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The loneliness is suffocating. He just wants the pain to stop, he needs it to stop. The wall is full of holes so what difference makes another one and the pain in his hand is a nice change from the pain in his chest. Even if he could he wouldn’t hold back the tears now streaming down his face, a week’s worth of feelings rushing to the surface.
He is on the floor and while he could be sitting on the couch or the bed there’s a space between the drawer and the wall that makes him feel safe. He is curled up into a ball and he’s rocking back and forth with a cigarette between his lips, smoke rising to the ceiling like snakes in a dance. He feels small but makes himself even smaller because a part of him just wants to disappear and it feels like he’s going to break.
His hand is shaking when he reaches for his phone on the floor. The screen is cracked from that time last month when he threw it across the room. Another time just like this one. With a flick of his thumb he unlocks the phone but there’s nothing to see. Because let’s face it, no one cares about him and he’s alone and what did he expect? That someone was going to call and ask how he is? Who would that be? His mother?
“Take this, it’s going to make you better,” she said. “Don’t do that, it’s dangerous,” she said. “You’re giving me a heart attack,” she screamed into his face late one night when he had forgot to call to let her know he was going to be late. “I’m so sick.”
He hates her. He loves her but he hates her and she is going to be the one to kill him in the end. He started smoking just to fuck with her head - and tell his own lungs that what she said to him growing up was lie after lie after lie and that he isn't going to die from an asthma attack. Because that is one more condition she made up to make him dependent on her.
He wants to kill her. Wants to squeeze her throat and watch the life leave her eyes, but he can’t ever do that. No, he’s not the monster she is. She’s never going to get better and all he can do is accept that and move on. This is him moving on.
But he’s so fucking scared.
He has no idea how to be a functional human being. He doesn’t know how to socialize. She never taught him how to be. So here he is in his apartment fighting the urge to reach for the inhaler he still keeps in his pocket because without it he feels naked and wrong. He doesn’t need it, he doesn’t fucking need it. The tightness in his throat is in his head and not real. He’s not going to let it beat him, not this time.
She’s calling now. She calls him at least once a day and if he doesn’t pick up she’s not going to stop. She will to terrorize him until he picks up and tells her that he is fine thanks for asking how are you? She’s going to tell him she’s feeling unwell and in her voice is the longing, that unasked question that requires an answer. No mother, I’m not coming home. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life taking care of you and your imaginary illnesses. Because no, they’re not real. Just like my asthma wasn’t fucking real.
Please just leave me alone.
But he can’t talk to her now and he turns off the sound so that he can resist follow her silent directions. She’s scaring him almost more than life itself and going against her like this is like releasing a lion among sheep and he’s going to have to run or she will catch up to him and bring him down.
He used to have friends. Bill, Bev, Ben, Mike, Stan and Richie. But all of them are gone now. He has seen Mike around, but he hasn’t said a word to the man since that humid afternoon back in ‘88, when his mother forbid him to speak to his group of friends. The only friends he has ever known.
He’s been alone ever since.
He knows that Richie does radio sometimes now and has become quite the famous comedian. He has considered reaching out but can’t bring himself to do it. What would he say? Hello, it’s Eddie. Remember me? We used to be friends but then we weren’t.
Bill is an author. Eddie has read his books. They’re good. He has no idea where Bev is. Or Ben. Stan is dead. His wife tracked all of them down when he took his own life a couple of years ago. Eddie mourned someone he didn’t even know, old times running through his head like a sad music video on repeat.
It’s late and the darkness is creeping into the room through the window and he is still afraid of the dark because he knows what’s lurking in the shadows. So he forces himself to get up and he crosses the room to the window, and with one quick tug he pulls down the blinds. Not that it makes him feel safer than before but at least he can’t see out and no one can see in.
He puts out the cigarette, dries the tears from his face with the sleeve of his hoodie and clears his throat. Then he picks up his phone, five missed calls from his mother flashing on the screen before he deletes them. Get them out of his life and pretend it never happened.
