#mungroveweek

You guys voted for your favorite prompts, we regrouped some of them and put them under umbrella themes we hope will inspire you all! Find out more about the themes under the cut!

Mungrove Week - Day 1: Out of The Upside Down

A Mini Ficlet About Cheating Death Part 1 of 2 (Also on AO3, here!)

The Death Year Curse strikes few, poor unlucky souls with the year of a their death written on their wrist. No one knows what triggers it, but some say it’s divine punishment for something shameful the parent or parents of the child have done. It almost always strikes the first born sons - how biblical. There must be some truth to it, because Billy’s death year emerges on his wrist the same year his mother leaves.

1985.

Billy was terrified of death as a child. The agony of dying. The unknown. 1985. He would be 18 in 1985. He would die in 1985. The thought of how it would happen plagued him for a while, but in his mother’s absence he grew so used to pain that death almost felt like a reprieve. A dream. He began courting death. Drinking. Driving fast. Smoking excessively. Snapping back at his father to welcome a beating…

After all, he wasn’t going to die yet.

There was still a part of Billy that fought the curse. He was stubborn like that. He tried in school. Worked multiple jobs, you know - just in case? Maybe he survives this stupid thing and what would surviving get him if he had no plans to live? Christ. Both life and death looked bleak for Billy, but he persisted.

Billy could not possibly predict the way in which he was going to go. Who could? He didn’t know why he fought so hard against it, despite knowing deep in his heart that this was the way it was going to end. Perhaps it was his one last attempt to defy fate. To not be controlled. The monster’s sharp tendrils pierced his sides, soaking his clothes in blood. The pain was unreal, but it would be over soon.

.

Eddie got his curse the year his parents got arrested, and his uncle took him in. When Eddie innocently asked what it was, Wayne didn’t know what to say but he figured that honesty was the best policy. After all, people would talk and they did talk. They said his parents must have made a deal with the devil. That Eddie was destined for “hellfire,” but Wayne always assured he did nothing wrong.

1986.

Eddie decided he wasn’t going to let that stop him from living it up while he still could. He was here to have a good time, not here for a long time. He slacked off in school so he could enjoy the finer things in life. B Movies. Comics. Dungeons and Dragons. Metal. Of course, there was the recreational drugs and alcohol, too - what could it hurt?

After all, he wasn’t going to die yet.

Thinking about death… he tried not to do it, but hearing about the mall fire a year before did keep him up at night occasionally. What a terrible way to go. Eddie had always hoped he died easy, but in a cool way. Like getting electrocuted by his electric guitar by accident or something. That seemed rad. Eddie avoided conflict in the meantime, and took it easy. He didn’t care if it made him a coward.

Never could he have imagined inter dimensional bats ripping into him. He chuckled a bit to himself as the blood filled his mouth. Yeah, what a terrible way to go. Ah, well. At least he was able to save his friends some time? Hopefully? It’s not like he would be alive to see it, and that’s perhaps the part that sucked the most about all of this.

.

Everything was dark for a while, like being asleep without dreaming. Then Eddie awoke. Everything looked the same as Hawkins, but wrong. Cursed. Strange. The woods around him were dark with creepy, crawling creatures of the Upside Down all about him but they didn’t do much of anything to him. Didn’t acknowledge him. It was like he was… dead to them.

“Welcome to hell”

Eddie sat up with a jolt upon hearing the voice.

The Billy Hargrove of Starcourt Mall Fire Legend held out his hand to help Eddie up. He looked like a ghost, all pale with dried blood on his clothes. He didn’t seem real until Eddie took his hand. Solid.

“Am I?”

“Dead? Yeah,” Billy replied, without much decorum.

“Shit,” Eddie ran his hands over his own shirt, checking his wounds. Nothing was there. It was if he was never mauled by dozens of demobats. “Holy - this is, what? You-You’ve been dead for almost a year! You been here this entire time?”

“In hell?” A painful look flashed across Billy’s face, “Yeah, I guess.”

Damn. It felt like an eternity had passed. Billy was starting to go crazy with no people around. He hated that. The neediness he felt despite being, well, dead. When he imagined hell, he thought of endless suffering. Fire and brimstone. Devils poking him with spears. This was like that in a way. The endless suffering part, except the suffering was mostly the solitude, and there were the strange creatures…

How could it not be hell?

“Dude,” Eddie huffed, looking around them and patting the dust off his jeans, “this isn’t hell.”

Billy frowned.

Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Eddie Munson Characters: Billy Hargrove, Eddie Munson Additional Tags: Looney Tunes References, Billy Hargrove Lives, Eddie Munson Lives, Well Depending on Your Definition of "Lives", Certainly They Are Walking Talking Fighting Crime, In the Upside-Down Tho, On Account of Their Bods Being Toast, Might Find a Way to Reverse That, For Now I Just Want Them to Rig Vecna w/ Dynamite and Smash Him w/ Anvils from the Sky, Eddie Munson in the Upside Down, Billy Hargrove in the Upside Down Summary:

Eddie wakes up in the Upside-Down and is promptly ushered into Billy Hargrove's manhole.

Mungrove Week 2023 Masterpost

First of all, thanks to everyone who participated, and congratulations! 🥰💜

Tumblr wouldn't let us compile all the masterlists into one post easily, so here are the links to each masterlist:

Day 1 - April 9: South of Heaven - Slayer

Day 2 - April 10: Let Me Put My Love Into You - AC/DC

Day 3 - April 11: Rock You like a Hurricane - Scorpions

Day 4 - April 12: Heading Out to the Highway - Judas Priest

Day 5 - April 13: I Was Made For Lovin' You - KISS

Day 6 - April 14: The Thing That Should Not Be - Metallica

Day 7 - April 15: Ace of Spades - Motörhead

You can also find all the art pieces and fics created for each day in this document, both the masterlists and the document will be updated until May 15, 2023, so if you couldn't finish your work, don't worry, you still have time!

Are you guys ready for the most metal week of all time? That's right, Mungrove Week 2023 will be running from April 9 to April 15, 2023! 🦇

Prompt Voting is open!

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There will be two categories of prompts for the event week: Themes prompts and Picture prompts as an alternate set.