The Air Was Cold, Actually Cold In Hawkins For December. Chrissy Could Be Fooled Into Thinking That The

𝕃𝕀𝕊𝔸 𝔾𝔸ℝ𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻'𝕊 𝕄𝕀𝕏𝕋𝔸ℙ𝔼  X  𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒸𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓎   ( @nonangelic​ )

as long as nobody’s listening, this fate of our is worsening ( 24 - flor )  /  heaven can you help us where we can’t go ( covered by roses - within temptation )  /  angels fall like rain and love is all of heaven away ( the ghost in you - the psychedelic furs )  /  ghost duet - louie zong

💭 + mementos of childhood

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

HER FULL SET OF NANCY DREW MYSTERIES. those are precious to her and she keeps them well past adulthood and collects every one for as long as they’re published. 

a whole stack of little diaries with the worst locks of all time as clasps. you know the ones. she never wrote in them regularly and mostly copied passages from books and little poems that she liked in between actual thoughts and doodles. (only when she had good hiding places for her diary did her real thoughts come out.) all the identical cheap metal keys live on a frayed green ribbon necklace that chrissy used to wear “just in case anyone tries to steal my secrets”. 

lisa frank pencils and sticker covered notebooks. she kept a few of her favorite pencils whole and unsharpened and they live in her desk. same with several novelty erasers that have since dried beyond usability, but are just fun to look at.

teeny tiny scrunchies from when she had less hair and her wrists were smaller. their shrunken size doesn’t make them any less sweet and she enjoys keeping track of her favorite colors through the years.

a decorated shoebox full of ribbon bows, with notes and letters from cheer coaches past who always had lovely things to say. 

stuffed at the back of one drawer is the ace bandage from her first cheer injury - a rolled ankle. 

several shoeboxes full of makeshift scrapbook pages she tried throwing together as a little girl that never looked anything except disorganized. but she had a pretty solid eye for color grouping and aesthetic building, all the pages just looked messy. she keeps them as a reminder of how much she’s improved her approach.

then, there’s different boxes filled with victorian style cutouts of animals, angels, hearts, bows, gifts, phrases, and symbols of all kinds that she’s either saved or collects to use for cards. her valentines are stuff of legend. and lace. lots of paper lace. there’s also plastic gems she pried out of costume jewelry that get glued here and there onto the paper designs. more punchy than glitter, and far less messy. 

 𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           (hellmartyr​)

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆, 𝐈 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐈 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐘 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃, was what eddie would’ve said if his brain hadn’t flatlined. jaw rusted ajar by shock, his vengeance upended into an anemic stare. questions that were more sensation than language stacked themselves on his teeth, his tongue, leeching the dusty moisture from the back of his throat. his head wasn’t completely empty. there was something resembling a thought for a brief, crudely puerile moment when eddie’s suede eyes widened because chrissy cunningham remembered him. even in his state of oozing wounds, matted hair, and a complexion not unlike an autopsy.

      eddie was still playing catch up when chrissy’s arms interlocked around his torso. an instinctive arm swam around her, shocked by how close to nothing she felt against him. his protection amended itself into a firmer circle as her lament tumbled like tears down the chewed remains of his shirt.

      you’re not dead, his thawing tongue willed itself to say, not yet. as if on cue, an alien wail shattered the unnatural peace. pale surprise overshadowed by a sudden sharpness of narrowed eyes and iron-soaked resolve. the hard line of his lips bent at a grim angle at the shadows in the encroaching mist.

      an encouraging pat warned the girl of his intentions. ❝ come on, let’s get you inside. ❞ shuffling awkwardly, eddie eased chrissy into the station, gingerly rotating their position so that if any spawn of the upside down chose that moment to strike, it’d be forced to go through ed before it ever got a chance to even look at her.

      the door closed behind them with a bloated thunk. there were better odds finding the holy grail stashed in powell’s desk than a surface not covered in disemboweled rot. fearing he’d drop her, eddie settled chrissy in a chair that looked like a cramped piece of shit even without the upside down tinge. as eddie slipped his jacket around the despondent girl, he took the opportunity to take in the horror she’d been through.

      how was it possible for her to be even smaller than he remembered? her skin, a glass menagerie tinted by faded shades of livor mortis. and her eyes, maybe it was a trick of light straining through heavy motes. maybe it was because the last time eddie saw them was the last time anyone did. but eddie swore the twinkle that outshone gymnasium lights was still there. with ghost behind it, barricading the way between him and the girl hiding.

