𝒾𝓉'𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑒𝓃𝒹 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓁𝒹 𝒶𝓈 𝓌𝑒 𝓀𝓃𝑜𝓌 𝒾𝓉  |  v. The Resurrection - Blog Posts

steve's car window was mercifully cool where chrissy's forehead pressed against it. faint radio sounds and the benign chill were suitable distractions from the aura of pure discomfort steve was radiating as he drove. chrissy herself was radiating plenty back. unpleasant as the environment was becoming she still felt free to curl into a lumpy ball, unjudged.

the former king of hawkins high really did wear his heart on his sleeve; every time he let it gleam a little from the corner of his eye, the cheerleader wished again that they didn't have to be here. or, more accurately, that what brought them to exactly this place wasn't almost dying (perishing then resurrecting from the actual dead, to be specific).

but considering the unavoidable turn chrissy cunningham's life was about to take, maybe death was the only thing that could have brought her to this brink.

the metal strip of car door her skin rested on grew warm. too warm. her thoughts raced just as fast as the molecules she imagined beginning to vibrate within the metal. no matter that "scary" paled in comparison to surviving the upside down and clambering out to a town in complete ruins, real life still frightened her. laura cunningham still scared her. and that was precisely why, when they arrived to their destination, steve harrington was keeping his ass right where it was. he'd hate it, but chrissy refused to allow any more collateral damage in her wake. eddie munson's death was one too many already.

mindlessly, teeth began nibbling on the loose layer of skin on her lips, still so dry after the week in the hospital. don't forget chapstick.

then steve managed at last to say the thing he'd been working at for long minutes and a stop sign or two. she'd have given him a smile if she could. the answer was still no, though. gentlemanly respect and acts of service aside, steve couldn't actually help her face her mom: the entire reason he was driving her home. this was her hurdle to leap and hers alone.

❝ i know what you're doing, steve. ❞ how come her voice could give away so much? wasn't she better at masking by now? even to her own ears she sounded exhausted and pathetic and there was no way steve would miss it. ❝ i have to do this myself. it's really not about carrying worldly possessions down the stairs, even though i wish it was. ❞  

long before they pulled out of his driveway, chrissy had made and memorized a list of the items she'd want to keep and kept it short. seven books. the stuffed sheep and pink bear on her bed. any clothes she'd bought with her own money that fit in her biggest duffle bag. her diaries and her bible with the pretty crocheted case. makeup. any jewelry from her dad. one purse. every part of her thanked her past self for putting her backpack and wallet in her locker before the drive to forest hills, so that wouldn't be a problem.

❝ as stupid as it sounds, i need her to....be like she would. without someone like you watching. i have to remember why i'm leaving or else i might have second thoughts. you know what i mean? ❞  

@greenscrunchy brought back-up this time...

There was an urge to drum his fingers on the steering wheel of the BMW as he drove that he masked by keeping the beat of the music that he'd turned down, but not off, to hide the silence without making it impossible to talk. They weren't speaking much, so it didn't really seem to matter how loud the music was, but it wasn't for lack of a topic. Chrissy was in the passenger seat, and if he had to guess, she was far more anxious than he was, but that really wasn't helping how he was feeling about the whole thing. He'd agreed to this, but he didn't have to like all of the steps.

There was a beat where his lips parted, a breath drawn to speak before he aborted the attempt, murmuring some of the song lyrics seemingly absently as he paused at a stop sign to wait for a truck to go and then continued. It didn't require as much concentration as all that, but the things he wanted to say did - he gave her a sidelong glance, trying to gauge how she was doing. "Soooo, I've been thinking about it, and I get that this is a thing and you wanna do this yourself and I respect that," he said, adding the last part quickly so it absolutely was not in question before he glanced her way again. "But that doesn't mean you have to carry all your stuff on your own. I could help with that, just keep quiet and carry everything for you."

If he sounded a little hopeful, he could hardly be blamed. They'd all proven time and again that their biggest strengths came from being together, so it made sense that it would apply here and now, as well.

