore a white crop top with pismo beach airbrushed across a muted neon sunset, homebrew cut-offs, and imported havaianas. teal clubmasters pinned back his fluffy blond fringe. the carefree nature of his taste failed to belay the anxiety clearly etched on his tanned face. one of his arms was wrapped protectively around the shoulders of a distraught brunette fastened close to his side.

      ❝ we got another night stalker on our hands, ❝ an unvarnished mix of mission brogue and inland drawl crumbled into the mic, ❝ who’s protecting the girls in this town, you know? like, were they students? sucks, man. it really does. say bye to your mom and dad, come out here to the california dream, pay all this tuition, then get butchered and dumped like your dreams meant nothing. who thinks they got the right to do this, you know? it’s scary. who’s gonna protect these girls? ❞

      the reporter’s response was robustly flaccid. she was there for the ratings game. she lived somewhere safe like albany or palo alto, seemingly out of a killer’s reach.

      ❝ it’s just awful, ❞ the woman beside the surfer boy whimpered as the mic was unceremoniously dropped into her face. fingers painted tulip pink cupped around her mouth to hide her grisly expression of heartbreak. her voice, so lost in the croak of sobbing, nearly drowned in the howl of onshore wind.

      leaned over a counter not too far from where the interview took place was eddie, fingers intertwined in a pensive barrier as tragedy once again surrounded him. the interviewer, the interviewees, the human wall that collected around them protectively, the police, the bay area denizens — they’d all believe this was done by a man. a man with his wires crossed. one who only formed a connection with someone when he watched the light fade from their eyes.

      chances are they were right. the capacity for great evil rested with mankind. and the atrocities didn’t stop at the boundaries of reality. spring of last year proved there was more to human wickedness than loose screws scattered on the floor. the unfathomable was real, organic, breeding and feeding off happily boring lives. its intentions ran deeper than cruelty, illness, or a maddening cocktail of two.

      that night in wayne’s trailer was a floodgate. the laws of nature were placebo and the truth was far more frightening than anything fantasy could conjure. vecna was real. angry red reminders across his abdomen and jaw evoked how much closer humanity was to hell than heaven. he was no leviathan in the sea or ancient being tethered to a shell, but a mortal man who wanted the world to burn the inside out. and if that was truth, what other unspeakable things hungered for warm bodies?

      low-bearing shadows skittering across the road, dark shapes beneath the waves, glittering eyes watching from the corner of an empty room.

      the lich’s curse, had it followed them to california? — the beating of a thousand cold, black wings, the hot red sting of teeth a thousand more — had they brought him here?

      a quiet shuffle behind the bedroom door broke eddie free of his nightmarish daydream. the joyous sound of tom getting pulverized by jerry replaced the macabre as he quickly flipped the channel.

      news to be shared when the day wasn’t so fresh and cherry bright.

baby, it’s halloween ! — @greenscrunchy / phoebe bridgers

      foreboding so heady moments before vanished without a trace as chrissy exited their room. how was it that she outshined the autumnal sun sneaking in from the balcony and sent eddie’s heart skimming across his ribs like a skipping stone. a bear-like yawn, a siren song, messy hair holier than a halo.

      his own expression lit up as eddie unwittingly straightened his posture. ❝ ah, there she is. my favorite ghoul emerges from her crypt. just in time for a morning bite. ❞ he emphasized the last word with an exaggerated gnash of teeth. a playfully extravagant gesture indicated the souvenir plate on the table, its offerings awaiting her inspection.

      a medley of blackberries and grapes lined the one edge of the plate. cradled in its crescent, a flapjack fashioned from bisquick and pumpkin purée, carved to reflect a jack-o-lantern. triangle eyes. a serrated grin. it even had a stem with a mint leaf jabbed in its shoulder to give it a flair of color and authenticity. it was very — not convincing. the image in his metal head was much clearer on paper than on bread.

      ❝ happy halloween, scream queen, hopefully breakfast is, uh, less trick and more treat. ❞ teased the smarmy hinge of his grin, ❝ no promises. ❞

Saturday, October 31, 1987

Halloween today.

