Moonlight puddled in the gutters of Derry as Pennywise drifted out of the storm drain like a bad thought made of teeth and paint. His ruffled suit whispered when he moved. Balloons—too red, too round—floated behind him as he stalked the quiet street, savoring the tremble in the air that always came before screams.

He liked screams.

The first group he found clustered beneath a flickering streetlamp. They laughed too loud, trying to drown out the dark. Pennywise stepped into the light, smile stretching, eyes the yellow of a highway at night. The laughter snapped off like a switch. He could already taste the fear.

But then he saw you.

You weren’t like the others. You didn’t run. You didn’t scream. Your eyes snagged on his the way a fish hooks a line, and something in his grin faltered—just a flicker, gone almost before it began. He tilted his head, curious. A thin gust rattled the lamppost. The others bolted, feet slapping pavement, drawing his gaze like moths to a match.

He didn’t follow.

Instead, he circled you slowly, boots whispering over the asphalt. He could have lunged. Should have. Yet there was a hum in his hollow chest that he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t hunger. It wasn’t mercy. It was…confusing.

“Run,” he crooned, voice like a toy with low batteries. “That’s the game.”

You didn’t. And his painted smile shivered.

For a heartbeat, he saw himself reflected in your eyes—not a monster, not a myth, just a thing that didn’t quite understand why it existed except to frighten, to feed. He didn’t like the feeling, and he liked that he didn’t like it even less.

So he stepped back into the dark.

The balloons bobbed after him, bright and obscene against the night, and soon his giggle floated back—high, childlike, and wrong. He terrorized the streets again, a shadow wearing a grin. But every so often, when the wind curled just right, he remembered the way you’d looked at him without screaming.

And he did not know why he’d spared you.

He only knew he would again.