they all fall down

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<<nobr>>  <li>[[Your character]]</li> <</nobr>>

they all fall down

by <a href="https://theyallfalldown-if.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Axel</a> & <a href="https://nikkefort-dev.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Nick</a>

!!!Who are you, child? Identifying features Name: $MC_name Gender: <<if hasVisited("Prologue2")>><<if $sibling is "brother">>Male<<elseif $sibling is "sister">>Female<<else>>Non-binary<</if>><<else>>Unknown<</if>> Pronouns: <<if hasVisited("Prologue2")>><<if $sibling is "brother">>He/Him<<elseif $sibling is "sister">>She/Her<<else>>They/Them<</if>><<else>>Unknown<</if>> Skin color: $skin_color Eye color: $eye_color Hair color: $hair_color Hair style: $hair_texture Height: $height Relationships C Gutiérrez: ??? Kabir Sevilla: ??? Valerie Vuong: ??? M Novitsky: ??? Olivia Rennick: ??? Wesley Kemner: ??? Personality Traits You are neither impulsive nor calm. You are neither cruel nor kind. You are neither serious nor easygoing. You are neither sarcastic nor genuine. Skills Strength: Average Agility: Average Speed: Average Intelligence: Average Creativity: Average <center><<link "Return to game" $return>><</link>></center>

<<script>>$("#sidebar").toggleClass("toggled");<</script>> <<audio "menu" play loop>> <div class="wrapperintrotitle"><div class="titleintro">THEY ALL FALL DOWN</div></div> <div class="wrapperintro"> <a class="linkintro"><<link "START GAME" "Disclaimer">><</link>></a> <a class="linkintro"><<link "LOAD GAME">><<script>>UI.saves();<</script>><</link>></a> <a class="linkintro"><<link "SETTINGS">><<script>>UI.settings();<</script>><</link>></a> </div>

<<script>>$("#sidebar").toggleClass("");<</script>> <div class="center">\ !!.prologue. !!!.let the flood wash it away. </div>\ <<audio "menu" stop>>\ The terror which would not end for another eighteen years—if it ever did end—began, so far as you know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through treacherous whirlpools, and continued on its way down Witcham Street toward the traffic light which marked the intersection of Witcham and Jackson. The three vertical lenses on all sides of the traffic light were dark this afternoon in the fall of 1987, and the houses were all dark, too. There had been steady rain for a week now, and two days ago the winds had come as well. Most sections of Derry had lost their power then, and it was not back on yet. A small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. It tapped on the yellow hood of the boy's slicker, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof... a comfortable, almost cozy sound. The boy in the yellow slicker was Simon. The youngest member of his family. What’s your surname? • [[Alderwood|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Alderwood"]] • [[Calhoun|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Calhoun"]] • [[Cartwright|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Cartwright"]] • [[Denbrough|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Denbrough"]] • [[Guerrero|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Guerrero"]] • [[Montclair|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Montclair"]] • [[Nakamura|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Nakamura"]] • [[Nesheim|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Nesheim"]] • [[Velasquez|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Velasquez"]] • [[Wayland|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Wayland"]] • [[Zafar|Prologue1.2][$lastname = "Zafar"]] Enter your surname: <<textbox "$surname" "">> <<link "Set">> <<set $surname to $surname.trim()>> <<set $surname to $surname.toUpperFirst()>> <<if $surname == "">> <<replace "#input-error">>Enter a name.<</replace>> <<else>> <<goto "Prologue1.2">> <</if>> <</link>> @@#input-error;@@