      any furniture not strapped to the ground by vines was dragged and deposited roughly against the door. eddie worked as quickly as his tremoring muscles allowed, always craning his neck to keep an eye on the object of his disbelief, replaying their one way exchange.

      was he real? he didn’t feel real, but he sure as shit felt alive. and — if you squinted — so did chrissy.

      panting from the strain of his task, the young man crouched in front of her, swallowing a dry knot of tension as he stumbled on what to say. because what the fuck do you say to someone murdered from the inside out? ❝ i’m, uh, i’m glad to see you too. ❞ despite the blood on his lower lip and the hellscape in the window, eddie smiled.

      realizing he was holding his breath, eddie flickered from side-to-side for a way to make her a little more comfortable. fastened to his back with medical tape was an outdoor first aid kit eddie scavenged from the drugstore. he was forced to clear out most of its contents, spoiled by the taint that permeated the upside down’s mimicry, leaving him with gauze, several bandages, and a tube of off-brand neosporin that passed the sniff test with skeptical colors. he needed to be careful retrieving its contents. a circular bite wound on his lower back was still runny, exploding with mauve-y pus if he touched it.

      placing the kit on a coaster of debris, eddie skittered to reclaim the treasonous ration from before. he returned, his joints ached as lowered himself again to meekly offer the can of campbell’s schlock to her.

      ❝ it’s safe to eat. i promise. just don’t look at it. ❞

forever ago, sometime during sophomore year, chrissy remembered an experiment she’d done in biology. for two months straight mr. stratner’s class had been drilling the ups and downs and insides and out of the human body and it had been a bumbling, awkward mess no matter what he did. but one wednesday, they’d turned to discussion of the heart. wonder of wonders, mr. stratner had lugged out one of the massive boomboxes from the a/v closet and plopped it on his desk wearing a well earned smirk. what followed was an experiment that turned out to be...fun. 

for almost 45 minutes the entire class experimented with the way music and sound affected the speed of a heartbeat. chrissy and her whole table bent over stopwatches, fingers on pulses and pencils flying. their smiles grew as 4/4 and 6/8 time signatures almost magically bloomed in the tattoo of their heartrates, responding to the music. thoughtful, melancholic strains of chopin eased their pulses to a tranquil putter while tchaikovsky and his cannons sent it sky high. a-ha, the doobie brothers, christopher cross, john waite, starship, spyro gyra, wynton marsalis, all with different rhythms but the same result; parallel rhythms. synchronicity. 

in the spiderweb-fragile moments between embracing what was left of eddie’s mirage, him grasping her back, and the eventual ripping of shrieks from somewhere too close by, there was silence. sweet, strange, then sour. the music of absence. emptiness. and chrissy’s heart paused to match that nothing rhythm. synchronicity in death, where nothing could truly exist. it was everything, everywhere. an ugly, inevitable peace. he’d promised my suffering would end. 

like a vhs struggling over a kink in its tape and then suddenly righting itself to rewind much too fast, time sped itself up again. the un-pause was quick but violent. only a blink and chrissy had been hastily rotated then ushered inside the police station. large hands were still firm over her arms, so she wasn’t going to fall, but she might as well have lost all sense of direction and balance. until a chair was under her. or she was on a chair. had the chair come to her or the other way around?

❝ ah - oh!  ❞  an unexpected face appeared out of nowhere. except it was just eddie, pale white, with muddy gray streaks. like the moon behind clouds. that was fine. five minutes ago she’d have wanted any friendly face at all and if - if only - leaping lizards why wouldn’t her heart rate go down? her breath was coming too fast and shallow, which didn’t calm the sloshing inside her head. all her presence of mind, melted. 

but....breathing. that was something only an alive person could do. eddie was breathing. he was. exhaled air was gusting around her ears as he adjusted something over her. unaware, shaking hands searched it out almost sans chrissy’s awareness or permission. looking down once her fingertips hit canvas, she registered a savaged jacket. 

then he was gone. a volley of thuds and clatters rent the air behind her, but the strawberry blonde didn’t turn to look for causes. instead, she shivered beneath a pile of army surplus as eddie barricaded every possible ingress point in the room, judging by the many slams and grunts in her peripherals. she’d help, but...what help would she really be? 

