I am a professional clown.
Laugh all you want, I get it a lot. Clown memes, ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ played when I walk in the room, I’ve seen it all. In truth it’s a pretty decent job, pays well if you know where to look. I used to do circus stuff, travelling across the Midwest with a decently-popular troupe. The crowds loved me, laughing out loud with every gag I performed, every time I fell on my ass for their amusement, I felt at home. That was of course until lockdown hit, forcing me away from my second home the stage, and back to my real home in suburban Illinois.
I was out of work for a while but I’ve been slowly getting back into it. Even without circuses there’s still plenty of people willing to pay good money for a laugh. Kids birthday parties, corporate events, even funerals oddly enough. It isn’t what I did before lockdown struck, but it’s something.
And now I wish I stayed on the stage.
It all started with me pulling up to an unassuming suburban home on Florence Drive last Saturday. As usual I was driving my clown car, a rusted-out VW Beetle barely spacious enough to fit a child let alone a woman in her twenties. The exterior was painted a stark white with gaudy multicolor polka-dots. On top of the roof sat a giant stuffed elephant wearing a bow tie and hat, and written on the hood in a bright cartoonish font was “Lulu the Clown”, my clown name. I hate the thing. It’s barely roadworthy, attracts unwanted attention and the interior reeks of sweat and stale perfume. But beggars can’t be choosers, and it gets a smile out of kids.
It was a house like any other, a simple two-story affair with a large garage. There weren’t many cars but then again I was early, I always am. No one wants to be left trying to placate a room full of hyperactive kids because the clown didn’t show. It was in a nice area, probably not cheap. Grass grew in abundance between the cracks of the sidewalk and some trees were dotted about here and there, their leaves rustling gently. A few signs on the drive in had even pointed towards a nearby creek, and opening the window I could just about hear the sound of its babbling waters carried by the breeze.
The drive over had been pretty uneventful, and filled with an impenetrable silence. I hadn’t always done these party gigs on my own, at first I was accompanied by Beth Simmons, a good friend from my touring days. Beth, whose clown name was Bim-Bam, was a stocky little barrel of laughs. Always cracking jokes as we rode along, never afraid to make herself the butt of them either, her emerald eyes twinkling every time she saw me laughing along.
She retired shortly after her first solo party. She never said why, didn’t even go through the proper process or anything, just sent out a text saying that she couldn’t continue working anymore and that was that. This business can be rough, I remember thinking to myself as I stole a forlorn glance at the passenger seat.
I was already fully dressed in my clown outfit, saving me from having to get changed in the cramped confines of the car. I looked garish, and yet kids seemed to love it and that was what mattered. White foundation gave me a slightly sickly complexion, and my lips were coated in cherry-red lipstick with a drawn-on smile. I gave my red rubber nose a quick squeeze and set off down the driveway. As the door swung open after my second ring of the doorbell I gave my usual cartoonishly-low bow, immediately shifting into character. Lulu is an overenthusiastic klutz, tripping over everything in sight and generally making a mess of things. In reality I’m actually pretty coordinated, which is probably why I play into it so heavily. “Hellooo! I hear somebody’s having a birthday?!” I exclaimed in a high pitched voice.
A glance up revealed a woman standing at the door, obviously the mom. She appeared to be middle-aged, with shoulder length brown hair tied in a bun and sharp cobalt eyes. “Ah, the clown!”, she said. “You’re early, aren’t you?”.
“Well, I figured everyone likes surprises!” I replied brightly. The woman chuckled and opened the door wider, gesturing for me to enter. “I’m still setting up the party, but if you want you can wait in the living room.”, she offered as I followed her deeper into the house. The interior made no effort to deviate from the overall typical suburban aesthetic: wooden floors, cream walls and neutral furnishings everywhere. The woman graciously opened the living room door and I stepped inside.
Immediately, my heart skipped a beat. The living room was a veritable taxidermy museum. Every space that wasn’t occupied by furniture held a different animal, stuffed and mounted with care. The walls held a plethora of deer heads, each sporting large antlers and staring directly ahead. One thing united all the animals within: they all stared ahead with cold, unblinking eyes that betrayed none of the life that they must have once gleamed with. How anyone could enjoy looking upon such lifeless creatures baffled me completely, still does.
“Oh, do you like the decorations?”, the woman asked as we entered the space, forging a path through the clutter. Her tone was light, as though she were asking someone’s opinion of a new painting and not… this. I smiled toothily but said nothing. “They’re my husband’s.”, she explained. “Or at least, they were. He did it for a living, taxidermy. He never hurt so much as a fly though, my George…”. She trailed off, her gaze distant. “Anyway,” she said after what felt like forever, “Please, take a seat. Do you want coffee or anything?”.