<<nobr>><<if $sibling is "brother">>\ <<set $mc to {"sibling": "brother","they": "he","them": "him","their": "his","theirs": "his"}>> <<elseif $sibling is "sister">> <<set $mc to {"sibling": "sister","they": "she","them": "her","their": "her","theirs": "hers"}>> <<else>> <<set $mc to {"sibling": "sibling","they": "they","them": "them","their": "their","theirs": "theirs"}>> <</if>><</nobr>>\ Simon was seven. You were at home, hacking out the last of a nasty case of flu. In that late autumn of 1987, eight months before the real horrors began and eighteen years before the final showdown, you were <<cycle "$mc.age" autoselect>><<option "fifteen">><<option "sixteen">><</cycle>> years old. You had made the boat beside which Simon now ran. You made it sitting up in bed, back propped against a pile of pillows, while your mother played ‘Fur Elise’ on the piano in the parlor and rain swept restlessly against your bedroom window. About three-quarters of the way down the block as one headed toward the intersection and the dead traffic light, Witcham Street was blocked to motor traffic by smudgepots and four orange sawhorses. Stenciled across each of the sawhorses was DERRY DEPT. OF PUBLIC WORKS. Beyond them, the rain had spilled out of gutters clogged with branches and rocks and big sticky piles of autumn leaves. The water had first pried finger holds in the paving and then snatched whole greedy handfuls-all of this by the third day of the rains. By noon of the fourth day, big chunks of the street's surface were boating through the intersection of Jackson and Witcham like miniature white-water rafts. By that time, many people in Derry had begun to make nervous jokes about arks. The Public Works Department had managed to keep Jackson Street open, but Witcham was impassable from the sawhorses all the way to the center of town. But, everyone agreed, the worst was over. The Kenduskeag Stream had crested just below its banks in the Barrens and bare inches below the concrete sides of the Canal which channeled it tightly as it passed through downtown. Right now a gang of men—Joel $surname, you and Simon’s father, among them—were removing the sandbags they had thrown up the day before with such panicky haste. Yesterday, overflow and expensive flood damage had seemed almost inevitable. God knew it had happened before—the flooding in 1969 had been a disaster which had cost millions of dollars and almost two dozen lives. That was a long time ago, but there were still enough people around who remembered it to scare the rest. One of the flood victims had been found twenty-five miles east, in Bucksport. The fish had eaten this unfortunate gentleman's eyes, three of his fingers, his penis, and most of his left foot. Clutched in what remained of his hands had been a Ford steering wheel. [[Continue|Prologue3]]

Now, though, the river was receding, and when the new Bangor Hydro dam went in upstream, the river would cease to be a threat. Or so said Joel $surname, who worked for Bangor Hydroelectric. As for the rest, well, future floods could take care of themselves. The thing was to get through this one, to get the power back on, and then to forget it. In Derry, such forgetting of tragedy and disaster was almost an art, as you would come to discover in the course of time. Simon paused just beyond the sawhorses at the edge of a deep ravine that had been cut through the tar surface of Witcham Street. This ravine ran on an almost exact diagonal. It ended on the far side of the street, roughly forty feet farther down the hill from where he now stood, on the right. He laughed aloud—the sound of solitary, childish glee a bright runner in that gray afternoon—as a vagary of the flowing water took his paper boat into a scale-model rapids which had been formed by the break in the tar. The urgent water had cut a channel which ran along the diagonal, and so his boat travelled from one side of Witcham Street to the other, the current carrying it so fast that Simon had to sprint to keep up with it. Water sprayed out from beneath his galoshes in muddy sheets. Their buckles made a jolly jingling as Simon $surname ran toward his strange death. And the feeling which filled him at that moment was clear and simple love for his $sibling, $MC_name... love and a touch of regret that you couldn't be here to see this and be a part of it. Of course he would try to describe it to you when he got home, but he knew he wouldn't be able to make you see it, the way you would have been able to make him see it if your positions had been reversed. You were good at reading and writing, but even at his age Simon was wise enough to know that wasn't the only reason why you got good grades on your report cards, or why your teachers liked your compositions so well. Telling was only part of it. You were good at seeing. <<message 'You are also especially good at sports, being a part of your school’s varsity team in'>>\ • [[Football|Prologue4][$strength = 2; $agility = 1; $school = "football"]] • [[Basketball|Prologue4][$agility = 2; $speed = 1; $school = "basketball"]] • [[Track & field|Prologue4][$speed = 2; $strength = 1; $school = "track"]] <</message>> • [[You are also part of the cheerleading squad|Prologue4][$agility = 2; $strength = 1; $school = "cheerleading"]] • [[You are also part of the art club|Prologue4][$creativity = 2; $intelligence = 1; $school = "art"]] • [[You are also part of the student council|Prologue4][$intelligence = 2; $creativity = 1; $school = "council"]]

