❝ and suddenly i'm an angel on the cutting room floor, wearing gore, a blank stare, not much more.❞
-daphne gottlieb
STRANGER THINGS SEASONS 2 - 4
。° fem oc x steve harrington
。° fem oc x robin buckley
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SUNLIGHT WAS NARROWLY BREAKING over the horizon, purling through gaps in the trees. With it rose dewdrops like sweet nectar on rows of lawns, under a dome of sleepy neighborhood ambiance. It should have been perfect. Within an ice bath of autumn air. Instead, everything around Mel that sang of serenity died as soon as it reached her.
Her feet pounded the pavement with dissonance. Each inhale she took was barely an apparition of breath, clawing its way down her throat as though it were something more. Mel kept running. She would run until she ran out of thoughts. Forever, probably. And no, the irony that Mel was, more or less, trying to run away from herself was not lost on her. She was well aware of the insanity. She was consciously losing her mind.
No one came back from Hawkins Lab without damage. No one, no matter how strong, could escape. Mel had made her own visit that night, and nightmare or not, it was indistinguishable from her memories. She could usually count on sleep as an escape, to slip into a muted version of herself in a dream. But now, she couldn't trust it anymore. Sleep had become just as unsafe as the waking world. All Mel had left for a distraction was pain. Last December, during late hours at the ballet studio, was when she first learned to enjoy it. Now she ran. Each level—from an ache to a stab to a shred—had her body screaming out. Ringing in her ears, it blotted out every coherent thought she could have. It slowly absolved her, but it knew no mercy. It tore and it tore and it tore until an imminent collapse.
Collapse. Collapse. Mel couldn't remember when exactly she'd hit the ground. All she knew was that the world was spinning when she had. Her knees took the brunt of the force, scraped against the pavement of a neighborhood sidewalk. She let her legs fall numb beneath her as reality filtered itself back in.
"Mel?"
Scratch that. She was hallucinating.
Except, when Mel's senses came flooding back cold, a concerned face peered down at her. It stood outlined by a large swoop of brown. Mel could recognize that hair anywhere.
