Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chrissy can’t see a thing. It’s wrong. Everything is. Her eyes are… moving. She’s definitely moving her eyes. The dark is thick, pressing in from all sides, and something in it pulses—sluggish and wet. Red blooms like old bruises as her eyes spin wildly. She thinks she hears something too. A low, slow squelch. Like raw meat. It’s wrong… her eyeballs are not where they’re supposed to be.

The sound is inside her. The wet churn of displaced tissue, the nauseating pop of something too soft moving against cartilage. Her eyeballs are drifting somewhere behind her nose, swimming in gelatinous sludge. It adds pressure to her skull, like she’s got the world’s worst sinus infection.

“Ahh!” She cries out in horror—but not pain—when she reaches up to touch her face. Her fingers are all broken, bent and twisted at odd angles, like snapped twigs held together by skin as fragile as a cobweb. Her left pinky flaps sideways when she tries to curl her hand. But they don’t hurt as bad as she expected, more just the gentle ache of a dislocated joint that needs to be pushed back into socket. The nerves tingle dully, like they’re trying to remember how to scream.

She tenderly touches her left index finger to her right, trying to feel out where the breaks are on her right hand with the left finger bent ninety degrees backwards. With a grunt, she manages to grip her right index finger between her left thumb and her palm, pulling it straight with a sickening crack and a jolt of pain that fades immediately. Something slides under her skin and the bone clicks back into place with the elegance of a rusty hinge. She flexes the finger, finding it working perfectly. One down, ten to go, she thinks to herself.

She must be in hell.

She remembers her bones snapping and cracking as she died while she puts her finger joints blindly back in the right places. Remembers her eyes snapping back inside her skull. Her eyes! When she tries to grin, it stretches wrong. Her lips peel back too far over dried gums. She reaches for her face with her newly reconstructed fingers. Her eyes must be inside her skull!

Pausing to yank her arms back to their original positions, she finally has the right angles to be able to stick her fingers in her eye sockets and root around for her eyeballs. Her nails scrape off soft tissue as she digs, the edges of her sockets squelching around her knuckles. The inside of her head feels cold and pulpy, like wet bread.

Her lip curls in distaste as her fingers struggle to find purchase on the slimy, squishy balls. They’re bigger than she expected them to be, difficult to get a finger around them. The optic nerve tugs like a leash as she drags the eye forward, and there’s a wet plop as it settles into the jelly of her socket. Vision returns in a flood of too bright light and upside-down shapes, all slicked in red.

She blinks, trying to right it as she drags her right eyeball back into place as well. They still feel off-kilter when she removes her hand, so she whacks herself on the side of the head and blinks hard, finally getting both globes into the right space and regaining her vision.

The world spins, then steadies. There’s no relief—just the awful sensation of something vital being where it shouldn’t be, but working anyway.

The first thing she notices is the pink stuff caked under the nails of her index fingers. It flakes when she touches it. Dried tissue? Brain matter? No way to tell, but it smells like pennies and rot.

Without thinking, she goes to run the nail over her bottom teeth to scrape it out, only to find that her jaw is completely off its hinge as well. Great. Her mouth hangs sideways. Her tongue lolls wet and heavy. Something crunches in her ear when she tries to speak.

With one hand holding her head in place, she grasps her lower jaw with the other and rights it with another sickening crunch. She opens her mouth and closes it a few times. The joint grinds like gravel. She feels cartilage shift, stretch, and snap into place. Her teeth feel like dice in a cup.

Everything seems to work as soon as she puts it back. This must be a requirement of hell or something, putting her body back together. None of it hurts too badly, but it’s nonetheless a pain.

She looks down at her legs and sighs. Of course they’re all twisted up and broken too. There’s no way she’ll be able to walk with them like that. Her left foot is backwards. Her ankle is a bulge of violet swelling. Her shin is bent at a ninety degree angle where it absolutely shouldn’t be.

With another sigh, she reaches for her right leg. Her thigh seems to have been spared—somewhere in the back of her mind she remembers that femurs are incredibly difficult to break, but there’s no reason why whatever broke the rest of the bones in her body shouldn’t have broken her femurs too.

Regardless of that, she twists her knee back into place. It lets out a deep, wet pop as it twists back into alignment. Her calf flops loosely like its barely held together. She tests it by bending it and crossing her ankle over her other leg so she can fix her shin. The ends of the two broken bones in her leg grind across each other as she tries to match up the broken ends.

Panting, she flexes her ankle as she straightens her right leg again, leaning back on her arms to rest for a second before she gets to her left leg. She looks around. The room smells like antiseptic, blood, and something else—something sweet, like rotting fruit. Her lungs feel too still in her chest.

Everything’s a little fuzzy, like she scratched her eyeballs in the process of dragging them out, but she can make out the white walls and metal tables of some kind of lab. Squinting, she focuses on the word written across the glass door, reading it backwards.

ƎUӘЯOM

Shit. So she’s definitely dead. The word blinks in and out of focus like a cruel joke. She works quickly to straighten out her left shin and swings both legs to the floor, left leg buckling slightly under her weight when she pushes herself off the metal table. The bones shift like cracked porcelain. A wet clank echoes in the tile room when her feet hit the floor. She hobbles as quickly as her not-quite-repaired left leg will take her.

As she wraps her fingers around the handle to pull it open, it occurs to her that she doesn’t have any clothes on. Groaning, she turns around. The morgue is all stainless steel and sterile, white walls. But there’s a desk in the corner. She limps over and opens drawers at random. The top one is full of snacks.

She swallows, suddenly aware of the aching emptiness in her belly. Hunger. It’s a sensation she’s familiar with, forgoing meals often to fit into her cheer uniform or, lately, to squeeze into the smaller size prom dress her mother insisted on buying. Chrissy scoffs. Zombie prom queen anyone?

Closing the drawer of the snacks, she keeps searching, flicking through files until she finds her own. ‘Autopsy report’ is splashed across the top of the first page in the file. It’s horrendously long. Too long to read now. She has to find some clothes and get out of here before someone comes back. Judging from the clock on the wall, it’s around two. But it could be the middle of the afternoon or the middle of the night for all she knows. There aren’t any windows in the morgue.

Tucking the file under her arm, Chrissy goes snooping in the cabinets along the far wall, across from the metal drawers where it’s obvious the other bodies are stored. Briefly, she wonders why she’s the only one awake. Surely whatever she’s infected with would have gotten other people too? She’d seen The Return of the Living Dead. Jason had dragged her to it during the final weeks of summer. While she’d been laughing at the antics, he’d been grumbling about how gross and disgusting it all was.

Well, now here she was. The living dead. The irony isn’t lost on her at all as she rifles through the cabinets until she finds a clear plastic bag labeled ‘Cunningham, C.’ Bingo.

She rips it open. Her cheer uniform, her jacket, her sneakers, even the scrunchie that had been in her hair the night she died. It’s all in there. Not the most inconspicuous clothing, but definitely better than nothing. Thank god she wore her good underwear that day.

Once her skirt is zipped and her hair is tied up in the scrunchie again, Chrissy heads for the door. She doesn’t know where she’s going once she gets outside, just that she needs to get out of here. Wandering through the halls of what she assumes is the basement floor of the hospital until she spots a door labeled ‘Exit.’

Pushing it open, she steps into the cool spring air to find that—luckily—it’s nighttime. Nobody is around. She draws her jacket closer around her and speed walks away from the hospital in the direction of her house, a bit further outside of downtown Hawkins. Looking over her shoulder, she trips over the ground, suddenly raised, like something pushed up under the sidewalk.

With a gasp, she lands hard on her palms, immediately re-breaking the bones in her forearms with a sickening snap. Fuck. That’s inconvenient. She groans, gingerly gathering her legs under her and sitting back on her heels to adjust the bones back into the proper place, they click in, like it’s a locking mechanism, with that same stab of pain that fades. Maybe she can find a way to brace the bones that were broken so she can get around. As she stands, her left leg still bothers her, like she can’t quite get those bones back into the right position. It aches like a bruise.

Now that she’s mostly whole again, Chrissy looks to see what tripped her. She covers her mouth with both hands, eyes widening in shock as she takes in the massive rift running directly through the middle of Hawkins. It goes as far left and as far right as she can see, with no way over it or around it. Creeping closer, she peers over the edge.

A bright orange glow emanates from the depths of it, making it hard to see. Something scuttles along the bottom and Chrissy squints and leans forward to get a better look.

“AH!” She yelps and throws herself backwards when a creepy black tentacle thrusts towards her, poking at the air where she’d just been kneeling before seemingly deciding that she isn’t worth following and retreating back into the depths.

Chrissy pushes herself to her feet, wiping her hands off on her skirt. There’s no way to head to her house short of finding a way around the rift, so she picks a direction and starts walking. Left, because it’s away from downtown.

It gets weirder the more she walks. The streets are completely empty of cars and the blinds are drawn in all the houses. Not like the occupants are just sleeping, but like everything is abandoned. Not to mention the giant crack in the Earth running through all the lawns on the other side of the street. Chrissy swallows, stopping to look at her friend Molly’s house, which is thankfully still intact. Her mom’s station wagon and her dad’s BMW are both gone, which is weird, because they never go out of town.

Curiously, Chrissy heads up the walkway. She cups her hands around her face to peer through the windows beside the front door. Molly’s golden retriever isn’t sleeping at the top of the stairs like she usually is, which is even weirder. She locates the spare key buried in the soil of the potted plant on the porch and unlocks the front door.

“Hello?” She calls when she pushes it open. Her voice sounds dry and cracked as it echoes around the house. “Molly? Mrs. Sanderson?” She closes the door behind her as she steps inside. When she flicks the light switch by the door, nothing happens. With a sigh, she goes to look around.

There are dishes in the sink in the kitchen, like they left in a hurry. Chrissy frowns. When she’s slept over before, Mrs. Sanderson always makes a point of cleaning up the kitchen before going to bed. She says it’s important to wake up to a clean kitchen.

Chrissy’s stomach grumbles, alerting her again to her hunger. It twists low in her abdomen—not like normal hunger, this is sharp, acidic, like her insides are chewing on themselves.

Twisting her mouth, she opens the fridge to look inside. There’s a bag of baby carrots in the vegetable drawer. She isn’t sure exactly what day it is, but the best buy date matches the day she died, so Mrs. Sanderson probably won’t mind if she eats them.

Tearing the plastic open, Chrissy sinks to the floor of the Sandersons kitchen and throws a carrot in her mouth. Instead of fresh and watery, it’s impossibly dry and chalky in her mouth, like biting into powdered plaster. Her saliva evaporates around it, her throat tightening, rejecting the texture on instinct.

She wrinkles her nose, inspecting the rest of the bag as she chews. They look perfectly fine and normal, even shiny with moisture in the faint moonlight coming through the window. Still, the one she tried to eat tastes disgusting and when she swallows, it stretches the inside of her throat going down. No comfort. No flavor. Just grit. The moisture on the carrots might as well be motor oil.

“Ugh.” She tosses the bag aside and drags herself to the pantry.

For the next hour, Chrissy eats everything she can find, chips, cookies, chocolate, cheese and crackers, even prying open a can of fruit cocktail and drinking it straight from the can. All of it tastes like sand. Dry and unappetizing.

The chocolate melts flavorlessly on her tongue. The fruit-cocktail slides down like syrup-soaked gauze. The crackers disintegrate in her mouth like sawdust. No matter what she chews, the textures turn to the same unholy grit.

Her stomach grows impossibly full as she binges, her skirt cutting into her skin as she bloats from overeating. She can feel the pressure building behind her ribcage, her body trying to protest but it’s too late. Her skin stretches. Her gut aches. She’s feeding a corpse and pretending it’s alive.

Finally giving up, she sinks to the floor, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. It falls to cradle her distended belly. She groans. It feels like nothing is being absorbed or digested, like it’s all just sitting there, chewed and swallowed and nothing more. The thought is nauseating.

The mass inside her shifts heavily, like wet cement. She can hear it gurgle, trapped. Her throat spasms once, twice. Something oily rises in the back of her mouth.

Moving as fast as she can on her bad leg, she makes it to the hall bathroom and lunges to kneel beside the toilet. Her knee hits the tile hard, sending a shock up her spine. The cold porcelain feels like ice when she grabs the rim, fingers trembling.

Raising the lid and seat just in time, she vomits everything she just consumed. It plops sickly into the water, mouthful by mouthful as it all comes up. The sound is wet and endless—chunky slaps against the bowl, syrup-thick retching. Her stomach cramps as it tries to excise what it never wanted.

She retches again when she finally looks and sees that she can recognize the bits of everything she’d stuffed in her mouth. Whole crumbs. Slick chunks of a candy bar. Half-chewed crackers floating in a filmy, pink liquid. Nothing broken down, nothing digested. Like her body had simply held it all, useless.

When she finally stops dry heaving, she curls up in a ball on the floor of the bathroom, tears leaking from her eyes. Sniffling, she presses her arms against her stomach, trying to silence the returning pangs. Her stomach grumbles—quieter this time, more patient. A black, gnawing emptiness that feels endless. Hungry again. Maybe hungry forever.

Get up, Chrissy, she tells herself. You’ve been hungry before. It isn’t going to kill you.

The voice in her head sounds like her mom.

Shaking it off, Chrissy scrubs her face with the heels of her hands, rubbing her eyes so hard the right one pops out of her socket and back into her skull with a squelch. Ouch. She curls her lip as she concentrates to pull it back out. It’s a tight squeeze, and her eyeball pinches between her fingers before expanding into the socket as she lets go.

She drops her forehead to her knees. This is ridiculous. She’s alive but she isn’t. Her body is falling apart and putting it back together is turning out to be a Sisyphean task.

“So stupid,” she mutters, knocking her head back against the wall.

But Chrissy isn’t a quitter. Despite all the stuff her mom has put her through, all the issues with Jason, and the stuff that was haunting her right before she died, Chrissy has always pushed forward. And that’s what gets her back on her feet.

Back on the street, she keeps wandering along, following the mysterious rift in the ground. It eventually occurs to her that she’s almost at the old Creel mansion. In fact, the rift seems to be leading directly there.

She stops, wringing her hands as she reaches the lawn of the old house. The rift has split it clean in two and it seems to end there. She tilts her head to the side, studying the damage. Something draws her in, she isn’t sure exactly what. There’s just a heavy feeling in her heart.

Making her way into the wreckage, she climbs over the debris, kicking aside broken boards and pieces of a glass chandelier. The house had always seemed so creepy when she was a kid but now it was just…

Something crunches under her foot with a broken, squishy sound. When she looks down, blonde hair pokes out from under her shoe. Just on the other side of her foot, the fleece remnants of a Hawkins High School letterman jacket. ‘86 on the shoulder. Chrissy knows what name is written across the chest without even seeing it.

A cold coil of recognition tightens around her spine. A horrified scream tears itself from her vocal cords as she falls backwards, pushing herself away from the dead body of her boyfriend until she hits a support beam that is miraculously still standing. Her chest heaves as she lets out short, rapid breaths. Eyes wide and mouth hanging open as she takes in the blood seeped into the treads of her shoe, thick and half-dried. His head rests at an unnatural angle, his body truncated like a broken doll where the rift had eaten away everything from the chest down.

Still fighting to take a breath, she crawls tentatively over, sitting up on her knees. Tears run down her face and fall onto her cheer jacket. She doesn’t even brush them away.

Jason’s caved in face and cracked open skull are the grossest thing she’s ever seen. And she’s now seen the inside of her own skull from when her eyeballs were lost inside of it. This is so much worse.

His forehead has completely given way to brain matter, his nose is smushed off to one side, and one of his eyeballs seems to have exploded into a clear, viscous jelly. The jelly glistens in the moonlight like raw egg whites. His mouth is slightly open, lips split, teeth bloodied.

Shaking, Chrissy puts a hand on what’s left of his shoulder and leans down to press a kiss to the remaining inch of forehead that she hasn’t completely destroyed with her shoe. Her lips tremble against the clammy skin. There’s no give, no warmth—just the sickening pliability of flesh that’s beginning to harden to stone.

As she does so, the smell wafts into her nose. Her lips brush some of that appetizingly pink brain and she inhales sharply, sitting up and licking her lips. The scent is copper and fat and something else—a savory rot that hits her deeper than a memory. It’s cold, but greasy and delicious, like ham left in the fridge after Thanksgiving. The kind she used to sneak at midnight, forbidden and irresistible. Her stomach growls, loud and wet.

This is wrong. She knows it’s wrong. But everything she’d tried to eat before tasted like dry sand. Jason’s brain is moist and aromatic. The smell lingers in her nostrils. It sticks to the roof of her mouth like scent alone could nourish her. She’s dizzy with it.

She pinches a piece of it between her fingers, a kind of treacly substance that isn’t blood drips down her wrist, and she swallows the saliva that pools in her mouth as she raises it up to her face. The texture between her fingers is both firm and yielding. The drip trails along her pale skin, thick as molasses.

She shouldn’t.

She really shouldn’t.

But… Jason would want her to do it, right? He’d want to take care of her? He was always buying her dinner, making sure she had enough to eat before cheer practice and games. He’d been a good boyfriend. He would want her to eat his brain. If that’s what would make her feel better. It sounds insane when she thinks it, but her mind twists it into making perfect sense. He loved her. He fed her. This is just…the final course.

Her hand trembles as she brings it to her mouth. She lets out a slow breath to calm herself, then places the piece on her tongue. Slowly inhaling through her nose, she closes her mouth and chews. It rests heavy and slick on her tongue, still warm at the core. She resists the urge to moan.

The delicious flavor explodes on her taste buds, immediately eliciting a surge of saliva. The texture is indescribable, spongy, buttery, the crackle of something soft giving way—like sausage. The taste floods her palate, savory and primal, lighting up neurons that haven’t fired since she woke up.

She swallows quickly, already reaching for more. Her vision sharpens. Her limbs steady. Shoving it in her mouth by the fistful, she can’t get enough. It’s wet and moist and delicious on her tongue in a body that can barely feel pain let alone pleasure.

Now this is pleasure. Overwhelming, animal pleasure. Her skin prickles. Her scalp tingles. Blood rushes back into her cheeks as she comes alive again. She’s sobbing and chewing and moaning through a mouthful of her boyfriend’s brain.

As she crams the brain matter into her mouth, her cheeks puff out, overstuffed. She moans again, swallowing and nearly choking, then immediately pushes more between her lips.

Grease smears on her chin. Her fingers are stained up to the knuckle. Flecks of pink flesh drop onto her white cheer jacket, but she doesn’t care. Doesn’t stop. Not until her fingers scrape the white inside of what’s left of Jason’s skull and she opens her eyes to find that she ate all of it.

Her hands are shaking now. Not from guilt, but from withdrawal. She peers into the skull—clean, hollow. Licked dry. The horror comes rushing back too late. Jason’s entire brain. It’s gone. She burps, disgusted with herself.

She doesn’t even have time to think about what she just did before the memory hits.

Her head explodes in pain, throbbing in her skull. She rolls it back and forth, furrowing her eyebrows against the pounding. Her eye feels swollen shut, only one of them opens when she tries to look. There’s someone to her right.

“Lucas!” A girl calls out.

A boy responds, “We need a doctor! Call an ambulance! Hurry call an ambulance!”

Footsteps pound down the stairs again, each one throbbing through her skull. She closes her eye again, chest heaving, too heavy to move.

“Yes, yes I’m here,” it’s the boy again, softer now, “I’m here.”

A faint voice responds, “I-I can’t feel or s-s-see anything.”