The boat nearly whistled along the diagonal channel, just a page torn from the Classified section of the Derry News, but now Simon imagined it as a FT boat in a war movie, like the ones he sometimes saw down at the Derry Theater with his older $sibling at Saturday matinees. A war picture with John Wayne fighting the Japanese forces. The prow of the newspaper boat threw sprays of water to either side as it rushed along, and then it reached the gutter on the left side of Witcham Street. A fresh streamlet rushed over the break in the tar at this point, creating a fairly large whirlpool, and it seemed to him that the boat must be swamped and capsized. It leaned alarmingly, and then Simon cheered as it righted itself, turned, and went racing on down toward the intersection. Simon sprinted to catch up. Over his head, a grim gust of October wind rattled the trees, now almost completely unburdened of their freight of colored leaves by the storm, which had been this year a reaper of the most ruthless sort. [[Continue|Prologue5]]

!!!30 minutes ago... Sitting up in bed, your cheeks still flushed with heat (but your fever, like the Kenduskeag, finally receding), you had finished the boat. But when Simon reached for it, you held it out of reach. "Now get me the paraffin wax." “What's that? Where is it?” “It's on the cellar shelf as you go downstairs,” you said, sniffling and reaching for another tissue. "In a box that says ‘Gulf’. Bring that to me, and a knife, and a bowl. And a pack of matches.” Simon had gone obediently to get these things. He could hear his mother playing the piano, not ‘Fur Elise’ now but something else he didn't like so well—something that sounded dry and fussy; he could hear rain flicking steadily against the kitchen windows. These were comfortable sounds, but the thought of going down to the cellar was not even a bit comfortable. He did not like the cellar, and he did not like going down the cellar stairs, because he always imagined there was something down there in the dark. That was silly, of course, his father said so and his mother said so and, even more important, you said so, but still... He did not even like opening the door to flick on the light because he always had this idea— something so exquisitely stupid he didn't dare tell anyone—that while he was feeling for the light switch, some horrible clawed paw would settle lightly over his wrist... and then jerk him down into the darkness that smelled of dirt and wet and dim rotted vegetables. [[Continue|Prologue6]]

Stupid! There were no things with claws, all hairy and full of killing spite. Every now and then someone went crazy and killed a lot of people—sometimes Chet Huntley told about such things on the evening news, Simon didn’t forget about the much talked about ‘Reaper of Helmsford’—and of course there were some wild animals that you would have the misfortune of meeting once in a while, but there was no monster living down in their cellar. Still, this idea lingered. In those interminable moments while he was groping for the switch with his right hand (his left arm curled around the doorjamb in a death grip), that cellar smell seemed to intensify until it filled the world. Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring. A creature which would eat anything, but which was especially hungry for the flesh of children. He had opened the door that morning and had groped interminably for the switch, holding the jamb in his usual death grip, his eyes squinted shut, the tip of his tongue poked from the corner of his mouth like an agonized rootlet searching for water in a place of drought. ‘Funny? Sure! You betcha! Lookit you, Si! Simon's scared of the dark! What a baby!’ He chastises himself. The sound of the piano came from what his father called the living room and what his mother called the parlor. It sounded like music from another world, far away, the way talk and laughter on a summer-crowded beach must sound to an exhausted swimmer who struggles with the undertow. [[Continue|Prologue7]]

His fingers found the switch! Ah-ha! They snapped it—and nothing. No light. ‘Oh shit! The power!’ Simon snatched his arm back as if from a basket filled with snakes. He stepped back from the open cellar door, his heart hurrying in his chest. The power was out, of course—he had forgotten the power was out. What now? Go back and tell you that he couldn't get the box of paraffin because the power was out and he was afraid that something might get him as he stood on the cellar stairs, something that wasn't a wild animal or a mass murderer but a creature much worse than either? That it would simply slither part of its rotted self up between the stair risers and grab his ankle? That would go over big, wouldn't it? Others might laugh at such a fancy, but you wouldn't laugh. • [[You would be mad. You would say, "Grow up, Simon. Do you want this boat or not?"|Prologue8][$serious = 1; $impatient = 1]] • [[You would sigh in exasperation. “Looks like you don’t want this boat after all.”|Prologue8][$sarcastic = 1; $calm = 1]] • [[You would be understanding. “It’s alright, we can finish this up once I get better, okay?”|Prologue8][$genuine = 1; $kind = 1]] • [[On second thought, maybe you would laugh. “Come on, Si. Still afraid of the dark?”|Prologue8][$cruel = 1; $easygoing = 1]]

