My Life and Other Exploding Chickens

by Tristan Bancks

  He stands, dusts himself off and looks directly at me.

  He knows me.

  He knows that I know that he knows me.

  And he wants revenge for what I did to him.

  Sweat stings my eyes. I slide down low in my chair.

  Giggles motions to the crowd like he wants a helper. I slide down further in my seat, trying to become invisible. Giggles lowers his chin, glares at me through his thick brows, points and motions to me with one crooked, white-gloved finger.

  Sasha claps wildly. ‘Tom! It’s you! He wants you!’

  I can’t get up.

  ‘Just go!’ Sasha says.

  I shake my head, cross my arms, squinch my eyes shut again.

  ‘Go on, young man!’ says the grandma sitting to my right.

  ‘How about you go, lady?’ I snap.

  ‘Get up, Tom!’ says Sasha’s dad. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  I shake my head. I have another flashback to the painting over my bed, the night he slipped out over the frame and tried to suffocate me with the world’s unfunniest clown fart. It smelt like dead mice, ginger beer and cauliflower. I was drowning in it. I held my breath for almost two minutes before I could swim to the surface of that deathly stench. I wrestled him back into the picture frame and ripped the painting off the wall.

  I dragged it outside in the dark of night and hid it in the shed behind the plastic tubs of camping gear and old tiles and tins of paint. Mum asked where the painting had gone, but I never, ever owned up to my crime. I thought that was the end of him, until tonight.

  Someone yells, ‘Boooo!’ Someone else says, ‘Come on, kid. Hurry up!’

  When I still refuse to move, Sasha’s dad jumps out of his seat, picks me up and puts me over his shoulder.

  ‘No!’ I struggle and pound my fists against his back to let me down, but he’s too strong. He carries me into the ring. He dumps me on the ground next to Giggles, who takes me by the arm. Sasha’s dad strides back to his seat to wild applause.

  Giggles pulls something out of his pocket and holds it up to the crowd. He does not speak, just points and fake-smiles. It is a clown suit. From his other pocket he produces a bright orange wig. He turns to me with those bloodshot eyes of doom, oil paint dripping down his face. Spider webs and dead grass are tangled in the wig that pokes out from the edge of his fedora. He smells like our shed – lawnmower fuel and rat droppings. I want to run but he digs his long fingernails into the soft flesh of my upper arm. I look out at the crowd.

  ‘Put it on!’ they scream.

  I look at Sasha. She’s smiling at me with a face full of expectation. So I pull the stupid clown suit on. It is white with rainbow spots and a pink-and-orange ruff around the neck. Giggles pulls the wig down hard on my head, then plants a kids’ fire helmet on top. He slathers my face in white make-up using a paintbrush big enough to paint a house. He snaps a red nose on me and scrawls lipstick across my lips. The crowd loves every minute. He’s a funny guy, Giggles.

  He shoves me backwards into the small fire truck that he arrived in. My feet are hanging over the front because it’s so small. There is a little steering wheel perched between my legs. Giggles holds up a large, silver, glittery box and pulls up an aerial. He flicks a switch and the fire truck takes off. Soon, the crowd is a blur. I am speeding around the ring with a demented clown at the controls. I am embarrassed and petrified, and hundreds of people are watching me. They start up a clap in time with the crazy circus music.

  Giggles’ sickly, black tongue squirms at the corner of his mouth as he stands in the centre of the ring, steering the truck with the remote. His eyes are narrow and he gleams with sweat. He throws an arm in the air and a thick wall of flame leaps from the floor right next to him.

  Giggles turns the fire truck hard and it skids to a stop. I try to pull myself out of the truck, but it takes off again before I have a chance. I am heading directly towards the wall of fire. Surely this lunatic isn’t going to drive a child through fire? There’s no way I’ll get through it without being toasted like a marshmallow.

  The crowd seems to realise what is happening. They stop clapping as I speed towards the blaze.

