DEATH WORE GREASEPAINT
A clown gazed into the abyss & found it hilarious.
By J. Ishiro Finney
Charlie watched as another fly sizzled in the bug zapper.
It was time for another belt of scotch.
Michigan in the summer was possibly one of the worst places on Earth—certainly the worst Charlie had ever had the misfortune of being trapped in. Outside was hot. Muggy. A simmering 98 degrees. Inside the offices at WDDT it was about the same, only a few degrees warmer. The only thing that made it bearable was the sack of crushed ice Charlie had shoved under his ass. Well, that and the scotch, he muttered to himself as he uncapped the bottle of Dewar’s.
Charlie took a hard swig. The taste of distilled regret burned his throat.
In the lower right of his computer monitor a clock counted seconds, minutes, hours. For Charlie, it was a personal metric of sorts—an ever-present reminder of the quantity of life he’d so far wasted behind a desk, sweating like a pig, keying in ad-spot schedules into a decrepit machine that should’ve been taken out back and shot years ago. 3:32 PM. Another five and half hours to go. Then it was home, back to a nagging wife and another bottle and, most probably, a night on the couch in front of the TV.
Another fly crackled to its death inside the zapper.
When Charlie had graduated from USC, this was not the career he’d envisioned for himself. A degree in broadcasting should’ve taken him anywhere he wanted. Of course, a booze-fueled night of internet webcams and sex with a rich producer’s jailbait daughter has a way of killing careers (and marriages) in one spectacular go. Now six years later here he was, on wife number two and managing a local cable station in Tranquil Bay, Michigan (Population 21,543). Goddamn it if Charlie didn’t loathe this place.
It was a fishing village, mostly. A grid of no-frills urbanization slapped onto a stretch of coastline at the base of the big lake. The reek of dead fish was inescapable. In the air. On the water. Even the people. Everything stank like week-old sardines under a supermarket heat lamp. But that wasn’t the worst part. No, Charlie’s own personal hell was that everyone knew who he was. He was Charlie Foster, the TV man! Charlie, the almighty bastard who ran commercials for Tubby’s Liquor Mart, and that white-haired guy who promised, “Now is the best time ever to invest in gold!” Charlie, who decided which episodes of Hee Haw aired, and when to interrupt programming to announce that Pat Rigg’s psychotic pit bull had again gone missing. And if a dumb yokel took issue with a rather risqué episode of I Dream of Jeannie, it was Charlie they blamed. Or if someone got taken in by yet another gold scam, it was Charlie who received threatening calls in the middle of the night. No one had yet shot up Charlie’s house, but he’d been frightened enough to install steel shutters and an alarm system. And then of course there were the old bats at the grocery store—prune-faced biddies who harassed him constantly about how badly Ricky treated Lucy, and insisted Charlie do something about the trampy clothes the girls were wearing on Gilligan’s Island.
“Can’t spend your whole life crying about mistakes,” Charlie grumbled to himself. He thudded the bottle onto the desk and sank into his chair. Faux leather and half-melted ice crunched under his ass. “That’s why the good Lord invented liquor.” He used to say that damn near every day back in college. Sort of became a mantra of his. Whenever Charlie pissed off a girl, blew a test, or got one of those “We’re so disappointed…” calls from mom and pop, he’d always remind himself to just keep drinking and carry on. Of course, nowadays that old mantra stung a bit.
Charlie stared blearily past his desk. The scotch was making it difficult to focus. Across the room the “on-air” monitor caught his eye. Wilbur was on, juggling knives again. “Guess it could be worse,” Charlie muttered, watching the clown drop the knives and transition into a wiggly jig. “I could be that sad son of a bitch.”