As if this thought were his cue, you call from your bedroom. "Did you die out there, Simon?" "No, I'm gettin it, $MC_nickname," Simon calls back at once. He rubbed at his arms, trying to make the guilty goosebumps disappear and be smooth skin again. "I just stopped to get a drink of water." "Well, hurry up!" So he walked down the four steps to the cellar shelf, his heart a warm, beating hammer in his throat. The hair on the nape of his neck standing at attention, his eyes hot, his hands cold, sure that at any moment the cellar door would swing shut on its own, closing off the white light falling through the kitchen windows, and then he would hear It, something worse than all the wild animals and murderers in the world, worse than any wild animal, worse than Attila the Hun, worse than the somethings in a hundred horror movies. It, growling deeply—he would hear the growl in those lunatic seconds before it pounced on him and unzipped his guts. The smell in the cellar was worse than ever today, because of the flood. Your house was high on Witcham Street, near the crest of the hill, and your family had escaped the worst of it, but there was still standing water down there that had seeped in through the old rock foundations. The smell was low and unpleasant, making everyone in the house take only the shallowest breaths. [[Continue|Prologue9]]

Simon sifted through the junk on the shelf as fast as he could: old cans of Kiwi shoe polish and shoe polish rags, a broken kerosene lamp, two mostly empty bottles of Windex, an old flat can of Turtle wax. For some reason this can struck him, and he spent nearly thirty seconds looking at the turtle on the lid with a kind of hypnotic wonder. Then he tossed it back... and here it was at last, a square box with the word GULF on it. Simon snatched it and ran up the stairs as fast as he could, suddenly aware that his shirttail was out and suddenly sure that his shirttail would be his undoing: the thing in the cellar would allow him to get almost all the way out, and then it would grab the tail of his shirt and snatch him back and— He reached the kitchen and swept the door shut behind him. It banged gustily. He leaned back against it with his eyes closed, sweat popped out on his arms and forehead, the box of paraffin gripped tightly in one hand. The piano had come to a stop, and his mom's voice floated to him: “Simon, can't you slam that door a little harder next time? Maybe you could break some of the plates in the Welsh dresser, if you really tried.” "Sorry mom," he called back. "Simon, you little shit," you say with a smirk as he enters your bedroom, voice low so your mother would not hear. You really did not needed to sit through another lecture of how you should not be using inappropriate words around your brother. Simon snickers a little. His fear was already gone; it had slipped away from him as easily as a nightmare slips away from a man who awakes, cold-skinned and gasping, from its grip; who feels his body and stares at his surroundings to make sure that none of it ever happened and who then begins at once to forget it. Half is gone by the time his feet hit the floor; three-quarters of it by the time he emerges from the shower and begins to towel off; all of it by the time he finishes his breakfast. All gone... until the next time, when, in the grip of the nightmare, all fears will be remembered. ‘That turtle,’ Simon thought, going to the counter drawer where the matches were kept. ‘Where did I see a turtle like that before?’ But no answer came, and he dismissed the question. [[Continue|Prologue10]]

He sits the paraffin down on your dresser and goes back out to get a pack of matches from the kitchen drawer, a knife from the rack (holding the sharp edge studiously away from his body, as his dad had taught him), and a small bowl from the Welsh dresser in the dining room. Then he comes back to your room, hands full with all the essentials. Smoothing down his hair that was identical to yours in its <<cycle "$hair_texture" autoselect>><<option "straight">><<option "wavy">><<option "curly">><<option "coily">><</cycle>> <<cycle "$hair_color" autoselect>><<option "black">><<option "dark brown">><<option "light brown">><<option "dark blonde">><<option "light blonde">><<option "dark red">><<option "light red">><</cycle>> glory, he obediently perks up to see what you do next. "Took you long enough, Simon," you say, amiably enough, and push back some of the stuff on your night table: an empty glass, a pitcher of water, Kleenex, books, a bottle of Vicks VapoRub—the smell of which you would probably associate all your life with thick, phlegmy chests and snotty noses. The old Phillips radio was there too, playing not Chopin or Bach but a Guns N’ Roses song... very softly, however, so softly that they were robbed of all their raw and elemental power. Your mother, who had studied classical piano at Juilliard, hated rock and roll. She did not merely dislike it; she abominated it. "I'm sorry," Simon said, sitting on the edge of $MC_nickname's bed and putting the things he had gathered on the night table. “I got thirsty along the way.” • [[“You have the most impeccable timing for that, it seems,” you chortle.|Prologue11][$easygoing += 1; $temp = 1]] • [[“Then try to drink faster next time, Si,” your tone isn’t admonishing as much as it is slightly irritated.|Prologue11][$impatient += 1; $temp = 2]] • [[“For all you know, I could be dying while you took your sweet time,” you sigh dramatically.|Prologue11][$sarcastic += 1; $temp = 3]] • [[“The cellar doesn’t really look good, huh,” you smile sympathetically.|Prologue11][$kind += 1; $temp = 4]]

