Clowns Are Funny
A new piece of horror-comedy short fiction
A note of introduction: Last year, I heard about an editor looking for clown-related horror fiction for an anthology. I was writing an installment of Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver when I saw the email, and an idea popped into my head about a rideshare driver running afoul of some evil clowns during a convention. At first I told myself I was too busy for a new short story, but on April Fool’s Day, a scheduling mistake by a comedy booker resulted in me being kicked off a show. With a day in my calendar suddenly empty, I took it as a cosmic kick in the ass, and I wrote the story after all, even deciding it should be set on April Fool’s Day.
Alas, the story was rejected. I suspect this editor was looking for straight-up horror and not the semi-silly tone I chose. C’est la vie. Some stories end up in the publications you conceive them for, others find paths of their own. The good thing about holiday stories is there’s always next year. Well, it’s next year now, and Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is in full swing, so today seems like the perfect day to debut this thing. Enjoy.
Clowns Are Funny — by Greg Sisco
Every April Fool’s weekend they descend—a dancing, juggling, unicycling plague. As the new class of Clown College graduates receive their diplomas, or their red noses, or whatever they give these degenerates to make believe they’re accomplishing something, hordes of them take to the streets, plastered on whiskey until you can’t tell the pratfalls from the real ones.
You think frat boys and sorority girls are bad? They don’t hold a candle to ClownCon.
I would know. I’m a rideshare driver.
Sure, the college students might hurl out the window. They might whine if you don’t want to wait in a drive thru with them for thirty minutes. They might argue with each other or make out in the back seat. But until you’ve tried to tone out a blowjob where a red nose is honking with each bob of the head, you haven’t sunk to your lowest.
“It’s not funny!” I shout into the speakerphone, six minutes away from my next pickup.
“I’m just picturing it,” I can hear Ashley say on the other end, laughing through tears. “It honked every time?”
“It sounds funny to you because you weren’t in the car with it. It’s fucking gross. And then I got hit with this blast of fluid right in my ear…”
“Eww, no you didn’t!”
“It turned out just to be just one of those gag flower things on his lapel. The ones that shoot water? I guess he accidentally set it off just as he was… you know…”
“Oh my God…” She’s still laughing. She wouldn’t be laughing if it was her in the car with these animals. “You’re gonna need to wash that car before I ride in it again.”
“I’m gonna need it detailed. I can’t tell the jizz from the face paint.”
Still she’s laughing. Goddamn clowns. Why do people laugh at them? Validate them? Sometimes I think it’s mass psychosis. Cult mentality. If everyone would stop laughing for ten seconds, we could admit how sick these people are.
She suddenly stops laughing and becomes serious. “You got my scarf out of the back seat, right?”
Shit.
“Um… Y-yeah…”
I crane my head and see it on the floor. I’m afraid to touch it. I might have to tell her it blew out the window or something.
She breathes a sigh of relief, then asks, “Are you making good money at least?”
“Kind of. It’s busy, but they don’t tip.”
“None of them?”
“One of them acted like he was going to, but then he shook my hand with one of those shocker things. He thought it was funny as hell.”
“Oh, honey, why don’t you just come home?”
“I’m thinking about it. The surge pricing is helping a little, but—”
I go to check my earnings. I don’t like to call it a night until I’ve made $200, and I must be getting close. I’m still futzing with the app, passing a dark alley in an empty part of downtown, when one of them leaps in front of me.
I slam the brakes with both feet, but not fast enough. Baggy pants balloon over my windshield and bounce off, leaving a cobweb of cracks. There is a smear of white face paint and red lipstick—at least I hope it’s lipstick—across the glass. An instant after I come to a stop, an oversized red shoe lands smack in the middle of my hood.
“Holy fuck…” I whisper.
“What happened?” asks Ashley, who I’ve almost forgotten I’m still talking to.
“I… I have to go. I think I hit a clown.”
“You what? Randy, what should I—”
I hang up, open the door, and take off my seatbelt.