I actually woke up slowly. That’s kind of a feat, I think, since the bed’s cold. And it must be a little later because the sun is in my eyes again, but I’m not sure I mind, even if I did leave the blinds open overnight. 

chrissy blinked through the last dozy fog of her half-asleep thoughts, unorganized mumbles eventually fading in favor of whatever daring breakfast preparations distant dings of silverware and thunks of bowls seemed to hint at. with remarkable ease, she found herself relaxing into the soundtrack of existence in the tiny, two room apartment. 

There’s so much noise coming from the kitchen. Eddie must be up and letting his mad scientist side take over. Him and the TV aren’t exactly working together but something about it sounds nice. Homey. I love that. 

chrissy sighed toward the ceiling, but it was a whoosh of happy effort against a fluttering of autumn sunbeams. light funneled through her tiny bedroom window, its makeshift curtain rod festooned with a gamely attempt at bloody handprints on ripped white undershirts masquerading as curtains. honestly, it was a little silly; from across the room the handprints looked more like balding chrysanthemums, their optimistic magenta shade not quite so sanguine up close or far away. no passersby taking more than a split second to look at the boo-on-a-budget would catch a lasting fright. which, as far as chrissy was concerned, was perfectly acceptable.

the hiss of something hot swapping surfaces and the surge of a breaking news jingle on their pocket-square sized television brought the threads of her wakefulness together. mental diary abandoned, bare feet hit the chilly floor in determined finality. days began with or without her, no matter what season, so it was best to break out ahead before it got the best of her. or before eddie munson got the best of the galley. 

eddie’s would-be culinary exploits were often more mis than adventure despite all the attentive enthusiasm befitting a michelin star chef. sure, he was giving their now shared kitchen a run for its money in terms of resilience (and their budget, watched over faithfully by herself, a run for its money in terms of cleaning product costs). yet the strawberry blonde couldn’t find much will to play stingy with her space when her effusive metalhead derived such joy from a task so mundane. 

yes, it was going to be a good day when the tricks befitting a halloween weekend were far more frightful than the thought of breakfast treats. that was to say, not at all. 

chrissy really hadn’t expected such a bold greeting to slip from her mouth on the tail end of a yawn. a year ago, she might not even have been capable. but away the pet name flew and her excitement with it, making a mad dash for the spark in eddie’s eyes. embarrassment folded under contentment at the vision of a cloud of frizzy brown hair leaning over the counter, snapping his jaws like a creature of the night. nothing had ever been sweeter. in the spirit of impulsivity chrissy pranced across their sliver of living room and past the counter to wind tight arms around his middle. ❝ g'morning. ❞  the air seemed to soften around them even further, melting all the essence of living down to the warmth she clung to. eddie’s shirt was soft when she pressed her forehead into it — soft and warm and smelling like pancakes. like home.

                        ❝ let’s see. ❞  hope rose with her spirits and she burrowed her way under his arm to peek at the masterpiece beyond. comfy as eddie was, his torso was in the way.

                         ❝ aww, he’s got big teeth! and a stem! i love him. thank you.... ❞  an arm snuck forward to snag three grapes, all of which chrissy popped into her mouth at once. she allowed herself the time it took to finish chewing slowly before letting the resident artist go with a squeeze in favor of admiring his presentation.  ❝ the pumpkin was a good idea, too - i can smell it. did you make yourself one or are you going to help me with this one? ❞

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ      𝔼𝔻𝔻𝕀𝔼      𝕄𝕌ℕ𝕊𝕆ℕ,                              (hellmartyr​)

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐓 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍. no sun, no moon — only venomous strands of electrified lifeblood. hours didn’t shift as they should, and the creatures reflected the restlessness of their cruel dimension. loathsome howls haunted the winds in immeasurable rotations. with no natural period of respite, eddie divided his routine into two cycles: get shit done and an intermittent spate of z’s.

      sleep was a treat that rarely went uninterrupted. shrieks from the sky peeled open his eyes and sounds he didn’t recognize stalked the periphery of his tenuous sanctuaries. blood-curdling shadows were a ruthless reminder that nowhere in hell was safe from the devil. munson didn’t dare breathe as he waited for the strange chittering to pass, holding the warlock so tightly his joints cramped.

      eddie never let go of her, even when he did manage to spirit away some sleep. no matter how long the man was out or in what position he awoke, his guitar’s twisted sister never strayed from his hand.