❝ not to me. ❞ such a simplistic response couldn't be enough, however — what robin dug for lay deeper. their own town and school system would have them think otherwise in half a heartbeat, for no purpose but....tradition? normalcy? years of being "queen" under her belt and chrissy cunningham had only just begun to ask how much of social status was pure distraction from something far more important. like well-being for example. maybe that's what robin was getting at, too. ❝ people are definitely obsessed with who is worth their time and who isn't because of popularity or some....some crap, and i think that's stupid now. especially now. ❞ chrissy nodded sharply, half to herself, an urging to keep going. ❝ i care a lot less about how people are supposed to see me lately. so i'd rather be friends with good people than rich idiots. besides, i never really got to hang out with you before....everything. now i can. turns out you're pretty cool. ❞

                  “   Are   we   really   that   different—   tell   me   where   you   stand.   ” @greenscrunchy

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙈𝙐𝙍𝙍𝘼𝙔 𝘽𝘼𝙐𝙈𝘼𝙉                           ( congregaticn ​)

@greenscrunchy​​ asked: ❝ i don’t even know how to describe it. i’ve never seen anything like it. ❞    ( murray! )

    - from stranger things s4 starters ( x ). 

    “ Of course, you haven’t seen anything like it. It’s–” He had to stop himself from saying something too aggressive like he normally would. The poor girl looked shaken up as it was. And she was a kid. And the last thing he wanted to deal with was a crying teenager. “It doesn’t want to be seen. More importantly, it’s not even supposed to be here. Crazy how that works, huh?” Still, he leaned forward with his hands folded together, obviously intent on listening to everything the blonde had to say. “Give me as much of a description as you can, yeah? Can’t really help if I got nothing to go off of except ‘ never seen anything like it. ’”

he’s helping. he’s helping. talking to her like she’s made of porcelain and would shatter at a moment’s notice if he said the wrong thing, which chrissy previously thought she’d learned to tolerate but apparently had not after, well....coming back from the dead. new chrissy had vastly different preferences, now. but murray is helping, she repeated, and swallowed down all thoughts of clinical insanity and tried to begin someplace concrete.

                    ❝ imagine the biggest spider you’ve ever seen. ❞  nope, still insane. all the indecision between giving a full confession and sounding less like she had a thousand screws rattling loose inside her head made for too much internal competition, too big for her skull. chrissy shook her head almost violently trying to wipe the distraction away.  ❝ a huge spider, but with a head that could almost be human? except it was just wrong enough not to be human. and it didn’t have eight legs. i think it was five....or six. ❞  just the foggiest recollection made her shiver with dread again and curl into herself.  ❝ i thought i might see vecna again...but not this. ❞

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝘽𝙍𝙄𝘿𝙂𝙀𝙏 𝘾𝙇𝘼𝙍𝙆𝙀                           ( @tempesttragedy​ )

@greenscrunchy gets Bridget from this starter call!

“Hey!” Bridget jogs through the downpour, shielded from rain droplets by a near-pristine condition umbrella. It certainly beats being without, but as she approaches Chrissy under the small ledge from which rain dripped, her arm extends, offering protection from the elements.  “Do you need a ride out of here? Or an umbrella escort, at least?” 

she’s somewhere else again. not the real world, or the “upside down” as chrissy now knows to call it, but another place. still red, just deeper. a void with walls like a crack in space-time itself, lit constantly with formless lightning strikes that cracked the sky apart more viciously than nature could dream of. the ground seemed to undulate beneath her shoes no matter where she tread. worse, it seemed to rise to meet her, swirling into tentacle shapes meant to trap her and  —

a shout loud enough to be from nowhere except reality pulls her from the gridlock into a land of lightning and thunder and wet. another thunderclap follows the voice and startles chrissy nearly off the curb. today really was the day she’d decided to take a walk from home to town and back without bringing her raincoat. 

