So the flash flared, and the smoke billowed through the loud report it made, and the peppery sting whipped up into Momo’s nostrils on the inhale. Then came the hurried slap of shoes on carpet and a big slatted eyelid opened in the blinds, out of which glared a raging clownface. Momo had time to register that this was one hefty punchinello, with muscle-bound eyes and lime-green hair that hung like a writhe of caterpillars about his face. And he saw the woman, Bobo’s wife, honker out, looking like the naughty fornicator she was but with an overlay of uh-oh beginning to sheen her eyes.
The old adrenaline kicked in. The usually poky Momo hugged up his tripod and made a mad dash for the van, his carpetbag shoved under one arm, his free hand pushing the derby down on his head. It was touch and go for a while, but Momo had the escape down to a science, and the beefy clown he now clouded over with a blanket of exhaust—big lumbering palooka caught offguard in the act of chicken stuffing—proved no match for the wily Momo.
Bobo took the envelope and motioned Momo to come in, but Momo declined with a hopeless shake of the head. He tipped his bowler and went his way, sorrow slumped like a mantle about his shoulders. With calm deliberation Bobo closed the door, thinking of Jojo and Juju fast asleep in their beds. Precious boys, flesh of his flesh, energetic pranksters, they deserved better than this.
He unzippered the envelope and pulled out the photo. Some clown suited in scarlet was engaged in hugger-mugger toe hops with Kiki. His rubber chicken, unsanctified by papa church, was stiff-necked as a rubber chicken can get and stuffed deep inside the bell of Kiki’s honker. Bobo leaned back against the door, his shoes levering off the rug like slapsticks. He’d never seen Kiki’s pink rubber bulb swell up so grandly. He’d never seen her hand close so tightly around it nor squeeze with such ardency. He’d never ever seen the happiness that danced so brightly in her eyes, turning her painted tear to a tear of joy.
He let the photo flutter to the floor. Blessedly it fell facedown. With his right hand he reached deep into his pocket and pulled out his rubber chicken, sad purple-yellow bird, a male’s burden in this world. The sight of it brought back memories of their wedding. They’d had it performed by Father Beppo in the center ring of the Church of Saint Canio. It had been a beautiful day, balloons so thick the air felt close under the bigtop. Father Beppo had laid one hand on Bobo’s rubber chicken, one on Kiki’s honker, inserting hen into honker for the first time as he lifted his long-lashed eyes to the heavens, wrinkle lines appearing on his meringue-white forehead. He’d looked to Kiki, then to Bobo, for their solemn nods toward fidelity.
And now she’d broken that vow, thrown it to the wind, made a mockery of their marriage.
Bobo slid to the floor, put his hands to his face, and wept. Real wet tears this time, and that astonished him, though not enough—no, not nearly enough—to divert his thoughts from Kiki’s treachery. His gloves grew soggy with weeping. When the flood subsided, he reached down and turned the photo over once more, scrutinizing the face of his wife’s lover. And then the details came together—the ears, the mouth, the chin; oh God no, the hair and the eyes—and he knew Kiki and this bulbousnosed bastard had been carrying on for a long time, a very long time indeed. Once more he inventoried the photo, frantic with the hope that his fears were playing magic tricks with the truth.
But the bald conclusion held.
At last, mulling things over, growing outwardly calm and composed, Bobo tumbled his eyes down the length of the flamingo-pink carpet, across the spun cotton-candy pattern of the kitchen floor, and up the cabinets to the Jojo-and-Juju-proofed top drawer.
Bobo sat at his wife’s vanity, his face close to the mirror. Perfume atomizers jutted up like minarets, thin rubber tubing hanging down from them and ending in pretty pink squeezebulbs Bobo did his best to ignore.
He’d strangled the piglets first, squealing the life out of them, his large hands thrust beneath their ruffs. Patty Petunia had pistoned her trotters against his chest more vigorously and for a longer time than had Pepper, to Bobo’s surprise; she’d always seemed so much the frailer of the two. When they lay still, he took up his carving knife and sliced open their bellies, fixed on retrieving the archaic instruments of comedy. Just as his tears had shocked him, so too did the deftness of his hands—guided by instinct he’d long supposed atrophied—as they removed the bladders, cleansed them in the water trough, tied them off, inflated them, secured each one to a long thin bendy dowel. He’d left Kiki’s dead pets sprawled in the muck of their pen, flies growing ever more interested in them.
