Hi, everyone! Javer here—as you may have guessed : )
I hope you enjoy this chapter. I found that it was very hard to get started on it, mainly because I have had to study like mad for midyear finals this past week, and so I didn't have a lot of spare time. I hope you can understand. Other than that, nothing much . . . oh, wait! That's right. I wanted to thank all of you for reviewing, and a special note of thanks to Kisstherain for reminding me who I'm really writing this for: you guys. Stop me if I'm getting too mushy. I've never had fans before. And btw, to all of you who said that my writing may be scarier even than Stephen King's, well, thanks for saying that. But you're crazy. My writing will never be on par with his, all I can hope to do is get as close as I can. Besides, all I'm trying to do here is discover my own style, which I have yet to find. Keep reviewing, good people.
Eddie was running.
He was oblivious to everything around him; the ground was a dark puddle waiting to swallow him up if he stood still for even a second. The sky was indiscernible, nothing but a vast reach of absolute nothing, an upside-down valley hanging in the air. Sky was ground and ground was middle and middle was nothing in between but Dark and Dark and Eddie felt that as soon as he paused to rest, a severe case of vertigo would be waiting for him. Not that he knew what vertigo was, of course. He just felt very sick and very cold. And he did not stop.
Why was he running? That never occurred to him.
(run boy run run run, see spot run watch him go. watch him run sprint go dash watch him as his lungs are beginning to fill with lead, and he maybe decides to look behind him, and watch as the whites of his eyes grow big and round like dinner plates, and watch his eyes bug out like a funnybook man and then his eyes EXPLODE-)
Lungs were burning, now. The small boy sprinting through the inky black sucked in several fresh breaths of air and automatically thrust a hand into his pocket. From it he yanked a minute plastic inhaler, the kind you used for asthma when your chest was heaving and your tongue was hanging out of your mouth and couldn't get any air and he needed it NOW RIGHT NOW.
He took a huge dragging pull on the mouth-end—Nothin like a pull on the ol' lung-sucker, Eddie remembered dimly from a different world a thousand miles away, and instantly felt better. His muscles relaxed. His head cleared. It was like a man in great pain taking a substantial dose of heroin. The sudden, sublime clarity of the air . . . blood pumping evenly, refreshing his body anew . . . Lovely. So lovely. Now he could run forever, and never stop.
In fact, it was so nice, Eddie reasoned, that he ought to take a second dose. It was for his health. That was why the doctors had given it to him. Doctors made you feel better.
Confidently, he lifted the inhaler once more and depressed the button.
(lungsucker)
Almost immediately a million tiny stingers stabbed deeply into the flesh of his left cheek, and he brought his hands up to guard an eternity too late as a burning, agonizing spray splashed across his face, melting him away. Rotting him.
He pulled his hand away, stared at the sticky white goo that remained of the left side of his cheekbone, too horrified to notice that he was still alive. Alive and screaming.
And too horrified to notice that the grotesque, viscous goo of his skin was stretching, stretching impossibly far without breaking, stretching a long wormy strand of the stuff, of EDDIE KASPBRAK for God's sake, across the first four fingers of
(of worlds, and of)
a pristine white glove.
And from far, far away, he heard a young, scared voice screaming itself out.
"THIS IS BATTERY ACID, YOU SLIME!!"
A mad, sickening rage slammed into Eddie's brain like a cramp slams into your stomach and doubles you over, but Eddie was standing straight and tall in his fury. A red haze dropped over his eyes, and this insolent little boy, this little boy had destroyed his face with that stupid water spray . . .
His wavy, clouded-over glare swung from side to side. Six boys and one girl. Their faces were obscured by the bloody miasma, but he could tell. He knew that they were smiling at him, and laughing at him. His paste-white forehead creased.
Easy pickings, he thought gleefully. The fat orange pompoms adorning his T-shirt wobbled back and forth like sea urchins. Eddie felt cold sweat slide down his face and drip down the wide contours of his chin.
His mouth opened wide, impossibly wide. The spray seemed insignificant now. It was no great cause for concern. He backhanded his lips and wiped off sweat and saliva. This was going to be so sweet. All that was left to do now was decide.
How? Wahl, now, Eddie blustered, grinning coolly and heroically, first ah'm gonna make you regret you ever tangled with the Sheriff o' this here town. Then ah'll rough ya up a bit. And then you'd better have gotten yore skinny little self outta here, or else I'll be forced to
(R I P Y O U R G O D D A M H E A D S O F F .)
Pennywise advanced, smiling serenely. His mouth twisted into a halo of scarlet lamprey teeth, a circle inscribing the path into hell. The needles gnashed and grated, splashing a rain of blood over the doomed seven. Pure children's blood. Let the whelps know what pit they'd dug themselves into. Let them know, and in their blessedly final moments on earth, the moments before his lovely saving fangs ripped their throats out, let them fear.
They knew.
They feared.
And Pennywise slammed his head into their chests, one by one, and opened and shut his jaws like a machine. These children could do nothing but watch as the funny clown, Mr. Bob Gray how d'you do, watch as the clown opened their stomachs and their friends' stomachs to the sight of the white spinal cord. Splashing new blood, different blood, tasty arterial blood as first he ate their hearts . . . and then they ceased to pound.
He carried on with joy and relish, long after Eddie was dead. After all, not only did fear always taste delicious, but it lasted. And lasted. And lasted. And las . . .
Eddie screamed. A second and a half later, he awoke to the world again.
Whole minutes passed as the poor boy gasped, completely disoriented. Was this here, or there? Is this up, or down? And most pressing of all: was he alive, or lying in a pipe stinking the death-smell miles below in the sewer?
A groggy, slow screech rose from outside his whitewashed door. "Ed-deeee?! Eddie, are you having a dreeeaaam?" The addressed's brittle stare skimmed swiftly to the door. It shone wanly in the moonlight and for a moment there sat . . .
Eddie gave a little "yeep!" of surprise and recoiled under his covers.
He carefully cupped a hand to his mouth. "I'm fine, Ma!"
This reassurance seemed to satisfy the voice, which died away. Eddie placed the hand over his narrow, pounding chest. He found he was unable to breathe, and so he stealthily made his way to the dresser, feeling his way in the dark. Eddie tapped around with his finger until finally he found what he was looking for. He grabbed his inhaler and began to lift it to his lips.
His pupils widened. The plastic clacked onto the wooden floor, looking harmless, and Eddie Kaspbrak went to bed. He did not take so much as a glance at, let alone use, the medicine for the next week.
Then he took a pull on the lungsucker. It tasted like smoke.