                           ❝ oh, thank you!  ❞  it’s quick work to duck under the offered shelter where the rewards are immediate. rain still splashes her shoes but to have the rest of her out of the deluge is ideal. the generous umbrella bearer is a girl who looks just a little older than chrissy, with a face that isn’t a strangers yet isn’t so familiar to have a name attached.  ❝ what a great day to take a walk! i don’t live that far off main street, but maybe the rain will slow down soon. ❞  

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?

Led Zeppelin – Going To California

                      ❝ 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 𝘾𝙃𝙄𝙀𝙁 𝙃𝙊𝙋𝙋𝙀𝙍                           (fatherscurse​)

❛ i’m tired of dying. ❜ - &. 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐭𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

he almost has to laugh. he feels like he’s died plenty of times over in the last eight months. the last couple of years, really. it was sad, a pang in his chest letting him know it wasn’t funny. but, of course, jim being jim, he does laugh. “ yeah. jesus. me too, kid. but hey. i got you now, no matter what, yeah? you’re not dyin’ this time. ”

feat. @greenscrunchy​

years ago laura cunningham nipped the act of chrissy allowing her head to loll back lazily in the bud. an indicator of terrible posture, she announced, and chrissy would never appear polite or put together with her neck flopping about like a chicken’s. sit up straight, feet crossed, hands in lap. like an obedient princess. 

right now, chrissy is obeying none of those pointers and looking not the least bit like a princess. her body hurts and every angled limb is an attempt to soften the ache that have come to dwell in all her hollows. both legs are bent slightly to the side and her spine has begun imitating the curvature of her seat back. the greatest offender of all, her neck, has allowed her head to wander, its weight now resting on the back of her chair. as of yet, hopper has yet to call her unladylike or sloppy. just “kid”. the simplicity is balm to her lingering frightened confusion.

                       ❝ thank you. ❞  she wishes she could hear her own voice better but it’s drowned out by heartbeat drumming even in her own ears.  ❝ i guess you have experience with that now. or everyone does and i guess i was the last to know. ❞  she twitches.  ❝ i’m sorry. you’ve had to do this for....how many kids? ❞

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.

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙈𝙎. 𝙎𝙐𝙈𝙈𝙀𝙍𝙎                         (blueminke​)

@greenscrunchy​​     /     chrissy   &   kacey   !

SHE’S THE LAST ONE IN THE CLASSROOM, which isn’t too far out of the norm, carefully placing her belongings into her purse - pencils, pens, wallet, car keys… she swings the bag’s strap over her shoulder as she’s preparing to head out for the day. It’s then that the door to the science classroom peeks open, causing her head to reel to the entryway. OH, CHRISSY… Painted lips curl into a pleasant smile as she stands up from her desk chair to approach the young woman. She knows that it’s been more than difficult for the poor girl to readjust to her life in Hawkins after everything that’s happened, but in the very least, she’s happy to be supportive. “Are you okay, honey?”

chrissy still heard the bats. no matter that she was in the right-side-up now, demobat screeches hid beneath the otherwise inoffensive chirping of nearby birds. the stratified sound grated against nerves in her spinal cord more frigidly than avian silhouettes on a powerline after watching the birds for the first time. hitchcock, for all his mangled and twisty brilliance, could never have fabricated a fear that clung close as breath itself.

rich sunlight washed into ms. summers’ classroom with all the syrupy golden ease of late afternoon, bouncing cheerfully against zeus’s terrarium. the corn snake lounged on a rock feature close to the glass wall, tongue tasting the air now and again. but suddenly the snake’s head turned toward chrissy still at her desk. creature and human locked eyes for a moment, transfixed, until the snake opened his mouth and hissed that time was up. 

the words seemed to come from miles away. chrissy still jumped and surrendered to a moment of spiky adrenaline which forcibly brought her wandering mind back to attention. it wasn’t zeus at all but ms. summers closing out class discussion. chrissy blinked wildly and organized her assignment folders, stuffed her backpack, and walked out like a zombie in a fog.

that was yesterday. 

today the smell of smoke follows her everywhere like it’s trapped in her nostrils. she waves at her friends with a weaker arm than last month even though graduation creeps ever closer. her grades are getting better by centimeters. except life, existence still doesn’t feel grounded when she keeps the truth of the upside down held so close. and it is the truth. but how real is the truth when almost no one knows?

