#pennywiseorigin

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It 1990

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A Pennywise Origin Story - Part 1

So, I read this post the other night and while at first it had only been an interesting thought, it has now become something that has me in its grip so hard, I can barely keep away from notebooks or keyboards, ever since I started pondering how a good natured clown would be willing to lend his body to a creature like It. Anyhow, because it is fun writinng for yourself, but even greater getting feedback, I just thought about putting it on here for people to see. If you enjoy it, that’s amazing, if not, well...then there’s a lot of other blogs to visit. So, well, here we go; the first part.

A Fateful Encounter - July 1772

Carefully the gloved hands took the little spider from the wooden make-up table and cradled it within their palms. It could feel a warmth emitting from the hands through the thin white garment, as well as It could feel the careful caution It was being handled with. Humans didn’t like spiders and most men, even if they would never admit it, were scared of them, however tiny they might be. Not so the clown. He had seen the spider on the light wood in front of the veiled vanity part of the vanity table and had let out a deep sigh. Not a scream, just a sigh. It reached out for the feelings of the clown; there was no disgust or fear, only pity and the will to help the little spider caught in his trailer. It felt some swaying and then there was green grass all around it, the red nose of the clown right in front of It. “Go on, little friend, enjoy your freedom. You wouldn’t want to be trapped in a circus.”

In a final attempt of scaring the clown, It rose on It’s four hindlegs, but the clown only smiled and waved at it. “Go on. Do spider things.” And with that and a little jingle of his bells, he turned around and went back into his trailer, leaving It to ponder human fear. Had It been over in the next trailer with the ballerinas, It might have given them a pretty big scare, maybe It might have even been able to scare one of them to death. But It wasn’t powerful enough quite yet. Still weak from Its hibernation and hunger, It wasn’t able to pull out all the bells and whistles right now. An easy kill, a light breakfast so to speak, would have to suffice. Its eight speedy legs carried it faster than one would have thought to the next trailer, where it could sense anger and viscious envy. Girls rivalling one another. It could feel an appetite grow. Anger stemmed from fear and fear meant an easy target.

The next day the oldest girl was missing. And It started to feel more alive and there was still a whole circus in town.

 *

 It could not fathom what It felt. The lonely figure in the street had seemed easy prey, scared out of its mind already, but when It reached out to feel for the figure’s fears to dress itself in their image, It came up the figure’s twin. That was new. It looked at It’s gloved hands and ruffled costume. It reached up to feel the immense forehead. Almost bit itself with the long front teeth. Another look at the weird silhouette on the road confirmed what It had perceived to be true; It had taken the form of the sad clown awkwardly limping along the road leading up to the Well House.  Night had fallen over Derry, Maine, where the circus had been staying for the past couple of weeks, and the clown felt uncomfortable walking along the old dirt road, away from the people who followed him. As It took a closer look, It could see the blood dripping from a small wound on the clowns head, see his clothes torn in places where people had tried to grab him and hold him. There were a few trees to his left, some of their branches clawing at his costume, making him jump, whenever he felt them tear at his costume, thinking it was somebody who had caught up to him. The area around here, for some reason, was deserted. There was an uneasy feeling about it, he himself felt like he was being watched. But maybe that was just his paranoia after being chased around by half the township. He could have drawn closer to the center of the street to avoid the branches, but that would have made him an easy target and easier to spot. Not that he wasn’t easy enough to spot with his flaming orange hair and his white face. And his large head. That large, unshapely head.

Though not exactly knowing why someone would be scared of themselves, It prepared for the hunt, excitement rising in It’s bones. It had wanted to stay undetected for a while longer, but the jingling bells on the costume made the clown turn around, a twist It hadn’t foreseen. A twist the clown had not foreseen. Damn bells, would take some getting used to. But for now, the game.

It saw the eyes of the clown widen with…not quite fear. There was disgust, anger, designation, surprise. But there was no fear. It was confused, when the picture it had gotten from the clown’s subconscious had been so clear.

It could hear the clown’s heartbeat speed up. They were staring at each other for a moment, both as unsure as the other as to what this meant.

“Not much dancing going on tonight, Mr.Pennywise.” It finally said. It didn’t know why It had said that, but it seemed appropriate. It had heard it somewhere, from someone. Or rather It had heard the sentence in the mind of the clown having been said to him by someone.

“You are the one who killed the children. You are the one who stole the women. You are what they are after.”

“Children, adults, men, women, it doesn’t make much of a difference. But children are the easiest. The tastiest.” It added as an afterthought, shivering with excitement, making the bells on the stolen costume jingle some more.

“You used my face.” A pause followed.

“Not until now. Not until today. We use a lot of faces, a lot of names.”

“Why today?” The clown’s enormous forehead creased almost comically in bewilderment.

“Why are you scared of yourself, Mr. Pennywise?”

