Lovers. // It (2017) // Eddie Kaspbrak

Ten - "Romeo, huh?"

"So let me get this straight, it comes out from wherever to eat kids for a year and then what? It just goes into hibernation?"
Eddie rambled

With a frustrated groan, Lyds leaned her head back onto the bench behind her where Bev, Stan, Ben and Mike all sat. Her other friends stood in front of them, but quite frankly Lyds was too tired to stand. She was too tired to do anything.

The poor girl had been kept awake all night with bad dreams of the clown, of Eddie dying, and of her father. Of the clown killing her father more specifically.

"Maybe it's like- what do you call it? Cicadas! You know the bugs that come out once in every seventeen years?" Stan shrugged

"My Grandfather thinks this town is cursed." Mike spoke up, "He thinks that everything that happens in this town is because of one thing, and it feeds of the people of Derry."

"But it can't be one thing we all saw something different."

"Maybe... Or maybe it knows what scares us most and that's what we see."

"I saw a leper." Eddie mumbled, a vacant look was held in his eyes, "He was like a walking infection."

"But you didn't. Because it isn't real." Stan shook his head, "None if this is, not Eddie's Leper, or Bill seeing Georgie, or Lyds's zombie, o-or the woman I keep seeing."

"She hot?"

"No Richie! She's not hot! Her face is all messed up... None of this makes any sense, they're all like bad dreams."

"I don't think so! I know the difference between a bad dream and real life, Okay?"

"What you see? You saw something too?"

"Yes. You guys know that burned down house on Harris Avenue?"

Everybody silently nodded, Lyds turned her head to look at Mike and she couldn't help but notice the sad look in his eyes, something which the young boy had worked hard to hide over the years.

"I was inside when it burned down. Before I was rescued my Mom and Dad we're trapped in the next room over from me. They were pushing and pounding on the door, trying to get to me... but it was too hot. When the firemen finally found them, the skin on their hands had melted down to bone." He struggled with his words, "Everybody's afraid of something."

"You got that right." Richie turned to look over his shoulder, the brown haired boy's eyes immediately fell on a clown on the other side of the park, dancing on stage for all of the children.

"Why Rich?" Lyds stood and placed a soft hand on her friends shoulder, "What are you afraid of?"

"Clowns."

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An hour had passed by and all of the losers found themselves huddled up in Bill's garage. Hurriedly, as Ben placed a map of Derry up on the wall and Mike shut the garage door, Lyds sat herself down on the ground beside Eddie, and then the lights went out.