It’s hard, and he’s itching to call her back because that’s what he’s been programmed to do but no, he’s not going to. Not tonight.
Tonight he’s going for a walk. Alone. In the dark. Where it can happen.
Richie arrives in Derry later than planned but that’s just how shit goes sometimes. He’s driving through town towards his parents house, still living in the same neighborhood on the same street and he has a lot of memories from this place. Nightmares, the hateful comments, being pushed around when he was walking down the corridor at school. When he’s driving past The Barrens where he used to spend the afternoons with the losers, images of their faces flash through his mind.
The comments.
Derry hasn’t changed. It’s still this dark and isolated place that feels so much further away from everything than it actually is. It’s been a while since his last visit and there’s something about this place that just pulls you in.
He parks the car on the street in front of the house because his dad hasn’t put their car into the garage. A final glance in the rear-view mirror before he gets out of the car and he can make sure he looks presentable, which is a rare thing these days.
“Richie?”
Richie whirls around. There’s someone coming towards him but he can’t see who it is because it’s dark so he squints but it doesn’t help. It isn’t until the man steps out into the dim light from the streetlamp overhead that he recognizes that face.
“Eds?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You’re smoking.” Richie has no idea what he expected Eddie to be like now but this ain’t it. He looks tired. He’s wearing a hoodie and dark jeans and regular sneakers, nothing special and nothing that resembles the Eddie he once knew. Eddie from his childhood was almost as colorful as himself. And that was one of the things he used to love about Eddie. There was a lot of things he used to love about Eddie.
But it’s a long time ago and things change.
“Yeah, I’m a late rebel.” Eddie is smiling but the smile never reaches his eyes. It also fades in a way that makes Richie’s heart sink in his chest.
“Oh damn it’s good to see you.” Richie steps forwards and hugs Eddie, but Eddie isn’t hugging him back. “I didn’t know you’re still here.”
“Yeah well,” Eddie says with a shrug and takes another drag on the cigarette. He is holding his other hand in his pocket and it looks like he’s fiddling with something. “What brings you back to Derry?”
“It’s mom’s birthday tomorrow.”
Eddie just nods. Another drag, and then another.
“Where are you headed?”
“Just around,” Eddie says. He drops the cigarette to the ground and crushes it with the tip of his shoe.
“I don’t want to go in there just yet,” Richie says. “Do you mind me waking with you?”
“No, not at all.”
Together they walk, in silence one might add, down through the town. Past the school, past the library and into the park that brings back so many bad memories Richie can’t hold back the shudder.
“Are you cold?”
“No, just thinking.”
It’s like Eddie understands but he stops at a bench and sits down. Richie joins him even though he would prefer to get out of here, sooner rather than later.
“Your carving,” Eddie suddenly says. “You never finished it.”
Richie glances at Eddie but Eddie isn’t looking at him. He remembers the day as if it were yesterday. He thought he was alone, because when he looked down the road he had seen no one. He had started carving, first R and then + because he was going to add another letter to the equation but he never got the chance because his bullies were coming down the road and he had to run. He never came back to finish it.
Eddie must have seen him.
“What was it supposed to be?”
More silence.
“I think I have to go, they’re expecting me.” Richie gets up and with a hurried “goodbye” over his shoulder he leaves Eddie sitting on the bench. He can’t talk about that, he can’t visit that part of himself and it's like a newly healed wound he doesn't want to rip open again. Not even for Eddie, who used to be one of his best friends.
He thinks he is walking back to the house but then there it is. The bridge. The same fucking bridge, and he has no idea how he got here. As he walks closer he can see it, the carving. But there’s something different about it and when he stops in front of it he can hardly believe what he's seeing.
“I knew,” a voice behind him says and when he looks around he can see Eddie standing there. Richie didn’t hear him approach.
He would crack some kind of joke could he only think of one, but his mind is blank and as he turns his head back to look at the finished carving he can feel rather than hear Eddie walking closer. Eddie takes his hand and squeezes it gently.
The carving used to say R +.
It now says R + E.