RICHIE TOZIER — despite his very best efforts — wasn't the greatest at dealing with the negative emotions in life. The positive emotions like happiness and zealousness and serenity weren't the problem, really, for he could keep on smiling and laughing and joking with his friends until mirthful tears streamed down his freckled cheeks. It was the emotions like sadness and solitude and vulnerability that he both physically and emotionally couldn't handle.

Richie wasn't too faint-hearted, and wouldn't ever be considered just so—he was never the first to run away if attacked. Richie, while being as badass as ever, had displayed true lionheartedness during the final confrontation with the wretched clown he and his friends called It. With determination coursing through his veins, he brandished his metal baseball bat before bringing it down on the skull of that stupid clown.

There lived instances, however, where he wasn't thinking reasonably enough to be courageous. Richie would become filled with the feeling of genuine terror, for the feeling slithered out of its hibernation inside of the crevices of his brain for the moments where he was at his weakest. When the more negative emotions happened to resurface, he handled his emotions rather differently.

Richie despised the feeling of vulnerability, for he couldn't comprehend the concept of someone looking into his thoughts for themselves. Whenever Richie thought back to his first face-to-face encounter with It, he realized that It had looked inside of his thoughts and emotions to discover what Richie was most scared of. He was sure and certain that It had been delighted when It found out that he wasn't afraid of any other being, but the clown itself. Pennywise needed no façade to intimidate Richie Tozier, and perhaps that terrified him more than if Pennywise had been anything else that Richie feared.

While Richie wasn't only terrified of clowns, he was terrified of werewolves and airplanes and needles and

( his father )

and most importantly...humiliation. While he remained reckless and impulsive, he secretly winced at the very thought of being publically embarrassed, winced at the very thought of being laughed at instead of laughed with.

And so...whenever Richie happened to be submitted to something that he couldn't emotionally handle, he ultimately turned to his defense mechanism —cursing. He had a colorful choice of swears for every situation, really, and when the pressure was just too much, he cursed like a sailor.

While swearing wasn't something uncommon in the desolate town of Derry, most people (grown men included) didn't curse like "Trashmouth Tozier". It was common knowledge that Richie Tozier cursed more than anyone else, even the adults were cognizant of the nickname that he'd received, and "Trashmouth Tozier" couldn't care less about the spreading of his plight.

But there was another explanation for the obscene language that Richie pronounced more often than not, and surprisingly, that explanation dated back to his younger years.

Richie Tozier and his father weren't close like the other Derry children and their fathers. Wentworth Tozier had contributed more time to working at his dentistry office than with his family. Wentworth was someone who believed that money was really something religious, believed that money was the answer to every question, and believed that money was the source of happiness for everyone on the planet. And ironically, the Tozier family wasn't the wealthiest of the lot.

Whenever Richie looked around for the other children in his neighborhood, he noticed that most of them were always spending time with their fathers —throwing around the football and whatnot. At only six-years-old, Richie dreamed for something similar to that with his own father. Wentworth was seldom around for dinnertime, and that confirmed that Wentworth frankly didn't have the time for Richie.

When Richie was nine-years-old he craved the attention of his father more than ever, for his classmates were playing baseball with their fathers to practice for the coming of little league baseball. Most of his classmates blabbed on about how their fathers did this and that, played in this and that, invented this and that, but Richie was rightfully annoyed.

One afternoon in March, at nine-years-old, he became so annoyed at one of his classmates that he punched him in the nose for talking about how his father worked down in Hampden, Maine. Richie had been punished for punching his classmate, but that didn't matter because both of his parents were required to meet with the principal. Both of his parents!

Richie came to realize that if he misbehaved, his father was needed to notice his existence, and so, he started misbehaving during school and swearing loudly whenever the teachers were around. Whenever the teachers heard him swear, he was punished — asked for his parents' signature so that his parents knew that Richie was behaving "inequitably" and "unjustly". He couldn't have been more delighted to have been in trouble, for each time his father would speak with him at the kitchen table and his father was never mean about how much Richie misbehaved, he was cordial and never

( always )

yelled.

Richie figured that swearing had become somewhat familiar to him, and so, he cursed unintentionally whenever his plight was something that would inescapably lead to punishment (no matter how serious said punishment was) and whenever he deemed it necessary.

"Not again, ya' fucker..." Richie Tozier, fourteen-years-old, muttered to himself, clutching the window-frame while he watched as his overly-intoxicated father slammed the door of his 1984 Ford F150. Wentworth Tozier had downed far more than several drinks that night — anyone could see that.

