Sexy Pennywise x Reader

✧3✧

The floorboards creaked beneath your weight as you descended into the basement, taking each step with caution due to the surrounding darkness. Your flashlight was fixed a couple of feet ahead of you, though the circle of light began to flicker as you neared the bottom step, a dim buzzing joining the voices that lied in wait just beyond.

It sounded as if there were at least two of them, just a little louder than they had been when you'd first realized they originated from the basement. You could pick out words here and there now, spoken with no clear emotion or motive. "Death", "follow", "down", "pain", "clown". Upon thinking it over, the last word didn't seem to relate too well to the others, but you weren't about to question it. This situation made little sense to begin with.

Both your flickering light and the voices guided you to the center of the room, and that's when things became stranger. The minute you aimed your flashlight at the stone well, all the sound cut off. It wasn't as though it gradually diminished, or even as if the whispers suddenly ceased; it was as if, all of a sudden, you were experiencing a moment of complete deafness, your ears ringing in that way they do when confronted with absolute silence. You stood there for a moment or two, waiting for it to die down on its own, losing some of your focus in the process due to the resulting disorientation. As you slowly regained your sense of self, you took notice of the fresh substance trickling down the well's stone walls, same as the blood that had gotten smeared on your hands hours earlier. There was too much of it for this to be the result of some simple injury—no, there was absolutely no way you would have missed such a scene when you first cleaned up in here. Whoever had been harmed here, it had just happened.

You only barely resisted the urge to reach out and touch the liquid with your fingertips, as if you needed to make sure it was really there to begin with. As if you needed to feel the wetness and see it against your skin to know this was reality. Your reality. Instead, something else kept you from giving in. A new sound, soft and yet rough, the sound of something scratching stone. The sound of something from within the well, clawing its way up to the surface to confront you. You were utterly frozen in place, unable to turn your flashlight away from the structure before you or rip your gaze from the hands that were now reaching to grip the edge of the well, clutching stone with gloved fingertips.

Slowly, quietly, a head rose from behind these hands, a figure that appeared to be human and yet moved so abnormally, there was just no way it was any old person. That, and it did just come out of a well in your basement. Even more distinctive, as if there needed to be a cherry on top—it was a clown.

Its eyes were a piercing blue as they locked with yours, its painted lips slowly twisting upwards to reveal two buck teeth. Its expression lifted as it looked you over; or rather, it seemed to look into you.

"Well, what a pleasant surprise!" it—he? Announced then, his cheerful tone accompanied by the faint jingling of bells. You simply blinked in surprise, having been so involved in the strange array of visuals that you had hardly considered the possibility of being spoken to all of a sudden. Thankfully, he didn't seem intent on allowing you to respond just yet, and you likely wouldn't have been able to form the words if you tried. "I didn't think anyone else lived here! You must be new!"

In all honesty, the guy sounded way too chipper for the circumstances, but you wouldn't have expected much less from a clown. You found it odd, then, that he didn't seem to be flinching away from the stream of bright light aimed directly at his face; surely any ordinary person would be unable to stare so intensely back into the beam of a flashlight. "I just moved in," you found yourself responding, your lips operating on autopilot now. You made no attempts to move or adjust from your current position several feet from the well.

"Why, that would make us neighbors, wouldn't it?" the clown eagerly replied. "And neighbors oughta introduce themselves! I'm Pennywise, Pennywise the dancing clown!" His introduction was quickly followed by the soft jingling of bells, a little louder now thanks to his goofy mannerisms. "I've been alone for so long. Living down here in this well, all alone...you must've heard my calls. Expressions of my loneliness...you followed them down here, didn't you?"

There were about a million red flags going off here at the very least. As an adult, your reason was solid enough to dictate that this was very, very wrong. And yet, something about the entire thing was exciting; most people don't find suspicious, dirty clowns hiding in their basement wells. Though it was safe to say that most people didn't have basement wells to begin with...

"So you were here before me, then?" you asked, choosing to ignore the weirdly predatory dialogue revolving around Pennywise's supposed loneliness. "You live here?"

The clown's expression drooped a little, as if he was disappointed that you hadn't fallen for what was the basement-dwelling clown version of a pedophile offering a child candy. "Yes, I do," he confirmed, his head bobbing animatedly alongside his words, "I've lived here for a long time. There's a whole circus down here, y'see—all sorts of things, like popcorn, and cotton candy, and hot dogs...and lots of balloons. But it's no fun enjoying it all by myself."

"I find that hard to believe," you admitted, more than likely making it clear why Pennywise prefers preying on children rather than adults.

"No, no, it's true!" Pennywise insisted. "I can prove it, too! If you come here, I'll show ya."

You made no move to accept this offer. You weren't exactly eager to jump into a well at any time, let alone with an eccentric clown you'd just met. "No, thanks," you politely declined, raising one hand to accentuate your refusal. If anything, you were about ready to sleep this the fuck off and hope you had actually been hallucinating the whole time. Maybe you'd been dreaming since you first heard the whispers that led you down here. "I should actually be heading back to bed. It was nice meeting you, though."

There was a brief moment of silence shared between you and the clown thereafter, as if neither of you could properly process what was happening here. You had just been presented with a scenario that one might witness only in their greatest nightmares, and yet you were just too tired and confused to behave appropriately. Your parents had always said you struggled with expressing yourself. What were you supposed to do, anyways? This kind of thing wasn't taught in school.

"Oh, okay," the clown murmured after a second or two, appearing both disappointed and dumbfounded by this turn of events; however, he recovered quickly. "Well, I'll see you around then! I'm sure I won't feel so lonely anymore with you around. We can be the best of friends!" His smile returned with this statement, accompanied once again by a chorus of bells.

"Sure, maybe," you tiredly replied, too disoriented from this entire situation to think about it any longer. "See you around." You thought, at least for a moment, that the clown might not let you leave—that the minute you turned your flashlight away from him, he would crawl all the way out of the well and lunge at you with outstretched arms, intending to drag you back down with him. He didn't, however. You made your way up the stairs without intervention, only pausing once at the top step to shine your light back down into the basement with curiosity. When you did, you could see that the well was unoccupied now, devoid of the figure that had been looming there just moments prior. In fact, there appeared to be no trace of the blood previously running down the well's stone walls, either. Maybe it had all been in your mind after all.

You climbed back into bed and allowed your thoughts to melt away with your consciousness, still unsure if what you had just experienced had been real; it was something you intended to deal with in the morning. As you slipped into a deep slumber, you dreamt of sights and smells beyond your imagination, a circus located in the depths of an abandoned well.

Popcorn, cotton candy, and hot dogs.