𝔹𝔸𝕐𝕆ℝ 𝕆ℂ𝔸𝕄ℙ𝕆'𝕊 𝕄𝕀𝕏𝕋𝔸ℙ𝔼  X  𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒸𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓎 

thanks for the patience as i ooze back once again! as part of my comeback, i edited my rules a bit. nothing too huge, mostly clarification on how i'll be approaching tumblr now. i also rewired some of the carrd links to make navigation clearer. the tbd verses i have listed in there, specifically star wars and bg3/d&d, will be added in the coming week. thanks again for coming to the circus!

okay i think i’ve waited a healthy amount of time — here’s the inaugural starter call! any and all verses are open as options. lengths will range from several inches to a mile. may or may not also include bonus musical tracks.   no cap / no expiration.

black.

black for miles. a single speck of it for eternity and no more than the size of an atom.

white - but just a flash. 

as soon as it disappeared, she found herself remembering it, holding the memory steady in her mind’s eye like a precious gem. white in a stitch. the gleaming curve of a coffee mug. pristine starched polyester blend. ceiling.

the inside of her eyes.

red.

it’s everywhere, it’s coming to choke her and she’s screaming, she’s screaming, she’s  ————

breathing.

the air was unnaturally thick and the moment it touched her throat she felt the pull of her abdomen, the revolt of her lungs. what she vomited out was all but discernible and only fractionally thicker than the very air that choked her.  

ropey growths were receding from splayed out limbs, almost hissing in their eagerness to withdraw and disappear. quicker than a startled snake, the vines were there and gone. but by then there was no time to notice that nothing remained to keep her upright. before she knew it, the charcoal ground was racing toward her at breakneck speed. 

the thud of her knees and meat of her palms colliding against the solid surface below rang agonizingly through dead air, knocking any hopeful gasps clean from her lungs. on all sides, the wash of blood-tinged rage surrounded chrissy in a bubble of fear. something like a gunshot tore through claggy air to rattle her eardrums to the point of pain. whatever she had fallen upon shook to the rhythm of each shot.

all chrissy could do was count one pang after another that rippled through her muscles. she could unmistakably sense herself gagging between every breath, but nothing came out. 

more shots. 

heat. strong, aggressive heat, like someone had thrown a lit match into spilt gasoline.

a roar, brimming with not just shock and pain, but fury. chrissy’s whole body shook fearfully, though it didn’t get much time to do much of it. after what seemed like only a few seconds of half-consciousness, the world once again emptied to void.

forever passed, all in a sliver of a second. 

then she split her lids to a deep shade of navy. 

opening her eyes fully right away seemed a feat too ambitious. chrissy cunningham (that was her name, wasn’t it?) trembled on what she could only hope was brittle grass. fingers hungry for something recognizable wove unsteadily through strands dryer than even the hawkins football field in summer. one mississippi, two mississippi, you can do this. four mississippi, five mississippi, you can do this, come on. you’re supposed to be tougher than a few bumps. 

the tail end of the thought sounded suspiciously like her mother and that shouldn’t have been the voice that propelled her to all fours, but it did. height did not agree with her stomach at first, nor did her fluttering muscles react with enthusiasm to being strained. every movement shot lightning through through her limbs, forcing chrissy to grit her teeth against the discomfort.

part of the storm above her had gotten itself stuck inside her body. the dead girl swore she could hear identical thunder hiding in her head behind clouds of confusion.

confusion that did not abate when she at last managed to stand to her full height. 

everywhere, in every direction, wasteland. a half-hearted impression of hawkins. derelict rocket playground in view across the street and with woods to every side, chrissy gulped almost without realizing. that could only put her at one place in hawkins.

the murder house.

turn around, chrissy. you were dead a minute ago. just turn around. 

after another eternity of of shaky stalling, chrissy completed a heel rotation. and screamed. shock knocked her back a few stumbling feet until she’d collapsed on her back again, all of her hard work to get upright undone.

it wasn’t only the murder house. 

interrupting her view of what used to be a glamorous home were four trees that absolutely were not present in the real hawkins. two on each side of the creel’s front door, now smashed almost entirely off its hinges. at the bottom of the stairs spread a charred circle of earth burnt bald. smoke still faintly drifted from the spot as if chrissy was only just barely too late to arrive for all the action. adding insult to injury, the sight of the house was far from the worst part.

the tree closest to her boasted a hollow eerily in the shape of a small human body. a knowledge chrissy had no place for rustled in her chest, sinking to the base of her spine: if she stood again and spread her arms across the trunk, she would fit inside that hollow with an accuracy that belied a supernatural force almost too horrendous to consider for a moment longer. wood yawned in a frozen howl, sending her eyes frantically skipping to the next tree. and the next. where the bodies of fred benson and patrick mckinney hung as warped trophies to sadism and the kind of eternal grudge encountered only in fiction. 

this tableau was the farthest thing from fiction if the pounding in her head was any proof. here were preserved testaments that fear remained the ultimate weapon.

