Marigolds

⍨Four⍨

Stan and Bill have huddled up on the sofa now, a blue blanket draped over stans shoulders. Stans' legs were bent over bills. Bills arms wrapped around stans body his head on top of stans. The rest of the losers were sitting on the floor, no one had talked in over 10 minutes and no one knew what had happened to stan. but stans breathing had started to even out now no more body wracking sobs just small shaky breaths. Maybe he was just being silly and maybe it wasn't real, Stan didn't like believing in things such as killer clowns but he still couldn't shake the deep fear inside of him.

Stan moved his head back looking at Bill, he had finally come to the conclusion that he was being stupid and he was probably annoying his new friends.

"Hey," bill said

"Hi, I'm sorry"

"For w-what?" Bill chuckled sweetly

"I freaked out"

"I-im su-ure you had a g-good reaso-on" all the others were looking at them now.

"I-i saw a clown, a-and it was right there in front of me, grinning? I think? Ugh I know it sounds stupid" Stan looked at Bill.

"Its o-okay"

"And then it jumped at me and the door swung open and he was gone, I thought I was going crazy b-but I could feel his breath and I could smell it" Stans' voice was shaky, he never usually talked about this kind of thing with people.

"Hey, how about we go paint the bikes, get your mind off it, yeah?" Stan nodded getting up, the others followed suit and went to hug Stan. None of them believed him but it seemed pretty terrifying. The kids were outside Bill was putting a third coat of blue paint but Stan was already done and working on the patterns. Stan had painted his bike a pastel yellow and was putting deeper yellow flowers and bluebirds on some parts of the bike. He was feeling happier still worried but he just thought maybe it was his imagination because that couldn't be real, right?

Stan looked over at Bill, he was painting a paper boat on the top tube of the bike. Ben painted his a very light purple and was writing something in black on the center of the handles. Bev was next to Ben and had her forest green bike in front of her, it had a key and keyhole patterns on it. Mikes' bike was simpler at was orange and had sheep on it.

"What the fuck Richie!" everyone looked at Eddie

Richie was laughing so hard he had to lie on his back. Stan looked down from Eddies horrified face to the pink bike. Among the pink paint lay a red heart. Eddie grabbed his paintbrush and put a pink heart on Richies' bike. Richie couldn't stop laughing, he was actually wheezing now losing more air. Eddie had enough and grabbed the biggest paintbrush he could find and dipped it in the goopy pink paint and then slapped it on Richies' leg. Richie immediately sat up looking from his pink leg to Eddie and back.

"Oh, it is on Kaspbrack!"

Eddie jumped up squealing and running away from Richie who was holding his red paintbrush in his hand.

"Richie no! Please! I just got these clothes my mom will kill me!"

"You asked for it"

"Richie I could get poisoning from the paint, I could diiieee Richie! do you want me to die??!" He was now behind Bev in a useless attempt to shealed himself from Richie. This had no effect and Richie flung red paint at the two of them, Bev was snickering as Eddie screamed his lungs out behind her. he grabbed the bucket of pink paint and dumbed it over Richies' head and stormed off dropping the can on the floor as he went. 

"Shit, babe-" his words were cut off by his fear and he turned looking at Stan, realizing what he had just said realizing he could have just made things a whole lot worse. Stan looked back and at the rest who were also staring at him now.