Monday, December 16, 2013

Circus Noir, Part One: Tears of a Clown

Poor Binky.  That poor bastard never saw it coming.  But how could he have ever known, ever foreseen what the real life under the big top is like? 

Yeah, I know the world at large thinks it's all just a game.  A joke.  A barrel of laughs.  A lark.  The truth is, we're all just sinners like everyone else in this Godforesaken world, trying to scratch out a living while the empty shirts upstairs laugh all the way to the bank. 

A motherfucking lark.

I held Binky's limp body in my arms, blood seeping out of the four bullet-holes in his head.  The blood, the make-up and the hot, melting rubber nose all mixing together and running onto your bare hands . . . it does something to a guy.  It's like he takes on all the memories of that foul liquid--all the madness and sadness and all the other things they've seen . . . it's like if you ate all the dreams of the poor fucks that sleep on one of those dirty Holiday Inn beds down Sheffield Street.  You'd eat 'em up and puke 'em out, and it would look something like the seeping brain fluid of a dying clown. 

I looked at poor Binky, his eyes all crazy with fear and rage, and I tried to apologize.  But what could I do now?  What could I say?  How could he forgive me?

*THREE HOURS EARLIER*

Fuck me, another overtime night at the Bazooko Circus.  Two of the bearded ladies thought it would just be a grand old time to shoot up with the junk, and one of 'em couldn't take the heat.  So the other one--Bernice, I think that's her name--comes running in, screaming like hell and sweating like fucking Niagara.  If you thought the bearded ladies were ugly before, imagine seeing one soaking wet with the junkie fire burning behind her eyes, makeup running and spit spraying with each nonsensical scream through her rotten meth teeth.  Meth--it's the quickest way to lose your teeth and your soul.  But for those of us who simply wanted to lose our souls, we just joined Bazooko's circus.

Anyway, one of the ladies checked out and had stopped breathing, and our ringleader, Mr. Vincenzo, assigned Wakka and Binky to clean up the mess.  It had been the ladies' turn tonight to do the customary grunt work around the tent, so this glorious charge was handed off to me, Pogo, Shep, and Toggle.  Shep was the angriest about it, but that's probably because he's the oldest damned clown alive.  Poor bastard's 86 years old, smokes a fat Colombian cigar on the dot every hour, and he still doesn't have the decency to die and spare us his gummy ramblings about Barnum and Albert Ringling's sleazy trysts in Morocco that he had allegedly been privy to. 

I didn't care about the ladies.  I'd seen 'em come and go in the past, and it's not like any of them were bound for a happy ending.  What little girl, bearded or not, dreams of growing up to become a bearded lady?  But Binky. . . .  I had a casual concern about Binky.  He was the new kid.  Fresh and easily excited.  When he couldn't afford to pay for a full degree program at clown college, he signed up with the military for the cash incentive they offer on paper to less fortunate clowns.  He'd been shipped out once already--poor bastard--and all the death, the sweltering days in the desert, the cold nights, and camel spiders crawling in his pants had shot whatever nerves he'd had left.  All before the age of 30.  Poor bastard.  Poor bastard Binky. 

I was the only one who'd made an effort to be decent to the poor kid.  Wakka was the typical bastard he always is, and had the record to back up all his talk.  He'd done ten for the "accidental manslaughter" of three dancing midgets when he "accidentally" backed over 'em with the ice cream truck.  Unfortunately for him, I'd been there and seen how they were first "accidentally" bound, gagged, and had water sprayed in their eyes with the joke flower that Wakka always wore.  I didn't squeal on him, though.  I had my own damned life to deal with.


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