“I know, I know, it’s okay.”

Chrissy strains to open her eye. It’s Lucas Sinclair, from the basketball team. There’s a girl with him. That redheaded girl she sees heading into the guidance counselor’s office sometimes. Chrissy closes her eye again.

“We’re gonna get you some help, okay? Just– just hold on.”

“Lucas, I’m scared. I’m so scared. I’m so scared…”

“I know, I know, I know, I know.”

“I don’t wanna die, I'm not ready!”

“You’re not gonna die, please, just hang on!”

“I don’t wanna go, I’m not ready, I’m–”

“You’re not gonna die! Just– just hang on!”

Chrissy wrenches open her good eye, groaning as she tries to focus. She can make out the girl's legs sprawled out towards her. Her head and shoulders are in Lucas’s lap. If only Chrissy could remember her name.

“Max, Max, no, no, Max, Max! Max, stay with me! Max, stay with me! No, no, Max…Max, stay with me! Just– look at me, Max! No… stay with me, Max! No… just hang on…”

Max gasps and chokes. Chrissy squeezes her eyes shut, a tear leaking out of the swollen one.

“ERICA, HELP!” Lucas calls out, desperate and broken.

Chrissy passes out.

She opens her eyes, Jason’s body is in front of her again. What’s left of it. She raises her shaking fingers to her face and feels around her eyeball, the one that had been swollen shut, but it’s fine. Shuddering, she leans forward, peering closer at Jason’s broken face.

What’s left of his left eye is bruised and red, the eyeball is jelly but the flesh surrounding it still shows signs of swelling. Chrissy inhales sharply. Had that been Jason’s memory? Who had hit him in the eye? It couldn’t have been Lucas, could it?

She turns, there’s no sign of Lucas and Max now. There’s no sign of anyone, anywhere. What had happened since she died?

Slowly, she pushes herself to her feet. She only turns back once, taking a final look at her dead boyfriend—who gave her a final parting gift of his brain—and then she pushes on, picking her way back out of the Creel house.

It’s cold, too cold for the springtime, and her cheer skirt and jacket don’t provide enough heat against the chill. She wraps her arms around herself as she walks. Just as she reaches the sidewalk, it hits her again.

“We call him, Vecna. He lives in another dimension. That’s why you can’t see him.”

Lucas Sinclair stands in front of her, in the same room she was just in, his hands out, palms showing. Her arms are shaking, shoulders aching from holding out the gun in her hands.

Gun? She glances down. Jason’s hands are wrapped around a silver revolver and he’s pointing it directly at Lucas. Chrissy wants to scream, tries to put down the gun, but she’s powerless to do anything at all in Jason’s memory.

“And Eddie Munson and his– his Hellfire acolytes?Wh– you all summoned this… Vecna?” Jason says through her mouth.

“No! No! You’re– You’re not listening, just listen! Lucas says, shaking his head in frustration. Listening never has been Jason’s strong suit once he gets an idea in his head. “Th– there’s no…cult! There never was!”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“It’s the truth!”

“Then why was Chrissy at Eddie’s trailer?”

“She was buying drugs!”

Jason cocks the gun. “LIAR!”

“Okay!” Lucas forces his hands higher, gasping for breath to stay calm. “Okay… Chrissy! She was seeing things.”

Chrissy wonders how he knows that. Then she spots Max sitting on the floor behind Lucas, eyes rolled back in her head. It must not have only happened to her then. Maybe Chrissy was just the first in a string of hauntings.

Lucas goes on, “Terrible things. Things Vecna forced her to see. She was scared! She just needed help.”

“See that’s how I know you’re lying,” Jason says breathlessly, “If Chrissy was scared…if– if Chrissy wanted help, SHE WOULD HAVE COME TO ME! Not Eddie! Not that freak! NEVER!”

“You’re wrong,” Lucas insists, remaining astonishingly calm, “about Eddie.”

“No… but I was wrong about you.” Jason shakes his head. “I never should have let you in the door.”

“And I never should have knocked,” Lucas replies, contempt in his voice. “I thought I wanted to be like you… popular… normal… but it turns out… normal’s just a raging psychopath.”

“You have five seconds to wake her up,” Jason says, raising the gun again, “...four…three…”

Lucas ducks and charges at the same time Jason squeezes the trigger.

Chrissy opens her eyes with the sound of a gunshot echoing through her brain. It must have been a hell of a fight, for Jason to end up where he did. She’d seen him get into brawls before, mostly drunken ones with rival basketball teams or guys who looked at her the wrong way.

Psychopath? That’s what Lucas had called Jason. Before she died, Chrissy wouldn’t have called him that. Overprotective maybe, but always in her best interests. Now that she’d been inside his head, felt his rage turning his vision red, her vision of him shifts. She hadn’t been aware he was capable of such violence, let alone against someone he’d considered a friend.

The last time she’d seen Jason and Lucas, they’d been celebrating the championship basketball win. Lucas had made the buzzer-beating shot to win. She’d watched Jason lifting him onto his shoulders, whooping and cheering. It had been the perfect time for her to sneak out of the gym to go and meet Eddie.

Eddie!

Chrissy stops walking. Eddie had been with her when she died. She’d been in his trailer. Oh no, this is bad, she thinks, panic rising in her chest. She fumbles in the pocket of her jacket from where she’d folded up the thick file folder as best she could and shoved it away. With fumbling fingers, she gets to the page of the autopsy report.

Manner of Death: Homicide

Chrissy closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Of course, everyone would have blamed him. Jason, her covetous boyfriend whose habit of knocking around guys whose eyes lingered too long on her legs, would have been the first to try and hunt Eddie down. She shakes her head.

Eddie had been nothing but sweet to her when she went to him for help. He’d so quickly ascertained that something was wrong. He’d tried to make her laugh and it had worked. Chrissy had realized he wasn’t some weird, Satanic freak. He was just a dorky kid trying to impress a girl he thought was cute. It had worked though, Chrissy walked out of the woods feeling brighter, with the promise of help for her headaches and visions. He’d taken a weight off her shoulders in a way Jason never had.

It’s imperative that she finds Eddie. Chrissy looks around. His trailer is clear on the other side of town, but it seems as good a place to go as any if she’s going to track him down. Tucking away the file folder, she wraps her jacket around herself and starts walking.

Chapter Text

Eddie wakes up with a loud inhale, air shoving its way into his empty lungs as if with a compressor. The breath drags through his throat like gravel. Dry. Forced. A mechanical jump-starting of a corpse.

His eyes fly open, chest heaving as he sits up on his elbows, looking around. The air tastes metallic. Thick with spores and rot. His vision pulses with a faint red at the edges. The last thing he remembers is Dustin. Promising to take care of the other little sheep with tears running down his face. Dustin’s sobs echo somewhere deep in his skull. Eddie clenches his jaw to shut them out.

He’s alone now. Dustin’s long gone. Time and death are weird. It could have been minutes or months. The air’s too still to tell. Based on the gray skies and horrible unearthly glow of the ground beneath him, he must be in hell.

The glow pulses faintly underfoot like a heartbeat, sickly white beneath cracked gray soil. Hell is fungal, alive. Except—he tilts his head to the side—hell looks a lot like the Upside Down. In fact, he seems to be in the exact spot he died.

Wincing, he lifts the hem of his t-shirt, checking for where the bats had attacked him. His fingers feel wrong—too cold, too smooth. The fabric drags along his skin like static.

There are hundreds of bites from his hipbones up to his ribs, but they’re all healed, white marks. The scars are pale ridges, jagged and asymmetrical from where the bats chewed him up and spit him back out.

Furrowing his eyebrows, he pulls his shirt up further. Tattoos are still there, but they stand out starkly black against his skin, which is white and bloodless as a block of stone from the quarry. Not pale—drained. Chalky, like all the life has been sucked out of him.

There are a few more bite marks on his chest, ruining the look of one of his tattoos. And he’s missing his left nipple. It’s just a flat, scarred patch now. The kind of detail that would have made Jeff gag and Gareth laugh for weeks. Fantastic. But at least he isn’t bleeding out anymore.

He groans and yanks his shirt back down. With a grunt, he pushes himself up into a sitting position, and then to his feet, dusting off his hands. The soles of his shoes leave faint prints in the dusty ground and he’s astoundingly aware of the contact, of where every part of his body is.

There are bats still flying around, so he ducks low and runs back towards the trailer. Their wingbeats grate on his ears more than they should—he flinches. One of them swoops at him, screeching, and he yelps, covering his head with his arms, but to his surprise, it leaves him alone.

They don’t attack; the bats just seem to check him out and then move on. Like pack animals sniffing a returned brother. Not prey. Not a threat. One of them. Interesting development. Also terrifying. Definitely terrifying. But interesting, yeah.

Panting, he continues on to the trailer, then stops dead in his tracks. The portal left by Chrissy’s body has grown, splitting open the entire ground and leading back towards downtown Hawkins. Eddie takes a tentative step closer to the edge, breathing shakily.

It’s a portal back into Hawkins still, just more like a rift now. He toes at it, sending a rock through. It goes through, then falls back from the gravity on the other side. Eddie tilts his head to the side, watching the rock fall back and forth through the two worlds. It acts like the gate between the Upside Down and Hawkins. So maybe he isn’t in hell after all.

Kneeling beside the rift, he dives headfirst through it, gripping the edge of the other side and pushing himself out like he’s exiting a swimming pool. He grits his teeth, fingernails clawing at the dirt as he drags himself out onto the surface. He lays on his back, breathing heavily.

He lays there for a while, staring up at the stars. It feels like literally no time has passed. Like five minutes ago he was dying in Dustin’s arms and ten minutes before that he was shredding on top of the trailer to distract the bats. Death is freaky like that.

Rolling over to push himself back up to his feet, he takes in the state of the trailer. The rift destroyed the living room half and most of the kitchen, but his bedroom appears to be intact.

So he picks his way carefully around the edge of the rift and gets into his room. His shirt is all ripped and his vest is coated in blood; a change of clothes would be nice. A shower would be even nicer, but the bathroom behind him no longer exists.

“What day is it even?” He mutters to himself as he shucks off his leather jacket and t-shirt and starts pawing through his dresser. He pauses, swallowing. His throat is so dry it burns. Finding a clean-ish black t-shirt, he pulls it on. The kitchen’s destroyed, but he needs to find some water. It’s like the walls of his throat have turned to sandpaper and it’s all scraping against itself when he swallows.

Grabbing his jacket, he shrugs it on again, yanking his hair out of the neck as he looks for his favorite vest. It’s not where he usually tosses it, so he digs, turning over his laundry pile and the covers on his bed. Nowhere. “Where the fuck did I–”

He remembers. Steve gave it back to him in the neighbors’ RV. Which they parked in the woods behind the trailer park. Sighing, he resigns himself to go get it. Then he needs to figure out what to do next. Something must have gone wrong with Vecna if there’s a rift all the way through Hawkins. Maybe everyone else died too. Then again, maybe they also came back.

“Who knows what’s happening anymore?” he sighs as he climbs back along the edge of the rift and out of the trailer.

When he finally gets to stable ground, he realizes the RV’s back in its usual spot. His neighbors must have found it and brought it back. Or the others returned it. Either way he has to decide if retrieving his vest is worth it.

He throws up his hands, already walking forward. Of course he’s going to get the damn vest. He worked hard to find the right patches and sew the Dio t-shirt on the back. It’s the perfect battle jacket. He needs it back.

The back window is cracked and he pushes it up the rest of the way, wincing at the screech of metal crying out in the dark. It screams like a dying bird. Echoes into the night with a sound that makes the hairs on his arms stand up. He pauses, listening, but doesn’t hear the two heartbeats pick up. Instead, he hears them slow. Deep thuds that echo through the air like bass through a wall.

Heartbeats? Why can he hear heartbeats?

He tilts his head, listening harder. Both of their hearts sound sluggish and overworked. Their lungs struggle to fill with air against years of tobacco use. One of them coughs. The other shifts in their metal and cloth chair. He can picture their ribcages heaving, their arteries straining. It goes beyond hearing. He knows. He senses.

Eddie shakes his head to clear it. That new little ability is strange, but he doesn’t have time to think too hard about how he knows neither of them is in the RV, just that they aren’t. Some primal switch flips in his brain, and suddenly he’s a sonar tower for human fragility.

He hoists himself up and slips through the window onto the bench in the very back, surprisingly easily. Before he died it had been a lot harder to move around, he was always stumbling and falling everywhere. Now he moves quickly and gracefully, like a prowling cat. No creaks. No slips. His body obeys because it’s been rewired to—silent, fluid, lethal.

Taking advantage of the sudden lightness on his feet as if it’s a temporary state, Eddie moves quickly through the RV, digging through the pile of junk on the seat behind the driver until his hand brushes the familiar denim.

“Gotcha,” he says, smiling. He yanks the vest out of the crack between the cushion and the wall, shaking it out.

It’s a little dirty, but that’s okay. He’s not too clean himself at the moment. He’s shrugging it on and getting his hair out of it when the door bangs open. The sound crashes through the silence like a gunshot. Eddie turns without fear—only instinct.

The man who owns the RV is glaring at him, eyes murderously wide. “You again?”

Eddie holds up his hands, palms out. “Now, now, no need to do anything,” he says with a grin, “I was just on my way out.”

“I’ve been wanting to get my hands on you, kid,” the guy says, lunging and swinging a fist at Eddie’s jaw. Eddie doesn’t even flinch. His body moves before he thinks—smooth and surgical. It’s frighteningly easy to dodge and throw up his right hand to catch the fist hurtling towards his face, shifting to hold the man’s wrist. So easy that a nervous laugh falls out of Eddie’s throat, reminding him of the rough dryness there.

He swallows again as he becomes aware of the man’s pulse jumping underneath his fingers. It speeds up as Eddie leans forward, watching the evidence of blood flowing through this man’s veins twitch beneath his skin. It thuds against Eddie’s fingertips, frantic and fragile. A drumbeat he can’t unhear. A dinner bell.

Saliva floods his mouth. He tries to swallow it away, but more of it collects, dripping from the corners of his mouth as his lips part. His teeth begin to ache. Chest heaving, he shifts, bringing the man’s wrist closer to his mouth. He can smell his blood running under his papery thin skin.

And it smells delicious.

It smells like copper and heat and something divine. Like roasted meat and dark sugar. Eddie’s vision narrows and everything else vanishes.

His eyes flutter shut. All rational thought leaves his mind. He inhales deeply through his nose, letting the appetizing aroma flood his enhanced senses. He’s thirsty—so fucking thirsty—and it isn’t for water…

“What the fuck are you doing?” The man asks, terror raising his voice two octaves. Eddie ignores him.

He puts the man’s wrist in his mouth, panting around it. The skin gives with barely a push. Eddie’s lips seal around it instinctively—no thought, no hesitation. For a second, he almost manages to talk himself out of it, but his new instincts are fighting any moral reservations he may have had when he was alive.

Elongated canine teeth pierce the man’s skin as Eddie grips his arm with both hands, sucking ravenously as the ambrosial fluid flows into his mouth and pools around his tongue. It’s like biting into ripe fruit. The skin splits, the pressure releases, and Eddie drinks. It’s instantly appeasing to the feeling in his throat as he swallows it down, bringing in mouthful after mouthful. Each gulp is better than the last. He can feel the blood moving through him, rewiring him again.

To his utter surprise, the man doesn’t cry out in horror or pain or anything of the like. He moans. In pleasure. It’s not even subtle. It’s pornographic. The man groans and shudders like Eddie is kissing him, not draining him. He looks at him out of the corner of his eye, brows furrowing as he sees the positively orgasmic look on the man’s face.

But nothing stops him from swallowing mouthful after mouthful of delicious blood, like water directly from the hose on a hot summer day. Sticky and warm and perfect. His head tips back, lips stained, face flushed. It soothes the fire in his throat, and Eddie finds himself moaning a little at how good it is.

The man presses himself against Eddie’s back, his erection prominent through his thin sweatpants, wrapping his free arm around Eddie’s waist. Eddie stills, horrified.

Without dropping his wrist, he pushes the guy back down on the bench seat, pinning him with a knee on his chest. But that doesn’t stop his hand from wandering up Eddie’s leg, tugging on the waistband of his jeans and pushing his shirt up. The guy is grinding now. Breathing like he’s on the verge of coming. Eddie’s jaw tightens. His stomach turns.

This is getting really weird. The guy is practically humping his leg, grabbing at him with frenzied need. Not that Eddie is one to judge, but he just never thought the guy swung that way, and being turned on by some guy you barely know sucking all the blood out of your body is definitely not a common fetish.

The door of the RV bangs open again and Eddie drops the guy’s wrist, whirling around to face his wife. Blood drips from his lips onto the floor. It splashes on the carpet. Thick and red and damning. He quickly tries to wipe it away, smearing it all across his cheek and over his hand.

“Okay, it’s not what it lo–” The woman screams. Eddie presses his lips together. It’s definitely time to go. “Thanks, buddy,” he says, patting the guy on the shoulder before he pushes out the door, leaving his neighbor with a bloody wrist and a raging erection. The guy waves a little. Dazed. Glassy-eyed and blissed out. Eddie doesn’t look back.

He glances down at the blood smear on his hand, and everything clicks into place. His unquenchable thirst, the increased hearing and sense of smell, sudden strength and stealth. Not to mention the fact that he died after being bitten by hundreds of bats. He’s become the perfect predator.

A vampire.

Apparently, one with side-effects.

He takes off running, not wanting to extend his encounter with the neighbors further. Not slowing until he’s put about a mile between himself and the weird-as-fuck encounter with the hicks who park their RV in the spot across from his home.

The wind whistles in his ears. Trees blur past. His body doesn’t tire. But the taste of blood lingers—copper and sweat and heat—and his suddenly renewed pulse is pounding.

The overgrown underbrush crunches beneath his sneakers as he makes his way through the woods, not entirely sure where he’s going, as long as he’s not anywhere near one of those rifts.

It suddenly occurs to him that it’s exactly like what Nancy said Vecna showed her, before they made the plan to kill him. The plan that must have failed, if Vecna managed to split Hawkins wide open and bring the Upside Down to the surface. Eddie freezes.

Nancy, Steve, and Robin had gone to kill Vecna. That hadn’t worked, so where are they now? Did they make it out? Eddie starts walking again as his mind races. Had Nancy’s gun jammed? Had Robin and Steve’s Molotov cocktails only made him angrier? What had gone wrong?

Not to mention, Lucas, Max, and Erica. Is Max even alive? Or did Vecna succeed? He pauses. Chrissy’s death in his trailer had opened the portal, which is now a rift heading for downtown Hawkins. Max and Lucas were all the way up at the Creel house. He could go there and check if a portal had opened. Yes. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll go and check.

Eddie sticks to the woods until he absolutely has to walk in town. He’s dead. He shouldn’t be walking around and regardless, he’d been wanted for murder before his death. And he has no idea how much time has passed. At least he’d woken up at night, so there’s nobody around, but the faintest rays of the rising sun are starting to show in the sky. He has to move quickly, and then figure out where he’s going to hide out the day.

“On the run again, Munson,” he mutters to himself. “Not gonna shake your reputation that easy.”

He’s sneaking around the shadows of downtown Hawkins, just past the morgue when he spots a commotion. Crouching behind a sign for the funeral home—yes, he is aware of the irony—he pokes his head out, watching.

There’s a guy—a kid really—running naked down the street. Eddie narrows his eyes, resting his hand on the cool stone of the sign for balance as he watches. A skinny kid is stumbling blindly down the street on legs that don’t seem to hold him up properly. He turns towards Eddie and Eddie gets a glimpse of his face.

