Chapter Text
The first thing Eddie thinks when he wakes up is did it work?
The second thing he thinks is that he definitely feels dead. Except, he’s not. Clearly, he’s not. Unless he is? He distinctly doesn’t feel like he’s dying, which is sort of the last thing he remembers, but maybe that’s because he feels like walking death already.
He sits up, he sits up, his bones crunching unpleasantly but weirdly enough, not hurting. He feels…strange. This is weird. This is definitely weird. He’s already pretty weird, he knows that, he’s not, like, stupid. But this is next level weird.
Is he dead? Is this…Hell? Or…something else?
The Upside Down looks…different. Still. He’s never really seen it be calm before, but that’s what he might call it now. The…thunder, and the lightning and shit, it’s still there, but it seems less…imminent. Also, is it daytime? It’s way brighter than he remembers it being.
He was under the impression it was kind of just perpetually nighttime, but maybe not? There was clearly a lot of shit he didn’t know. Namely, why he was up.
Because he died. He definitely died.
He remembered it, remembered the guitar and the bats and saying I love you before the world went black, he doesn’t even remember closing his eyes but he must’ve at some point, right? He must have.
Eddie stands up. He looks around at the dozens of bat corpses surrounding his…well, his corpse. He kicks them a little bit, steps on a tail just to see, even though he probably shouldn’t. They don’t move. Nothing screams. Nothing comes running.
He can see his trailer in the distance, and even if he is dead or something, thinks Ah, what the hell.
It’s exactly the same as he remembers, which is to say cold and full of vines, vines that somehow seem…less alive. If he wasn’t in what he knew was an alternate hellscape, he’d almost say it was…chill.
He catches a glimpse of himself in his trailer’s mirror, a mirror (ha) of the one they have in the hallway back in Hawkins, the real Hawkins, and thinks he looks like shit. There’s a lot of blood on him. Like, a lot of blood.
Oddly enough, he’s not injured, really. Just sort of…bloody. Further proof that he’s already dead and this is some kind of purgatory. Or something.
Hell, he sold hard drugs to high schoolers, if he was anywhere it definitely wasn’t the pearly gates, he thinks mockingly, looking up as he does and catching a glimpse of the gate
The hole in his ceiling is closing up, like a wound or something, but it’s slow. Slow enough that it’s still covered by some gross pink mucus-y shit and sunlight is still penetrating through the film.
It’s not really a question of touching it or not. He’s already gross enough as is. Besides, he’s still pretty sure he’s dead, somehow, so, like, it doesn’t matter.
One pile of chairs and couch cushions later, Eddie’s shoving his blunt fingernails through the mucus and gripping the sides of his ceiling, pushing himself up and through, and wow, he wasn’t aware he could do that. He lands on his feet, which, what the fuck, he really shouldn’t be able to do, but the extent of his physical capabilities post-death is a promptly forgotten thought when he sees the yellow caution tape lining his trailer.
A white outline of tape on the ground. Crunch.
He’s standing right there. Right where they stood.
Right where they stood before he died, right where he and Chrissy stood when her fucking eyes got sucked out and, Jesus, Chrissy fucking died here, and they needed to use this trailer for the gate, the gate for the mission that killed him, and Eddie runs his hand over his face. Jesus, this trailer is cursed. His hands are cold, which only serves to worsen his nausea.
Chrissy’s skin was cold when he touched her. Cold as ice. Like she was already dead.
It’s like she was here, lihe he could hear her, see her, smell the blood dripping from her eyes and hear her bones snapping, like her jaw was going to pop itself any second now, and the lights were flickering and he was screaming and fuck—
He needed to get out.
He stumbled out of his trailer into the harsh sun, squinting as he took in the grass, and the gravel, and the sudden realization that people could not see him. Not now. God, no.
It doesn’t take much more than that thought and the bile creeping up in the back of his throat for him to take off in a sprint towards the woods. There’s a distant relief when he runs into the woods, the shadows of the trees offering something akin to relief. He chalks it up to getting away. He doesn’t know how long he runs for, doesn’t know why he doesn’t stop until he’s on his knees hurling into the soft earth.
It’s thin and filmy, more like water than anything else, which feels wrong considering the amount of blood he lost. Before, well…
He mentally trails off. Doesn’t matter. Point is, there should probably be more blood. Or maybe, like, intestines or something.
Snap.
His head whips around. The fuck?
A deer, stumbling awkwardly into the space between the trees.
It’s young, he thinks.
He’s been breathing funny since he woke up, and for some unexplainable reason he thinks this is why, like it’s been leading up to this. He zeroes in on the deer, and it’s like he can feel it breathing, like he can hear its heart beating, like he can look at every stream of blood in its body going in every direction.
It doesn’t make any sense.
He doesn’t care. He’s not even thinking.
He lunges.
There’s blood. There’s so much blood. It’s really warm. He really doesn’t mind.
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the f—
He can’t stop. He can’t stop and it feels so good he willingly pushes down the very loud alarm bells blaring in his head.
He’s not really all that present for what’s happening. He stops. Involuntarily, he might add. He doesn’t feel like he’s in control of any of this. It’s over?
He’s swaying, now, the blood dripping down his chin reminding him of that shit with Persephone and the pomegranate, and he smiles a little bit thinking about how he actually did pay attention in sophomore English, despite what everyone thought.
Wonder what they’d think now.
It’s like every endorphin is rushing to his head, and his brain sort of feels like a glass of fizzy soda or maybe pop rocks, and distantly Eddie acknowledges that he’s never felt this much relief in his life .
The world goes black, and Eddie closes his eyes with a hazy smile on his lips.