.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

SWEET MELANCHOLY

CHAPTER ONE

i. caboodles and boxes

--------------------------------------------------------------

APRIL AMBROSE HAD A PROBLEM. Quite a large, concerning problem at hand. She had taken on the task of cleaning out the storage room of the large house her and her husband had lived in for years. Dozens of unopened cardboard boxes littered the room, filled with memories and all other things they didn't care to open until now. April cared now. Simply because she could barely remember anything. Hardly anything at all.

It was an ongoing problem she had. She searched every single crevice in her brain for something, anything and still, she came out unsatisfied with her discoveries. All she ever really wanted was to remember who she was before this depression, this disease that infected her body and poisoned her from the inside out. To see the girl of sparkling eyes and joyous smiles her mother would reminisce about. She just wanted to see who she was before she became a shell of that girl.

Her hands are shaky as she pulls at a large cardboard box tucked into the corner of the room. She brings it to the centre of the room where she had managed to clear a spot for her to sit on the floor and comfortably search the boxes for answers. On the side of the box, written in black sharpied words read, 'Derry, Maine. 1975-1993' . Her boxes were vastly more specific than Nolan's, she had organized them greatly while Nolan had tossed things in without a care. She knew for a fact that this box in specific would be the box with the highest chance of giving her the answers she so desperately wanted.

She grew up in a small town. That's the most she could remember about it. That it was small, suffocating almost. Looking back to what she vaguely remembers about it made her sick at the thought that that town was her entire world for the beginning of her life.

It's funny, you see. She had only spent seventeen years of her life there and yet since leaving, she swore she was stuck, stunted, unable to grow because she was still there. Stuck, begging to be set free. She wasn't exactly aware of what made her feel so unchanging, so lost in the body of a grown woman. The depression she had found mind infected with at the age of eighteen, eating at her for the past twenty-two years.

She's sat crosslegged on the floor in front of it, her wrinkled pale yellow button down bunched up at her thighs. Her hands reaching for the cover and lifting it up, revealing the contents inside it. It was filled to the brim and she could barely tell what was in it beside from the jewelry box at the very top.

Her heart races at the sight, bottom lip pulled beneath the top — gnawing on it nervously as her shaky hands grab at the pale pink jewelry box. She runs her hand along the top, lifting the white handle and dusting off the dust which lived within the crevice. On the side, it read Caboodles in gold cursive. For some strange reason, she was able to remember that she had received this for Christmas when she was around thirteen. After pestering her parents for months and months, begging for one. God, wouldn't it be nice if she could remember everything as easily as that. 

She places it on the hardwood in front of her, pulling at the clip which kept the bottom and top clasped together and opening it completely. She stares down into the pink plastic case, her heart racing as she lets out a small giggle at the sight. It was like she was a kid all over again as she stared down at the plethora of colours. It was almost like Lisa Frank puked all over it. Heck, there was even some old Lisa Frank stickers stuck to the inside of the top.

A bittersweet smile was plastered on her face as she plucks one of the threaded bracelets which sat in the box. There was a ton flooding the floor of it, intricate braids and knots tied and her smile widens at the sight. This is how she started out. This is what brought Camvrósi to life. Carefully, she runs her finger down the bracelet, staring at the blue, pink, and purple threads intertwined together. Even after all these years, it was almost like she had made it yesterday. It looked unused, unworn.

It made her sad, wondering if she had given one of her bracelets to anyone. If only she could remember. From the looks of it, she didn't have any friends. Any at all because as she stares down at the bracelets she's suddenly remembering all those awful days she spent hidden in her room. No one with her, it was always just plain April Ambrose and her colourful bracelets. She remembered that part now.

It was something she preferred she didn't remember, shaking the memory away and sighing. Placing the bracelet back down as she hears Nolan's footsteps walking towards the room she sat in. The door which was already cracked open slightly opening fully, him walking into the room and seeing his wife sit in the middle what looked like a blast from the past. The bright colours and vintage cartoon drawings she had pulled out of the box she searched brought a smile to his face.

