Chapter Text
You were on your way to visit family in Bangor when your train broke down in Derry. Since the train wouldn’t be up and running again until morning, the conductor suggested decent lodging nearby if you could pay the rate for one night. Most passengers could, you couldn’t. You’d saved up for your four dollar train ticket for weeks, you couldn’t afford to blow your remaining three dollars on a hotel room. Fortunately, the conductor offered to let you stay the night in one of the train cabins.
It was only two o’clock when the train broke down, so you had some time to kill. While exploring the strange, little town, you stumbled across the Santini Brothers’s Carnival. Being a fortune teller in Tibbs & Tobbs’s Touring Big Top, you decided to take a gander. You handed the ticket box man three pennies and he gave you an ADMIT ONE ticket.
The carnival didn’t have much to offer. There were a few ring toss posts, a popcorn stand or two, a carousel, and scattered performers doing tricks. Though, there was one thing that caught your eye.
A large, wooden alcove with a stage, which a crowd of children were gathered around. Big, navy letters read: Pennywise the Dancing Clown against a crimson background. The curtain was drawn closed, kids buzzing with excitement and munching on popcorn or cotton candy. Colorful balloons swayed in the warm breeze, wafting the smells of soot and steam, along with caramelized sugar and salted butter, into your nostrils.
You looked over to the nearest popcorn stand and watched as an outstandingly short woman spun cotton candy around the paper cone effortlessly. Your mouth watered at the sight of the pink, fluffy cloud of goodness.
A barker dressed in a patterned vest and a top hat took the stage to introduce the long anticipated act.
“Feast your eyes on Pennywise the Dancing Clown!” he yelled.
The curtains were drawn open as the barker hopped off of the platform, joining a little girl in back of the stage.
The setup was elaborate, to say the least. Bright, handpainted backgrounds and even moving parts. It seemed like magic, so out of place in that small-time carnival. The children felt it too, all gasping and marveling at what was in front of them.
And then, through a tiny door in the set, out popped who you could only assume was Pennywise himself.
He wore a vibrant, fiery wig, white face paint and an exaggerated, red smile that pierced all the way through his eyebrows. He had a beige clown suit on with tufts of vermillion down his sternum and on the tops of his shoes. It was clearly handmade, everything about the production was, which made you appreciate it that much more.
Everyone clapped and cheered. The clown tripped on his own two feet, making the kids erupt with laughter. The show went on without a single hitch. Everything was perfect: the mechanics, the ebbs and flows of emotion, the music, and most of all, the jolliest grin on his face as the curtains enveloped the stage once more. But you got the sense that it wasn’t because of the kids. The attention to detail, the theatrics of it all… He was a performer. No matter the carnival, big or small.
And you couldn’t help but wonder who that performer was when he wasn’t performing. Underneath the makeup and over the top expressions, who was he?