His eyes are missing.

Eddie’s eyes widen. He looks like Chrissy right before she died. But…he looks closer. This kid is familiar. He’s definitely seen him before, but something isn’t clicking in his head. The blood, the empty sockets, the stilted way he moves.

“C’mon Munson, think,” Eddie mutters, shifting in his crouch. The kid stumbles under a streetlight and realization hits him all at once. Fred Benson. “Jesus Christ,” he breathes. Fred Fucking Benson. Who is supposed to be dead.

Fred lurches forward, a wet sucking sound coming from his mouth as he pants into the cold air. His head snaps to the left suddenly—no eyes, is he…smelling? Or sensing? Or something worse?

A man steps out of the liquor store down the street, holding a brown paper bag and fumbling for his keys. He glances up and stops. “What the hell…?”

Fred lets out a low, wet moan and breaks into a stumbling sprint, limbs flailing. One foot twists underneath him and the bone punctures through skin. He doesn’t stop.

The man—who Eddie recognizes as working at the plant with Wayne, probably coming home off a shift—stares in frozen horror. The bag slides from his fingers and a bottle of Jack Daniels shatters at his feet. Eddie can pinpoint the type of liquor and brand from smell alone, fifty yards away.

Fred tackles him.

They hit the pavement hard, the man screaming as Fred pins him down with unnatural strength. There’s a horrific crack as the back of the man’s head hits the concrete, but he’s still moving. Still pushing at Fred’s scrawny chest, trying to fight him off.

The screams draw the attention of the police officer on duty a couple blocks away. Eddie hears the cop's heart pick up as he starts running, hears him draw his gun. But Eddie's still frozen, watching in horrified silence.

Fred opens his mouth. Eddie can’t move, can’t breathe. Fred’s bony, broken fingers poke into the man’s eyes and his screams turn from terror to pain. The man’s shrieks cut off in a garbled gargle as Fred sinks his teeth into the side of his face. Cheekbone, temple, eye socket—he tears the flesh off with his teeth and begins chewing. Blood sprays on the sidewalk, the smell hitting Eddie’s nostrils and making him tense. A piece of the man’s scalp sticks to Fred’s chin.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Eddie whispers, clutching at the edge of the stone sign.

The cop is breathing heavily, a block and a half away now, slowing to a jog. Eddie rolls his eyes. Is nobody in shape in this town?

The man is still flailing but weaker now. Fred scrabbles at his skull like he’s trying to open a coconut, fingers yanking at the skin. And then…he gets in.

Fred dives into the man’s head. Blood splashes out in an arc, soaking his arm up to the elbow. His fingers sink deep and he pulls.

Eddie wretches dryly. The officer appears on the scene and freezes. He lowers his gun, eyes wide, and radios for help. Sirens rise in the distance. Eddie turns away just in time to hear the dull, wet plop of something hitting the pavement.

“This isn’t real, this isn’t real,” he mutters. But it is. And he’s part of it. He’d sucked that man’s blood down like it was the last beer in the fridge after a long day.

Eddie crouches lower as the sirens get closer. Every instinct is screaming at him to run. But he’s frozen, hypnotized by the horror unraveling in front of him.

Fred lifts his head again. Chunks of the man’s brain hang from his lips. Whirling, he turns at the sound of tires screeching to a stop down the block. The cruiser skids to a halt. Doors fly open. Guns draw.

“Step away from him!”

“Put your hands up!”

“Holy shit, what is that?”

Fred launches himself towards the officers.

Gunfire explodes through the cool, night air. Fred doesn’t stop. He takes a shot to the shoulder, another to the gut—thick, black blood that carries a scent all the way to Eddie’s sensitive nose splashes onto the pavement—and still he keeps going, snarling now. A growl with no language, no thought. Just hunger.

Three more shots. One misses. One punches through his neck. The final one takes off half his skull.

Fred drops.

Hard.

Silence again.

Eddie’s fingers are numb from gripping the stone so tightly. His mouth is full of the taste of blood that isn’t his. A gasp sounds from somewhere behind him, his ears tuning to it immediately. His head twitches as he turns it slightly to the side to listen.

Someone is moving on the other side of the sign. One of their legs is broken. Eddie can hear the tibia and fibula scraping against each other with every tentative step. The only weird part is, there’s no corresponding heartbeat.

Across the street, Fred’s body twitches once. Then stills. His brains are scattered across the sidewalk like a smashed gourd. The cops are just standing there, not moving, not talking.

Eddie takes the opportunity to move back behind the sign, still crouching low as he peers around the other side. Someone’s there. Another undead. Even smaller than Fred. Eddie stands and creeps closer, predatory instincts taking over.

In two quick steps, he grabs her around the waist and claps his other hand across her mouth so she can’t scream, jerking her almost silently out of view of the cops again.

She kicks her legs, furiously beating at his chest with ineffectual fists, squirming in his impossibly strong grip. Eddie releases her waist, keeping a hand over her mouth.

“Don’t scream,” he mutters in her ear. She nods frantically against his palm, and he releases her. She turns and he staggers back in petrified shock.

It’s Chrissy Cunningham.

Chapter Text

“Eddie?” She whispers, eyes going wide.

“Chr– Chrissy?” He steps towards her again, hands out, hesitating to touch her in case she isn’t real and he’s hallucinating. “You’re– you died.”

“You didn’t!” She says happily, throwing her arms around his waist and smushing her face into his chest. Tentatively, Eddie hugs her back, smoothing his hand over her hair and neck and rubbing her back with the other.

Her skin is cold, but not like a chilled person out in the night—it’s basement cold, like she’s never been warm. Her hair is clean, but stiff. She feels fragile in his arms, a mannequin that might fall apart if he squeezes too hard.

So much happened after she died. There’s so much she doesn’t know about. She has no idea he died and came back as…whatever the hell he is, a vampire or something else. He keeps rubbing her back, staring without seeing, because his mind is just replaying all the horrible stuff he’s seen—starting with her awful death.

“I did though,” he says, swallowing. His throat bobs around the words, the pressure of the memory clawing its way back up.

“What?” Chrissy lifts her head, looking up at him with those wide, innocent eyes.

They’re not entirely right. Her face looks mostly normal, but something’s off. Her right eye bulges slightly, and her jaw is a little off-kilter. The faintest discoloration spiders out around her eye sockets, like bruises haven’t decided whether to fade or deepen. It’s freaking him out. Uncanny, how she looks like Chrissy…but not.

“I, uh, I did die,” he says. “A few days after you did.”

“Oh,” Chrissy nods, frowning. “H-how?” She isn’t sure what the proper, polite way to ask how someone died. Or how they came back. Her voice cracks on the word “how,” like something is catching in her throat—not emotion, but the drag of dried tissue. Her breath smells faintly of soil.

Eddie scratches the back of his head. There’s no quick way to catch her up on everything that went down since her death. The manhunt her boyfriend orchestrated for him, the other deaths, the Upside Down, Vecna… it’s too much to explain.

Not with the cops who killed Fred prowling around nearby and his face plastered on every wanted poster in Hawkins. Not with Chrissy wandering around in her very recognizable Tigers cheer uniform with…blood? on the collar of her jacket.

“Look, Chrissy,” he grabs her shoulders, crouching to look her in the eye better, “I’ll explain the whole thing to you, but right now,” he glances back at the police setting up a crime scene around the two bodies, “we gotta get the fuck out of here.”

Her shoulder shifts beneath his fingers, like the joint isn’t quite seated right.

“Right.” She nods, steeling herself. The motion shudders through her wrong. It’s impossible not to notice that her neck turns just a second too slowly, as if her muscles have to catch up to her intentions.

Eddie nods, letting go of her. He turns and starts walking, then stops, realizing he’s made it like thirty feet and she isn’t with him. He whirls around, frowning. She hobbles after him, but her left leg really seems to be giving her grief. Eddie jogs back towards her.

“You okay?” He asks, nodding towards her leg.

“Yeah,” she says, trying to seem brave. “I’m fine. My leg, it just…”

“The bones are broken,” Eddie fills in. “I can hear them rubbing against each other.”

The click-click grind of it sets his teeth on edge. It’s quiet but persistent, like wet wood snapping inside her skin.

Chrissy tilts her head. “You can hear that?”

“Yeah,” Eddie rubs his mouth. “I’ll explain later.” He squats beside her, running his hand down her shin. He can feel the break beneath his fingers. “What’s this from? Does it hurt?”

There’s something stiff in the way her muscle sheaths the fracture. Not swelling, not heat—just the taut give of spoiled meat under skin.

“Not really,” Chrissy says. “When I woke up, I had to put everything back. Like, my fingers, my arms and legs. I had to pull my eyes back out of my skull.”

Eddie’s head snaps up. “Seriously?”

Chrissy presses her lips together and nods.

Eddie’s impressed. That’s pretty fucking badass of her. Very metal. It also explains why Fred didn’t have eyes. He didn’t have the same mental wherewithal to put himself back together enough to function. That probably drove him insane. A tremor of admiration ripples through his spine. It’s horrible. It’s unthinkable. And it’s unbelievably fucking cool. Eddie looks up at Chrissy and smiles.

“Atta girl.”

Chrissy grins down at him, that huge beaming smile she’d given him when he called her a freak back in the woods. Then she drops it, sighing and kicking her foot slightly. The kick makes a sound. Not from her shoe, from her actual bones clacking together as the motion jolts the fracture again.

“All the rest of my bones popped back into place easy, I mean, if I do like, basically anything they re-break, but mostly they line up.” She points to her left leg. “For some reason I just can’t get that one in the right place. So I’m really slow. Sorry.” She wrings her hands in front of her.

Her fingers are slightly crooked too from where she forced them back into shape. She’s missing the fingernail on her right middle finger. The dead space is scabbed over black.

“No, don’t apologize,” Eddie shakes his head, “we’ll get it fixed but, we need to get out of here, so I’m gonna carry you, okay?”

Chrissy nods. “Okay.”

Eddie slips one arm behind her knees and stands up, wrapping the other under her shoulders. She seems lighter than his Fender Quad Reverb. Hopefully not, because that would make her unhealthily thin. Or maybe he’s just stronger than he used to be, because carrying her doesn’t slow him down at all. In a few minutes, he’s well across town and out of sight and earshot of the cops.

Her body shifts against his chest like a bundle of sticks wrapped in skin. She doesn’t really breathe—or blink much either.

“Where are we going?” Chrissy asks softly, her breath hot on his neck.

“Away from those cops,” Eddie says, glancing back. “After that, I have no idea. The sun’s coming up. People are going to be coming out soon and I don’t think it’s a good idea for either of us to be seen right now.”

The thought of sunlight prickles across his skin like a warning—all instincts screaming at him to avoid it. Something deep in his body coils, uneasy.

Chrissy nods frantically. “Totally. Um,” she swallows, lifting her hand from his shoulder to point. “I live down that way? I, uh, people have left town, may– maybe my parents are gone too?”

“We can check it out,” Eddie agrees, following the direction she pointed. It’s away from the smoke and everything in the center of town, so that’s good too.

She smells weird. That’s the thing he notices about her now that she’s so close to him. Earthy and inhuman. Frankly, she smells dead. And she has no heartbeat in her chest. He can hear that there’s blood in her veins, but it’s thick, moving like sludge only because of gravity, not because a heart is pushing it through her body.

Whatever she woke up as, she isn’t like him.

“It’s that one,” Chrissy says, pointing at a two-story, brick house across the street. It’s exactly the type of house he expected her to live in. Tall, white pillars frame the door, perfectly trimmed hedges in front of the spotless windows, and a three-car garage.

Eddie pauses, listening. There are no cars in the driveway, and no heartbeats coming from inside. Chrissy tightens her grip on his neck as they approach, her fingers gripping the collar of his jacket like she’s afraid he’ll drop her. A tiny whimper escapes through her lips, so small he wouldn’t have heard it if her mouth wasn’t right next to his ear.

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs, setting her down gently on the porch.

“I’m not worried,” Chrissy lies, shaking her head. She looks up at him. “My keys are in my backpack,” she admits. “Which is–”

“In my van,” Eddie finishes. “Shit.”

“Where’s the van?” Chrissy asks, leaning against the brick beside the door.

“Probably impound,” Eddie shrugs, “or still out by Lovers Lake.”

“That’s inconvenient.”

“Yeah, it is,” Eddie mutters. He steps closer to the door, twisting the handle to open the latch. It turns, but the door remains closed. He smiles at Chrissy. “Did you know a deadbolt isn’t actually a very good way to lock your door?”

“What does–”

He cuts her off by throwing his shoulder against the door, breaking the deadbolt through the doorframe and stumbling across the doorstep. He straightens, then bows slightly, waving her in.

She smiles up at him as she limps by. “Welcome to my castle.”

Eddie smiles at her joke, closing the door and flipping the lock on the handle. Useless as the deadbolt but it makes him feel better that he might hear someone unlock it if Chrissy’s family returns.

She collapses on the couch in the living room with a groan, grabbing one of the decorative throw pillows and hugging it to her stomach. She peeks at him over the top of its ridiculous ruffles.

“I hate this couch,” she announces. “It’s horrible.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Eddie says, striding over and taking a seat beside her curled up legs. He bounces once. It’s like sitting on cement, nothing like the well-broken-in couch at home. Looking at her, he grimaces. “You’re right, this couch sucks.”

“My mom has terrible taste,” Chrissy adds with a sigh. She looks around. “Already took down all the photos of me. Wow. Record time.”

Her voice is light, but the room feels colder now. Eddie follows her gaze to the mantle. There’s her parents’ wedding photo and several school portraits of who he assumes is Chrissy’s brother, but she’s right, nothing of her. He frowns. What type of parent tries to erase their kid after they die?

“She’s never been great at emotions,” Chrissy says quietly. “I’m sure it was just her way of grieving.” Her fingers twitch where they clutch the pillow as her eyes go glassy.

“That really sucks, Chrissy,” Eddie says, staring at the floor. He hesitates, then puts his hand on her knee. She takes it immediately, squeezing.

“What happened after I died?” She asks softly.

Eddie sighs. He pulls his hand out of hers and grabs her ankles, dragging her legs across his lap. Chrissy squeals, reaching to hold her skirt down, but she’s laughing when he looks up at her.

“How about I fix your leg?” He offers, inclining his head. “And we’ll catch each other up?”

Chrissy nods, relaxing her grip on the pillow. Eddie runs his fingers over her left shin, prodding at the misaligned bone. Chrissy doesn’t even flinch. He glances at her, looking for signs of pain in her face, but she’s perfectly relaxed. The bones shift wetly beneath his hands. Her flesh holds the shape of his fingers too long when he presses.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she assures him. “Do whatever you were gonna do.”

Eddie nods and looks back at her leg. Chrissy watches him, his hair falling between them like a curtain. His nimble fingers trace over the bones in her shin, then he grips her leg above and below the break. He turns his head, ear down, looking in her direction but not using his eyes. He listens.

She notices how still he goes when he listens—preternaturally still. No breath. Unblinking. Like a predator with its hackles raised and prey between its eyes. Her breath catches.

Chrissy can feel the bones scraping again, her muscles stretching as he manipulates her leg. She swallows, tensing slightly as Eddie’s hand drifts towards her knee. Her eyebrows knit together, her lips parting as he screws up his face in concentration. He pulls on her ankle, stretching out her leg, then twists, clicking the bones into place. Chrissy sighs with relief.

“Thank you,” she says, as he sits back up. “How did you do that?”

“I could hear the bones scraping against each other,” he says, “figured out how it was misaligned by where the sounds were.”

Chrissy stares at him. “Eddie, that’s really weird.”

She means it lightly, but the way he looks at her—head tilted, eyes a little too dark—sends a chill down her spine. It brings back the fear she used to have of him before she got to know him at the picnic table that day. That he’s capable of something dangerous.

“Is it weirder than you pulling your eyeballs back out of your head?” He asks her, raising an eyebrow. “Or the fact that I just put your bones back together and you didn’t feel any pain?”

“Okay well if I am what I am–”

“A zombie,” Eddie interrupts. “You’re like a zombie. You don’t have a heartbeat and you smell…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but the implication is there. A flash of shame crosses her face—quickly masked. She knows what she is.

Chrissy nods, inhaling sharply to calm herself. “Right. If I’m a zombie, then what are you? How did you die?”

Eddie hesitates. His hands still rest on her leg. Chrissy isn’t sure if he realizes he left them there, but she likes the weight of him. It’s comforting to know she isn’t alone. Even if his hands feel…wrong.

“I was attacked by bats,” he says finally. “In the Upside Down.” His eyes are glassy as he talks, like he’s seeing it all again in his mind. “You know all the bad things that have happened here over the past couple years?” He doesn’t stop talking for her to answer. “It’s all ‘cause of this guy—we called him Vecna, but his name was Henry Creel.”

“Didn’t he…die?” Chrissy asks. “Didn’t that whole family die? I heard the story once. The father did it, right?”

Eddie shakes his head. “No, Henry killed his mother and sister, and he was shipped off. His father took the blame for all of it. It’s…” he shakes his head. “I’ll give you the whole thing later if you want but, basically, Henry—Vecna had these…powers.”

“Powers?” Chrissy furrows her brows.

“Like he can…make someone see things. Move stuff with his mind. That sort of thing,” Eddie tells her. “And he was living in this world—the Upside Down—another dimension beneath Hawkins.”

He lets Chrissy take that in for a moment, watches her face for signs of confusion or fear, but she stays neutral, waiting patiently for him to go on.

Her composure unnerves him a little, because she’s so hard to read. Maybe because it’s easier for her now—to stay calm—without a working heartbeat to kick up. Or maybe she’s still in shock.

“H– he was the one making you see things,” he tells her, involuntarily squeezing her leg. “He’s the one who killed you.”

Chrissy nods. She remembers it all. Completely. The way he’d followed her through her hallucinations for days. How she’d tried to escape. His sick, raw body of tentacles and rot looming over her just before he killed her. That had to have been the man—creature—he calls Vecna.

“I remember,” she whispers. Eddie looks at her sympathetically. “What happened? What did you see when I died?”

“I– I’d gone to my room,” Eddie chews on the inside of his cheek, not looking at her. His voice cracks. “When I found the Special K, I came back and you were in like, I dunno, a trance I guess.” He shifts, eyes unseeing as he recalls it. “I tried to wake you up. I really tried, but…” He trails off.

“But what?” Chrissy prompts.

“You started floating,” Eddie says, swallowing. “I– I fell back. I was so scared, I couldn’t– I couldn’t–”

“Eddie,” Chrissy sits up and grabs his arm, making him look at her, “it’s okay.”

“All your bones snapped, one by one,” he whispers, “and then your eyes…” He looks away again. “And when you hit the floor, I ran,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I wanted to–”

Chrissy squeezes his forearm. “You couldn’t have stopped it, Eddie,” she says to him. Her voice catches, and for a moment, she’s not sure if the feeling is her grief or the rot. She turns and coughs into her elbow to clear it.

He sniffs, his shoulders tremble. “But I could have,” he turns back to her, eyes dark and shining with tears, “because we figured out later the way to pull someone out of it was music. I’m a musician.” He grimaces. “Who was more perfect to save you than me?”

Chrissy shakes her head. “You didn’t know that,” she assures him. “If you had known, you would have.” She reaches blindly, shoving her fingers into his hair and pulling his head towards hers. Their foreheads press together. “It’s okay, because we’re both here now.”