<<if $temp is 1>>\ “You would understand, after all you’re just lying there for the past couple of days and leaving me to do your chores as well,” Simon says teasingly. You gasp in mock offense. “Sir Simon, please! Your dear $sibling is dying over here. Show some mercy.” <<elseif $temp is 2>>\ “You are more impatient than mom when the lottery winners are announced on TV,” he giggles and you crack a smile despite yourself. “Sorry, Si. The flu has made me more prone to getting annoyed over minor inconveniences.” “And here I thought it was just because you were getting old.” You gawk at him in offence. “Oh how dare you, young man.” <<elseif $temp is 3>>\ “You are not dying,” Simon frowns, sitting next to you with a concerned expression. You chuckle softly. “Oh don’t worry, Si, you are not getting rid of your favourite $sibling that easily.” “You are my only $sibling,” he cracks a grin. “Exactly, so I have to be your favourite. Moreso because you know you are mine,” you wiggle your eyebrows comically. <<else>>\ “Yeah, it is so damp and stinky, even more than every public restroom in the world!” Simon wrinkles his nose. You raise an eybrow in amusement. “Just how many restrooms have you smelled to come to that conclusion.” Simon giggles, trying to maintain a disgusted expression. “Enough to last me a lifetime, dear <<if $sibling is "brother">>sir<<elseif $sibling is "sister">>miss<<else>>comrade<</if>>.” <</if>>\ You stare at each other for a bit, before bursting into laughter together. It was easier to joke around with Simon even more than with your friends. Maybe it was his childish humour and his ability to be amused by anything you do or say. Whatever it was, you knew that you loved him dearly and he felt the same way. Your laughter turns into a coughing fit. As it finally began to taper off, by which time your <<cycle "$skin_color">><<option "pale">><<option "fair">><<option "beige">><<option "olive">><<option "brown">><<option "dark brown">><</cycle>> shade of skin had turned into a slightly plummy tint (which Simon regarded with some alarm), the piano stopped again. You and your brother look in the direction of the parlor, listening for the piano-bench to scrape back, listening for your mother's worried footsteps. You bury your mouth in the crook of your elbow, stifling the last of the coughs, pointing at the pitcher at the same time. Simon pours you a glass of water hurriedly, which you drink off steadily. The piano begins once more— ‘Fur Elise’, again. In the following years, you would never forgot that piece, and even after a very long time, it would never fail to bring goosebumps to your arms and back; your heart would drop and you would remember: ‘Mom was playing that the day Simon died.’ [[Continue|Prologue12]]

"You gonna cough anymore, $MC_nickname?" "I don’t think so." You pull another tissue from the Kleenex box, make a rumbling sound in your chest, spit phlegm into the tissue, screw it up, and toss it into the wastebasket by your bed, which was filled with similar twists of tissues. Then you open the box of paraffin and drop a waxy cube of the stuff into your palm. Simon watches you closely, but without speaking or questioning. You tended to not like Simon running his mouth on a tandem while you were working on something, and he had learned that if he just kept his mouth shut, you would usually explain what you were doing. You use the knife to cut off a small piece of the paraffin cube. Putting the piece in the bowl, you struck a match and put it on top of the paraffin. You and Simon watch the small yellow flame as the dying wind drives the rain against the window in occasional spatters. "You have to waterproof the boat or it'll just get wet and sink," You said. The piece of paraffin in the bowl was almost entirely melted. The match-flame guttered lower, growing blue as it hugged the cardboard stick, and then it went out. You carefully dip your finger into the liquid, jerking it out with a faint hiss. "Hot," you muttered. You dip the large paintbrush from your drawer in the wax and begin to smear the wax along the sides of the boat, where it quickly dried to a milky haze. "Can I do some?" Simon asked. “Sure,” you nodded, handing him the brush. “Just don't get any on the blankets or Mom will kill you.” Simon dips it into the paraffin, which was now very warm but no longer hot, and begins to spread it along the other side of the boat. • [[“Woah easy there, champ,” you chuckle through a small cough. “It will sink if you put too much wax.”|Prologue13][$easygoing += 1; $sarcastic += 1]] • [[“Don’t put on so much!” you exclaim, annoyed. “It’s going to sink, you idiot.”|Prologue13][$cruel += 1; $impatient += 1]] • [[“That’s a bit excessive, Si,” you steady his wrist. “Try to not to go overboard with it.”|Prologue13][$kind += 1; $genuine += 1]] • [[“You’re smearing too much wax on this side,” you rub your temple. “Use your head a little.”|Prologue13][$kind += 1; $serious += 1]]