Sixty-watt lights puffed out around the perimeter of the mirror like yellow honker bulbs. Bobo opened Kiki’s cosmetics box and took out three squat shallow cylinders of color. The paint seemed like miniature seas, choppy and wet, when he unscrewed and removed the lids.
He’d taken a tin of black paint into the boys’ room—that and the carving knife. He sat beside Jojo in a sharp jag of moonlight, listening to the card-in-bike-spoke duet of their snores, watching their fat wide lips flutter like stuck bees. Bobo dolloped one white finger with darkness, leaning in to X a cross over Jojo’s right eyelid. If only they’d stayed asleep. But they woke. And Bobo could not help seeing them in new light. They sat up in mock-stun, living outcroppings of Kiki’s cruelty, and Bobo could not stop himself from finger-scooping thick gobs of paint and smearing their faces entirely in black. But even that was not enough for his distracted mind, which spiraled upward into bloody revenge, even though it meant carving his way through innocence. By the time he plunged the blade into the sapphire silk of his first victim’s suit, jagging open downward a bloody furrow, he no longer knew which child he murdered. The other one led him a merry chase through the house, but Bobo scruffed him under the cellar stairs, his shoes windmilling helplessly as Bobo hoisted him up and sank the knife into him just below the second puffball. He’d tucked them snug beneath their covers, Kiki’s brood; then he’d tied their rubber chickens together at the neck and nailed them smackdab in the center of the heartshaped headboard.
Bobo dipped a brush into the cobalt blue, outlined a tear under his left eye, filled it in. It wasn’t perfect but it would do.
As horsehair taught paint how to cry, he surveyed in his mind’s eye the lay of readiness: the bucket of crimson confetti poised above the front door; the exploding cigar he would light and jam into the gape of her mouth; the tangerine apron he’d throw in her face, the same apron that hung loose now about his neck, its strings snipped off and spilling out of its big frilly kangaroo pouch; the Deluxe Husband-Tamer Slapstick he’d paddle her bottom with, as they did the traditional high-stepping divorce chase around the house; and the twin bladders to buffet her about the ears with, just to show her how serious things were with him. But he knew, nearly for a certainty, that none of these would stanch his blood lust, that it would grow with each antic act, not assuaged by any of them, not peaking until he plunged his hand into the elephant’s-foot umbrella stand in the hallway and drew forth the carving knife hidden among the parasols—whose hands shot up like cocktail toothpicks out of a ripple of pink chiffon—drew it out and used it to plumb Kiki’s unfathomable depths.
Another tear, a twin of the first, he painted under his right eye. He paused to survey his right cheekbone, planning where precisely to paint the third.
Bobo heard, at the front door, the rattle of Kiki’s key in the lock.
Momo watched aghast.
He’d brushed off with a dove-white handkerchief his collapsible stool in the bushes, slumped hopelessly into it, given a mock-sigh, and found the bent slat he needed for a splendid view of the front hallway and much of the living room, given the odd neck swivel. On the off-chance that their spat might end in reconciliation, Momo’d also positioned a tall rickety stepladder beside Bobo’s bedroom window. It was perilous to climb and a balancing act and a half not to fall off of, but a more leisurely glimpse of Kiki’s lovely honker in action was, he decided, well worth the risk.
What he could see of the confrontation pl
eased him. These were clowns in their prime, and every swoop, every duck, every tumble, tuck, and turn, was carried out with consummate skill. For all the heartache Momo had to deal with, he liked his work. His clients quite often afforded him a front row seat at the grandest entertainments ever staged: spills, chills, and thrills, high passion and low comedy, inflated bozos pin-punctured and deflated ones puffed up with triumph. Momo took deep delight—though his forlorn face cracked nary a smile—in the confetti, the exploding cigar, what he could see and hear of their slapstick chase. Even the bladder-buffeting Bobo visited upon his wife strained upward at the down-droop of Momo’s mouth, he took such fond joy in the old ways, wishing with deep soundless sighs that more clowns these days would re-embrace them.
