hi i just found like five paragraphs i wrote in january 2020 right after reading IT in southern california and i think they kind of bop. lesbian reddie ofc. it's two horror bits and a cute one with absolutely no connective tissue whatsoever. xoxo
The beautiful woman in the doorframe leaned down, and Richie met her gaze.
Richie registered in an instant a dozen things. Something done to her hair to make it smooth and straight and glossy, lip gloss, contacts, mascara, skin-correcting gunk, cap-sleeve scoop-neck tee showing a soft slope of cleavage, nails pointed and buffed (dirt-free), baby blue nail polish, clean white socks hugging pale thighs under a short pleated skirt, repurposed from a cheerleader's uniform in the way some of the highschool girls styled themselves. This stranger was her, who she could grow up to soon be.
Richie leaned forward just a little more, and smiled at Richie, showing sharp and yellowed fangs.
Richie (our Richie) felt a sick jolt of relief that she would not dare explain to anyone.
Fur raced up the other Richie's arms, up her neck, as she still grinned wider and wider. Her claws dug into the doorframe. She erupted into a monster.
Richie careened wildly into the foyer. "BILL WE GOTTA FUCKIN GO—"
she thumped him on the arm, frantic, as they tumbled down the stairs.
Edith Kaspbrak was sitting in her room, re-reading a magazine, when the china dolls on her shelf began to whisper to her.
Edith did not have many dolls now. For a time she had had too many dolls. She was gifted them on birthdays and Christmas, from her mother and from her aunts, and they had almost crowded her out of her room. They were all very beautiful, but still a frustrating sort of gift; you could only throw so many tea-parties, be scolded so many times for mussing up their curls. You could make up stories, and torrid betrayals, and all sorts of things, but china dolls couldn't even hold a pose, and it got tiring when she had to think of it all herself. Everyone else had been too old for dolls for years now. Her mother wouldn't even let her sew them new clothes. She said they looked sloppy.
A few years ago, though, she and Regina "Richie" Tozier bundled them up and carried them into the woods. They set about cutting the dolls' hair. The haircuts grew shorter and shorter, half from Edith's meticulous evening-up and half from Richie's natural lean towards joyful chaos, and when Edith carried the dolls through the back door her mother had screamed and dropped a plate. The shorn dolls were banished to some cupboard or closet and the population of Edith's room dropped precipitously, even as she was grounded to it for weeks.
Four dolls is enough to chorus in the round "Edith. Edith," sweet voices overlapping like filmy layers of silk. "Edith Kaspbrak. Play with us."
Edith straightened up slowly.
"Play with us, Edith." "You wouldn't want to be ungrateful, Edith." "Aren't we beautiful, Edith?" "No thanks to you, Edith," and "You could be beautiful, Edith," these two almost simultaneously. "If you ate better." "If you stayed neat." "If you took care of yourself." "You could be lovely, Edith." The dolls were shaking slightly, vibrating. The magazine was crumpling in Edith's hands.
One doll fell off the shelf - or did it throw itself? A hard landing on its side. Cracks splintered across its arm, its lovely face, but it hung together. A pause, and it began to drag itself across the floor towards Edith, its full skirts barely rustling with the slowness of its movement. As it moved it grew.
Dull thuds as the other dolls fell too. Edith backed away, towards the window. She fumbled for the latch. The leading doll had doubled in size, and they still whispered: "We're wasted on you, Edith." "Ungrateful." "Cold." "Something's broken in you, Edith." "Something's sick in you, Edith."
Groping behind her, she got the window open and one-handed pulled it up. She didn't want to take her eyes off them. She was absolutely certain that their sluggish speed was some function of observation, that the instant she turned away they would grow monstrously quick. Her eyes were filling with tears; she distantly observed that this meant she didn't need to blink.
The cracks in the china grew wider, and a chunk popped off, like a bit of eggshell. Underneath was something that glistened with moisture. More china broke, the whole clawing-forward arm molting off, and Edith saw a skeleton arm, grey flesh clinging to the bone. The doll was the size of her now, just about. She got one leg out of the window. There was a birch out there that she'd managed to climb down once, shaking with nerves the whole time, and excitement too.
The face broke apart and beneath was another, grey and rotting, grinning so widely, wider than the moue of the pink china mouth had ever hinted at. "SICK," it bellowed, and Edith turned and hurled herself into the tree.
Summers in Maine were always riotously green. Edith drops into L.A. in the middle of January, California's greenest season, and it doesn't compare.
Even below the snowline there's dead brown at the corners of any place you look; spring-green sunlit grass poking up next to bare dirt, fallen palm fronds withering to paper.
Snow dusts the mountains that crouch over the city, none of it reaching the people, like someone has gone up and told it sternly not to be an inconvenience. She shivers and hugs herself. The mountains look like they might grow tired and shrug the whole mess off, shake themselves free, let everyone else fall into the Pacific's embrace.
In any given week, there is a 1-in-10,000 chance that a magnitude 7.8 or greater earthquake can strike the southern San Andreas fault. she thinks to herself, and briefly luxuriates in the concept of 1-in-10,000. Ten thousand weeks, two hundred years. Or of course it could hit tomorrow.
Edith knows this sort of detail-seeking is a screensaver, a loading animation, a routine her brain is running as it adjusts to bigger things behind the scenes. She lets it run.
The screen door creaks. Richie comes and stands beside her on the balcony. There's no pretension of distance. She presses up against Edith's side, a solid and inarguable warmth. "Whatcha thinking?" One of her arms comes around to rest lightly on Edith's waist.
"Earthquakes." She leans back into Richie, resting her head on her shoulder. Richie's hand settles more firmly on her hipbone.
Richie chuckles, low. "Yeah, sorry. I tried to get some people on that, fix that for you before you came out, but it turns out--" Edith kisses her, quick and light, then takes Richie's face in her hands and kisses her deeper. She can't help it. Richie chases her down.
It's a few minutes before they break apart. Edith tucks her cold hands under Richie's sweater and t-shirt both, making her hiss. "Are you sure you talked to the right people?" she says. "Did you use all of your contacts?"
"Each and every one of 'em," Richie says. She looks at Edith with deep sincerity in her eyes, the corners of her soft mouth twitching. "Bad news, sweetheart. It turns out this whole state is... faulty." And she goes off into a wheezy giggle. Edith tucks her face into Richie's neck and quietly screams, and then blows a raspberry there for good measure. The giggle/scream situation gets all tangled up together.
"Puns make you sound like an uncle," Eddie says. "You're gonna be booed off the stage."
Richie clicks her tongue. "That one is special for you. Exclusive. Eds-clusive."
"It was terrible," Eddie says politely.
"Oh, absolutely," Richie says. She kisses Eddie on the forehead. "Only the worst for you."
--- Connective tissue? ed 2025: lol no--
"The thing I like about earthquakes now," Richie says, staring out over the city, "they make me feel a lot better about the odds of anything living underground."
Eddie thinks a flash of something dark and unspeakable, and then thinks subway infrastructure, that must be reinforced somehow, and then she thinks how lucky she is to be here. She wraps her arms more tightly around Richie, runs her fingertips up her spine. They're bundled up in each other toe to tip in the January chill, a perfect summer morning in Maine.
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