Work Text:
Dear diary,
The words were smudged, black ink bleeding through the paper in a watery confusion of vowels, consonants, ideas and feelings.
The paper was so thin that it had ripped apart and now, what was once a page, became a note. Its entirety forever lost somewhere down the sewers, probably diminished to tiny pieces and decorating the piles of trash that floated around his lair.
Pennywise held the paper with more care than what he liked to admit, white gloves soaking with contaminated water while his eyes, ethereally glowing a happy blue, insisted on the task of guessing what William Denbrough had confided to his journal.
An eternal creature like IT, that had traveled across uncountable universes and feasted upon them, knew a great number of languages. Dead ones, new ones, forbidden ones, and that was why he could say with certainty that humans were tasteless and stupid creatures; their languages were crude, rough, but there he was, putting himself at their level, unwillingly discoviring that the language many fools talked about indeed existed; the language of love.
For there was no other way he could describe the feelings a simple piece of paper awakened in him, nor other explanation of why he waited every single day for what had happened to the boy that liked to write all his secrets to then flush them down the toilet before 7 p.m.
It was so idiotic, the clown himself still couldn’t accept it, but maybe it was ka, or the Other playing a prank, but as the days passed and the gears moving all universes kept working, Pennywise found himself even more attracted to William and his writing.
The dilacerated note was taken to where all the others were being kept, in an adjacent room where light shone almost all day long.
With certain reverence, it was placed under the sun to dry, carefully patted in the corners as to not winkle and then, a few hours later, it’d be in a neat pile that talked about Sundays, Mondays, nightmares, dreams and everything that composed what William Denbrough was:
A boy. Barely 14 years old, with ginger hair that reminded his mother’s, freckled cheeks and blue eyes.
An outcast. He hated school, the Bowers gang, but loved Silver, his bicycle, and often preferred to cycle through Derry and be with his friends instead of going home.
A victim. His daddy threw all his frustration on his only remaining son, some dark marks that could only be covered by long sleeved shirts, some abuse that morphed into desperate drawings.
Pennywise kept it all.
They were mementos. Pieces of a puzzle. Trophies.
He was still too weak to dare leave the sewers, though, instead lurking under the city, picking prey, crafting plans, observing, slowly spreading a cloak of ignorance and malevolence among the inhabitants.
Within the first week of his awakening, the pages started to come.
Some were folded into unsuspecting boats, while others were just tightly crumpled, marking desperation, the hush of almost being caught.
Among all the trash and remains of past victims, they stood out the most, and it was driven by an almost childish curiosity that the clown read William's days.
With each entry, Pennywise built a clearer image of this human that was slowly becoming his.
Like a twisted secret admirer, being handed pieces of William's life, feeling foreign emotions take root in his millennial heart, unable to make them stop, unwilling to make them stop.
Dear diary, I dreamed with a clown.
The rest of the tale was lost, but he knew how it had played; the soft noises William made whenever he touched some sensitive spot, his sweet little moans, his eagerness to be held, the goosebumps in his flesh, the sparkle in his eyes and the pink burning in his cheeks.
Reading those simple words filled him with laughter, a high pitched thing that echoed through the dark corridors and scared a few rats.
Oh, it was definitely a way the Other was using to have revenge for all the planets and lives destroyed by his teeth, maybe it was punishment for Maturin's death too, even though he had nothing to do with it, for that laugh had filled his chest with emotions he wasn't used to: joy, earning, love.
All undressed of possible despicable sentiments, all pure.
Pennywise stopped for a moment, considering ripping the notes apart, drowning their memories in the deepest part of the sewer and then giving the boy a similar ending.
How would his throat feel under his fingers? Would he beg for mercy or would he fight?
The thought brought back delight, a depraved one, but it was better like this; more comfortable, familiar.
Without needing to ponder too much, he decided who would be his first prey.
