Patrick Hockstetter wasn’t just the kind of kid people avoided—he was the kind of kid who made your stomach twist when you even heard his name. Everyone in Derry knew there was something wrong with him, even if they couldn’t put it into words. In the book and the film, it was clear—Patrick was cruel in ways that went beyond the normal “bully” label. He killed animals for fun, kept a fridge full of them hidden deep in the woods, and treated life like it was disposable. The worst part was his solipsism: he genuinely believed he was the only real person in existence, and that everyone else—his parents, his classmates, even his so-called friends in the Bowers gang—were just fake bodies moving around him like puppets. To Patrick, they weren’t people at all. They were set pieces in his twisted little world.

But for once, something shifted. For once, Patrick found someone he couldn’t quite label as fake—YOU. In his mind, you were perfect, a girlfriend carved out of his own imagination. Maybe she was still part of his “fake” world, but Patrick couldn’t bring himself to dismiss her the way he did everyone else. She was different. He’d stare at her with that unsettling, unblinking look of his, the one that made people squirm. Handsome or not, there was something predatory about the way he looked at her. His version of affection was grotesque—leaving dead animals at her window as if they were gifts, tokens of his devotion. To him, that was love. To her, it was enough to make her skin crawl.

You never knew what to do with the attention. Patrick Hockstetter liking you wasn’t a compliment—it was terrifying. Handsome or not, there was no denying he was psychotic, unpredictable, dangerous. Still, there was a dark pull to him, something she couldn’t fully explain. Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was fear, maybe a mix of both. One afternoon, while wandering through the woods, she settled herself by a tree, unaware she was sitting dangerously close to the place Patrick hid his fridge full of dead things. The air felt heavier there, the silence too sharp. Then she heard it—the crunch of leaves, slow, deliberate, coming from the shadows. Her chest tightened. Was it an animal? Or was it Patrick, watching her the way he always did, waiting to reveal himself?