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All the bullshit started with Netflix and a dream.
The Netflix thing was easy enough for Eddie to explain. After searching vainly for something to watch while Myra, his wife, was out with friends (something he was not allowed to do, not that he had friends to go out with), he decided to just pick something at random. That at random choice was, much to his disgust, some forty-something scruffy white guy next to big red text that said "SnowFLAKE: Special". Eddie honestly didn't want to watch some asshole rant about millennials (who weren't the ones who fucked shit up) and their triggers (as someone who had many, Eddie found this incredibly offensive) or whatever else, but to be completely frank, he felt like being pissed off. No better way to blow off steam than to scream at someone who couldn't hear you.
That's how he spent his night. He looked up every special by this guy, who he found out was named Richard Tozier (Eddie started calling him Dick the Dick), and watched them back to back, yelling responses to all of his stupid, """""""edgy""""""" jokes. He bet this asshole didn't even write any of what he was spouting. He migrated to YouTube when Netflix ran out, watching his talk show interviews and responding to his bull before the hosts even could. In all fairness, the oldest special he found actually made him laugh a few times despite himself. He suspected, maybe, maybe those were written by Dick the Dick before the fame went to his head. He watched the man age in reverse, all the way back to 2003. The videos were awful quality, but the comedy was much better in Eddie's opinion. He only stopped when Myra got home at midnight, and he realized he'd spent the last six hours watching a comedian he hated. In fact, his throat was hoarse from how much he'd argued with the man on the screen. And yet he felt the happiest he'd had since…. Well, he couldn't remember when.
Then came the dream.
He dreamt… of pineapples.
Generally speaking, Eddie did not dream. He took enough sleeping medication to put out a horse to deal with his anxiety and usual night terrors of monsters without shape and losses he couldn't quite recall. The medication took all that away, and yet… he dreamt.
Of fucking pineapples.
The specific context in which these pineapples lived was floating in space, before collecting on the body of a boy whose eyes were as big as saucers and whose smile made Eddie feel furious and comforted at the same time. The pineapple boy stood in front of him, staring owlishly, and he spoke like he knew Eddie well. Like he was glad to see him.
"You won't forget me when I'm out of this shithole, right, Eds?"
And Eddie responded, like a reflex, but his voice wasn't his own. The voice that came out was squeaky and childlike. His absolutely was not, though...
Maybe it was, once.
"How can I forget a grade A fuckwad like you? And don't call me that!"
This quickfire response earned him a laugh and a wink.
"Good. Don't forget." The laughter stopped, and the boy stopped, and the pineapples remained.
Somehow, that was more unsettling than any night terror he'd ever had.
The dream woke him up at three am and sent him into a Google hole about what pineapples meant in dreams. No answer was remotely satisfying. It was all "happiness, joy, pleasure, and all sorts of big profits" and "all your troubles will likely soon be forgotten" and "a reflection of good memories and desires". None of the websites he checked could explain the pit of distress that sat in his gut every time he thought about it. It was enough to send him towards panic attack territory (not that he didn't spend much of his time walking the border), and it got to the point where he got out his anxiety medication and downed it. It was enough to knock him out, thank god, and by the time morning came all that remained of the dream was his search history.
-----
It was about two months before he even thought about pineapples again.
What brought it back to the front of his mind was an advertisement on one of the many huge screens throughout Manhattan. Eddie was usually able to tune out the frequently shifting images all around him, but this one presented itself to him in such a way that he couldn’t just ignore it. A larger than life picture of Dick the Dick himself stared down at him in his car, and for a second Eddie felt the entire world stop around him. He only came back to his senses when he just about rear ended someone and they honked loudly. Jesus. That guys ugly mug was a risk to public health. A liability. He should know, it was his job.
Eddie chuckled at that, filing it away as a good comeback to use against…. Someone. At some point. If he ever met Dick the Dick in person. He was at a stop so he took a second to look over the ad. Richie Tozier, performing 6/10-11-12/16.
Hm.
Maybe he’d go. Just to heckle. Yeah. Yeah! That guy deserved to be put in his place, fucking asshole! He’d rip him a new one!!
The idea actually sent him into the rest of his day with a smile on his face (though apparently his coworkers found it disconcerting, and told him as much. He snapped back with vigor, cussing them out but doing so almost flippantly.) and for once his neuroses didn't control his day. He was busy making up things in his head to cut down Dick The Dick
That night he bought a ticket for the front row.
That night he had another dream about the goddamn pineapples.
This time, they weren’t just floating in empty space; the saucer-eyed boy wore them on his body in a garish pattern that didn’t bother Eddie as much as it usually would. He’d never welcomed discord, but this was fine. Why the hell was it fine? It was ugly as fuck and yet, it was fine. The boy was an entire being, now, not just disjointed parts, and that helped calm him, too.