Before Eddie can respond, her eyes flutter, and her body collapses with a boneless sag against his chest. Her head lolls, her eyes rolled just slightly back, flickering just like the night she died.

“Chrissy? Chrissy! Wake up! Chrissy!”

“Holy shit,” Patrick says beside her.

“Hey, FREAK!” comes out of Jason’s mouth—her mouth. “Where do you think you’re going?”

They’re at the edge of Lover’s Lake. There’s a small boat, maybe twenty yards out. It has a motor but the person in it is paddling. Chrissy tries to make out who it is through Jason’s eyes. She recognizes the Dio patch on the back of Eddie’s jacket. Fuck. Jason’s rage pulses through her—not her own heartbeat, but his fury pounding inside her skull.

Eddie starts trying to get the engine going and Jason peels off his suit jacket. He kicks off his shoes as Eddie yanks the cord. The engine doesn’t start. Jason peels off his socks.

“Just…come…on…” Eddie grunts from the lake.

Patrick isn’t moving beside Jason.

“You scared of some water?” Jason spits at him. “Let’s go!”

From the lake again, “You! Piece! Of! Shit!” Then Eddie starts muttering to himself, inaudible from the shore.

Jason rips his dress shirt open and tosses it aside before splashing into the water. It’s deathly cold, but he doesn’t stop. He sloshes through until it’s too deep, then he starts swimming towards Eddie. Chrissy hears Patrick splash in behind him.

The chill of the water is nothing compared to Jason’s hate. It’s weird. Not just that he thinks Eddie killed his girlfriend. It’s the kind of petty rage a child has when someone steals their toy and plays with it themselves. Inside him, Chrissy feels that particular anger coil and bristle.

“Goddamn it!” Eddie yells from the boat as the motor fails and Jason gets even closer.

Chrissy can feel his lividity. The red-hot urge to kill Eddie bubbling up in Jason’s throat, in his hands as he cuts through the water. His jaw is clenched, breathing through his teeth. Inside him, Chrissy shrivels, like she always does when Jason gets into a fight.

“Nope? Okay. All right. Okay.”

Eddie gives up on the engine and grabs the oar. He starts paddling frantically and Jason digs deep, kicking harder to catch him. He’s an athlete, he can catch some scrawny, metalhead freak in a boat. Water crashes into Jason’s mouth. Chrissy can taste it—muddy and metallic, teeming with rot. There’s something wrong in the lake.

“Hey stay back, man!” Eddie swings the oar wildly. “Stay back! Stay back!” There’s fear in his voice. It’s unfamiliar to Chrissy. Eddie before was sweet to her, Eddie now is too dangerous to be afraid of anyone else. She’s never heard him afraid.

He’s almost there, inches away from getting a hand on it when Patrick stops. He isn’t swimming with Jason anymore. Jason pauses, turns.

“Hey c’mon let’s go! We almost have him!” Jason encourages him. He’d much rather take on Eddie with backup than alone. He’s tired, and Eddie has a weapon. Patrick doesn’t move. Doesn’t look at him. “Hey, Patrick!” he tries again, barely keeping his head above the choppy water. “Patrick!” His head dips under. “Patrick!”

Suddenly, Patrick is gone. Yanked below the surface. Fear and forboding swirls in Jason’s chest. “Patrick?” He squints in the dark. “Hey, Patrick.” Silence. Nothing happens. Eddie’s frozen behind him
even though he could use the opportunity to get away. “Pat– Patrick!”

Water rushes over Jason’s head as Patrick surges out of the water, floating a good ten feet or so above the surface. Jason loses his control for a second, slipping below the surface and choking on water as he tries to inhale. Fear floods through Chrissy. Jason’s never believed in the supernatural. Now his friend is fifteen feet above him, hanging in the air.

The shape of Patrick is wrong. His body hovers like a puppet dangling from invisible strings that crucify him against nothing. The freak must be doing this. He’s Satan himself, reborn. He must be attacking Patrick. Jason flinches as his friend’s bones begin to snap. First his legs and arms and fingers, then his elbows and knees twist unnaturally.

The sound is unbearable. Chrissy has to remind herself that it isn’t her body being shattered this time—which she remembers fully until the moment her eyes imploded into her skull.

Behind him, Eddie falls out of the boat and into the water, but Jason is frozen, watching in horror has his friend’s body is mangled before his very eyes. Patrick’s jaw snaps off its hinge. Finally his head snaps back and his body plummets into the water, disappearing.

“Chrissy, wake up! Seriously, wake up!”

Eddie’s patting her cheek and roughly shaking her when Chrissy returns from Jason’s memory. She grabs his wrist and looks up at him. His eyes are wide and terrified. His touch is panicked; his hands are too strong. There’s something unsteady about him, and Chrissy quickly realizes there’s still one thing Eddie is afraid of. Losing her.

“I’m fine,” she tells him. “All good.”

“Jesus Christ," Eddie breathes, “I was like ‘not again.’ Holy shit.”

He’s shaking so much it’s rattling Chrissy’s jaw. Whatever she looks like when she’s experiencing a memory, it must remind him of the night she died. Not knowing what else to do, she snakes her arms around him, burying her face against his shoulder to try and stop the trembling. Eddie hesitates, then wraps his arms loosely around her.

His body vibrates against hers, almost humming with tension. And beneath his skin, she can feel something not-quite-human thrum through him—his blood too fast, his chill unnatural.

“Sorry I scared you,” Chrissy mutters. “Just got tired I guess.” She isn’t sure why she doesn’t tell him she’s reliving Jason’s memories. It feels…private. Like telling Eddie would be a betrayal, even though he was clearly there in the latest one she experienced.

Jason had been hunting Eddie. And the way he was thinking about it, like he was more worried that Eddie had touched Chrissy—because Chrissy was Jason’s—than the fact that she was dead at all, ignites a tiny spark of self-righteous anger inside her.

“It’s okay,” Eddie replies, relaxing. But he doesn’t really relax. Not all the way. His jaw stays clenched and his heartbeat—too fast, too loud—rattles through his chest like a snare drum with heavy reverb and no rhythm. “Wh– what happened when you woke up?”

She sits up, pushing away from Eddie. She curls her legs up under her, unsure of how to explain what she’d done since she woke up.

“It’s been… weird.”

Eddie inclines his head. “Try me.”

There’s something off about the way Eddie watches her now. His pupils are wide, a little too dark. His irises were already almost black when he was alive. Chrissy wonders what he’s seeing when he looks at her like that.

“Before I found you,” Chrissy sighs, wrapping her arms around herself, “I was walking along one of the rifts and I came to the Creel house.”

“Max and Lucas and Erica were there,” Eddie interrupts. “We had this plan to kill Vecna. Max was supposed to be the bait.” He speaks quickly, nervously.

She shakes her head, ignoring him. “I guess Jason ended up there too…” She picks at a hangnail absentmindedly. “You’re going to think I’m so weird and gross when I tell you this.”

To her surprise, Eddie scoffs, a grin cracking across his face. He leans back, extending his arms out along the back of the couch. “Trust me, I’ve seen and done some pretty weird and gross stuff in the last week.”

Chrissy notices the way the veins in his forearms pulse—stronger, darker than they should be under sickeningly pale skin. The way his teeth flash when he smiles.

“Not like this.” Chrissy twists her mouth around avoiding his gaze. “I did something really bad.”

Eddie’s smile drops. “Just tell me what it is.” The silence sharpens. The room feels smaller.

Chrissy’s voice catches in her throat. “Well, th– the rift ended…at the Creel house. A– and I was kinda, drawn in, I guess.” She pauses, swallowing. “And Jason was there.”

“He was?” Eddie asks, leaning towards her. “Did you talk to him?”

Chrissy shakes her head. “No, he was d– dead.”

Eddie leans back again, keeping his face neutral even though on the inside he’s elated. Somehow he’d outlived that douchebag. If this is what you can call living. But Chrissy catches the glint in his eye—satisfaction, maybe. Relief.

“And I accidentally…” she inhales sharply. “I didn’t see him and I stepped on his face. I broke his skull wide open.”

Eddie lets out a peal of involuntary laughter. God, that’s exactly what that dick deserves. But he stops the moment he sees Chrissy’s horrified expression. She looks haunted. However much of an asshole Jason was, some part of her had cared for him.

“Sorry,” he says, composing himself. “And then what happened?”

“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” Chrissy says, continuing to pick at the flap of skin next to her nailbed. She doesn’t look at him.

Eddie shrugs. “Can’t be that bad.”

“I ate his brain.”

Eddie sucks in air sharply through his teeth. Okay. So it is that bad. But it could be worse. She could have attacked someone in the middle of the street and ripped their face off and been killed by the police like Fred Benson. Instead, she’d put herself back together. And yeah, she’d eaten her dead boyfriend’s brain. But he’d been dead.

Eddie looks at her sympathetically. “He was already dead,” he reminds her. “You didn’t kill him.”

Chrissy’s face starts to crumple. “It’s just, I was so hungry…” She slumps back against the arm of the couch, scooting away from Eddie, feeling like she’s too abhorrent to be touched. “I tried to eat, you know, regular food.” She sniffles. “And I threw it all right back up. Then I was there, and Jason’s head was broken, and I could smell his brain and it was the only thing that smelled good.” She buries her face in her hands. “God, I’m so disgusting."

“I drank my neighbor’s blood,” Eddie offers.

Chrissy lifts her face to look at him. “You what?”

The look in her eyes is sharp, hungry, desperately seeking understanding of the taboo act she’d performed—finding it in his admission.

“I, uh,” Eddie rubs the back of his neck, suddenly ashamed of it, even though she just confessed to cannibalism. “I’d left my vest in their RV—long story—and I went back to get it. My neighbor walked in. He– he tried to hit me. When I grabbed his wrist I could hear his pulse? Like throbbing in his veins? And I was so thirsty…” He looks at her sharply, his eyes glittering in the faint moonlight, “…and it was the only thing that smelled good.”

His voice deepens to a low, sexy rumble when he talks about it. Though some part of him does appear contrite, something else—something hungrier, slicker—appears arrogant. Chrissy watches his throat work as he remembers the taste of blood.

She sighs. Her shoulders slump and she looks down at her hands in her lap. She’s picked the hangnail so much that she has a good piece to grip, and Eddie watches her slowly peel it back, a long thin strip of paper thin skin revealing the dead, black flesh beneath. A thicker curl of dark fluid seeps out, dripping like molasses, not blood. Eddie’s breath hitches.

“We make quite the pair don’t we,” she says. “A zombie and a vampire.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, nodding. He licks his lips as he stares at the blood on her finger. It must be blood, because it smells appetizing, but more like a day old hamburger than a juicy steak.

“You know what that means though, don’t you?” Chrissy asks. He tears his gaze away from her bloody finger to meet her eye.

“What does it mean?”

“We’re going to have to eat again at some point.”

Chapter Text

They sleep through the day. Eddie follows Chrissy up to her bedroom. Under other circumstances, he might be excited to see the inside of her room, but after the night he had, he just wants to pass out. The sun rising feels like the opposite of what the sun setting used to be—a signal to his brain that he should be asleep.

Still, he takes it in as he sits on the edge of Chrissy’s bed and takes off his sneakers. It’s pink. More pink than he expected. Her furniture is white, with delicate little girly touches. Everything is neatly organized and put away. The bed is made perfectly. It’s like a museum of Chrissy, not like she really lives in this room. When he takes off his jacket, she snatches it right out of his hands and hangs it on a hook behind the door.

Then she strides across and yanks the curtains shut, making sure no light can come through. Even still, as it gets lighter outside, Eddie’s eyes itch and his skin crawls.

“I’m gonna go change clothes,” Chrissy says, standing by the door. She pauses awkwardly. “You can sleep in here. You look dead on your feet.” She smiles a little at her joke.

“Thanks.” Without even bothering to take his jeans off, Eddie curls up under the lacy quilt, and closes his eyes.

In the bathroom down the hall, Chrissy tries the sink. No water. No power either. The whole town seems to be in shambles since the rift opened. No wonder her parents left town. They probably went to stay with her mom’s sister in Chicago.

Chrissy braces her hands on the edge of the sink and looks in the mirror. She immediately closes her eyes. It’s obvious why Eddie looked at her with such disgust on his face. She looks wrong. Eyes bulging, jaw out of alignment, even her skin has a faint greenish gray tinge that’s only made more obvious by the dull redness of her hair.

A tear squeezes out between her eyelids and falls down her cheek. Chrissy bites her lip, preparing herself, and opens her eyes again. Once she gets used to it, her appearance isn’t so bad. She pokes at her eye and it slides back. There. That’s a lot better! Now she looks normal. If she can just get her jaw set right.

Planting one hand on top of her head, she adjusts her jaw with the other. It clicks into place with a loud snap, then a squelch as something hard falls down her throat. Chrissy gags, grabbing her neck and bending forward over the sink. She coughs hard, banging her palm on the porcelain. Again and again, she tries to dislodge the object. Finally, she reaches her fingers in her mouth and scoops it out.

One of her molars falls into the sink, root and all. She spits out two mouthfuls of black blood, spattering across the white porcelain. It keeps gushing; she chokes on it as it runs down her throat like sludge. She spits again, reaching for a tissue, balling it up and putting pressure on the hole in the back of her mouth. Standing up straight stops the flow as gravity settles her blood back down.

When she looks up and bares her teeth, the cracks between them are lined with black. Her breath catches in her throat. She looks like a monster. Grabbing the hand towel, she frantically scrubs at her teeth, staining the white terrycloth, but her mother isn’t here to be disappointed in her. When she smiles again, her teeth are clean, but her gums are still a lifeless gray instead of pink.

Swallowing, she looks down. There are still flecks of Jason’s brain caught on the knit of her jacket. She wrinkles her nose in disgust while at the same time salivating at the memory of the juicy taste.

Oh, it would probably be so much better if it had been warm. Or fried up like breakfast sausage. Chrissy loves breakfast sausage, but she only gets it when she visits her grandmother—her mother would never have something so greasy in the house.

Still, even at her grandmother’s house, Chrissy would eat her breakfast sausage—and French toast and eggs—before excusing herself to the powder room, where she’d dutifully throw it all back up like a good girl. Like her mother taught her.

“You get to enjoy it twice!” She’d told Chrissy the first time, that fake, bright smile on her face.

Most mothers teach their daughters how to shave their legs at thirteen. Laura Cunningham made sure her daughter would never be bigger than the size she was in seventh grade. Fat girls aren’t on the cheer team. The skirt looks better on thin, bony legs. Never mind that Chrissy was always falling asleep in class and passing out in practice.

She shucks off the jacket, wadding it up in a ball and stuffing it in the trashcan next to the toilet. It had gotten a little better when she started dating Jason. He was so possessive, she couldn’t get away from him to go to the bathroom after he took her out to dinner. He’d wait outside the door and would’ve heard her if she tried to make herself vomit. By the time she got home, it was too far along to throw up.

Laura was furious that Chrissy was gaining weight, but couldn’t say anything about her dating the most popular boy in school. Chrissy began to look forward to hanging out at Jason’s house. It got her away from her mom, even if being with Jason wasn’t much better.

She stares at herself in the mirror. Jason’s dead now. And through all his memories, it’s becoming apparent to Chrissy that he never viewed her as anything other than an accessory to have on his arm. His anger at Eddie stemmed from the fear that he’d stolen something of Jason’s—ruined her virtuous reputation—not from actual grief that she was dead and desire to avenge her.

Her cheerleading uniform suddenly feels itchy, wrong. It isn’t hers anymore. It’s the physical manifestation of their ownership over her. Laura’s daughter had to be perfect. Jason just had to be with the head cheerleader, the “Queen of Hawkins High,” as Eddie had dubbed her.

She scoffs. She’s not that girl anymore. That girl who rolled over and showed her belly so nobody would hurt her had died in Eddie’s trailer. They’d hurt her anyway. What could they do to her now? Her body is rotting, nourished only by her dead boyfriend’s brain.

Chrissy peels off her top and unzips her skirt. It falls in a heap to the floor. She kicks the offensive fabric into the corner and stares at herself in the mirror. Veins spiderweb out across her sternum, over her bony collarbones. Her mother’s work. All of it is. Even her good underwear is a silky pink pair she’d picked out because she thought Jason would like it when they celebrated the championship win and his hands inevitably made their way up her skirt.

Fuck this shit, Chrissy thinks. She throws her underwear and bra in the trash too. There’s no water to shower, so she grabs a baby wipe from the top of the toilet and starts wiping her body down—scrubbing off dirt and Jason’s hands and her mother’s influence. She scrubs and scrubs, until the wipe is black with grime and she feels lighter.

Sighing, she pulls on clean pajama shorts and an old t-shirt she’d taken from her dad’s drawer a few months ago. It still sort of smells like his cologne. She lifts the neck and hooks it on her nose, inhaling deeply. It’s more of a memory than an actual smell, but it’s there and it’s comforting. Swallowing back more tears, she heads back to her bedroom.

Eddie’s sprawled out on his stomach, one of his arms dangling off her bed, his face smushed into a pillow. Chrissy twists her mouth. It isn’t that she isn’t happy for the company in the afterlife, it’s just that his presence makes her a little uneasy. He’s different. The week between her death and his hardened him. Death changed him.

He moves with uncanny quickness and complete silence. His eyes track her tiniest twitches. She saw the way he fixated on the blood on her finger earlier. But even her blood seemed to repulse him. Of course it does, she thinks to herself, you’re a disgusting, dead monster whose heart doesn’t beat.

Still, he’d taken care of her. Fixed her leg. And having him around was better than being alone. If you’d asked her a week ago, she never would have told you it’d be her and Eddie Munson figuring out life after death together.

Kneeling beside the bed, she brushes the hair off his face and tugs the quilt higher over his shoulders. Trying to be as quiet as possible, she reaches over him and grabs the pillow from the other side of her bed, then slowly pulls the blanket folded at the foot of the bed. Just as she’s spreading out on the floor, Eddie’s eye cracks open.

“What are you doing?” He mutters.

“Sleeping,” Chrissy whispers, “like you’re supposed to be.” She smacks the pillow once to redistribute the oomph of it, and lays down facing away from him. Closing her eyes, she sighs. For the first time since she woke up in the morgue, she relaxes.

Until Eddie grabs her. She screams and thrashes in his arms, kicking hard against the blanket. “Put me down!”

“Sure.” Eddie dumps her unceremoniously on the bed. She scowls at him as he settles down on the floor where she just was. “Night.”

“I can sleep on the floor,” she insists, sitting up on her elbow to look at him.

“Go the fuck to sleep, Chrissy,” he growls. “It’s your bed. If you don’t want to sleep with me in it, you could have just said. Don’t wake me up again.”

Chrissy’s stomach drops. She’s clearly offended him when she was just trying to be polite and give him space. Peering over the edge, she frowns. With a sigh, she untangles herself from the blanket and gently spreads it over him. He shifts, fisting it and pulling it around him, but doesn’t say anything else.

Laying back, she folds her hands over her chest. She could have easily gone to sleep in her brother’s room. He wouldn’t have minded, but something tells her Eddie would have just followed her. And she doesn’t want to sleep alone anyway. Not after everything that happened. She yawns and closes her eyes.

Briefly, the issue of eating again flits through her mind. She pushes it aside as a problem for when she wakes up. Right now, she just wants to rest her broken body.

***

Eddie wakes up just as the last rays of sunlight fade from the sky, like his body is hardwired to exist in the dark. He sits up and looks at Chrissy. She’s curled up in a ball in the center of her bed, arms around a worn teddy bear he hadn’t noticed the night before.