                       ❝ trying. ❞  pathetic. chrissy can do so much better than whispering from the crack in the door.  ❝ today was okay. i’m going to my friend’s house later to help with cleaning up the last of the rubble on their street. ❞  one shoulder has ticked up as she tries to pour her discomfort somewhere else.  ❝  i just....i wondered if i could ask you something? about the earthquake. and....why i got lost. because there’s parts of what happened that scare me. ❞  please, her brain begs as chrissy finally dares to look her kind, pink-cheeked teacher straight in the eye. please don’t think i’m crazy.

chrissy had paced the boundary of the football field for twenty solid minutes before feeling any modicum less like crawling out of her skin and leaving it behind on the turf. it would take more than twenty minutes or a half hour or hour or the rest of the semester to make any sort of harmony with the disastrous state of affairs back at school, but that was ticking time chrissy did not have. 

                            we’re so sorry, chrissy. you must miss him so much. 

a surge of petulance rattled so fiercely in her gut that chrissy kicked at a clump of damp soil and grass hard enough to send it flying, nearly sending her sneaker with it. 

                            it must be so difficult. i always envied you two.

yes, shedding her skin sounded perfect. she would leave behind the deflated organ like a trash liner, right there at the edge of the football field. someone would find it and scream in terror that “chrissy cunningham’s dead again!” and run away or even faint dramatically on the spot. but there would be no body, only the ghoulish sausage casing polite company called flesh. chrissy could walk away from the smiles that wobbled and wavered, the lips that gloss never stuck to, the cracked and dehydrated nail beds she had to mask religiously with stinging nail polish. off she’d go, nothing but muscles and tendons and trailing blood like bread crumbs, a devil straight from a nightmare. her mother would open the door in horror and chrissy would demand an answer. what about now, mom? will i fit in the dress now?

                            just the perfect hawkins couple.

❝ your boyfriend was adamant that you wouldn’t have gone to someone like young mr. munson for help if you were afraid. ❞  

hhmph. jason was more wrong than he knew.

❝ it’s what he wanted people to think. ❞ a hard blink; her lashes felt light without mascara.   ❝ ....and where is jason now? ❞  there had been a strange lack of visits from him - or information about him, which was arguably preferable to a visit. chrissy didn’t want to watch while jason pointedly looked away from her bruised eyes and joints and wrist and knee braces. she could see it now, his bald discomfort with her appearance, not so doll-like anymore. not head cheerleader material, looking like that, her mother had already spewed to an attending nurse when she thought her daughter couldn’t hear.  

chief powell swallowed and glanced away. avoiding. chrissy froze.

❝ ch - chief powell? ❞  

❝ i’m sorry, ms. cunningham. ❞  his posture had noticeably shifted as if a load were suddenly dropped upon his shoulders.  ❝ we found your boyfriend beside a fault line. it’s likely that jason was killed during the earthquake. ❞  

❝ .....oh.... ❞

then he isn’t my boyfriend anymore, is he?

                            it seemed like jason really loved you.

                            don’t you think it’s weird hanging with the freak after your boyfriend died?

                            you’re friends with the hellfire weirdos? what the shit, chrissy, since when?

that was it. she couldn’t hold in the storm a moment longer. 

with an unusually savage cry, chrissy unloaded every iota of frustration on an unlucky blocking sled the football team had left out along the touchline. she felt the drag of an angry yelp as it flew out of her throat. again and again and again. the pull of muscle was refreshing and nauseating in turns. a kick for every stupid comment she’d heard since resuming classes. a pitiful grunt for every time she let the cheer squad, her friends, every oblivious classmate at hawkins high believe a lie about her. another, harder grit of her teeth for every time she didn’t do a thing to make anyone assume otherwise, too petrified to admit to herself just how miserable she truly was. 

now, chrissy cunninham was paying for her stepford bullshit and plastic smiles along chewing gum-stuccoed hallways. a perfect picture never meant to last. everything she was told to work for, gone.

four oil painted smiles flashed across her mind’s eye, each one more painfully frozen than the last. on the left, the girl in pink’s eyes started to bleed.

