❝ Not To Me. ❞ Such A Simplistic Response Couldn't Be Enough, However — What Robin Dug For Lay

Uh so in other good news, flattery works with me, so Twenty-five percent discount for the half. Fifteen bucks

 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? ❞

hi friends! first of all, thank you for being here and interested in this little chrissy blog. second [spoilers], across the fandom the prevailing aus for chrissy seem to take place during the events of season 4. that is not the case for this portrayal’s main verse. chrissy remains dead for the entirety of the season, only reviving when robin/nancy/steve blast vecna. first killed, first revived.

as vecna emulates the lich of the same name from dnd lore and has noticeably displayed the bodies of chrissy, fred, and patrick in his mind space for max to stumble upon, which, coupled with the line “they’re not gone, eleven. they’re still with me,” provides some implication that the consciousnesses (or souls) of vecna’s victims still exist somewhere inside vecna or in a place of his choosing. this is only emphasized by his stealing of their eyes upon killing them, since “eyes are the windows to the soul”. especially powerful liches possess phylacteries, aka a protective central storage of power for their soul to draw upon when they need to regenerate. the three victims’ souls may very well have been stored in vecna’s “phylactery” mind space - his family’s deconstructed house - for that purpose. when vecna is attacked he is weakened to the point of potentially letting souls slip from his grasp. in a similar fashion that max can enter and exit, chrissy is released from the immediate bondage of vecna’s “phylactery” and able to slip through the cracks. although, unlike max, she isn’t released into the real world but the realm that vecna dwells in: the upside down. until she can find her way out, it’s there that she stays. in the real world, her buried body dissolves and her casket, when exhumed, is discovered to be empty.

long story short, all this can be found on my verses page and this drabble explaining how chrissy woke up. all this is to give chrissy her own unique story that both gives her a chance at agency, a solo story of survival, and manages to keep the timeline of s4 unchanged. thanks so much for reading!!!

                      ❝ i think you’d make a great cheerleader. ❞  chrissy sensed the oncoming blink before it ever surfaced and plunged forward, oddly insistent on her point getting across. she’d envisioned this whole mischievously alluring setup for too long not to lay it out for him. continuously warming air fluttered in puffs at her back, almost like taps that encouraged her to keep going.  ❝ it’s like this: your voice carries without you even trying. you’re really tall and could put cheerleaders on your shoulders. you’re a musician so your rhythm is perfect. and you’re always..... ❞  finally, finally, she could present her own cheeky reference to the first  meeting here at their table, the pièce de résistance. with some pride in the perk of her chin, chrissy cunningham flopped her arms from side to side as wildly as possible without colliding against him or herself or the tabletop below, threatening splinters aplenty if she so much as considered bumping it.  ❝ .....doing that naturally. like you’re always excited! we wouldn’t even have to give you pom-poms. ❞

        ❝  well, it’s not good, but it’s a reason.   ❞             /           @hellmartyr​

                      ❝ they are too good reasons! think about it. you’d be such a hit at pep rallies. ❞   of course she’s kidding. him worming his way onto that court for a rally was more likely than her ever acing french. and she’d tried.

far above, afternoon sunlight grew shy behind passing clouds. chrissy drew herself in tighter, finished with her joking but still wearing a happy grin. summer really was coming despite stubborn chills from an unfinished and bitter spring. she was so grateful. for a safe place like this, namely.  ❝ plus......you’re naturally encouraging. did you know that? that’s probably the most important part about being on the squad. ❞

teiknu​:

Goofy movie au with chrissy and eddie

indie.    𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚  𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨    of  resident  evil  village.  loved  by  aila,  25+.         some  base  graphics  provided  by  blitzkriegers.

City of the Living Dead (1980) dir. Lucio Fulci

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           ( hellmartyr​ )

you deserve better than this … better than me … — @greenscrunchy / angsty prompts

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐃𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐔𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐒 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐒.

      at first eddie thought her sadness was a detail in a dream. a specter of the subconscious, summoned by whatever bullshit mayhem his beer-battered brain was slathering across his cortex. bad trip without the high, when senses got so convinced that reality was just a suggestion right up until your eyes split open and the lucid imagery turned a slippery mess.

      awareness emerged from a cloudy pool, prodding floaty nerves with tingling pins and needles. chrissy was a silent echo ringing in his ears, her words too old to be strung together were now indiscernible water drops dispersed into the corners like shades.

      dark eyes fluttered open to an even darker room. a backlighting of blue cut through the gap between the curtains and the window. the back of his hand, stationed beside his nose, soaked up the cobalt. eddie’s fingers retracted from the temptation to reach over and prove to himself that his friend was still asleep. that the lonely lie had not been real, just a figment of a morbid imagination. but the sour knot in his gut warned that the moment his warmth met hers, she’d betray them both with a wince.

