The Clown, by Edward J. Rathke
jimmy was a friend of mine
every night from the rodeo
wearing clown paint
jimmy was a friend of mine
every night from the rodeo
wearing clown paint
You arrive early. The tests, they’ve told you, may take all day. The waiting area is jammed. You people-watch. Old bodies, frail bodies, a smattering of cue-ball tweens with huge, haunted eyes. A geezer slurping oxygen in spasmodic gulps, a palsied granny wobbling in a wheelchair. Relatives and personal care attendants lean solicitously, untangling IV lines, patting parchment hands. Barely enough of these cadavers left to save, but here they are, ardent for eternity. A skeleton starts to cough, his knotted hand flying to his mouth, his eyes gaping. Others look away in politeness, embarrassment, dread. The hacking rips your chest. You fight a rising disgust at being hemmed by such ugliness. You pray it’s true what they say, that everyone’s different on the other side.
To My Beloved Reader,
I cannot with any assurance state that this will be the most nerve-shattering tale ever conceived by the misguided mind of man, but I can solemnly swear to you that its intention is not only to shock and surprise, but also to arouse naught but the most bestial emotions from deep within you. Our tale this evening concerns a most pure and delicate maiden, barely eighteen years of age. To say that Charlotte (for that was the young lady’s name) was possessed of the most striking beauty would be a dreadful understatement. Her straight, dusky hair made the blackest ebony weep with envy. Her electric blue eyes shamed the most brilliant sapphires. The milky white skin was as silky and as smooth as the finest alabaster. The luscious curves of her body were enough to make even the most stalwart clergyman quiver with lust. The most striking feature of our dear Charlotte had to be her lips. Naturally they held the color that lies beneath freshly cleaved skin. A deep crimson red that was matched only by the virginal blood left after a woman’s first time in the act of love.
They went on. Man and woman traveling at night across the darkened terrain although this was not his first choice he had no other choices in the matter. Grey clouds were building in the western sky and the temperature had been dropping since the days previous. Come sunrise he feared the barren fields of corn and tobacco would be shrouded in snowfall and the only road out of the county would be frozen over and impossible for his horse to navigate. So they went on that night, husband and wife in their horse drawn wagon down the hardpacked road leading them away from the town and deep into the backwoods, a territory of the county sparsely inhabited. A foreign land and place. They traveled under the last light of the stars, the man sawing the leather reins in his gloved hands, the iron rims of the wagon creaking and bouncing in the worn ruts of the road. His wife a shell of the woman she had once been, a few heartbeats away from death, lay dead still in the back of the wagon wrapped in awful smelling quilts, her body jostling with every bump and dip in the road. Her skin the color of parchment paper, her eyes sunken into her face and her face was wrinkled and lined with illness. She lay on her side balled in the fetal position, one bare and dirty foot protruding from the shroud. Molded straw from last summer’s harvest lay strewn about her, covering the wooden bed of the wagon.
Thirty wooden desks supported a classroom of nine-year-old girls. Each girl folded her hands neatly on her lap, and crossed her legs neatly at the ankle. Thirty pairs of eyes watched Miss Sharon expectantly. The day was rainy, and recess was to be spent indoors. This meant that an alternate activity must have been planned, and each of the thirty girls was eager to find out exactly what that would be.
“Barb?”
” Yes, sweetie, I’m here.“
“I’ve missed you so much. You don’t know how hard it is sometimes. It’s just… just…”
” I know, sweetie, I know. You’ve been so brave, taking care of the kids and keeping Mom from going crazy. I’m real proud of you!“
Upon matriculating, her parting gift was a pair of combat boots.
Artemis was jealous, Athena loathed her.
Off to war she flew on a comet of enthusiasm.
Valerie saw Randolph Tate strangle Leonora Talc, sometime quite late at night, while she was walking home with some bourbon, wine, and her rental movies. It was just around from the stairwell of the building adjacent to hers, the building where Leonora lived, the building where Randolph lived, as well. At the time, she didn’t know it was Leonora Talc, exactly; she thought it might have been one of the women who come to Leonora’s apartment for the groups she held, as many of these women looked a bit like Leonora. But it was easily verified the next morning by a brief conversation in the corridor with Daryl as she was leaving for work that it was Leonora who had been strangled.
Heard in the limbo of the waiting room
at Accident and Emergency
from the excited tones of two boys
James Porticus stepped into the elevator and pressed a button. He was soon gazing over the green suburbs as the elevator streaked up the outside of the Sheffield Building in East London. He watched as the horizon receded and both the Thames estuary and their giant floating apartment complexes climbed gracefully into view. The glare from the sun filled the glass cube with a dazzling light.
“Darken,” he said and the walls of the elevator took on a dark tint.
The taxi was smoldering. The fake leather burned and stuck to Derrick’s skin as he fidgeted in his seat and clicked his belt into place. His mother smacked the side of his leg and sent him a glare. He stopped moving. Hands sweating, he clutched his pillow more tightly, knuckles popping and grinding. His ten-year-old frame vibrated with tension as he watched his neighborhood fly behind the car and new streets and signs began streaking by with violent speed. His eardrums thumped when sirens glared past.
The ghosts chase me into the bathroom.
Lock the door and I’m safe. They won’t get me here.
I look into the mirror and see a girl but not me.
Jeff had just climbed into bed and closed his eyes when Rocky started barking. Jeff sat up, switched the bedside lamp on and slid his feet into his slippers. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. Fearing an intruder, he grabbed his rifle from the closet and hurried down the stairs to the main floor.
As Jeff crossed the living room, Rocky’s growling grew more vicious. He’d had the dog since it was a puppy. From the loss of his only son to diabetes through a three-year battle with alcoholism that cost him his marriage, Rocky had been the only constant in his life, the only one who stood by him through it all, loyally, unconditionally.
Thorns gouged jagged lines into Arnold’s palm with each desperate yank at the vines. He paid no attention to the bloody stains smeared across his overalls, or to the ever-increasing burn of protest from his muscles as he continued his rescue attempt. But with every root he tore from the soil, and with every sinuous branch he pulled away from the man’s body, there seemed to be another piece of foliage clinging to him like barbed wire to a blanket. And Arnold was too old for this. … Continue Reading
My frayed militia jacket and the dropping a few high ranking names get me through the checkpoints and across McCarren Park. Even in the dead of night the deserted lawns and play fields are lit up like noonday by massive overhead lights. It’s an insane amount of electricity and man power to secure an uninhabited patch of grass and dirt but it’s the only open green from here to Prospect Park and The Counsels intend to protect it. The uneasy silence hurries my steps and it’s not long before I’m exiting the park and crossing Bedford Avenue and what was the high water mark during the last wave of flooding. The stifling scent of the river clings to everything and even though the water has receded there is still the sense that every surface is still damp and rotting below the surface. … Continue Reading