      a rest fast wasn’t the only flagellation he inflicted upon himself. his eyes opened to a sharp pain in his gut. eddie curled into a ball, the warlock twanged as she was crushed into his abdomen.

      the two things a survivor needed most were just as likely to kill him. he didn’t want to remember the last time he ate, and felt sick just thinking about cracking open another ungodly can of something parading itself as edible. but the tight ache could no longer be ignored.

      keeping parallel to the thoroughfares, it was a steady crawl into hawkins proper. the rhythmic crunch of rotten leaves under his sneakers turned to grit as he picked his way over black, pulsating veins that overlapped the butchered segments of asphalt. from there it was a reluctant beeline to the canned goods. nothing in front or too far back, somewhere in the middle where the least amount of tainted air settled. his stomach objected as eddie slipped his not-so-fresh catch into his vest pocket.

      distant thunder and the soft rustle of his gear bumping against his steps set the rhythm of his march to the police station. vines covered the parking lot like pulsating cracks in the concrete. eddie hopscotched towards the back of the building to the spore-covered dumpster. his arms wobbled as he hoisted himself onto the lid. sneakers scrapped the molded brick as he clambered onto the roof.

      on one end there was an access door that led to the ground level. completely useless of course. vines cavorted in the stairwell, bulging into a grotesque neural network of rot as they smothered each other in vacuous greed. with no super powers to speak of, munson abandoned the route, turning his attention instead to the whirlybird. the damn thing looked more like a mushroom, it’s galvanized steel covered in a crust that glistened in the brackish light.

      eddie cracked his fingers and carefully tipped it aside to reveal a crumbling system beneath. he removed his guitar, lowering her first into the insulation before following her down with a jostle. despite the tight fit, eddie had enough room to army crawl through a decadent perfume of interdimensional asbestos and spores.

      the scattered remains of the demobat he killed during his previous visit were putrefied puddles. a ghastly stench interlocked with the moisture in the back of his throat. jesus christ, he could taste it; a pungent sweetness that tested the strength of his stomach. eddie pressed his mouth into his arm, stifling a cough as he dragged himself away as quickly as he dared.

      for the better part of an hour, eddie searched for a way down. it was a grueling process, one he’d been forced to back out of multiple times. the spoiled air was suffocating, forcing him to breath with his mouth open, which in turn made him vulnerable to swallowing something that turned his insides out. that shit was just the cherry on top too. during one attempt, he almost lost consciousness. which put a fear in the man so bad he stayed away for the equivalent of several days. even the allure of a shotgun failed to shake it.

      suddenly, a ray of gloomy light illuminated a small flotilla of dust motes several feet ahead. it took a moment for his eyes to register what they were seeing. never before had eddie made it this far. a feverish zing spread from his heart to the rest of his body as the young man rustled closer. a rutted cleft in the ceiling, not big enough for him to squeeze through without a little help.

      he maneuvered the teeth of his spearhead and sawed at the disintegrating plaster. as pieces loosened, eddie broke them off by hand and piled them on the side. by the time he was finished, sweat dripped from the strands of hair sticking out from his bandana. his head felt like it was about to tailspin, but an unwitting smile kept the young man steady as he looked down into the police station.

      now there’s a sight a munson never thought he’d be thrilled to see.

      first came the warlock, descending like a fallen angel from a cloud of insulation foam. then her guitarist. he didn’t descend so much as topple when his fingers slipped. sneakers squeaked as eddie landed awkwardly. he teetered on the edge of his balance, but caught himself before he went sideways straight into a cluster of tendrils.

      sour saliva coated the dry rush of his throat. eddie spared himself a moment of relief before he fished the can out of his pocket. with a scoff, he spotted the cursive c poking out from a film of sludge.

