Prologue / Time Flies When You're a Dead Girl
Retrograde, 2022

⠀⠀IT IS 2002 AND EDEN LOVELOCK IS BORN.

⠀⠀Delicate petal lids open to grassy irises in the heart of Hawkins, Indiana. The room is unnaturally cool and smells of disinfectant. There is a ringing in her ears, the persistent beeping of multiple monitors pinching her papery skin. She feels the prod of a rubber glove before the embrace of a mother.

⠀⠀Not that Mom had ever cared to offer one, regardless. The baby is ripped from her arms and she sinks deeper into the rickety hospital bed with tired limbs crossed; closed from her daughter in seconds upon her genesis.

⠀⠀Eden is blinded by the stark white beam of a small flashlight flicking across her features. Left, right, up, down. The scratch of ballpoint against cardboard.

⠀⠀"S'Looks normal to me, doc."

⠀⠀A hollow chuckle. Mom's fists ball up under the sheets.

⠀⠀There is a strange ache in the baby's olive branch bones. She does not cry; she cannot.

⠀⠀Curious, almost fearful, eyes cling to her every move... She does not belong to this world. They have known it from her very conception.

⠀⠀IT IS 2008 AND MOM AND DAD ARE FIGHTING.

⠀⠀Thursday nights are meant to be reserved for family dinner. Dad comes home late from work with his tie wrung loosely around his neck and smelling of cheap beer. Mom is screaming before he even reaches the dining table.

⠀⠀Eden keeps her head low - like all good girls are meant to do, Dad's told her - and begins to make out words in her alphabet soup.

⠀⠀M-A-D

⠀⠀"Where the hell have you been?!"

⠀⠀A heavy sigh. "Don't give me this shit right now, woman."

⠀⠀W-A-I-T

⠀⠀"I'll give you shit whenever I want to give you shit." Mom stands from her chair and pokes a finger into Dad's chest. "Our daughter's been eating that goddamn soup for hours, Tom."

⠀⠀"She's fine." A reassurance laced with warning. His eyes, the colour of muddied seaglass, bear holes into the small girl's head. "You're fine, aren't 'cha kid?"

⠀⠀H-E-L-P

⠀⠀Eden nods.

⠀⠀"She's miserable!"

⠀⠀"Maybe she wouldn't be if you treated her like a normal kid!"

⠀⠀L-O-V-E

⠀⠀"She's not a normal kid!" Mom hates her for it. "You and I both know that."

⠀⠀F-U-C-K

⠀⠀She learned that one from Dad.

⠀⠀"And whose fault is that, huh?" He grips Mom's blouse in his fist, "Fuckin' devil woman."

⠀⠀H-I-T

⠀⠀Calloused palm against hollow bone. Mom begins to wail.

⠀⠀"Landed the one fucking woman in East Indiana who just can't-"

⠀⠀H-I-T

⠀⠀"Keep-"

⠀⠀H-I-T

⠀⠀"Her-"

⠀⠀H-I-T

⠀⠀"Mouth-"

⠀⠀H-I-T

⠀⠀"Shut."

⠀⠀The final blow sends Mom against the hardwood table. It rocks with a loud creak and the bowl of alphabet soup soaks through Eden's pajamas.

⠀⠀The liquid is cold and jumbled letters stick to her front.

⠀⠀Mom is bruising and Dad is nowhere to be seen.

⠀⠀MAD. WAIT. HELP. LOVE. FUCK. HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT. HIT-

⠀⠀Eden does not sleep that night. She scrubs the stained carpet until her palms go raw.

⠀⠀Still, she does not cry.

⠀⠀IT IS 2011 AND DAD HAS LEFT.

⠀⠀Mom would be upset, had her soul not already been beaten out of its body. Instead, she is angry. Eden does not know how she is supposed to feel.

⠀⠀"This is all your fault!"

⠀⠀"I'm sorry, mommy."

