By Ferrel D. Moore

“I don’t like clown dolls,” Melly said.  “When I was a kid I was afraid at night they could come alive and eat you.” 

 “You’re psycho,” I said. 

 “Hey, I’m over it,” she said. 

 “Then what’s with all this?”  I asked, waving my arm in front of the wall opposite the headboard where four full-length rows of clown dolls were staring at us. A strip of black tape was fixed across their eyes as though they were actors in a clown doll porn movie, and each clown was stuck to the wall by a nail through its chest. 

Melly leaned back on the bed, brushed her hair away from her face, and grinned. 

 “This is Death Row, clown style,” she said, “and I’m the sixteen year old warden.” 

She was wearing jeans and silver chains, a ragged open shirt held together with safety pins, and a tight color-blurred t-shirt that was redder than anything else.  I followed the line of her legs to where they ended in black ankle-high boots with rolled-down tops.  She looked good in boots.   

“Where’d you get them all?” I asked. 

I wanted to sit down on the edge of the bed, but I wasn’t sure how she’d take it. 

“Him,” she said. 

I knew who that was.  Nobody that went to our school had to ask who “Him” was. 

I didn’t like the green highlights in her hair, I decided.  I liked it better pink. 

Melly and I had met outside the psychiatrist’s office.  I had seen her around school a few times, hanging with Him─ the clown giver.  

He was tall and wore a black trench coat, dark glasses, and he looked pretty scary for being in the tenth grade.  He called Melly his “familiar”, like she was one of those cats that hung around witches.  Once she wore a dog collar to school for him.  It had silver spikes sticking out from it, and her teacher hauled into the school office and got her booted out.  His name, before he had a brain aneurysm and blew a head gasket, had been Collin. 

“Why?”  I asked. 

“Why what?” 

“Why’d he give you all these clowns?  I mean there must be like a million of them.” 

They watched me.  All in a row.  All nailed to the wall. 

Never piss off a girl with a hammer. 

Even in broad daylight, I didn’t like them.  I had taken my medicine in the morning, and I felt calm except for being alone in her house with Melly, so I shouldn’t have felt paranoid.  When my dosage is off, I can usually tell.  I feel hot and I start to sweat.  I hear a repeat or an echo in my head sometimes.  When my dosage is off, I can hear voices, but not too often.  I could go to school, though, because I was on a treatment program.  Not a lot of kids hung with me.  Girls usually kept their distance.  

That’s why I was couldn’t believe it when Melly called.  I thought it was a joke at first.  We began to talk a lot.  I kept waiting for her to hang up.  She could have dialed the wrong number and got me by mistake and decided to just keep talking.  I asked a lot of flipped questions, but I tried not to ask the same ones twice.  I worried now that none of my business about why he gave her all the clowns.   

She squinted at her bedroom window. 

“Kind of bright in here, isn’t it?” she said. 

I checked my watch. 

“It’s two o’clock,” I said back at her. 

“My mom won’t be back until eight,” she said.   

She twisted a bit of her hair and looked at the ceiling.  The air conditioning was on, but my forehead felt damp.  It was the way she moved or laid there or breathed or just the way she looked at me that did it.  Melly Brooks wasn’t the best looking girl in school, but she definitely had the best body.  I was the same age as she was, and I’d never seen a naked girl yet except on videos. 

“She’s working, right?”  I asked. 

“Posing it,” she said.  “You know- anything to keep from being a housewife.  At least when my jerkwad stepdad was here she hung around a little more.” 

“Why did he leave?” 

“Why don’t you sit on the edge of the bed?  Don’t get any ideas or anything, though.  Not yet. ” 

“I can drag that chair over from the computer desk,” I said. 

“Suit yourself,” she said, and pulled her shirt out from her pants and began to rub her stomach.  “Fat,” she said, patting it. 

“No way,” I said. 

When I’d moved the red metal chair over from the computer desk to a spot next to her bed and was about to sit down, she asked, “So, are you going to close the curtains, or what?” 

“What about the neighbors?” 

“You care about the neighbors?” 

“No, I just meant that I didn’t want you to get in trouble.  You know what I mean.  People look up and see the curtains closed and say something to your mom and all.  Maybe she won’t let me come back over.” 

Melly started to laugh at that. 

“I can close them if you want,” I said. 

She kept laughing.  Her fingers dug into the comforter like she was afraid of laughing so hard that she would fall off of the floor and hurt herself. 

“I’m closing them right now,” I said.  

“Do you like me?”  she asked, and stopped me before I could move by grabbing my wrist. 

I looked straight down into her dark eyes, and felt a warm buzz humming through my system. 

“Yeah,” I said.  “I like you a lot.” 

“I’ll do something for you if you do something for me.”  

I sat down as slowly as I could, and at least I didn’t knock the chair over doing it.   

