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Feb. 25th, 2033 04:11 pm
Everybody's got two hands - @spikedbats
Apr. 29th, 2023 06:24 pmSpring break had been... eventful.
As it turned out she hadn't been losing her mind, but she had been under attack by an actual dark wizard, or something like it. It also turned out that the people who liked to say that Hawkins was cursed weren't entirely wrong, either. Both of which were things that she wanted to forget but knew she wouldn't be able to. The curse of knowledge or something like that.
But Eddie, with the help of Max Mayfield of all people, had actually saved her life. Of course, the fact that she was in the hospital recovering for the rest of the week afterwards -one ankle broken, the other sprained, and a dislocated knee, not to mention the jammed wrist and elbow that had happened when she fell- she hadn't been able to say so, or, rather, she had, but her mother refused to believe it, insisting that she'd hit her head and forgotten, or simply blocked out the trauma of 'that boy' trying to kill her.
But, with a shocking lack of actual evidence to that point, a stack of personal testimonials to the contrary, and Jim Hopper returning from the dead -something else that had happened while she'd been in the hospital- to shake some sense back into the Hawkins police, they'd been forced to conclude that it had been an accident and nothing more.
She'd been discharged from the hospital within hours of being admitted, and while she was still mostly unaware of what had happened with everyone else while she was recovering -aside from the brief moments she'd seen in her dreams and the even briefer explanations she'd been given- she was actually alright with that, given the state Eddie and Max were in when she'd managed to visit them during her own follow-up appointment.
But in the days and weeks that followed, things changed almost as much as they stayed the same. The town suffered what everyone was calling an earthquake, but had, apparently been caused by the death of the dark wizard that had been hunting her and had also caused the Creel Murder House to just collapse in on itself into a sinkhole that no one had known was under it.
She also reconnected with Steve Harrington, who she hadn't fully realized she'd missed until they were back in each other's orbit, and more than that, the two of them devised a plan to make sure Eddie graduated, because as far as she was concerned it was the least she could do in return for him saving her life.
Mostly what this meant was a lot of afternoons and even evenings spent at the Harrington house over the next couple of months, and while they were cramming Eddie full of all the information he was going to need, sometimes the three of them just talked, and that was even better because as it turned out, she wasn't used to having friends, though a few of the girls on the squad still stood by her after everything, and that was good too.
Surprisingly, the plan worked, and Eddie had graduated, by a very narrow margin, but that still counted. After that had been Chrissy's birthday and her first act of adult rebellion had been to cut her hair. The second had been to quit choir -she'd already dropped out of cheer after the spring break injuries- and while she knew she was going to pay for both those things, as she was still very much living under Laura Cunningham's roof, she couldn't really bring herself to care, because she felt free and a little reckless for the first time in her life.
Of course, as soon as her mother found out about her quitting choir, the ultimatum was that she shouldn't even come to church that Sunday, to which she'd replied 'alright, I won't', and that was what led to a rather cryptic invitation from Steve that she should come over because he 'knew she hadn't had an actual birthday in a while' which had mostly made her laugh, but she wasn't really opposed to it, and was entirely unsurprised to find Eddie's van already out front when she arrived, though with no other vehicles, she wasn't entirely sure what to expect as she stepped up onto the porch to knock.
As it turned out she hadn't been losing her mind, but she had been under attack by an actual dark wizard, or something like it. It also turned out that the people who liked to say that Hawkins was cursed weren't entirely wrong, either. Both of which were things that she wanted to forget but knew she wouldn't be able to. The curse of knowledge or something like that.
But Eddie, with the help of Max Mayfield of all people, had actually saved her life. Of course, the fact that she was in the hospital recovering for the rest of the week afterwards -one ankle broken, the other sprained, and a dislocated knee, not to mention the jammed wrist and elbow that had happened when she fell- she hadn't been able to say so, or, rather, she had, but her mother refused to believe it, insisting that she'd hit her head and forgotten, or simply blocked out the trauma of 'that boy' trying to kill her.