His first thought when the carving knife flashed in Bobo’s hand was that it was rubber, or retractable. But there was no drawn-out scene played, no mock-death here; the blow came swift, the blood could not be mistaken for ketchup or karo syrup, and Momo learned more about clown anatomy than he cared to know—the gizmos, the coils, the springs that kept them ticking; the organs, more piglike than clownlike, that bled and squirted; the obscure voids glimmering within, filled with giggle power and something deeper. And above it all, Bobo’s plunging arm and Kiki’s crimped eyes and open arch of a mouth, wide with pain and drawn down at the corners by the weight of her dying.
Momo drew back from the window, shaking his head. He vanned the stool, he vanned the ladder. There would be no honker action tonight. None, anyway, he cared to witness. He reached deep into the darkness of the van, losing his balance and bellyflopping so that his legs flew up in the night air and his white shanks were exposed from ankle to knee. Righting himself, he sniffed at the red carnation in his lapel, took the inevitable faceful of water, and shouldered the pushbroom he’d retrieved.
The neighborhood was quiet. Rooftops, curved in high hyperbolas, were silvered in moonlight. So, too, the paved road and the cobbled walkways that led up to the homes on Bobo’s side of the street. As Momo made his way without hurry to the front door, his shadow eased back and forth, covering and uncovering the brightly lit house as if it were the dark wing of the Death Clown flapping casually, silently, overhead. He hoped Bobo would not yank open the door, knife still dripping, and fix him in the red swirl of his crazed eyes. Yet maybe that would be for the best. It occurred to Momo that a world which contained horrors like these might happily be left behind. Indeed, from one rare glimpse at rogue-clown behavior in his youth, as well as from gruesome tales mimed by other dicks, Momo thought it likely that Bobo, by now, had had the same idea and had brought his knifeblade home.
This case had turned dark indeed. He’d have lots of shrugging and moping, much groveling and kowtowing to do, before this was over. But that came, Momo knew, with the territory. Leaning his tired bones into the pushbroom, he swept a swatch of moonlight off the front stoop onto the grass. It was his duty, as a citizen and especially as a practitioner of the law, to call in the Kops. A few more sweeps and the stoop was moonless; the lawn to either side shone with shattered shards of light. He would finish the walkway, then broom away a spill of light from the road in front of Bobo’s house, before firing the obligatory flare into the sky.
Time enough then to endure the noises that would tear open the night, the clamorous bell of the mismatched wheeled, pony-drawn firetruck, the screaming whistles in the bright red mouths of the Kops clinging to the Kop Kar as it raced into the neighborhood, hands to their domed blue hats, the bass drums booming as Bobo’s friends and neighbors marched out of their houses, spouses and kids, poodles and ponies and piglets highstepping in perfect columns behind.
For now, it was enough to sweep moonlight from Bobo’s cobbled walkway, to darken the wayward clown’s doorway, to take in the scent of a fall evening and gaze up wistfully at the aching gaping moon.
ADROITLY WRAPPED by Mark McLaughlin
Mark McLaughlin was born December 12, 1961 in Iowa and presently resides in Davenport. I think this is the first story your editor has reprinted from a writer with the same birthday. Could be a plot.
Of himself, McLaughlin writes: “I’m a graphic designer and copywriter here in the Midwest. My fiction has appeared in The Silver Web, Tekeli-li!, Not One of Us, Dark Infinity, Mystic Fiction, Gaslight, Argonaut, and other publications. Plus, I have a long poem in the Air Fish anthology. I am the editor of The Urbanite (a journal of surreal city fiction and poetry) and The Brood of Sycorax (a magazine-format collection of monster fiction). I’m Graeco-Gaelic (half Greek, half Irish) and I drink waaaaay too much coffee/expresso/cappuccino. I enjoy low-budget horror movies, chocolate, and tossing rubber toys for my huge tabby cat to fetch.” Wonder if that’s an orange tabby.
“So what’s in the sack?” Anthony said, eyeing the bundle that pale, leatherclad Punkin dragged along the path. A full moon brought a greenish-silver glow to the pebbles in the path and the chains on Punkin’s jacket.
“ ‘What’s in the Sack?’ Sounds like a game show.” Punkin’s nervous gait sped into a loping gallop, so that Anthony had to run to keep up with him. Odd slitherings and slappings issued from the burlap sack as it bounced in the dust. “I’ll give you three guesses,” the pale youth said.
“Is it ...” Anthony flipped his long black bangs out of his face. “Is it a baby pterodactyl, flapping its membranous wings in the throes of death?”