"Hey, I'm gonna go head to the grocery store, alright? I've got that case coming up and I've been revising all day... My brains exploding —" He pauses, chuckling lightly as April nods her head along, picking up a braided bracelet from the jewelry box which faced her, messing with the ends. "I'll check if they have that ice-cream -- the Talenti one? D'you want anything else?" He goes on, a smile peeking on his lips as she looks up to him with pursed lips.

She scrunches her nose slightly, thinking and running her mind back to their kitchen -- attempting to remember if they needed anything. "Grab a loaf of French bread if there's any freshly baked ones?" She responds, thumb still ghosting over the bracelet softly before her eyes light up softly. "Oh! And some Greek Yogurt. I'm gonna bake that Yiaoutorpita cake tomorrow. Mom just sent me the recipe," She babbles as Nolan nods.

"Got it. Just shoot me a message if you think of anything else," He says, looking down at the floor and laughing lightly. "Looks like you're having fun. My sister used to have one of those," He adds on, gesturing to the kit as he leaned against the doorframe.

April nods, picking up another bracelet and flashing it to him. "I begged my parents for it after seeing countless commercials. Made a whole presentation about how it'd be beneficial for my bedroom to have it," She scoffs at the thought, a small smile reaching her lips as she remembers. "My dad picked up extra hours at the shop to afford it. Had to get my aunt in the city to ship it out since Derry didn't have a department store," She continues.

She always felt most happy remembering her dad. Remembering him was like remembering herself before she had developed a permanent storm cloud over her head. Losing him was the hardest thing she had ever faced, she knew that as a fact. Nothing in this world would ever equal up to the fluorescent lights, beeping monitors, and the sound of him flatlining as she was pulled from his bedside and to the hallway, forced from her comfort and with his death, came her demise.

"Anyway. Go to the store, I don't want to keep you from work." April adds on, shaking herself from the memories which are fond at first but within minutes become a permanent reminder of her fathers absence and spots in memory.

"You know you never talk about back then, I never knew it was so small," Nolan responds, walking into the room and kneeling next to his wife — brushing her curly bangs from her forehead and pressing a kiss to it. "I'll see you later, Lovebug," He mumbles against her forehead before getting back up and going back towards the door. "I love you," He glances back at her, a soft smile on his face as he begins to leave.

She looks up from the ground, smiling back weakly — partly because of his comment about not knowing much about her past and partly due to her uncertainty. "I love you too," She calls back before carrying in with herself.

She had fallen into routine with Nolan, she was comfortable. He made her feel safe, loved, as if she was wanted and really, that was all she could ever need. This wasn't anything she would admit aloud, or even consciously. However, it was always there, blasting her from the back of her head each time she uttered those three words his ears begged to hear and out of obligation, out of pure want, April always said it back. She wanted to love him the way he loved her because he was perfect. Nolan Neufield was perfect and it wasn't just for her, he was perfect all around.

She listened as he rustled by the front door, pulling his shoes on and grabbing his keys — hearing the front door shut with a thud. She continues then, sorting through the works. It made her bones ache, picking up things that were left untouched for the past twenty-something years. They were untouched, untarnished, infected not with her sorrow but dripping with her past glow.

Biting her lip as she picks up a small pink comb which held small tufts of her brown, curly hair in it still, she felt as if things were on the cusp of rushing back to her. As if she was on the verge of something big, something startling, something so strange it'd send her back twenty-seven years and into her fourteen-year-old body. It sat on the tip of her tongue, perched at the forefront of her mind with a black screen over it, there but unfathomable, there but invisible.

She felt as if she had been slapped in the face, as if something so obvious was being dangled over her head — floating away from her like a balloon while she chased after it, forever and evermore. She ran her thumb over multicoloured barrettes which she partially remembered would litter her hair before the terrible incident of them getting knotted in her soft curls.

This box was a trove of her own lost memories, looking through it was like she had been catapulted into the past, a past she hardly remembered. A past she felt as if she hadn't lived at all. She pulls up the lid of a compartment which was meant for makeup, expecting to find old, waxy lip-smackers which smelt of Cola and cherries.