It had been impossible for him to sleep until he knew she was back in the same room. Then she’d gone to try and sleep on the floor, and his heart had sunk. Not because she owed him anything—but because of course she wouldn’t want to be near him. Why would she? Dead or alive, he’s still the freak, still the loser. Whatever he is now only makes it worse.

There’d never been a real chance they could be anything more than casual acquaintances who occasionally exchanged money for drugs—if it hadn’t just been a one-time thing. And whatever scraps of feeling he carried for her, buried somewhere under everything he’s become, he knows better than to think someone like her could ever want anything to do with someone like him.

He doesn’t belong in this house. Doesn’t belong in her room. The only reason to stay close is to make sure she’s safe. And to do that, he needs to figure out what the hell is happening in Hawkins.

Eddie watches her for a while. Maybe once a minute, her chest rises and falls with a breath, more like because it feels good—human—to breathe than because she actually needs it. After assuring himself she’s still not dead-dead, he moves silently out of the room, grabbing his jacket on the way. His throat burns with thirst.

Outside, Hawkins is more alive than when he woke up in the early morning. Eddie stops on the porch of Chrissy’s house, fixing the collar of his vest as he looks around. Bits of ash have coated the ground. It looks like rotted snow clinging to the plants and withering them. He sniffs. The air smells burnt and decayed. It’s like the whole town is dying.

In the distance, a storm brews over downtown Hawkins, red lightning flashes in a massive black cloud emanating from where the rifts join together. Eddie’s jaw clenches. He can hear more people milling around. Whoever remains in Hawkins, they’re still awake. He’ll have to stick to the shadows.

From what Eddie knows about the area, the Wheelers and the Sinclairs live nearby. He checks their houses first, listening and counting the heartbeats. It isn’t good. Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler and Mike and Nancy’s little sister—her heart is faster and stands out—are at the Wheelers, but no Nancy or Mike. Which means he isn’t back yet. And Nancy’s unaccounted for. Same story at the Sinclairs, two heartbeats. Just Lucas and Erica’s parents.

Eddie tries to stay calm as he comes up empty twice. They might just be out and about. It’s only about nine o’clock. He’s had campaigns go later than this. He’ll just keep looking until everyone is accounted for. And he’s got to find some blood—the hospital might be a good stop.

Curving south instead of heading directly into town, Eddie finally finds signs of life. Steve’s 7 series is parked in front of Dustin’s house and he can hear two heartbeats inside. He slinks through the shadows to crouch in the corner of the car park, listening.

“Were you telling Mr. Munson about Eddie?” Steve’s voice is as loud and clear as if Eddie were sitting in the backseat. He smiles. Vampire hearing is awesome.

“He deserved to know,” Dustin replies. Eddie’s smile drops as he realizes what Dustin is saying. That he’d let Wayne know Eddie was dead. “Eddie died a hero and nobody in this town will ever know it.”

“It sucks,” Steve agrees, “the wanted posters are still everywhere and they’re talking on the news like the whole thing is his fault.”

Eddie closes his eyes. Of course. Of course the whole thing must be the fault of the Satanic, serial killing, cult leader. Jason had seen to it that he was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. That’s really why he’d gone back to hold off the bats. He hadn’t had a way out.

It chokes him a little, the grief. He was two months from graduation. Now he’d never see a diploma. Even now, even reanimated. There’s no future for him.

“I miss him,” Dustin says. “I really miss him.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “I miss him too.”

That makes Eddie chuckle. The one-sided rivalry he’d created with Steve Harrington over Dustin’s friendship was dumb, really. A lot of the shit he did when he was alive was dumb. Including, probably, blatantly flirting with Steve just push his buttons. He’d expected to get punched, or at the very least for Steve to be grossed out. Hawkins isn’t exactly the safest place to push that boundary—though Eddie had pushed it often. But Steve had just taken it in stride, rolled his eyes, maybe even flirted back once or twice.

It was unexpected. Unlike basically everyone else around here, Steve just didn’t seem to care about that sort of thing. Eddie didn’t know what to make of it. And somewhere along the way, that mild frustration he had with Steve had turned into something else—a tiny, deeply inconvenient crush.

Eddie watches Dustin get out of the car and limp towards the door. Steve waits in the car, gaze heavy on Dustin’s back, until the door creaks open and swallows him up. Then he drives away.

Eddie swallows hard. He peels off his vest—the one he’d gone to get out of the RV. If what Steve said was true, that the town’s still looking for him—whispering about murder and satanic cults—then the vest is too recognizable.

He creeps over to the door, moving as silent as the fog, and lays it gently folded on the doorstep. If he wants anyone to have it, it’s Dustin. Knocking three times, he’s off the porch and hidden across the street before Dustin can get back on his bad leg. Eddie swallows when he watches the door open, holding back the urge to yell his friend’s name.

Dustin bends down with some difficulty and picks up the vest. Recognition blooms on his face and he steps outside, looking around.

“Is someone there?” He calls out. “Eddie?”

Eddie grips the tree, knuckles white, fingers digging into the bark as if to tether himself to this choice. His throat burns—from thirst, yes—but also from guilt, from love, from grief.

He can’t do it. Can’t step back into Dustin’s life and shatter it all over again. Not when he already watched Eddie die once. Not when he doesn’t know what he is. Not when he might still be Vecna’s puppet. Not with the kind of hunger inside him. He doesn’t want to hurt the kid.

No. It would be cruel to make Dustin hope.

So Eddie stays dead. He watches Dustin shrug on the vest, then head back inside. “Take care, Henderson,” he murmurs to himself. Once the door shuts, Eddie slinks away, swallowed by the dark again. It’s time to steal some blood.

The smoke gets thicker as he draws closer, flooding Eddie’s sensitive nose and choking off his sense of smell, which he didn’t realize he’d come to depend on so much in the few hours he’d been active since he woke up.

The Hawkins Hospital isn’t very big. Eddie’s been in a few times for various childhood injuries—stitches on his hand, a broken wrist. He guesses the bags of blood for transfusions will be somewhere near the emergency room.

It’s easy to break in through the basement door because some idiot left it unlocked. But then again, maybe people in Hawkins are worried about bigger things than keeping people out of the basement of the hospital.

The hallway smells like disinfectant and something sweeter, rotting beneath. The backup lights are dim and flickering in the stairwell as he makes his way up to the main floor. Most of the building is on emergency power, if anything at all. It’s quiet, eerily so.

The emergency room is deserted. The overhead lights are out completely. They must have rerouted all emergencies to the next town over. Eddie takes his time even though he can see well in the dark, making sure there’s no one lurking. He lets his his instincts guide him to a storage room with a large industrial refrigerator.

Bingo.

He yanks it open, half-expecting an alarm to sound, someone to burst in yelling, but nothing happens. The cold doesn’t even hit him—because it’s not cold. The power’s out.

Eddie stares at the shelves. Rows of clear bags filled with the unmistakeably burgundy blood. They’re all sealed, but the fridge is warm inside. Humid, even. His sensitive nose wrinkles. It smells wrong.

Still, he’s thirsty and can’t be picky. His throat is dry and aching. He grabs one of the bags at random and sinks his teeth into the plastic, upending the bag like it’s cheap boxed wine at a party.

The second it hits his tongue, he gags. It’s clotted and sour, thick like spoiled milk, and he can’t stop the reflex that jerks his head away. He spits it back out across the tile.

“Fuck,” he mutters, coughing.

The taste lingers in his mouth like pennies and curdled cream. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, pacing in a slow circle around the room. It’s not just that it tastes bad. It tastes dead.

Dead blood. Dead town. Dead boy.

He slams the fridge shut. Squeezing his eyes shut, he raises the bag and again and bites down over the holes his teeth left before. Gagging, he manages to choke down the whole thing. The blood roils in his stomach like rotten eggs. As long as he can keep it down, it’ll at least keep him going awhile.

But he doesn’t take any more of the blood bags with him. Next time, he’ll get it straight from the source. Fresh. Warm.

Alive.

As he’s starting to head back out the way he came, he hears his name. Eddie freezes, tilting his head to listen to the conversation on the floor above him.

“... died?” It’s Mike Wheeler’s voice. He must have gotten back to town and come here.

“Yeah,” Lucas says. “Dustin was with him. Says he died fighting off the bats so they wouldn’t get through the portal.”

Why are the kids here? Eddie pauses, listening. He focuses in on another conversation between two nurses down the hall from Lucas and Mike. Their voices are hushed, exhausted.

“Max Mayfield needs her IV replaced,” one of them is saying.

“No change?” The other asks.

The first one sighs. “No, I was really hoping her friends coming back might help.”

So Max is in the hospital. But at least she isn’t dead. Eddie closes his eyes, shutting out the nurses, pushing past the throb in his temples to lock back onto the kids’ conversation. His hearing sharpens like a blade being drawn.

“I wish I could have met him,” a girl’s voice says. Eddie doesn’t recognize it but the way she talks is stilted, slow. Like English isn’t her first language. “He sounds like he was a very good friend.”

“He was,” Lucas agrees. “He isn’t what everyone is saying he is.”

“Of course not,” Mike says emphatically. “Eddie wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Eddie snorts under his breath. “Way too much faith in me, Wheeler,” he mutters. His tongue scrapes against his teeth. The sharp points of his canines are just barely longer than a normal human’s now, but they’re always there—the hunger is always there—beneath the surface.

“What happened to Erica?” A third boy’s voice asks. “That’s a nasty bruise on her forearm.”

“Oh,” Lucas chuckles, “you’ll like this. Mike, you know Andy from the basketball team?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s this big, dumb guy who followed Jason around, always wearing a stupid hat,” Lucas explains, presumably to the people whose voices Eddie doesn’t recognize. “He like…tackled Erica outside the Creel house.”

A pulse of rage flares behind Eddie’s eyes. He stands up straight, Erica’s face, her relentlessness, her attitude—far more mature than an eleven-year-old should have to be—pops into his head.

“Ooh, bad idea,” Mike says.

Eddie shivers, but it’s different now—sharper, darker. He presses the heel of his palm against the wall to keep himself steady. Andy’s a big guy. Erica’s just a kid. And she’s tough, tougher than most guys he knows, but still. That asshole had no business putting his hands on her. How weak do you as a guy have to be to consider putting hands on a girl, let alone a kid?

“She clocked him with her flashlight,” Lucas says. “When we came outside, he was still out cold across the street.”

Mike joins in laughing with Lucas.

Eddie doesn’t.

He leans hard into the stone wall, nostrils flaring. His jaw ticks. The tips of his fingers ache, curled into fists. Erica was supposed to be outside the danger. That’s why she was the signal between Lucas and Max in Hawkins and the team in the Upside Down. It was supposed to keep her safe. And then those two pieces of shit—Jason and Andy—just had to come stomping in, poisoning everything they touched. At least Jason got what was coming to him. Sounds like Andy got away.

Something inside Eddie uncoils. His anger mixes with the hunger burning in his throat. The desire to rip and tear sings through his bones, rattling them.

“Hey, Mike, it’s time to go,” Nancy says, walking into the room with the kids. Someone else follows her, but they don’t say anything.

Eddie relaxes for a second. Nancy’s alive, that’s good. And nobody’s mentioned Robin yet—presumably if she’d died then she would have been brought up when they talked about him dying. That means everyone made it out but him.

And that’s the moment his rage slips back in—hotter, deeper. It curls around the hollow in his chest and squeezes. The fire in his throat returns, wrapped in new purpose—justice.

As the kids all stand up to go, Eddie heads back for the stairwell to the basement. His mouth is dry. His skin prickles with tension. His fangs throb behind his lips, hungry for warm blood and a beating pulse. He needs it. And he knows exactly where to find it.

It doesn’t take Eddie long to find Andy. His plan had been to break into the office at school to find his file and therefore his address, but it had been simpler than that. Hawkins High School had become the refugee center for the town. And it seems like Andy’s house was destroyed, because Eddie picks up the dickwad’s scent mingled among all the others.

It snakes through the gymnasium like a rot Eddie can’t ignore—faint sweat, deodorant, blood beneath the skin. There are dozens of cots set up in neat little rows. The air is filled with sounds of sleeping families—breathing, snoring. He can hear the mucusy drag of a child’s clogged nose. A man coughs in his sleep—shallow, bronchial.

For a second, Eddie pauses when he catches his uncle’s scent, but it’s stale. Wayne was here, but he isn’t anymore. He refocuses. Nobody notices him.

Eddie’s never been this quiet in his life. Something in him is learning, evolving. The part of him that used to flinch and run at the sign of confrontation is dying. What’s left moves like a predator.

He glides along the outer edge of the gym, low to the ground, scent trailing ahead of him like a fuse already lit. He pauses near the bleachers, crouched behind a stack of chairs. He waits.

Then someone shifts out of one of the cots near the locker room doors. Andy gets up and walks over to the boys’ locker room. Alone.

He’s wearing sweatpants and a Tigers Basketball t-shirt. His hair’s a mess. There’s no stupid hat. He looks smaller than Eddie remembers, like someone cut the swagger out of him and left the rest to collapse.

Andy glances over his shoulder then disappears through the door into the darkened locker room. The soft thud of his footsteps echoes down the hallway. Eddie follows.

He doesn’t rush. He stalks. Each step is measured, silent, patient. He slips into the tiled corridor, letting the door click shut behind him. The fluorescent bulbs flicker dimly overhead, a few bulbs humming weakly.

Water drips from a sink someone didn’t shut off all the way. The lockers creak. Andy’s inside somewhere, out of sight. Eddie moves through the silence like smoke. He isn’t even breathing. He can hear Andy’s heartbeat. It’s fast, but not terrified. Not yet.

Eddie waits just beyond the next row of lockers. He can see in the mirror that Andy is sitting on a bench, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. When he lifts his head there’s a bandage on his cheek. A purple, but yellowing bruise blooms across his temple. His knuckles are cracked.

Eddie watches. The sight of Andy so defeated doesn’t soften him. If anything it makes him hungrier.

Andy exhales, sitting upright again. His voice is raw. “What were we thinking? Hunt the freak,” he mutters, then scoffs. “Jason got his war. Now he’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”

He closes his eyes. For a moment he just sits there.

Eddie walks around the locker. “Well, well, well,” he says, sneering. “Who’s the freak hunting now?” His voice is warm, playful, but with a sinister edge. It feels wrong in his throat. Too human.

Andy jumps to his feet, tripping back over the bench and barely catching himself as he crashes against the lockers behind him. His face drains of blood.

“Y– you’re, you’re–”

“Hm?” Eddie puts his fingers behind his ear, mocking him. “Sorry, what was that? Are you sad all your little buddies died?”

Any semblance of possibility for sympathy Eddie might have for Andy leaves when the image of Erica re-enters his mind. Anger surges in him, carrying him across the room with inhuman speed to pin Andy against the lockers.

A week ago, Andy would have had the upper hand. Now Eddie holds him easily with a forearm across his chest. He can’t resist leaning in, smelling the delicious blood pumping through Andy’s exposed neck. The scent floods his nostrils, reinvigorating the burn in his throat and the desire for vengeance inside him. The artery pulses so close to Eddie’s lips he could bite without moving his jaw. The heat of it fogs his brain. His saliva beads, thick and shimmering on his tongue.

“Look, man–”

“Shut up,” Eddie snarls. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Attacking a little girl? Were you out of your mind?”

“Yes,” Andy nods frantically, “it was Jason, it was everything! The whole town!” He sounds more like a scared kid than a bully now. But that doesn’t matter in Eddie’s thirst-addled brain. He’s already decided. Andy deserves to die.

“But Erica is just a kid, you knew that right?” Eddie hisses. “She’s eleven fucking years old. She’s half your size.”

“I know, I know, I know,” Andy repeats desperately. “I don’t know, I was–”

Eddie’s hand slides up his throat, cutting him off. The pulse flutters beneath his fingers, like a bird caught in a wire. His fangs are fully out now, aching behind his lips, his body coiled with hunger and rage.

“Eddie,” Andy says, barely more than a whisper. “Please don’t.”

It’s the pleading that gets him. Too late for that now.

He leans in, nostrils flaring. The scent of Andy’s blood is thick and clean beneath the sweat. His mouth waters. The tip of his tongue brushes over Andy’s skin, slick with heat. Andy shudders, eyes squeezing shut. His knees give slightly and only Eddie’s grip keeps him upright.

Eddie closes his eyes for a few seconds. The power of it is almost too much. He wants to tear Andy apart. He wants to make him beg more. He wants to sink his teeth in and drink until there’s nothing left. So he doesn’t hesitate any longer.

Eddie opens his mouth and bites down on Andy’s neck.

The first rush of blood is intoxicating. It floods Eddie’s mouth and pours down his throat, quenching the burning flames of his thirst—alive and panicked.

Andy gasps—part surprise, part pain, a little bit in pleasure—and his body arches against Eddie’s chest. His fingers clutch at Eddie’s jacket. There’s no need to hold him up anymore. Not now that Eddie’s saliva is in his system.

Somewhere, in the back of Eddie’s subconscious, the memory of the first time he kissed a guy surfaces. A football player a couple years older than Eddie, back when he’d been a freshman. He’s always liked athletes—their muscular, fit bodies. Guys and girls. It’s why he pretends to hate the concept of sports so much—too much shame tied up in it all.

Now there’s no shame as Eddie drinks.

The blood is warm and pulsing—thick with adrenaline. It carries the sharp tang of fear and the bitter aftertaste of guilt. Every swallow sharpens Eddie’s mind and dulls his empathy.

Andy’s hand fists Eddie’s hair, practically holding Eddie’s mouth to his throat. For a moment, Eddie loses himself in it—starts to believe in the false desire. He wraps his arms around Andy, pushes his knee between his legs. It almost feels like kissing that football player again.

Except it isn’t. Because as Eddie drains him, he has to support more and more of Andy’s weight. Until there’s no blood left to drink. Eddie sinks to the floor with a groan, Andy’s lifeless body still in his arms.

It’s over. He’s become what all of Hawkins has thought he was his whole life.

A monster.

Chapter Text

Chrissy wakes up to the greasy, heavy smell of breakfast sausage. She rolls over, sniffing. Her body is sluggish. Moonlight streams in through a crack in the curtain. For a moment she thinks she’s dreaming, but no, there’s something cooking downstairs.

Yawning, she puts her feet on the floor and grabs her scrunchie off the nightstand to tie her hair up. It feels like straw, dry and dead. Her hair used to be so soft—vibrant and luscious. Now it’s rotting like the rest of her.

She crosses her arms over her chest as she makes her way downstairs, freezing when she walks through the doorway into the kitchen. The scent is making her salivate now, especially as she hears it sizzling in the pan.

Eddie is standing at the stove, back to her. His hair is tied up off his neck. He looks—normal. Like he could be her boyfriend. When he turns and spots her, he waves, as if this is any other night.

“You get enough sleep?” He asks, flipping something in the skillet.

“Yeah,” Chrissy says quietly. She moves closer, listening to the sizzling coming from the stove. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh you know,” he shrugs, “just a little midnight grocery run.” His skin has color again—not human, exactly, but warmer. His eyes are bright. His smile is easy. He looks good.

Chrissy pushes herself up on the kitchen island, ignoring the screaming voice of her mother in her head. Her legs dangle. She leans back on her palms. The scent is stronger here, mouthwatering and wrong.

Eddie turns off the gas burner and scoops the meat from the pan. He spins around with a flourish and presents the plate to her like a diner waiter.

“Breakfast for the lady,” he says, depositing it into her hands. The ceramic is hot against her bare thighs. He digs around in the drawers for a minute before coming up with a fork. Chrissy takes it wordlessly, still staring at the plate. She swallows the saliva flooding her mouth.

