Pennywise⊹

That evening, Derry breathed with the dampness of autumn and a secret. The bar was a refuge—warm, cramped, alive. The walls, paneled in dark wood, had absorbed the smoke of thousands of cigars and the echoes of blues sung there. The patrons—mostly black soldiers from the nearby base—listened not with their ears but with their skin, surrendering their fatigue, their longing, and their vague hope to the music.

You were singing "Strange Fruit." The air thickened, grew viscous and sweet with pain. In the final note hung an absolute silence, and then—an explosion. Not of applause. Of the doors.

They did not enter like everyone else. Not like drunks, not like the lost. They entered as owners disgusted by everything here. Four of them. Faces carved from limestone—cold, rough, lifeless. Their eyes, the color of murky ice, slid over the room, searching. The bar froze. Even the ice in the glasses stopped clinking.

"Where is he?" The first one's voice was like gravel scraping on iron. "We know he's here. Hand him over."

No one moved. The old saxophonist slowly, with exaggerated politeness, laid his instrument in its case. It was not a gesture of fear but a ritual—the closing of something sacred before desecration. The silence became a weapon. Thick, proud, dangerous.

The thug spat. The saliva landed on the floor near your shoes, white and now inappropriately dressy.

"Alright," he hissed. "Alright. We're out of place here."

They left. But they left behind not relief, but a vacuum that immediately began to fill with a sticky, primal fear. And then, through the window they had shattered, fluttered the first orange petal of flame. Followed by the smell. A sweetish, revolting smell of gasoline mixed with the ancient scent of burning wood.

Chaos is not the absence of order. It is order of another, monstrous kind. The fire did not simply burn—it feasted. It licked the bar where whiskey had just stood, devoured the velvet curtains you had been gazing into pensively, surged towards the ceiling in tongues resembling the hands of a praying demon. The lights went out, and the world narrowed to a ghostly, flickering spectacle in three colors: black smoke, orange flame, crimson shadows on the faces of screaming people.

Sounds imprinted themselves on the mind like branding irons: the wild roar of the fire, a glass rain of shattered bottles, the bellow of a man ramming a jammed door with his shoulder, the choked sob of a waitress pressed against the wall. You don't remember how you ended up in the corner. Your body made the decision for you—to hide, to curl up, to become invisible. The floor trembled. Hot ash, like black snow, settled on your hair, on your white clothes. You hugged your knees, buried your forehead in the fabric, tried to breathe through the hem of your dress—short, greedy, useless breaths. The smoke was everywhere. It ate at your eyes, scraped claws in your lungs, turned the world into a tearful, suffocating haze. You squeezed your eyes shut, seeing only dancing orange spots through your eyelids.

And then you heard them.

Through the cacophony of the end of the world—a clear, relentless rhythm. Thump. Thump. As if someone was walking on old wood, or even on something thick and sticky, like tar. The sound was wrong. It defied the physics of the burning building. It was… personal. It was meant for you.

You opened your eyes, overcoming the searing pain.

Through the veil of smoke, ten paces away, stood a figure. Tall. Unnaturally straight. Its contours shimmered and swam in the hot air, but it was not a mirage. It was the most solid thing in the room. It took a step. Another. The smoke seemed to part before it, not daring to touch it.

Your heart in your chest fell silent, then raced in a frantic, bird-like flutter. You raised your head, and your gaze, full of tears from the smoke, met its face.

Whiteness. Dead, porcelain whiteness of skin, where the reflections of the flames danced. Bright orange hair, sticking out in all directions, as if he'd just stuck his head in a socket. And the smile. God, that smile. It took up half his face, stretching his lips into an unnatural, clownish grimace, baring rows of small, sharp, utterly inhuman teeth. But the main thing—the eyes. Large, round, yellow, like those of a nocturnal bird of prey. They held no malice, no joy. Only emptiness. Emptiness and a cold, living interest. Like a child examining a bug before tearing its wings off.

The air escaped your lungs in a short, rasping gasp. No scream came. Horror gripped your throat with an icy ring.

His hands—in long, dazzlingly white gloves—settled on your shoulders. The touch was a shock. Not the heat of the fire, but a piercing, bone-deep cold that seeped through the fabric of your dress straight into your soul. His fingers tightened. The grip was absolute, leaving no room for the thought of resistance. He lifted you as easily as if you were a straw-stuffed doll. Your legs, soft and unresponsive, shuffled helplessly across the floor.

He did not look at the fire, at the panic. He looked only at you. His yellow eyes devoured your reflection. Then he lunged forward. It was not an attack. It was the movement of an element. He wrapped his long, flexible arms around you, pressed you to himself with monstrous force. His embrace was not protection but a sarcophagus—tight, cold, insurmountable. Your ears rang from the pressure, your ribs creaked under the onslaught.

He spun, dragging you in this deadly dance, took two swift steps—not towards the exit, but towards the wall, the very wall behind which the freedom of the night and the cold already raged. And he threw himself at it. Or rather, threw you both.

Everything blurred. Impact—a dull, world-shaking thud. Pain—sharp and diffuse at once, fanning across your back. The crash of breaking, already charred boards. A blinding flash of orange light from outside, momentarily illuminating his face—distorted not by effort but by blissful, insane joy. You flew through the wall like a cannonball, and the fall into the wet, cold mud of the alley seemed a blessing. He fell beside you but rose immediately, not releasing you from his icy ring.

He only let you go once on the ground. You collapsed onto your back, gasping for air that was sweet and terrible for its lack of smoke. Above you, blocking out the stars and the billows of black smoke, his silhouette loomed. He stood, swaying slightly, and looked down. Then he began to laugh.

It was not a human laugh. It was the sound of a broken spring in a huge clock, the creak of unoiled swings rocking in an empty wind. It held a wild, uncontrollable mirth devoid of any warmth. From this sound, blood froze in your veins faster than from any scream.

He leaned down. He smelled of mildew, circus powder, and something old, infinitely old—abandoned wells, attics closed forever, grave dirt.

His voice, when he spoke, was a whisper. But this whisper cut the hearing like a whisper in absolute silence. It was full of playful, sinister intimacy.

"O-o-oh," he drawled, and his voice tinkled like a little bell. "Lookie here! A little birdie fell out of its burning nest. All alone. Frightened. Trembling."

He straightened up, spread his arms in a theatrical gesture, his shadow on the wall of the burning bar covering you entirely like a giant, ugly frog.

"And do you know what happens to little birds all alone?" he asked, and in his eyes flashed those very "deadlights," the promise of a madness more terrifying than any physical pain. "They get PLAYED WITH."

He paused, savoring the moment, your mute horror.

"Well then," his voice became silky again, seductive, like before the most terrible trick. "time to fly."