Previous instalment here: https://redd.it/15vvwk0
For Amy and her siblings, birthday parties were always a disaster, courtesy of (who else?) their mother Maura. The bitch just had an unparalleled talent for spoiling all the fun; for turning a child’s special day into a mess of disappointment and humiliation.
“None of us had a decent birthday until after we had moved out,” Amy once said to me, and proceeded to tell me some horror stories.
There was Cameron’s sixth birthday, when Maura got angry that her son seemed more enthusiastic about the train set he had received from his aunt Jane than the baseball glove from his mother, and so tried to smash it with the piñata stick while David, in a rare instance of manning up, held her back. There was Ella’s twelfth birthday, when the girls were dancing to music on the radio and a song with somewhat raunchy lyrics came on. Maura, a prude of the highest order, flipped out and went on a big angry rant about how much it disgusted her that a song like that would be allowed on public radio. Somehow, this evolved into an even bigger, angrier rant about the overall “lack of decency” displayed by young women these days and how Ella and her friends were all shaping up to be “shameless sluts who strut about town with their tits hanging out, each on the hunt for a dirty older man who will screw that little sense she has left out of her.”
Oh, and then there was Amy’s ninth birthday. Things were going surprisingly well until Maura abruptly decided that Amy didn’t seem grateful enough for the party being thrown for her. And if there was one thing Maura hated more than non-prudish women, it was ingratitude. So after the guests had sung “Happy Birthday” and Amy had blown out her candles, Maura picked up the cake and told the girls to put on their shoes and head outside. Amy assumed that, since it was so nice out, they’d be having cake in the back yard. But Maura instead led them all to the park across the street, one with a duck pond. She then proceeded to toss the beautiful red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, piece by piece, into the water for the ducks to eat. Amy just stood there and cried while her friends tried in vain to comfort her. The worst part, according to Amy, was that the whole time Maura had this big smirk on her face, like the destruction of her daughter’s birthday cake and said daughter’s distress over it were freaking amusing to her. The mental image set my blood boiling. I mean, how spiteful and sadistic do you have to be to pull a stunt like that?
Why am I telling you all this, you ask? What relevance does it have to the story, you ask?
Well, it wasn’t enough for Maura to ruin her children’s birthdays; there was also the time she ruined Lily’s fifth birthday party. And the mess she made of that day was far, far worse than anything Amy, Cameron, or Ella ever had to endure.
It all started with Maura going behind our backs and hiring a clown to come perform at the party.
She didn’t do it because it was something Lily particularly wanted; she did it because she was stupid enough to believe it would get her back in our good graces. You see, at this point, Amy and I were still firm about restricting Maura’s contact with Lily. It wasn’t even entirely because of the whole kidnapping debacle; it was also because, well, Maura was a toxic waste dump of a woman whom Lily was better off being as little as possible. But did Maura understand that? Pfft, fuck no. She was incensed that Amy and I were depriving her of a relationship with her favourite grandchild, and I think the clown was also in part to spite us. See what a wonderful grandmother she was, hiring entertainment for Lily’s party? Why hadn’t Amy and I thought to do that? We must not love her the way Maura did.
So the clown arrived just as Amy and Maura were on the verge of brawling on the lawn in front of all the kids. You see, Maura had come over to drop off her present for Lily, but now she was refusing to leave. She insisted that she had a right to stay for the show, since she was the one who had hired Mr. Chuckles.
“Who the hell is Mr. Chuckles?” Amy demanded.
Why, a clown, of course! He performed at children’s birthday parties with his trusty sidekick, Chortles the Chimp!
A chimp? Oh, fuck, no!
It had been many years since that infamous chimpanzee attack down in the States, the one that ended in a woman getting her face and hands torn and chewed off, but Amy and I still remembered. In fact, in the aftermath of that incident, I had gone down a rabbit hole of researching chimpanzee attacks. I have a pretty strong stomach for gore and body horror and all that, but the things I read and the images I saw left me genuinely disturbed. It’s insane, the amount of damage those creatures can inflict on a human body. And it seemed that all the worst attacks were carried out by chimps who had been raised by humans, either as pets or in captivity. Despite us being closely related genetically, mixing people with chimps just seems to be a recipe for disaster.
Amy and I did not want this Mr. Chuckles fellow bringing his chimp to our daughter’s party; we were worried not only for Lily’s safety, but for that of her guests as well.