Wacky Wilbur. Wilbur the Clown. Wilbur, his fucked-up brother-in-law who’d needed a job, so Charlie obliged. Made him the host of WDDT’s afternoon clubhouse show. In truth, it made perfect sense, Wilbur being a true-to-life trained professional of the clowning arts. He was a Ringling Bros. graduate, after all. He’d even spent two years with Princess Cruises as an on-ship entertainer. That was until customs busted him for smuggling. If it’d just been drugs, the courts might’ve gone easy on him. But no, like everything about Wilbur, normal wasn’t good enough. He had to go one step beyond. To the edge, dude! To the frickin’ edge! And in this case ‘the edge’ meant hooking up with a wealthy collector who had a jones for cultural artifacts. The bag of high-grade hash cops found shoved up Wilber’s ass was almost an afterthought compared to the 2000-year-old statue and ceremonial dagger he’d stuffed into his oversized shoes. Prison hadn’t been kind to Wilbur. After a five-year stint at Big Sandy…well, a clown with a prison record takes work where he can find it.
On-screen Wilbur had broken into song. Thankfully, the sound was muted. He shuffled around like a giant penguin, arms stiff, feet together, head bobbing in bird-like pantomime. Every time he opened his mouth the stage lights gleamed over purple gums and the chrome glint of a studded tongue piercing. The camera cut away. Panned across the audience. They were local kids, mostly. What Charlie lovingly called the ‘inbred spawn’ demographic. They laughed like rabid jackals, screaming and waving and baring gnarled teeth. One of them spat at the camera. It could have been a scene from Lord of the Flies. Back to Wilbur. Holding a cane now, he’d gone into a frenetic soft-shoe routine.
Then the fish hit him.
A rancid trout.
Someone off-camera had hurled the thing at him, and with considerable force. It didn’t look planned. Wilbur was sent reeling head over clown shoes, right into the cardboard backdrop.
“Yep,” Charlie said. “There’s always somebody whose gotta swallow a bigger dick than you.”
* * *
Under the scorching tungsten lights of Soundstage 2 Wilbur could feel the white of his grease paint begin to run. The stink of dead trout was all over him. A taste of fish-goo on his lips. The damn thing had chinned him but good. Knocked him smack into the Aether Island set. Now he was on the ground, entangled in what had been a scene of confetti sand beaches and smiling stone heads. The audience howled wildly. They were out of control today. Bloodthirsty, even. Whatever. The little dudes were gonna lose their shit eventually, Wilbur reminded himself. Control was an illusion.
Wilbur kicked his legs, flexed his back, shot up like a spring. In a blink, he was on his feet. If there was one thing every clown knew, it was how to take a fall and get back up. Wilbur made it look easy. He turned to the cackling mob beyond the stage, felt their rabid hostility. They weren’t an audience anymore. These kids were a lit fuse, ready to blow. The frickin’ heat had only made them worse. Wilbur arched forward and shot them a crooked sneer. “Duuuude!” he barked, fists raised. His voice sounded like cigarettes and cheap candy. “If you’re gonna bring me fish, frickin’ cook it first!”
The tension broke.
The cackling jumped three octaves.
A wry smile eased across Wilbur’s lips. He had ‘em. The twerps were laughing with him again, not against. “I’ll tell ya this,” he said, dipping down to scoop up the fish, “You little butt-nuts are off the hook today! I think Ol’ Uncle Wilbur is gonna have to step up his game!” He rubbed the trout across his ass. Tossed it back into the audience. “There ya go! Autographed and everything, dudes…”
Suddenly the low moan of a canned foghorn cut in.
Wilbur jumped. “What!?! Oh frick me, dude! You hear that?!”
The audience fell to a hush, their yellowed eyes wide with anticipation. Wilbur cupped a hand to his ear. The foghorn blared again. “Yeeeeah! It totally is dudes! That’s the call of the Octopus King!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!” The kids erupted into a yapping cacophony, spewing cheers, cries, screams, and tears of pious devotion. The most zealous of the crowd rushed the stage. Unable to climb the five-foot rise, they took to pounding their tiny fists against the plywood supports. “Answer the call! Answer the call!” some chanted. Others simply yowled, “Ogdapuss King is the awesomest!”
“Well, alright then!” Wilbur shrugged. “Let’s not keep ‘em waiting! Let’s go!”
