by Shaun Meeks
Why did they hate him?
Why did they abandon him?
Why wouldn’t they love him?
They didn’t answer, because none of them could hear his words or see his tears; whoever made him had forgotten to give him that ability. What good was it to think and move if you were always trapped in a world which nobody would ever hear you or understand the tears that you tried so hard to shed. He hoped that as they lay in the attic, on their bed, sprawled out on the kitchen floor in a pool of their hateful insides, that they were able to see their sins and see how much pain they had served him.
Madcap cleaned himself up after he had killed the family, his third family, leaving them in the same state as the last two, the put himself back in the attic in a box marked “donations”. He always put himself in a box or a toy box, somewhere where he could be found after the bodies of his lost family were discovered, so he could be taken to a garage sale, or a Goodwill store, somewhere that he would have the chance of finding another family, always hoping to have his dreams come true.
He hated that from the first time that he was found in the old toy shop, to each subsequent time he was found at a yard sale, or laying in a bin at Goodwill, he was found by one of the parents and brought home for the wrong reasons. He was bought to be played with or loved, but as a joke because of how unusual and to some parents, how gross he looked. Someone would pick him up from where he was, and a look crossed their face as though they had just stepped in summer warm dog shit, and he always felt horribly sad and hurt by it.
When he had been brought home to the fifth family, being found by the father at a Goodwill, the years of dirt and neglect engrained in his face, so deep-seated that soap and water would never restore him to his original state. The man had looked at him as he lay in a bin, nothing short of disgust etched on the father’s face, then he picked up Madcap and smiled.
“Oh, Tommy and Jeff are going to shit when they see your ugly face.” He whispered to the doll, having no idea that he was being heard and that his words were like daggers burying themselves in Madcaps small heart. It went from bad to worse for Madcap when he was brought to the house and shown to the two young boys that were at first excited to see what their dad had brought home for them, but the joy quickly turned to disgust as their eyes fell on the clown’s face.
“Eww, dad! Why did you bring that thing home? It’s all dirty and its face looks weird.”
“I hate clowns!” The second boy had said and those words echoed in Madcap’s head as he was knocked out of the father’s hands, crashing to the floor as the kids ran out of the room.
Madcap felt his heart shattering again, knowing right away that this family would not be for him, that he would be left alone and everything would end the same horrible way, history repeating itself. He stared up with his unblinking eyes, the ceiling fan moving around lazily as the father bent down and picked him up again.
“Why did you bring that thing home, Adam? You know that Jeff hates clowns. Look at it. Why the hell is it so dirty? And what’s with the face? It looks like it’s in pain.”
The father turned Madcap towards him, looking at the clown’s face and began to smile. “Kind of looks like the thing is fighting to take a huge dump to me. It is an ugly bastard, isn’t it? I’ll go chuck it up in the attic. Maybe we can sell it to somebody this summer when we have our yard sale.”
The father had taken him up to the attic and tossed him across the room like another piece of trash, some discarded article of outdated fashion and Madcap was introduced to his new home for the next six month. In that time he had lived with the dust and dirt, the forgotten memories of the family and the sound of their disembodied voices sounding like ghosts that bled through the floor of the attic and haunted him each hour of every day. He did his best to look forward to a future where he would be taken out to the yard sale and brought home by some loving child that would hold him and care for him the way he dreamed, but as weeks dragged on into months, his hope was replaced by those familiar feelings that had ended in blood shed.
There were days that Madcap would sit in the darkest corner of the attic, hear the soft sounds of the family sleeping below him and would question his very existence. He asked himself why he would have been made, why had he been brought into a world where there was nobody to care for him, no family to call his own. All he wanted, since he had been put on the shelf by the old man whose face was a dim blur, was to be accepted, to find a place in this world where he was a someone instead of a nobody that was thrown into the realm of lost memories, of darkness. He wondered if the old man that had put him on the shelf was his maker, some insane man with a sick sense of humor that found amusement in giving Madcap the ability to move and think, but had created him to be so unlikeable, an ugly monster that was unable to speak to those that he wished would just love him for who he was.
