°°·.⬧︎ ᴀꜱᴛʀᴏɴᴏᴍʏ ⬧︎.·°° | ʀᴇᴅᴅɪᴇ |

#8: ᴡᴇʟᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴇʀʀʏ, ꜰᴜᴄᴋᴇʀ

I inhaled quickly, squeezing my eyes closed. I prayed that when I opened my eyes again, Henry would be gone, and I would only see Eddie standing there, with vanilla ice cream in hand.

But no, I felt the severe and intense grasp of Henry Bowers's firm grasp, intensely gripping my arm with his left hand. I was almost certain that once he let go, I would have a large red handprint dug into my skin.

I followed Henry's pocket knife with my eyes as he slowly grazed my forehead, not enough to make a mark, but enough to make me squirm with panic. He lightly trailed it over the top of my eyebrow, and I felt the immediate stinging sensation of a cut, letting out a heavy breath of pain through my mouth. 

I could hear Eddie's physical remorse as he winced, watching a thin line of red blood cross over my eyelid. I could almost feel the warm trickle of the thick liquid run down my skin, and I was suddenly terrified that it would get in my eye and blur my senses.

"You see this?" Henry yanked my hair back to face Eddie, who sat frozen, with his bottom lip quivering in perpetual fear. "Just a little taste of faggot blood. What do you say, Kaspbrak? Should we spill all of it? How do you think the ground would look with gallons and gallons of faggot blood on it, huh?" Henry held my gaze, hard and intense. 

Watching his eyes, dark and watchful and horrifying, I felt my entire body shiver up and down. I felt like I was face to face with an intensely dangerous shark, with cold and dead eyes, similar to Henry's. My fight or flight reflexes seemed to switch on. 

And it was at this moment that it suddenly dawned on me. 

Henry would kill me if he got the chance. 

He was going to kill me. And I was standing here, terrified, doing absolutely jackshit about it. 

Eddie let out a soft, troubled noise from beside me, probably a result of Henry's rhetorical question. I shifted my eyes uneasily to the side, making eye contact with Eddie. 

Patrick had a nearby Coca Cola cup in his hand, raised high above Eddie's head, with moderate laughs escaping his lips, as he jokingly leaned his hand from side to side. Before I had time to argue and reach my hand out, risking my entire life, I watched as Patrick's snarky grin turned, and he dumped the entire cup over, onto Eddie's head.

"Are you thirsty, wheezy boy? How about a drink?"

My mouth gaped open as the dark liquid poured over his hair, and I could almost feel the cold embrace of the drink on my own skin. Eddie gasped quickly and let his eyes shut, beginning to tremble as ice dripped down his neck and shoulders, coating him in a watery, sticky second skin. 

"It doesn't improve his looks much, huh, Hockstetter?" Henry grinned as he continued to clutch my shirt in a tight manner, and I could smell the thick scent of bourbon on Henry's tongue. The motherfucker was drunk, and it explained a lot more. Henry had a history for underage drinking, even though his father was a cop. With his dad dead and gone, though, Henry was beginning to have even more of a disregard for the law.

"Not even a little, Henry." Patrick sneered.

Henry's eyes narrowed darkly, and he removed the blade from my forehead, holding it out in Eddie's direction. The pocket knife came so close to Eddie's face that he physically leaned his head back, letting the blade slightly brush over a strand of hair that hung over Eddie's face.

Eddie wiped his eyes solemnly, frozen in place and trembling even more than he was. "Don't fucking touch me with that thing, man, I'm not kidding, Henry, come on-" he sputtered.

"You can fix his complexion a bit, though, can't ya?" Patrick seemed so giddy that his hands fidgeted, throwing down the empty coke cup on the floor.