Alexithymia | STRANGER THINGS [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

thirteen | dig dug

With a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a pencil in one of his hands, Matthew let out a sigh as he stared at yet another one of his attempts of drawing his former drug dealer, Eddie Munson.

It seemed that no matter how many times he tried to draw Eddie— whether it be in different angles or in a lighter or darker shade with his pencil— he just couldn't be satisfied with the end result.

It was as if there was something that he felt was missing from his drawings of his former drug dealer, but no matter how much he tried, he just couldn't find the one thing that was missing from the drawing.

With a groan, he ripped the piece of paper out of his notebook and crunched it into a ball and then tossed it behind himself.

Then he started to make another attempt to draw Eddie, only to stop when he heard a voice ask from behind him, "What's this?"

It was then that Matthew's eyes had widened, and he quickly turned around to see Eddie holding the balled-up piece of paper in his hand.

Without even thinking twice about it, he threw the cigarette onto the ground and put it out and then he quickly jumped up from the ground and ran over towards Eddie in an attempt to take the balled up drawing away from his former dealer.

But unfortunately for Matthew, Eddie had quickly hidden his hand behind his own back and was doing what he could to prevent Matthew from taking the balled-up piece of paper from him.

After several seconds of him trying to take the paper from Eddie, Matthew stared at Eddie with a scowl on his face as he said, "Munson, I swear to God, you better give that fucking piece of paper back to me, or I swear to God that I will—"

With an eyebrow raised, Eddie asked him, "Or you'll what?" When he glanced down at Matthew's hands and saw them start to clench into fists, he went to toss the piece of paper back over to Matthew as he said, "No need to get so serious about it, Wheeler. I was only messing around."

After shoving the paper into his back pocket, Matthew said, "Yeah, of course you were."

After watching Matthew turn his head to look at anything except for Eddie himself, Eddie asked him, "Hey, are you doing okay, Wheeler?" After watching Matthew quickly look over at him with narrowed eyes, Eddie told him, "You've just seemed on edge recently and a lot angrier than you were before I started to sell to you last year, so I don't know if it's from some, uh, withdrawal thing or what's happening, but, uh, you're not acting like your usual self."

As he turned to look away from Eddie, Matthew said to him, "I'm fine." When Eddie opened his mouth to say something to him, Matthew said to him, "I told you that I'm fine, Munson."

When Eddie only raised his hands on either side of his head with his eyebrows raised, Matthew scoffed to himself before he pulled out another cigarette and then started to light it with his lighter.