minutes crawled past. chrissy became one with the chair. behind her, legs of tables turned to splinters and desks became walls in lieu of any real barricade. the sound of metal denting peppered the air now and again, matched by the horrible squeaks of file cabinets digging into the floor with a last gasp of obstinance. 

nothing in hawkins ever did fold easily. 

and there eddie was again, this time at eye level and heaving like he’d forgotten about air during his rushed renovations. this wasn’t a dead man after all, she considered at long last, staring into the last real pair of eyes she’d seen before falling headlong into that...creature’s clutches. friendly then, friendly now. maybe more now because he was smiling. or giving his all in the effort. chrissy tried to offer him the same, although she had very little idea of what her face was doing. honestly, she might have started crying instead. it was hard to tell. maybe both. 

❝ th  —  ❞  her throat rebelled, spiraling her into a brief coughing fit. salt water kept getting in her mouth as she clumsily gulped down air. smiling and crying, then.  ❝ sorry. ❞  but he was skittering raccoonishly out of reach then back again, now proffering a raggedy can of goop. chrissy couldn’t exactly smell through her unattractively running nose, but she could imagine. her gut entire writhed and shrank away from the sight, petrified, but she commanded her shaking hands to reach for it anyway. inside looked like an extension of the vomitous wreath cloaking this nightmare land in every direction. the outside benignly announced “campbell’s”.

❝ thanks. i, um, don’t think i’m hungry, but thanks?  ❞  still, she clung to the aluminum as an anchor. unwanted as its contents might be, the gift she still understood.   ❝ so  —  you’re actually alive. right? you are? if you are, then i am.❞  teeth absently tugged at peeling skin across her lips, where another drop of salt water crept into the soft, red valleys and stung.  ❝ where are we? i don’t understand. what happened or how i got here. how did you get here?  ❞  one long, fierce swallow around a gordian knot inside her throat halted all progress, but not for long. even if she had to whisper to pry the words free. 

❝ is there a way to get out? ❞

If you marry me

Would you bury me?

Would you carry me to the end?

𝚢𝚘𝚞    𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎    𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝    ,     𝚒     𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚜    𝚖𝚢    𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎    𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗    𝚝𝚑𝚎    𝚙𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜    𝚘𝚏    𝚊    𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚔    𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎    𝚊    𝐷𝐴𝐹𝐹𝑂𝐷𝐼𝐿     .      𝚋𝚞𝚝    𝚑𝚘𝚠    𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍    𝚒𝚝    𝔤𝔯𝔬𝔴     𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎    𝚎𝚕𝚜𝚎    ?

#   𝙵𝙾𝙶𝙴𝙻𝚂   .     a  writing  blog  horror - based  original  character    𝐝𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐥  𝐟𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐬   ,     currently  based  in  stranger  things  .    created  by  annie  .

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?

reblog this to give the person you reblogged this from a gold star because they’ve been stellar today and they deserve it ⭐️

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 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           (hellmartyr​)

you do realize you don’t have to do this alone right ? — @greenscrunchy / confrontations

❝ 𝐈’𝐌 𝐍𝐎𝐓, 𝐘𝐎𝐔’𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐌𝐄. ❞ the dial clicked as eddie tuned to channel 6 before placing the plastic-sheathed walkie in chrissy’s hand, ❝ just, from the comfort of the van. ❞

      his 1970s fossil-guzzling monstrosity was a shabby stand-in for her hi-tech mobile unit cousin. no reinforced chassis, no double-armored moulding, no supercomputers with crash resistant casing. and her engine? oh, her engine, a chain smoking banshee with tuberculosis on speed. yet for all her inorganic flaws, she was an ornery steel heifer who never failed to bulldoze eddie out of a pinch.

      the hollow bumps popped underfoot as eddie manically pranced from one corner to its parallel. he rifled through several pouches before locating a tablet shoved into the abyss of an overstuffed duffel. speakers chirped in greeting as the handheld booted through a logo to the menu. a few taps populated the screen with an empirical application with a plain royal background. the mechanic set the device beside the young woman before tampering with the componentry on the shoulder strap of his vest. twin beady red lights blinked to life on the front and back of his right shoulder. a high definition projection of the van’s insides engulfed the tablet screen, mimicking eddie’s jostling.