⠀⠀She looks at Eden for the first time. Really looks at her; and shocks herself with the resemblance. Golden hair hanging to her shoulders in a curly nest, freckles painted on a rose-tinted canvas, pale pink lips permanently twisted into a frown.

⠀⠀Mom used to look like that too, before the world turned her ugly.

⠀⠀A shallow gasp - the one stark difference is her eyes. Almond shaped and deep emerald with specks of dirt and gold. They are her father's eyes.

⠀⠀Mom has not looked into them since.

⠀⠀IT IS 2015 AND EDEN LOVELOCK WAKES IN HER SLEEP.

⠀⠀She is in a town that looks like her home, feels like her home; but isn't all the same. There is no Mom. She rides bicycles with the neighborhood boys. She reads books and paints with the girl who lives down the road. She meets a boy and he teaches her how to swim. They dive headfirst into the lake at night and never care to come back up for air.

⠀⠀Her eyes peel open. She is back in her room and it all feels a distant memory. She tumbles to the dining room and tells Mom of her adventures.

⠀⠀Mom snaps.

⠀⠀"You never speak of this to anyone, you hear me?" Her eyes are stern and locked to the floor, "Or you're a dead girl."

⠀⠀"But-"

⠀⠀"Dead, I tell you!"

⠀⠀Eden swallows her words. "Yes, mommy."

⠀⠀"It's just a dream." Mom bites, "Go back into your room and don't even think about coming out 'til I say so."

⠀⠀"Yes, mommy."

⠀⠀Eden crawls beneath the sheets and spends every night for a year wishing on another dream.

⠀⠀It doesn't come.

⠀⠀IT IS 2019 AND EDEN LOVELOCK IS LOSING HOPE.

⠀⠀The days are colder and the nights darker. Memories of the past have slipped through her calloused fingertips.

⠀⠀Until she wakes, again, in the Other world.

⠀⠀She introduces herself to fragments of a distant past. It feels like it is for the first time, but there is something thumping in her bones that tells her it is not.

⠀⠀Every night is spent in the back seat of a plum-hued BMW, curled against the toughened chest of a highschool heartthrob. Her nails carve love letters into his skin and he finds an inexplicable solace between her thighs.

⠀⠀Eden feels an undeserving mortal in heaven; yet she is certain she would fight God tooth and nail to stay, even if it were only for five more minutes.

⠀⠀But God has never been so kind. She wakes to a harsh beam of light piercing through her curtains.

⠀⠀Again, she tumbles into the dining room and makes the mistake of telling her mother.

⠀⠀"What did I tell you last time, huh? You're a dead girl!"

⠀⠀Call it teenage angst, but Eden bites back. "I swear, Mom! It felt so real-"

⠀⠀"Are you not hearing me?" Mom's voice begins to shake, "It's just a dream, Eden!"

⠀⠀"It's real, I know it is!" She searches for the words, "I- I... I feel it in my bones!"

⠀⠀"Don't raise your fucking voice at me!" Open palm stings against Eden's cheekbone, "You have no idea what you're talking about."

⠀⠀"God, I'm not a kid anymore, Mom!" Her face burns, it hurts.

⠀⠀"It's a dream, Eden." Mom is looking right through her, "Say it."

⠀⠀"No."

⠀⠀Open palm turns to closed fist. Knuckles against olive branch bones. "Say it!"

⠀⠀"Mom!" Eden begins to turn purple.

⠀⠀Another. "Say it!"

⠀⠀A choked gasp. "I- It's just-"

⠀⠀And another. "Hm?"

⠀⠀"It's just a dream!"

⠀⠀Tears water the gold-speckled dirt of her eyes. But there are no seeds to be grown, and so they begin to flood.

⠀⠀Mom looks into them and can only see Dad. She hits harder.

⠀⠀"Again!"

⠀⠀"It's just a dream!"

⠀⠀And harder.

⠀⠀"It's just a dream!"

⠀⠀And harder.

⠀⠀"Mom, stop!"

⠀⠀Thud. A deafening silence.

⠀⠀Eden is unconscious and she hopes to never wake up.