Wentworth had stumbled through the front door piss-drunk more times than not in recent years. If his wife, Maggie Tozier, had been there, Wentworth wouldn't have stumbled into the house drunk in the first place. But Maggie wasn't there — she wouldn't be there — because she had committed suicide by overdose when her son had been only twelve-years-old. Richie would never talk to anyone about the suicide of his mother unless he had to, for he despised being reminded of her sudden passing. Richie had been closer to his mother than he had been with his father, his mother always having had time for her son. The suicide of his mother had been unpredicted, she hadn't shown any of the signs that pointed toward suicide before her death, but she had taken her life nonetheless.

Richie Tozier missed his mother genuinely and he guessed that perhaps his father did, too, because Richie couldn't think of another reason why his father would've turned to alcohol after the passing of his wife. Richie figured that maybe Wentworth hadn't hated his family, after all. Or, maybe, Wentworth hadn't despised Maggie (he had loved her once, probably did then), but he, for sure, despised his foulmouthed son.

Richie listened as Wentworth staggered through the front door and suddenly, the intense feeling of resentment for his father bubbled dangerously inside the abyss of his stomach. When Richie was younger, he had desired the attention from his father greatly, but at that moment, he regretted the entire thing. All he had wanted then was for his father to love him, but at that moment, Richie realized that his father had one disgusting, ruthless soul.

When Richie sprinted down the wooden staircase, his surroundings were blurred with his anger. He wanted only to confront his father, for he believed that his father never deserved having someone like who Richie used to be—someone who had tried, and tried, and tried, for his attention.

"You're drunk again, Daddy Dearest?" asked Richie, his tone-of-voice dripping with malice. "I'm surprised you don't have another drugged teenager with you this time." He smiled exasperatingly, tilting his head to the side as if to intimate his father.

Before Richie could mentally process what was happening, his father had punched him once in the mouth and once in the stomach. Richie had tumbled toward the ground, falling to his knees. From there, he started sputtering crimson blood onto the threadbare carpet underneath him. Already, Richie wished that he hadn't provoked his father. At that moment, he despised his unfiltered trashmouth, and he wished that he'd learned when to close his goddamned mouth.

Wentworth Tozier grabbed him forcefully by his raven-colored locks, angling Richie to where he could punch him in the cheekbone. When Richie's magnified, coke-bottle glasses slipped off of his bloodied nose and clattered onto the floor, they somehow didn't break. With his surrounding now exceptionally out of focus, he was capable of only listening and feeling while his maniac-of-a-father kicked and punched him ruthlessly.

When Wentworth eventually tossed Richie back onto the floor, he guessed that his father had completed his endeavor of abusing his own child and, surely, was about to collapse onto the ground himself in his own drunken crash, but, oh, was Richie wrong.

Richie Tozier huddled into the fetal position, whimpering softly whilst his father kicked him in the stomach for the fifth time that night. With shimmering tears trailing down his cheeks, connecting the light freckles on his face, he brought his forearms upward to potentially shield himself from the wrath of his drunk-of-a-father.

When the punching and the kicking slowed ever-so-slightly, he decisively noticed the arising opportunity.

Richie peeked through the sliver of space inbetween his head and his forearms, noticing the unfocused outline of his coke-bottle glasses sitting unfolded on the floor. If he retrieved his glasses, he could escape the bruised hands of his abusive father.

Richie, while he executed his escape, moved faster than he'd ever moved before in his entire life. He recovered his glasses from the ground, clumsily slipped them onto his nose, and started running — away and away from the horrid, tainted memories he shared with his damned father. "Get back here, you little shit!" his father screamed after his fleeing figure, beckoning furiously for him to come back, but to no avail. Richie wouldn't stop for him, not now, and not ever again.

He retreated out into the brisk, serene autumn night, sprinting through the neighborhood in the direction of which his consciousnesses guided him. Find Big Bill, a voice whispered despairingly in his mind. Or Stanley...or Eddie...or anyone! Anyone at all!

He stumbled once — no, twice — but managed to recover his balance each time. While his vision might've been swimming in and out of the abyss, he was running further and further into the heart of Derry, Maine. Richie didn't realize it at the time, his consciousnesses being too unclear, he was unintentionally running toward the Kaspbrak house in search of Eddie Kaspbrak, who wasn't just skilled in medicine and could further aid the wounds that Richie had received but his best friend.

As Richie turned the corner on the street of which Eddie lived, his vision started darkening more than before. He stumbled once more and regained his balance, great black splotches appearing before his eyes. Before Richie realized what was happening, the black splotches flowered and, soon, everything withered into the abyss.

He fainted, almost there. So fucking close.