He had so much to say, if only his lips would move, if only one of the families would give him a chance. In the months he spent in the last family’s attic, he tried to think of things other than his growing anger, other than the path of destruction of his past lives with the other families he had been with. Madcap didn’t want to think about how he had destroyed each of those families, how he had sliced, disemboweled, dismembered each and every one of them. He didn’t want to think about the way their eyes pleaded with him silently as the life ran red from the wounds he had served them. At those moments he had been so full of rage, that he felt no sorrow or regret, he only felt redemption as they had been the cause of his actions. Later on, the guilt set in as always, and he would curse himself that he let his own anger get the better of him, that he would allow his own feelings of loneliness to give birth to such malice. Once his regret set in, he would wallow in pity and do everything he could to try and be a better clown, a doll that anyone could love, even if he had to sit in the dark attics for years, he thought he would do all he could to control his dark feelings, but it never worked out. As days, weeks and months passed, and he sat in his solitude, listening to the sounds of the house shifting and settling, rain dancing on the rooftop and the joyful sounds of his captures, he could only continue to move back towards his old ways, his little plastic hands begging for the feel of warm blood on them once again.
Madcap knew that things had come to an end with the fifth family as well, that he could wait no longer in his cell, holding on to the hope of a loving family, the sound of a child’s heartbeat as he was held close during bedtime or if there was a thunderstorm outside. He had been strong for six months, trying to bide his time, think of nothing but the goodness that he knew was inside him and avoiding his cursed thoughts. Yet as the days grew older, the dust multiplying like a Mormon family, Madcap began down that same old path that seemed to be his fate in life. He wondered if he wasn’t ever made to be loved or care for, that the family life was to ever be just a dream, as unattainable to him as the heaven he heard spoken of though the floorboards. Perhaps his was to always be a life of the outcast, of bloodletting, that his was to be the role of the extinguisher of life. He wondered if that old man, the one with the foggy face, had been his creator and had made him for no more than the life he was living. Had he been given an ugly face so that nobody would ever give him the love he yearned for, the love he envied below him? Or was he part of nature’s sick and twisted plan, a fate put on earth to bring suffering to the selfish? If that was so, then Madcap knew that he had nothing more to do than to let this family join the others before them.
He lurked around the room silently, looking for a tool to begin his work, but had trouble at first in the sheer darkness of the room. As he had no real pupils in his painted eyes, they could never dilate and allow them to adjust to the darkness around him and make his treasure hunting easier. He felt around in the void like a blind man, touching surfaces and doing his best to figure out what each of them were. Hours passed in his search before his hand fell on the handle of a pair of fabric cutting shears. He felt his heart made of lentils move away from h
is feelings of loneliness and solitude and embrace the evil that needed to flow forth from him, what he figured must be his destiny.
With the scissors in his hand, he began to thrash around the attic, making enough noise to wake up the dead. He stomped his over-sized plastic feet on the ground as he knocked things over, glass shattering here and there until he heard the familiar sounds of someone coming up to where he was, and he readied himself to let the family’s candle blow out.
Madcap gripped the scissors as best as he could, crouched low in the corner as he watched the door. He felt himself ready to spring as soon as it opened; wanting nothing more than to bury the scissors deep in the neck of whoever came through the door. In his mind he saw the faces of each of his previous victims as he took the lives they never deserved, and was ready to add to those memories.
He heard a hand on the door and a deep voice, the father’s he guessed, cursing quietly to himself about fucking rats. The door opened, spilling light into the room and blinding Madcap for a moment. He covered his eyes with his free hand as he was unable to shut them, and did his best to adjust to the sudden flood of brightness. The father stepped into the room, not noticing the clown with the scissors in the corner and walked slowly across the room to where the bare light bulb hung, scanning as he went for any signs of the rodents that had caused all the noise that brought him to the attic. He only looked forward and side to side, never behind him, so he never saw the stuffed clown scurry across the floor, gripping the scissors, his face frozen in the same ugly grimace as he closed the distance and cut into the Achilles tendon on the man’s left leg.
