Oh No! | Anthology ✔

Moonaker | @tamoja

Steven King is an ass. Sure, the guy writes like a genius, has an adorable dog and entertains people all the live-long day but let me assure you - he’s a giant ASS.

Argue all you want. I won’t get to hear you. Not even if your scream travels at the speed of sound and makes a sonic boom across the universe. Nope. Not me. Because I’m not there anymore. Why?

BECAUSE STEVEN KING RUINED MY LIFE.

Do you know how much damage that asswipe has created for clowns?  Clowns! It used to be an institution! I used to be a child God! It wasn’t a birthday party or festival in the park if one us rainbow colored joybringers weren’t standing front and center with a giant bouquet of balloons.

Those were the days. Glory days of sugar highs being thronged by kids with sticky hands who watched us make balloon animals like it was freaking magic. We were the comic book hero’s.

Until some sicko with a twisted up mind decided to screw it all up. He could have picked anything! Unicorns, freaking Shetland ponies. But no, he decided that clowns should be the things that keep kids up at night.

Clowns killing kids!  What sort of sick mind comes up with a plot like that!! Parents should have been outraged! Kids should have picketed and burned down movie houses. But no, Mr. Popular writer had them all hooked.

The seeds were planted. Everyone was giving us the side eye like we spent every waking moment dreaming of sending little johnny to the carving house. It was asinine!  I won’t say it never crossed anyone’s mind. I’d hit that dark thought plane once or twice. Once, after a particularly bad experience at a three year olds party with an imprint of teeth in my forearm I’d envisioned putting the kids in a bus headed off a cliff. But I’d never hurt a kid in real life. They were the reason I had food on the table and a business card that squirts water. Kids were a clowns bread and butter man!  No clown in their right mind would lure a kid into the sewer. No one that graduated in my clown college would!

Oh! Lemme guess. You didn’t know there was a clown college?  You thought it was all about throwing on some make up and acting like a wacko right?  That was part of the magic!! Making it look easy. You know how hard it is to make a weiner dog out of a balloon?  Yeah, screw you!! Let me see you do it. Especially with a real live dog getting off on your leg while a tiara wearing princess wannabe screams about how she was supposed to be next. Add on ten other kids in the room bouncing off the walls all jumped up on cake and pixie sticks at full volume. Could you do it then?  Those were the trenches. That was my war and I was a five star general. I made that room laugh no matter what.

It’s was more than a skill, it was a g-d gift. Even the makeup, you think clowns look like that naturally getting up on the morning?  It’s a whole freaking semester of layers and palettes. Screw you and your dollar store red nose. That shit takes skill!!

So out comes Mr. Big shot and his “clowns are the scariest things on earth” campaign. The party is over. The phone stops ringing. Carnivals suddenly cancel bookings because only the super glued half assembled rides and the funhouse should be scary. Not the clowns. No god fearing parent wants to take precious little Tabitha out in her Sunday best for an elephant ear and terror.

So I wrote him. Sixty two times. And nothing. That shit for brains author who makes a living using nothing but words doesn’t have one single line for me. So I call. Twenty three times. Not once does he give me what I want. I want an “I’m sorry. Clowns got a bad rap. From me. And I’ll fix it.”  Instead. I get freaking silence.

So I did what I had to. I break into the sicko’s house and make him a balloon sculpture. Of a noose. I tie it around his throat right there at the typewriter where he’s probably making a story about how butterflies end the world with a mutant virus, and I pull. And damn it feels good!! Not only does it feel good, it is good. Why? Because I am a master at balloon art. Skilled!! It stretches more than any I’ve ever used and the “king” doesn’t look good. His eyes water, his skin turns bluish grey and drool slips from his mouth to the floor.

When he starts to panic he kicks out his leg and it hits the table and wakes us his dog. Cute dog. Molly. You wouldn’t think a short fat corgi could be ferocious, but lemme tell ya, she is. She grabs a hold of my pants and yanks. I pull back but she just won’t stop. In hindsight maybe I shouldn’t have went in full clown gear- but that’s who I am.

It’s embarrassing. Pantsed and tripped by a corgi and tied up by an ass wipe wordsmith. But that’s what happened. And the joke of it all? He got to name the punishment. Jerk. Would it kill the guy to be a little less psycho?  Can’t come up with an actual boogeyman that doesn’t rip apart my life - but sure. Give him the power to hand out a sentence and he’s suddenly got a million fresh ideas!

So now I’m here. A clown in a spaceship floating above the earth with no return date. Oh but don’t worry about me. The ever loving wicked Mr. King made sure I had entertainment. His idiotic clown movie plays on full volume in a 24/7 loop. That, and he made sure I had 120,000 balloons to make all the friends I want.

There’s more! Just for kicks and giggles mind you. The kind of kicks and giggles only a psycho could come up with there’s something else on board. Something living. Something that only comes out when my guard is down and I’m feeling insane.

I have no idea what it is. Or how something with so many teeth manages to stay under my radar on the brave days I go looking. Maybe it’s something he created, maybe it’s all in my head. But there’s not much food for it left. Every package of dehydrated meat has been used. And I can’t help wonder what it’s gonna eat now.

And so I wait. Wait to see if the ever clever Mr. King has actually called check mate and written an ending. God I hope so. I’m sick of astronaut food. I’m sick of the lines of this everlasting movie that I can’t tune out. But most of all, I’m sick of the stupid clown that keeps looking st me in all the shiny surfaces. It used to look like me, but now, it looks disheveled and crazed. I’m sure it’s my imagination, but I think he’s planning to kill me. He’s mad I tell you!  Maybe King was right. Clowns can be terrifying.

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Thanks so much for letting me be a part of this awesome anthology. It was a lot of fun to think outside the box and take part in a community project again!  For those who don’t know me- My name is Tamoja and it’s fantastic to meet you here.

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