Amylforsythe: Oh Chrissy. How Sweet; You Little Tortured Soul. […]

nothing new // taylor swift feat. phoebe bridgers

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.  ❞

i’m the opposite of the grinch. i’m the binch. my heart is two sizes too BIG

chrissy on vigil by max’s bedside. 

switching between rubbing the blood back into max’s fingers, putting lotion on max’s hands, brushing max’s hair, and taking stock of her own still bruised limbs.

sitting by lucas while he’s reading to max and taking over when lucas has to leave or gets tired. 

asking lucas (and whoever else is willing) to tell stories about max so no one even gets close to forgetting what max was like alive and well. 

chrissy telling dustin she’s noticed his hat collection for a while and likes all of them. being fascinated by dustin’s fascination with radios. 

chrissy asking erica with genuine interest how she got into d&d, immediately getting more curious when she learns about figure painting and dice towers and homemade maps and dioramas. erica is no cliché and she has too many facets to ever be boring.

chrissy finding out nancy knows a thing or two about guns and with great trepidation asking if nancy will show her what she knows. saying she needs to read the school paper more. promising nancy she’s got the clear head and the clear eyes to see what’s happening in the world and call it out truthfully. admiring nancy’s dedication to not being just some girl. 

going to family video and getting into an almost heated discussion with robin over the ranking of brat pack movies before deciding st. elmo’s fire is superior. or maybe it’s the outsiders. is it the outsiders? probably. steve is making cartoon blinking noises.

chrissy being endlessly amused and in awe of robin, her solid sense of self. soon showing up to band concerts with a single pompom to wave in silence as a show of support.

something about will drawing chrissy in, even if he’s near silent, until she pulls him aside and asks what he’s feeling, if it’s anything like what she felt. getting to sit down together and explain all the leftover fear and dread to someone who might actually understand how heavy and how inevitable it feels. 

chrissy teaching max leg strengthening exercises.

driving to max’s house and either existing in post-vecna silence from the pain of living through it or doggedly pushing through and either cussing at their bodies’ weaknesses together or chrissy taking max’s hand and urging them both across the yard to the clothesline and back, then to the dog and back. and then to eddie’s house and back. 

chrissy asking eddie if there’s anything that can be done about his uncle’s trailer.

bringing wayne a new mug and flowers, desperately sorry he had to see her twisted the way she had been on his floor. 

every time she goes to see eddie bringing a hat or a mug for his uncle.

chrissy trying to ask what everyone’s favorite song is, but when it gets too hard to say and stings to remember, she asks about favorite albums. 

going to record stores and digging through bargain bins and whatever she can find that makes her think of the hawkins heroes. 

chrissy going to the picnic table clearing with a trash bag and determinedly cleaning up the tiny little space as if it will somehow cleanse it. 

chrissy being benched from cheer but still showing up to every game, now able to cheer for her squad even more than simply the players on the court. the girls become much less than just simple squad-mates and much more like friends.

chrissy telling mike and will she’s admired how close their friendship has been over the years. 

chrissy asking all four of the freshman boys how long they’ve liked d&d and what got them started. 

just once getting to have a conversation with argyle and hanging on every word that comes out of his mouth with a huge smile on her face, completely entranced and entertained. 

chrissy visiting fred and patrick’s graves to clean and decorate them. she didn’t know fred but from a distance and knew patrick on a friendly surface level, but she knows the horrors they experienced before they died. that’s enough. 

chrissy going to the hideout on tuesdays, not just to see eddie play, but to see corroded coffin. to hear the band members eddie is so proud of playing their hearts out. to actually learn their names and talk to them all and get to know them. she doesn’t scream or whoop or holler during their set but remembers particularly sharp riffs and rhythms to compliment later. asking about song names and lyrics and inspirations.

chrissy telling all of her female friends daily that they’re beautiful, slowly, eventually abandoning references to appearance altogether and telling them they’re amazing and smart or clever instead. what she might have liked to hear, unladen with subtext. 

the party having lunch picnics on the school lawn. 

creating summer game plans together and apart.

library dates.

desperately trying to reclaim any sense of normalcy within hawkins. 

here’s your “wow, what the hell, jason” for today:  there are multiple guys on the hawkins cheer squad, and like all cheer guys they play a really big part in building the strength of the squad - which we see in the pep rally when they’re assisting with lifts. jason, during his rousing “we’ll win for the dead people” speech, only draws attention to the girls on the squad. 

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝘾𝙃𝙄𝙀𝙁 𝙃𝙊𝙋𝙋𝙀𝙍                           (fatherscurse​)

❛ i’m tired of dying. ❜ - &. 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐭𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

he almost has to laugh. he feels like he’s died plenty of times over in the last eight months. the last couple of years, really. it was sad, a pang in his chest letting him know it wasn’t funny. but, of course, jim being jim, he does laugh. “ yeah. jesus. me too, kid. but hey. i got you now, no matter what, yeah? you’re not dyin’ this time. ”

feat. @greenscrunchy​

years ago laura cunningham nipped the act of chrissy allowing her head to loll back lazily in the bud. an indicator of terrible posture, she announced, and chrissy would never appear polite or put together with her neck flopping about like a chicken’s. sit up straight, feet crossed, hands in lap. like an obedient princess. 

right now, chrissy is obeying none of those pointers and looking not the least bit like a princess. her body hurts and every angled limb is an attempt to soften the ache that have come to dwell in all her hollows. both legs are bent slightly to the side and her spine has begun imitating the curvature of her seat back. the greatest offender of all, her neck, has allowed her head to wander, its weight now resting on the back of her chair. as of yet, hopper has yet to call her unladylike or sloppy. just “kid”. the simplicity is balm to her lingering frightened confusion.

