Tony.
Deprogramming.
Tony circled the word in sparkly, red ink. It was a word that she had seen pop up often in the cult books that she had stolen from Eddie. Deprogramming was a process that 'victims' - god, the very word made her stomach twist in knots - went through when they left cults. She still wasn't sure if the Beacons of Righteousness was a cult. Yet, ironically, it was comforting to know that she could put a name to her experience, like a therapist making a diagnosis. A diagnosis meant a cure, and a cure meant progress. And what she needed was progress to escape the confines of her conditioning.
Conditioning - that was another word that had popped up numerous times in the books.
She lifted her headphones from her ears and raised her face to the sunlight, taking in a deep breath that filled her lungs. The sound of a car pulling into the lot caused her heart to thunder in her chest. The rooftop of the trailer that she shared with Marshall afforded a general view of the entire Trailer Park. It was useless for her to try and convince herself that she wasn't looking out for Eddie. Like a thorn in a sock, he clung to her conscience in a way that confused and excited her greatly.
"Okay," she whispered to herself. "I can do this. I can do this. I can do this."
She gathered her books and slowly climbed down the wall of the trailer. Earlier that day, she had recorded the sounds of a ping-pong match played between two jocks in the Hawkins High Recreation Room. The sound of the 'thwack, thwack, thwack' continued to play from the headphones hanging from her neck. She had an idea of what she would do with it: maybe speed up the sound a little, put it in a loop, and create a basic and rhythmic beat to buoy a jaunty party melody. She wondered what Eddie would think. Lately, every time she created a new sound, she imagined playing it for Eddie and watching his face for approval.
"Marsh," she called out as she stepped into the trailer. "Mar-shall!"
Marshall was in the corner, bent over a feisty television set. She watched tiredly as he smacked its side and then raised his hand in the universal gesture of 'what the fuck is this?' She could still feel the imprints of his hands on her and his fingers inside of her - that shameful flush of residual heat that followed a night of tepid sex. Marshall was good - experienced, intuitive, and patient. But he was not enthusiastic. She faintly remembered him checking his wristwatch while she informed, in a voice muffled by the pillow, that she was close.
"Hey. I'm going out."
"Out," he repeated as if such a notion was foreign and unthinkable. He turned upon his haunches to glare at her, his eyes a blood-shot red that matched his spandex bell bottoms. The gaudy fashion inclinations of the 70s weren't dead, for Marshall was keeping them alive and well. Unfortunately. "What, you have class today?"
"It's Saturday, troglodyte. You know I don't have class."
"Then why the fuck are you 'going out'?"
Tony's shoulders hunched of their own accord. Marshall had never laid a violent or reprimanding hand on her. But, sometimes, the pure venom in his eyes felt like a blow straight to the cheek. Perhaps having seen the flare in her eye, he lowered his hand to his thigh and sighed.
"Game's about to start," he said, then tossed his grizzled chin at the broken TV set. "You don't want to catch a round or two with this old man?"
Old man. God, the reminder of their age gap was everywhere. She slipped the strap of her book bag higher on her shoulder and gestured awkwardly at the door. "Your thing is sitting around watching grown men play with balls, my thing is going out in the real world to get some fresh air."
"You love soccer," he pleaded with a voice crack, his expression utterly shocked and devastated as if she had betrayed him with her words. He was right, in some ways. Back at the Farm, she had often been so high that she was willing to watch anything with him: paint drying, infomercials, soccer. "Y-you're not going to see that Eddie-fella, are you?"
"Christ, Marsh, what if I was? Is it really so bad if I have a friend my age?"
"Boys your age are -" he used a slur that made her cover her mouth and gasp. "They only want one thing, compadre-"
"Stop fucking calling me that!"
"Oh - oh! Alright-y, then. You would rather I call you Mrs. Munson, huh?"
"Fuck off," she scoffed and turned towards the door. "He's a good guy."
"I was part of the generation that raised men like him," Marshall said to her back. "And I have no shame in sayin' that we didn't exactly raise 'em right. Antoinette! Look at me!"
Tony groaned and turned to face him. She felt her expression collapse as he walked up to her and swirled his old, leather biker's coat around her shoulders. It was hard for her to ignore the flickering of the spark that she felt for him, buried deep down in her belly. Marshall was movie-star handsome, still muscular, and towering in his prime. She had seen the way that the women in Hawkins had stared at him whenever they stopped by the gas station. He was a throwback to their era of drugs in the back of graffitied vans, sex on rain-slicked concert fields, and flowered headbands by the roadside. Though it embarrassed Tony to admit, she wanted to love him. She just wasn't sure how.
