Complete Chaos

071

A month had passed since Vecna was destroyed.

The small town was trying their hardest to ignore what had happened. Many couldn't forget they didn't want to.

The community was broken. It wasn't the same after the event that occurred during spring break.

Many parents decided to leave Hawkins with their children thinking the town wasn't a safe place to have their kids grow up in.

Who could blame them?

They weren't sure what happened. They didn't truly know what caused all the destruction.

The town looked a bit better. Buildings were getting rebuilt, roads were getting fixed.

The Secret Ingredient was still standing; it only suffered minor destruction. All the windows were shattered, and because Julia was dealing with Vecna, she left her business unattended.

A few of the customers got mad and said they wouldn't buy from her again. It was a step back in her business and made her lose money she needed for her daughter.

At the end of the month of April, Julia focused on fixing her establishment and taking care of her daughter.

Steve went back to work with his dad while still working part-time in Family Video with Robin. Robin and Steve didn't get a lot of customers; no one was in the mood to watch movies. Most of the days were slow for them.

Julia, on the other hand, was getting new customers thanks to Steve promoting her business to the few customers who showed up wanting to rent a movie, and a handful of her old customers were coming back.

Julia was baking a lot. After resting her wrist for a few weeks, it was brand new. Her orders were getting done a little bit slower than usual, but she was able to have everything done in a reasonable amount of time.

Working again was great for her. It was a good distraction from what Vecna had done.

She barely slept. She was scared of closing her eyes and seeing Eddie's body.

There were nights when she even saw Vecna in her nightmares, killing her daughter. Those nightmares wouldn't let her go back to sleep.

She knew sleep wouldn't come easy for her on those nights; she would go downstairs and bake and work ahead on her orders.

The young woman had gone to work early in the morning.

Julia was cleaning her area. She didn't want customers to come in and see the mess.

She went to the back and threw what was trash inside the trash can.

While she was washing her hands, she used that time to check on Melody. She was sitting up, her back against the wall playing with her toy.

Julia smiled, seeing her daughter was happy. She dried her hands and threw the paper towel into the trash can. Seeing that Melody didn't need her at that moment, Julia went back to the front and right on time because the timer went off. Her cookies were ready.

She grabbed her oven mitts and put them on. The smell of fresh baked cookies was strong as she opened the oven door.

Julia smiled content with her work.

Carefully she took the cookies out of the oven. The chocolate chip cookies were almost in perfect shape. Julia began refilling the chocolate chip cookies. They were the customers favorite.

As she was placing them inside the display case glass from the corner of her eye, she saw something moving.

Her heart began to beat faster, not knowing what it was. She carefully grabbed the rectangle pan where the fresh cookies were a few minutes ago. It was going to be her weapon.