CHAPTER ZERO ━━━ YOUR FUNERAL MY TRIAL
( Stranger Things, Season Four )

warnings:  depictions drug use (cocaine),
blood, and gore.

Late November '85

BLOOD DRIPPED DOWN onto the muddy toecap of Sam's Chuck-Taylors. For several grueling minutes he has been nursing a nosebleed with an egregious amount of tissues. It's hard to mover around with the heavy cast on his arm. He didn't notice his nose was bleeding till he saw a splotch of blood on it. A soft hum fills the trailer's compact bathroom and there perched on top of the sink's counter was her. She was humming the same haunting tune that typically announced her arrival. Sam should be accustomed to his mother's macabre appearance but it was meaningless. Lorelai Munson's porcelain skin has turned a caliginous grey. Her tawny-colored eyes were now milky white, her once ivory burial gown was threadbare and caked with dirt. Each time she visited Sam she was worse for wear; a bona fide Deadite in the flesh.

He glances down to the blood-stained paper evidence in his hand. Eddie isn't dumb. There'd be an interrogation both sides of good cop-bad cop performed by his brother. Soon Eddie would be flashing a lamplight in his face. Sam knows he needs to put an end to his little "faux pas" but he can't let it go. The moment he stepped foot off of on Reefer Rick's porch it knew it wouldn't be last time. No matter how many times he told himself: the last time would be the last time. For the past few months the drug had been a solution to his hopefully temporary situation of possible insanity. Sam's predicament was unusual sure. He'd seen a lot of stranger things in Hawkins ever since Will Byers went missing. Yet, seeing the ghost of his mother was by far more than abnormal.

Taking light steps, Sam maneuvers his way past his mother knees to reach the toilet. The bathroom was boxy and there was only enough room to move back and forth to the shower and out the door. His body sticks close to the wall and he tiptoes past his mother. She's a ghost (or a hallucination Sam doesn't really know) but he really doesn't like to get close to her. The last time he was this close to his mother's body had definitely been her funeral. Even though Sam wishes he could somehow merge his body with the wall become invisible from his mother's line of sight, her head snaps towards him the second Sam's unburdened hand brushes the skin of her knee (whatever is left of it anyway). The sound of each vertebra crack reverberates against the bathroom's plywood walls.

"Saaaamuel," she whispers accentuating the vowels of his name as a slow smile begins to pervade her features.

On a normal day, Sam's mother never speaks. She's hums, stares, and torments him from afar with her presence. Today she's speaking to him. Is that what her voice sounds like? Sam thinks. He can't remember the inflections of mother's voice. He can't even remember the last time he spoke to her. Sam has been staring ahead looking at the titled walls of the shower. He closes his eyes and breathes in. Sam wants to look at her. He wants to hear her say something to him. Anything. So much like a dog and its owner Sam listens to the call of his voice forcing himself to look at his mother.

The sight of her leaves an unsettling feeling in Sam's stomach.  She's dead. That much is obvious. His mother picks her arm up and her hand stretches out towards him. Sam winces at the movement. She's practically inches away from him now. The skeletal bones of her fingers are peeking through her skin and somehow her apple red nails were still hanging on. Sam makes no sudden movement. She leans in towards Sam and suddenly the pad of her thumb is touching the skin above his upper lip. "You have..." she drifts off with her thumb wiping back and forth against Sam's skin. Sam doesn't find it comforting as it's such a motherly thing to do—wiping your child's face.

Sam hates it.

"Blood."

Sam recoils from his mother's touch lurching forward to take a step back to put space between them. The back of his heels hit the bottom of the shower door. Her blank eyes are trained on him and a wave of nausea overcomes Sam. He's been in a multitude of worse situations. Life and death situations. But his mother, dead to be exact, had come for him. To haunt him? To drive him insane? He doesn't know. Sam hurriedly takes the tissues in his hand to wipe the remnants of the blood on face.

Sam wanted to be strong enough to not reach into the emergency stash of drugs in his pocket. Turns out he's really not strong enough. He reaches into the inside of his jeans pocket feels for what should be inside. He pulls out a small plastic bag filled with white powder.

He tosses the tissues into the toilet in order to use both hands to meticulously open the bag. He makes one hand into a fist and quickly realizes he can't use his other backhand. He hurriedly leans down puts the toilet seat down. He pours out all the contents of it on top and holds one nostril with his free hand to lean down and inhale. Sam winces, coughs, and breathes in through his mouth and out slowly through his nose.

