now that the danger in hawkins was back to zero, jim was able to finally sleep a whole three hours, which is more than the last couple of days. nightmares about vines and demodogs and bob kept him up all night, but thankfully ( or at least hopefully ) jane didn’t catch on. he would merely get out of bed and sit on the porch, smoking god knows how many cigarettes to calm his nerves. the danger was gone. so why did he still feel the hairs on his neck standing up? despite all this, he planned on just staying up through the night. but no. he fell back asleep at six in the morning, planning on waking back up in an hour. until he wakes with a jolt and realizes the sun has been up for quite some time––and he needs to get moving. “ shiiiiiit–– ”
he’s at the station within the hour, and by the time he walks into the door, flo is already handing him a folder of paperwork and telling him the agenda while he walks through the office, grabbing his coffee. “ oh, and joyce keeps calling, ” flo says and it gets him to stop. “ keeps? multiple times? ” flo merely nods and hands him his keys back and takes the folder as well, unamused. “ shit. shit, shit, shit, shit–– ” and he’s right back out the door. “ married life suits him well, ” powell notes from behind his newspaper. “ wait. they’re married?? when did that–– ” flo comes from behind and whacks him with another newspaper. “ ––ow! it was just a question! ”
now, as chief of police, jim doesn’t usually turn his sirens on just to bypass traffic. usually. but if joyce kept calling, it must have been important. bags under his eyes and throbbing pain on the right of his head have him speeding like there’s no tomorrow to the byers household. and when he gets there––oh she looks pissed.
but…..beautiful. jim shakes the thought from his head as he parks. “ i know––i know, joyce. ” he grimaces as he steps out of the car and the throbbing turns to pounding. thank god for sunglasses. “ what happened, is will okay? ”
She understands that sometimes she can just be a little dramatic with these things, but she doesn’t really feel that her reactions are that outrageous -- especially when involving carcasses in her kitchen. Any normal person would be absolutely outraged; Joyce is the only one hard-headed enough to actually act. Honestly she could have gone a little easier on Hop this morning; after all, he’s one of the few people in Hawkins who does take her seriously, for the most part. It took him a lot of convincing to believe her, but as parents they’ve both been dragged through very similar hells.
He wouldn’t be here so soon, and so early if he didn’t care. And yeah, she notices that . . . but she’s a little bit preoccupied with this whole demodog situation.
“ Will’s fine, ” she manages to spit out, clearly overstressed at this point. “ It’s nothing like that, but . . . I need help. I don’t know what to do about this -- ” With that, Joyce is storming back inside; plain to see that the place is still fairly disheveled, perhaps even more so with what’s been transpiring this morning.
A direct beeline to the kitchen can be easily traced by the distinct odor coming from it. It nearly hits you in the face when approaching the refrigerator, and Joyce has to cover her nose at this point because her stomach is really starting to churn again. She’s shoved the table and chairs to the opposite side, and it’s a good thing, as a distinct pool of liquid seems to be spilling from the fridge’s door and all over the linoleum. She doesn’t even want to open it herself this time. “ I think it’s dead -- I don’t know how the hell it got in there. ”