“Come on, Eduardo! Andale!!” He was running away from Eddie, waving for him to follow, and Eddie chased as well as he could. His chest felt tight, and even though he hadn’t used one in years, he was able to produce an inhaler from a fanny pack he hadn’t worn since he was fourteen. He took a puff, and the relief was instant. He laughed, and it came out high and giddy. “We’re gonna go to the quarry!”
Before he could recall what that meant, the pineapples flew into his face. He grabbed them, pulling them away from his face and…
A Hawaiian shirt?
Eddie looked up just in time to watch the boy, now in his underwear, jump off of a cliff that hadn’t been there a moment prior. The edges had refined further. Dark messy hair, long skinny limbs, pale, freckled skin... He held the shirt to himself, and to his surprise he wasn’t worried. He was going to jump, too. Why was he going to jump? He shouldn’t, that’s dangerous, but he still ran at the edge, tossing the shirt behind him. He was going to die. He was going to jump and die.
He screamed laughing.
“Ri-!”
He woke before he hit whatever was waiting below. He sat bolt upright in bed and laughed, almost maniacally, waking up Myra. She started to fuss over him, and for once, he didn’t let her. He got out of bed and told her he was going to take a walk and that was that. Even when she pushed harder, trying to find out what was wrong with him, trying to come along, he held firm that he was going to go on a walk, by himself. He’d be back soon, he swore, he’d have his phone. She only chased him for so long.
He needed his phone, anyways, to look up what he wanted to.
This dream didn’t spur him towards looking up what pineapples meant, this one had him looking up quarries. Quarries in dreams (positivity, yet again, as well as being trapped. Hm.), as well as quarries near him. Ones in New York. Ones in Maine. Ones in…
Well, that was odd. He couldn’t quite remember what town he grew up in. Maine, he could recall that. But where the fuck in it?? He couldn’t ask his mom, she had passed years ago after living with him in New York for a while. Myra wouldn’t know, he didn’t think he ever mentioned it to her. What the fuck. Whaaaat the fuck. He was gonna have a panic attack. Maybe Myra was right to tell him not to go out on a walk. He was going to have an asthma attack. Did he even have asthma anymore? He was certainly going to have some kind of attack at least, because he couldn’t remember the goddamn name of the goddamn town he lived in for the first twenty goddamn years of his life .
Somehow he managed to get home and stumble into Myra’s waiting arms. She had, apparently, been about to call the police about him being “not in his right mind”, but enough “I love you”s and “I just needed fresh air”s and soft (begrudging) kisses got her to calm down. Eddie had almost forty years of experience dealing with this sort of thing, and idley he thought about how sad that was. How did he get into this mess again? How did he always fall into the hands of a woman who thought he was made of glass?
What was it about the Quarry that made him feel like he could jump?
...Where the fuck did he grow up?
-----
Going to see the show was… uncomfortable, to say the very least.
He didn’t enjoy it, didn’t heckle like he wanted, he just stared at Richard Tozier and felt like someone was ripping his heart out of his chest. And punching it. A lot. He felt two degrees off from reality as he watched this grubby-on-purpose man traipse around the stage. He knew him, he knew him and he didn’t know how and it made him want to be sick. Plus, this didn’t help how bad the weeks leading up to it were (Myra was being pushier than ever, work was weirdly difficult to concentrate on.) and he still couldn’t remember where he was from.
But looking up at him, up at Richard (BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP), He knew.
He knew where he was from (DERRY, DERRY, DERRY, DERRY), and he didn’t have an explanation for why.
Richard looked him in the eyes and the entire room stopped.
“Eds?” The voice echoed through the theatre. It was pineapple boy again.
“Don’t call me that.” He responded, and his voice was pinched and high. Tears welled in his eyes, and Richie was walking towards him, and he wasn’t wearing a Hawaiian shirt, no fucking pineapples, and god he felt like he could fight the world, jump off any cliff, run into his arms, be held like he used to be, laugh like he used to laugh, and-
Blackness.
Blackness.
Blackness.
---
Eddie woke up at his front door, unsure of how he got there. He checked his watch. Three in the morning. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing, despite feeling like something important had happened. There was a numbness that ran through his body that he didn’t like, but prevented him from pursuing it beyond acknowledgement. He felt braindead, like a zombie. Still, he pushed the feeling aside and entered his home.
Derry, Maine. Huh. That’s where he was from. Didn’t know why he remembered that. Good to know, he supposed. Whatever. Myra was awake, worried, of course, and it was fine. He let her fuss and they went to bed.