The night is quiet, and all at once I long for silly laughter and circus songs. I’d even settle for a honking nose. Instead, all I get is a cold wind brushing leaves across the street.
“S-sir?” I make myself say, stepping toward the pile of colorful clothing in the street. One shoe is still on his foot, his arms are splayed, and his left cheek is pressed into the asphalt. The right side of his wig is light blue, and I can’t tell whether the left side is red or if it’s just matted in blood.
He doesn’t move.
“I… I didn’t mean to…” says a male voice.
I turn. A balding, heavyset man stands in the alley, wearing a sports coat and a bowtie. His hands are in front of him, trembling, and his breath is unsteady.
“He tried to grab me and I pushed him, but I wasn’t trying to… I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I understand. They’re assholes.”
I kneel and put two fingers on the clown’s neck, like I’ve seen done in movies. I don’t know if I’m doing it right, but I don’t feel anything.
The man in the bowtie looks at me, his eyes begging for good news.
I shake my head.
“We better call 911,” I say. “My phone is in my car.”
“No…” he says, eyes bulging. “No, you can’t… You’ll just piss them off.”
“What?” If a man weren’t dead in the road, I’d think it was a joke.
“Cops can’t help us. It goes deeper than you can imagine. They control everything.”
I look at the dead clown, then back at the bald man. “Clowns?”
He nods gravely. “Haven’t you ever wondered why people pretend to like them?”
I have. Every year I’ve wondered. Even as a kid I wondered, when one showed up to my friend’s birthday reeking of bourbon and vomited into the swimming pool. But this? Surely this can’t be the answer. As much as it might help explain—
A car horn playing La Cucaracha cuts through the night. I whirl around to see a Volkswagen Beetle coming toward me. It brakes hard, its high beams casting my shadow over the clown corpse behind me. I raise a hand to shield my eyes, squinting at the car, and in my periphery I can see the man in the bowtie running away down the alley, faster than a man his size could be expected to run.
The doors to the Beetle open and four clowns get out, then four more, and four more, spreading in a giant circle that eventually closes behind me, trapping me inside with the corpse.
“My, oh my,” says a clown in a top hat who looks to be the ringleader. He puffs on a half-smoked cigar, holding a match to relight it, then blows a perfect smoke ring that hangs in the air between us. “Looks like we’re not the only ones getting up to some funny business tonight.”
The warehouse is empty, except for us and a circular curtain with red and white circus stripes. They have me tied to a chair with fifty or sixty colorful handkerchiefs, all knotted together, but I still feel less constrained than I did riding in that Beetle with them.
The ringleader—he calls himself Funzy—is squatting on a three-foot ball, defying physics by not letting it roll in any direction. A fluorescent light overhead casts the harsh shadow of his orange wig over his face. In front of him, a stocky clown about four feet tall paces back and forth with an inflatable hammer, looking like a dwarf out of Mordor.
“I’ll ask again…” says Funzy. “The man in the bowtie, you thought he pushed this clown in front of your car?”
“Yes.”
“On purpose?”
“I’m not sure. I was about to call the police and he said not to. He said clowns control everything and I’d only cause trouble.”
“And you believed him?”
“Of course not. It’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“…Isn’t it?”
Funzy shrugs. He stands up, towering over me on top of that giant ball. “What is your opinion on clowns?” he asks.
“Beg pardon?”
“Funny? Scary? Annoying? How do we make you feel?”
“I, uh… I don’t really… have an opinion.”
Funzy shoots a nod to the dwarven clown, who hits me in the face with the inflatable hammer. The pain is no worse than a hard slap, but it’s twice as humiliating.
Funzy jumps off the ball and walks toward me, the light silhouetting him from behind. “Everybody has an opinion on clowns,” he says.
“I… I don’t care for them,” I admit, afraid I may be speaking to a human lie detector.
“Why not?”
“I drive rideshare. They fuck up my car, they get makeup all over the place, they treat everything like it’s a joke.”
