mental wounds not healing
life’s a bitter shame
i’m going off the rails on a crazy train [meet: eddie munson]
who’s that? oh it’s (EDWARD) EDDIE MUNSON. i hear they’re TWENTY-TWO and are known as THE FREAK around CHICAGO/HAWKINS TRAILER PARK. they’re also a EMPLOYEE/ (ASPIRING MUSICIAN) at ‘SHADY RECORDS’,. they’re known to be ENGAGING+HUMOROUS and MOODY+OVERBEARING. some people say they remind them of :
the smell of smoke, cologne and vanilla
browsing through a stack of vinyls and cassettes for half an hour until ou find the right one
the overwhelming expectations that come with being a ocietal outcast
a bandana in your back pocket, no matter what outfit you’re wearing
tw drug mention, death mention
what’s left to say about eddie ‘the freak’ munson - props to jason carver for the most inventive of nicknames - that hasn’t already been speculated aobut? the list goes as follows: freak, metalhead, trailer park trash, dungeon master, outcast, drug dealer, murder suspect, runaway, satan worshipper. miss anything?
after the dust settles, after that whacky fucking week, after chrissy's incident happened and he was on the run and in the ‘upside down’, fighting vecna - after all that has passed, after he’s cleared of all charges, he actually manages to army crawl his way towards that D in miss o’donnell’s and he graduates. two years late but hey, he got there. it’s like he predicted - eddie walks on stage, flips the principal the bird, snatches his diploma and runs like hell. the week after graduation his van leaves hawkins trailer park for the last time in a long time - eddie’s wasted no time.
;he drives around for a bit, settles in chicago. college is just ... not gonna be an option, but he’s got his music and a new band and he knows they’re going to take off, he just knows it. they play small venues but the crowd is bigger than in hawkins - fucking everything is bigger than hawkins, he thinks to himself - and even though he’s still labeled ‘weird’ and ‘freaky’ in chicago, there are just...a lot more weird, freaky people here than in hicksville indiana. so he’s not complaining. the opposite, actually.
still, they make a decent amount of money from their gigs but not enough to support themselves so eddie finally caves, takes that job at ‘shady records’. pay’s awful but his boss and co-workers are fucking angels and the people coming are never looking for belina carlisle or eddy huntington, no, they’re asking for the smiths and van halen and eddie’s face lights up everytime someone asks for his metal recommendations.
so, chicago is not what he expected but he’s making it work for him. he’s got a decent amount of friends there but ... eddie can’t deny he misses his hawkins friends. the hellfire club, the upside down gang. so he comes back every few weeks, checks in with his uncle and may mayfield, catches up with his friends. eddie’s not ‘officially’ the head of hellfire club anymore, in his absence he has passed his dungeon master duties on to the only worthy candidate, one will byers. but eddie still takes his time in chicago to plan some epic campaigns for when he pays hawkins a longer visit.
his boss has closed the store for the summer, taking the time to take a road tripe around the states, but he’s payed eddie in advance and hey, he’s not complaining, he’s packed his bags and drove back to hawkins to move back into his old room for the summer. a little apprehensive - staying in hawkins that long, that town always meant trouble. but mybe this time would be different.
he’s been back a couple of weeks now - and he’s still adjusting, because there are some things that one could do and say in chicago but....not in smalltown indiana. he’s back to being looked at funny and being called a ‘freak ‘ -though he has to say he sort of likes the attention, he doesn’t really stand out that much anymore in chicago - and no one’s asked him if he’s ‘flagging’ yet, which is a question he hears regularly but hey, he still keeps that bandana in his back pocket, just in case.