                          freak, freak, chrissy, you’re a freak! 

her shoe flew in one more perfect arc, a final blazing strike for good measure.  ❝ UGH!! ❞  

“looks like it’s absolutely necessary.”       /      @tempesttragedy​‘s veronica sawyer

sounds of exertion pivoted from growls to a terrified squeak. that whole performance had been witnessed. oh god, oh god.  chrissy waited, all tension and electricity, for the derision or the utter shock and horror, but none came. instead, all she saw upon turning was an almost.....blasé pair of eyes.

                  ❝ o-h......um. yeah. ❞  dainty wrist shaking with adrenaline, chrissy tried to dab at her forehead with any elegance she had left. halfway through the motion she gave up, a regretful grin taking the worry’s place.  ❝ kind of. it got built up....over a while.  ❞

“ it’s right between ‘ouch’ & ‘boing.’ “               /              @quietresistance​

not bursting into chuckles felt out of the question. the word choice, so far-flung yet oddly specific, captured chrissy’s fascination in an instant. how obvious, in retrospect, that a reporter would have a grip on language so unrelenting that they could make words dance in patterns more complicated than any cheer or ballet routine. chrissy crushed her brows together, an image of pure concentration, already sensing herself slipping down a rabbit hole of wondering if she’d ever experienced something in parallel. 

certainly chrissy’d had her fair share of ouch. perhaps the reporter’s wordsmithing magic had seeped into the stale hawkins general hospital air, because that simple sound, ouch, was beginning to take a thousand shapes inspired by eighteen short years of near constant physical activity. come to think of it, there was a surfeit of boings, too. before the events of a week and a half ago, chrissy hadn’t known the breadth of disasters it was possible to bounce back from, or that she could survive so many in a row, even just barely. 

right... a week and a half ago. the upside down and the earthquake. likely the whole reason the reporter had come. and she was the whole reason chrissy had asked how it felt to be a woman with a pen in a business so full of men. somewhere in between painful and disorienting. bruising and frustrating. difficult, but so, so interesting. 

                        ❝ i haven’t read any newspapers or news stories that sounded half as creative as what you just said. hopefully when by the time you finish your hawkins story, everyone will take you twice as serious. ❞   a blush pink, chipped-polish painted fingernail found a snag in the rough hospital blanket. chrissy paused.   ❝ but you still must be trusted a lot if you’re here, to try and make sense of....everything. ❞

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. ❞

it's okay. it's over now. they won't hurt you again.     /     @wolfvirago​​

the deathly silent, yet piercing klaxon ring of panic was still racing through chrissy’s every vein and nerve. once upon a time, she used to think she understood pain. on the inside where secrets festered like ulcers, dirty, hidden things that she never dared give volume to, detectable by even to the kindest of eyes. on the outside, where exhaustion’s strains warred against endurance, her body warping to the airborne twists of cheerleading, the rippling jar through her tendons when a landing skewed wrong. 

this pain.... it touched places inside that chrissy never knew she possessed. 

no clocks chimed in any place but her sanguine-dyed memories. no slithering vines attached to a more sophisticated, crueler will. the hollow in the tree trunk she’d huddled against was not molded to the shape of her form crumpled and tortured by the supernatural. nothing touched her but the warming air of early summer trapped close to the ground by moss and pine needles, and the soft-spoken breath of the older girl. 

through it all, the skies had the audacity to be blue. blue like the day in march that she broke. and chrissy wept quietly. 