The Octopus King. The Old Man in the Sea. Wilbur had introduced the character about three weeks ago. Already the King was a fan favorite. More popular than Rhonda, more popular than Fishface, he even got more love than Goofy Mister Gugs. Like most of Wilbur’s ideas, it had come to him as a dream. Well, many dreams, actually. That, and a fair amount of hash. Late at night when he’d collapse into bed and allow sleep to finally take him, Wilbur would find himself wandering the corridors of a fantastical place. A palace beneath the waves, where reality was jumbled and everything looked like that Iron Maiden album, the one with all the weird statues and shit on the cover. From the very first Wilbur knew where the dreams were taking him. To the domain of The Old God. The one who fell to Earth and built a city upon the water. The God who was betrayed by the stars and tricked into a long, deep slumber. One day He’d rise. Rise and give the world what Wilbur had already found.
Enlightenment.
It was the one thing Wilbur brought back from Thailand that the Feds couldn’t confiscate. With their gloved hands and shock wands, the assholes in the yellow vests had stripped Wilbur bare, searched every orifice. The fuckers had even pumped his stomach. But some things cannot be seized. They could never take away those long nights Wilbur had spent in the jungle with Boonliang and Suchin. He’d taken the dream walk. He’d tasted the dark. That had been part of the deal. Wilbur needed to experience the miracle before the freak twins would hand over the goods.
When Wilbur found the twins outside that Bangkok club, they’d assumed he was just another dumb tourist, another American dweeb itching for a hint of danger. They were so sure he’d turn chicken and run. They didn’t know Wilbur. Six nights of weird drugs and sex? Chanting and fucking under the full moon? Amongst the ruins of an Ayuthaya temple, even? What’s not to like? It was total Apocalypse Now shit! Like being Colonel Kurtz for a week! By the end of it all Suchin had even given Wilbur a wicked tattoo—all words and thorny symbols. An invocation of power, she’d called it. Sacred images that evoked gnarly spirit juju. Maybe the tattoo is what did it, pried Wilbur’s third-eye wide-open. Or was it the blood wine? Did it even matter? The dreams were coming on their own now. No rituals needed. No voodoo liquor required. At first, he’d had to swallow about a fifth of the stuff before the magic happened. Boonliang would rub him down with ashes while Suchin poured shots. Wilbur wasn’t sure why they even called it wine. The drink was mostly rum and cobra guts…and some other shit. Mescaline, probably. Strong enough to make a grown man shit himself, that was for sure.
Now six years later and some eight thousand miles away those dreams had become more real than reality itself. So persistent, so powerful were they, Wilbur was compelled to give them shape. Form. So he’d built his own castle under the sea…
“And we’re going… Down! Down! Down!!!” Wilbur jogged over to a darkened patch of stage. Lights flicked on, a sickly green. Then curtains parted to reveal a scene of blue cardboard panels and hanging rubber fish. “All the way to the very doorstep of where our wet friend lives!” And there it was, the castle in all its glory—its four-foot spires and glitter-coated walls shimmered under a neon blue spotlight. Wilbur had constructed the thing mostly from junk he’d found behind the studio: wood planks, styrofoam blocks, a pile of rusted drywall screws. There was even an old distributor cap somewhere in the mix. Hot glue and nails held it all together. At a glance, it looked like the worst doghouse ever. Or maybe something an eight-year-old would hammer together for his imaginary pet dragon to live in. The kids loved it. The sight of the Octopus King’s Keep always sent them into hysterics.
“So here we are, right? Totally beneath the ocean! And this…” Wilber took a step closer to his creation, knelt down beside it, “…this is where the great and mighty Octopus King hangs out!” Wilbur batted at a few stray bubbles that drifted under his nose, then leaned in to knock at the on the door. “Yo dude! You around or what, man?!” Wilbur hollered. More bubbles wafted past, getting caught in his stringy green hair. Behind the keep a machine gurgled, choking the bubbles out like a leaf blower with a head cold. Wilbur knocked again; this time harder. The giant nautilus shell above the door rattled. “Dude! The kids are here to see you, man! They’ve come all the way from Nowhere, Michigan! Isn’t that awesome, dude? King?! King?!” Wilbur stood, then turned to the audience, “I dunno, dudes, I don’t think he’s in.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” the kids howled unison. “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!”