<<cacheaudio "menu" "music/DVD.mp3">> <<set $MC_name = "Unknown">> <<set $gender = "Unknown">> <<set $skin_color = "Unknown">> <<set $eye_color = "Unknown">> <<set $hair_color = "Unknown">> <<set $hair_texture = "Unknown">> <<set $height = "Unknown">>

What’s your first name? <<message 'List of traditionally masculine name.'>>\ • [[Akemi|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Akemi"]] • [[Damien|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Damien"]] • [[Florian|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Florian"]] • [[Issac|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Issac"]] • [[Jason|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Jason"]] • [[Haider|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Haider"]] • [[Norman|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Norman"]] • [[Theodore|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Theodore"]] • [[Vincent|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Vincent"]] • [[William|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "William"]] <</message>> <<message 'List of traditionally feminine name.'>>\ • [[Asami|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Asami"]] • [[Audrey|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Audrey"]] • [[Clarice|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Clarice"]] • [[Emily|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Emily"]] • [[Haniya|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Haniya"]] • [[Katherine|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Katherine"]] • [[Ophelia|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Ophelia"]] • [[Rosalie|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Rosalie"]] • [[Sabrina|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Sabrina"]] • [[Willow|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Willow"]] <</message>> <<message 'List of traditionally gender-neutral name.'>>\ • [[Akira|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Akira"]] • [[Blake|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Blake"]] • [[Cameron|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Cameron"]] • [[Dakota|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Dakota"]] • [[Hikmat|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Hikmat"]] • [[Jesse|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Jesse"]] • [[Kieran|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Kieran"]] • [[Rowan|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Rowan"]] • [[Sidney|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Sidney"]] • [[Wylan|Prologue1.3][$MC_name = "Wylan"]] <</message>> Enter your name: <<textbox "$MC_name" "">> <<link "Set">> <<set $MC_name to $MC_name.trim()>> <<set $MC_name to $MC_name.toUpperFirst()>> <<if $MC_name == "">> <<replace "#input-error">>Enter a name.<</replace>> <<else>> <<goto "Prologue1.3">> <</if>> <</link>> @@#input-error;@@

But you are also known as: <<textbox "$MC_nickname" "">> <<link "Set">> <<set $MC_nickname to $MC_nickname.trim()>> <<set $MC_nickname to $MC_nickname.toUpperFirst()>> <<if $MC_nickname == "">> <<replace "#input-error">>Enter a name.<</replace>> <<else>> <<goto "Prologue1.4">> <</if>> <</link>> @@#input-error;@@

You pronouns are: • [[He/Him|Prologue2][$sibling = "brother"]] • [[She/Her|Prologue2][$sibling = "sister"]] • [[They/Them|Prologue2][$sibling = "sibling"]]

“I'm sorry,” Simon backs away slightly. You sigh. “That's all right. Just go easy.” He eventually does the other side, then holds the furbished paper boat in his hands. It felt a little heavier, but not much. “So cool,” he said, his voice giddy with childish excitement. “I'm gonna go out and sail it!” "Yeah, you do that," You said, leaning back. You suddenly felt even more tired than usual and still not very well. “I wish you could come,” Simon said. He really did. You always had the coolest ideas and would let him tag along the way. “It's your boat, really.” “She,” you correct him, coughing twice. “You call boats she.” “She, then.” "I wish I could come, too," you say glumly. For all the times that you had convinced yourself that you had grew up way past the point of chasing paper boats with your little brother, you can’t deny that a part of you just wants to accompany him and experience that joy with him. “Well...” Simon shifts from one foot to the other, the boat in his hands. “You put on your rain-stuff," you say, making a shooing motion with your hand. “Or you'll wind up with the flu like me. You probably caught it anyway, from my germs in the room.” Simon giggles. “Thanks, $MC_nickname. It's a nice boat.” And he does something he hadn't done for a long time, something you never forgot since then: he leans over and kisses your cheek. “You'll catch it for sure now, dipshit,” you said, yet you felt a little cheered up. You give him a smile. "Put all this stuff back, too. Or Mom will be after both our asses.” “Okay!” Simon gathers up the waterproofing equipment and crosses the room, the boat perched precariously on top of the paraffin box, which was sitting askew in the little bowl. “Simon?” He turns back to look at you. There is a slight uneasiness in your chest, but you can’t tell if it’s a strange kind of worry or just your fever. “Be careful.” “Sure.” His brow creased a little. That was something his mom usually said, not his big $sibling. It was as strange as him giving you a kiss. “Sure I will.” He went out. You never saw him again. [[Continue|Prologue14]]