      ❝ so, we meet again. ❞ munson remarked dryly as he cleaned the top off on his sleeve. he angled his spear and carefully punctured the can, rotating slowly to preserve the precious contents. anticipation coated his dry mouth in a harsh brine as he precociously caught the serrated edge of the lid with his thumb. eddie hissed, jerking his thumb back as a bead of blood formed on the tip. quickly, he stuck the wound in his mouth. immediate revulsion at the taste of the grime on his skin, but stifling a gag-reflex was preferable to letting bloodscent loose in the air.

      frustration surged up from the depths of all he’d been through. pain that refused to dissipate from the infection spreading on his abdomen, the hopeless determination to keep going without a chance of actually seeing his uncle again. eddie never thought it possible to miss hawkins like this, but seeing his hometown mutilated by the evil of a child-murdering madman …

      eddie crumbled.

      folding towards his knees, eddie’s shoulders quivered in tandem with the tears turning the oil on his cheeks sticky. there was no desire to give up, but the will to keep going was leaking onto his tongue. an end, he just wanted an end. to go back in time to a moment full of copper, adrenaline bleeding out as vision turned a dark red.

      just die. don’t open your eyes. there’s no point. there’s no fucking point.

      a dangerous sob was stopped by the digit still enclosed between his teeth. eddie sank closer to the ground, surrendering to the blue devils that would pin him there till the young man finally wasted away.

                              hello?

      anguish turned deathly still as his attention snapped like a viper towards the door. the burning of a final heartbreak extinguished into something silent, something cold. eddie rose, the ominous glitter in his eyes glowing brighter as the voice of chrissy cunningham begged for the help she never got.

      a shuddering sigh, ❝ that’s sick, man. even for you. ❞

      the young man swallowed the lump in his throat as he set aside the can and placed his warlock on one of the desks. his sights strayed from the door. no, his fixation steeled into a tranquil fury as the redeemer readied his spear. there was no feeling in his legs as he approached the entrance, futile pounding reverberating from the other side.

      seemed like the universe was finally showing a bit of pity. a worthy way out; all he had to do was unlock the door and kill whatever shit-eating beast was making a mockery of a girl who deserved more than her fair share of peace.

      he fished out the homebrew lock kit he’d fashioned from his jeans and picked the door. his eagerness steeled, munson kept his actions deliberate as to not alert whatever the hell was waiting for him. he had one chance to get the drop so that no matter what it did to him, eddie munson wasn’t leaving this hellhole alone.

      click. eddie’s heart rate spiked as the lock gave. in one swift motion, he raised up his spear and threw open the door to see —

                  ❝ CHRIST — Y — CHRISSY ? ❞

                           ❝ please let someone be here, plea  —  ❞  and as if loftily answering a prayer, the door flew open from the inside. 

but who waited beyond the knob wasn’t any kind of anticipated, if unimaginable, underworld monstrosity. nor was it a badge-toting figurehead of hawkins safety and security. it was a ghoul with the face of a terrified and bloody eddie munson, clutching a makeshift spear in one hand and the doorknob in the other. truly, he looked so shocked that for a moment chrissy almost believed he was real. 

the once-cheerleader automatically let out a strangled bleat in fright, but all the air was stolen from the sound halfway through. her shock stumbled down a cliff of surprise rolling all the way down into a pit of.....sadness. this vision of eddie looked so like the world they were in —  grungy, dusty, slathered in rot. so thoroughly mangled that there was no chance he could be alive. he could be nothing other than the manifestation of this place’s manic feeding frenzy on souls and bodies alike. ....which implied he’d entered their now shared purgatory while still alive only to fall and be consumed by the acidic hatred that had conjured this place however long ago. 

oh. 

here stood her confirmation that this barren slice of the universe was not a second chance at whatever passed as living here in this poor excuse for “hawkins", inverted. genuine existence was only mimicked. she was dead. and so was he. like a gunshot, chrissy’s chest was riven by the sensation of missing him. could you miss someone you barely knew? someone who wasn’t there? 

yet — almost-eddie said her name. as if her appearance was the least likely sight in hell he could muster up. she didn’t blame this shade his stupefaction, at least not for too long. this mutated world of darkness trapping them could very well birth all manner of hallucinations, could be dangling false hope in front of her at any moment. manufactured, cruel fictions to match the cruel imitation of life chrissy had lived thus far and a crueler imprint of the town she’d called home.

what was left of her heart sank quickly to the ichor-slicked soles of her sneakers. he sounded so much like eddie, this ghost. or.....she thought. guilt assuaged slumping shoulders as she realized how little she really knew of this young man from whom humble hawkins seemed to expect the worst. and he’d been so kind to her up until the moment her memories stopped. [ did you find it? eddie? ] generous with his time and his humour [ you’re not what i thought you’d be like ], clever with his attempts at making her smile. [ how could i forget?! ] a mere few hours after meeting him (again) was enough time gone to know he’d not lay a harming finger on her if he drove her home. ready to help her despite his confusion. 

oh, living and breathing chrissy, so starved of understanding had she been that the moment eddie munson stared through her like glass, she felt secure for the first time in... no. that was a pointless enumeration. she’d be ashamed of herself if she went any further. 