You could only imagine her surprise when she finds a stack of folded papers, tied with a pink tulle ribbon. She furrows her eyebrows, feeling pit form in her stomach — becoming a chasm of dread, of sadness, and hope. It swallowed her whole as she picked up the stack, her bottom lip sucked beneath the top and suddenly, she's morphed into a body she had forgotten, a mind she had left twenty-seven years ago.

~

At the age of sixteen, April Ambrose had decided in a last-ditch attempt to burn the many letters she had written to her best friend, her lost love, her Bill Denbrough. A pathetic attempt of ridding herself of him and the lasting effects of he left on her heart in his absence.

In truth, her emotions towards to boy who would hold her heart for the rest of her existence were complicated. She knew she loved him, that she always would love him, that her entire being was his in ways that she'd never fully comprehend. She knew that her keenness towards the boy was wrong and that she shouldn't be in love with a boy who she had no contact with for nearly two years and for that, she resented him

She'd never acknowledge it. Not in a real way, anyway. She only ever thought it in the late hours of the night, when she was nothing but her thoughts. When her body was rooted to her bed and everything else was nonexistent, that was then. That was when she'd finally spill over, her lungs crushed with wilting flowers and her tears spilling onto her pillow.

She cried for him, for a call, for any sign he remembered her the way she remembered him. She cried out of frustration and fear and anger towards him, begging whoever was listening to give her closure. A form of comfort and every time, she found herself punching her pillows and thrashing in her bed before she finally met sleep halfway out of pure sorrow and heartache.

Which brought her here, sat in her bedroom as she sorted through the letters. All written in her neat handwriting and faded pink paper, her I's signed with hearts and nearly every letter closed out with Sunshine. It felt so fitting at first, writing these letters on such a lovely colour, signing them off so happily, so full of adoration. Now, she stared at them with agony — feeling sick at the thought of her desperate attempts of getting a boy who was never going to write back to read the letters she had never sent.

She was impractical, so embarrassingly in love that she didn't even notice that what she was holding onto was futile. Something that probably didn't even exist anymore, if she didn't have her friends to show for it, the constant memories battering her from the back of her head, and the teasing she faced from Richie, she'd be convinced it hadn't happened at all.

Taking the letters and piling them up, she takes a piece of ribbon and ties them together neatly, wanting to be able to toss them into the fire in one go. To be able to rid herself of the words in a moment, and with the loss of those words, hopefully the recovery of her heart would come soon after. She'd destroy these letters before let them destroy her anymore. She needed them out, needed him out, she needed everything out. All those memories, all those feelings, she needed that entire summer gone.

And so, as she sat cross-legged in front of the fireplace in the living room of her house at midnight, staring into the fighting embers and listening to the soft cries of the flames. She glances down at the letters in her hands, her heart racing and stomach churning. Her hands tremble as she attempts to bite the bullet, toss them into the flames, watch them burn, and destroy the connection she had built up with the stuttering boy she only had three months with — to destroy the connection she nurtured on paper.

Again, much like the million other times she attempted to do this, she couldn't. Dropping the letters to the floor, and pulling her knees to her chest as she hugs herself, crying into her knees as she remembers her sorrow. That it was all true, that that summer won't go away with the destruction of these letters, that she wasn't just in pain because of Bill — that his absence wasn't what made her so sick. It was all of it, the memories, the coma, the horror, and lasting physical trauma that IT left in her. So, she cries. She sobs, she chokes down her tears and let's herself again, focus onto something less painful than the reality of it all.

~

Atop the stack sat a piece of yellowed paper contrasting the pale pink which the bulk of them were written on, as if it was added at the last minute in a rush. As if it wasn't supposed to be there initially. She unties the bow, eyebrows still furrowed at the stack.

She was confused. None of it seemed familiar. Though, nothing ever really felt familiar to April. She hardly remembered anything so truly, how reasonable could her confusion be in this sense? She hums as she pulls the yellowed paper from the stack, unfolding it carefully and seeing in her messy scrawl, a letter.

