𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                         

"suburban intervention" by ian strange

“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.

Guido Grünewald

Chessie, the mascot kitten of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ,1933

etching

 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? ❞

@v1ctimplagued / @godstrayed - cont. from here

It wasn't as if he was keenly aware of many secrets. He heard gossip here and there but he wasn't too close to anyone to have many wanting to confide in him. The last thing Billy inspired was trust or a sense of safety. Rather it was quite the opposite. "Should I pretend that I know what you're talking about? Color me amused. What secrets does Chrissy Cunningham know?"

what a way to kill an already limp mood. and how is she supposed to answer such a targeted barb so quick on the heels of dismissal? it's not like she’d never been rebuffed so thoroughly before; getting shrugged off was a fact of life with jason and chrissy learned the ins and out of how to sidestep his proclivities quickly. a private little list of rules she walks around with inscribed inside her skull and carved by half moon nails in her palms. she’s prepared for a jason anywhere. however, none of hawkins was truly prepared for the hellion hurricane that was billy hargrove. including chrissy. 

his effect was like a slap in its suddenness. chrissy’s body was decidedly at school, yet the walls of home were a noose drawing in closer around her, her previous interest in gently examining billy’s persona further, almost fully dashed. a quotidian familiarity she liked even less than the immediate one pricked tender bits of her brain she’d rather leave alone completely. 

( i’ve laid awake at night, starting to wonder if going home at the end of the day feels the same way for you as it does me. dread. pure anxiety. feeling sicker the closer you get. how’s that for a secret, billy? but i won’t be telling you. )

instead, chrissy blinked, then squinted like a lamb in the sun. she knew her role to play in this conversation with certainty now.

                       “if you don’t actually care, then it doesn’t matter how you find out. word spreads fast enough. if not by tonight’s game, then tomorrow,” she added with a shrug. light, airy, careless – hoping for no fire to follow. billy’s moods were less an open secret and more like a guarantee. “i’m surprised jason hasn’t acted out more in front of you or steve since he wants the captain spot next year. but … you know, if you don’t care, that’s probably better.”

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?

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ 𝔸𝕊ℍ𝕋𝕆ℕ 𝔽𝕆𝕎𝕃𝔼ℝ                                     (blueminke​)

@greenscrunchy​  asked:   “ i’ve been having weird dreams. i wondered if maybe the right album would help. “   /   chrissy to ashton   !

HE WASN’T THE BIGGEST FAN of the black and blue uniform that he was required to wear at the record store. It’s no secret that he’d rather be in his leather jacket - and if you ask him, that’s still a perfect fit for selling music. However, he desperately needs to keep this job, so… uniform it is. There’s a little chime at the door as she enters, which is what first grabs his attention - and then he sees just who is stopping by, which truly is the catalyst that has him approaching her. While the two weren’t very close, OF COURSE he knew the face of Chrissy Cunningham. Hell, he’d recognize most of the Hawkins faces, but hers… has him grinning as he slides his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It usually works for me - and that’s not a sales pitch, it’s just the truth.” Words are interrupted by a light laugh. “You want somethin’ relaxing or that kind of music that just makes you let it all out?”

chrissy had been trying a different approach to small talk lately, at the behest of ms. kelly: even when admitting the entirety of how she felt seemed dangerous, hiding just a little bit of honesty here and there would lighten the load of keeping up appearances. ms. kelly promised others wouldn’t show her their backs so quickly if chrissy just gave it a go. so this was her giving it a go. with the guy at the record store. and it....worked? 

                         ❝ yeah? ❞  if consolation were a lipstick shade, she’d be wearing it. her smile stretched beyond the measurements of conversational to something appreciative. thankful. status as the perennially bright face of school spirit aside, the square footage of the high school appeared paltry in comparison to the places chrissy wanted to be cheerful just because. if she’s lucky, maybe the pleasant feeling she’d grasped would follow her outside into the clean air. because of music. she could talk about music. there’s more than enough material here and if his nameplate is to be believed, “ashton” actually has some salient thoughts on the topic.  ❝ i like options, ❞  the array of which is probably in the hundreds; it’s exciting. if this works, she’s going to sail into the land of nod quicker than a blink. at least, quicker than she had been.  ❝ maybe one record to dance to, and then one with lots of instruments?  ❞

well well well. some of the lotr fandom has shown their true colors. i'm both surprised and not surprised at the frankly outlandish amount of complaints that dwarves and elves and hobbits of color seem to have elicited. the rage is more outlandish when you discover the reasons for these complaints are 1) tolkien on occasion neglected to describe skin color which apparently renders everyone pale or 2) nostalgic attachment to the peter jackson films makes it unfathomable to picture the above listed races as anything other than pale/white.

here is all i’ll say about it: A WORLD WITH ONLY WHITE SKIN IS AN INCOMPLETE ONE. yes, even a fantasy world.

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

𝑤𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