  My throat closes up. I’m only 20 metres from being burnt alive and I’m gaining speed. I can’t jump out now – I’m going too fast. I grab the wheel and rip it to the right. The truck moves right but Giggles, with the remote control, steers me back towards the fire. I rip it to the left and Giggles steers me back again.

  I can see the crowd behind him. They look worried, which worries me even more. People call out ‘STOP!’, but Giggles is hell-bent on killing me, I know it.

  Tom Weekly does not go down without a fight. I decide to drive the truck right at him. I will face my fear and take him down. I’ve had enough. It’s Tom Weekly vs Giggles the Clown, and the Gigmeister is going down.

  He stands just to the left of the wall of fire. As I twist the wheel, charging towards him, I see a flicker of fear in his red-rimmed eyes. The speeding fire truck is ten metres from both the flames and the world’s most dastardly clown. He steers me towards the fire, and I steer back. He steers me towards the fire again, and I steer back. I’m five metres away and I can feel the terrible inferno. Giggles is hunched over the remote control and is not about to give in. Good, because neither am I. I am two metres from the fire and there is a very real chance that I am about to be barbecued. Crowd members run into the ring towards us. Sasha’s dad is one of them.

  Now! I tear the wheel to the left and clamp it there with my hands and knees. I put every last shred of muscle and energy that I have into this.

  The fire engine skids and feels like it’s about to roll when the shiny silver bumper bar hits Giggles right in the shins. He screams, falls backwards, and his oversized clown shoes flip the truck up in an explosion of ladders and jingling bells. I am thrown out of the truck towards the devastating wall of fire. I hit the ground hard and flames lick my clown suit, setting my wig alight. My head is on fire, and I roll over and over to kill the flames. Someone from the crowd helps.

  As soon as the flames are out, I look back. The truck has stopped dead, right on top of Giggles. His arms and legs are pinned beneath the vehicle. The remote control, aerial snapped, lies on the sawdust next to him.

  Two clown paramedics run across the ring with a stretcher. Sasha and her dad reach me. I sit up. Sasha gives me a huge hug. In that moment, feeling the warmth and kindness of her, and the relief of knowing that I am alive, my coulrophobia seems to slip away.

  I am no longer afraid of clowns.

  Sasha holds my hand all the way home in the car.

  ‘Goodnight, Tom,’ she says when we pull up outside my house. She looks at me in a way she’s never looked at me before. I gaze back.

  ‘Alrighty then,’ says her dad, switching on the car’s interior light.

  ‘Okay, g’night,’ I say, climbing out of the car.

  Sasha wipes steam from the back window and watches me as they drive off. I float up my front path on an air-biscuit of Sasha-love. I knock on the front door. Footsteps. The door opens. Mum screams when she sees me dressed as a lightly toasted clown.

  ‘What are you wearing that for?’

  ‘Long story,’ I say, pushing past her.

  ‘How did you go with the clowns?’

  ‘Good. I mean not good. I’ll tell you in the morning,’ I say, heading down the hall.

  I shut the bathroom door and rest my back against it. I sniff the hand that Sasha was holding. I can smell her popcorny goodness. I decide to never wash that hand again. I figure I’ll put it in a plastic bag when I shower.

  I look at myself in the mirror. I have saved my life, overcome my fear of clowns and won the girl of my dreams – all in one night. I straighten my burnt, orange wig and adjust my nose. I look kind of cool. Sasha loves clowns. Maybe that’s why she looked at me that way?

  I smile at the mirror, then I bare my teeth like I’m about to eat a small child. Then I smile sweetly again. It’s
fun to be a clown. I squeeze the spurty flower stuck to my clown suit and water drips down the mirror, blurring my reflection.

  I think back to Giggles being arrested and taken away in cuffs after receiving medical attention from the clown doctor. I guess Dingaling Brothers will probably be looking for someone to replace him. And for the first time in my life, I think I know what I want to be when I grow up.

  My Cat’s So Fat …

  I have to admit, we are pretty bad pet owners. We feed our cat Gordon all the wrong things – chicken necks, cheese fries, chocolate milk. Mum just can’t help but give him our leftovers. He’s a disgrace. Gordon’s so fat …

  When he walks in front of the TV you miss the whole series.

