"You planned out a scrapyard showdown and didn't think to invite your friendly neighbourhood barbarian? I'm hurt."
☾
Before the vanishing of Will Byers, there was the strange case of Teresa Hopper.
After the strange case of Will Byers, there was the...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
October, 1984
Fall arrived with its warm colors and gentle breezes. As Teresa approached her one year anniversary of being set free once more, her sketchbook started getting thicker with inserts of odd drawings from the summer.
Ivy and all consuming greenery stretched over Hawkins, eating up at the sidewalks, buildings, and notable structures of the town both on paper and in her dreams. There were days she found it difficult to distinguish between the two, but as school started up again it became easier. The routine became easier.
In the middle of the night, the cabin was silent. She sat with her back to the window, the rising sun giving enough light for her to finish the sketch of her night. As the crudely sharpened pencil lay on its side, Teresa's middle finger rubbed at the graphite on the paper, giving the arcade a dark shadow. A six legged creature towered over the building in the background, it's head pointed like the xenomorph as she finished the details on its spider-like legs. The same image had been playing around in her head for days, but tonight was the first night she needed to go into detail.
She glanced at her watch on her makeshift nightstand, eyes catching onto the analogue face quickly, as if she could see perfectly well in the dark.
There wasn't long left until Jim would be awake. She might as well start getting up.
Dressed in her pair of jeans that surely have seen better days but which have become an identifying feature, a t-shirt advertising a movie from the last decade and an additional denim shirt over it, she padded out into the main area of the cabin. Putting on some coffee, she continued on as quietly as possible to let her father have a couple of extra minutes of sleep. She didn't need any of the other two to have sleepless nights as well as her.
She sat at the table, biting into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as she finished up her sketch. Although haunting, she found it easier to get it down onto paper to get it out of her head. She just had to hope her father wouldn't find that specific sketchbook. For a long time.
Sat with a cup of coffee, her unfinished peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the dark portrait of the arcade, Teresa waited for her family to wake. Pouring her father a coffee and handing him a bacon sandwich and an apple, she watched with a smile as he bid goodbye to her and El, before she did the same, and left for school. The sketchbook laying on the bottom of her bag, holding the waking nightmare of Will's previous evening.
───────
Teresa 'Reese' Hopper | Killer Queen | The Jailbird