“Wha…wrong? You’re saying I’m messing it up?” Wilbur feigned exaggerated confusion. “I don’t think so. If there’s one thing Ol’ Uncle Wilbur knows, its his way around seafood…don’t worry, you’ll get that when you’re a little older.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YOU NEED TO WAKE HIM UP!”
“Wake him? Dude, it’s totally daytime. I don’t think so!”
“WAKE! HIM! UP! WAKE! HIM! UP!” Their squeaky little voices rose into a chant, feet stomping with each word. Occasionally a lone, shrill cry would cut through, screaming “He wants to awaken!”
Wilbur laughed. Shook his head. “So, like maybe you’re right. But you know, there’s only one way to wake an octopus and that’s to…” Over the in-studio PA a jaunty music box melody began to play. “…SING!”
Deep down in the bubbling blue their lives the Octopus King!
He came to Earth long, long ago, but then he fell asleep!
The water bubble bubble bubbles because he snores!
But he likes it when we sing!
Join me now in this song!
Let’s sing to the Octopus King!
On cue, the kids heeded the call to join in. Standing on their seats, one by one, they began to yap the words and mimic the dance Wilbur was performing—a sort of slow spinning jig with head held high and hand twirling. Finally, the music box tune sputtered to a close.
The audience fell silent.
Wilbur turned, looked to the keep. The Octopus King was still a no-show. “Well dudes, I just don’t know. Maybe the King is hung over or something.”
The audience sparked up, all fifty-three child voices squealing together, “NOOOOOOOOOO! YOU FORGOT THE LAST PART!”
“Oh…oh wait! You’re totally right! Yeah dudes, we need to sing the song in Octopus words now! I totally forgot he can’t speak Amer…” The music kicked in again, this time a little louder and faster. Without missing a beat, the kids started up before Wilbur could even finish…
Ph-nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu!
R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
N’gai, n’gha’ghaa, bugg-shoggog, y’hah!
Cthulhu fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtaaaaaaaaaaaaagn!
* * *
Cool tones oozed from the boombox nestled under Charlie’s desk. Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon. The perfect chaser to a belly full of scotch. For all the things Charlie hated about this job, at least the office was always clear by three. What little staff WDDT could afford was either in the studio right now, or on their way home, back to their trailer parks and cigarettes and bathtub cooked meth. “Breathe…breathe in the aaaaair, don’t be afraid to caaaaare…” Charlie crooned with the music. His hands spilled over the keyboard, fingertips going numb. Strings of gibberish threaded across the screen. Charlie blinked. Tried to erase the error, only adding to the mess. Shit. The booze was hitting him hard. Wino physics had kicked in.
“Fuck it…” Charlie slurred. He pushed away from the computer and slumping into his chair, felt the squelch of wet leather as he sunk deep into sweat-drenched cushions. His whole body was caving under the weight of a universe gone heavy. The room swayed. Spun. Turned bleary against the dusty light that pushed through the open blinds. Outside the bug zapper was crackling away, executing flies like a neon god of electric death. It blended into the Floyd seamlessly, the spits and sizzles becoming something of a rhythm track. Not a surprise, really. The disc had clicked to track three, which was all bleeps and blips, anyway. The zapper only added to the effect.
Charlie wiped a palm over his face, closed his eyes. “Relax, man. Relax and just ride the buzz,” he whispered to himself. “Feel the tension leak out. Remember, man… I am in control of my world and my body. I deserve good things. I can allow myself…” He trailed off. A light breeze had drifted through the window, which at that moment struck him as being more interesting than sifting through his brain for the affirmation. Didn’t matter. The booze had already gotten him to where he wanted to be. The breeze on Charlie’s skin was hot and moist, sticky like a dog’s breath.
“Dog breath,” Charlie muttered, “That’s what a Michigan summer is…a face full of goddamn dog breath.” For a second Charlie considered writing it down. That was the kind of clever shit he could put into a screenplay. He knew someday he’d get around to writing one. It’d make him famous. Be his ticket out of here. Dog Breath Summer, the words gnawed through Charlie’s imagination like piss black piranhas. That could be the title! An indie drama-comedy…a dramady! A man with an artist’s soul. A hot but quirky high school girl who is wise beyond her years. Together these two find each other in the most unlikely of places, a go-nowhere town in Michigan! The plot began to come into focus. He’d open to a scene of…
The phone rang.