But, with a shocking lack of actual evidence to that point, a stack of personal testimonials to the contrary, and Jim Hopper returning from the dead -something else that had happened while she'd been in the hospital- to shake some sense back into the Hawkins police, they'd been forced to conclude that it had been an accident and nothing more.
She'd been discharged from the hospital within hours of being admitted, and while she was still mostly unaware of what had happened with everyone else while she was recovering -aside from the brief moments she'd seen in her dreams and the even briefer explanations she'd been given- she was actually alright with that, given the state Eddie and Max were in when she'd managed to visit them during her own follow-up appointment.
But in the days and weeks that followed, things changed almost as much as they stayed the same. The town suffered what everyone was calling an earthquake, but had, apparently been caused by the death of the dark wizard that had been hunting her and had also caused the Creel Murder House to just collapse in on itself into a sinkhole that no one had known was under it.
She also reconnected with Steve Harrington, who she hadn't fully realized she'd missed until they were back in each other's orbit, and more than that, the two of them devised a plan to make sure Eddie graduated, because as far as she was concerned it was the least she could do in return for him saving her life.
Mostly what this meant was a lot of afternoons and even evenings spent at the Harrington house over the next couple of months, and while they were cramming Eddie full of all the information he was going to need, sometimes the three of them just talked, and that was even better because as it turned out, she wasn't used to having friends, though a few of the girls on the squad still stood by her after everything, and that was good too.
Surprisingly, the plan worked, and Eddie had graduated, by a very narrow margin, but that still counted. After that had been Chrissy's birthday and her first act of adult rebellion had been to cut her hair. The second had been to quit choir -she'd already dropped out of cheer after the spring break injuries- and while she knew she was going to pay for both those things, as she was still very much living under Laura Cunningham's roof, she couldn't really bring herself to care, because she felt free and a little reckless for the first time in her life.
Of course, as soon as her mother found out about her quitting choir, the ultimatum was that she shouldn't even come to church that Sunday, to which she'd replied 'alright, I won't', and that was what led to a rather cryptic invitation from Steve that she should come over because he 'knew she hadn't had an actual birthday in a while' which had mostly made her laugh, but she wasn't really opposed to it, and was entirely unsurprised to find Eddie's van already out front when she arrived, though with no other vehicles, she wasn't entirely sure what to expect as she stepped up onto the porch to knock.
'Cleared of murder charges' didn't mean forgiven, and back from the dead didn't mean free from suspicion. But after multiple rounds of questioning -both together and alone- and signing of affidavits, and really everything short of a lie detector test, their story was finally believed. Or at the very least, agreed upon as believed. Because while their story was believable, it wasn't airtight, and there were things they couldn't explain, like the body.
But even so the charges against Eddie had been dropped and Chrissy's death certificate had been voided.
She had expected that Eddie's friends would go along with the story, once they'd heard it, and they had, but what she hadn't expected was that the cheer squad would go along with it, too, and the fact that they were willing, and in some cases even eager, to go along with the story of Eddie having rescued her from whatever Jason had been planning after the championship win, should have raised concerns about things they might have actually overheard from him.
But she didn't ask because she didn't actually want to know, and it didn't really matter, since Jason definitely wasn't coming back.
She'd also expected that her mother would ban her from talking to Eddie, though she'd thought they might still be able to get away with it at school, they both had a senior year to finish after all, except that Chrissy wasn't going to be attending in person, she was going to be doing home study 'like some kind of delinquent'. Which apparently came with bars on her bedroom window -a decorative faux-trellis, but definitely bars- for safety reasons, and really everything short of hourly bed checks during the night.
Not that Chrissy had ever used her bedroom window to sneak out, she'd used her bathroom window, and that one was, at least for the time being, still unbarred.