“I have a hard time thinking when I’m around you,” I told her. 

“You like that?”  she asked, and propped herself up on both elbows again. 

“I don’t know,” I said, leaning back in the chair. 

 “You think I’m bizarre, don’t you?”  asked Melly.   

 “I think you’re different,” I said. 

“Yeah, well you’d be different if you had to sleep with them every night,” she said, jerking her thumb at the small stadium of clowns lining the wall. 

“So what’s the story with the circus?”  I asked. 

“I told you, they’re from Him.”  

Collin again.   

It was creepy. 

White make-up and Mardi Gras outfits.  Big floppy shoes and orange hair.  Most of them happy, some of them sad.  All of them with round red noses and painted mouths, and each of them with a nail hammered through their little clown hearts. 

“That why you hammered them into place?” 

She sat up and patted the edge of the bed, inviting me to leave the safety of my chair.  Her black fingernail polish made it okay even though it was afternoon. 

I was too nervous to move. 

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”  she asked. 

“It’s hard to think around you,” I told her again. 

“And?”  she prompted. 

“And it gets harder when you’re closer.” 

“What gets harder?”  she grinned. 

“Thinking.  Thinking gets harder.  Oh, I got it.  I didn’t mean that.  I meant─.” 

“You can quit talking now, Orin,” she said. 

I shut up. 

She moved a little closer to me and touched my hand. 

“Orin, a lot of people think we’re crazy, you and me,” she said. 

“I’m not crazy,” I told her.  “Not when I take my medicine.” 

I looked away and over at the clowns.  I could hear them whispering to each other, but I couldn’t see them move.  They were playing it cool.  There was one I saw, a little bigger than the rest, and it was the only one that had its hands in front of it and its wrist wired together.  Its head seemed to move a little to one side, as though it were angling for a better look at me. 

“Do you like my clowns?”  she asked. 

“Are you afraid of them?” 

“They scare the shit out of me,” she said as she brought her face within a few inches of mine. 

“Why am I here?”  I asked. 

She leaned forward and kissed me on the tip of the nose. 

I leaned back in the chair, pulling away from her, my stomach tightening and my groin muscles locking up. 

“Why, Melly?” 

“Because I like you.  I like you a lot.” 

“Why really?” 

“You don’t think I like you?” 

“I’m skinny, I’ve got big ears, and I’ve got too many pimples.  Why am I here?” 

She sat up straight and swung her legs over the edge of the bed so that our knees were touching, even though I was leaning back.  Her hands moved forward and she placed them on my knees. 

“I need some help, Orin, and I think you’re the only one crazy enough to help me.” 

“You like me, though, right?  Maybe just a little bit?” 

I felt safer with my chair leaning back and away from her.  With her hands on my knees, though, it was a lot hard for me to breathe.  The heat from her palms went right through my jeans.  It was like my thighs were being microwaved. 

“Sure I like you.  I figured you liked me too.  That’s why I thought you would help me do it.” 

“Do what?  What do you want me to do?”   

“I want you,” she leaned forward and whispered, “to help me electrocute some clowns.” 

“That’s murder,” I said. 

“Those clowns,” she said, pointing at the wall. 

The chair fell backwards as I stood up and backed away a few steps.  Maybe she was making fun of me.  Maybe we weren’t alone in the house.  From the corner of my eye I saw one of the clowns, a little one in a green polka-dotted jump suit with a circle of red around his mouth, lean his head forward like he was agreeing with me. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“What’s wrong with you?”  I asked.  “Why are you doing this to me?  Inviting me over here with your mom gone.  But we’re not alone, are we?  I bet you’ve got lots of your friends in here somewhere, waiting to come in and laugh at me.  I didn’t do anything to you.  You think just because I take pills I must be crazy.  It’s just some kind of a chemical imbalance.  That’s all.  I’m normal, I am.  I’m right in the head.” 

“Hey, you’re fine.  I take pills too.  And what’s wrong with being a little crazy?” 

She was off the bed and walking toward me.  I wanted to push her back onto to the blanket and hold her down.  She was trying to use me. 

“What’re you thinking about, Orin?” she asked.  “We are all alone, you know.” 

Melly was so close, so close, and she put her arms behind my neck and started to stroke the back of my hair. 

“I was…I was…I was thinking that I…. I was thinking that I wanted to push you back down on the bed and hold you down.” 

“You can do that, you know.  Is that what you want to do, to push me back on the bed and hold me down?” 

“I can’t think,” I said. 

“All you have to do is help me fry some little clowns.  I’m so afraid, Orin.  They’ve been tormenting me ever since Collin died.  I don’t know how he does it.  You knew what he was, didn’t you?  You knew that he messed around with some nasty black witchcraft, didn’t you?” 

“I was afraid of him.  He could be very bad.” 

