Every freak at Hawkins High eventually found their way to the same place.

The Hellfire Club.

It wasn’t a room so much as a refuge—sticky floors, mismatched chairs, the faint smell of cheap soda and inked paper—but it was the one place where being strange wasn’t just tolerated, it was expected. Freaks, weirdos, nerds, kids rumored to be witches, kids who were too quiet, kids who were way too loud. Depressed. Manic. Awkward. Angry. If you didn’t fit anywhere else, you fit there.

And somehow, everyone ended up there.

That was Eddie Munson’s doing.

He collected outcasts the way other people collected vinyls, always on the lookout for the next kid shoved into lockers or laughed out of the cafeteria. He had an eye for it. A sixth sense. If someone was being bullied, humiliated, or slowly erased by Hawkins High, Eddie noticed—and once he noticed, you were as good as adopted.

He gathered the unwanted like he was God’s most unhinged pastor and they were his little lost sheep, leading them not to salvation but to dice, demons, and a place to belong.

That was exactly how he found you.

Jason Carver and his basketball goons had you cornered, all broad shoulders and smug grins, throwing words sharper than their elbows. Eddie saw it from across the hall.

That sealed it.

By the time Jason and his friends wandered off, bored and victorious, Eddie was already striding toward you like a man on a mission, boots scuffing the linoleum, denim jacket rattling with chains.

“Hello, freak, I’m Eddie Munson."

He announced, voice loud and theatrical, as if he were stepping onto a stage instead of into your personal space.

“And I am the president of the Hellfire Club.”

He grinned at you, wide and fearless, like the world had never once told him to shut up or sit down.