The clown’s face lit up in dark understanding. “I am not. I am afraid of my face. The way people react to it. I am afraid of the farmers with their pitchforks and the women with their shrieking laughter. I am afraid of the children’s fear when they look at me. I am afraid of being thought a monster.”

“But what if you are a monster? What if you are made to be a monster?” It sneered, having found the weak spot in the other’s armour.

“The way I see it,” the clown said and looked into the distance, “mankind is the monster. They do each other so much harm. The most beautiful men have the cruellest of hearts and kindness wears an ugly face most of the time.”

There was another emotion, speeding up the heartbeat of Pennywise. It was anger. It felt fascinated by the poisoned heart of the innocent clown. What a beautiful contradiction. All Pennywise had ever wanted was to do right by the world and all the world had ever done was make him an outcast, laugh at him, spit in his face, just to laugh at him some more. His heart was burning with a fire brighter than It had ever felt. That was why It had felt drawn toward the clown. There was a deep satisfaction found in violence. It could feed almost as easily off violence as it could off fear. Fear made people taste better, but violence made them juicy.

“We seem to be seeing eye to eye on that subject, Mr. Pennywise. Which makes it a pity that we will have to kill you.” It circled around the clown and watched it hungrily. But the clown only shrugged.

“End my miserable existence if you must, but if you are the monster they are all talking about, would you mind doing me a favour?”

“We are not in the business of doing people favours. But you seem an interesting case, so speak on, dear clown.”

Darkness rose in the innocent blue eyes of the clown and its voice went deep and growling. “Make them suffer, take their children and their wives, let them watch and scream and wish they had never been born.” It bathed in the violence of the thought, fed on the hatred coming off the clown and felt deeply drawn toward Pennywise’s shaking figure. Bells tingling on the both of them, they stood facing each other, It’s eyes a glowing amber, Pennywise’s a dark blue.

It needed a while to form an answer. Speaking with their kind took some effort. “We will make them suffer for all eternity. The way we always did and always will do. We must feed. We must survive. What we don’t understand is why you would want them to suffer so badly.”

Pennywise closed his eyes. “They say ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’, but I say they have not deserved to ever see the sun again.”

It’s head perked up in a jerky motion. They had seen him. They had found Pennywise. The clown looked at him darkly.

“Either you kill me or they will. But I beg of you to make good on your word. Give me the revenge I never got.”

It slowly faded into the background when it realised that the good people of Derry had been surrounding the clown, drawing closer and closer this whole chase. He hadn’t stood a chance against their knowledge of the layout of the town and his being caught was one of the inevitabilities of life. When they reached him, the mob started to attack him and it would have been easy for It to enjoy the show and feed of their hate and violence. However, something in It had been stirred by the clown. He wanted to know more about him. He had been so dark, yet so innocent, It could not let him die through the hands of a lynch mob. So it made them calm down. Let the rational people think their rational thoughts. A trial should be held. Tomorrow evening. Because everyone deserved a trial, even a killer clown. And if he didn’t deserve it, it would look better to the neighbouring towns. Because Derry, Derry was a nice place to live.

 *

1748-1753 

Born with what would today be known as Hydrocephalus and its side effects, the little boy had never had a chance at a normal life. When he was born, his father turned away and his mother cried in agony for three days. They thought about drowning their first-born son, but could not quite find the courage for that. Or the mercy. The child screamed in pain some days, having trouble to focus things with his eyes. His head, already big when he was born, grew even more in the first few weeks after his birth. The doctors said they could not help him, so his parents, who were still good people did their best by him. They did not give him a name, because the doctor said, he probably wouldn’t live to be a year. But his first birthday saw him a happy little boy, despite the circumstances. His mother loved him as well as she could, but his father never accepted him as his first-born, his heir. Everytime he had a cold or fell ill, they thought this was the day their son was going to die. But he lived to be two, three, four. He was still their only son. Their neighbours started talking that with his large forehead and bucked teeth, with his flaming orange hair, he was probably the Devil’s child. Talk about it went around town and his parents started to feel uneasy in his vicinity. His mother had had several miscarriages by then and even though nobody explicitly blamed it on the boy, they were thinking it. He was different and he knew from a small age that he was. A few weeks before he turned five, he got a little baby sister, but she died in her sleep only a few nights after she was born. Once again, no one dared say a word to the parents, but they all blamed it on the little demon boy. The boy who saved cats out of trees and butterflies from dying in cobwebs. The quiet winter child with the curious blue eyes and the kindest of souls. When his mother got pregnant again, he was joyfully telling his parents how he would love a baby brother to play with and it hurt his mother to think about the big tears he had cried over his dead sister. In the end, her heart couldn’t take another tragedy and so while giving birth to her second son, she died. It felt like she had died preventively to spare herself from another child death in the week bed, but what she did, was rob herself of a happy life with her two sons, one of them normal, the other a little odd, but kind and loving. His father, however, finally having the healthy son he had always wanted, blamed the death of his wife on their sickly son. In his mind, if it hadn’t been for his deformity, his wife would not have had to go through so many miscarriages and that last, deadly, childbirth. He could not bear to see the orange-haired boy day in, day out reminding him of the death of his wife. So, he decided to get rid of his crippled kid, and as it sometimes happens, things fell into place for the small boy with the domed forehead and the tinkling laughter that – more than anything else – reminded his father so much of his late wife.