                          ❝ eddie? ❞  even to her own ears she sounded devastated. wrecked. what misfortune had laced the atoms of his essence together into so ripped and chewed a shadow of sentience? nothing that could comfort her in the presence of his ghost, certainly.  ❝ what happened to you? you’re.... a mess.  ❞

chapped lips closed, then opened, then closed again, rendered suddenly unable to string any kind of sufficient thought into speech. all she could feel was sorry. everything she knew was sorry. sorry to see him in such a place, sorry to be haunting the haunted, sorry to have possibly done anything that could drag him into this tartarus pit, this realm of refuse. he’d paid dearly for every act of heroism, judging by the looks of things. a shining, blood-soaked knight in shredded ribbons, complete with a sword.

either all her tears had evaporated or weariness sapped every reaction in extreme from her system. a limp swallow clenched her throat shut long enough to pause all thought of caution and chrissy stepped forward. her bruised arms lifted, powered by winces of pain, to wrap gingerly around this not-quite-eddie’s torso. no breath to reconsider, just the driving force of mourning a life half lived and a thousand chances missed. in cheer, missing by inches brought injurious disaster. what brought them here was miles.

                         ❝ it’s alright if you’re not real, ❞  chrissy mumbled into ruined fabric, utterly depressed. anything above a whisper scraped murder across her vocal cords. her fingers dug into a bony back until spinal ridging uncomfortably collided with the juts of her knuckles. the skeletal pattern was grounding. so frustrating in its physicality. he still faintly smelled like leather and hawkins humidity. you didn’t deserve this. you didn’t deserve anything you were getting. i’m sorry i thought so badly of you. if i could go back i’d make up my own mind about you and never listen to anyone tell me what to believe again. how tantalizing a thought, to admit as much to the real eddie. but his ghost was no replacement. admission to a phantom was like begging a stone for help. like pounding on the door of an abandoned police station that might never have held any remote promise of safety. absolute miserable insanity. still, there was a small childish comfort in embracing a figure that could only be meant to fade from her gaze the moment she gripped it too fiercely in a bid to regain her balance.  ❝ i'm just glad to see you. ❞

so chrissy let go.  easier, when the battle was already lost. 

                        ❝ this place is.....is twisted. i don’t know why it made you look like this. it’s messing with my head, eddie. but i can’t be losing my mind anymore if i’m dead, can i? ❞

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ      𝔼𝔻𝔻𝕀𝔼      𝕄𝕌ℕ𝕊𝕆ℕ,                               (hellmartyr​)

𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐕𝐎𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐆𝐎𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐍 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍 bombarded the theater with rapacious glee. metallic barks followed gluttonous drops as they sniffed out every crevice, every surface, like foxhounds in pursuit of their eponymous prey. the accompanying winds were equally ruthless, tearing at the woods that outlined campus. roots moaned in an uncanny human chorus as they clung to clods of drowned soil. barks of thunder followed claws of fearsome light, incensed by the trees’ refusal to surrender their centennial roosts.

      eddie munson had given up on music as he labored by candlelight. layers of rebar and concrete couldn’t placate the stormy quarrel, and each time the most satisfying part of a song was about to assail his eardrums — a peal of thunder injected a riff of its own. thus he surrendered to the company of silence, interrupted only by the echoes of his own activity and nature’s bitchy roiling.

      but at least tonight’s premier bullshit worked in his favor. normally goblin’s three hundred sixty days of downpour lacked an inspiring ambiance for campaigns set in sandy tombs of reanimated kings or crystalline caverns carved deep within an ivory castle. this semester was different; four months of adventuring ( and a previous summer of planning ) brought the members of the hellfire club to a gothic crypt and its restless denizens. here, in the belly of a diabolical mansion torn between the material plane and an eldritch parallel, heroes would face their most dastardly foes yet while negating the sadistic twists their dungeon master had slithering in his sleeves.