a girl’s helpless sobs rent the air. because that was all chrissy was: a helpless, weak, lost girl. nothing was making sense. chrissy collapsed against the pedestal that would have held her broken body akimbo had something  —  someone?  —  not broken apart his hold on the last of her very soul. a miracle, maybe. was that possible? even as she wearily succumbed to a tsunami of tears, a rebellious flare of hope ignited at the sight of the fourth, empty tree. patrick and fred hadn’t managed to run free, but someone else had. like her.

with that thought, she gasped for a square breath, determined to pull together enough to leave this horrible place. one proper step at a time.

much easier said than done. 

every step seemed to shoot fire directly through her bones to inflame her joints, the cause utterly mysterious until she looked down. the sight sent shaking hands flying to her cardigan to whip it off and investigate more thoroughly. elbows. shoulders. wrists. knees. ankles. hips. all of them bruised so deeply that her body seemed to halfway disappear into the sickly mauve landscape. the skin under her eyes, too, felt tender and puffed. when her hand withdrew from prodding them the tips were covered in rusty flakes. she flicked them away and they listlessly drifted away like ash. blood, long since dried.

a wet sigh slipped from lips edging closer to dried, mangled flesh than anything that could be mistaken for something alive. she really had been dead, hadn’t she? or something too close to death. chrissy certainly felt weary enough to have startled from a slumber she’d never been meant to wake from. and here she was, painfully awake and alive in a place fit for nothing but dead, quiet things. a living nightmare. 

somewhere she would rather die than remain in for much longer. again. 

well... freedom was no closer the longer she huddled here in terror. 

weak breaths came in quick succession as chrissy cunningham put her back to the ghost of the hawkins murder house, limped down the steps, scurried past the playground, and let the main road wind ahead of her and lead her anyplace else. 

hopefully home.

serendipity in deadtown.                        /                   @nonangelic​

there’s theories aplenty about the other side of death postulated by the living, but the problem is that no one actually knows anything about it unless they’re....well, dead. anecdotes about lamps or beckoning angels or loved ones or long ladders up to someplace bright and shiny were just that: anecdotes. unconfirmed even by dreams and near-death experiences alike. because it wasn’t the real thing if you came back from it. 

what does come after that anticipated, glorified transition from life on earth to the great beyond turns out to be, aptly, deadtown. the great city in the...sky? hell? either way, it’s the end. most times there isn’t any leaving.

exiting deadtown wiped the memories of death after death clean out of the brain. at least that’s the impression chrissy got from witnessing the one one or two exits followed by a reentrance not long after. brevity was long opined the soul of wit, but it the heart of heartbreak, too. no life was long enough, and not even the wizard or superhero or guy-who-knew-a-guy-who-knew-a-guy could stop the wheel of mortality from turning. all things ended.

except who chrissy was when she died. she was confused. shy. hopeful. looking for someone.

someone absolutely not here in deadtown, but that she’d look for eternally until further notice.

a gargoyle who introduced himself as neil lurked pleasantly behind a café counter, watching chrissy from the corner of his eye, as if her presence was both brand new and absolutely expected. chrissy hadn’t thought she’d died before the first friday of spring break, but at this rate anything was possible. best to stop asking questions.

                       ❝  so — how does this work, exactly?  ❞     ......after that one.

neil just chuckled. the door blew open in answer instead of him. evening and the scent of autumn trickled in like a discontinued department store perfume. considering the setting, that might have been true. chrissy watched from the corner of her eye as moonlight blew its way over the doorjamb in ruffled, yet smooth, locks. she used to be that put together, once. the cheerleader stared into the sudden appearance of a cup smelling like black coffee with just a hint of sugar. steam wafted up to her nose languidly, buoyed by the last vestiges of the entryway breeze. 

                      ❝  oh.  ❞  it’s easy, then, to smile. despite the missing and the looking over her shoulder, the answer was there before she knew the question. chrissy kept the smile pinned in place to level at the shadow near her shoulder.  ❝  do you have a usual, too?  ❞

Émotion (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1966)

just wanted to give a shoutout to @greenscrunchy! the mun is super nice and has made me feel so welcome in this fandom and they’re a pleasure to see on my dash! their chrissy is great and they deserve to know it! <3

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           ( alwaysrevvedup​ )

Fairytale? Abrupt, airy laughter escaped him, and hands burrowed themselves further into his pockets. Well—at least she hadn’t laughed. Normally, Eddie didn’t whip out such eloquent descriptors for anything besides Hellfire’s DnD campaigns. After all, what was a good campaign without a good story? But there was a certain ease that came with being around Chrissy, strangely enough, and here came a sentimental ode to autumn tripping of his tongue. 

For a guy like him—a guy of his lower social standing in the high school food chain—he should be on egg shells around her, anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. But he wasn’t. If anything, he felt lighter than he had in weeks. 