!!!Present time Simon chases his boat down the left side of Witcham Street. He was running fast but the water was running faster and his boat was pulling ahead. He heard a deepening roar and saw that fifty yards farther down the hill, the water in the gutter was cascading into a storm drain that was still open. It was a long dark semicircle cutting into the curbing, and as Simon watched, a stripped branch—its bark as dark and glistening as sealskin—shot into the storm drain's maw. It hung up there for a moment and then slipped down inside. That was where his boat was headed. "Oh shit!" he yelled, dismayed. He put on speed, and for a moment he thought he would catch the boat. Then one of his feet slipped and he went sprawling, skinning one knee and crying out in pain. From his new pavement-level perspective, he watched his boat swing around twice—momentarily caught in another whirlpool—and then disappear. "Shit!" he yelled again, and slammed his fist down on the pavement. That hurt too, and he began to cry a little. What a stupid way to lose the boat! He got up and walked over to the storm drain, dropping to his knees and peering in. The water made a dank hollow sound as it fell into the darkness. It was a spooky sound. It reminded him of— "Huh!" The sound was jerked out of him as if on a string, and he recoiled. There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement. It's an animal, he thought incoherently, that's all it is, some animal, maybe a housecat that got stuck down in there- Still, he was ready to run— would run in a second or two, when his mental switchboard had dealt with the shock those two shiny yellow eyes had given him. He felt the rough surface of the macadam under his fingers, and the thin sheet of cold water flowing around them. He saw himself getting up and backing away, and that was when a voice—a perfectly reasonable and rather pleasant voice—spoke to him from inside the storm drain. "Well hiya, Si," it said. Simon blinked and looked again. He could barely credit what he saw; it was like something from a made-up story, or a movie where you know the animals will talk and dance. If he had been ten years older, he would not have believed what he was seeing, but he was not seventeen. He was seven. There was a clown in the storm drain. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that Simon $surname was sure of what he was seeing. It was a clown, like in the circus or on TV. In fact, he looked like he was from a McDonald’s commercial, that had always cracked Simon up. The face of the clown in the storm drain was white, there were funny tufts of red hair on either side of his bald head, and there was a big clown-smile painted over his mouth, something that never seemed to waver even as he stares at the little boy. The clown held a bunch of balloons, all colors, like gorgeous ripe fruit in one hand. In the other he held Simon's newspaper boat. [[Continue|Prologue15]]

"Want your boat, Si?" The clown smiles wider. Simon smiled back. He couldn't help it; it was the kind of smile you just had to answer. "I sure do," he said. The clown laughed. “Oh, that's good! That's very good! And how about a balloon with it as well?” "I mean, sure!" He reached forward... and then drew his hand reluctantly back. "My parents said I'm not supposed to take stuff from strangers." "Very wise of them," the clown in the storm drain said, the smile still present. ‘How,’ Simon wondered, ‘could I have thought his eyes were yellow? They were a twinkling <<cycle "$eye_color" autoselect>><<option "sapphire blue">><<option "jade green">><<option "hypnotic hazel">><<option "cloudy grey">><<option "coffee brown">><<option "inky black">><</cycle>>, the color of his mom's eyes, and $MC_nickname's.’ “Very wise indeed. Therefore I will introduce myself. I, Si, am Mister Bob Gray, also known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise, meet Simon $surname. Simon, meet Pennywise. And now we know each other. I'm not a stranger to you, and you're not a stranger to me. Kurr-ect?” Simon giggled. "I guess so." He reached forward again... and drew his hand back again. "Um, how did you get down there?" "Storm just bleeeew me away," Pennywise the Dancing Clown laughs. "It blew the whole circus away. Can you smell the circus, Si?" Simon leaned forward. Suddenly he could smell peanuts! Hot roasted peanuts! And vinegar! The white kind you put on your french fries through a hole in the cap! He could smell cotton candy and frying doughboys and the faint but thunderous odour of animal shit. He could smell the cheery aroma of midway sawdust. And yet... And yet under it all was the smell of flood and decomposing leaves and dark storm drain shadows. That smell was wet and rotten. The cellar-smell. But the circus smell was stronger. [[Continue|Prologue16]]

