𝐆𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃

𝕧𝕚𝕚𝕚. 𝕤𝕦𝕔𝕜 𝕚𝕥 𝕦𝕡, 𝕓𝕦𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕔𝕦𝕡

Precious little boy with a heart of gold/ He's
gonna hold you 'til your blood runs cold

- Barcelona, Paper Lion

/

Oftentimes in his relatively short life, Richie has had a singular, persistent thought: I'm a moth, a fly, an insect. Small and insignificant, ready to be swatted at, stomped on, constantly chasing pinpricks of light with one arm outstretched, tripping pathetically over himself in desperation. No, no, no...Please, please don't leave me, I'm so fucking lonely, please.

Maybe it's that thought that spurs him on, because he's tearing through the streets of Derry faster than he thinks he ever has, heart waterlogged with fear and his mind caught on one thing, one name, one boy in between flashes of gore. Eddie. Deer skin laid down the center of the road like a carpet. Eddie. Car tires rolling over crushed bones. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. Chocolate milkshake rises to the back of Richie's throat. He swallows the sickly sweet taste of it back.

He's not even really running anymore, just wandering, frantic and aimless, and it isn't until the third or fourth time he passes one that he realizes the face staring him down from the MISSING posters taped crudely to the sides of bus stops and streetlights is Sonia Kaspbrak's. MISSING! in bleeding green marker, like her disappearance wasn't even enough to warrant the printer ink it'd take to print all those copies.

Richie slows to a stop to glance at one stuck to a telephone pole near the motel at the edge of town. The Sonia Kaspbrak in the photo is at least ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter than the one Richie is familiar with, wearing waxy red lipstick with her corkscrew hair pulled back. He wonders if the photo is one that was hung up somewhere in the house. He wonders who'd gone inside to get it. Had they also felt the same, unshakable evil, or had the three of them just made it up inside their heads?

Richie shakes his head to clear the fog and ends up with a sudden earful of shrieking laughter, the kind that he's learned to listen for since he could walk and was branded loser with a capital L. The laughter is short a voice, now, but that just makes them louder in their taunts, baying like animals (Richie thinks - wolf, hyena, wild dogs, glistening yellow teeth and claws) in an effort to compensate for the loss.

Under normal circumstances, Richie thinks he'd be torn between running away - coward, selfish, coward, coward, coward - and wanting to help whatever poor kid is stuck facing the wrath of Bowers and his hangers-on. He was braver when he was younger, reckless, eager to lend a helping hand just for the thrill of the chase. He's always been itching to feel something real.

But this isn't just some random kid. Richie forces himself towards the noise, one foot in front of the other.

The motel comes into view, the sign out front gleefully advertising color television and a pool that was drained five years ago. Its dark green roof droops pathetically, brick walls once covered in white paint that's faded entirely in some spots, revealing the rust-red underneath like patches of blood. It's a one-story building with maybe two dozen rooms, though from the almost-empty parking lot Richie has to assume that most of them are vacant. Which makes sense. No one ever wants to come to Derry; they're all just passing through. The blinds in the motel office are drawn shut. It faces the road with its back to the woods and all its evils, and it's around back that Richie finds them.

Henry Bowers is still dressed in his funeral attire sans suit jacket, flanked on either side by his two remaining lackeys. All three of their faces are contorted in varying degrees of delight, and though none of them wear it quite as alarmingly well as Patrick Hockstetter it still makes Richie's stomach curl. His eyes catch on the gleam of silver pressed into Henry's palm. He's too far away to know for sure if it's the knife, but wouldn't it be just like Bowers, Richie thinks, to want it as some sort of weird keepsake? He wonders if it's still got traces of his blood on it. He wonders if Bowers had to steal it from his daddy or if the sheriff gave it to him.