✧✧✧

❝ may the flowers remind us why the rain was so necessary. ❞
—XAN OKU

I UNDOUBTEDLY suffered from a petrifying nightmare once I awoke to my torso drenched in pools of sweat and rosy cheeks stained with tears. My body felt numb—an almost hollow exoskeleton of decaying organs.

Richie was still asleep as I glared at the peaks of sunlight slicing through his ragged charcoal curtains. The fluorescents causing my eyes to twitch due to the hostile contact.

To say I was embarrassed was an understatement; I was absolutely mortified by what I'd had to expect from Richie's insults for the day.

I was not afraid of Richie; I was always afraid of him decoding the labyrinth to my buried insecurities and serving them to me upon a silver platter. The exposed part of my fear and pleading for him to sleep in the same room was an event he'd take advantage of once he grasped his opportunity, so I laid in his sheets – my exposed pale flesh of my arms and legs contrasting to the brightness – and tried to decipher a persuading story to discard his memory of the night before.

I was, however, still undeniably terrified of the voices denting my thoughts from the previous night. The blood-curdling chills imprinted upon my shoulder blades.

Absentmindedly, my torso began swaying as I was engulfed in shuddering and shaking. I bit the dented lines of my magenta lips as I suppressed a tsunami of tears, silently whimpering in agony.

I was overcome by acute nostalgia as I recalled events of my childhood; my father's timeworn features drowning me like an anchor from a ship.

It was a rare occasion for him to appear in my mind due to how much effort I mustered to block him out entirely, referring to him as though he had never existed.

I hadn't thought of him intentionally—his memory creeping up on me when I glanced at a rustic guitar that laid steadily against Richie's withering tawny dresser.

I recalled my dad playing music to my mom with his raspy voice drenched in oozes pain and the aromas of alcohol floating from him. The distinct image was fuzzy, but I still remembered his calloused hands coated in scars strumming to the acoustic guitar towards the strike of twilight.

I hadn't noticed Richie's curious gaze until he propped himself on his feet while I stayed laid down on his bed, my small curled fists using his thin blanket to relieve the chills.

"Stef," he groggily spoke, "are you okay?"

I didn't answer; I knew that if I spewed a single word I'd burst into a range of emotions and completely dissect the well-built walls of defense I had always managed to hide behind. So instead, I nodded silently, moving myself up to have my feet patter on the cold wooden floor.

I hadn't remembered taking my shoes off but found them lazily thrown by the door as I trailed behind Richie to the kitchen. I stared at the back of Richie's head skeptically.

Engulfed in silence, the atmosphere was thin and foreign for both Richie and I. There was never a moment where we didn't have anything to say to each other – despite it usually being an insult – but I guess I had few items to check off my bucket-list.

I sat at his small circular dining table, a bowl of corn flakes plopped in front of me. I silently took note of Richie's habit of masking his cereal in clumps of sugar as he placed his bowl across from me and took a seat.

He coughed lightly before breaking the barrier of silence in the room. "I just wanted to tell you—because I forgot to mention it yesterday, Bill said we were all meeting at the fair today."

"Today?" My timid voice croaked; the sound so bizarre that I had to keep my eyes glued to the swaying of the metal spoon in my bowl.

"Yeah, I don't know why but at least it'll be fun and shit, right?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know."

"Are you kidding me, Copperhead?" He asked sarcastically. "I'm gonna be there."

I couldn't help but snort weakly at his attempts of uplifting the atmosphere. I hated that son-of-a-bitch.

"Copperhead, I'm not gonna bring up last night," he announced, "I mean, it's not even the slightest bit interesting to bring up, Eddie begs me to sleep with him all the time."

I placed my bowl of cereal upon my bottom lip as I chugged down the milk, skimming him with irritated sea foam irises and a low growl.

"Not a morning person, are we?" He observed, timidly sipping the remains of his corn flakes while chuckling nervously.

✧✧✧

Maybe I repelled luck, or maybe I was paying for a sin I didn't remember committing, but I knew that there wasn't an explanation to why – for whatever reason – the universe found it purposeful to provide Richie Tozier with a voice.