The father howled in pain as he tried to step forward and felt his leg give up. He fell forward, and came crashing down face first into a pile of broken glass. He screamed more as the glass became intimate with his face. He cried out as he attempted to get back up, then felt small, yet heavy feet move up his back. He tried to turn his head to see what it was, thinking it must be a huge rat, but before he could see anything, Madcap was there, burying the ends of the blades into the back of the father’s neck and using all his strength the close them, severing his spinal cord with an audible crunch.
Madcap laughed inside his own head, the maniacal sound bouncing around in there like a super ball in a small room and he jumped of the man. He walked around to where the father’s face was turned, and stood, looking deep into his face.
“Who’s the ugly bastard now?” Madcap asked, but the man couldn’t hear him. Not because he was dead, which he was, but because the question could only be heard by the clown himself.
“Adam? Are you okay? I heard screaming.”
Madcap spun around, lifting his blood weapon as he did. He heard the woman, the mother, calling up to her dead husband as she was walking up the stairs to where they were. She must have heard the scream and felt concerned for her man’s safety and for a moment, Madcap was touched by the sweetness of her sentiment. Then he remembered the way she had looked at him, thinking he was dirty and ugly and any kind feelings he had evaporated as he walked towards the door she was approaching.
She came into view though before he got there and saw her husband lying in a pool of his own essence. Her face grew pale, even in the dim lighting Madcap could see it and she called out to her husband, the man she had met in high school, fallen in love with and had two children with. She wanted to run to him, pull him to her and make sure he wasn’t as hurt as he looked, but as she went to move, she saw something on the floor and looked down. What met her gaze was an impossibility, the ugly clown her husband had brought home months ago, was scurrying across the attic, his grimy face looking up at her as the bell on the hat jingled back and forth, metal in the clown’s hands glinting from the light coming in through the door. Not knowing how what she was seeing could be true, but not wanting to wait and ponder the possibilities, she turned and went to run down the stairs. She spun around, but lost her footing on the first stair and went tumbling downwards as Madcap stood at the top watching her go, snapping her neck as she went, killing her a third of the way down.
Madcap stared as her lifeless body came to a stop at the bottom, her neck twisted in a horrible way that filled him with joy. He had wanted to kill her himself, to cut her hateful tongue from her mouth, but fate had taken care of her for him and there was no saying that he couldn’t come back to her and play more once he was done with the two boys, Tommy and Jeff. He hopped down the steps towards the dead mother, dragging the heavy set of scissors behind him leaving a trail of the father’s blood as he went. In his head he hummed a song that he heard playing in the house on an almost daily basis over the last six months. He had no idea that the song as the opening song to the mother’s workout dvd, he just liked the way that it sounded in his own mind, if that circle of hollow empty plastic contained anything close to a mind. He hummed the song to himself and walked down the hall to where he was sure one or both of the boys slept. He lifted his weapon up and onto his shoulder looking like a clown version of an old confederate soldier and moved along the hallway happily, enjoying the feel of the plush carpet under his feet. After months of walking around the old hardwood floor of attic, it was nice to feel something different under him.
Madcap turned his mind away from the joyful feeling under him as he came to the bedroom door of Tommy and Jeff, their names written on a little wooden sign that hung from a nail. The door was partially open, which was good because there was no way that he would be able to open it himself. He pushed it open a little further, not wanting to let too much of the hallway light in that could wake them up, and stepped in, changing the way he held the scissors in case one was already awake from the sounds of their mother and father being killed. He pointed the weapon out ahead of him and moved into the darkness and was happy to hear the quiet sounds of their sleeping.