~

Billy,

I don't know if you miss me and I'm really not sure if you remember me at all. Or if you've even thought about me since you've moved. But, good God, I'm terrified I'll never love someone as much as I love you-

~

She jumps. Her phone rings. Snapping her from the letter and drawing her from the trance she found herself in. Feeling as if she had been caught doing something bad, as if she was a child found eating desserts before supper, she throws the letter down to the floor — scrambling to grab her phone from her pocket and sees the caller ID reading DERRY, MAINE.

Too scattered to connect the ties, to question who Billy was, to even ask when she had even wrote that letter — she swiped to the right and answered the call, lifting the phone to her ear and speaks into the phone softly,

"Hello?" She says, biting at her thumb as she stares down at the letter, eyes scanning over the first few lines repeatedly as if it would give her any clues as to who this was written to. Or if it was even written by her at all.

There was a lull of silence before the caller in the other end responded. "April?" The voice says. It was a man, a gruff voice which she wasn't familiar with.

"This is she. Who is this?" She presses, interest piqued as she presses it to her ear.

"It's Mike. Mike Hanlon, April. From Derry." The voice, Mike responds to her question gently — it was as if he could feel her discomfort seeping through the phone, the confusion and uncertainty.

April hums. "Mike?" She repeats back to him, somewhat confused. "Mike..." She repeats to herself now. It comes back to her then. An old friend. Mike Hanlon! He worked on the farm back home as a kid. Derry. Not home. Seattle was home. "Oh, I'm sorry. Mike!" She goes on, feeling embarrassed and guilty of her initial confusion. "I've been frazzled today. How are you?" She asks, pushing the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach away.

Her hand began to tremble as she held her phone, the feeling of sorrow which always sat upon her shoulders increasing, almost tenfold. She had never felt this scared before. Why was she scared? It was Mike. Not that she remembered much but she trusted he knew her well enough. That the horror in her body wasn't from him but from some imminent thing he was going to tell her.

"No worries, I understand. I'm okay," He pauses, going about this gentler than the others — getting a flash of the fragile girl he remembered.

April Ambrose after it all, six months after the final fight, awake from her coma and muscles weak and atrophied from months of bed rest. She was weak then, fragile and frail. In a way, Mike always remember her that way. A muddle between the sunny girl he met at the beginning of July in 1989 and the aftermath of her, the plagued with nightmares and tired bones version of her.

"April, do you remember anything?" He prods her, unsure how to break the news — knowing that she hadn't made the pact, that in truth, she wasn't bind to come back, to help. For all he knew, April could blow up right there — tell him to fuck off and to not call again. But that wasn't her, he knew that — she wouldn't say those things. Even if she wanted to.

She laughs weakly, nervous and she begin to sweat. "Funny you say that. I was looking through my memory box just now, trying to remember some things," She answers, beginning to see things more clearly. Mike had visited her after she had woken up from her coma. He was a friend, a close one for that matter. "What's the matter, Mike? What's going on?" She goes on, wanting to know, feeling the need to know what was going know before she'd explode into two and be left with no answers and no memories at all.

Silence. Again. For a second before Mike sighs and takes a deep breath in. "IT's back, April. You need to come home," He says softly, having broken the news to everyone but her. He didn't know how to.

There it was. April sucked in a sharp breath as her head began to pound, rubbing her temples with her free hand. Beginning to see it all, that summer, seven kids — her only friends, her best friends. She saw it all for a split moment before it all got sucked away from her again.

IT. She saw it. She was there. She remembered it now and it nearly made her drop her phone to the hardwood. The sight of it made her sick. She remembered it all so vaguely. 1989. She was fourteen. It was summer... Kids. There were missing kids. She pulled at the loose threads in her mind to build an explanation now.

Her friends. She forgets their names but she could see their faces now. Muddled images of their fresh faces as she attempts to form words for Mike. She felt so sick. So lost. She was at a loss as her lips began to tremble, her head beginning to pound as more came back to her. She saw it, waves of memories coming in like a storm. She coughs, tears falling from her cheeks as the drops the phone to the ground. Remembering it all now. Maybe, even too much.

Authors Note;
Happy New Year.