He pushed his shaggy, black-dyed hair back with his palms and then smiled down at her. It was then that she realized something: Marshall reminded her of who Eddie Munson would most likely become when he reached his fifties.
"Y-you don't have to love me," he said in his usual, baritone stutter then kissed her cheek. "Doesn't mean I can't love you though. Wherever you go tonight - just be safe, capiche? And keep that fucking jacket on! One cold breeze is enough to knock you on your ass, girlie."
"God forbid," she said with a stiff grin. "You and I both know this ass doesn't have much padding."
"More than enough from where I'm standing." Marshall winked and wiggled his tongue between the gap in his front teeth. "Catch you later, sweetheart."
X
Tony hopped out of the bus and trudged towards the old, boarded-over bar. The Hideout - Tony had heard about the place from the men who hung around the liquor shops. It was supposed to be a bar for the bleary-eyed and washed-out 9-5s avoiding their wives, avoiding their children, and avoiding their nightly duty of taking out the trash. They watched her in disinterest as she stepped into the lobby and shrugged her jacket off. The place reeked of cigarettes and musty, alcoholic breath. An old Elvis tune played from the jukebox. A waitress in a stained mini-skirt carried cups of peanuts and trays of beer across the floor. At the end of the bar stood a stage doused in purple neon light. It appeared depressingly empty as if no one had performed on it in a long time. Tony hooked her coat on the coat rack and wandered towards the bar, rubbing the gooseflesh that had risen along her arms. This was the first step of her 'deprogramming': go out, make new friends, explore new scenes. The populace of Hawkins High hadn't been very welcoming, so she had been forced to turn to the Hideout instead.
"I'll take two Sprites," she called to the bartender.
The woman looked her up and down and snickered. Tony knew that she wasn't dressed for the occasion, but the dingy strawberry-print dress and combat boots constituted the only social attire that she had.
"You here to see Corroded Coffin," the bartender asked as she passed Tony two lukewarm cans. Tony furrowed her brow and leaned forward to hear better.
"C-corroded Coffin? What's that?"
"You know, the kids who play that devil music." The bartender crooked her fingers above her ears and stuck out her tongue. "They do that thing all the time."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Tony said with a laugh. "Devil music?"
"Hey, I don't care what they play so long as they pay their dues. Over there, look!"
The bartender pointed towards the stage. Tony turned around in her seat and felt as if her heart had suddenly been snatched from her chest. Once bereft, the stage now held several young men in patched, black jeans and white t-shirts. Eddie Munson stood at the head, his eyes downcast as he adjusted the microphone on the stand. The drummer settled into his seat and bounced his sticks along the snare drum, creating a high, rolling sound. No way, Tony thought to herself as Eddie adjusted his guitar strap on his shoulder. No fucking way in hell.
"How we all doin' tonight?" He said into the microphone. The sound of his voice created a piercing feedback that made several drunkards curse his existence. "Are we drunk yet or what?"
"Get off the stage," someone from the crowd called. Eddie grinned and pushed his hair away from his face. Even from a distance, Tony could see the sweat glistening on his brow.
"One more for the asshole in the denim hat," Eddie cried into the mic, pointing at the man. "Put it on my tab!"
"Fuck your tab," another man called. Eddie cupped his hands around the mic and spoke in a low voice.
"I've reserved that right for your mother," he said in a theatrical, Vincent Price-esque voice that grew decadently deeper with every word. "Now, ladies and gentlemen, let us take a little trip into the underworld - deep into the bat-filled crevices and glistening pits of hell - all the way down to a place called St. James Infirmary."
Tony gasped. She knew that song. It had been one of her favorites, sung often by the members of the Farm when it was her birthday. She leaped off of her barstool and stumbled towards the small stretch of floor in front of the stage. Eddie seemed to not even have noticed her. His eyes sought out a place far beyond the realm of the bar as he strummed his guitar and threw a hand in the air.
"Folks," he said into the mic, his voice so deep that it sounded guttural and devilish and perfect. "I'm goin' down to St. James Infirmary-"
What followed next was a rise in pitch so seamless and feral, a breathless elongation of the word 'see.' Eddie squished his eyes shut and grasped the microphone between his palms as his pitch rose higher and higher, so high that it became a hellish wail that split her ears. She covered her ears as Eddie slumped over his guitar and began to play a fast-fingered and rhythmless riff. He paused, looked out at the crowd with unseeing eyes, and grasped the mic again.
