Writing Wednesday July 13, 2022 (Patreon)

Date: July 13, 2022

What did I work on? A prompt-based one-shot

How much time was allotted: 45 mins

Thoughts and Feelings: Not too shabby! I'm really pleased with my last line

I feel great about writing little one shots right now in these writing sprints I've been up to each week. Granted I haven't worked much on big projects in these past weeks (this week a bit more in B&B ) however I think I need to get used to sitting down for a block of time and just putting something down and these sprints have gotten me into that practice

Word count (if known): 962

What was written:

I'll let you all in on the writing. It is from the movies It: Chapter One and 2 so it has some content from that but is mostly based on leaving a piece of shit town and finding inner strength. I left out the actual horror stuff ^_^

- Set your story in an unlikely sanctuary.

Having to move away from Derry was easy enough for Edward Kaspbrak.

Now approaching twenty, he’d applied for and got a job in another state far, far away from this shithole of a town and the control of his overbearing mother. He was dearly looking forward to figuring out life outside of all he knew and yet terrified all at the same time.

His mother had always dictated everything for him, though once he entered high school he managed to find a little more freedom outside of her influence. But he was definitely a follower so if it wasn’t Mom who was calling the shots, he was just going along with whatever his friends or people that he thought were his friends were going to do.

That hadn’t changed much until now. He’d applied on his own, he’d made the arrangements on his own. He wasn’t quite sure what had come over him, honestly. A piece of him whispered it was time to stop riding on the coattails of The Losers Club and later the separate “Derry Dozen” as some other group of people began calling themselves in high school. He needed to do something for himself. Everyone else seemed to be doing so. Bill, Bev and hell even Ben had got the hell outta dodge, as they say.

Fuck if Ben could fucking do it, Eddie sure could. That’s what he’d told himself again and again.

But now that he was on the eve of leaving, he felt absolutely terrified. How in the hell was he going to manage out there in a big city without anyone else he knew to fall back on?

Without realizing what he was really doing, Eddie was running through the streets of town blindly until he ran out of breath (which took a while considering he did not in fact have asthma). When he looked up, panting heavily, he saw it.

The house.

It’s house. The place that he and his friends had faced terrors galore and survived. All of the memories came rushing back to Eddie at once and he staggered back only to find himself steadying himself again on the crooked gate.

What awful things he’d seen in that house, and below it. The awful creature he and his friends had called It had taunted, terrorized and traumatized them there. Eddie knew that he should run away from this place, far, far away and never return and yet—

Yet, he was reminded of the strength he’d found in this rundown dump and the sewage system below it. He’d fought something of pure evil, and he’d won.

Of course, The Losers had all had a part. But Eddie, despite his concerns and legitimate worries of going in there had in fact gone in and faced everything —and further to that had fought back. He’d found something inside of him that day that he had never known existed.

His feet moved up the crumbled sidewalk towards the house and he looked up at it appraising its worth. It was still a piece of shit house and everything that it held within and below was an absolute living nightmare. He didn’t deny that. He never would. But he also saw power in the peeling paint, the rotting boards and the ominous shadows that played over the place day and night. He felt a sense of comfort here; comfort from the terrifying unknown future that lay ahead of him.

“Honestly,” he began speaking out loud to the broken front steps, “out there is nothing compared to you, you sonuvabitch. You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone–”

He swallowed nervously, suddenly worried that the house would answer him.

Eddie took a step back from the shattered sanctuary he was experiencing, and as he did so he realized that maybe he wasn’t so much talking to the house as much as he was talking to Derry too. He couldn’t see himself ever coming back after leaving tomorrow. Especially now that he’d realized he’d faced true horrors and fears and gotten over them so whatever life had for him outside of this sheltered existence in a small town was going to be peanuts in comparison so why would he ever need to fall back on the familiar?

With that solid feeling of confidence in mind, he stood a little more steadily on his feet and took in this condemned building for the last time.

“Thanks for showing me what… what…” He couldn’t find the words but the creaking of an upstairs shutter in the wind that interrupted his thoughts took whatever coherency he had left in him.

The young man turned on his heel, dark eyes flashing, and fled from the property that had served as a temporary sanctuary from his racing thoughts just minutes before.

He never thought of that place again after that. Well, at least not for almost another two decades after his unexpected encounter with the house that had given him the strength to leave and the fear of returning to Derry ever again.

But return he did after finding out about the death of his old friend, Stanley.

Derry, and that evil, rotting house were not done with Eddie and The Losers Club.

If he could have seen how it had played out, it was unknown whether he might’ve laughed at the irony. He’d find one last moment of sanctuary there in the bowels of that house underneath Derry.

And then, the spot where the house stood would become forever a reoccurring sanctuary for another Loser.

The almost twenty-year-old Eddie, though, was fine with this last stupid “gazebo” placebo to allow himself to think he was strong enough to go out and face a potentially unforgiving world —since he’d already seen a sanctuary in hell.