She was pulling my head forward, and I put my hand between us to keep her back, but I could feel that I was pushing against her breast. 

“Do you want to push me there?”  she asked. 

“I was just-.” 

“Then you’ve got to help me get rid of Collin.” 

“Collin’s dead, Melly.” 

She pulled my head closer, and I had my hand still on her breast when she kissed me. 

“He’s not dead,” she said, pulling me down lower and whispering in my ear.  “Collin is in one of those little clowns.” 

***** 

Before the doctors found meds that worked for me, I used to have nightmares while I was awake.  Some of the psychiatrists said that my waking nightmares were primal terrors and aggressions that broke past my inhibitions.  Others said other things.  All of them thought that I was crazy.  None of them said quite that.  What I was doing with Melly was real, and as I strapped the first clown into the wires and straps and metal that she called “her little electric chair” after we pulled the drapes, I knew that what I was doing would classify as nuts.  But Melly felt good. 

She had put her electric chair on a rubber mouse pad, and wires ran from the device to a switchbox that was plugged into the wall.   

“You take them off the wall one at a time,”  she said,  “and put them in the chair and strap them in.  I don’t want to touch them.  But I’ll throw the switch.” 

“Why don’t you want to touch them?”  I had asked. 

“I just don’t,” she said.  

“Why?” 

“Because they’ll try to hurt me.” 

“What about me?”  I asked. 

“They’ll hate you,” she said back, “but they can’t do anything to you.  Most of them are just… half alive.  One of them is him.  I just don’t know which one.” 

“It wouldn’t be the one with the little handcuffs, would it?”  I asked. 

“I think that’s a devil.  It might be Collin, though.  I’m not sure.  But I’m not taking any chances.” 

“Why did you put the black tape over their eyes?” 

“I got tired of them watching me,” she said.  “And when we do it, you can’t take the tape off their eyes.” 

“Why?” 

“Because their eyes can make you do things.” 

“This is crazy, Melly.” 

“So?” 

“Maybe I should leave.” 

“You chicken?” 

“I think so.” 

“Good.  Go get me a prisoner.” 

***** 

I removed the nail from the first victim with the claw end of a hammer, and it must have been nailed into a stud, because either the wood or the clown doll shrieked as the nail came out.   

There were tears painted onto the doll’s ceramic face.  They were red and made me think of blood.  I saw one drop of red at the corner of its lips that I wasn’t sure was there before I had pulled out the nail.  I tried not to look at it while I did the reverse-stake thing. 

“Hurry,” she said.  “Put it in the chair before it wakes up.  It takes them a while to start moving because they’re still in shock.” 

When I had wired the first one in, I stepped back, took one of a few amber bottles from my pocket, and shook out a med.  I wasn’t sure if I was following the schedule, but I was feeling stressed.  As Melly squeezed a little water onto the clown from a washcloth, I swallowed the pill dry.  I thought that it was the one to keep me calm, but the label had fallen off the plastic bottles and I wasn’t sure which one was which.  With what was going on, I wasn’t sure that it made a difference what type of drug that I took. 

Melly said something in Latin or some other language with her eyes closed and then threw the switch.  The sparks must have bounced the clown up in the chair before it started to smoke, because it jumped enough that if it wasn’t the sparks, it was the clown arching its back.   

“It’s going to burn,” I said. 

“In Hell,” she replied. 

“This is crazy, Melly,” I said. 

“Next clown,” she said back at me.  

***** 

By Clown number five, we had to put a fan in front of her bedroom window and blow the smoke out. Each clown that she juiced puffed a gray-purple cloud.  It wasn’t that there was so much of the smoke; it was just that when she threw the switch, there was an awful smell that came from them; the puff clouds had the kind of nasty odor that you’d expect if you lit a skunk on fire.  But the fan cleared the smoke out enough to breathe without gagging. 

Outside, it was a day as bright and clear as freshly cleaned glass, but inside we were killing inanimate objects. 

The lights would dim for a sec when she threw the switch, like they do in the Death Row movies; there would be the snap, crackle, and pop when the electricity fried their fifty percent cotton, fifty percent rayon hearts, and always the fan sucked the air from the room and blew it outside.  We were running a clown death camp on the second floor of a suburban bi-level. 

People have asked me if they were alive, and whether or not I thought that what Melly and I did was killing living things.  I have always answered that I was just following orders.   I learned that from the history channel.  Whenever that doesn’t work, though, I remind them that I’m not right in the head, and tell them that I can’t imagine why they would be looking for a straight answer from me anyway. 

But when I pried the nails from their chest with the claw hammer, as I held them against the wall and yanked on the hammer’s handle, I know that I felt them squirm.  I mean it. 

And I could not take my eyes away from the black tape that blindfolded them.  I wondered about their eyes.   