He knew I was still spooked, so as he rode his bike next to me while I traveled by foot, coming up with scenarios explaining that whatever I had seen was a failed experiment from the government and I was either a) their first test subject or b) hallucinating from being under the same roof as his mother and her god-awful habits.

He also snuck in a few remarks about how my mom could've just done crack while being pregnant with me, but stopped once I offered to sock his treacherous face out.

Before I left Richie's, I practiced the tactic of facades so the losers wouldn't see how petrified I was, the clown's presence still lingering through my system as I shuddered.

It all seemed like my sadistic imagination; beds don't swallow children and tell them they're going to float. I wished that it was my lack of sleep playing tricks on me.

"—what if you were bitten by a radioactive spider and that was the beginning process of becoming spider-man?" Richie's voice interrupted my assertive thoughts.

I groaned. "Richie, your stupid comic books aren't real."

"You could also be the spider-girl from that alternative universe where Peter dies—" he continued to ramble about.

"Richie, please for heaven's sake," I cried, "shut your pot-hole."

He glared at me from behind his cracked rims of glasses. "Fine, but I was just offering moral support to your stupid disease, whatever it is."

"I don't have a disease, Richie."

"Clearly, it speaks for itself since you're seeing that creepy shit too, Copperhead," he concluded, riding in a circle around me as I stalked closer to the group of losers.

Eddie approached me with a handful of coins jingling in his small palm. "Do ya want a cone, Stef?"

"Sure Edward."

Eddie groaned, not bothering to correct me. "What flavor?"

"Strawberry, thanks," I said, a small smile etched upon my lips.

"No problem, strawberry."

My eyebrow perked upwards in confusion. "Strawberry?"

"Yeah, you like the flavor and your hair looks like one," he clarified, causing me to snicker.

We all stood in an abandoned alley as the losers were entranced in deep conversation. I stood in between Stanley and Beverly. Beverly sported a pretty red and ocean striped tank-top with denim shorts. I glared at my outfit of the same red polka-dot dress I had sticking to my grimly coated body. I wore it way too often.

They were scanning a new missing child poster that had been plastered over Betty Ripsom's. I heard small news of her disappearance but was surprised to see how quickly the town had discarded her, now in search of the next missing victim.

"I actually think it will end," Ben asserted, "for a while at least."

"What will?" I piped up curiously.

"The disappearances," Ben explained. "I did some research and charted out all the big events. The Ironworks Explosion in 1908, The Bradley Gang in '35 and the Black Spot in '62 and now kids being—"

"Abducted?" I asked as Bill winced. I regretted being so blunt as I watched his eyes meet the ground.

"Well, I realized that this stuff seems to happen every 27 years," Ben clarified as Bill mumbled the words '27' in unison with him.

"What the actual fuck," I cried, "you're telling me that this shit is actually real? What kind of drugs are you taking, Hanscom?"

"Stef, shut up," both Stan and Beverly nudged my feeble pale arms.

"Can we sit or something? This conversation is making me nauseous." I pleaded, causing the group to all start walking toward a wooden chartreuse bench by the Paul Bunyan statue, clowns simultaneously roaming the area as they handed out balloons to small children.

I studied the newfound member of the losers club—Mike. He seemed lost in thought as his features scrunched in a brooding expression and sweat slowly began spilling from his forehead due to the boiling sunshine.

I sauntered next to Stanley as we got closer to the bench. "Hi, Manley Stanley."

He raised his eyebrow curiously as he murmured, "hey, Stef."

"I don't want my ice-cream anymore, want it?" I offered, the half-eaten magenta scoop dripping to my wrist.

"You sure? You were all over it like it was your last meal of the century."

"I wouldn't advise sharing the same ice-cream cone," Eddie interjected, "Stef, you're cool an' all, but you still have millions of germs scattering around your tongue, I mean my mom was telling me this story about my aunt who—"

Stan interrupted him as he yanked the cone out of my grasp and licked a large portion of it, darting his eyes at a bewildered Eddie.

"Stan, that's revolting!" Eddie bellowed. "You're disgusting; I'm ashamed to share oxygen with you."

I rubbed my fingers across his face as he screamed, "I'm going to get acne!"

Stan and I chuckled in unison as we took a seat next to each other. Everyone sat on the bench facing Richie who was buried in his mind.

