A Fear of Clowns (The Greasepaint Chronicals)
Read A Fear of Clowns (The Greasepaint Chronicals) Online
Authors: P. S. Power
The Greasepaint
Chronicles:
A Fear of Clowns
P.S. Power
Copyright 2014
Orange Cat Publishing
Table of Contents:
A Little Bit of Madness (About the
Author)
The little cream colored
Volkswagen was a bit too small for Jason Hadley to really manage getting set up
in. He wasn't a huge man, being only six feet tall, more or less. His frame was
stick thin, which helped at the moment, but he had to have space to get his
mirror facing the right direction. That meant he was on the far side of the
vehicle with the passenger's door open when the first guests started to arrive.
Ducked down, not so much to hide himself, but so that he could use the seat as
a table. He wasn't due to go on for an hour, but he needed to get ready, and
get a feel for the place, if he could.
It was a nice home, from the
front. A large house that had the feel of money to it. It was brown, but not
the common kind that he was used to seeing. A fine sort of siding that was
matte, but gave a sense of being clean and tidy at the same time.
The first person to go to the
door had a rather normal looking present in her hand. It was a silver and red
striped thing, easily made out from across the street. Sun glinted off of the
shiny paper, making it seem rich and refined. That was fine, since going to a
birthday party meant bringing something, for most people. She was alone, and
wearing a skirt that was just short enough to be interesting, without causing
him to think anything that would leave him feeling like too much of a pervert
later.
She was also fourteen if she was
a day. Not that he could tell for certain from where he was, but this wasn't a
little girl. It was a problem. The real kind that had nothing to do with his
aching knees, pressed into the hard ground, or the awkward tilt the car seat forced
him to work at.
Because girls that age didn't go
to little kid's parties, as a rule. If she'd been guilt tripped into it, say by
a relative that knew no one would show up for little Johnny's big day, she
wouldn't have been wearing anything that revealing. It would have been shorts
perhaps, and a t-shirt. Probably jeans, given the early spring weather. That
meant two things then. First, Seth, the kid whose b-day it was, probably hadn't
just turned six, like Jason had expected. Not unless he was a
hardcore
player, and liked older women. Second, Jason was well and truly screwed.
The rest of the kids started
getting there about five minutes after that. It was a decent turn out, for a
party where there wouldn't be drinking.
That
he'd asked about, since he
had a problem that way. It was an issue, so he always found out first, because
a surprising amount of adults drank at parties, even ones for their children.
Not that he was judging them based on that. It was just that he didn't want to
be tempted.
The next issue was that he didn't
have a cell phone. They cost money, and the life of a clown didn't provide too
much of that. It meant either going in blind, or walking up to the house to do
some recon, and potentially spoiling the surprise.
There was a chance, if an
incredibly tiny one, that the kid was actually a hipster and
wanted
a
children's entertainment clown for his party. One with the full-on big shoed
and bright wigged experience. There was
also
a chance that he was about
to walk into a den of kids that would crucify the poor brat, because his mother
didn't realize the difference between four and fourteen.
It took a few moments to work out
what to do, given all that. Jason had made a point of learning all he could
about his new business nine months before, when his buddy Carlos had suggested
it as a way to make a bit of spare cash. It wasn't that he wanted to become a
lifelong clown, just that he liked to do as well as he could, regardless of the
job to be done. He had some feelers out for a new position, but history
professors weren't being snapped up at the moment. In hard times, people stuck
with their work, even if they hated it. So it was selling himself as a clown,
or taking up some kind of criminal endeavor.
Given that they were in Nevada,
crime was a high competition business, which meant clowning it was. So he'd
invented his act. Joey the Clown. The Clown of a Thousand Faces. It was ten,
really, but he had one that he could possibly use for this. If he did it right.
It would be risky.
That meant going in ready and
staying aware of what the audience was feeling. With teens that just meant
failing most of the time. Kids tolerated clowns, when they didn't scream in
fear or try to run. The whole concept was unfamiliar to them, and not a thing
they saw on television anymore, like when he was a child. Adults were
distrustful of them, since they hid their faces and seemed to want to be around
the little ones. The older kids were going to be more concerned with seeming
cool than anything else.
If he'd been a rock star it might
have worked, even one in his mid-forties, as long as some of the kids knew who
he was. Playing music was a thing that people understood as far as parties
went. That wasn't what he did, unfortunately. Not that day.
Joey the Clown had ten faces, and
a hundred tricks. He could look like a hobo, Joey the Hobo, in fact, who was
optimistic and pleasant, or a bum that was darker, and more lazy. He could be
cheerful and wear a rainbow wig, but also had some other tricks up his
voluminous and brightly colored sleeves. He'd planned on going in as a regular
party performer, and still would. With one minor change to his costume. A latex
mask.
This one was smiling, and didn't
look
all
that creepy. A bit, since all masks like that did, being too
close to real for the eye to be easily fooled. It was the makeup under it that
was the risk. Jay took his time, and changed from the blue and green outfit
he'd been planning on using, to the
other
one. The rainbow stripes on
white. It was faded in places and looked a bit poor. Like Seth's mom had hired
a cut rate performer, not knowing any better. She hadn't gotten that at all.
She just didn't know it yet. Joey the Clown actually took pride in his work. As
much as was possible, considering the shame of it all.
While he worked, parked a good
way back from the house, the party crowd kept showing up. There were a lot more
than he'd contracted for over the phone too, at least fifty. Enough to tear him
apart if things got out of hand. Physically beat him down, if it went too
wrong. A couple had clearly been drinking already. If anyone knew how drunks
walked when they were hiding the fact from the world, it was him. Hang out in
enough bars, and you learned things. Like what vomit smelled like. What a-holes
looked like, too. There were at least a few in the mix. Young ones that
strutted up to the door, acting bold, as if they were constantly on display.