"-seeeeeeee my baby there! She was stretched out on a long, white table. She's so sweet, so cold, so bare-"
Eddie had the voice of every cocaine-filed and booze-laced heavy metal artist who had taken to the big stage. It was a voice with ragged ends, uneven notes, and deep-throated howls that caused vibrations to spider through her chest. It was the shameless spirit of Cab Calloway pining for the dead, the quivering and thick-veined unholiness that was the soul of James Hetfield.
"When I die bury me in my straight-legged britches," Eddie screamed into the mic, his face red and hair a blustery halo melting into slick rivulets around his cheeks. "Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain so you can let all the boys know I died standing pat!"
Eddie didn't sing: he demanded the attention of his alcohol-stupefied audience. He tore himself away from the mic, threw himself into the rhythm of his guitar as tears poured along Tony's cheeks. Like some satanic and heathenistic musician, he took the notes of a worn melody and forced them into transmigration: turning blues into red, sadness into wrath, dejection into passion. Corroded Coffin tested her boundaries and pushed her to her limits, rendering her incapable of running away. The drummer lifted Eddie's bass line to new heights, holding it uplifted to heaven as Eddie tore away at a solo that seemed almost inhuman. He grabbed the mic and screamed until his face was flush and beet-red. His words turned incomprehensible, a slur of incantations misheard but not misunderstood,
"Put a red hot jazzbandat-the-tuh'meehead sowecanraise HALLELUJAH as we go alo-ong! Folks, now that you have heard my story-" Eddie let go of his guitar and curled his fingers in front of his chest, feigning angelic innocence as he pleaded with a voice that only he could hear. "Say, boy, hand me another shot of that boo-ooze. If anyone should ask you….tell 'em I got those fucking St. James Infirmary Blue-ues."
Eddie dropped his head as if his neck was a broken hinge. The music from the band cut off sharply, swiftly, sooner than she was ready for. She expected a raucous round of applause. Instead, a drunk at the bar grumbled in vehemence at the noise disruption and then promptly sunk lower in his seat. Tony jumped up and down and clapped her lands, hooting and hollering as Eddie swept the hair away from his brow and held up his ringed middle finger. He deserved more than that - he deserved the thunderous surge of an audience rushing to his feet, the collective whoop of a packed stadium in the throes of exhilaration. Instead, all he had was a bar full of uninterested patrons and Tony screaming deliriously at the top of her lungs.
Unable to stop herself, she swung herself onto the stage and charged after him. He turned around, the color in his face washed out by the neon lights, and smiled as if in disbelief at her presence. She meant to hug him, and he had reached out to hug her, but something stopped them at the last possible moment. They stumbled to a halt in front of each other, unsure of what to do next.
"Hey," she said breathlessly. Sweat dampened her collar and rolled between her breasts. Was it her imagination, she wondered, or had his eyes briefly flickered to her chest?
"Hey," he said back, a slight tease in his voice and a wiggle to his chin. He held his hand out and she shook it excitedly.
"That was-" she paused, unsure of how to describe the scene that she had just witnessed. It took her a moment to realize that she was still gripping his hand. She let it go and quickly brushed the sweat from his palm onto her dress. "That was some real cool shit. I mean, I thought you would go flying off the stage at any second-"
"What, into the arms of Denim Hat and Plaid Shirt over there-?"
"I would have caught you-"
"I would have crushed you-"
"I would have been honored-"
"You would have been dead-"
They were talking too fast, they both realized it at the same time. Nothing that they were saying was making much sense, but the breathless stream of verbal lunacy struck her as exhilarating. She felt an irrepressible and drunken need to gush but years' worth of reprimands forced her to hold her tongue. Her cheeks ballooned around a breath of air and she sighed slowly from between pursed lips. Easy, she pleaded with her thudding heart and racing mind, just take it easy,
"I was thinking about what you said," she stuttered. Eddie bent down and tucked his guitar into its case, then yanked several times at the broken zipper. The hem of his white-and-blue striped boxer briefs was momentarily visible before he straightened up again and tugged his shirt lower along his midriff. She cleared her throat and tried again. "About the Farm, the whole Beacons of Righteousness and whatever. I guess I just wanted to thank you-"
"For what?"
