I liked this one. The ending could only have been what it was, given that this is PseudoPod rather than PodCastle or Escape Pod. So I was expecting that.
However, I did say, aloud in the car upon hearing the closing music begin, "Wait! What? That's IT?! You can't just . . . well, okay, I guess so."
I, too, was struck by the unavoidable Pennywise connection.
The one thing that disappointed me about the story was that the character (I forget his name at the moment) didn't do the scientific thing and check to see if his old teacher really was in a home with Alzheimers, or that his crush was a stripper in Reno, or that his childhood bully was . . . whatever he was. That should be fairly easy to check. Then he would KNOW whether he was making up the whole thing or if it was all a twisted fantasy.
That's what *I* would have done, anyway.
I mean, you know . . . right after I sat in the corner gibbering for a while. Like you do.
(Of course, then would have come the question of whether I had managed to look up this information while in some sort of fugue state and then just incorporated it into my fantasy . . .)
Oh! And YAY to Rish Outfield's reading. Awesome.