I’m Fed Up With You And The Way That You Do

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? ❞

thank you, cinnamoroll (that's a childhood dream right there) 🧡💛 and i'm so charmed to see the rest of the Strangers included in this. as it should be!

order up for @greenscrunchy!

Susan Sontag, from “Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963″

had chris survived the great vecna-ing of spring ‘86, no doubt she’d be dressing up as sarah from labyrinth.

before ‘86 it was princess leia multiple times, and once she and two little friends dressed up as judy, violet, and doralee from 9 to 5.

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. ❞

💭 + waiting

𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓸𝓷𝓼 — send 💭 + a topic to receive a headcanon about said topic.

chrissy’s good at it. she’d rather not be. or, more specifically, she is veeeeeeeeery good at biding her time. 

internalizing is nearly her full time profession at this point, so she can keep angst and impatience down like an utter champ, enough that the urge to think about what she’s waiting on all but disappears. distraction is key to this, also. no one is better at keeping busy or looking the furthest thing from lazy. (laura has a different rubric for this but that different rubric could apply to the rest of chrissy’s life already, so it’s rather a moot point.) filling her meantimes to the brim is never a problem. it’s the ache of waiting and wondering, sometimes for something completely unnamed and indefinable, that hurts the most. 

chrissy hadn’t known, but she’d lived her youth waiting, plodding along to achieve each goal her mother set for her. those were bite-sized accomplishments that helped ease the hunger to move on in her life. maybe from hawkins, even if it was only for four years. lasting all the way through high school was a long, long wait and her time needed to be filled so it would fly by. 

up until the nightmares began, chrissy thought the easiest way to survive was to steadily outlast every struggle that showed its grim little face, waiting until it passed. but the nightmares and visions came on too fast and too bloody to wait out. for those she had no plan and no solution, save for opening up to miss kelly. but not even miss kelly could help with every unsettled matter up to that point that still hadn’t dissolved with inattention and patience.

after that, she wasn’t too keen on letting life drift past her anymore. there was much still left to wait on, but even more still to do. things to do immediately, without having to twiddle her thumbs. the most important of which became kicking high school to the curb and setting herself up for a successful college experience far, faaaaar away. 

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?”

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. 

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ 𝔻𝕌𝕊𝕋𝕀ℕ ℍ𝔼ℕ𝔻𝔼ℝ𝕊𝕆ℕ                               (barhd​)

                 FAMILY     REFERENCES    /     SENTENCE    STARTERS  .

@greenscrunchy​ asked: ​❝ you remind me a little bit of my brother. ❞ 

                       HE   WAS   TAKEN   OFF   GUARD   BY   THE   COMMENT   coming   from   Hawkin’s   queen.   Soft   eyes   glanced   up   at   her,   head   inclined   to   the   side   as   he   did   so.   He   was   quiet,   sat   alone   after   school   until   the   halls   cleared.   It   was   better   this   way.   Less   people   to   pick   on   his   curls,   the   way   he   dressed,   or   by   the   fact   that   he   was   in   Hellfire.   Of   course,   that   didn’t   matter   much   anymore.   That   wasn’t   the   reason   why   he   stayed   so   late.   That   was   just   the   bonus,   “   I…   uh…   ”

            LIPS   PARTED   TO   SAY   MORE   WORDS,   BUT   THEY   were   lost   in   a   small   grunt.   Dustin   put   down   his   pencil   and   closed   his   notebook.   Homework   was   already   done,   just   one   more   problem.   Besides,   he   should   be   going   to   get   his   bike   to   go   home   now,   “   Your   brother?   ”   he   didn’t   know   much   about   Chrissy,   but   he   didn’t   know   she   had   a   brother,   “   I   do?   Is   that   a…   good   thing?   ”   words   questioned   as   he   started   to   slowly   pack   away   his   things.

according to ancient history class, there were three ways to become royalty: take the throne by force, earn the throne by feat or battle or lineage, or be crowned by civilians. the resulting level of power seemed to be the same, but the most beloved of monarchs historically were chosen. 

chrissy cunningham had landed squarely between earning the throne through dating jason and her leadership of the cheer squad, and being pulled to the top ranking by public opinion. the former was a side effect she hadn’t asked for, and the latter was flattering if confounding. all chrissy did was smile and say hello, and hawkins high seemed to think she had it all. each day they assumed so was another day chrissy succeeded in hiding the hideous thoughts populating her mind with damning growls. outside pressure crystallized the voices into sharp barbs more difficult to shatter than diamonds and far more dark. 

then sometimes, when eyes were turned elsewhere, when the hallways were quiet, she could temporarily abandon a title festooned with never-ending rumours and expectations. that late-afternoon illusion was broken by the outline of one dustin henderson slouched against the wall, head buried in stacks of homework. chrissy slowed her nearly silent pace to her locker. the image radiated with a passing, familiar bittersweetness that urged chrissy to remark on it, already knowing her interruption would startle the freshman when it was too late to stop. 

yet chrissy found herself hoping she looked less of a gawk-worthy queen and more like an average senior coming from cheer practice in her tank top and hawkins tigers shorts. it was a long shot. though, she’d not properly traded words with dustin since the school year began. he might surprise her. 

                             ❝ yeah, i do. his name is matty. you’re a freshman, right? he’s two grades below you. ❞  fading sunlight caught the sweat-curled ends of her ponytail, strawberry blonde blinking copper as chrissy scuffed her left sneaker against a seam in the linoleum.   ❝ he loves to read. always gets this....focused look on his face when he does. like you had just now. ❞  she stalled the sudden, misplaced urge to chew her lip and smiled instead.  ❝ it’s really sweet. ❞

    I’m dead. The deadest girl in Deadtown. It’s been a while now. I’m comfortable with the word. You wouldn’t believe how comfortable the dead can get. We don’t tiptoe. Dead. Dead. Dead. Flying Ace of the Corpse Corps. Stepping the light. Deathtastic. I don’t actually know what a doornail is, but we have a lot in common. Dying was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. I’m famous for it.

    And the thing about me is, I’m not coming back. Lots of people do, you know. Deadtown has pretty shitty border control. If you know somebody on the outside, somebody who knows a guy, a priest or a wizard or a screenwriter or a guy whose superpower shtick gets really dark sometimes or a scientist with a totally neat revivification ray who just can’t seem to get federal funding, you can go home again. But we go steady, Death and me. Nobody can tear us apart

    When the fires went out in Manhattan, they went out in her eyes, too.                              It’s nice to be famous for something, I guess.

             –  the  refrigerator  monologues .                                by  catherynne  valente .