Vihilum (nancy Wheeler) - Blog Posts
𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙉𝘼𝙉𝘾𝙔 𝙒𝙃𝙀𝙀𝙇𝙀𝙍 (vihilum)
@greenscrunchy asked, “Was it always this way? Was i too dumb to notice?”
Evil has tendrils, evil has roots. Nancy’s never just out of reach, even when she’s grounded, even when her feet are planted firmly against soil. There’s no security granted that comes with stillness. Steadiness. Better to shift. She’s not a shark. She can’t stop swimming. She’s like the other fish in the sea. If she stops moving, she will die.
That’s how it feels. That’s how it’s felt. A mind unoccupied teeters on the edge of unraveling. She’s never catered to the luxury of relaxing and doing nothing. That has never appealed to her.
She thinks Chrissy needs it from her right now. A sure, unmoving hand, set on her shoulder. Stillness. She can’t always anticipate the storm. There’s no way of knowing if this is the calm ahead of a downpour. There is no way to tell what might be coming.
“I used to think I knew,” where it started, when it started, just how wide this crack had spread, she thought she understood everything about it, “but so many things,” Her record’s still playing low. She squeezes Chrissy lightly. “so many things move in secret.”
Things not meant for their eyes, to any prying gaze.
“Hidden, on purpose,” she shifts so that her arm is wrapped around the other’s shoulders, “I’d say noticing it was nothing but dumb luck.”
it’s discouraging to brace for the itching crawl of dread at prospective touch, like prey in a thicket anticipating danger. prey — or a sack of meat for trimming and displayed as a “prize winning catch”. either way, chills still tend to prickle over wary nerves she keeps primed at all times.
when people unexpectedly touch her arms, even friends, chrissy feels hooks sink into skin and frigid air blasting against the skin of her neck. goosebumps sprout, a thousand fearful eyes waiting for the other shoe to drop. for anything that requires an artful dodge and a smile wide enough to blind anyone that could even hypothesize what’s happening under the surface. that fearful, flayed core of chrissy is ugly; no one told her so, she just knows.
but, chrissy is reminding herself, teaching herself, she is safe here in the wheeler house.
nancy’s room is low-lit, but there are no knives or hooks that she can see. none made for cleaving meat from bone at least. if there is cold, it’s drowned out by hums of music from nancy’s records and the sheer warmth of the colors strewn across the room. it’s cozy and appreciated. lived in. not that chrissy’s isn’t, but there’s a difference between girl’s bedroom and a doll’s.
❝ dumb luck, ❞ chrissy parrots. dumb luck for smart people. something about it makes the strawberry blonde grin and lean, really actually lean, into nancy’s gentle grip.
it’s been so long. so long since she had real friends. the kind of friends that truly understood. who were honest without being cruel yet invited openness, offering their own in trade.
one deep, steadying breath where she lets herself the believe the world has stopped turning, and a breath out. she turns toward nancy unsteadily reassured, but it’s a new beginning.
❝ is it better to wish i’d known sooner? even if the truth was....so terrible. you were trying to figure all of this.....stuff out, about the upside down, all by yourself. you and your brother and jonathan and steve and mike’s friends, i mean. ❞ all of them so damn young when they had to fight a monster no one taught them to look for. and chrissy is afraid that even with enough quick thinking fit to lead a squad of cheerleaders and pull off reasonably good grades while keeping everyone politely at arm’s length, she would still have been too distracted by her own inner ache to see through it clearly. ❝ things that move in secret are the deadliest. ❞
she doesn’t want to miss anything else. she can’t. not just for herself, but for everyone else.
a nightmare on elm street (1984) / scream (1996) / i know what you did last summer (1997)
it wasn't your fault. you know that, right? / @vihilum (nancy)
the breath chrissy drew in was long and labored.
hawkins’ last three roller coaster years had proved wildly informative. power hungry corporations were allegedly endangering kids left and right, often enough to kill a few. (chrissy still recalled the last time she saw barbara holland in the cafeteria. if memory served, chrissy had been a little jealous of the smile on barb’s face.) there had been monsters at work from the beginning, biding their time below hawkins like spiders twitching, waiting patiently for a fly to clumsily flutter its way into their web.
but what chrissy cunningham had known for longer than the godforsaken upside down existed? it was her fault. it was always her fault. for eating the extra mouthful of protein, for not smiling hard enough, for not kicking high enough, for not willing herself weightless in the air to fly higher, born just unpretty enough to have to make up for that lack everywhere else.
amazing, how one voice could sound like a thousand. and the few outliers that didn’t sound like the one rang so falsely at first.
❝ are we so sure? ❞ i was weak enough to start the disaster. the gates.
she pivoted to look at nancy. hard. it felt monstrous all of a sudden to bore her gaze into the fellow senior’s face. it felt.....like turning the splitting stare of her own mother onto someone innocent of any wrongdoing. all nancy wheeler, good, reasonable, strong, determined nancy wheeler who flouted every high school expectation to stick up her chin and say what i want matters more than what you think of me, had done was ask an absolving question.
from experience, a queen bee’s glare could wither anyone from underclassmen to upperclassmen just as much as her smile could turn eyes to stars. that power came in handy now and again, unearned as it was. but in this moment....
she couldn’t do this. chrissy couldn’t do this to nancy. not even because she wanted honesty without cotton candy fluff and nonsense. to survive all this and to let her fears and worry mold her around constant suspicion? what a waste of time all but lost the night spring break began. she’d already spent enough of her life ruined and pretending.
❝ i’m sorry i’m pushing you. there’s still.... ❞ the smile she tried to push forth flickered true for a moment, then plummeted to bittersweet. no vaseline teeth here. (deep down, something hinted that nancy's the type to say forced optimism is pointless. the impression unwound a hidden knot in the cheerleader’s chest.) ❝ a lot to wrap my head around. have you ever been told something your whole life then all of a sudden the opposite is true? ❞ the words floated a few moments before chrissy huffed a chuckle at her toes, flicking her left pointer nail against the seam in her pants. ❝ like maybe there’s no such thing as a parallel universe. and suddenly there is, right here under our feet. ❞