mixtape (reddie)

Chapter 44

The hall echoes with rainfall, the melodic sound of water droplets dripping into the bottom of a metal bucket breaking the eerie silence every two to four seconds.

A melancholic mood grazes over the whole Denbrough household, the flickering lamps and drawn curtains only placing the cap on the glum atmosphere. Heavy thunder can be heard clapping outside, but Richie's ears are finely tuned to the humming that's floating down the hall, coming from the direction of the kitchen.

"Richie!" The humming comes to an abrupt stop, only replaced by a loud shout.

Richie's skin ices over, dread flooding in through him as if the leaky ceiling caved in to allow the flood to swallow him whole.

He stays silent, listening hard for the sound of footsteps coming to take him to the back office. That's where all the spankings were; her office. Sometimes, she would whack the ruler over a kid's hands in the living room, gathering the rest of the kids to watch. The humiliation was supposed to teach them a lesson, but after Richie's second public sentencing, he only become more of a recluse than before.

The footsteps don't come, no, Bill remains in the kitchen. He follows up his shouting by letting out "Do you want popcorn? We can stay in and watch movies!"

Zack is out of town and Sharon got called in to cover a shift at the hospital, leaving the boys alone on this dreary Saturday. Bill doesn't mind, he's been left home alone since he was about 14. Richie, however, seems to be antsy about the idea of Zack and Sharon being gone.

Richie won't say it, but Bill knows it has something to do with spending all those months in an empty house when they were just kids.

Richie feels like the dust in the air is settling in his lungs, clogging his airways and blocking off any oxygen to his brain. He's going to suffocate in this house, he can't sit and watch movies with Bill until Sharon comes home.

If Sharon comes home.

He is afraid she won't, he always is. He woke up before Bill this morning, carefully treading down the stairs. He's learned which ones creak by now, memorized the walking pattern to avoid disturbing the old house. Usually, Sharon will be up and making the boys some kind of breakfast that Richie picks at until she looks away and he can scrape it into the trash, but today, the kitchen curtains remained shut. No morning light was shining through, just a cloudy sky casting darkness into the lonely kitchen. She left a note explaining the situation, and Richie stood there, staring at her handwriting, convinced he would never see her again.

It's not that he's necessarily attached to them, he's still very apprehensive about their intentions. It seems way too good to be true, and good things just don't happen to people like Richie. At least, that's what he thinks. Richie stood there, staring at her handwriting scrawling out the nurse station phone number for the boys to call in case an emergency comes up, and he had convinced himself that she would never step foot in this house again.

Zack's out of town, it would be perfect. She leaves, abandons the boys, meets up with her husband so that they can make their hasty escape from the mistake they made. Richie is nothing but extra baggage in their lives, and he swore to himself that this note was them trying to get as far away from him as his own parents did.

Then Bill tumbled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and tussled hair. His pajamas hung low on his hips, a cut off shirt that definitely belongs to Beverly exposing Bill's midriff. Richie looked away, his mind instantly cultivating sinful thoughts of his friends in positions he shouldn't be thinking of. As Bill stood in front of the fridge and chugged orange juice straight from the carton, Richie beat his leg profusely for thinking such disgusting things.