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chapter forty-eight isn't it strange?
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Rue wakes with the taste of ash on her tongue and a buzz under her skin.
Her mind drifts away from a nightmare that felt almost too vivid to be her imagination. She can still hear the screams of despair, the snapping bones, and the breaking of joints and every time she blinks, Rue sees distorted faces she doesn't recognize. Four faceless bodies lay on the floor of a house she'd never seen.
A profound sense of wrong inked itself into Rue's skin, and the taste of ash on her tongue turned to iron, almost like blood.
Her head throbs against her skull, and it takes her a long minute to process her surroundings. A blurry image of the familiar roof of Nancy Wheeler's basement comes to focus, and Rue groans softly while sitting up from where she had been sleeping. A blanket slips from her shoulders, and she brings her hand up to rub the back of her neck, where a killer ache pulses against the skin, and she has to roll her head back to soothe it.
Rue finds herself on a soft couch, and Lucas is curled into a ball at the other end while Dustin is on a chair. The two boys drool and snore as they sleep, still dressed in the same dirty clothes from the day before.
Rue can hear Nancy, Robin and Steve's voices from upstairs with the clutter of dishes and Steve yelling at Robin to move out of the way before she burns the whole house down. The two start to bicker, and Nancy screeches, "Shush! The kids are still sleeping."
The old staircase leading to the basement creaks, and soft footsteps coming down the steps. Rue half expected it to be Nancy coming to check on them but was left surprised when she spotted Max instead.