At ten minutes before he was
supposed to go in, he took a deep breath and chanted his working mantra. It was
a little ditty that he'd used before his first gig, and he found that it really
helped keep things in perspective.
"No dignity. A hundred and
fifty dollars. No dignity. Pride is for people that can afford it." A very
real stage fright took hold about then, too. That normally didn't happen, but
he was used to meeting up with sugar crazed five year olds with present
fatigue, not cannibals. Not monsters pretending to be human either.
Teens. What the freaking hell was
he getting himself into? No
dignity
? They'd probably eat him alive.
The mother was in the back of the
house, like she'd promised. She was pretty much what he'd expected, from the
way she spoke. Her voice had been young, but mothers always sounded like that,
until they were on their third or fourth kid. She only had the one, and he
probably wasn't hers. Mom's face was youthful still, no older than her early
twenties, which meant she was a step-mom. One that Seth probably secretly
wanted to bag, if he could. She had a nice gold band on, with a set of large
glistening rocks set in the back. That matched the house, from what he could
see, which was big and well kept. A vast modern castle, fit for a minor lord.
So she'd married into money. If
it had happened recently it might explain why she didn't know anything about
kids in particular. Except for the fact that she'd probably been one within the
last ten years herself.
"Joey the Clown?" She
said it so seriously he had to wonder if she were going for a joke.
It was tempting to claim that he
was just some
other
clown passing by, and then leave, even if it cost
him his day's pay. He needed the cash, and the woman in front of him, who was
dressed like what she probably thought a soccer mom was supposed to be, seemed
eager to pay him. In that she had, right there in her lovely and soft seeming
white hand, an envelope with what had to be cash in it.
With his name on it. Joey the
Clown, right there in black ink. Big letters, addressed just to him.
Smiling hugely she started to
hand it over, "I added a bit, since I didn't think so many people would
show up. Seth's popular. Who knew?" Clearly not her.
He didn't bother smiling, since
his mask was already doing that for him.
"Maggie Winthrop, I
presume?" He used his cutesy stage voice. It was high pitched, and got a
giggle from the brunette. That was the point after all. It was a parody of a
child, used to help the little ones feel more at ease with the strange creature
that someone had hired to "entertain" them.
It worked on childlike adults, too.
She smiled and wiggled the white envelope in her hand a bit, "I know that
we originally said one-fifty, but there are a lot more people. I put a bit more
in."
He nodded, exaggerating the
movement by a vast margin and bringing his arms into the act by pulling them
up, elbows flying outward. Once he was on, he tried to stay that way. It left
people feeling a bit more like they'd hired an alien being that had come to
visit them, and not a washed up drunk that couldn't get a better job.
"I'm not so concerned about
the numbers. It's the age. The age! How old is Seth today? Forty? These kids
today aren't kids at
all
." He tried to convey his real meaning
without seeming serious. He wanted data, not to make her feel bad.
She just nodded, her eyes wide
and happy enough that he thought she might not be all too bright. If so then he
could cut her some slack. After all, you couldn't help what I.Q. you were born
with. Blaming people for ignorance was fair, since they should have taken the
time to learn. Going after them for how they were born, wasn't. That would have
been like saying that they weren't worth as much as anyone else. Everyone had
their place in society. History showed that clearly enough. It was built not by
the brilliant, but by those that lived in the world of their own time.
In this case it was as a slightly
vapid, but attractive, housewife to a rich man. At least she seemed pleasant
about it.
"Sixteen. Can you believe
it? We should go in soon. I'm almost certain that no one is expecting a clown.
This is so exciting." She turned to move inside, but Jay held out his
hand, trying to get her to pause. It got stuffed with money.
He decided, no matter how big of
a disaster the day was, to always love Maggie Winthrop, if only a little. There
were worst ways to treat people than paying promptly.
"They might not want a clown
at that age, so I worked up an act, just in case my regular one starts to fall
through. Just so you won't be scared when I start doing strange things. That's
all right, isn't it? I mean, you aren't doing this ironically, or just to
destroy Seth with his friends?" If so, well, Seth wasn't paying him, and
Jay had car insurance payments to make. So far he'd been keeping up, mainly
thanks to the fact that he didn't have to pay rent for the shed he lived in.
The woman in front of him gave
him a look then. It was the sort of thing that he normally would have been
pretty happy to see on any woman's face. It was loving and kind, and just warm
enough that he understood how she'd managed to capture some rich guy without
using gold digging tricks. It was all about sweetness. A genuine sort of thing
that seemed to know no wrong.
Part of him wanted it to be fake,
and for her to announce that she
was
hiring him to destroy the boy
inside the house. It actually hurt to see someone, a woman, look at him like
that. It was an emotional problem for him, and nothing she was doing really, so
he sucked it up and didn't let his expression show. The mask made that a whole
lot easier. There were good things to being hidden. It was one of the reasons
that Carlos had suggested he be a clown. The expressions were built in.
"Oh, no. I want this to go
well. I promised Seth that it would. A real party for his sixteenth birthday. I
got a big cake, balloons, a clown and some fruit punch. That's it, right?"
Taking a deep breath, and
fighting the urge to run away, he shook his head, slowly, the weight of the
mask pulling from side to side enough that he knew it wasn't going to easily
fall off if he made a dash for his car. That would be the prudent and sensible
reaction. Toss down the cash, and make a run for it. Except that would leave
Maggie all on her own, probably not knowing what to do if anything started to
go wrong.