“Oh no thanks, I’m happy happy happy as it is!”, I replied as I sat in one of the room’s chairs, which had a stuffed weasel on its arm. Lulu was quickly coming to the fore as my mind raced, hiding behind characters has always been a defense mechanism of mine. “Say, ma’am. I hear there’s a creek nearby. Would the kiddies like a little trip down there after my show? I would love to get to know them, we could make daisy chains and sing songs and-“. I often do this, bring the children along somewhere nice so they remember me as a nice clown, especially for the inevitable few who are scared of me at first. I always get the parents’ permission, with the bad rap clowns get in the media ranging from creepy predators to demonic forces I feel it’s best to err on the safe side.
The idea was immediately shot down. “No!.. no, I, I won’t allow it.”, the woman said a little too loud, her hands shaking almost imperceptibly. “The creek is too dangerous, far too dangerous. No.” That caught me off guard. Sure her reluctance was completely understandable, but the force with which she spat out the words surprised me. “Okie dokie,” I said quickly, not wanting to push it. “I’ll just leave you to your preparations then.”. She rose to her feet, nodding. “Yes, yes.. my preparations… I’m sorry.”, she mumbled as she wandered out of the room.
With the woman gone I found myself alone in the living room, flanked by a tableau of death. I stared at an empty spot on the wall and in that moment, thought about how deathly silent the house was. Surely if there was a party going on soon music would be playing, kids would be running around at the very least, but… nothing.
Again my mind wandered back to Beth. If she were there she would have been cracking joke after joke, booping all the mounted heads and telling them to behave themselves. She was effortlessly funny like that.
Trying to distract myself I took my phone out, quickly tapping out my passcode. After a quick check of Twitter (nothing) and Instagram (nothing interesting), I put it away and glanced back up. For a split second I could have sworn I saw the woman’s head peeking out from the doorway but when I blinked she was gone. Maybe I was just on edge and imagining things. I must have been, because a moment later she called me, her voice distant. Fidgeting with my dress as I stood up, I left the room.
The party was being held in a conservatory at the back of the house. The woman stood at the door and as soon as she noticed me, grinned widely. “This is it!”, she pipped. “Oh, my babies have been waiting for this for so long! Go on, go.”.
Babies? As in plural? I was about to ask about this when I felt the woman’s grip tighten on my wrist as I was forcefully shoved inside.
“Hey hey, kids!”, I exclaimed, still looking back at the woman in surprise. When I turned my head, however, my voice immediately caught in my throat.
A small group of children sat in the centre of the glass-walled room that looked out into the back yard, none of them appearing older than eight years old. They were completely motionless, silent as they sat there cross-legged on the floor in a display of what looked like excellent manners.
It wasn’t. And “display” was sickeningly accurate.
They were all stuffed. Taxidermized.
Where the animals in the living room showed an expert’s touch, even I could admit that, the same could not be said of the children. Bits of stuffing fell from the bodies of some while others looked like they’d been torn apart and sewn back together by some alien species with little idea of anatomy or biology. Some seemed intact, their skin stitched shut with thick black thread, but even their skin hung loose in flaps.
Some futile attempt had clearly been made to preserve them, but in spite of it each body existed in a state of decomposition more gruesome and advanced than the last. Their faces were sunken into skulls, flesh had rotted away leaving bone visible beneath. Eyes lay open wide, mouths agape with teeth glistening white against decaying gums, lips stretched into permanent and sickening smiles. Their clothes were decayed, moth-eaten and ragged, stained yellowish-grey with mould. The windows of the conservatory space were all wide open and yet the cloying stench of death and decay lingered in the air like a thick fog, forcing me to hold my breath lest I choke.
I stood there frozen, unable to move or speak. This was, without a doubt, the most messed-up thing I had witnessed in my entire clown career.
No, my life.
I practically longed to be back in the living room. At least with the animals I could distance myself somewhat. Here, I couldn’t.
I could feel vomit rising in my throat as tears threatened to spill out of my eyes. I wanted so badly to tear my eyes away from the horror before me but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t. It was the woman speaking up behind me that finally broke the trance. “Well, aren’t you going to start your act?”, she asked. Her expression was calm, eyebrow raised as she asked the question. As if waking from a nightmare I dashed past the woman back into the house, making a beeline for the bathroom.
Immediately I tossed my wig to the floor, hugged the toilet bowl and heaved violently. I expelled the contents of my stomach with both eyes wide open, closing them only served to refresh the image in my mind, the miasma of rot mingling with vomit. Through the bathroom door I could hear the woman’s voice. “It’s okay little ones, settle down!”, she said. Christ, she was even talking to the things. “I’ll go get the backup clown.”.