                     ❝  you can know that? how can you know that?  ❞  

whispered doubt thought it was, chrissy could not manage to hide the layers of unbelief still left despite witnessing a thousand impossibilities. impossible until the beginning of spring break. ( and years before that according to rumours that could very well be total truths for all the cheerleader knew, now. ) among all the strange she was asked to believe, what remained unacceptable was assurance unasked for, unearned. 

help was an allergy. no acceptance without resistance. years of shying gradually away from hands that might stretch in her direction had not released their hold. the upside down had changed chrissy cunningham to her core, but it had not reversed everything.

what she was hearing......there was no way it could be as true as the jut of dry bark against her side. could it? 

                    ❝  the things that are in my head.... i don’t think they can come out. no one has to do anything to me for it to still hurt.  ❞

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ   𝔼𝕃𝔼ℕ𝕆ℝ𝔼   𝕎ℍ𝕀𝕋𝔼,                                       (bakcr​)

*  ―      settling dust.   |  accepting.

            “ come on… wake up. please… please wake up… “ 🙃

* .  ♡ she should have gone home. should have tried to make her way BACK to home ages ago. maybe none of this would have happened. maybe she would have been able to wake up, in her bed, in her time. but of course - life was a bitch and none of that happened. ellie knew that there was SOME trauma in her life, but she didn’t think that it was enough to gain the attention of vecna. that fucking clock chiming was enough to give her MORE trauma and she wondered if that was WHY it was there in the first place. but then, all of a sudden - it had stopped. no more chimes, no more bad dreams, it was silent. until her paranoia and night terrors kicked in again. and this was the 80s, working through something was hard.

                                                              so when she and @greenscrunchy​ got closer, she knew that at least SOMEONE would understand what she was going through. it had been a really bad night terror - one where she would scream bloody murder and people would think there actually WAS a murder. ellie could feel hands gripping onto her shoulders, shaking her slightly - nails digging into her skin. she was on the cusp of consciousness, but it was taking a longer time than normal for her to wake up. almost a solid ten seconds later, did ellie’s eyes snap open. her breathing heavy, like she had just run a marathon without stopping - a sob and a cry. ellie sits up and falls onto chrissy - arms wrapping around the slender girl, who had been hovering over her - trying to wake her up for the past ten minutes. “ i’m sorry - ” the brunette kept repeating. “ i’m sorry, i’m sorry. ” she doesn’t want the trauma of vecna to come back, but sometimes her nightmares wouldn’t let her escape. “ chrissy … ” she groaned. “ fuck. ”

                                      ❝ don’t do this, not now. ellie…. ❞  the motions blurred feverish, superheated by chrissy’s depths of alarm and thunderous eagerness not to find out what happened when a girl out of time faded from one that wasn’t her own. if ellie were to be snatched by another something from a nightmare dimension… if at this very moment, in another place, ellie was screaming for help while chrissy cluelessly tried to give it without making a mite of difference, the cheerleader would never forgive herself. she’d never forgive herself, she’d never  ――

                                      ❝ oh, thank god, ❞  gasped sharply in tandem with ellie’s own jolted resurrection. chrissy flung her arms around all of her shaking friend available to reach. one set of fingers tangled with another as if to weave a net strong enough for the both of them to collapse on and keep steady.   ❝ it’s okay. i’ve got you. it’s alright. hey, breathe with me? ❞   this of course required chrissy to herself model some form of controlled lung motion – easier said than done. but years of cheer and airborne spills prepared her for this. it’s all about staying calm. staying focused. knowing where you were in space and how to contort to land safely. right now they were in the park, prickled by emeraldine grass around a picnic table, on a saturday in the beginning of may. all small things, but so weighty in the moment.

chrissy hated to admit it, but ellie was right. fuck was right.   ❝ don’t be sorry. those things in your head aren’t your fault. i just hoped… ❞  the urge to fidget seemed better redirected toward hauling the both of them squarely upright and leaning against the bench.  ❝ …that you wouldn’t get sucked somewhere no one could find you. or that you couldn’t come home from. ❞ 

( had this been how it felt to watch her float, to break? )