“Shit!” Charlie wrenched forward, instantly alert. By the second ring the receiver was pushed against his ear. “Hello, you’ve reached WDDT, provider of the finest local programming in the greater…” Before Charlie could rattle off the whole script the guy cut him off, “Git that queermo faggot off muh TV! What the hell you think yer doin’ showin’ my kids that faggot devil-talk!”
A voice.
Charlie heard a voice.
High-pitched. Nasally. Potentially dangerous.
“Wha…what?” Charlie sputtered, “Who is…ummm…how can I help y…”
“Don’t fiddly fuck around with me, buddy! I oughta kick yer ass! I oughta come down there right now and beat you so hard ya piss blood fer a week! Ya hear me?! I don’t know what passes fer entertainment up there in yer cushy TV building, but we’re good Christians in this town!”
What the fuck?! An angry call? Now? During kid’s hour? Charlie struggled to connect the dots, but his brain hadn’t quite come back online. “Sir, if you could please jus…”
“Dang it! Are you is dumb is ya sound?! I ain’t callin’ to talk! I’m telling ya if you don’t get that Satan worshippn’ ass clown off muh TV, I’m gunna come down there and put mah size ten boot in yer ass!”
“Clown?! You mean Wilbur?!” Charlie jerked his gaze to the on-air monitor. His stomach dropped. That stupid motherfucker! He was at it again! Onscreen Wilbur was prancing alongside one of the interns—Jack or PJ, or whatever the hell his name was. Charlie just knew him as “the fat one.” And right now, nearly every ounce of that pale, hair flecked blubber was on display, broadcasting live to hundreds of kids. Charlie blinked, parts of his brain refusing to accept what reality was showing it. Squid mask, black Speedos, and a Batman cape. The Octopus King costume left little to the imagination. But it was the dripping clumps of…what the hell was that? Was he smeared in KY-jelly!?!
“Sir,” Charlie groaned. There was a taste of bile on his lips. “I will take care of this. Immediately. In the meantime, just turn off your TV or something.”
“Turn it off?!”
“Or change the channel. Whatever.”
“Hell no! I told ya! That devil clown, he’s got muh brats all riled up! I tried turnin’ the channel! Muh kids, they started howlin’ like demon coyotes and biting me! Turn it back! Turn it back, Papa! There’s piss and shit all over the place!”
“Sure. Well, we all have problems.” Charlie slammed the phone down, then reached for the bottle of Dewars. Took a hard swig. Wilbur’s toothy grin beamed at him from across the room, a mouth full of rot jammed into the lens. Nausea squeezed at Charlie innards. My god did he want to knock those teeth in. “Stay cool…stay cool…” he breathed, “Gotta be the better man here. Can’t afford to lose this job…not yet. I’ll do what I do best, I’ll handle the situ…”
The phone rang.
Fuck.
Charlie thumbed it over to speakerphone this time, not caring enough to expend the effort it’d take to lift the receiver. “You’ve reached WDDT,” he droned, “Provider of the finest local programming in…”
“It ain’t right what you’re doing!” A voice squawked back. Female. Probably middle-aged. Definitely a smoker. “To children, of all people! To CHILDREN! How could you?! You make me sick!”
“Ma’am, we’re sorry for…aw, screw it.” The sound the phone made as it collided with the on-air monitor was almost satisfying. The brittle crunch of plastic. The cracking glass. The call crackling to static before becoming dead air. The last thing the woman said before she cut out was something about “…making the little baby Jesus cry!”
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WHISPERS FROM THE ABYSS, A COLLECTION OF H.P. LOVECRAFT-INSPIRED SHORT FICTION.
Edited by Kat Rocha
Copy Editors: Gretchen Helms, Sharlynn V., Ihimu Ukpo.
www.01Publishing.com
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This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, and events portrayed are fictional or are used in an imaginary manner to entertain. Any resemblance to any real persons or dead is purely intentional for the purposes of satire.
Ebook first published by 01Publishing 2013
Copyright © 2013 by 01Publishing 2013
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