"You bet I can smell it," he said. "Want your boat, Si?" Pennywise asked. "I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager." He held it up, smiling even wider. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore. "Yeah sure," Simon said, looking into the storm drain. "And a balloon? I've got red and green and yellow and blue..." "Do they float?" "Float?" The clown's friendly smile turns into an eerie grin. "Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And there's cotton candy..." Simon reaches out. The clown seizes his arm. And Simon saw the clown's face change. What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke. "They float," the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held Simon's arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled Simon toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. Simon craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1987. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or boiled out onto their porches. "They float," it growled, "they float, Simon, and when you're down here with me, you'll float, too—" [[Continue|Prologue17]]

Simon's shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who had stayed home from his job at The Shoeboat that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in a yellow rain-slicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter with muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly. He would immediately get an umbrella from inside to see what had happened. "Everything down here floats," that chuckling, rotten voice whispered, and suddenly there was a ripping noise and a flaring sheet of agony, and Simon $surname knew no more. Dave Gardener was the first to get there, and although he arrived only a minute or two after the first scream, the boy was gone. Gardener could only see a strip of yellow as big as his forearm. When he peered closer to examine it, he began to scream himself. It was Simon's left arm, still adorning his yellow slicker, the torn area from the shoulder now stained red. Blood flowed into the storm drain from the tattered hole where the rest of his body was attached to. A knob of bone, horribly bright, peeked through the torn shoulder. The boy's unattached arm faces up into the white sky, and as Dave staggered away toward the others already running pell-mell down the street, the palm began to fill up with rain. [[Continue|Prologue18]]

Somewhere below, in the storm drain that was already filled nearly to capacity with runoff (“There could have been no one down there,” the County Sheriff would later exclaim to a Derry News reporter with a frustrated fury so great it was almost agony. “Hercules himself would have been swept away in that driving ”), Simon's newspaper boat shot onward through dark chambers and long concrete hallways that roared and chimed with water. For awhile it ran neck-and-neck with a dead chicken that floated with its yellowy, reptilian toes pointed at the dripping ceiling; then, at some junction east of town, the chicken was swept off to the left while Simon's boat went straight. An hour later, while your mother was being sedated in the Emergency Room at Derry Home Hospital and while you sat stunned and white and silent in your bed, listening to your father sob hoarsely in the parlor where your mother had been playing ‘Fur Elise’ when Simon went out, the boat shot out through a concrete loophole like a bullet exiting the muzzle of a gun and ran at speed down a sluiceway and into an unnamed stream. When it joined the boiling, swollen Penobscot River twenty minutes later, the first rifts of blue had begun to show in the sky overhead. The storm was over. The boat dipped and swayed and sometimes took on water, but it did not sink; you and Simon had waterproofed it well. No one will know where it finally fetched up, if ever it did; perhaps it reached the sea and sails there forever, like a magic boat in a fairytale. All you know is that it was still afloat and still running on the breast of the flood when it passed the incorporated town limits of Derry, Maine, and there it passes out of this tale forever. !!!END PROLOGUE

<div class="center"> <<fadeout 3s 9s>><<fadein 4s 1s>> !!THEY ALL FALL DOWN <</fadein>><</fadeout>>\ <<fadeout 3s 9s>><<fadein 4s 3s>>\ !PART 1 !!!and so it goes <</fadein>><</fadeout>> </div> <span class="next">[[Continue|Prologue0.2]]</span><<timed 10s>><<goto "Prologue0.2">><</timed>>

<div class="center"><<fadeout 5s 15s>><<fadein 10s 1s>> ‘They begin! The perfections are sharpened The flower spreads its colored petals wide in the sun But the tongue of the bee misses them They sink back into the loam crying out — you may call it a cry that creeps over them, a shiver as they wilt and disappear...’ – William Carlos Williams, Paterson <</fadein>><</fadeout>></div> <span class="next">[[Continue|Prologue1]]</span><<timed 20s>><<goto "Prologue1">><</timed>>