From the Archives

Consequences

It had been terrible last week. You had come into work same as always, apron on, hair pulled back, hands at the ready in cheap plastic gloves, to do as you always did on those busy weekend mornings- serve food to demandingly thankless festival patrons. It had seemed a relatively innocuous and easy gig when you applied; after all, if all you had to do was throw food in a boat and shove it out a slipshod wooden window to greasy, greedy hands on the other side of a wall, it would be the easiest $12 an hour you had ever made. It got tiring being on your feet for ten consecutive hours on festival days, and lunch rushes were routinely hell incarnate, but all things considered it was fairly easy money and you couldn't rightly complain about your particular station. Until last week, that is.

It had started when you came in that second weekend morning, ready to prep your area for work only to be greeted by your managers, who had prepared a stern word for you and the rest of your fellow kitchen colleagues about a laundry list of complaints made by a nameless informant to the higher ups the day before. They were about as sympathetic as anyone else in the room, as they were only beholden to admonishing you out of obligation to their supervisors and had, in fact, been admonished themselves in the process. You had been solemn during this impromptu meeting, silently scared out of your wits that you would be singled out or, worse, fired somehow for your apparent transgressions. The thought of it was simply mortifying, but you kept a stoic face, knowing better than to betray any sort of weakness in that room in front of all your peers.

Pennywise had been furious when he found out. He had come to you, fully intent on whisking you away on filthy, lascivious errand but had encountered you red-faced and weeping in your bedroom instead. Turns out, it didn't stop with micromanaging the entire kitchen. It had boiled over into singling out everyone for one petty reason or another, and this time you'd gotten your hand smacked for checking the time on your phone. You'd been talked down to and they threatened to take it away like you were some kind of irreverent, unruly middle schooler; it had been a long time since you'd been so completely and utterly humiliated. You were a grown adult and you didn't appreciate being patronized in the least; not that you could ever muster the nerve to speak up on your own behalf however. You just silently stewed in your dismay over the course of your shift and endured the drive home, wherein you weakly kicked in the front door, peeled off your uniform and crawled into bed to sob. Things had been so difficult for you lately; it took everything you had to drag yourself out of bed every morning, so when things like this happened you tended to cope with them with a little less grace than you liked to admit.

He hadn't been pleased. Despite his vicious composure and predilection towards cruelty, Pennywise had admittedly garnered something of a soft spot for you. While he would routinely shove you down onto the floor and take what he wanted whenever he sought you out, he was also just as likely to lavish you with passionately decadent pleasure just for the sake of currying your favor. Pennywise knew how valuable your loyalty was; it offered him something precious, a kind of invincibility against mortal harm that he would be a fool to deny. So, he was content to restrain himself with you at times, knowing full well just how many sweet, sweet spoils it would yield for him in the end.

That's why, when you had been so clearly threatened in the absence of his presence, he had become absolutely livid. He didn't like the taste of you like this, small and curled up in dejected misery, not even softening to his touch when he attempted to console you in your grief. It took everything he had not to take his anger out on you, for he knew it would only make the situation that much worse, and he knew you didn't deserve it. He simply had to be careful with you, but he knew this transgression must not go unpunished. No, there would be consequences, no doubt about that. It was just a matter of who had to pay them, and when.

Though you hadn't known it, Pennywise had accompanied you to work that following weekend. He would keep a close eye on you, if for no other reason than he was concerned for your wellbeing, but there was a second, more pressing motive he had that had taken the most precedence in this moment. He would find the people responsible for your despondence. He would find them, he would take them, and he would deal with them accordingly. He watched you as you prepared your work area in the morning, he watched as you would casually shoot the breeze with your coworkers; would watch as you nervously glanced at your phone while making feverish glances to the doorway of your kitchen out of the corner of your eye, shoving it into your back pocket when you caught a glimpse of anyone coming through the threshold, regardless of who they were. He watched as you passed the time however you could, simply counting the minutes until cannon went off, signifying the official commencement of the festival to the public eye. His eyes would trail appreciatively over your form as you bent to look out the window to your station, anticipating the first food order of the day with a vague sense of dread and yet, impatience as well.