  He doesn’t eat sardines, he eats orcas.

  He’s got his own postcode.

  He sat on my foot this morning and broke three toes.

  His collar is the equator.

  When Frisbee – the poodle next door – went missing, the cops had Gordon X-rayed.

  The kennel charges us Large Dog rates when we go on holidays.

  Kings Bay Theatre Company wants him to play a wombat in their latest adaptation of a Jackie French book.

  When a fireman tried to rescue him from a tree, Gordon fell and crushed the fire truck.

  On Sunday afternoon he jumped on the trampoline and our neighbours, having a barbecue, complained he kept blocking out the sun.

  His milk saucer is an Olympic swimming pool.

  On Monday he ate a bird. Not that unusual for a cat. But this was a pelican.

  My star sign is Sagittarius. His is Doritos.

  When he was in the front yard yesterday, a calf from a nearby field thought Gordon was his mama and tried to drink his milk.

  He did a poo in the middle of our street and Kings Bay Shire Council had to send a bulldozer to remove it.

  He swished his tail and took out the mailman, two girls playing handball on the footpath and a ute.

  His furballs are so fat my mum thought he’d had kittens.

  When he runs around the house, people in Tokyo think there’s been an earthquake.

  He’s officially been named Earth’s eighth continent: Gordonia.

  When he went to the beach, the local whale society thought they had discovered a new species and tried to drag him back out to sea.

  Fungus the Bogeyman

  I am crouched in the bushes across the road from Kings Bay Public Library. I have a copy of a book called Fungus the Bogeyman in my trembling left hand. The prickly native bush is scratching my left ear and I have a branch sticking into my bum cheek, but I dare not move.

  Cars crisscross between me and the front door of the library. Right next to the door is the returns machine. It is a large, black square set into the wall like a bank ATM. It has a pulsing red digital eye that watches everything and a wide, greedy mouth that eats books. I have been thinking about this machine for five long years. Sometimes I imagine it to have yellow teeth and a disgusting, white tongue when its mouth opens, its dusty breath smelling of 10,000 old books.

  Next to the returns machine is a sign in large letters:

  SECURITY NOTICE:

  THIS BUILDING IS UNDER

  24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE.

  Above the sign there is a security camera mounted on the wall, and I have reason to worry …

  When I was six years old I borrowed Fungus the Bogeyman from the library, and I have had it out ever since. Three weeks after I borrowed it, the first overdue notice came. Then the second. And by the third notice, when my overdue fees were higher than the cost of the book, I decided I could never go back to the public library again. I hid the notices from Mum. For five long years, Fungus has lurked inside the trapdoor beneath my bedroom rug, shaking his boogery head at me, disgusted. I should be disgusted with Fungus and the 10,000 green boogers inside his nose but, instead, he is disgusted with me … Late fees are ten cents a day, so I currently owe $186.70.

  But I really want to go to the library. They have great books and air conditioning and comfy chairs, and I’ve heard they give lollies and milkshakes to kids at book club. If I take back Fungus I’m scared to death of what the librarians will do to me, but the guilt is too much.

  I’ve confessed my fears to Jack, and he thinks I’m overreacting, but what would Jack know about libraries? He’s never been in one. He breaks out in hives when he even looks at a book. He wouldn’t even return Fungus for me.

  I open the book. The first pages show the inside of Fungus the Bogeyman’s nose – bright-green boogers in super-macro close-up. It makes me feel kind of sick. Not because I’m squeamish about boogers, but because boogers remind me of my crime and the money I owe.

  If I just walked into a shop, opened the till, removed $186.70 and ran, they’d probably call the police, right? Well … that’s pretty much what I’ve done. So here’s my plan:

  Get out of prickly Australian native bush.

  Cross road.

  Climb steps.

  Deposit book in slot.

  Slip around side of building and disappear into thick undergrowth behind library.

  It’s time I close this chapter of my life. Jack is probably right. I am overreacting. I am a professional overreactor. I need to have my imagination surgically removed.