With the light of the hallway coming in, Madcap was able to see the evil little beasts sleeping in matching twin beds and climbed up onto the first bed with a slight struggle, nearly losing the scissors several times. During his climb, Madcap thought of the sounds of happiness and joy these two would make all day long as a way to torture him in the endless solitude that filled his daily prison. How they would tell each other funny stories and laugh together while he sat in a dark corner and cried tearlessly, wishing for nothing more than the warmth of a hand on his own, or to feel the heat from a hug and listen to the sound of a beating heart that was full of the love for him that he so craved. He thought of all this as he climbed towards the first boy, wishing he could taste their bitter blood on the tongue he didn’t have as he sliced their smiling lips from their little faces.
When Madcap reached the top of the bed, he stood on the chest of one of the boys, Jeff he thought, and slowly opened the blood tacky scissors, loving the whisper of the metal blades as they moved. In his mind, he spoke to the boy, telling him how he wished things had been right, how he only wanted love and happiness and not to be left alone to grow bitter and full of hate. He said these words in his own head as he brought the open scissors down and into the boy’s face, hearing the cracking of breaking bones as the blades went deep into his cheeks. Madcap began to close the scissors as the boy opened his eyes wide and let out a guttural death scream, but it was too late for him. The clown looked into the boy’s eyes as the life quickly began to drain away, continuing to close the scissors, though it was hard work and he gave it all the attention it deserved.
The only problem was, he had forgotten about Tommy, and by the time he was done with Jeff, it was already too late.
Madcap pulled the scissors out of the boy’s destroyed face, the metal singing high notes off of the bone as they came free, and he turned to jump from the bed when he found himself flying through the air. He was confused as he flew, and then saw the shape of Tommy, hugged partial by the room’s dark shadows, standing by Jeff’s bed. The clown struck the wall hard, the scissors long gone, and fell to the floor with a soft thud. He tried to get up quickly, but Tommy was on him before he had a chanc
e to move and the boy had the scissors in his hand, his brother’s blood drooling off the tips. The boy brought the weapon down on the clown, spilling lentil beans as though it were blood from Madcap’s body and the clown knew that it was over for him, that his life, or curse, was at an end. He looked down at his body, seeing his insides on the outside and wondered what the point of his life had been. He couldn’t understand why he had been brought into a world that would never let him have what he so craved, what he felt he was made for. He wondered if perhaps he had been an evil man in another life and this was just his own punishment, his own Hell, or if life was simply a joke and the punch line was death.
Things quickly began to darken around him as he pondered it all, but he looked at the boy who had killed him and tried to find a silver lining to it all. The only thing he could think of was now the boy, Tommy, in the house with his dead family all around him, would know how it felt to be alone and unloved in the dark.
Simcoe Sally Ain’t No Lady
I brush my teeth again, trying to get the taste out of my mouth and glance at my reflection in the grimy mirror over the sink. What looks back is a stranger, a man with sunken cheeks, thinning hair and blood shot eyes. My eyes use to be blood shot from drinking too much or occasionally smoke a bit too much weed, but now it’s from the tears I’m shedding as the pain inside rips me apart.
I spit white foam into the sink, try to ignore them blood mixed in, grabbing the mouthwash because I can still taste the rot I my mouth that has been there for days. At first, I tried to deny it, telling myself that I just ate something funky and it would go away in a day or two. I do my best to convince myself that this is no different than the time I had drank too much and eaten the eggs that were well past the expiry date and I was burping their disgusting flavor for almost a week. The longer the horrid taste lingers in my mouth, the harder I find the lie very convincing. I knew that going swimming in the lake had been a bad idea, the way it smelt, the history it has, and even the weird foaming scum that was floating on its edge. When we had walked down to the lake, four of us all together, I took one look and thought that there was no way in hell that I would step one foot in there. I wanted to say so, but before I knew it, Tom and his girlfriend Jenny were taking their clothes off and jumping in. I looked over at the Diana, one of Jenny’s friends that had come out to hang with me and she was slowly climbing out of her shorts and t-shirt, looking at me, no doubt wondering why I wasn’t taking my things off.