“Everything is a joke.”
I pause. “Well… Maybe I just disagree. I’m out here trying to make a living. My fiancée is pregnant, and I’m trying to make enough money to… Look, it doesn’t matter. I would never hit somebody with my car on purpose. I’d never even think of it.”
“Who said anything about that?”
“Isn’t that why you’re asking?
Funzy shakes his head. “When we arrived, the man in the bowtie ran. You thought he might have killed a clown on purpose. And yet… you said nothing.”
“I was scared.”
“Of us…”
“No. I mean, yes. Of everything. The whole situation. I was overwhelmed.”
“You hate clowns. You find us disgusting. You hate driving us. Then you hit one of us, and the man who pushed him shared your feelings. So when he ran, you let him escape.”
“That’s not true.”
“Which part isn’t true?”
“It’s just… a bad framing.”
“A bad framing?”
“Look, I’m not crazy about driving during ClownCon. You guys have a lot of fun, you get rowdy, you can be a handful. But the accident was just that—an accident.”
“You didn’t call the police.”
“I was about to!”
“If we let you go now… would you call the police?”
I don’t answer. It feels like a trap. There is a long, heavy silence.
“That’s what I thought,” he says.
“I wouldn’t tell them anything,” I plead. “Or I’ll tell them whatever you want me to tell them. Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it. I swear.”
“Good…” he nods. “Good.” He turns to the other clowns and makes a grand, sweeping gesture with his hand.
On his cue, the red and white striped curtain drops to the floor. Behind it, two clowns restrain a large man from either side, and at first I don’t recognize him as the man in the bowtie. His mouth and nose are bloody, the bowtie is gone, his shirt hangs open and the work shirt underneath is stained with blood.
“There he is,” smiles Funzy. “How you feeling?”
“Get your fucking hands off me,” shouts the man formerly in the bowtie.
Funzy looks him over with cold indifference. He holds out a hand to one of the clowns restraining him, and the clown hands him the bowtie. Funzy walks dramatically to the center of the circle and produces a long balloon from his pocket, stretching it in his fingers as he speaks.
“You know… clowning traces all the way back to Ancient Egypt. Before America, before science, before Christ… there were clowns.”
He blows up the balloon in one long breath and ties the end with casual expertise, punctuating his speech by waving the long balloon.
“The philosophy of clowning is simple: Life is play. Your doctors and politicians and CEOs are fools, so focused on extending life or building wealth or maximizing productivity, that they forget… none of it matters if you don’t play. We are here… to play.”
He twists and spins the balloon, and it’s only seconds before he holds the completed balloon animal in his hand. Only it’s not an animal—it’s a balloon human, impressively rendered, with joints and feet and a little too much weight in the gut. In fact, it’s the same proportions and shape as…
“That’s why clowns are scary. That’s why we’re annoying. We bother you, because we are enjoying life in a way that you know you are not, and cannot, but wish you could.”
At that, he ties the bowtie around the neck of the balloon human, completing the effigy. The balloon man in the bowtie. From the orange wig on his head, he produces a pin.
“You fear us…” he says, “because deep down… you want to be us.”
He brings the needle toward the balloon. The bald man thrashes and squirms, screaming at the clowns to stop, that he’ll do whatever they want.
For a moment—I don’t know if it’s the atmosphere, or Funzy’s demeanor, or fear playing tricks with my head—but I believe the instant the needle hits the skin of the effigy, it won’t just be the balloon that pops. It will be the man himself, a burst of blood and organs splattered across the room.
The needle pierces the balloon.
The bald man falls to his knees, letting out a primordial scream that echoes in the empty warehouse, then into oblivion, as his hands cover his face.
But he doesn’t explode. He just sits there, with his face in his hands.
Then he begins to laugh.
It is a quiet laugh at first, but it builds. The clowns laugh with him, a few at a time, until everyone is laughing except me. I feel stuck in the center of a fever dream, the subject of an April Fool’s prank from hell.