A circus just happened to be on its way through town and the director took one look at the boy and was willing to pay up. Without knowing it, the small boy changed hands like a well-fed cow. His father got money and rid of him, and the small boy got his first real family. Within this circus, he was by far not the weirdest person, but felt oddly normal. Even though he missed his mother, he felt like he was home. And it was more of a home than his brother had, as he should discover in later years. When he was older and they came through his hometown on their circuit, he looked for his brother and father, only to be told that his father had almost killed his little brother one day in a drunken state and then managed to fall to his own death in a freak accident. His brother had been given to a distant relative no one really knew the name of and no one had seen him ever since. So, his circus family wasn’t too shabby after all.

 *

 After being rescued from a death at the hand of an overly eager lynch mob by none other than the most evil entity in our known world, Pennywise sat in a dark and dank, slightly moist and creepy prison cell, awaiting the arrival of the sheriff from Bangor. It was early morning and dawn started to slowly creep onto a fog-veiled horizon. His prison cell had only a small window, casting it into the darkness of an eternal night on days like these. He didn’t care anymore. Not after all that had happened to him. Quite frankly, he could not wait to leave this cruel and corrupted world, where hope was only an illusion to keep you going and as you went work hard for something you could never achieve, and where, if you actually did find yourself happy, just had to wait for the knife in your side to be turned again, taking away everything that was dear to you. That was, when he saw two amber eyes in one of the corners of his prison cell, glowing like embers in the dark. He could feel the mere presence of the being that had met him in his own form only a few hours ago, as it radiated an unsettling feeling of underlying tension and anger. Pennywise, the once kind and too-soft-for-this-world boy, embraced that violent feeling right now, it felt like the sun warming his skin. The eyes grew closer, the dark and hidden figure behind them not yet perceivable to his eyes, but changing into a form, his mind was able to comprehend. Once again, he found himself facing himself, with the slight exception that this version of him had amber eyes instead of blue ones. He hardly acknowledged the arrival of his saviour, so to speak, just looked at him tiredly.

“And what are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice, the tinkling laughter and playful notes all gone.

“We came to make you a proposition in case you were still who we think you could be.”

Pennywise gave a humourless laugh. “Could you be anymore cryptic? What is it you want from a run-down existence like mine?”

The eyes of the creature swam in different directions, which should have made him uneasy, but he found himself not caring anymore. He was done with this world and if the world sent him an actual devil to take him away, then maybe that was just how it was supposed to end.

It was looking for the right words to get what It wanted, but it was hard for the creature as It had never been inside the mind of a human being longer than the few moments the chase normally took. It had no real idea of how the mind of a human being worked when it wasn’t scared to death, It had no sense of personality yet, because It never had one, had never needed one. But mankind was developing at an amazingly fast pace and if It wanted to keep up with his prey, It would need to get a better sense of what they were and how their minds were working. Their fears became more complicated, varied and complex than “the dark”, “spiders” or maybe weird animal creations that had never been and would never be. And as It’s prey evolved, it was time for It to evolve with it or starve. But how to put all this into words, when It had never needed to use words to express anything else than phrases or on the rare occasion had to string together a meaningful sentence? That was another reason It was here. But once again, the right words escaped It, failed It, just hadn’t been heard by It before. It’s mind was like a phrasebook, able to use things it had picked up before, even able to rearrange them and combine them to give them the kind of meaning It was looking for, but there was no deeper understanding as to how their kind’s language worked, which made any original utterings impossible. So, It fell back on what It had heard before.

“Who are you and why are you here?” It asked of the clown. And somehow the clown understood. It didn’t need to know that he was known around most of New England as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, It already knew, as It knew that he was here because he had been caught by a mob of angry villagers. It needed to know why the villagers had been furiously following him and who he was to make them that angry. The creature drew closer, moving in awkward, jerking motions, revealing It’s inhuman nature by It’s lack of coordination and real speech. Again Pennywise noticed how scared he should have been, but how much this felt like something falling into place. Like he was here because of this. He took a deep breath and looked into the face of the stranger that looked so much like his own.

“I grew up to be a clown after my first circus took me in. Well, I guess they paid for me, but I was never told the specifics of why or for how much they took me in, I was too young back then to really understand…”