Routine Seven:
I
She wakes in her bed in the morning light, with sweat-soaked skin, and harsh breathing, and she still hears the whispers.
Hears the clock, chiming once.
Twice.
Thrice.
And four times.
Chrissy doesn't move. Doesn't cry. She can't smile as she had when she died. She just- I murdered my mom and killed myself right afterward.
She doesn't move at all.
Even when her mother screams at her, and slaps and pinches her, trying to get her into motion. Her fury shifts to concern, to shrieking hysterics. Chrissy only stares vacantly at the ceiling, every bit of her previous anger gone. She can't bring herself to do anything. She's taken to the hospital, and it's there that Henry Creel comes for her again. The world of rot and red comes. She sits up in her hospital bed. She looks at him, disguised as her mother. He opens his mouth- probably to scream at her and torment her like he had before. Spiders scuttle across the hospital floor. She notes absently that they are all the same species, no, the same spider, like… Like a xerox of the same image. Did the spider mean something to him?
"I know you aren't my mother," she tells him, absently. Her voice is flat, and she… She can't think of what to sell to him. She feels… So empty, "You're Henry Creel."
Despite himself, she thinks, his curiosity peeks. It slithers across her mind like an eel, slimy and wiggling. Her mother's visage freezes. It's like he's wearing a Laura Cunningham suit, everything but her eyes are right.
She can see Henry's cool blue, near purple in this world, glowing from behind her mother's dark brown.
"How do you know that name?" her mother's voice is gentle and sweet, like how she usually talks to Chrissy, at least at first. As if she was still a young child that would take a sickly sweet voice and ache for it.
She tilts her head.
"You want to open the gates into Hawkins," He implied he was not a prisoner exactly… So… Why? Why does he need… Gates? Plural- It's not just for him. Why would one entity need more then one gate? "To release everything in this world of Rot and Red."
Her voice is still flat. Chrissy still feels like nothing at all. He blinks with her mother's face. And then it shifts. There he is. Her murderer, Henry Creel.
"How did you know, Christine Elizabeth?"
She gives a single blink. She will never tell him about the Routines. She thinks of the sensation she had been feeling when they are fighting in this world of rot and red. It was like… Sissy Spacek in Carrie, she realizes. All mental, pushing and pushing back and forth between Chinadoll Chrissy and Predator Henry Creel. What had it been called? Carrie White had been telekinetic. She could do things with her mind. Chrissy breathed.
Go back, she thought, staring at Henry, away from me. Hard. Steady. Blood seeps from her nose, and Chrissy feels sweat bead on her brow.
BACK.
Henry Creel stumbles back a fraction of an inch. Not much at all. He huffs, and he smiles his terrible smile.
"Oh?" his voice vibrates, claws into her, "What is it about Hawkins that makes this possible?"
She breathes, chest heaving. She feels like she should cry… But it's like her tears have dried up. She still feels like nothing at all.
"And here I thought you were just a sad little paper shaker queen."
And he's laughing in delight.
Because he thinks, again, maybe, she can be just like him- And he wants that, so badly. She can feel it, clawing and sloshing inside her, that Henry wants, wants, wants someone like him. Someone who thought of others as prey. Apparently, monsters get lonely too, she thinks, and something other than numbness enters Chrissy.
Pure, unfiltered disgust. She doesn't want to hurt people. She doesn't want to make chinadolls out of them. And this Henry Creel deserves all the loneliness he gets for his wish to do so.
I don't want to see the light fade from someone's eyes ever again. Killing mom just made me feel nothing. Killing myself was a shallow victory.
"I'll never be like you." she spits, "Never."
He sighs. Frowns.
"Ain't that a bite," He says with another sigh.
She bares her teeth. She feels her disgust rise.
"Let's go Henry, snake, let's rattle."
He laughs. Of course, he does. He still thinks she's now prey, now that she has denied him. But at least she's prey with some bite.
She tries…
She tries again this time. To push back as much as possible. To stand her ground. She's broken again, simply and painfully as before. Chinadoll Chrissy, Cheerleader Humpty Dumpty, and not even all the King's men can put her together again.