- Now, it seems like we never left," Ritchie said, putting out a cigarette on the railing. Still, nobody cared.
They didn't say anything.
- I don't like it here," Ritchie confessed.
Eddie breathed a sigh and still put his hand on his shoulder, pulling it to himself. Something was warm inside, but Ritchie didn't try to get rid of it. Somewhere deep down in his heart, he had long wanted to send everything to hell and finally feel the peace. And now he was as close as ever to Eddie's side.
- Everything will be fine," Casprack confidently said, clenching Ritchie's shoulder tighter.
Tosier pretended like he believed it.
* * *
Everything was definitely not okay.
Richie Tosier's strangled love for Eddie was gradually coming to life. She gently enveloped her insides, sometimes causing unbearable pain, and she pushed all her common sense out of her head, making him uncomfortable as if he were a teenager.
Next to Eddie, calm and rational at normal times, he did not feel like an adult man. He felt as if he was fourteen years old again, as if he had just realized what he was so thoroughly involved in. It was ridiculous and, perhaps, just funny to everyone else, but Ritchie was in a panic.
He kept looking away or looking the other way when God forbid he was talking to Eddie. I was joking around, slipping away more and more about moms. Thank God he didn't blush, otherwise things could have gotten a few times worse. But even so, Ritchie felt that everything is rolling into some abyss, from which there is no and there was never a way out.
A child's fear that his old friends, learning that he was, will turn away from him, contemptuously shriveling, like Bowers, did not let go. More like growing and spreading, each day more and more dense and densely wrapped around his throat, depriving him of air. It was unbearable.
So, once again, when he couldn't breathe at all, he grabbed the bottle and went to his room, tightly closing the door. The day really turned out to be more terrible than usual, because the memories that attacked his head with renewed vigor hit the sickest person. Pennywise, as if mockingly, pressed on all the painful points at once, hinting at how disgusting and pathetic he was. Ritchie knew about it without him, and yet it was unpleasant to hear about it.
When he filled the glass with bourbon, he immediately sipped off most of it, crushing. Ritchie coughed up and tried to convince himself not to give up.
No one would know, he kept telling himself, nervously wiping his wet lips, I was normal.
It was getting harder and harder for him to believe it. Although it was much easier to convince myself of that before he arrived in Derry.
He drank, drank, drank, and drank, trying to drown out his hated voice, which he kept saying that he wasn't what he wanted to look like. The voice exposed an old child's wound, which had not turned into a scar and had not healed over time, but was festering and bleeding. And any touch to it caused only pain.
They knocked on the door, and then a quiet voice asked:
- May I?
Ritchie didn't understand who had said that, so he mumbled something, and then loudly put the glass on a wooden table.
When Eddie walked into the room, Ritchie wanted to escape.
- What do you want? - He said rudely, feeling the alcohol inside turning a big hot ball. The throat was slowly getting nauseous because of fear.
Eddie didn't answer: he sat down next to Ritchie on the couch, with his black shimmering eyes. He took Tosier by the wrist in silence and asked:
- What was going on?
Ritchie couldn't resist and cried.
- I can't do this anymore.
His words were so bitter, so painful, and so afraid that Eddie was breathless for a moment. The need for words immediately disappeared, because Caspbruck didn't think that any word in the world could change anything. Pulling drunk Ritchie towards him, he hugged him tightly, allowing him to hide his defenseless face from strangers' eyes.
Ritchie grabbed him like a drowning man, clutching his hands firmly into his shirt, threatening to tear him apart, and pulling him closer to himself. He tried to climb on it completely, but it did not work, and then failed, stretching out next to him, preventing him from breathing.
to be continued...
Link to Part 5