"For helping me realize that it was a-" she closed her eyes and forced herself to slow down, to inhale and recalibrate. The word 'cult' was still too potent and unthinkable to be spoken out loud. Several strands of hair fluttered away from his face as she exhaled. "That it was a real fucked up organization, you know? Absolutely and one hundred percent FUBAR."
"Ah, come on. Don't be so hard on yourself, sweetheart. You would have figured it out by yourself," he said warmly, then playfully flicked the tip of her nose. "I just expedited the process."
"Yeah." Her eyes wandered away and she hunched her shoulders, acutely aware of the several pairs of eyes turned their way. "Look, can I just level with you? I'm learning to live again, Eddie. I'm starting all over, all the way at the bottom, you know? And I was hoping to start all over with a friend like you."
The words died away from her lips, leaving them engulfed in a world of silence made impenetrable to outsiders. His eyes remained riveted on her face and, for the first time since knowing him, Tony felt as if Eddie did not know what to say. She felt stupid and small and pitiable, like her admission had somehow turned her vulnerable. But that was part of the process, she realized. 'Deprogramming' required vulnerability. She did not know Eddie Munson well, but she had an intuitive feeling that he was the only man in Hawkins who would not attempt to take advantage of her vulnerability.
"I've never had friends," she added in a rushed whisper, her lips parched and stiff. "I had 'family' on the Farm, but they weren't friends. We all just tolerated each other. When you came into my room, and I played my sounds for you, I kind of felt like you were a friend, or something close to it. And I've been thinking about that a lot, y'know, how good it felt to be able to connect without the fear of being-" she faltered. "Without worrying when the punch was going to land, I guess. Everything in this world is so fucking two-fold, but you're not. You're simple and easy and honest and-"
"Marianne-" he started. She raised her hand, stopping him, and shook her head.
"Marianne is the name that Andrea gave me," she said quickly, alarmed by how easy it was to thrust her secrets at him. She hadn't meant to do it, but there it was. "My real name is Antoinette. Antoinette 'Tony' Shields."
"Antoinette 'Tony' Shields," he repeated softly, acquainting himself with every syllable. She liked the way that he said her name: curious and pleased by the sound of it. "Tony. Yeah, yeah. I like it. It fits you."
"When you knew Andrea," Tony stuttered. "Did she - I mean, did she give you a new name, too?"
"Uh-huh," Eddie grunted distractedly. Something to his tone reminded her of a door struggling to close. The conversation had strayed into uncomfortable territory, but he was too polite to shut it down."She used to call me Thumper," he finally said.
"Thumper," Tony repeated incredulously, then chuckled. "Why Thumper?"
"Trust me, T - can I call you that? It's a long story. In fact…come on."
Eddie took her hand and guided her towards the back of the stage. One of the members of Corroded Coffin whistled as he led her towards a door and down a flight of stairs. At the end of the hall bedecked in posters and graffiti stood a door leading to a single bathroom. Eddie punched the door open, then stepped back with a bow as Tony walked inside.
"Welcome to my salle de bain," he said as he tugged the door shut behind them. "Reserved only for guests of high honor."
Tony looked around at the fogged-over mirror, the cracked toilet bereft of any water, and the cigarette-cherry-stained faucet. Years' worth of graffiti covered every inch of the wall: slurs written in red Sharpie, incomprehensible rambles of schizophrenic minds scribbled in pencils, peeling stickers of nude women and goat heads painted in purple. She had a feeling that several of the clumsy sketches belonged to Eddie.
He hopped up on the sink and cupped his hand around a joint. He lit it slowly, took a heavy drag, then passed it over to her. She took a moment to cherish her first hit as he coughed and thumped his chest. He didn't move away as she hopped onto the sink beside him and wedged her hands between her thighs, sitting so close to him that their thighs touched. There was a particular scent to Eddie - one that she couldn't describe but would remember forever. Moved by a strange sense of manic rebellion, she dropped her head onto his shoulder and passed the joint back to him. The opening was there: according to every erotic Playboy fantasy fic that she had read, the timing was perfect for them to ease into back-room bar sex. But she didn't want it just then. She wanted to sit with him in the ugly, flickering-light-lit bathroom and listen to him talk forever.
"Nineteen eighty-two," he started, then sucked the smoke back into his throat. "I had just turned seventeen. That's when Andrea found me."
"Are you sure you're ready to talk about this?" She interjected. He nodded, passed the joint back her way, then draped a heavy arm around her shoulders. "As ready as I'll ever be, sweetheart. Listen." He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the mirror. "It all started in a beach house in San Francisco, right there on the waters."