But when Amy told Maura this, Maura got all pissy and told her not to be silly, that the chimp would pose no threat to the kids, and that Amy should be thanking her. Things got heated pretty fast, as they always did between Amy and her mother. The kids were starting to gawk, Lily looked like she might start crying any second, and I was feeling sick to my stomach, watching the situation devolve.
Then, a timid voice cut through the buzz of angry voices: “Hello? Is this the Poirier residence?”
Maura, Amy, and I all turned.
Standing on the lawn, looking uncertain, was a kid in a polka dot clown suit and a curly red wig, his gaudy clown makeup doing little to conceal the fact that he looked barely out of college. In one white-gloved hand, he held a thin red leash, which was clipped to a harness, which was being worn by a chimpanzee.
“I’m Mr. Chuckles. And this is Chortles,” said the clown, nodding at the ape. “We are here to put on a show.”
The kids went crazy at the sight of the chimp. They gathered around, squealing with delight, trying to pet it. Chortles shrank back, baring his teeth; his fangs gleamed wickedly in the summer’s afternoon sun. He wasn’t large (we would later learn that he was not yet fully grown), but he looked strong, muscles rippling underneath his bristly black hair. Lily rushed forward, arms out as if she was going to hug the creature; I grabbed the back of the dress and held her back while she protested and squirmed.
Maura clapped her hands and cackled with delight. “Oh, he is so cute!” she shrieked, and to this day I still believe that it was her high-pitched, grating screech of a voice that set off Chortles.
He wrenched himself free of his handlers grip and began to charge, barreling on all fours through the crowd of kids, knocking them down as he went. They all began to scream and freak out, flying off in all directions in an attempt to escape the rampaging beast.
Maura, shrieking like a tornado siren, grabbed Lily and fled into the house, slamming the door behind her. Chortles was running in circles around the back yard, popping balloons, shredding streamers, and tossing aside wrapped presents.
Amy stood up, clapped her hands, and hollered for them all to calm down and gather around her. She’s an elementary school teacher, you see, and good at wrangling kids. They all huddled around her legs, and she ordered them to line up behind her and follow her inside… carefully and quietly. She began leading them in a single file back to the house. I spotted Maura in the living room window, waving her arms above her head, her lipsticked mouth a perfect o as she continued to wail.
By now, Amy and the kids had reached the door, and my wife reached out and turned the knob…
Only to discover that Maura had locked it.
Amy yelled for Maura to let them in, right fucking now.
Maura yelled at her to go away, that all that mattered was that Lily was safe.
Amy yelled back that there were eight other children in need of safety, and if any of them got mauled by that crazy animal, Maura would be charged with child endangerment.
Amy didn’t know whether that was true or not, but it worked; Maura unlocked the door, and Amy made a point of elbowing her in the stomach as she hustled the kids inside. Petty, but it felt good.
Oh, and throughout all this, Chortles was still tearing around at a dizzying pace, his angry animal screams piercing the hot, stagnant air. He grabbed one of the presents and began gutting it with his bare hands; a severed Barbie leg whizzed past me like a bullet, grazing the tip of my nose. I grabbed a rake that was leaning up against the tool shed and gave chase, trying to hit Chortles with it, but kept missing.
Mr. Chuckles was yelling commands at the chimp: “Stop, stop! Come! Stop! Come! Stop, Chortles!” He was trying to sound stern and authoritative, but I could tell that he was scared, and had little control over the situation. At one point, he reached inside the bag he’d been carrying, pulled out a water gun, and squirted Chortles with it. It was about as useful as taking a piss on a forest fire.
My chase was cut off when I stepped in a hollow in the ground and went sprawling, the impact slamming the wind out of me. For a moment all I saw were colours and shapes as I struggled to catch my breath. Over the roar of adrenaline, I heard a scream. A human scream.
When I could see again, the sight that greeted me is forever branded onto my memory, a gruesome scar that will never fade.
Chortles was on top of Mr. Chuckles, mauling him. Blood sprayed out in all directions, painting the grass a livid red. The young man was kicking and flailing as if he were being drowned, but he wasn’t screaming, and that was somehow more terrifying than any sounds he might have been making.
