inevitable - stanley uris x reader

chapter twenty - tinted

You were seated solemnly in your room, legs kicking back and forth and colliding with your bed frame every so often as you dangled them idly off of your mattress, the gentle music drifting from one of your scratchy cassette tapes filling the otherwise barren atmosphere of your room.  You tried to push the feelings of loneliness from your mind, but the ever persistent thoughts seemed intent on plaguing your Saturday.

Six days had past since the incident on Neibolt Street.  Six days since you had faced that awful thing, six days since your group had broken up.

It was barely a week, and yet it felt like an eternity had passed.

You missed the others.  You had only kept in contact with Richie, of course, and Stanley.  You missed Beverly, and her gentle, yet firm ways of being.  You missed Ben's benevolence, missed his unwavering maturity.  You even felt the loss of Eddie's incessant rambles, and you longed for Mike's resilience and agility in situations.

You lent a solemn gaze towards your telephone, staring at the dial with a sort of baseless envy.  You wanted to call Stanley, not just to talk but to see him in person.  You knew his bar mitzvah was to happen soon, and both you and Richie were invited.  But you wanted to see him outside of the formal event.  Your fingers crept towards the dial, itching to phone the curly-haired boy and sitting readily upon the numbers that were your only means of contact with him.  But your mind rejected your body's impulses.  You slumped back on your bed, expression defeated.  You didn't know why you were having such a hard time contacting him, your reluctance didn't make sense.

You shifted into a more comfortable position, spreading out on your bed as you pressed your back into the sheets.  The dusky rays of the evening sun collided with your face, but not in a 'main character who just kissed the love of her life' way.  No, you felt them clashing with your features, imprinting heavy shadows upon your face and blaring into your tired eyes.  Things had been quieter than ever between you and Richie.  You disliked the tension.  It was evident that you were both still recovering, and vulnerability was a rare thing in your relationship despite your closeness to the boy.  

Thoughts, heavy thoughts, weighted images of your friends flashed against your eyelids.  Richie, Stanley. Beverly. Clown. The clown. 

The clown.  A disfigured Stanley. Blood.  The color red, searing hot against your face.  Your eyes twitched and trembled, wrought with the sickening amalgamation of visuals.  A tear, a crystal droplet, fell onto your pillow, staining the bleached fabric and dampening the threads of the fabric.  A tear fell like blood, an inconsistent drop against a sheet of nothingness.  Blood, like that on the clown.  Blood, like that which had drenched your nightgown.  Blood, like that on Stanley.  

Stanley. 

Stanley, you had to see Stanley.

You fell from your bed, your ankles intertwining messily as you pulled on your Keds,  a burst of motivation moving you to visit to curly-headed boy.  You had to see him, you were compelled to.  He could help you feel...calm.  In that moment, you needed him.  

You disembarked on your bicycle without interruptions, making your way towards the cul-de-sac on which he lived.  You stopped just short of his house, breath catching in your throat as you spotted his closed curtains.  You weren't sure why, but such a thing felt incredibly disconcerting, even haunting.   You threw your bike down in worry, before almost unconsciously picking it up and setting it against its kickstand, a recent habit of yours.  You were certain that you knew where it had come from.

You had concurred enough knowledge of the boy's day-to-day life to know that his father would be at the Synagogue and his mom out running errands at this hour.  His family tended to follow a specific routine, one that was dictated by the regular passing of the days.  With this knowledge, you marched to his door, twisting the knob carefully as you entered the house.  

Sandalwood candles and must, a familiar scent with far from a negative connotation.  Your eyes fell on a picture propped against the wall, a photographic portrait of his family that had presumably fallen from its hanging place on a nail.  Ascending the creaking staircase in your familiar path, you let your hand drag against the muted blue of his walls.  Blue.  A cold color, not like red.  Red smears, soaks, and overtakes everything in its path.  Red is ever dominating, but blue is resilient.  Blue.  Blue is Stanley's favorite color.

A cold chill down your spine.  A lingering sense of dread, and a whisper.  A deep voice behind you, scuffing against your ears and spitting out nonsense.  You couldn't make out what the voice said.  It was far too quick and far too disembodied.  And you were too on edge to even try to make sense of it.  You whipped around, nearly losing your footing on the stairs as you tried, in vain, to search for the origin of the voice.  Perhaps a month ago you would've accused Stanley of just playing a trick on you, even though he wasn't too partial to those, but now..Now you were aware of the supernatural.  More than aware.. you were living in a world in which you had settled to coincide with a blood-hungry entity.  It.  

A whole tremor ran through your body as you started to run up the stairs once more, seeking the safety of Stan's bedroom.  But something-something cold, slender.  A hand.  A hand around your neck, choking the very life from your lungs, ghostly apparition milking your throat with an unmatched cruelty.  You gasped out, whimpering under its touch before mustering out a scream.  

A door banged open.  The pressure released, and you grew limp, the rug dipping underneath your knees as you fell. 

Footsteps.  They were cold, they were descending.  They were cold-warm..cold gentle rough but cold but so hot so burning so excruciating you could feel them reverberate through your entire body and flame your soul to embers as you struggled against your self-induced paralysis, body spread on the stairs.  Footsteps, louder, heavy footfalls.  Footfalls.  Heavy soles, heavy shoes, heavy. Heavy but so light.  So cold but so hot.  So cold but-

An embrace.  Your neck.  An embrace, on the torso.  On the torso.  Around the chest.  Someone held you tight, as though the wind itself was going to sweep you away from them.  Safe.  Lukewarm.  

Not intense, not red. Blue.  Stanley.  

You quivered, the voice of the anxiety-ridden boy ringing through your ears and gradually materializing as you came to your senses.  You looked up through a veil of glossed eyes, his worried expression floating and contorting as he stared at you with bated breath.  

"Y...Y/n..."  Your name sounded foreign in his mouth.  "What happened? What's going on?"

Your entire body shook beneath him as you stared up at him, perturbation fogging up your vision.

You mumbled out a single utterance in return, one that was drenched in bloody implications.

"It."

Word Count: 1192

...Uhm...

:)