      ❝ whose voice told you that? ❞ he asked the deep blue, ❝ vecna’s? ❞ venom coated the name. two thousand miles was not enough to stall a fresh the anger felt each time eddie recalled his unseen enemy. the lich survived, the chorus of heartbeats buried in his honeycomb scars reminded him that the promise of retribution at the climax of a hero’s tale was a fantasy, not a guarantee.

      crisp sheets rustled as the young man twisted around and peered at the soft outline balled up on the other side of the barrier. eddie hovered, searching for an explanation too private to see.

      ❝ yours? ❞ gingerly he sat up to project his plea over the fort, ❝ chris? ❞

      the headboard creaked against his weight as eddie propped himself against the frame. his perspective switched between the popcorn ceiling and the vortexed donald duck on his nightshirt.

      ❝ y’know, for a really long time, the only friends i had were in books. i, uh, i think middle school was the first time i hung out with someone and not because we were sent to the principal’s office together. so, can you level with me? because this isn’t exactly my field of expertise, ❞ the back of his skull clocked the wall as eddie fixated plaster clusters above, finding cohesive shapes were there was none, ❝ and fuck if i know what can be better than the best. ❞

a turned back was small defense from the wave of honesty soaking the darkened bedroom. chrissy had balled herself around a swelling hurricane of inferiority masked by a now faded silhouette of tweety bird, its cheery yellow emblazoned across her nightshirt faded into black shadow. her formerly upward mood had faded with an equal ferocity earlier that afternoon. being hopeful, even happy, something like truly happy, around eddie had become nearly as easy as breathing. natural. but it was as easy and natural to watch her bright little world closing in around her after listening to a crazed and caustic telephone message from none other than laura cunningham.

if nothing else, laura was consistent. there wasn’t a word in the message chrissy hadn’t been pierced by a thousand time before. she knew the cadence of her mother’s derision almost better than the sound of her own private thoughts. but it wasn’t a mother’s ire that bounced around her mind at the speed of a rogue basketball, or even a mother’s doubt.

                        ❝  mine. i say so. ❞

after all his kindness that he’d brought to her doorstep, this is what she had to offer. doubt.

                        ❝ i’m not just saying that, eddie. you –  ❞  god, what was the point? what was the point of her, being such a bottomless pit on whom generosity was wasted because she couldn’t even grasp it long enough for a chance at absolution? honestly, she must not deserve a drop if she was as watertight as a sieve. 

                        ❝ you came all this way and i’m a mess. ❞  the vise of her jaw clapped shut as how she truly sounded dawned upon her. belated good sense whispered the danger of what eddie might think she meant, right after the words marched out of her mouth.  ❝ scratch that. having you here…. it’s more than anyone’s done before? i guess i feel awful for wanting you to stay but i really don’t want you to leave. ❞

all the sequestered pain she’d been carrying like buried shards of glass since eddie arrived flayed her insides on the way out, dragging stringy regrets and shriveled, acid-burnt hopes along with them. a piteous river of entrails with so many shameful secrets on display, knotted beyond any hope of detangling and none of her tossing and turning in the middle of the night would sort her out. 

in the midst of her disquiet, chrissy eased to her other side where the pillow wall waited. her stupidest idea possibly ever. just over the top she could see eddie’s head, but that was all. it was a protection and a taunt all at once. a joke she'd cracked at her own expense. her left hand lifted almost without her permission to skate the top of the farcical wall and tug it down, just a little, to pull eddie’s presence a tiny bit closer. maybe this way he could hear what she was really trying to say in between all her bouts of lunacy. 

                        ❝ do you know what left handed people are called?  ❞

okay i think i’ve waited a healthy amount of time — here’s the inaugural starter call! any and all verses are open as options. lengths will range from several inches to a mile. may or may not also include bonus musical tracks.   no cap / no expiration.

It was, in fact, not their year at all, but let's ignore that :' )))

curse stranger things and their accidental symbolism