The bald man removes his hands from his face, and…
No.
It doesn’t make sense.
His skin is pale white, with blue stars over his eyes and an enormous, red smile across his lips and cheeks. He laughs and laughs, and when he gets to his feet, he begins to dance. The others dance with him, until it’s me and Funzy standing in the center of a circle of dancing clowns.
“You see…” he tells me. “Everything is a joke.”
He blows up another balloon and shapes it, with those masterful hands, into another balloon human. This one is female, and he adorns it with a strip of cloth that he pulls from his pocket. A strip of cloth it takes me only a moment to recognize as the scarf that Ashley left in my back seat.
“No!” I scream. “Please! Not her!”
“Who are you going to tell about what happened tonight?” Funzy asks.
“Nobody,” I whisper, through tears.
“And what are you going to do at next year’s ClownCon?”
“Drive you.”
“And if someone should happen to ask what you think of clowns?”
“…They’re funny.”
“You’re goddamn right.”
“I just thank Christ you’re not another fucking clown,” says my rideshare driver as he takes me from the warehouse back to my car. “You can’t believe how obnoxious these guys are.”
My mouth opens, but words don’t come out. I want to scream at him to stop, or tell him it’s worse than he can imagine. But all the possible replies get caught in my throat, and I only sit there, trembling, listening.
“Sorry,” he says. “That’s not very professional. You’re not a clown, are you? You’re not just out of makeup or something?”
“No…” I say, and then a terrifying thought dawns on me, a thought that will stay with me in every conversation for the rest of my life. “Are you?”
He laughs. “Course not. You’d never catch me doing something that undignified. You seem upset. Look, if your dad’s a clown or something, I… I’m talking out of my ass. I’m sure some of them are good people. It’s just been a long night.”
No. None of them are good people. I want to warn him, but I can’t.
“You, uh… you got an opinion on clowns?” he asks me.
I stare out the window, at nothing in particular.
“They’re funny,” I whisper.
Ashley hugs me at the door. She is pale and cold and breathing hard.
“What happened? You didn’t call me back. I was trying you all night, calling and texting and… Baby, where were you?”
“It’s okay,” I say, rubbing her cheek. “Really. I’m fine.”
“What about the clown you hit? Was he okay?”
The clown I hit is gone. That’s the truth. By the time the rideshare driver got me back to my car, that street was clean. Not a drop of blood or a splotch of makeup. No rubber on the road. No dents or scratches on my car. Even the windshield wasn’t cracked. You’d be forgiven for thinking a whole NASCAR pit crew went to work on that car the instant I was taken away. And maybe they did. If enough scarves and sweaters fell into the wrong hands.
In any case, it was as if it never happened.
“He was fine,” I say. “Barely clipped him. He wouldn’t even take my insurance information.”
I walk past her, to the fridge. I’ve never needed a beer so badly in my life, but there are none in the house until the baby is born. I settle for a Diet Coke, cracking it open and sitting on the couch.
“Then why didn’t you call me back?” she begs. “It’s been hours! I’ve been so worried.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just been a really long night.”
“For me too!” she insists. “The police found your car on the side of the road and they said you were nowhere in sight.”
I freeze, then put down my soda. “You talked to the police?”
“Of course I did! I was so worried. You said you hit a clown and then you just disappeared. I told the police about it and they said they’d just taken some clowns into custody and they were going to ask them about you.”
“No… No! Who did you talk to?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there a particular detective? Did he give you a callback number? You have to tell him I’m okay, and not to mention me to any clowns! We can’t cause them any trouble!”
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s the number?”
“Hold on. It’s in my phone.”
I watch, breathing hard, as she opens her call history and scrolls. She is about to call one of the numbers when she drops the phone on the floor between her feet and covers her face with both hands.
“…Ashley?” I whisper.
From under her hands, she begins to laugh.
This was so good!! Will there be a part 2??