Chrissy stares at the plate. Her mouth waters, thick and slick. Her throat aches with hunger. But her stomach clenches. She knows what this is.

“Wh– where did you get this?” Chrissy asks quietly.

“Told you,” Eddie shrugs, wiping his hands off with a dish towel that’s supposed to be decorative only. “Grocery store. I thought you might like it better if it was cooked. But I saved the rest if you prefer it raw or whatever.”

He has no idea she gets the memories of the person whose brain she consumes. She swallows again. He might be trying to spare her the details of how he acquired this breakfast he’s prepared for her, but she’ll know the person whose brain this was soon enough. She’ll be in their head. Someone with a name. Someone with a life.

“Uh, thanks,” Chrissy says. She hops off the counter, carefully balancing the plate. “I’m just gonna… go eat this in my room.”

“Sure.” Eddie replies casually. As if he hasn’t just fed her a human brain. As if any of this is normal.

Eddie leans back against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms as he watches her dart out of the kitchen like a scared fawn. It hadn’t been a huge mess to crack open Andy’s skull and retrieve his brain to bring back for Chrissy before pushing his body into one of the rifts. What had been weird was carrying it all the way. It was slimy and slippery and kept falling apart in his hands. Gross, frankly.

Eddie wouldn’t be able to stomach eating it, that’s for sure. He’d cooked it to make it easier on her, tried to make it normal. He even seasoned it from what he could find in the cabinet. If she wants to eat it alone, that’s fine. He reaches in his pocket for a cigarette.

Upstairs, Chrissy perches on the edge of her bed, setting the plate on her nightstand. She spears a bite.

It looks like sausage.

It smells like sausage.

Maybe if she just doesn’t think about it.

She takes a bite.

It’s delectable. Mouthwateringly greasy and pleasantly firm. She moans involuntarily. Her eyes flutter closed. The meat melts across her tongue, better than any meal she ever had when she was alive. Better than raw. She’s already shoveling the next bite in her mouth before she’s swallowed.

It’s gone too fast. Chrissy mourns the loss of it immediately. So much so that she tiptoes over to her bedroom door and calls down the stairs.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I—um—could you cook the rest of it?” She bites her lip, waiting for him to respond.

There’s a pause, then a faint, almost amused, “Sure.”

Chrissy quietly closes her door. Back in bed, she hugs her knees to her chest as she leans back against the pillows. He killed someone. For her. And cooked their brain into breakfast sausage. He was smiling.

Chrissy buries her face in the quilt. She tries not to think about who the brain belongs to, but the memory is coming. It came on fast the first time, so it’ll be any moment now. She can feel it slithering forward, just beneath her skin. And despite that preparation, it still takes her by surprise.

“What were we thinking? Hunt the freak,” she mutters. Or the person whose brain she’s occupying does. “Jason got his war. Now he’s dead. Everybody’s dead.”

Chrissy shivers. The voice in her head is trembling with regret, not righteousness. Her stomach churns. She looks around. It looks like the girls locker room at Hawkins High School, but it smells terrible in comparison, so it must be the boys. Someone comes around the corner of the lockers, and she snaps her head up to look at them.

“Well, well, well,” Eddie says in a terrifying deadpan, “who’s the freak hunting now?”

Her body reacts before her mind can catch up. Panic slams through her chest. Chrissy’s on her feet in a second, tripping backwards over the bench and crashing back against the lockers behind her. “Y– you’re, you’re–” her throat is dry and catching.

Even through his victim’s terror, Chrissy recognizes it: the difference in Eddie. The feral glint in his eye. The blur of motion, too fast to track. The power rolling off him.

She’s never been the same height as Eddie before. She thought it might make him less intense. It doesn’t. Inside the memory, she gets the sense he’s changed. That this person didn’t see him as a threat before, but is horrified by his black eyes and pale skin now. The way he moves is graceful, like a dancer—or a stalking cougar.

She’s never felt this much of someone before—every beat of his (for she knows now Eddie’s victim must be a boy) fear thunders through her, but threaded through it now is her understanding: this is Eddie. This is what he’s become. What he’s capable of.

And she asked him to cook her breakfast.

“Hm?” Eddie mockingly puts his fingers behind his ear, a sly grin creeping wolfishly over his face. “Sorry, what was that? Are you sad all your buddies died?”

He surges forward, pinning Chrissy against the lockers with a forearm across her chest. She gulps, eyes widening. It was like he was four feet away and then suddenly in front of her. No human can move that fast.

Her back hits the metal hard. A lock digs into her flesh beneath her shoulder blade. Air leaves her lungs. It’s no longer his fear—it’s her fear. Her skin prickles. Her thighs tremble.

Eddie’s nose brushes over her neck just below her ear, his moist lips dragging over the exposed skin of her neck. She struggles against his grasp but it’s no use, he’s too strong. Dread fills her and she gets the feeling the body she’s in has never failed its owner when it comes to strength before.

“Look man—” she tries weakly.

“Shut up.” The growl in Eddie’s voice has her jaw clenching together, rattling her skull.

Chrissy flinches. The voice is cruel, but what cuts her deeper is the fury in it. Eddie has never spoken to her like that. He’s never sounded like this. She doesn’t recognize him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Attacking a little girl? Were you out of your mind?”

She doesn’t know who he means—she’s drowning in guilt but it isn’t her own.

“Yes,” Chrissy nods, latching onto the possibility of escape. “It was Jason! It was everything! The whole town!”

Eddie’s teeth snap near her ear, sending a bolt of fear down her spine. He’s going to kill her. She knows it.

“But Erica was just a kid, you knew that right?” He hisses. “She’s eleven fucking years old. She’s half your size.”

Chrissy doesn’t know who Erica is, or why Eddie is so hellbent on vengeance for her, but the person whose brain she ate knows. Images of a little Black girl in a pink dress flood her mind, she’s running, then struggling beneath Chrissy, then she whacks Chrissy across the face with a flashlight. The memory wraps around her throat. The guilt hits like acid. Chrissy gasps.

“I know, I know, I know,” she says desperately to Eddie. “I don’t know, I was–”

Eddie’s hand closing on her throat cuts her off. This is it. This is the end. Her throat is crushed between his fingers and the pressure builds behind her eyes. Her heart pounds in her chest. She looks down, fear flooding her as the faint light flashes over Eddie’s fangs. They gleam. Predatory. Beautiful. He’s going to bite her.

“Eddie,” she manages against the pressure on her throat, “please don’t.”

He leans in and Chrissy gives up. Everyone she knows is dead—Jason’s face, Patrick’s face, even her own face, flash through her memory. This must be Andy’s brain, she realizes with a jolt. It makes her dizzy. Eddie killed him. And she ate him for breakfast.

Eddie sinks his teeth into her neck.

Her knees give out slightly and she catches herself against the lockers. Pain, fear, and inexplicable pleasure flow through her. She moans as Eddie settles into her neck, slurping contentedly at the blood flowing from her severed carotid.

It’s obscene. It should feel like dying. But it doesn’t.

It hurts, yes, but only a little. Mostly his teeth brushing over her torn skin feel like a lover leaving open-mouthed kisses on the sensitive side of her neck. She moans again.

Chrissy’s body burns. Her breath catches. Her thoughts are no longer her own. She can feel Andy’s arousal curling around her shame like a snake. And she isn’t sure where his ends and hers begins.

Her hand comes up as if of its own accord to tangle in Eddie’s hair, holding his head to her neck. Eddie’s hands slide around her back, gripping her shoulderblades as his thigh presses between her legs. She lifts her hips to meet his, grinding deliciously against him even as the strength leaves her body.

Oh god.

Oh god.

She likes this. She wants more. Her dead heart lurches.

Blackness creeps into the edges of her vision as the wet suckling sounds near her ear begin to slow. Her eyes flutter shut.

Chrissy wakes up in her own bed, panting heavily. She can still feel it, the burning need between her legs. The phantom memory of pressure, the roll of Eddie’s thigh against her, the heat of his breath on her neck. Not hers. Not real. But her body doesn’t know the difference.

Still clutching her pillow, the edge of it has made its way between her thighs. She whimpers when the seam of it pulls taut against her clit as she wrenches it out and tosses it aside. Shame floods her cheeks. Her hand trembles as she wipes it on the sheets. Like she can scrub the sensation away. Like she can erase what her body did in someone else’s death.

Scrubbing her face, her knees fall apart and she draws her legs up, sitting criss-cross style. She can still taste the cooked brain on her tongue. Still feel the memory in her throat. It isn’t Eddie killing Andy that haunts her—it’s the sound of Andy moaning. It’s the realization that she liked it too. Not as Andy. As herself.

And the worst part? He didn’t even know. Eddie had no idea she’d experience that. He was just trying to take care of her. And now she’s supposed to look at him and try not to remember the weight of his body pressing hers into the cold lockers.

There’s a knock on the door, then it opens before she answers. Eddie pokes his head in, grinning.

“You decent?”

He doesn’t wait for her to answer before pushing his way inside. He presents her with another plate—this one piled with even more delectably greasy meat—before sinking to the ground and mimicking her criss-cross position. Chrissy precariously balances the plate on her knees and reaches for her fork with a shaky hand.

She shouldn’t want it this badly. Not after what she just remembered. Not after what she knows. But her body has already decided. Her mouth is watering.

“I tried a piece,” Eddie admits as she pushes it around on her plate.

She looks up at him. “What did you think?

He shrugs. “Not my thing. But basically anything except blood tastes sour since I woke up,” he admits. “I just thought, you know, it might be okay.”

Chrissy lets out a slow breath as she spears a morsel with her fork and raises it to her mouth. Tentatively, she puts it inside and chews, closing her eyes at the flavor. It takes everything she has not to moan.

It’s not just delicious—it’s euphoric. Calming. Comforting. Like her grandma’s house. Her body comes back to life with every bite.

It’s bad enough he’s in here, right after she had the memory of him feeding on Andy and all that lingers behind is burning desire. No fear of the predator, only carnal craving.

But Eddie can see the enjoyment on Chrissy’s face, the soft upturn of the corners of her mouth, eyes fluttering shut, delicate throat working to swallow. Her hands tremble as she goes to pick up another piece, but he can’t tell if she’s holding herself together or holding back.

He doesn’t know what she saw in the memory. Doesn’t realize that she’s mourning the boy she just devoured. He doesn’t know that Andy once kissed her behind the middle school gym—her first kiss. Both of them giggling, braces catching awkwardly.

Her t-shirt is too big for her, the neckline falling off one shoulder to reveal her dainty collarbone and thin shoulder. There isn’t an ounce of muscle or fat on her. Eddie’s nose wrinkles. She needs to eat. A lot. She looks like she could blow away in the breeze.

He isn’t sure if zombies can put on weight, but he wants her to. Needs her to be healthy. She’s the only person who even remotely understands right now. Maybe that’s selfish of him. But that’s probably the only thing keeping him from going completely feral off on his own. He’ll feed her as long as she wants him to. He’ll protect her until she asks him to stop.

“Thank you,” Chrissy says, between bites, a hand hovering in front of her mouth as she chews. “I’d been thinking it might taste better cooked.”

There’s color returning to her cheeks. Her skin pinks up, lips flushing, eyes brighter. The corpse-girl vanishes bite by bite. Eddie smiles, leaning back on his hands, satisfied with his work.

“You’re welcome.”

Chrissy ducks her head, quickly eating the last bite and dropping the plate on top of the first one with a clatter. “And,” she swallows, “thank you for going to get it for me. I know it– I know it’s a lot.”

She can’t bring herself to say his name. Can’t admit she knew him. That she’d thought he was sweet. That she might have dated him instead of Jason, in a different world. It would give away her secret. But the grief swirls inside her, and she desperately wants to tell someone.

“To what? Crack someone’s head open and take their brain?” Eddie raises an eyebrow.

Chrissy grimaces. “Yeah.”

The word brain sticks in her throat. A few hours ago, her breakfast was a person. A boy she used to pass notes with in math class. Who carried her books once freshman year when she fell off the pyramid and dislocated her shoulder.

“I’m happy to do it for you,” he says. “I’m already drinking the blood. No problem to bring home the leftovers for you,” he jokes.

She gives him a small, polite smile. It’s hard to even look at him right now. She should hate him for what he did to Andy. For what he is. For what he made her feel. But her body doesn’t listen. The memory clings to her—filthy and electric.

All she can think about when she sees him is his mouth on her neck. His fangs piercing the thin skin there and the flood of warmth through her veins, the need, the desire. It’s overwhelming, even now.

She’d never felt that way with Jason. It had been all fumbling fingers and his immense weight on top of her, clumsy lips and tongue darting in and out of her mouth like a lizard. That had been something to endure. Eddie is something she craves.

He moves so gracefully in contrast, even before. His fingers are light and nimble from years of playing guitar. In the memory, he’d been sure and confident, like he’d done it before. It wasn’t his first time pressing his thigh between someone’s legs, she could tell that much.

“Um,” she clears her throat, “if I ask you where you got it?”

Eddie’s smile drops. He looks away from her, reaching across to rub his shoulder. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he shakes his head. “It’s…”

“Gross?” Chrissy fills in, tilting her head to the side.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “It’s gross.”

He doesn’t meet her eyes. That’s how she knows it wasn’t just gross. It was real. It was intimate. He felt it too.

“I don’t know,” Chrissy shakes her head, “I think drinking blood isn’t nearly as bad as having to eat brains.”

Eddie scoffs. “Maybe to you. Your food looks like…food at least.” He shakes his head. “Maybe we shouldn’t have a ‘whose undead life is worse’ competition.”

Chrissy giggles. “I’d win and you know it,” she tells him. The sound is brittle. She hates herself for laughing.

“Shut up.” Eddie stretches his legs out in front of him, feet tapping at the bedframe. “Speaking of being undead,” he grows serious, “we should probably talk about what we’re gonna do next.”

“Right,” Chrissy nods, tensing. “That’s sensible.”

“I should probably let you know,” Eddie looks down, “there’s a warrant out for my arrest.”

“For murdering me,” Chrissy fills in.

Eddie’s head snaps up. “How’d you know?”

“I guessed.”

His jaw clenches. There’s shame there. And something darker. He nods, relaxing a little again, but still grinding his teeth uncomfortably. Chrissy’s face softens. He suddenly looks human again. Not a predator. Just a boy in over his head. All that swagger, all that control—it’s been for her. So she wouldn’t feel alone. So she’d think he has it figured out. But he doesn’t.

“We should leave,” she suggests. “It’ll do us no good to stay in Hawkins. My body’s missing now and with the incident with that other kid,” she shudders, “they’ll assume I’m like him.”

Eddie agrees. “Right.” His throat bobs as he swallows. “We’ll have to track down my van.”

“We can take my car,” Chrissy suggests. “It’s still in the garage. And it’s less conspicuous.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Where should we go?”

“A city,” Chrissy says immediately. “More people. It’s easier to get lost in a crowd and…”

Eddie raises an eyebrow. “And easier to kill people and get away with it?”

Chrissy nods. She wrings her hands. It’s tough to think about the fact that she has to kill people now to survive. It makes her want to go and throw up everything she just ate. Both because she’s nauseated and out of habit. But her body wouldn’t let her even if she tried. It wants to hang on to the precious brains Eddie so thoughtfully brought back for her.

A strange emotion overtakes her. It's not just guilt. It’s grief. For her own body. For the girl who once would have stomped her foot over a ruined manicure. That girl’s gone. And this one is hungry.

“Hey,” Eddie says softly. He moves—slowly for him—to sit on the bed beside her. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” he offers. “I’m here.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Chrissy sniffles. “You don’t have to kill to eat. I’ll stop being such a baby about it and do it myself.” Her voice trembles. “You shouldn’t have to clean up after me. I already ruined your life once.”

“I want to,” Eddie says, patting her leg. He cracks a smile. “Well I don’t want to kill people. But, you know,” he looks at her, “I’ll take care of you, okay?”

Chrissy chews on the inside of her cheek. It’s a lot to take on. Eddie barely knows her at all; it’s hard to see why he’d want to do this for her. Why he thinks she’s worth it. But he means it. That’s the worst part. In his dark eyes, she can see he genuinely thinks she’s worth saving.

“You really don’t have to,” she whispers again. “I can do it.”

“I’m going to,” he promises. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Something in her chest uncoils, and she believes him. She wants to scream. To kiss him. He’s being kind and it feels like a knife now that she knows what he’s capable of. Looking up from her lap, she gives him a tiny smile. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Next thing Chrissy knows, she’s standing in her dad’s office with her arms crossed, watching Eddie try and crack open her father’s safe with his superhearing. Eddie’s sprawled out on the floor, ear pressed up against the safe while he turns the combination lock, brows furrowed in concentration.

“This would be so much cooler if I knew what I was doing,” Eddie mutters as he twirls the dial, his nimble fingers moving impossibly quickly. “I feel like I’m the guy in the heist movie who dies immediately because I guessed wrong.”

Click. Click. Click. Nothing.

Chrissy shifts her weight back and forth, frowning. “I thought you could hear the pins.”

“I can hear the pins,” Eddie snaps, then sighs and drops his forehead to the floor, banging it lightly. “I just don’t know what they’re supposed to sound like. They all sound like clicks. Different clicks. Tiny little bastards.” He spins the dial aimlessly as Chrissy watches him spiral emotionally. “This is stupid. We should just torch the thing. Or I’ll punch it. I could punch it. I bet I could punch it open.”

Chrissy hangs her head, rubbing her upper arms to soothe her impatience. It takes everything in her not to tap her foot while Eddie throws his little tantrum.

He groans and rolls onto his back with an exaggerated noise of defeat, staring at the ceiling. “I once memorized an entire Megadeth solo in an afternoon but this—”

“Eddie,” Chrissy interrupts gently.

He exhales. Covers his face with one arm. Chrissy swallows, staring at the way his bicep stretches the sleeve of his t-shirt. He lowers his arm again to reveal wide brown eyes, calmer now. “Okay. Sorry. One more try.”

He rolls back over, presses his ear to the safe, and closes his eyes. Slower this time. His fingers turn the dial like he’s tuning his guitar, listening for the subtle changes.

Click. Click. Click.

Clunk.

Eddie freezes. Then straightens up fast as the safe unlocks with a sharp clack.

“Voila!” He shouts, triumphant as Chrissy drops to her knees beside him. Inside the safe is a tidy stack of bills—crisp, fresh, and bound with a paper band.

“Holy shit,” she breathes, reaching for it. “He left this behind?”

“Either they left in a hurry or he didn’t think they’d need it,” Eddie says, still stunned. He runs a hand through his hair, pushing back the pieces falling in his face.

Chrissy grins as she flips through the stack, holding it out like a prize. “Two thousand dollars,” she whispers. And when she looks at him, wide-eyed and breathless, Eddie can’t help but smile back.

“I guess we should count ourselves lucky he didn’t need it,” Chrissy says. She hands the stack over to Eddie. So easy, so trusting. Eddie stands and shoves it in his back pocket, offering her a hand. When she takes it, he pulls her easily to her feet. God, she’s so small.

He’s got to get some meat on her bones. That’s the real reason he offered to help her with the eating thing. She’s too thin. It probably isn’t helping her body stay in one piece that she has no flesh to support it. Plus Eddie’s terrified if he doesn’t feed her, she won’t eat at all—and then she might end up like Fred Benson. And then he’d be all alone.

“So we leave tonight?” Chrissy asks softly. He’s still holding her hand. She’s right in front of him, chest to chest. He nods.

