Psychotic// Richie Tozier

{18} The Slideshow Thats Sure To Change Everything

Alex's POV

"Mom I gotta go!" I say, her hugging me tight in her arms as everyone else in my family except for my stepfather watches a movie.

She nods in my shoulder before giving me a peck on the cheek. "Again?" she says looking playfully annoyed for a second until she drops the act and smiles and gives me a high five. "Bye" I say to everyone, them lazily waving back.

I grab my skateboard from outside and begin to skate out of the neighborhood, guessing that Richie already was headed to Bills house.

It's still the fourth of july, but everyone decided to go home and change because most of us were sweaty due to the extremely hot sun at the parade.

I passed by Eddies neighborhood quickly, already almost there. Minutes passed and eventually I arrived at the front yard of Bills house, his garage door already open with some of the losers inside.

I leaned my skateboard on a wall and greeted all of the losers. Bev, Mike, Eddie, Richie and of course Bill were already there. We were now waiting for Stan and Ben. As we waited, Bill set up a map on the wall and Mike fixed up the projector.

Soon, Stan showed up, then Ben. We all gathered in a semicircle around the projector so we could all see the map. "Let's make this quick, Big Bill. I had a long night" I comment, rubbing my eyes and sitting on a chair. I hear Richie laughing next to me so I shove him off of the stool he was on.

Bev laughs at the groan Richie let out as he fell and so did I. Suddenly, it fell silent as Bill turned on the projector to reveal another map.

I sat right in front of Stan but his stool was higher so he could see just fine. Richie sat next to me and Eddie sat in front. "Look. Thats where G-georgie disappeared" Bill says pointing to a spot on the map that read storm drain. I nodded.

"There's the ironworks. And the blackspot" he says. "Everywhere it happens. It's all connected by the sewers...". I exchange a small look of worry to Mike. ",and th-they all meet up at th" "The Wellhouse!" Ben says, sounding surprised.

It was extremely quiet for a second until Stan said something. "Thats in the house on Neitbolt Street" he says. "Y-You mean that creepy ass house where all the hobos and junkies like to sleep?" Richie says, me replying with an eye roll and an annoyed sigh.

Eddie takes a big puff from his inhaler as Beverly starts speaking. "I hate that place. It always feels like someone's watching me" she says. I look down to see Eddie breathing hard.

"That's w-where I saw it" he gasps, "That's where I saw the clown". I start breathing harder than usual at how it all fits together. It scares me at the fact that it could all be real.

"Th-tha-that's where it lives." Bill says, saying it as if that were its name. I wouldn't know. Apparently it's all of our worst nightmares.

I realized that I had a fear of really small spaces when I was in second grade. Henry and his goons locked me in the super small janitors closet. Eventually when I cried my heart out and banged on the door enough, Richie found me, saying that he was looking for me everywhere. Worried out of his mind, I told him about what happened. I had cursed out Henry and he got mad and pushed me on the floor and locked me in the closet. Richie at first was going to take me to the nurse, but he randomly changed his mind and we decided to skip the rest of the day and hang out together. That was actually the first day I had ever skipped school in my life, and I had seemed to do it just a bit more often since then. But, getting back to my fear of closed spaces. Isolation has always been the worst for me. It always had been, but that was when I realized it.

"I can't imagine anyone wanting to live there" Stan says, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Can we stop talking about this?" Eddie bursts from his seat, shaking with his inhaler in hand. "I-i can b-barely breathe! It's s-suh-summer. We're kids. I-i'm about to have a fucking asthma attack" he's blocking the map, gesturing to everything that's happening.