Coward • Eddie Munson

Introduction

In a quiet little place on the east coast of Maine, there was a town.

Despite the fact it was rumored to be cursed, the little community grew and grew until eventually, those rumors became hollow.

This town was the very town you grew up in. From having your diapers changed to riding around on a rusted hunk of metal on wheels with a group of outcasts, it never seemed to change.

Happy memories or not, everything made you who you are today.

And it's name was Derry.

Derry was a place full of legends and myths, but one stood out from the rest: the legend of a parallel universe called 'The Rightside Up'.

At first it was believed to have been a folk tale that originated in the early years of Derry when strange disappearances began. Mainly these tales were created to give the community hope in surviving through harsh times and ignore the constant vanishings of their people.

These unnatural events had a periodic take to them; they happened every 27 years.

But the schedule had a shift on 1979, the 27 year mark hadn't been hit yet. The disappearances launched way sooner then planned- and the trigger? Unknown.

Even with a highly unbelievable situation at hand, you had a group of friends to help you make sense of it, and that same batch of strays assisted in defeating a certain evil to save a fucked up town.

Regardless of the circumstances being resolved, you discovered things about yourself and the possibility of other worlds that were meant to stay secret.

And that was why you left. If you had stayed it could've happened all over again.

Although, the next place you were moving to wasn't much different. It was also said to be cursed.

Hawkins, Indiana: the town where a boy mysteriously went missing as well as came back from the dead, the town where a small lab was allegedly experimenting illegally.

This was nothing short of what you had experienced before. Even so, you thought nothing of it. It could've just been a coincidence after all. Nothing had happened yet.

Summer had just ended for you and leaving your home town was the hardest thing for you to do. Especially after everything that happened back in Derry. Saying goodbye to your friends honestly felt like a knife through the chest.

You were gonna miss them for sure.

.
.
.
• September 1, 1981 •
3 years after IT

This year wasn't going to be much better then the last. That's something you always told yourself after going into a new semester of school with the same mindset of: 'I don't want to fucking be here.'

Hell, if you had actually made friends these past few years maybe you would actually look forward to school like how it was with your old friend group. Or maybe not, the work just keeps getting harder.

Walking into class was the worst part of your day specifically because everyone was so obnoxious and loud. It would take you a couple prayers before the voices in your head telling you to just drop out of school would stop.

One would say you're lucky because you sat in front of the 'hottest kid in school' but, you never thought anything akin to that.

Besides Jason Carver being the most insufferable little douche you had ever met, you only put up with him because you found his girlfriend to be a cheerful person.