“Tonight,” he agrees, barely daring to breathe in case she realizes how close they are and moves away. But the sun is coming up, and he’s fading fast after his nighttime escapades. He sways on his feet.

“Woah,” Chrissy says, planting her hand on his chest as if to steady him. Eddie smiles. She’s cute. Like she could do anything if he fell over. He’d be out cold on the ground for however long until he woke up. She wouldn’t be able to move him.

“I’m okay,” he says, squinting against the rays of light coming through the window. “Time for bed though.”

“Sure.” Chrissy nods, stepping back. She gives him a tight smile. “You really can sleep in the bed if you want.”

“I’m fine on the floor,” Eddie assures her, but even as he says that, he feels the stiffness in his neck and tilts his head to crack it.

Chrissy shakes her head. “No seriously, I’m gonna stay up. I only woke up like two hours ago anyway.”

“Right, right, yeah,” Eddie agrees reluctantly, pushing a hand through his hair. “I feel bad taking your bed though.”

“I’m offering,” Chrissy says. They start heading back to her bedroom. “But I’m gonna pack some stuff while you sleep if that’s okay?” She looks over her shoulder at him.

Eddie nods, eyes half-closed. “I’m about to be dead to the world. Don’t worry about waking me.” He stumbles slightly over the threshold, catching himself on the door frame.

“The sun really does make you sleepy, huh?” Chrissy observes. “That’s weird.”

“Yep,” Eddie agrees. He squints at the window, the light still drifting through the pale pink curtains. “It hurts.”

“Sorry,” Chrissy winces. “Let me close the blinds behind the curtains.” She rushes over to the window. As she lets the blinds down, the room is slowly enveloped in even more darkness.

“Oh fuck yes,” Eddie groans. “That’s so much better.” He staggers over and collapses on the bed. “Will you stay in the room?” He mumbles. “Helps me sleep if you’re safe.”

“Sure, Eddie,” Chrissy promises, nodding.

Within seconds, he’s snoring, legs still hanging off the edge.

Chrissy presses her fingers over her mouth, suppressing a giggle. He goes hard all night and then passes out at dawn—like any famous rockstar. For a moment, she can pretend this is normal. That she’s hefting his legs into bed because he’s drunk after a show that went too long—not a night of killing her friend and bringing his brain back for her to eat.

With some effort, she gets the covers out from under Eddie so she can spread the quilt over his prone body, draping it gently over him. He looks more peaceful when he’s asleep, not muttering to himself or darting all over the place.

She stares at him a moment. Strange how quickly her life has changed—and how fast she’s adjusted. A little over a week ago, she was head cheerleader, dating Jason, the basketball captain. She barely gave Eddie Munson—the freak—a second glance. Now she’s dead. Jason’s dead. Everyone is dead. But only her and Eddie came back.

Then it suddenly occurs to her. They might not be the only ones. Fred Benson had come back after all. Patrick! His face pops into Chrissy’s head. He’d died the same way she had, killed by Vecna. Just like Fred. Just like her.

She heads for her closet, grabbing for a pair of jeans and a nondescript green hoodie. After a little more digging, she unearths her sneakers, not the ones she wore with her cheer uniform, but an older, sturdier pair. In a few minutes, she’s dressed, sneakers dangling from her hand as she creeps out of the bedroom so she doesn’t disturb Eddie and his superhearing. She feels sorry for breaking her promise, but she needs to do this. She has to find Patrick.

It’s a bright gray morning over Hawkins. Chrissy lifts the hood over her distinctive red hair and shoves her hands in the pocket of her sweatshirt, keeping her head down. Eddie said she looked less like a corpse after eating but she doesn’t agree. Plus, the whole town knows what she looks like and that she’s dead. Better to keep a low profile while she’s out looking for Patrick.

Chrissy coughs into her sleeve. The air is full of strange gray ash, coating the ground like snow. It gets everywhere, in her sneakers, down her throat. She coughs again as she walks, a sound that’s somehow both wet and dry at the same time.

Patrick lived a couple blocks over. She’d been over there once to work on a history project. His mom had brought out all kinds of snacks for the group and Chrissy had to watch everyone else eat while her stomach grumbled. She tried not to vomit in other people’s houses. It’s too easy to get caught.

It had been super awkward when Patrick’s dad came home. Chrissy saw the way both Patrick and his mom flinched when the door swung open and banged against the wall. How he’d bellowed about strangers being in the house and when would dinner be ready. She’d given Patrick a tight, sympathetic smile, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes as he ushered her out the door.

The next day he had a black eye in history class.

When she gets to the ranch style house, she isn’t surprised that there’s no signs of life. Home isn’t a place Patrick would go back to if he’d woken up like her, but it had been worth a check. It was on the way to Benny’s anyway—the next place she thought of to check.

The dilapidated burger joint is practically caving in on itself after the party celebrating the championship win. Nobody has even picked up the Bud Light cans littering the area outside the front door. Chrissy pushes up on her toes, cupping her hands around her face to peer in the dirty window.

It looks deserted, but Benny’s has a couple good hiding places—spots Jason had dragged her to so he could feel her up during parties. So she drags open the front door, wincing at the rusty hinges, and slips inside.

“Patrick?” Chrissy whisper-shouts into the dimly lit room. Nothing. She creeps further into the foul smelling room. Someone threw up in the toilet and never flushed it. The smell has permeated out of the bathroom and seeped into every surface of the place. Chrissy wrinkles her nose. It smells like stomach acid and shit and old meat, layered together and baked into the walls.

It looks how it usually does after parties. A mess. Chrissy wrings her hands, resisting the urge to start cleaning it up. Something creaks in the ceiling. Or maybe the walls. Or something behind the counter. The creak echoes like an old bone giving way. Something drips. Just once.

Chrissy freezes. Her hand hovers at her side like she could reach for a weapon—but what? She didn’t bring anything with her. No knife. Not even a flashlight. And she wasn’t lucky enough to get the capability to kill like Eddie did. Her fingers twitch, aching to clutch something sharp.

“Patrick?” she tries again, afraid of the answer.

Silence answers back, thick and itchy. Then there’s a rustle. A scrape. A wet sound of movement. She steps carefully, sneakers sticking to something tacky on the floor. The deeper she moves into Benny’s, the darker it gets, despite the daylight outside. The smell shifts from stale vomit to something meatier as she approaches the kitchen. Fresher, but like raw hamburger left out too long.

She cautiously steps inside. The ice machine Jason used to pull her behind to make out doesn’t hum anymore, it sits in the corner, dead. The kitchen is still, but the smell is stronger here. The now-familiar copper and rot smell layered beneath a faint, almost sweet tang. Her eyes adjust to be able to pick out shapes as she inches into the dark room.

On the counter, there’s a metal tray, an old burger prep pan. Sitting right on top of it are—unmistakeably—two human brains. Saliva fills Chrissy’s mouth, the smell tugging her forward. One of them has been cut neatly in half down the middle, the other hemisphere saved for later, wrapped neatly in plastic wrap. Beside them, a plastic knife from the condiment station smeared with gray gore. Flies buzz faintly around it.

Chrissy swallows hard. Her throat burns and it’s not just from the stench or the persistent hunger in her belly. It’s the quiet. The sense that she isn’t alone. The image of Fred tearing that poor man’s face off flashes through her mind. She could be in enemy territory.

A sound scrapes faintly behind her. She spins, stomach lurching—but there’s nobody there. Then it comes again. Drag. Tap. Drag. An unmistakable limp. She freezes, eyes wide as the uneven rhythm draws closer.

Drag. Tap.

She backs away from the prep counter slowly, not taking her eyes off the doorway. What’s left of her nervous system is screaming for her to run. She’d hoped Patrick would be like her. Maybe even like Eddie. But all she can picture is Fred Benson’s ruined mouth, the blood-slick flash of his teeth, the chaos he left behind.

A shape moves in the dark beyond the doorway. Chrissy tenses.

Then Patrick steps into view. Or what’s left of him. One leg drags behind him at a sick angle, the bones visibly broken still, barely connected by his gray flesh. His left eye is dull and bloodshot, still sunken into the socket. The other is bulging, the skin around it swollen.

Both are trained directly on her. His head tilts slightly. He doesn’t speak. One eyelid trembles with every step. His exposed joints glisten in the faint light.

Chrissy stiffens. “Patrick?” she says, voice shaking.

No answer. He takes one step closer. Then another. He sags to the right, favoring the broken leg. His hands twitch at his sides, like he’s deciding whether to lunge for her.

She stumbles back, pressed against the ice machine. There’s no escape route. He’s between her and the only door. Her breath catches in her throat. She can hear the wet gurgle of his lungs with every ragged breath. His smell hits her like roadkill left in the sun.

“Patrick, it’s me—Chrissy,” she tries again. Her voice is higher now, a thread pulled tight with fear. “You know me.”

He halts a few steps away. Slowly, his eyes focus on her face. His mouth parts slightly. A strange, wet breath rattles his chest.

“Chrissy?” he croaks.

“Patrick!” Chrissy throws her arms around him, breathing a sigh of relief. He stumbles and Chrissy reels back, trying to keep from knocking him over. “I’m so glad to see you!”

“I can’t believe…” Patrick trails off, giving her a light squeeze in return. “I wondered if you’d…come back.” He pushes away from her, hobbling over to the metal chair nearby and sinking into it, groaning as the weight comes off his leg. “I saw– I saw that Fred kid…”

“Me too,” Chrissy nods, coming over to crouch beside him. “I was afraid you–”

“Me too,” Patrick says weakly. “I figured out what I– what we are after that. Went back and cracked open a couple of the bodies in the morgue.” He gestures to the brains on the counter. “I took what I could carry.” He sighs. “I didn’t want to end up like him but…I’m gonna run out soon.”

“We can help you,” Chrissy says. “We’ll get your leg all fixed and you can come with us.”

“Who’s we?” Patrick says, furrowing his eyebrows. “I thought only the three of us…”

“Eddie came back too,” Chrissy says quietly. “He died and he came back but he’s not like us, he’s something else.”

“You’ve been hanging out with that weirdo?” Patrick asks, like he’s trying to keep the judgemental tone out of his voice. “I didn’t know you were cool with him.”

“I wasn’t,” Chrissy says. “Not until the day I died.”

“So the rumors were true?” Patrick asks, his face hardening. “You ditched Jason for him?” He scoffs. “I defended you. I thought that could never be true.”

“I didn’t ditch Jason,” Chrissy says icily. “I was having those awful headaches and visions, I thought maybe I could take something to stop them.” She stands, pushing her hood off her head and pacing around. This isn’t the Patrick she knew when she was alive. He was never this volatile. Jason was the hot-headed one of the bunch. “I thought we were cooler than that, Patrick,” she says softly, pausing. “I thought we were friends.”

Patrick shrugs. “We were. Enough that I tried to help avenge your death, and look where that got me.” He shakes his head. “Now you’re hanging out with the guy who killed us? Real nice, Chris.”

“Eddie didn’t do this.” It’s so absurd Chrissy laughs. “He told me the whole story, and I’ll tell you too if you want to listen to it.”

Patrick eyes her warily, then grunts and shrugs. Chrissy sighs and leans back against the wall. Over the next hour, she explains to him everything Eddie told her happened, the real story of Hawkins over the past few years, all leading up to what happened over spring break, beginning with Chrissy’s death at the hands of Vecna.

Patrick stares sightlessly in front of him. Chrissy isn’t even sure he’s still listening to her, but his twitchiness makes her anxious, so she keeps talking, trying to keep him engaged. When she finishes, finally running out of stuff to say as she explains how Eddie differs from them, Patrick stays quiet.

His index finger is broken and he slides the bones in and out of alignment over and over, like he’s fidgeting with a toy. The finger crunches audibly, cartilage shearing with every twist. He doesn’t flinch.

“So,” he says quietly. “You and I, we woke up like this, having to put ourselves back together and still rotting, only able to eat human brains and then having to relive their deaths in our minds.”

He stands up and walks across the room, to where empty beer bottles are lined up along the counter opposite the brains.

“Yeah basically,” Chrissy says, agreeing with his assessment. “It won’t be so bad once we get the rest of your bones back in alignment. Mine are mostly okay now. Eating…helps.”

Patrick nods, his back still turned to her. “Right so we got that. And Eddie gets to not have to kill people, he gets better hearing and strength, and his heart still beats and his body seems more alive than ever.” He picks up one of the empty bottles and toys with it, rolling it around in his hands.

“Yeah,” Chrissy laughs awkwardly, wondering where he’s going with this. “Sucks for us, huh?”

Patrick doesn’t answer for a long moment. Dread builds in Chrissy’s throat. She tries to swallow it down and takes a step closer to Patrick, her hand raised to touch his shoulder.

“IT’S NOT FAIR!”

Chrissy flinches back as Patrick smashes the bottle along the edge of the counter, glass shattering around his feet. When he turns around, he’s holding what’s left by the neck of the bottle, jagged edges held out towards her. Chrissy whimpers, backing herself against the wall again as Patrick shuffles across the room. His face is twisted into a mask of rage, driven both by hunger and anger. His decaying lips pull back from his teeth as he snarls.

“Please,” Chrissy says as he grips the front of her sweatshirt in his hand, the broken bottle pressed against her cheek. “Don’t. I can help you.”

“I don’t want you or that freak’s help,” Patrick spits, his decaying breath hot across her face. “You won’t have to worry about me much longer.”

“What do you–” Chrissy cuts herself off with a choked scream as Patrick shoves back away from her and slams the broken edge of the bottle into his own skull. “PATRICK!”

He gives her a weak smile. “Thank you,” he says with a grunt of effort as he pries the glass out again. Thick black blood pours out of the open wounds, dripping down the side of his face as he starts to keel over. “You helped me see there’s no more point in trying. I died already. I need to stay dead.” He lifts the bottle one more time, stumbling slightly as Chrissy covers her mouth in horror.

Patrick lurches forward, blood dripping down his face and landing on Chrissy’s as he leans over her, wheezing hard. “You should too,” he says. “You’re supposed to be dead, Chrissy.”

His voice is wet and gurgling, like his vocal cords have been flooded with blood. It bubbles in the corners of his mouth. A pink sliver of tongue flaps uselessly between rotted teeth.

Chrissy winces as he slams the bottle into his skull again, the brittle bone beneath his rotted skin giving way easily to the sharp glass. Another spurt of black blood pours out of the wound as Patrick’s eyes roll back in his head.

The jagged glass sinks deeper this time, cracking open a crevice that splits his forehead open nearly to the bridge of his nose. A chunk of scalp slides down over his brow, dangling like a strip of soggy meat.

His hands twitch as his brain begins to fail, one still clenched tight around the bottle hilt, prepared to pull it out and plunge it back in again if he needs to. But he doesn’t.

He falls against Chrissy, taking her down to the ground with him. Dead.

For good.

Chapter Text

Eddie blinks awake in near pitch darkness. He yawns as he rolls over on his back, rubbing the stubble on his cheek. Good to know that even in death he still needs to shave. Just another thing on his to do list. He blinks, adjusting to being awake.

The house is quiet. He frowns. The house is too quiet. Even without a heartbeat, he always knows where Chrissy is in the house. She’s definitely not still in the bedroom with him, but he really couldn’t have expected her to stay all night, even though he’d prefer to know exactly where she is at all times. The silence presses in around him. Heavy. Breathless. Like the house is holding something back.

He stands and stalks over to the door. “Chrissy?” He calls, his voice echoing through the house. No response. “Dammit,” he mutters to himself, grabbing his jacket off the hook and heading downstairs. He gets his shoes on and is out of the house in less than a minute, smelling the air.

The falling ash chokes him, going up his nose and into his throat. Eddie doubles over, coughing and gasping. He’d forgotten about that. The ash prevents him from using his now keen sense of smell. There’s no easy way to track her. Eddie’s heart kicks into gear, blood pulsing through his veins. She could be anywhere.

“Fuck!” Eddie exclaims, running his hand through his hair. He’s thirsty. His throat is burning and it’s all he can focus on. “This is such bullshit,” he mutters. He starts walking towards town. He can only imagine she was looking for something specific. Or someone.

The falling ash has covered any trace of foot prints that might have been left behind. And he has no idea how long ago she left. “Damn the sun,” he mutters. This whole sleeping like the dead during the daylight is incredibly inconvenient. It’s like being buried every morning and clawing his way out every night, just a little more raw.

He groans and presses on, slipping between the shadows of the trees. It’s become second nature for Eddie to blend into the darkness. There’s National Guard members and aid workers wandering around closer to town as more of a response comes in due to the rifts opening. Chrissy and Eddie are supposed to be getting out of here, but now she’s off and disappeared.

The smoke and ash are thicker the closer he gets to the center of town. Eddie pulls the bandana out of his back pocket and ties it over his nose and mouth. Not only will it help him breathe, but it provides a pretty good disguise from anyone still wandering around tonight. The world is decaying in slow motion and he’s walking straight into the rot.

He doesn’t think Chrissy would have come this far into town, the people and the smoke would have deterred her, so he swings east, heading for the high school again. He’ll check the woods surrounding it. Once she realizes there are so many people in the school, she might have gone back to the picnic table. It’s all he can think of. He doesn’t know her hangouts. Never worried about what Chrissy Cunningham was doing after school. Not until now.

He wishes he’d paid more attention. Wishes he’d stalked her like some of the others had, watched her like a creep, followed her home. At least then he might know where the hell she might go.

A few lights are on in the gym. Eddie can hear the crowd of people inside preparing for another night of sleep. There’s fewer heartbeats now. More evacuations must have happened during the day. Only a few families remain with the volunteers.

He swallows, trying to moisten the persistent dryness in his throat. He needs to feed again, but can’t risk it here. Heading for the woods, he puts the heartbeats out of his mind. It’s more important to find Chrissy.

But his body remembers. His teeth ache and his throat screams. The blood from the night before has already burned away. Quenching his thirst is proving to be a daily task.

There’s no one at the picnic table. It looks like nobody has been there since he met her after school the Friday before spring break. Eddie sighs and climbs up to sit on the table, pulling down the bandana, digging his dwindling pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one. He takes a long drag before exhaling, resting his hand against his knee.

“You got another one of those?”

The voice comes from the shadows just beyond the trees. For a second, Eddie wonders if he imagined it—until the scent of blood hits him like a brick to the face. Warm. Sweet. Alive. She’s a few yards away, dressed in jeans and a flannel rolled up to her elbows—the solution to his problem. Her curly, blonde hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail. There are bags under her eyes, like she hasn’t been sleeping. She points to the cigarette.

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie says, reaching for the pack again, “sure.”

He flicks his fingers against the crumpled cardboard, shaking loose another precious cigarette and offering it between two fingers, watching the way her eyes track the movement. Her pulse flutters as her hand brushes his. Warm. Soft. God, she’s warm.

She must not be from Hawkins because she doesn’t seem to recognize him. An aid worker from out of town maybe. One who hasn’t been paying attention to the news because even as she approaches him to take the cigarette he offers her, she doesn’t seem to recognize him.

The butt of the cigarette grazes her lower lip. Her fingers are steady, but her heart gives her away. Quickening. Curious. Maybe a little reckless. Good. That’ll keep her here.

Eddie flicks open his zippo, cupping his hand around it as she leans in—closer than she needs to be—to light the cigarette. Even with the cigarette smoke and ash, he can smell the delicious scent of her blood flowing through her veins and hear her heart pick up as she gets close to him. Her eyes close as she takes a long drag, then she opens them and smiles. Her breath when she exhales is warm against his cheek. Her tongue barely grazes the paper as she adjusts the cigarette.

