Richie Tozier Gets A Sad Surprise
________________________
Derry, Maine - 1992
3 years after IT
_________

It was a late Friday night. The streets were quiet apart from the pitter patter of rain that was continuously falling, and had been falling for the entire day. It was around 8 O'clock that night, and a 16 year old Richie Tozier was boredly reading through an old looking chemistry notebook, much to his own dismay.

The dark haired male hadn't changed much over the past 3 years. He, of course, had gotten much taller, and had the occasional spray of acne across his otherwise pale and freckled cheeks. He was still a thin male, not that he didn't eat enough. Rather, he ate lots when he got the chance. Usually not at home, though. It was his metabolism that stopped him from gaining much weight, from years of not eating much at all.
Apart from his physical appearance, there were other changes in the Tozier boy. His old, thick rimmed glasses were still worn every day, although they now had gained many tape repairs through the years as they had been stepped on, dropped or even sat on many times. Richie's sense of humour seemed to stay exactly the same, or rather just get more raunchy over the years. He did, though, gain the ability to usually know when a joke is taken too far. So, being beeped wasn't a regular occurrence anymore. Although it still happened, usually when Richie got anxious and tried to joke to hide it.

Currently, the teen was sitting on the floor of Stanley Uris' bedroom as the duo had been paired up for Chemistry, much to Stanley's dismay.
The Jewish boy had to bribe Richie to come over to study for the weekend, since otherwise, he would have been left to his own devices to worry and stress while Richie did god knows what. Honestly, Stanley would have preferred to do that, if only to not have to deal with Richie getting distracted so often.

See, Richie never studied but somehow managed to get high grades — A's and B's — but he couldn't sit still for the life of him without fidgeting. It had gotten to the point where the other losers figured he had some type of undiagnosed ADHD, and they weren't wrong.

Stanley, being the over-achiever he naturally is, brought it upon himself to try to help Richie practice focusing more. Even if it meant spending the whole weekend studying with said annoying male. The studying had come to a halt after a while, due to both boys feeling tired, and Richie complaining of having a headache from all the reading.

"Stan, dude. This is givin me a headache. Now I understand why you're always so annoyed. It's cause you always have a headache."

"No, I'm just annoyed usually because you never stop talking. My parents will kill me if we stay up any longer, let's go to sleep."

And with that, the two males got into bed, Stanley being comfortably in his own bed, while Richie just curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor, and were now falling asleep.

An hour or so later and Stanley was stirring in his sleep, sweating profusely and obviously having a nightmare.
His stirring and panicking had caused Richie to wake up — confused and half asleep — but by the time he managed to wake up enough to realise what was going on, Stanley had already woken himself up and things seemed to have calmed down.

"Stan, you okay?"

"Yeah- I uh.. I'm fine. Just had a bad dream. About- It.." The Uris boy seemed to shudder, as he recounted what his nightmare was about, and had already began to slowly get up out of bed, wiping some cold sweat off his forehead with his pyjama sleeve.

"Shit dude. Where you going, now?" Richie asked curiously, moving around somewhat in his sleeping bag, trying to figure out if he should get up or not, but also trying to find his glasses that he always seemed to misplace.

"I'm just... Going to go have a bath. It should calm me down. You wait here."

And with that, Stanley left the room, and headed straight to the bathroom. Richie did exactly what he was told, even though his friends' tone unsettled him a lot, and stayed in the room, eventually deciding to try to get back to sleep. That didn't work, and the brunette ended up staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours, stomach churning in a way that made Richie feel like something was desperately wrong. Eventually, he decided to check the time since it really had felt like hours had passed since Stanley left the room, and he was getting really worried.
Richie managed to squirm out of his sleeping bag and get a good look at Stanley's alarm clock that was placed neatly on his bedside table.

12:10 AM.

Stanley had been gone for a long time, and Richie concluded he may have fallen asleep in the bath, so he moved to leave the room, down the hall and over to the bathroom. Once the wooden door was infront of him, Richie knocked lightly and called out, "Stan?" No reply, not even after waiting a few seconds. So, he knocked and called out again, "Stan? You in there?"

Still no answer, and Richie finally started panicking. See, Richie, surprisingly, was one of the only people who knew about the effects that It had on Stanley. He knew about the times Stanley had called him up late at night crying and saying he needed someone to talk to or that he messed up — although, Richie was never told exactly the extent of the effects it had on Stanley, He had a bit of a grasp on it from what he'd been told and his own experiences, and now it was starting to connect in his mind and he didn't like the thoughts that were happening.

He hoped he was wrong.

He attempted to open the door, but it was locked. That didn't stop him from trying to open it still, as he frantically called out, "Stanley? Dude, if you're playing a prank on me I swear- it's not funny." When his attempts at prying the door open failed, Richie decided to use whatever weight he did have to try and break the door open. luckily, the door was dodgy and old, and broke right open once Richie shoulder barged it. After a short celebration of getting the door open, Richie finally noticed the scene in the bathroom.

His celebrating stopped immediately.

Before him, in the bathtub — with water that had been turned the slightest tint of pinkish-red — was his friend, Stanley.

Stanley Uris laid before him, his head lulled back over the edge of the tub lifelessly. There was no way Stanley was 'just sleeping'. Behind cracked lenses, Richie's blue eyes trailed over to Stanley's arm that was laying neatly over the side of the tub, dripping red onto the white tiles below.

He saw the cuts; dozens down Stanley's forearm, from the beginning of his wrist, all the way up to his inner elbow, and then one long cut going up across the smaller slashes. Richie couldn't tell exactly how many there were, since the blood covered most of it, and he couldn't bring himself to even try to count. But the next thing he noticed was the Gillette razor blades spread nearly across the bathtub, next to Stanley's shredded up arm.

Of course the male was in shock. He couldn't find his voice to scream, or call out to someone — anyone — not until he saw the wall.

On the tiled wall, just beside Stanley's lifeless body, was a very haunting image.

IT was written messily, with... Blood? That was definitely blood. Of course, at the end of the T, it seemed to slide off, as if Stanley had lost consciousness as he wrote it.

That's when Richie let out a blood curdling scream, and backed quickly out of the bathroom, his heart in his throat, and on the verge of having a panic attack. As soon as he backed out of the bathroom, the sixteen year old couldn't hold it back anymore and threw up, right in the middle of the hallway. Fear always made him throw up. He wound up curling into a ball, knees pulled up to his chest, sobbing in the hallway just outside the bathroom until the Uris parents came bustling down the hall to see what Richie's commotion was about.