                       ❝ thank you. ❞  she wishes she could hear her own voice better but it’s drowned out by heartbeat drumming even in her own ears.  ❝ i guess you have experience with that now. or everyone does and i guess i was the last to know. ❞  she twitches.  ❝ i’m sorry. you’ve had to do this for....how many kids? ❞

chrissy will eventually warm up a little to the aggressive sounds of metal although she never really becomes a fan fan. however, the moment eddie/cc plays her metallica’s “one”, she immediately latches on and never lets go. that is her metallica song.

there’s so much wrong with this place. everything, actually. 

as if the void dimension’s very existence wasn’t crime enough, chrissy stumbled down a hill covered in vines that appeared locked in a neverending battle with themselves, writhing and thrashing until too exhausted to continue. the ground crawled, the sky grumbled. unearthly animal voices chittered nearby every time chrissy so much as scuffed her sneakers too loudly. 

if her nerves weren’t completely shot by the time she escaped, they’d be numb enough to fool her into thinking they were useless. 

like the sky itself was ill, it regularly spat out streams of bloodstained lightning to wash the stale air in a rainbow of bruised indigo across sickly green, mocking her own bruised body - or complementing it. every sound echoed only to disappear moments afterward. even the echoes seemed doomed to die mere yards from their origin.

time burnt away meaninglessly the further chrissy walked on....and on.....and on until  —  yes, finally, main street snuck into view. hawkins always seemed so small from behind a set of wheels. just another pint-sized half awake middle american town that only stirred on weekends and holidays, where people still used the word “newfangled” and the church bell still told the time better than anyone’s watch. family businesses rarely closed because the family seldom moved. home was familiar. home was predictable, safe. 

chrissy had never been more sure of anything in her life when she stared down at the rotten facsimile of hawkins and reminded herself it was the farthest thing from safe. 

what she ought to have done was make a beeline for the police station. that would have been the wisest, smartest thing. but at the sight of the mayor’s office a few blocks away, a wall of exhaustion hit chrissy harder than a freight train. all that walking after an impromptu resurrection did nothing for her stamina and the thought of rest was enough to make her want to burst into tears. enough for her to creep up the office steps and gently pry open the door. inside was silent as a graveyard and twice as dark. dust motes floated in in the air, swirling into eddies while she tiptoed down the central hallway. going up the stairwell was tantamount to courting disaster - even keeping her back to it felt risky. then the smallest stroke of luck materialized in a plush (if musty) chaise lounge tucked away in an office. with some difficulty chrissy managed to drag it all the way back to the front doors and scoot it against the wall adjacent. this way, nothing could get in or out without her knowing. the best she could ask for at the moment. all that was left was to lay down, find an angle that didn’t exacerbate the shooting pain in her shoulder, and attempt to sleep. 

pain lingered no matter how she arranged her limbs, but sleep... sleep crept up on her without warning. the world fell into darkness so quickly that when chrissy awoke it was with a twitch of terror. she couldn’t remember toeing the familiar, milky line between consciousness and the void.

everything looked exactly the same as when she’d arrived. 

had hours passed? had days?

without any shift in light and no sound from the church bell or town center clock, chrissy might as well have been in the same place forever. such a thought blasted shivers into her every extremity. time to move along. this place gave her every species of the creeps ever invented. 

the next two blocks to the police station were small potatoes compared to her haunted trek from the creel house. her body still ached with every bend in her stride. rest had done nothing for her pain, only giving her sufficient energy to push through. well, that was something, wasn’t it? 

despite the flickering hope the notion of weapons provided, that light was dashed by the rattle of very secure locks on every door chrissy tried. she slammed her good shoulder into all of them; none did so much as tremble in their frames. the windows were barred even if she could find a rock to smash the glass. in the end, all she had were her frantic fists and shouts of panic that she knew, chrissy knew, were more foolhardy than anything else. any number of the nightmares lurking in shadows that she never spotted could hear her and come rushing out, discovering the easiest prey to ever wander in their vicinity. her yelps were careless and scratched like sandpaper over the tender meat of her throat, but she couldn’t seem to stop. she’d come all this way for nothing otherwise. this couldn’t be for nothing. she couldn’t let it stop here.

                               ❝  hello?? please, is somebody in there? i need help, please. hello?? ❞  if only faithful chief hopper was still alive, he’d have come running. maybe chief powell would, too. anyone, anyone.  ❝  it’s chrissy, chrissy cunningham. please, i don’t know what’s happening anymore. help, HELP!!!  ❞  

                             a note to @hellmartyr​ 

    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 .

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? ❞