But what Laura Cunningham hadn't taken into account, was that Amber -from the cheer squad, who had graciously offered to bring Chrissy her assignments each week and drop them off for her, just so that Mrs. Cunningham didn't have to worry about it herself- had sometime in the chaos of the past few weeks, started dating Jeff of the Hellfire Club.
Which meant that even if Amber didn't speak to Eddie directly, she was still able to pass along notes, and she did. The most recent one was simple: Friday, 10pm, Lover's Lake dock..
It had been weeks, and Chrissy had been careful and quiet and perfectly penitent, and she was about ready to tear her hair out, she needed even just a few minutes out of the house, and being able to see Eddie would be a bonus.
But even so the charges against Eddie had been dropped and Chrissy's death certificate had been voided.
She had expected that Eddie's friends would go along with the story, once they'd heard it, and they had, but what she hadn't expected was that the cheer squad would go along with it, too, and the fact that they were willing, and in some cases even eager, to go along with the story of Eddie having rescued her from whatever Jason had been planning after the championship win, should have raised concerns about things they might have actually overheard from him.
But she didn't ask because she didn't actually want to know, and it didn't really matter, since Jason definitely wasn't coming back.
She'd also expected that her mother would ban her from talking to Eddie, though she'd thought they might still be able to get away with it at school, they both had a senior year to finish after all, except that Chrissy wasn't going to be attending in person, she was going to be doing home study 'like some kind of delinquent'. Which apparently came with bars on her bedroom window -a decorative faux-trellis, but definitely bars- for safety reasons, and really everything short of hourly bed checks during the night.
Not that Chrissy had ever used her bedroom window to sneak out, she'd used her bathroom window, and that one was, at least for the time being, still unbarred.
But what Laura Cunningham hadn't taken into account, was that Amber -from the cheer squad, who had graciously offered to bring Chrissy her assignments each week and drop them off for her, just so that Mrs. Cunningham didn't have to worry about it herself- had sometime in the chaos of the past few weeks, started dating Jeff of the Hellfire Club.
Which meant that even if Amber didn't speak to Eddie directly, she was still able to pass along notes, and she did. The most recent one was simple: Friday, 10pm, Lover's Lake dock..
It had been weeks, and Chrissy had been careful and quiet and perfectly penitent, and she was about ready to tear her hair out, she needed even just a few minutes out of the house, and being able to see Eddie would be a bonus.
Chrissy jolted forward, the same kind of hypnic jerk that sometimes happened when falling asleep. It wasn't hard enough to smack her face on the table in front of her, but suddenly enough to slap both hands down flat on it, and hard enough to sting. But only that, there wasn't any other pain, and that couldn't be right.
She flexed her fingers for a moment, brow furrowing at the fact that her hands were unbent, almost pristine, and that definitely couldn't be right either, this had to be another trick, that monster toying with her again -and why again was her first thought she didn't know- letting her think it was over, or that she'd gotten away somehow.
She twisted partway around without getting up, half-expecting that she'd see that damn clock wedged partway into a tree trunk again, or just standing freely between trees. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest, she could practically feel it in her ears, under her tongue, some kind of adrenaline dump because this couldn't be real and it was just going to shatter again at any moment. But there was no sign of it, she couldn't see it, she couldn't hear it, and the dappled afternoon sunlight showed no sign of shifting suddenly to twilit gloom.
Flexing her fingers again she turned back around, "Eddie?"
She flexed her fingers for a moment, brow furrowing at the fact that her hands were unbent, almost pristine, and that definitely couldn't be right either, this had to be another trick, that monster toying with her again -and why again was her first thought she didn't know- letting her think it was over, or that she'd gotten away somehow.
She twisted partway around without getting up, half-expecting that she'd see that damn clock wedged partway into a tree trunk again, or just standing freely between trees. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest, she could practically feel it in her ears, under her tongue, some kind of adrenaline dump because this couldn't be real and it was just going to shatter again at any moment. But there was no sign of it, she couldn't see it, she couldn't hear it, and the dappled afternoon sunlight showed no sign of shifting suddenly to twilit gloom.