      the wild-haired eccentric was always one to set a stage for the finale. what started as simple seasoning grew more and more elaborate over the past six years. eddie was determined to make this night of zenith revelry one to remember. his swan song before graduation. a didactic legacy for all dms who thought themselves worthy of his draconian lineage.

      last year’s after-halloween sales had given the youngest munson an idea. he raided what was left on the clean-picked shelves of pop-up shops and every discount store in the county. over the next several months, added to his growing stockpile via regular visits to every bargain dealer within reach of his cough-and-hack brick of a van.

      his uncle’s trailer became a slaughterhouse of creativity. cheap curtains shredded and stained by hand hung from the ceiling while sheets and shirts lingering long past their natural lifespans were cut-up on the floor. testing anything at school was too risky; the hellfire club was made up of a clever bunch. so, his uncle wayne was forced to endure several months of embellishing chaos as eddie turned their small home into a dollar store’s rendition of a haunted house.

      by mid-january the bulk of the backdrop was done. eddie packed it into two old moving boxes and stored them in the corner of his room where it silently teased him till the momentous day. the time between was spent on finishing touches: spray painted candelabras, disposable wine glasses transformed into jewel encrusted goblets, plastic skulls smeared in coffee and dirt, and a cathedrals worth of white candles.

      now those latter bastards had been his bane. eddie pre-burned half of the lot while he melted down the rest to be reforged in various shades of black and red. he trawled candle making books for how to do it, but fell back on good ol’ trial and error since he lacked just about every damn thing the instructions called for. but, after coating the trailer’s kitchenette in a waxy film for two weeks, the young man succeeded and gave rise to one of his favorite decorations: a skull with a black cherry candle burning through its head, twin flows oozing out its sockets like offerings of an unholy sacrament.

      wayne was visibly relieved when his nephew loaded everything into his van last night, yet still commented on how neat it was all going to be once eddie set it up. months of work, now lambasted all over the theater, looking just how its creator envisioned it … or at least a realistic interpretation. and in all fairness, the decorum looked a little less — thrifty — in the moody lighting.

      reaping what he’d sown at last, eddie glanced at his watch. done and with plenty of time to spare. if the storm kept up its scathing temper ( knowing goblin’s visceral hatred for all things breathing, it would ), then tonight, hellfire was really going to taste the truth of their namesake —

      eddie’s head jerked up as the weathered doors keened open. a pillar of dim light cut through the pitch of the theater’s innards. an elongated shadow stretched over the foyer as munson dropped low.

      shit — why were the guys so early? were they planning something too?

      fist balled tightly, teeth grinding his lower lip in a row of frustration. careful to avoid any unwanted sneaker squeaks, eddie crept around the table into recesses so opaque the candles’ sultry lighting wouldn’t dare breach it. if the boys hoped to get the drop on him, there was a price to pay for attempting to outplay the master.

@greenscrunchy, this is for you

goblin high school was haunted. at least, it was supposed to be.

there’s no proof besides stories, the customary churning water wheel of rumours that flowed ceaselessly through cracked linoleum-lined hallways. arteries from a heart in which children were flung loose, but goblin was so famous for its tall tales that every one of them might as well have been set in stone. perfectly preserved history. so wild they had to be true. repeated and repeated and repeated, religiously cradled in the minds of the peculiarly suburban city dwellers of goblin. when a small city operated like an even smaller town, there had to be something keeping everyone spinning.

of course it would be the ghosts.

among whom were the phantoms of the senior class royal couple that tracked chrissy cunningham down the corridor leading away from the basketball court, floating just behind the squeak of her sneakers all the way from the wood-paneled gymnasium to wherever it is she was trying to escape. a foxhole she needed to decide upon quickly before she ended up in a circle right where she started from, the place she wanted to be the least. 

at her back, raucous cheers rumbled still from throats packing the gym. goblin’s marauders had won the basketball championship game, thoroughly shocking all onlookers to the point of pure frenzy. even chrissy let the momentary thrill consume her, shaking wild pompoms along with her entire stunned squad. all it took was a foul, a timeout, and a benchwarmer launching his perfectly timed gamble into the air for a nail-biting three pointer no doubt already being carved in the annals of goblin legend. the basketball had swished through the net against a backdrop of a final buzzer. thunder to rival even goblin skies’ best and boomiest rattled the foundations of the gym until even the buried-upright dead in the graveyard miles away could feel so many joyous vibrations. 

