𝐆𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃

𝕧𝕚𝕚. 𝕙𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕘

how can i begin to move on?/ the
wounds still have something to say
- Noor Shirazie

/

In the dream, Maggie Tozier is a princess. Not the locked-in-a-tower, fire-breathing dragon kind, but a princess nonetheless.

But that's not really a dream, is it? It's what she was, once upon a time just like in the storybooks Richie's never read. Margaret, Maggie, Mags - Richie hears stories even today from people who tell him that she flitted between three names as easily as a butterfly. Beloved daughter, pageant queen, golden girl, everybody's best friend. Even in its prime, Derry was always something of a wasteland, all dead leaves and sagging bodies in the late summer heat, and in the midst of it there she had been, shining and celestial. There had been so many people starving for that kind of girl, slavering like rabid dogs, bad men with good hands, crooked smiles, ugly thoughts who wanted to sink their teeth into her light. Richie supposes that her being consumed by one of them was inevitable.

In the dream Richie watches her fall in love with a wolf disguised as a prince, broad-shouldered and charming, who promises her the world with his hands on her hips. In the dream the princess believes him, if only because all she's ever wanted is to be adored like her mother before her. In the dream the wolf has teeth dripping with saliva. In the dream the wolf wears his father's face.

In the dream he's in the hallway of his house, and everything is the same except the walls are white instead of the ugly forest green they are now, and the photos hanging up and down the hall are ones he only knows from the messy stack of them in the back of his parents' closet. In the dream his mama is standing in the living room window, fingers tracing shapes against the frosted glass. She's singing to herself, softly, lips just barely moving with words Richie can't make out; she's heavily pregnant, and somehow Richie's dream-self knows that the child growing her belly is him, too, even as he stands here watching.

In the dream, Richie is within and without. (His dream-self knows that's a line he's heard before, but he can't put his finger on where. Something that Stan's said, maybe, or something overheard on the cusp of consciousness.)

In the dream he's thrust into the world in an abrupt burst of painful white light. In the dream his parents only stare down at him, unblinking, for a long time, as he gurgles and clenches his splotchy pink hands. In the dream they stare down at him until their eyes go black with disappointment and their faces turn blue and then gray and their skin peels away from their faces like the flesh of an apple and they rot and they rot and they rot.

"What about this one?"

Everything trembles suddenly, violently. Equal parts panicked and annoyed, Richie jerks up from where he started to doze in the cradle of his arms, leaving a puddle of drool on the worn dark wood of the library table. He blinks wearily as he comes to his senses, stomach lurching painfully just as the image of his parents in shades of dead and deader disappears entirely, and wipes at his mouth with his shirtsleeve. He shoots a glare at Beverly, who has just deliberately slammed a book down in front of him. She smiles back innocently, unrelenting.

"I hate you," Richie mutters.

"No, you don't."

Richie holds her gaze for maybe three seconds before he breaks. "Fair point," he concedes. His spine pops noisily as he leans over on his elbows to study the thick, worn paperback she's dropped onto the table.

They Thirst in dripping blood letters with the screaming subtitle THEY COME TO DEVOUR A CITY! Richie cackles.

"Think it's accurate?" Beverly asks, plopping down across from him. She turns to a random page near the middle and begins to read aloud. "'She thought she'd seen a face as white as gossamer and within it a pair of eyes that shone in the dark like a lowrider's headlights.'" She snickers, tongue between her teeth.