In less time than it takes to blink, I was on my feet, rake in hand. I had rolled my ankle in the fall, and pain rushed up my leg as I half-ran, half-hobbled over and began slamming hitting Chortles on the back and head, screaming at him to stop. My vision had gone fuzzy and white at the edges. I was pure adrenaline, my arms slashing through the air like swords as I lifted the rake and brought it back down as hard as I could, again and again and again.
Chortles didn’t even seem to feel the blows, and was now chewing on the clown’s throat. But then I struck him on the top of the head, and he whipped around, a feral snarl on his face. He leaped at me, knocking me down again, and crouched on my chest like a sleep paralysis demon… except he was no figment of my imagination.
He opened his mouth, so wide it seemed to fill my entire field of vision. Strips of flesh dangled from his incisors like party streamers; globules of blood clung to his fangs like bright red balloons. It was like I was being welcomed into the world’s most nightmarish party… a party celebrating my death.
I closed my eyes. No, a film reel of my life did not play out against the backdrop of my eyelids, because real life is rarely so horrendously cliché. I did, however, picture myself lying in chewed-up, bloody pieces on the lawn. All because of Maura and her inability to keep the fuck out of my family’s lives.
But Chortles never got the chance to tear my face off. Because there was a crack, like lightning striking, and he became dead weight before rolling off of me.
The police, summoned by Amy, had arrived. One of them had shot the chimp in the head, killing him instantly and saving my life.
I was in shock and could only lie there uselessly until two of the cops hauled me to my feet and began helping me back to the house. At this point, the paramedics were also there, and had Mr. Chuckles on a stretcher. As they lifted him to load him into the ambulance, I saw his face, which was a churned-up mess of red meat, yellow fat, and white bone. I puked all over the grass. Then I spotted something lying there: an ear. I stared at it, the pink whorls, the fleshy lobe, thinking how alien it looked detached from a human head.
Then I puked again and passed out.
When I came to, lying on the couch, the boys in blue were trying to calm down Amy and the kids, who were all horribly shaken up by what they had just witnessed. Meanwhile, Maura had was on the phone with David back at home, telling him all about how the chimp had tried to maul her.
Mr. Chuckles survived.
He lost his left ear, most of his nose, and three fingers and half a thumb on his left hand. Still, the doctors were able to mostly reconstruct his face, rendering him mostly back to normal. At least, he wasn’t left as nearly as disfigured as I’d imagined. I know this because I looked him up recently, and he’s still performing, though as a magician instead of a clown. All I can say is, I just hope he was able to recover mentally.
Lily and her friends were traumatized, as you can imagine. Many of the parents were pretty upset that their children had been exposed to something so horrific, and would not let them attend any more of Lily’s birthday parties in the future. For weeks afterward, Lily had nightmares and ended most nights sandwiched between Amy and I in bed. We ended up having to take her to a child psychiatrist, and after a few sessions, began sleeping through the night again. But to this very day, she still has a fear of not only chimpanzees, but primates of any kind.
And Maura? Well, Maura not only refused to take responsibility for what had happened, but also had to make it all about her. She would tell the story again and again at every Sunday Dinner or holiday gathering, treating it like a spectator sport. And she always twisted the details so that she looked like the biggest victim, or the hero. Sometimes, Chortles had bitten her on the leg as she rushed the kids to safety. Other times, she saved the day by running back out and stabbing the chimp with a knife, distracting him long enough for the cops to rush in and subdue the animal. It never seemed to occur to her that she was telling each new version of the story to people who had heard the previous ones and knew she was full of shit.
At the very first Christmas after the attack, Maura moaned about how she still had nightmares about Chortles coming back to finish her off. Her mother Elizabeth, seated beside her at the dinner table, stroked Maura’s hair as if she were still a child and cooed at her that it was okay, that the “mean old monkey” was now dead and couldn’t get to her. Amy, seated next to me, gripped her wine glass so hard I swear I heard it crack. “I wish the chimp really had attacked you,” she snarled, and Elizabeth lit into her granddaughter for being so horribly “unsympathetic” to her mother’s “trauma.” She was still enabling Maura’s bullshit, even after all these years.
So that’s it. That’s the story of how Maura ruined Lily’s fifth birthday party. And how she still managed to cause misery and grief for all of us despite our attempts to keep her at bay. But as the next story I have planned will demonstrate, Maura is impossible to repel entirely. No matter how impenitrable you think the walls you’ve put up are, she will always find a crack and slither in like the snake she is, wreaking havoc on the lives of everyone whose path she crosses.