Maybe it was too much.

Sam never does the whole bag. Usually he takes a diminutive amount of the drug like Rick taught him. He's exhausted from everything. From school, his friends, Hawkins itself, and his dead mother especially. Sam needs to get up and hide away somewhere before Eddie comes home. He has to be somewhat functioning for Eddie. Sam knows his brother is worried but he's got it figured out. The ghost of their mother will eventually go away and Sam will be normal. Sane even. He'll be the old Sam again (it's what everyone wants anyway).

He slides his back down the shower door till he reaches the floorboards and is eye to eye with the toilet seat. Looking up where his mother sat on the sink's counter Sam thought for a split second he saw her. Alive. No longer decaying. The lights flicker in the bathroom and she's gone. As if she was never even there.

🕰️

SAM WOKE UP TO COLD water running down his body. He squints his eyes to see his brother standing in front of the shower's open doorway. His jacket was shrugged off thrown on the floor of the restroom, alongside his jeans, and his blood-stained converses. All Sam was left in was a t-shirt he stole from Eddie's closet, his boxers, a plastic bag covering his cast, and his socks. He blinks a few more times realizing he's sitting on the floor of shower. Sam drags himself away from the stream of water with his unbroken arm to get a better look at his brother.

"What—" Sam begins to croaks out.

"Shut up!" Eddie hisses.

He kneels over Sam's body to shut the water off and it stops with a loud creak that makes the younger Munson flinch. "I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are!" He yells frustratedly. Sam can see the pin prick of tears in the corner of his Eddie's eyes.

Fuck, he knows.

He never planned on any one finding out. Sam didn't mean for it to get this far. Eddie was never meant to find out he—

"Yeah. I fucking know Sam," Eddie turns to grab something from the sink's counter and holds up the tiny and very empty plastic bag in with his fingers. Sam blanches when Eddie waves it in front of Sam's face before he drops it.

"This is a hard drug. Weed is fine. Fuck. I wouldn't have cared if you bought weed from Rick. Sure, I'd be peeved because you could have come to me! Your brother. But here we are!" Eddie berates. His attention is on Sam like there should be some grand explanation for this. This isn't Sam. This isn't like him. Eddie knows this. Before Sam can even attempt to try to get back up on his two feet Eddie opens his mouth.

"Really, Sam? Who the fuck are you?" The words that come out of Eddie make Sam lose his breath. There's only the thrashing sound of leftover droplets hitting the plastic bag covering his cast and Eddie's heavy breathing like he was on the verge of a break down.

"I-...I'm your brother," Sam says. "I'll stop. Eddie, I promise. This– This was suppose to be temporary—"

An abrupt laugh startles Sam and realizes Eddie was laughing at him. Sam's hand reaches for the shower's grab bar and he grips it to haul himself up. The laugh stops and Eddie hand is on top Sam's and he leans down so face to face with him.

"You're not my brother. I don't even know who you are anymore," Eddie seethes as he grips Sam's free arm and helps to haul him to feet. Sam's winces as he's being hauled up. He feels weak. Small even. Eddie towers over him somehow when Eddie is one inch taller. Sam puts a trembling hand on to Eddie's shoulder to steady himself. He desperately trying not to tremble but with the cold shower he was given and the thirty degree weather outside it's hard not to.

"How were you paying for this?" Eddie suddenly asks.

"I—"

"Did you believe you were getting some sort of free trial? A test run?" He grips Sam by the shoulder to ensure he doesn't slip.

"No, Rick said—"

"Oh, 'Rick said.' He said what? That it was free every first time!" Eddie yells. "How many first times did you go to him?"

"I...I don't know," Sam whispers.

"Jesus Christ. You're never going back there. You were half-way dead. You know that?" He takes Sam by his upper arm forcefully. "Some mess you've made and dragged me into."

"Eddie, please. I—"

His grip tightens as he reaches for a towel from the upper bathroom cabinet wrapping it around his brother's shoulders. "Do not even speak right now. You know it's a good thing Wayne's schedule isn't due to change till next week. Or 'else he would have been the one to find you like this."

 
A/N:         this chapter was a lot imo...i had chapter one prepared before this one so it was a difficult to write. i actually had to change a lot of stuff because i forgot the timeline and realized sam most definitely has a cast on his arm here...

( your funeral my trial by nick cave & the bad seeds )