“Yeah, it is pretty. As pretty as Hawkins gets really.” Silence fell briefly as he searched for what he wanted to say. “You got big plans for Halloween?” he asked conversationally, a brow quirking as he glanced sidelong at her. “Or are you boring and just pass out candy?” The teasing was obvious: from his tone and how his elbow gently knocked against hers. 

                            ❝ so.... ❞  it was almost idiotic how hard she was trying to come up with a good retort, but at first all she could scavenge was an embarrassed, if wholehearted and helpless, giggle. chrissy kept pushing her steps onward through the leaves as though that cycle produced the electricity powering her train of thought. if she could keep moving, she could come up with an answer that sounded distinctly not boring but also reasonably cool.

funny  —  she’d had her expectations, then so did eddie. clearly they were catching up to him, judging by the bony echo of his elbow’s collide against her arm. and he didn’t even seem all that mad about it.

                            ❝ my little brother is going trick or treating and i’ll walk with him for a while. he’s twelve and my parents don’t really want him to go by himself yet. he’s stuck with me, but he still gets to go. i just stand on the curb and look at all the costumes. it’s really cute to see what everyone comes up with. ❞  chrissy shrugged like it was all simply business as usual, pausing to unsnag the toe of her sneaker from a clump of dirt. she’d have to clean off her shoes at school before heading home. coach tweedy wasn’t such a perfectionist that she’d call chrissy out on a smudge or two, but her mother would certainly notice. white reeboks were nothing to be trifled with. she had an image to uphold. an image that only spotless reeboks would support. 

                           ❝ i did used to go to my friend tina’s house after matty was done and she’d split her candy with me while we watched a movie, but she left for college last year. ❞  another shrug. nothing to bother dwelling on since nothing about tina’s absence could be altered. but enough about me. a small smile bloomed as chrissy made a pin-sharp pivot on her left heel to tread backward. now eddie was locked in her sights.  ❝ do you have big plans? ❞

[hoarsely] is everyone ok

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙒𝘼𝙍𝙍𝙀𝙉 𝙋𝙀𝘼𝘾𝙀                             ( roastyoualive​ )

whenever there's a moment to generate clear thoughts inside the falsely labyrinthian halls of hawkins high, chrissy has begun wondering if the pathways of her brain have been rewired in the exact same turns and corners. stupid, since almost four years have passed in this place and that seemed hardly enough time for her life entire to be remolded. but something as mundane as high school, evidently, did have that power. a sparse but reportedly all-powerful adult presence mixed with still developing young minds hungry for some kind of independence created a strange kind of panic room masquerading its every wall as windows. there was nowhere to go but in until you were cast out on your butt to be the mystical mature everyone said was required after twelfth grade. a place where all students were asked to be older but treated younger, at its most basic.

at the eventual end of her illustrious career as a hawkins high elite, chrissy was sure she'd be picking out splinters of the school's influence for years.

a new shard lodged itself in hidden places she'd doubtlessly discover later when a voice shattered the brief silence she'd wrapped herself in. it made its intrusion gently, but could not escape what it was. despite herself, chrissy jolted.

❝ huh?? ❞ immediately, too sharp. her grimace offered the first apology. ❝ i — sorry, i was — i mean i wasn't... sorry. i'm okay, yeah. just get lost in my own head sometimes, when stuff here get too loud. probably senioritis, you know? ❞

if whoever this polite guy might be wasn't convinced of her sanity, she'd hardly blame him. that had been one of her poorer saves to date. thankfully, the burst of adrenaline cleared her clouded thoughts enough to see his expression. he wasn't exactly in his comfort zone either. time to save what she could of the moment.

❝ thanks for checking. ❞ a swallow. ❝ i appreciate it. i hope your day hasn't been as weird as mine. ❞ finally she'd collected enough presence of mind for a real smile and a sentence that sounded spoken by an actual human being instead of a zombie. ❝ have i passed your table at lunch recently? they somehow change every year. was it the science club, maybe? ❞

LYRIC STARTER || @greenscrunchy

SONG: DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH - THE NEARLY DEADS

Warren knows he's not exactly social - he's never tried to be. Quite the opposite, in fact. He liked the isolation. It was relaxing. It was safe. (As safe as anything could be, but Hawkins had been pretty quiet, so far.) 

Social or not, he still knows who this is as soon as he turns the corner. Of course he does - it’s Chrissy Cunningham. Everyone knows who she is. Cheer captain, one of the popular kids. Most people said she was nice, but Warren had never spoken to her. Again, he liked quiet. Not social. All that. 

But when he sees the look on her face, he freezes. He almost turns on his heel. He definitely looks away. He feels like he shouldn’t be looking at her like this - like nobody should see her like this. She’s sad. Chrissy Cunningham is sad. Hypocritical as it is, that feels unnatural. He falters, glances around. 

“Uh-” Yup, they’re the only ones here. Nobody else to save either of them from the situation. “Are you… Okay?”