⠀⠀IT IS 2021 AND EDEN LOVELOCK FEARS REST.

⠀⠀She cannot sleep; she does not let herself. Caffeine, alcohol, drugs from on and off the shelf... Anything to chase the weariness away. Do not close your eyes for more than two hours - or risk falling into the first REM cycle, and we can't have that - and no more than three times a day.

⠀⠀If you do not sleep, you do not dream. Simple as that.

⠀⠀...If only the Gods cared for simplicity.

⠀⠀She is thrown to gravel in the Other world. There is no recollection of the past, only an invisible thread coiled around her neck.

⠀⠀She is tied to this place. She can feel it.

⠀⠀A flashy mall has just been opened in the center of the town. She indulges in tooth-rotting candy. She buys coloring books and scribbles outside the lines. She listens to cheesy records and reads tear-jerking novels, all for the hell of it. Or, rather, the pursuit of a childhood her parents could never have afforded - nor cared enough - to give her.

⠀⠀There is a boy working at the ice cream shop who sneaks her vanilla sundaes soaked in strawberry syrup after hours. He watches her play dress-up in loud patterns and ridiculous stiletto heels. They buy slushies - one red, one blue - and sneak into the cinema until their tongues stain violet. They must have watched The Breakfast Club twentyfold.

⠀⠀"This feels like a dream." He kisses the words into her skin, "Almost like I can't tell if this - you - are real or not..." A pause, "And the funny thing is, I don't even think I want to find out."

⠀⠀Her eyes screw shut, "Yeah."

⠀⠀A gentle hand brushes the curls falling over her cheeks behind the shell of her ear.

⠀⠀"You feel so familiar... Like... Like-"

⠀⠀"Home?"

⠀⠀He smiles. "Yeah. You feel like home."

⠀⠀The screams rattling against her skull are sated to a soft whisper; quiet, but there nevertheless.

⠀⠀His thumb traces delicate patterns over the back of her hand. He is absentmindedly humming the theme to The Breakfast Club and, if only for a moment, the whispers cannot be heard.

⠀⠀At last, Eden allows herself rest.

⠀⠀It's just a dream. It's just a dream. It's just a dream.

⠀⠀She wakes the next morning and doesn't speak to Mom for months.

⠀⠀IT IS 2022 AND EDEN LOVELOCK IS TIRED.

⠀⠀She is tired of forgetting. She is tired of knowing, yet not knowing all the same. She is tired of her mother's hardened fists and thorny tongue. She is tired of Hawkins. She is tired of herself.

⠀⠀Frankly, she is tired of being tired.

⠀⠀Yet the cycle continues.

⠀⠀She wakes on the pavement of a world she recognises, but cannot remember. The invisible thread is stretched over her skin; only this time, it does not stop tightening.

⠀⠀Eden is suffocating. She can almost hear her bones weep into her blood.

⠀⠀It's just a dream.

⠀⠀But it does not hurt like a dream. It is visceral, it is raw, and she cannot breathe.

⠀⠀It's just a dream.

⠀⠀Tighter, tighter, tighter... until it snaps. Eden's knees scrape against the asphalt and she gasps for air.

⠀⠀It is not a fucking dream.

Note,
I know this is ridiculously long for a prologue, but justifiably so! (I hope). I just wanted you all to get a good idea of Eden's backstory and prior experiences before we get into the good stuff 😈 Plus, I just love Steve and Eden with everything in my little heart so you guys are just gonna have to deal with all the fluff.

Also, in case it wasn't made glaringly obvious already: Yes. Eden's memories of her 'dreams' are essentially wiped when she wakes up, so she's really only ever come back with a gut feeling that something has happened, she just doesn't know what. Same goes for Steve and everyone else she's interacted with from Past!Hawkins. There is, of course, a canon-related reason behind this, which is gonna be really fun to explore in later chapters!

(I will put this out there, though: This time will be the *fourth* experience Eden will have with the past... That number ringing any bells? 🫣)

RETROGRADE (2022)
© villainera