𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙅𝘼𝙉𝙀                   ( familybyerstm​ )

𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓  𝟓 (𝐨𝐫 𝟏𝟎)  𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒  𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓  𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐄  𝐘𝐎𝐔  𝐓𝐎  𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄  𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑  𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄. 

1.    mothers talk   ∕   tears for fears 2.    more than a feeling   ∕   cinematic pop ft. cosette smith (originally by boston) 3.    victoria’s secret   ∕   jax 4.    you picked off all the polish   ∕   UTAH 5.    kids + teens   ∕   kyle dixon & michael stein 6.    fields of coral   ∕   vangelis 7.    gloria   ∕   laura branigan 8.    here i go again   ∕   whitesnake 9.    i cheat the hangman   ∕   the doobie brothers 10.  the end  ∕   the beatles

&  𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓  𝟓  𝐐𝐔𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒  𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓  𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐄  𝐘𝐎𝐔  𝐓𝐎  𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄  𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑  𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄.

1.     “all parents damage their children. it cannot be helped. youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”   —   mitch albom, the five people you meet in heaven

2.     “i must get my soul back from you; i am killing my flesh without it.”  /  “the silence depressed me. it wasn’t the silence of silence. it was my own silence.”   —   sylvia plath, the unabridged journals / the bell jar 

3.     “i have a strict policy that no one cries alone in my presence.”   —   dolly parton

4.     “when did your childhood end? how badly did you get hurt, when you did, when you were this little, when you were this wee little hurtable thing, nothing but big eyes, a heart, a few hundred words? isn't it wonderful how we never recover?"   —   will eno, thom pain (based on nothing)

5.      In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth  [...]  I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness, And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away— [...] I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. [...] So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.                                     You say I am repeating Something I have said before. I shall say it again.    —   t.s. eliot, east coker

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲:  @quietresistance  then  @hellmartyr​  xD  love you both dearly

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠: @darkestshadeofgrey or @athousandmilesandcounting or BOTH  /  @manaborn  /  @starsinshadows (steve)  /  @firelightfables (billy or eddie)  /  @knowseverythingaboutyou  /  @vihilum ( tommy or nance! )  /  @dvarapala  /  @shadowedvales  /  @sihnon  /  @sawbcnes  /  @asteritm  /  @masterwcrk  /  @hostica  /  @katesgotabow  /  @wheeling  /  @cleryc  /  @wihlliams  /  @flaeyed​  /  @telekinsis or @barhd  /  @alwaysrevvedup  /  @flayerlinked  /  @partysheart or @rebelcliche  /  @mikewheelertm  /  @temporarywiin (jessica or ashton!)  /  @trashm0uth  /  @finalhorrors​ (stephanie or eddie k.)

 — To the Young Who Want to Die, Gwendolyn Brooks  

[ text ID: Graves grow no green that you can use. / Remember, green’s your color. / You are Spring. ]

If you marry me

Would you bury me?

Would you carry me to the end?

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.

(in tears) next year i will have so much fun!

Émotion (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1966)

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?”

“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.

hours into the unclear future, chrissy might catch herself realizing that infinite reasons could exist for pink cheeks and dreamy silences in a packed kitchen hot from crowded bodies guzzling light beer and gossip like air, but in the moment she was only capable of joyously giggling,  ❝ steve, you’re so pink! ❞  a small poke to his cheek came after, followed in quick succession by an exultant gasp and a poke to a nearby eddie’s cheek.  ❝ you both are! ❞

such a sight was inexplicably tickling with a plastic cup of punch or two in her system (never more than that, however  —  playing it safe has become more comforting than boring) that lent a glowing edge to even the harshest of lighting and noises. like all of them were sucked into the kind of classic 80’s film chrissy used to romanticize within an inch of its life. with her shoulder sunk into eddie’s side and halfway beaming at steve, an argument could be made. brat pack, eat your heart out. they didn’t have safe places like she did, to be drawn back to every night like twin homing beacons. they weren’t laughing like she could these days. 

a slow, loose dawning still managed to roll over the former cheerleader, cooling a little of her own halfway inebriation.  ❝ it’s been a while, right? since we had fun like this? ‘cuz it feels good. ❞  

a freak, a jock, & an ex-jock walk into a party....     ///      @firelightfables​ + @starsinshadows​