  Before I know it I’ve completed steps one to three. I’m two metres from the returns machine and being watched by that all-seeing eye. Any moment I’ll trigger the face-recognition technology, or the barcode will trip an alarm, and it’ll be the end of my time on the run.

  I make it to the returns slot, scan the barcode, and the machine whirrs and whirrs and whirrs. C’mon, I urge. I look over my shoulder and there is a lady in a pink tracksuit standing behind me with an armful of novels. She smiles and I’m immediately suspicious – people don’t just smile at each other in public for no reason.

  The machine beeps and then its mouth starts to open. I brace myself, ready for it to taser me or deliver a devastating blast of knock-out gas before it sucks me into its mechanical belly. But it just continues to whirr. Finally, the digital display reads, ‘Please Deposit Your Books Now.’ I tentatively move my head towards the machine and sniff. It doesn’t smell like 10,000 old books at all. It doesn’t smell like anything. And it doesn’t have teeth or a tongue. Just harmless mechanical rollers.

  I kiss Fungus on the forehead and hope that the lady behind doesn’t see me. I feed the book into the slot. The mouth closes, the machine stops whirring, the digital readout says, ‘Thank You For Using Kings Bay Public Library’, and it’s over. Chapter closed.

  I turn and grin at the lady with the stack of books. For the first time in five long years I have actually used the public library. I turn around to the street and drink in the sunshine and salty air. I’m a free man. The book is back. Maybe I could even come in next week and try using my card. Maybe they don’t keep records that long. Maybe they’ll welcome me back into the family.

  An alarm sounds – loud, high-pitched and insistent – like a fire alarm. Red light flashes just above the returns machine. Just then, a white van mounts the kerb and skids to a stop on the footpath. It has a Kings Bay Public Library logo on the front and side.

  I start to back up towards my escape route into the bush behind the library, just like I planned. Three librarians jump out of the side of the van.

  ‘Stop right there!’ one of them yells. She is the youngest, has her hair in a ponytail, wears sweat pants and looks like she could be faster than me.

  All three librarians have guns, and they point them right at me. Two red laser dots rest on my chest. I feel one on my forehead. This is worse than anything I’d imagined.

  The librarians move slowly up the steps towards me, weapons raised. As they close in I realise that their ‘guns’ are actually barcode scanners, the kind they use at the front desk of the library, so I turn and run, praying that Sweat Pants doesn’t catch me. As I do, a large male librarian emerges from the double front doors. He has a forehead so grea
sy it almost blinds me with reflected sunlight. He’s brandishing a large net, like a dog catcher.

  ‘Take it easy, buddy.’ He goes to nab me and I run the other way. Two more librarians rappel on ropes from the roof. They are dressed in black cardigans and black pants like Library Ninjas. They land on the ground in front of me, unclip their harnesses and train their barcode scanner beams on my legs.

  ‘No place to run, kid,’ says Sweat Pants, who is now close enough that I can read her name badge: Sienna Harper-Hill – Head of Youth Services. A librarian with the initials ‘SHH’.

  I am surrounded by a narrowing circle of librarians on the front steps. The alarm beeps loudly, the red light flashes, illuminating my face in sickening swirls of light. There’s a crowd building now. Two perfect-looking parents holding library books across the street cover their perfect-looking children’s eyes. People inside the library are lined up at the windows, watching.

  And I’m standing here, naked. (Not actually naked. It’s a metaphor for how I feel on the inside.)

  ‘You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?’ It’s the Head of Youth Services – SHH. She’s actually kind of cute. Beautiful in a Sasha-ish way. This makes me even more nervous. My bladder, all of a sudden, feels full.

  ‘N-no,’ I say.

  ‘You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ I’m not sure why I call her ‘ma’am’. She’s only about twenty-five.

  ‘You think we’re running a charity here? You think we like chasing horrible little kids to get our property back? You think books grow on trees?’

  ‘No. Well, technically, they do but –’

  ‘Don’t get smart with me. How do you think we feel when our books come back half-eaten by a pet cockatoo?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t have a pet c–’