      ❝ you can switch views. be the eyes in the back of my head, ❞ indicating the navigational options in the lower corner, ❝ there’s a three centimeter blind spot on either side. not sure it’s darwin award winning, but, uh, something to keep in mind. ❞

      hesitation burned like bile in the gullet. chris wasn’t a meek little fawn ready to drop at the first sign of struggle. there was no questioning her intelligence either. she was leagues beyond his bell curve but even the brightest could be overwhelmed under maddening pressure. and it wasn’t just tasks, he was asking for her to have a hand in his safety. shit was bound to go south, and if it went far enough to t-bone the equator, eddie wasn’t keen on the young woman feeling responsible if he was ripped apart.

      snow compacted with a crunch as ed leapt down from the tail. keys jangled as he slid them towards her foot along with further instructions, ❝ keep the doors locked. fuck it, even it’s me. i knock more than three times, something’s wrong. you get to the wheel and just, ❞ his lip curled inward uncomfortable, hand frozen mid-gesture as eddie considered how request she leave him for dead. he settled on a halted hand-chop and wan smile, ❝ drive. ❞

      eddie was about to seal the doors when an eerie cry humbled the dense night air. his spine jammed into an uneasy curve. nothing moved aside from the motes of snow in the moon’s bleached reflection bouncing off the frozen earth. the low timber carried overhead, slipping through the trees like phantom waves. nerves estranged, eddie fished a pistol from his belt and offered it to her, grip first, ❝ live rounds. safety off. don’t go for the head, aim for the gut. ❞

                  ❝  eddie munson, that’s not what i meant and you know it! don’t leave me in here, ❞  but this was the munson way, to dig his heels in to the point of no return. the mad metalhead had pure concentrated decision writ across his narrow face and it frightened chrissy more than she’d be willing to put to words. at least, not in front of eddie. not when he’d spent so much of his prior time around her ensuring he didn’t fumble his way across all of her tripwires at once. she couldn’t very well tell him that after months of pure care and concern, he was waltzing his way through all of her worst fears like a blindfolded ballerina dancing through a bank vault robbery: being left completely alone in a dangerous place, being left behind in general, being stuck IN THE DARK, being told things were fine when they weren’t, being a person she liked doing something unquestioningly stupid, and the list could have rambled on. 

numb disbelief forced her to watch every sharp movement eddie made while booting up the ranch’s surveillance tablet and syncing it to his shoulder-mounted camera. this wasn’t helping. all chrissy could associate with her bonus eyes was a 360 degree (minus six centimeters) view of all the bad bad bad that was surely waiting for ed out in the blackness. 

                    ❝  great, i can watch you get mauled, ❞  she muttered down at the screen with its heralding rotating ‘SWR’ in the top right corner. mocking her. such a paragon of safety and in its name eddie munson was about to rank-and-file like a tin soldier out into a field of unknowns containing creatures as big as those four-legged star wars machines and worse. at least those armored walkers had no teeth, and the institution both she and eddie worked for dealt with very real quadrupeds that absolutely did. littered with teeth of all kinds, they were, and more deadly than hunks of moving metal.

all the accessories and steps to go with them were supposed to make her feel active in whatever this little expedition was meant to be, but chrissy’s tongue tangled around the truth that it was making it worse. oh so much worse and creating a bigger sense of helplessness than mad-eye munson had set forth to author. but here they were and by the time keys hit the crumbling rubber floormats, she was done.

                   ❝  so i have to sit and wait until something with two legs and two wings knocks on the window?? eddie, you’ve got to be kidding. don’t you dare close that door, don’t you  ——— ❞   exactly then the call of the wild trumpeted its primal prerogative and all words ceased in favor of divining the source and distance away. absolutely impossible within the copse of trees eddie had parked them, but painfully human instinct demanded they try. eddie’s confounding response was to, once more, arm her instead of himself. 

                   ❝  you want me to try and shoot something? ❞  she squeaked.  ❝  nuh-uh, not happening. ❞  the seatbelt pinning her to the faded front seat flew apart, released into god’s hands now. chrissy cunningham would not just be van loitering like a fluffy little duck in a kiddie pool while 1) terrifying monsters circled her without her knowledge and 2) eddie traipsed into the jaws of death without at least a little backup. the matter was settled in her book.  ❝  i’m coming with you before you’re too far into the next clearing and realize maybe four eyes are better than two. okay? ❞  with great haste she gingerly slapped the pistol across the empty seat and back to eddie’s vicinity, all too eager to get it away, away.  ❝  just... don’t make me use that.  ❞