His eyes roamed between Stan and me curiously, a foreign set of features orchestrated upon his boyish face.

"So, let me get this straight," Eddie chimed, "it comes out from wherever to eat kids for like a year and then what, it just goes into hibernation?"

"Maybe it's like . . . what do you call it–" Stanley paused between his thoughts–"Cicadas, you know the bugs that come out every 17 years?"

Mike was broken from his assertive thoughts as he spoke up. "My grandfather thinks this town is cursed, he says that all the bad things that happen in this town are because of one thing."

"What do you mean?" I gulped aggressively.

"An evil thing that feeds off the people of Derry."

Stanley added. "But it can't be one thing, we all saw something different."

"Maybe . . ." Mike began as he rummaged through his thoughts. "Maybe it knows what scares us most and that's what we see."

"I saw a leper; it was like a walking infection," Eddie shuddered, recalling the event.

"But you didn't because it isn't real, none of this is," Stanley assessed the situation. "Not Eddie's leper, Bill seeing Georgie, Stef seeing a clown in the tree and in Bowers' car, or the women I keep seeing."

Richie's eyebrows rose up as a deviant smirk planted itself upon his pouted lips. "Is she hot?"

I glared at Richie, my foot pounding his toe harshly causing him to yelp in pain.

"Stop being a fucking dickhead for once, Tozier," I groaned toward the raven-haired boy who sat across from me growling.

Stanley's wobbly voice fled the atmosphere as his demeanor shifted from calm to fearful. "No Richie, she's not hot, her face is all . . . messed up."

I decided not to contribute last night's encounter due to the embarrassment that was equipped with sleeping at Richie's.

"None of this makes sense, they're all like bad dreams," Stanley suddenly croaked.

"I don't think so; I know the difference between a bad dream and real life, okay?" Mike appeared to be engulfed in haunting terror as well.

"What'd you see?" Eddie piped up curiously. "You saw something too?"

"Yes," Mike began nervously. "You guys know that burnt down house on Harris Avenue?"

We all nodded in unison as he continued. "I was inside when it burnt down. Before I was rescued m—my mom and dad were in the next room over from me, they were pushing and pounding on the door trying to get to me.

"But it was too hot when the firemen finally found them . . . t—the skin on their hands had melted down to the bone. "

"Holy shit," I sputtered.

"We're all afraid of something."

Mike's revelations made me slightly respect him, but also send pulsing fear to reverberate through me.

I sent him a reassuring smile for being brave enough to confide in us after such a traumatic event, causing him to smile at me slightly.

"Got that right," Richie muttered as he turned his attention the atmosphere of children running around.

"Why Rich, what are you afraid of?" Eddie questioned.

He adjusted the rim of his glasses – yet another habit he perceived – and turned his attention to a clown handing a balloon to a group of children, its peculiar smile sending electric chills down my spine.

"Clowns," was all Richie murmured as he glanced away from the sight behind him, eyes landing upon the piercing sunshine.

"Clowns?" I repeated, confused.

"Yeah, Copperhead," he clarified in an annoyed tone. "I wonder though, what are you afraid of?"

I felt the blood drain from my features as I remembered the conversation I shared with him about my biggest fear. My heart contracted painfully in nervousness as I gnawed on my bottom lip aggressively.

"Leave her alone, Rich," Stanley spewed toward him.

"What are you, her knight in shining armor?" Richie chuckled dryly.

"Richie, cut it out," Stanley fumed.

"Afraid that I'll hurt your little girlfriend's feelings, Stan?"

"Beep-beep, R-Richie," Bill hissed.

"What the hell are you going on about?" The blonde boy pondered his friend assertively.

"It's not like you even know her, I mean you weren't there when she—" he began rambling but paused mid-thought— "you know what, never mind."

Richie groaned as he hopped on his bike, vanishing from the scene as we all got caught in his labyrinth of confusion.

✧✧✧

[ I wrote this while listening to Fallingforyou, I'm emo now. ]

I know I have a playlist chapter, but I want to add a special chapter for Richie and Stef to have a mix tape??? also,, I wish I could do a Q&A, but I might save that till the end just because I have a lot of ghost readers lol.

PS THIS WAS WRITTEN AT 4:49 KSKSKSJSJD