Flexing her fingers again she turned back around, "Eddie?"
Eddie's got a ghoulfriend - for @gygaxed
Sep. 7th, 2022 04:49 pmEverything was wrong. Or, maybe, everything was right and she was wrong, she didn't know.
What she knew was what she'd heard. She'd heard the song and she'd known that it was for her, it was hers and even though it had faded almost as soon as it had started, it had still lodged somewhere in her chest, humming away like audio feedback where her heartbeat should be.
She didn't know how she'd gotten this far, there were only fragments that stuck, some of them fit together and some didn't, it was sensation, mostly, falling first when the vines-roots-limbs holding her in place finally gave way, the grit of the ground under her hands and her knees when she fell.
She knew that she'd just laid there for a while on the gritty hardpack, listening to her song, feeling it flutter against her ribs, feeling like it wanted to go somewhere, but it took what seemed like an actual eternity to get her limbs to cooperate, to stop being wrong, and another eternity after that one before she could actually manage to make them move, make herself move.
She didn't know how she'd gotten from there to here, but she knew she was here and that was right, even though she'd had to find somewhere cool and dark to burrow herself into for a while, to get away from a sky that was too bright and a world that was too hot, but now that it was dim again she knew where she was going. Toward the last bastion of safety she'd felt before everything had gone wrong.
She had no idea what time it was, time was meaningless, currently beyond her grasp. What she knew was that he was there. She knew that he was responsible for her song and she knew that he'd tried to help her once, which meant that he had the best chance of helping her now.
She couldn't see the trailer, but she knew it was there, and once she was close enough she knew exactly where he was inside it, taking a moment to collect herself, reaching up to tap-tap-tap at the window.
Just as she had no way of knowing what time it was, or how long she'd been there instead of here, she had no way of knowing the state she was in. She was hale again, yes, but far from hardy, she was no longer broken, but she was still bruised, hair tattered and eyes no longer gone, but still useless, milk-white and featureless.
She was, in short, like something out of a nightmare.
What she knew was what she'd heard. She'd heard the song and she'd known that it was for her, it was hers and even though it had faded almost as soon as it had started, it had still lodged somewhere in her chest, humming away like audio feedback where her heartbeat should be.
She didn't know how she'd gotten this far, there were only fragments that stuck, some of them fit together and some didn't, it was sensation, mostly, falling first when the vines-roots-limbs holding her in place finally gave way, the grit of the ground under her hands and her knees when she fell.
She knew that she'd just laid there for a while on the gritty hardpack, listening to her song, feeling it flutter against her ribs, feeling like it wanted to go somewhere, but it took what seemed like an actual eternity to get her limbs to cooperate, to stop being wrong, and another eternity after that one before she could actually manage to make them move, make herself move.
She didn't know how she'd gotten from there to here, but she knew she was here and that was right, even though she'd had to find somewhere cool and dark to burrow herself into for a while, to get away from a sky that was too bright and a world that was too hot, but now that it was dim again she knew where she was going. Toward the last bastion of safety she'd felt before everything had gone wrong.
She had no idea what time it was, time was meaningless, currently beyond her grasp. What she knew was that he was there. She knew that he was responsible for her song and she knew that he'd tried to help her once, which meant that he had the best chance of helping her now.
She couldn't see the trailer, but she knew it was there, and once she was close enough she knew exactly where he was inside it, taking a moment to collect herself, reaching up to tap-tap-tap at the window.
Just as she had no way of knowing what time it was, or how long she'd been there instead of here, she had no way of knowing the state she was in. She was hale again, yes, but far from hardy, she was no longer broken, but she was still bruised, hair tattered and eyes no longer gone, but still useless, milk-white and featureless.
She was, in short, like something out of a nightmare.