“No ... but you know, they taste just like chicken.” Punkin swung the sack over his shoulder. Startled, a flock of crystal birds flew out of the trees lining the path.
“Is it ... An oversized jungle slug? A miniature sea-squid?” Anthony listened closely to the wet whisperings inside the sack. “The lymph glands of a dead Cyclops? Munchkin roadkill from the Yellow Brick Highway?”
“Wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong again, Contestant Number One.” Punkin flashed the gap-toothed Halloween smile that had earned him his nickname. “No new car, no trip to Tierra del Fuego. So sorry.”
Anthony glimpsed yellow eyes glowing in a shadowed treetop. Three ...? Leaves rustled and the eyes disappeared. He stopped to peer into the shadows, searching for the dubious owner of the eyes. Then he noticed that Punkin, still running, was far ahead of him. He could hear the pale youth whistling a shrill, pointless tune. Anthony raced to catch up.
He was out of breath by the time they reached the long, low house of Athena Moth. He ran his fingers through his bangs and static crackled ... no doubt his hair was standing on end. He spit onto his fingers and slicked his bangs into place.
Punkin rang the doorbell and a snippet of Verdi’s “Un Bel Di” echoed through the house. Athena answered the door wearing white face, a black wig, and a geisha costume.
“Oh, why, hello.” She always seemed surprised to see them, even when the visit was scheduled. “Come in, come in ... but please, forgive the mess.”
With every visit, Anthony pondered the same riddle. Athena was a she ... But was she a woman? Athena had a low voice and a large-boned build. She always wore heavy makeup—even on her hands. And, of course, there were the costumes ... Still, there were other factors that clouded the issue. The delicacy of the mouth, the hands, the ears. The lack of both an Adam’s apple and a crotch bulge. The exciting way that she gazed at him through half-closed purple eyes (men are taught to stare down their world).
This time, Anthony decided to address the issue directly. “So, Athena. What’s under the kimono?”
“My body. What else—a diesel engine?” She led them to an overstuffed couch in a parlor lined with shelves. These shelves were filled with books, jar of herbs and animal hair, lipsticks and stone statuettes.
“He’s full of questions tonight,” Punkin said, plopping down onto the couch. “He also wanted to know what was in the sack.”
Anthony sat by the pale youth’s side. His hip sank down between the soft cushions. He hated this couch, this wicked, butt-eating couch.
“We have a surprise for you, Anthony,” Athena said, taking the sack from P
unkin. “Did you think that we’d forget that tomorrow was your birthday?”
Anthony glanced at his cheap digital wristwatch—9:30 PM—then pressed the button that brought the date to the screen. 10-12. “God, you’re right. I’d forgotten myself.” He sighed. “Twenty-one and still living with my parents. Still flipping burgers at Fry-Pappy’s. Still ...” He didn’t care to go on.
Athena nodded. “I understand.” She opened a door in a shadowed corner of the parlor. With one hand, she lifted a department store mannequin out of the closet and leaned it against a table in the center of the room. Was the mannequin quite light or was Athena quite strong?
“You’re lonely,” she said. “Lonely in that special way.” She then opened Punkin’s sack and pulled out a length of pink ribbon. Soft. Thick. Moist. And really, far too pink.
She proceeded to pull yards of ribbon from the sack. “Looks a bit like human skin, doesn’t it? Well, that’s just what it is. But don’t worry, Anthony, it doesn’t belong to anyone. Isn’t that right, Punkin?”
Punkin grinned and nodded. “Athena gave me the recipe. Anybody can make it.”
Anthony watched as Athena began to wrap the ribbon tightly around the left foot and ankle of the mannequin. “But—is it real skin? As real as mine or Punkin’s?”
“Of course it is,” Athena said. “I can make anything out of anything. You should know that by now. Look at me ... I used to be a tiny Malaysian fellow. Before that I was an old woman in a nursing home. Skin? Skin can be made from silk ribbon, soaked for three weeks in a special solution.” The geisha wrapped faster and faster to the top of the thigh. “One must take great care in the winding. I allowed Punkin to prepare the skin—he wanted to help so badly—but the wrapping is my area of expertise. See how I’m folding the tissue between the legs? You’ll not have cause for complaint later, birthday boy.”
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