an unlikely win from an unlikely source. no one present would ever forget it and wouldn’t keep it to themselves. it would make the goblin post before sunday. 

enthusiasm befitting of a true sportswoman buoyed chrissy until before the amoebic goblin high crowd could even begin to think of oozing off the court and into the downpour outside, washing slurries of the away team with them. an indoor tennis match would follow not long behind, somewhat of a downturn in excitement after such a triumph for the basketball team. but around here, the rain made the rules. initial celebrations could not last forever - and chrissy had to get out before anyone tried to pull her attention. particularly, especially, jason. his prior pep rally stunt was the only one of its kind she could bear after a week of heightened pda; all for show to hammer home goblin’s worth as the next district champions. goblin had the team, and the team captain had the girl. (until teenage throngs abandoned the couple for more riveting objects of affection and jason melted into the shadows to wrap his arm around lizzie miller.)

meanwhile chrissy ticked down seconds until she could bolt from the room he was in, with the additional bonus that no one should be able to ascertain the source of her disquiet lest her performance be revealed as just that: a performance and a sham.

the hallway ahead stretched longer and longer, calling to mind a frustratingly pliable piece of taffy on a summer afternoon. it kept going, and going, and going. a monstrous unfairness when all chrissy wanted was a simple getaway, tucked out of sight from swaths of paper banners drowned in every drop of purple and green paint goblin high school could wrap their wet, wrinkled hands around.

nothing but purple and green. chrissy hated purple and green. purple and green together. the fluttering rustle of pompoms clutched white-knuckled in both hands mocked her, their vomitous, plastine shine reflecting goblin high’s storm-lit passages. separated, she didn’t mind the colors too terribly much. even a rare violent in the grass was more pleasant. but in school all bets at their joint attractiveness were off. 

a metallic clang punctuated the now distant rumble of sports fanatics and thunder combined. chrissy stuffed her pompoms into the depths of her locker, out of sight at last, exchanging them for the soft pink corduroy of her backpack. its weight comfortably settled the pumping desire to take flight far, far away although not enough to quell her urge to hide. 

somewhere. there had to be somewhere quiet and dark she could wait out her tides of discontentment apart from the ghosts. maybe.....

there was one possibility. enough of one that chrissy’s feet took off again, chasing down the faint illusion of privacy. down the main hallway to the right, past the a.v. closet, past the principle’s office and the coachs’ offices, veering to the left toward the science lab, the school nurse, and just beyond....the theater. perfect. 

like a blessing from heaven, the enormous doors hung open juuuuust a sliver. 

in a flash chrissy bolted for the alluring dark ribbon of silent freedom. mere moments later she’d dragged one door open enough to slip inside. the answering darkness was almost dizzyingly relaxing in comparison to the shadowy high school corridors now echoing signs of life; students were emerging from the gym and she’d been just in time to miss all the action.

her forehead met the cool surface of the doors as she shut them decisively. heavy exhales gusted against the metal until she could wrangle her heartbeat back in check. only for it to halt completely when a rustle split the curtain of silence.

solitude rendered itself an illusion. 

trepidation tempered a one-eighty pivot to investigate the source and weighed down painfully on her heel. a strange terror built as her peripherals picked up on a flickering light that multiplied with each centimeter exposed. more, more, and  —

the full revelation of why lay behind resulted in startled howl.

as a cheerleader, most would imagine chrissy’s voice capable of projecting powerfully across any open space. reality was far less impressive. instead of a mighty, rousing shout, all chrissy was capable of was a high pitched, elongated squeak. nevertheless, it communicated the same thing.