“Thank you,” she groans, “you can’t get anything around here right now.”

He watches her lips form the words, slow and plush. Her throat works as she takes another drag. He listens to the blood moving beneath her skin.

“We’re not in great shape that’s for sure,” Eddie agrees. “Appreciate all the help though.”

“My mom said volunteering would look good on job applications when I graduate,” she says with a light scoff. “I’ve been organizing families for evacuations all day. So many little kids crying. Ugh.”

She reaches up and twirls one of her curls around her finger and he tracks the motion, how her elbow lifts, how her collarbone shifts beneath the fabric of her flannel. Her scent hits his nostrils in a stronger wave, sweat and soap and fatigue—tangible, rich.

“Where are you from?” Eddie asks. He scoots over and pats the table beside him. She hops right up, sitting close enough that he can feel the heat of her thigh through his jeans. The wood creaks beneath their shared weight. She doesn’t move away. The hum beneath his skin kicks up, hunger and instinct in response to her warmth.

“Indianapolis,” she says, taking another drag, “but I’m at school in Bloomington.” She glances over at him. “I’m studying public affairs.”

Eddie balks. “What even is that?” He doesn’t mean to laugh, but it doesn’t offend her. She smiles at him, a light blush on her cheeks. Her pulse pounds in her throat as she swallows. She likes him.

“I have no idea,” she shakes her head. “Technically my major is Nonprofit Management.”

She’s smart. That’s cool. Might make for a better brain for Chrissy. “How’d you get into that?” Eddie leans back on his hand, resting it behind her on the table so his shoulder brushes hers. He’s a bit rusty flirting with girls, besides talking to Chrissy here last week. And he’s never tried it with a college girl before, even though they’re the same age.

He continues to watch her lips move as she talks, the tendons in her neck tense, her teeth worry the edge of the cigarette filter. Everything about her is so appetizing, so alive.

She rambles, mostly ashing her cigarette instead of smoking it, talking about growing up with parents who worked in the Peace Corps, and who now work in the non-profit sector. The whole time, Eddie keeps an eye on her carotid artery jumping beneath the thin, fair skin on her neck. Saliva pools in his mouth. His fangs start to ache.

He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, willing his instincts to stay leashed. It’s not time yet. He needs her relaxed, needs her soft so she won’t scream.

“What do you do?” She finally asks him. “Are you from here?”

“I’m in a band.” That’s usually the thing that works, and seems a lot safer than saying he sells drugs. He throws her a cocky half-smile, letting it hang in the air like the smoke between them. His eyes drop to her lips again.

Leaning a little closer, she glances down at his mouth. “Have I heard of you?”

Eddie smiles, keeping his lips tight together. “No, probably not.”

“That’s a shame,” she tells him, pulling away to take another drag from her cigarette. It’s practically down to the filter already and she frowns, stubbing it out on the table. Eddie tenses, quickly putting his own out in case she starts to leave. “You’ve made my night so much better,” she tells him. “Haven’t met anyone else willing to let me mooch a cigarette.”

Her knee bumps his again. She shifts ever so slightly closer, but he doesn’t reciprocate yet. He just lets the silence stretch between them.

He tilts his head to the side. “What are your plans for the rest of the evening?”

“Oh, you know,” she clicks her tongue, “probably just go back inside and sort more donations until it’s time to sleep.”

“Sounds terribly boring.”

“Unless you’ve got a better offer,” she says with a hopeful look on her face.

Time seems to slow when she reaches up to deliberately twirl a lock of his hair between her fingers. His breath hitches. Her wrist lingers in front of his face and the smell of her skin is so vivid it’s dizzying—salt and lotion and blood. Eddie’s eyes lock in on the blue veins visible through the thin skin. He licks his lips, wetting them. Throat burning and heart pounding, he can’t help himself. He’s so fucking thirsty.

He leaves her body under the picnic table, covered with dead leaves. Once he finds Chrissy, he’ll return and open up her skull, but right now it’s too risky to be carrying around a human brain. Those things are bigger and heavier than you’d think.

Back near the road, face covered again, Eddie presses himself flat against the bark of a tree as a truck rumbles by. He can make out that the radio is playing Dire Straits. Not a bad song. But he’ll never admit it to anyone. He likes the guitar riff. Sue him.

He’s humming it as he continues creeping around town and almost misses the noise. “That’s the way you do it, money for nothin’ and the chicks for fr–” He stops dead in his tracks and tilts his head, holding his breath.

There. A faint crunch—wet and grainy. Bone scraping against bone. The soft sound is specific and familiar, faintly coming from the southeast, along the rift heading from the center of town towards the trailer park. Eddie starts walking that direction, ears dialed in now that his thirst has been quenched.

He follows it all the way to the old building that used to be Benny’s Burger Joint. Benny had been a friend of Wayne’s. It tore his uncle up when Benny passed and the place closed. Eddie’d spent a lot of his childhood hanging out there. Now it’s been desecrated by the popular kids throwing parties. He sneers as he approaches. What they’ve done to the place is disappointing.

The windows gape like broken teeth. Ash swirls through the jagged glass, coating the linoleum in a gray paste of rot and dust. Something has been dragged recently. The air smells like burnt fat and vomit.

But what isn’t disappointing is the unmistakable ragged breathing he’s come to associate with Chrissy, and the crunch of broken bones against each other. He slips through the door, wondering just what the hell she got herself into.

The sound sharpens as he steps inside. Breath hitching under weight, ribs creaking like a broken accordion. Her breath is quiet, but panicked, nearly drowned by the wet compression of something heavy on her chest.

Following the shallow breaths and muffled whimpering, Eddie stalks through the near pitch blackness. If he can barely see, Chrissy definitely can’t. He walks through the doorway to the kitchen. His sneakers stick to the floor—syrupy residue slick underfoot. The shadows pulse around him, thick with the smell of meat gone bad.

“Who’s there?” Chrissy’s voice comes from the back corner. It sounds like she’s trapped with something compressing her lungs. Her voice is small, tight with pain or fear. Eddie widens his eyes as he takes in the scene.

The darkness parts just enough for him to see the grotesque silhouette: a body slumped on top of her, its limbs bent at wrong angles, the side of the skull concave like a dropped melon. Eddie yanks the bandana back down from his mouth.

“Shit, what’d you get yourself into, Cunningham?”

“Eddie!” Chrissy exclaims breathlessly. “Thank goodness it’s you. I couldn’t get him off me.”

“Yeah, well,” Eddie crouches down and gets his hands under the arms of the body on top of her, “you got yourself in quite the situation here.” He moves the body back—Chrissy takes in a massive gulp of air, sitting up—and peers at the face. It’s hard to make out in the darkness and given that his skull seems to have been cracked in half, but he recognizes Patrick. “You do this to him?”

The corpse pulls away from her with a damp squelch, strands of viscera catching on her hoodie. Something soft tears. When Eddie rolls him off, Patrick’s eye lolls out of its socket, tethered on only by a shredded optic nerve.

“No,” Chrissy shakes her head, “he did it to himself.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie turns to her and smiles, his teeth gleaming in the very faint moonlight. He extends a hand to Chrissy. Begrudgingly, she takes it and allows him to pull her to her feet. Her legs are fine, but the bones in her left forearm have slipped out of alignment and her right shoulder dislocated when Patrick took her down. With her dominant arm useless, she hadn’t been able to move the weight off her at all.

Her hoodie is damp. Sticky. The blood from Patrick’s split skull has soaked through and begun to dry cold against her chest. She shivers. She doesn’t flinch from Eddie though.

“You want me to fix that?” Eddie asks, pointing to her arm.

Chrissy sighs, getting tired of asking him for help. “Sure.”

“Well gee, I don’t have to,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes as he steps over Patrick’s legs and reaches for her arm. His fingers drift over her skin as he slowly pushes the sleeve of her hoodie up her arm. Chrissy turns her head away, not wanting to see the disgusting bump from the fracture under her skin.

His fingers glide over the tender flesh of her forearm, leaving prints where he grips the muscle even a little. She feels every ridge of his hands. It makes her shiver—not from the chill of the blood on her clothes.

Eddie’s hands are firm, one encircling her wrist and the other gripping just below her elbow. He goes supernaturally still again, listening as he gently manipulates her bones back into position. They slide back into place with a muted crunch. She breathes through it, registering the sound, but too focused on the cool heat of his hands. Chrissy swallows, flexing her fingers as he lets go of her arm.

“Thanks,” she says quietly as he presses on her good shoulder, indicating she should turn around.

“You’re welcome,” Eddie mumbles. “Was this popped out when you woke up?” His breath ghosts over the back of her neck as he presses his hand flat against her shoulder blade, lightly gripping her wrist with the other. A chill prickles across her skin where his palm rests—firm, steady, almost possessive. Her eyes flutter shut. She lets him move her. She wants him to.

“No,” Chrissy admits. “But I dislocated it once when I fell off the pyramid in practice.”

“Remember how they put it back at all?” Eddie asks, prodding the misplaced joint gently with his index finger.

“They kinda lifted my arm and elbow up and away from my body,” she explains, “and it just twisted back in.”

“Let’s try that before I brute force it in,” Eddie suggests.

“It doesn’t hurt me, remember?” Chrissy reminds him. “You probably don’t have to do it perfectly.”

“I know, but I’m afraid if I try and shove it back in the wrong way I’ll break something else,” Eddie admits as he lifts her hand, his fingers curled around her wrist. One finger snakes over her palm and between her index finger and thumb.

Chrissy’s breath hitches. She’s so distracted by his cool skin that she barely notices when her joint falls back into place with a sickening pop. The sound is sharp, echoing in her skull like a slap. But her body doesn’t resist. It’s too focused on the feel of his hand cradling hers, the slow trail of his thumb over the inside of her wrist. It feels good. Too good. Shame coils hot in her gut. She doesn’t pull away.

“Hurt?” Eddie asks, not letting go of her hand.

“No,” Chrissy assures him. “Nothing ever hurts.”

“Mm,” Eddie hums thoughtfully. “Kinda sucks,” he says, “not being able to feel anything.”

Chrissy can see how he’d jump to that conclusion, hanging onto his jacket as he guides her back through the dark maze and out into the moonlight. No pain usually means no feeling at all. But she can feel it every time he touches her. In real life and in the memories she experiences. It makes her feel alive again. Which is worse. Because it’s not supposed to matter. It shouldn’t make her want more.

She lets her hand drift lower, hooks her fingers around his belt, trailing slightly lower than she needs to. Just to test something. For a second, she thinks his breath catches, but it’s so subtle she convinces herself she imagined it. A flicker of power. A flicker of hope. She hates herself for chasing it.

Out in the moonlight, she can see him better. She frowns, brushing her thumb over a weird stain she can see even on his black t-shirt. It’s not quite dry yet and her thumb comes away rust colored. She raises her eyebrows and shows it to Eddie.

“You stopped for a drink on the way to find me?”

He shrugs. “My senses dial in a little better when I’m not as thirsty. Made it easier to find you.”

There’s a faint smirk playing at the edge of his mouth, but his eyes are heavy-lidded and dark. Not with thirst. He looks good in the moonlight. Sharp, strange, unreal, like something out of a fever dream. She shouldn’t be thinking about how kissable his lips look smeared with blood, but the thought worms its way into her anyway. Her own mind disgusts her.

Not that she really feels like eating after spending the day trapped under the dead body of one of her friends, but she asks anyway, “Did you bring me leftovers this time?”

She’d been able to smell the rot of the brains on the counter throughout the day. Eventually, that smell combined with the smell of Patrick on top of her had made her so sick, she never once thought of bringing them with her. She wants something fresh.

Eddie’s mouth twists with humor. “Not quite. We need to go back and get her.”

Her? A lump forms in Chrissy’s throat as she trails after him. It was one thing experiencing Eddie feeding on a boy. She can’t compare herself to a boy. Now that he’s admitted to feeding from a girl, something hot and annoying builds in her chest. She scrunches up her face, trying not to imagine what she knows she’ll experience. That Eddie fed from some girl who isn’t her. Not that she wants Eddie to drink her blood. It’s the part that comes with Eddie feeding that’s upsetting. The intimacy of it. The pleasure.

Her stomach knots as she walks. She feels the potential for the memory already, curled up inside the base of her skull like a splinter. A girl’s pulse rising. Eddie’s mouth at her throat. Her hands in his hair. That soft, helpless moan of surrender. It’s not fair. It’s not fair she’s going to feel that secondhand—feel her feeling him. She wants it. Not the memory. The real thing.

Chrissy doesn’t have blood to spare. But she wishes she did. Wants to know what it would feel like to have his mouth on her for real. If he tasted her. Claimed her. If that bone-deep hunger she sees in him were ever just for her. She shouldn’t want to be consumed. She shouldn’t want to be wanted this much, though she’s always enjoyed being wanted. But not like this. It makes her feel filthy. Monstrous. Weak.

She’s never let herself feel this before. It was never there for Jason. He was always available, always asking. She never had room left to want him. But with Eddie, there’s space there for her desire to build. And it scares her.

It’s a slow-blooming thing. Sick and sweet. Rotten at the core. She’s starving for it. For him. And she can’t afford that. She can’t afford to want someone who could hurt her so deeply.

So she shoves it down, swallowing as she speeds up to walk next to him. She can’t stare at him any longer or she’ll keep thinking about whatever he just did with the girl she’s about to eat. She doesn’t want to feel jealous of a corpse. She doesn’t want to feel anything.

“We’re heading back to school,” she hisses under her breath.

“I know,” Eddie whispers back, “I checked by the picnic table for you first.”

“Why?” Chrissy asks. “I never hang out there.”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know where you hang out,” he admits.

For some reason that stings. It’s a harmless answer, but it cuts her open anyway. Chrissy frowns. She doesn’t know why, but some part of her hoped he’d been keeping tabs on her. After all, most guys at the school did. Before Jason, she’d never been short of a date for homecoming or prom or any other event. She wasn’t oblivious to the guys checking her out when she walked down the hall on game days in her cheer skirt. She used to be so good at playing the girl they all wanted.

And that day she’d slipped a note in Eddie’s locker asking him for the weed and met him at this very picnic table, he’d flirted with her the whole time. So part of her had just assumed he’d liked her. Everyone else did.

But since they came back he’s been all business. He takes care of her, but it’s friendly and nothing more. Any flirtation seems to just be part of his personality. And of course, he’s getting whatever needs he has met when he feeds. Though he still doesn’t know that Chrissy knows about that.

She wonders how good it felt. If she moaned into his mouth. If she touched him the way Chrissy wants to. If he touched her back. She shouldn’t be picturing it. But she does. The worst part is, some piece of her is grateful for the memory she hasn’t even eaten yet. Grateful to get to feel what she’s not brave enough to ask for.

They walk into the clearing with the picnic table and Chrissy looks around, confused. “Where is…she?”

Eddie walks over to the table, digging under the dead leaves beneath it. “Right here.” In a flash, he drags the body out by her ankles and Chrissy stumbles forward, catching herself on a tree.

The corpse thuds dully against the dirt. Her limbs are loose, her mouth open, her eyes unfocused. There’s still a hint of a smile on her face, like she died mid-sigh. Her blonde hair fans around her skull like a halo, streaked with ash.

Chrissy’s stomach twists. Her own hunger slithers forward. Hot. Shameful. Automatic. She’s seen death. But this—this is different. This girl had warm blood and a future. And Eddie had his hands on her.

Despite the fact that she spent the entire day trapped underneath Patrick’s body, there’s something incredibly difficult about witnessing the lifeless body of someone Eddie just killed, someone whose brain she’s about to eat. She watches as Eddie scoops the girl up in his arms.

There’s an obvious bite mark on the girl’s wrist, bloodless puncture wounds forming two semicircles. Her skin is pale and kind of blue. He drained her entirely. There’s nothing left to even drip. When Eddie lays her out on the table and her head lolls to the side, Chrissy spots another bite mark on her neck. She swallows down the bile rising in her throat.

“You’re gonna do it here?” she asks, wringing her hands. She glances around.

“Nobody’s nearby,” Eddie says matter-of-factly, “and I’d hear someone coming. Plus there’s a table.”

Can’t argue with that logic.

Chrissy watches as Eddie steps up to the table like a butcher preparing to cut. He tilts the girl’s head to one side, brushing strands of hair away from her face with gentle fingers. Like he’s tucking her in. Like he’s apologizing. It makes Chrissy’s skin crawl.

He doesn’t say anything or look back at Chrissy. One hand rests against the girl’s temple, the other cradles the back of her head like it’s fragile.

And then he adds pressure. And Chrissy realizes her skull is fragile. To him. At first it looks like nothing. Just pressure. His muscles don’t flex, his shoulders don’t strain. But then a crack—soft and intimate—splits the night air.

Chrissy flinches. The sound is wrong—wet and deep. She watches, horrified, as Eddie’s grip tightens. Not by much. Just enough to fold the skull in on itself.

He’s not even really trying.

It hits her all at once—just how strong he really is. The ease of it. He could tear her limb from limb with those hands. Could crush her throat with a twitch of his fingers.

And instead, those hands had held her gently.

Another pop. Something gives and Eddie adjusts his hands to dig into the cracked bone, ripping apart the flesh still holding it together with his fingers. The skull begins to split, not like glass, but like fruit. Overripe. Soft in the middle.

Chrissy can’t look away. When the final seam gives, Eddie pulls the bone back with a wet crack. A gleaming curve of brain matter bulges forward, still warm and shimmering with cerebrospinal fluid under the moonlight like meat in a butcher’s case.

The scent hits her. Hot. Metallic. Sweet. Blood and rot and sugar. Her mouth waters against her will. She swallows it down and tastes ash, stepping closer.

Eddie exhales, breathless, like the worst is over. His wrists and forearms are smeared with red. There’s blood under his nails. The same hands that put her arm back together a little bit ago. He doesn’t look triumphant. He looks focused. Alive.

She swallows hard, her throat burning with bile and want. This is what he is. This is what he can do. This is what he did. For her. No one’s ever looked so monstrous and felt so much like safety.

He glances at her, finally. And somehow that’s the most unbearable part—the casual way he meets her eyes, his fingers dripping red.

“Thought we’d take it back,” he says. “You like it cooked.” He lifts a hand to his mouth and starts licking the blood off his fingers. Chrissy’s eyes widen. She nods. She can’t trust herself to speak. She can’t trust herself to move. She’s going to dream about that lazy flick of his tongue over the fingers that broke someone open to feed her.

Eddie carries the girl’s body to one of the rifts and kneels beside it. For one single moment, he actually looks reverent, like she might have meant something to him. Then he drops her, watching her tumble lifelessly into the crack in the earth before standing and brushing his hands off on his jeans.

“You want me to take that?” He says, pointing to the precious brain in Chrissy’s hands.

She shakes her head, hands trembling. “I can hold it.”

Eddie smiles and takes it from her. “You’re shaking.”

The poor girl’s body is gone now. Her parents will never know what happened to her. She’d been beautiful. Tall, with elegant curves and long hair. Her eyes were probably bright once. She probably smiled at Eddie. She probably touched his arm and leaned in close. Chrissy would have hated her in life. But in death, she might love her.

Now Eddie’s carrying her brain home for Chrissy to eat.

And Chrissy is going to eat it.

She’s going to sit on the counter in the kitchen, bare feet swinging, and watch Eddie scoop brain matter into a skillet. Wait for him to fry it up until it’s greasy and extra-delicious.

Worst of all, she’s going to like it.