PHOEBE BRIDGERS LYRIC PROMPTS.

she’s a ten but she absolutely loathes gone with the wind.

black.

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

white - but just a flash. 

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

the inside of her eyes.

red.

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

breathing.

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

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

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

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

more shots. 

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

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

forever passed, all in a sliver of a second. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

the murder house.

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

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

it wasn’t only the murder house. 

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

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

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

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

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

much easier said than done. 

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

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

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

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

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

hopefully home.

chrissy’s favorite of the freshman is max, followed very closely by jane and will.

her favorite of the hellfire club is lucas, then dustin. lucas is also the sole member of the basketball team that she truly enjoys and feels comfortable around.

her favorite of corroded coffin is jeff.

she will cop to absolutely none of this and will swear passionately and often that she loves everyone the most.

( lady erica applejack is in a category of her own. so is eddie. )

chrissy appreciates the cheer squad very much, but nancy and robin become sources of great admiration and hope. her best friend tracy graduated in ‘85 and the hole she left behind was considerable. it’s nice to meet two girls who understand the horrors of the upside down and still have their heads on straight. nancy and robin are chrissy’s favorite seniors and she will tell them so.

“being kind takes zero effort” Lies.

Being kind takes enormous effort. Being kind means humbling yourself- it means saying no to your pride- it means forgiving someone instantly- it means putting someone convenience over your own for some time- it means acting as if the universe doesn’t revolve around you. Being kind is hard. Being kind is not butterflies and sickly sweet, half-witted compliments. It’s work. It’s serving others. It’s being silent when you don’t want to. It’s being honest. It’s being gentle. It’s being true even if the other person disagrees. Being kind is one of the hardest things a person can do and we need more of it.

a million years later but it never felt more right 🧡 the biggest, BIGGEST thank you to sky for this gorgeous piece with my favorite troubled trio!

A commissioned sketch for @greenscrunchy of Steve, Chrissy, and Eddie looking very concerned! I always love an opportunity to draw the babies- thank you so much for commissioning me!!

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.

the air was cold, actually cold in hawkins for december. chrissy could be fooled into thinking that the place where she’d grown up was a place that made sense, where right side up really was the right side, and seasons were as black and white as they were supposed to be. but that illusion couldn’t be anything but fleeting. california fit more like a home for the past five months than hawkins ever had, even though it was fractionally warmer than what she was used to in winter, to the point that the beginning of december hadn’t felt real there until she’d arrived back in hawkins. where all the old, familiar places had shrunk into pitiful, sad imitations of what younger chrissy lived with so willingly.

there was one last place that still managed to make her feel welcome when all else fell through, one place that felt innately warm: the munson stoop. an emphatic middle finger to the blustery chill shooting shards of wracking frigidity through chrissy’s coat. eddie would be proud to know.

he was why she was there in the first place, rocking on her toes after knocking at the door. it had taken a minute to work up enough assurance that this wasn’t a mistake before her knuckles hit metal, but it happened. she knocked. and now she’d wait for the door to open and for just the right greeting to float down from her brain when it did. 

except when it did open, chrissy stalled. 

five long months of nothing but notes and letters and phone calls since summer ended, and there was eddie munson just a few inches away. in the flesh.

                      ❝ hi? ❞  what a way to sound the opposite of confident, but when chrissy meant so much, almost too much, by her announcement-free arrival, it was hard to know what to say first.  ❝ i hope that....   —  oh, forget it. merry christmas, eddie. i thought i’d try to surprise you. ❞

                       SURPRISE! merry christmas, @hellmartyr​ !

“—oh God, it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

𝑤𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠

Led Zeppelin – Going To California