                                            ❝ OHMYGOD! ❞

spread across the room was a rippling tableau of yawning skulls dripping in waxy blood, goblets filling unsettlingly with dark liquid, and scattered glimmers of who knew what all over a rich tablecloth in pitch hues. everywhere the dull, ghostly white of bone and insidious sparkle of metal sent candlelight ricocheting across the theater. among the instruments of death, almost randomly but not quite, were placed multiple kinds of dice and miniature figures looking frozen from battle.

not even the zombified goblin police could compare to the sensation of wrongness filling the room. whatever she’d stumbled upon, it couldn’t possibly be good. 

there’s so much wrong with this place. everything, actually. 

as if the void dimension’s very existence wasn’t crime enough, chrissy stumbled down a hill covered in vines that appeared locked in a neverending battle with themselves, writhing and thrashing until too exhausted to continue. the ground crawled, the sky grumbled. unearthly animal voices chittered nearby every time chrissy so much as scuffed her sneakers too loudly. 

if her nerves weren’t completely shot by the time she escaped, they’d be numb enough to fool her into thinking they were useless. 

like the sky itself was ill, it regularly spat out streams of bloodstained lightning to wash the stale air in a rainbow of bruised indigo across sickly green, mocking her own bruised body - or complementing it. every sound echoed only to disappear moments afterward. even the echoes seemed doomed to die mere yards from their origin.

time burnt away meaninglessly the further chrissy walked on....and on.....and on until  —  yes, finally, main street snuck into view. hawkins always seemed so small from behind a set of wheels. just another pint-sized half awake middle american town that only stirred on weekends and holidays, where people still used the word “newfangled” and the church bell still told the time better than anyone’s watch. family businesses rarely closed because the family seldom moved. home was familiar. home was predictable, safe. 

chrissy had never been more sure of anything in her life when she stared down at the rotten facsimile of hawkins and reminded herself it was the farthest thing from safe. 

what she ought to have done was make a beeline for the police station. that would have been the wisest, smartest thing. but at the sight of the mayor’s office a few blocks away, a wall of exhaustion hit chrissy harder than a freight train. all that walking after an impromptu resurrection did nothing for her stamina and the thought of rest was enough to make her want to burst into tears. enough for her to creep up the office steps and gently pry open the door. inside was silent as a graveyard and twice as dark. dust motes floated in in the air, swirling into eddies while she tiptoed down the central hallway. going up the stairwell was tantamount to courting disaster - even keeping her back to it felt risky. then the smallest stroke of luck materialized in a plush (if musty) chaise lounge tucked away in an office. with some difficulty chrissy managed to drag it all the way back to the front doors and scoot it against the wall adjacent. this way, nothing could get in or out without her knowing. the best she could ask for at the moment. all that was left was to lay down, find an angle that didn’t exacerbate the shooting pain in her shoulder, and attempt to sleep. 

pain lingered no matter how she arranged her limbs, but sleep... sleep crept up on her without warning. the world fell into darkness so quickly that when chrissy awoke it was with a twitch of terror. she couldn’t remember toeing the familiar, milky line between consciousness and the void.

everything looked exactly the same as when she’d arrived. 

had hours passed? had days?

without any shift in light and no sound from the church bell or town center clock, chrissy might as well have been in the same place forever. such a thought blasted shivers into her every extremity. time to move along. this place gave her every species of the creeps ever invented. 

the next two blocks to the police station were small potatoes compared to her haunted trek from the creel house. her body still ached with every bend in her stride. rest had done nothing for her pain, only giving her sufficient energy to push through. well, that was something, wasn’t it? 

despite the flickering hope the notion of weapons provided, that light was dashed by the rattle of very secure locks on every door chrissy tried. she slammed her good shoulder into all of them; none did so much as tremble in their frames. the windows were barred even if she could find a rock to smash the glass. in the end, all she had were her frantic fists and shouts of panic that she knew, chrissy knew, were more foolhardy than anything else. any number of the nightmares lurking in shadows that she never spotted could hear her and come rushing out, discovering the easiest prey to ever wander in their vicinity. her yelps were careless and scratched like sandpaper over the tender meat of her throat, but she couldn’t seem to stop. she’d come all this way for nothing otherwise. this couldn’t be for nothing. she couldn’t let it stop here.

                               ❝  hello?? please, is somebody in there? i need help, please. hello?? ❞  if only faithful chief hopper was still alive, he’d have come running. maybe chief powell would, too. anyone, anyone.  ❝  it’s chrissy, chrissy cunningham. please, i don’t know what’s happening anymore. help, HELP!!!  ❞  

                             a note to @hellmartyr​