𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐀 𝐒𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 - 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞

The Boy With Bruises

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Iron. Blood.

Richie ran his tongue over the bust in his lip bitterly.

A rock in the road. Pedaling faster than he should.

He winced as his teeth latched onto his tongue for a moment.

Richie Tozier was full of years of pent up anger. Every day it spilled between his lips; ceaseless jokes, puns, and insults.

This anger boiled his blood and burned his eyes with hot tears. This anger wasn't the type that led to violence, but the kind that led to shaking shoulders and muffled sobs in his bedroom while his parents fought in the kitchen and slurs bounced around in his mind. It was the wet anger during the night; after you've turned away from the fight, you find yourself crying, and you can't stop. It was almost never the dry anger, but the dry anger came after he'd cried all of his tears (or been socked in the jaw).

His release was interrupting class with jokes that got him sent to the principal's office, or calling Henry Bowers things that got him beat half to death in football fields after school (sometimes, when Bowers and his goons would fuck off, he would cry and beg for help, but no one ever came).

It was November 12th, 1992, and Richie had no release but to pedal harder, faster, further. His thighs burned worse than his eyes, but he didn't care.

The sun had already set, its earlier slumber lighting the sky with deep-sea shadow. As the wheels of his bike disturbed the peaceful puddles pooling in the middle of the empty street, a frigid wind began to blow leaves from their branches. He shuddered, turned his head down against the air, and kept going.

He didn't exactly have a destination, but that wasn't to say he didn't have options; the Kissing Bridge; the high school; the park; the junk yard or the gravel pit, where he could throw a fit with rocks and glass Coca-Cola bottles; his house, where zero, one, or two people would be waiting for him (in the case of one, he'd either be bombarded with fists or the smell of alcohol, and two meant he'd be offered both and the end of a screaming argument. A PACKAGE DEAL!!! 50% OFF if your FATASS FUCKIN' GLASSES get BROKEN against your FROG FACE!! 25% OFF if you go to school Monday with PLUMS FOR EYES!!).

Richie wasn't exactly in the mood to sit out in the cold, though, so he found himself dropping his bike next to his front porch. His movements were careless. He opened the door and only slightly flinched when it shrieked. He forced himself to not glance around for his father's infuriated (and probably intoxicated) face. He kicked off his shoes and made his way up to his room. He avoided the creaky floorboards on autopilot and opened his door quickly to keep it from mimicking the front door—his was the loudest in the house, but on a good day, if you threw it open, it wouldn't make a sound unless you were too slow and didn't keep it from hitting the wall.

Wentworth parading into his room only minutes later was no surprise, nor was the man's immediate instinct to scream at Richie. "I did not raise you to come in this house like a wild fuckin' animal!" he started, and Richie stopped. He tuned out his father's yelling and breathed.

Time slowed.

His father's words were almost muffled.

Richie wondered if this was what it felt like to overdose. Did everything just slow down and fade away?

It almost felt like he was floating. Slowly. Like a balloon with something tied to the end of the string, weighing it down but not enough to keep it from floating, up, up and away.

And then he was snapped out of it.

He stared into his father's bloodshot eyes as the man dragged him to his feet by his shirt. "I'm gonna beat your ass! Look at me when I talk to you, boy!" Boy, like Richie wasn't his son. "If you get into anymore fights, I'll knock it out of you myself, you hear?"