The backup clown? I thought back to when I pulled up at the driveway, there weren’t any other clown cars there. My curiosity got the better of me and so, emptying my stomach of the last of its contents, I washed my mouth out and put my wig back on before emerging from the bathroom. Slipping back out into the dining room I peered out into the conservatory, and what I saw there made me wish I had stayed.
My vision was partly obscured by a stack of boxes on top of which a group of children, alive mercifully, stood. In their hands they held ropes, puppeteering something in front of the crowd of corpses. At first I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but after a moment it lazily pivoted in my direction and I had to stop myself from screaming.
It was Beth. Or, what was once Beth.
Her body was preserved in the same fashion as the children, but with her limbs twisted awkwardly at odd angles. Her face was covered in unfamiliar wrinkles, her lips stretched taut in the same demented smile that the children wore. She wore her Bim-Bam clothes, green dungarees and red boots, but they hung ragged from her frame. Her makeup was applied in a cruel parody of her clown look: smeared haphazardly, her features exaggerated to grotesque proportions. Her hair was greasy and stringy, falling limply around her shoulders and looking like it hadn’t been washed in months.
The worst by far was her eyes. Those kind, verdant green eyes that once glimmered with laughter were now dull and lifeless; devoid of emotion, staring straight through me.
As I watched the children standing on the boxes manipulated the strings, causing Beth’s lifeless body to perform a jaunty dance routine for the assembled children. To say that it disturbed me would be an understatement. After a moment it stopped and bowed deeply. Immediately, a speaker began to play the sound of applause and children cheering, distorted and tinny. Closing my eyes to block out the freak show before me I turned abruptly, desperate to leave.
I walked perhaps two steps before my path was abruptly blocked.
“Lulu, there you are!”, the mom exclaimed. Her tone was still irritatingly jovial, condescending. “What’s the matter? It’s not very nice to run away like that.”.
I tried to respond, but the onslaught of chatter continued. “My children have been looking forward to a performance by a clown and this is what you give them? Lulu you must understand, my little darlings deserve only the best and they were very hopeful, young lady, so if you could just go out there and give them a show-“
“YOUR CHILDREN ARE FUCKING DEAD!”
My outburst was as much a cry for help as anything, the frenzied scream of a tortured animal pleading with its captor. I had reached my breaking point, surpassed it.
The woman stared at me for a moment, her face unreadable. Then, slowly, she reached into her pocket and extracted something. My heart sinking, I recognized the metallic object. It was my phone. How the hell did she get that? I had it on my person, I definitely put it away that time in the living room, and- I remembered the force with which she shoved me out into the conservatory. Either then or while I was frozen in shock she must have grabbed it.
“N-no no no no no…” I babbled. “I-I’m sorry, look, could I please have that back?”.
She shook her head, still holding it up for me to see. “Lulu, I’ve been thinking about the offer you made earlier,” she mused, “and a trip down to the creek is just the thing I need. Not with the kids, mind you, just the two of us. I know a perfect spot where we could sit and relax, out of the way, the water’s nice and deep-“.
I took once glance at the woman through teary eyes before doing the only thing I could think of doing in that moment.
I charged at her.
Clutching blindly as I ran I managed to clasp my hands around my phone and wrench it from her grasp as she let out a startled yelp. A split second later I hit the ground, immediately rising to my feet again. I ignored the pain that shot up my legs as I hobbled forwards, eyes trained on the door. I reached the front door of the house and wrenched it open before limping outside and into my clown car. Starting up the engine I drove off, never looking back.
I’m planning my resignation as I type this, a couple days later. My actions forced my hand, where I work the client always controls the narrative and nobody I’ve told believes me. The official story is that I showed up to this woman’s house, refused to perform for her children and then assaulted her. Fireable behavior for sure.
In truth though even if I could, even if this all blows over, I don’t think I’ll ever work as a clown again. I look at a crowd of smiling children and I see those dead faces, I smell their decay. I look at my clown co-workers and I see Beth’s lifeless corpse. There’s no such thing as happy endings anymore.
I’m chatting with one of my co-workers on WhatsApp about a birthday party gig he has coming up, and while I’ve been writing this he’s been trying to send me the coordinates of where it is. The message just came in as I typed these last few sentences.
I knew the place at a glance.
EDIT: So… I reported this to the police. I don’t know why I didn’t before, thanks u/Mariahissleepy. Guess I needed the knowledge that this madness didn’t end with me to get my ass in gear and do it. Co-worker’s still unconvinced that going to that house would be the worst mistake of his life. Ugh.