Little clowns with little clown hats and two teenagers who were electrocuting them one at a time. 

I hoped that Melly was right. 

I hoped that they couldn’t hurt me. 

***** 

Melly brought a black garbage bag into the room, and when they had been executed with her saying her enchantment as each clown in succession met Mr. Electron, the bag was filling up with their rag doll bodies. 

By the third clown execution, I had begun to shake and sweat.  Half way through the lot my T-shirt was soaked.  Two thirds of the way through I had taken three more pills, and the room glowed with bright, oscillating colors.  I heard whisperings in my head.  One part of my mind argued with the other.  The rational with the part that was possessed by fear and lust.   

 “Take that you little bastard,” she told a fat little clown that I had barely been able to squeeze into her homemade electric chair. 

 “There’s nobody here but us,” I reminded her. 

I had never been alone with a girl in her bedroom, but somehow I had imagined it differently. 

 “I have to go to the bathroom,” Melly said. 

 “Now?”  I asked. 

 “Now.” 

 “But we’ve only got that one left,” I told her, and pointed to the last clown on the shelf, the one with its hands wired together.   

Things weren’t going exactly the way that I had planned.  Somewhere during the execution of the clowns, I had asked myself why forty or fifty normal clown dolls would be pissed at a teenage girl.  Maybe her ex-boyfriend Collin really had given her clown dolls that came to life after he died.  I’m sure it happened a lot in the Twilight Zone. 

So what had Melly done to Collin?  

I didn’t like the idea of her leaving me in the room with the last clown doll.  The big clown.  The mother of all clown dolls. 

And Melly wanted to go to the bathroom and leave me by myself. 

 “I can’t,”   she said. 

 “You can’t hold it?” 

 “I can’t be here when you do that one.” 

 “Why not?”  I asked. 

 “I just can’t.  You’ve got to do it by yourself.” 

 “You’re coming back right?” 

 “You’re horny, is that it?” 

 “No, it’s-.” 

 “Hey, you’re a boy.  What else is new?  But we might have to wait until tomorrow.  I think I’m getting kind of sick.” 

 “But you said-.” 

 “I said what?  I mean what am I supposed to think when you don’t even like me enough to get rid of the last clown?  You saved the worst one for last.  God, you’re an asshole.   You would have used me and left me with that last one there, wouldn’t you?” 

 “No, I wouldn’t do that, Melly.  I wouldn’t.” 

 “Yeah, you’d say anything you had to to get my pants off, wouldn’t you, Orin?” 

I would have, actually, but figured I knew that what she was saying had nothing to do with what she said.  She was lying.  I knew a lot about lying.  Lying is what people did to get you to do what you didn’t want to do by promising you something that you were never going to get.  Some things were clearer to me when I was on medication, but maybe if I hadn’t have been on the meds, I wouldn’t have bought her bullshit either. 

It was sometime late in the afternoon.  The fan was either doing a good job of blowing out the smoke and the smell, or I was getting used to it. 

I looked past Melly, trying not to think of the fact that she was trying to scoot out of the room and leave me with a clown doll that she was so afraid of that not only had she nailed it to the wall and covered its eyes with black electrician’s tape, but she had also wired its puffy white cotton wrists together.  The wall behind each of the shelves was lined with the nail holes that I had left while taking the condemned off of the wall so that Melly could fry them.  Plaster-dandruff flakes lay scattered on the floor. 

 “She won’t do it for you,” I heard a tiny voice say, and I didn’t want to look over at the wall to see who had said it.  She should have taped their mouths. 

 “She’s running her game on you.  She’s using you, man.” 

Shut up, Collin, I thought, but I was glad that he was nailed to the wall. 

 “You shining me?”  I asked her.  So much of my medication had kicked in that listening to the blood flowing along through my veins made it tough to concentrate. 

 “Are you okay?”  she asked.  I thought that she was concerned, but it was hard to tell. 

 “I’m okay,” I told her. 

I was worried about her, I thought, because she was rocking back and forth, back and forth without seeming to be aware of it. 

 “Orin,” she said, “you’ve got to stop moving back and forth.  You’re making my stomach more upset.” 

 “I’ll try,” I said. 

She was weaving or I was weaving, or both.  If she was weaving, that was bad.  If I was weaving, that was worse. 

 “Are you tough enough for this?”  she asked. 

My parents usually didn’t care where I went or how long that I was gone, but at that moment I wished that they would start looking for me. 

 “Melly, we’re going to… I mean maybe tomorrow…” 

 “Is that all you think about, Orin?  I thought you liked me.” 

She pressed her lips together as though she was thinking bad things about me, but I was used to that.  Lots of people thought bad things about me.   

 “I do.” 

And I truly did.  I liked her so much that I wanted to put my hands on her hips and squeeze just a little.  I liked her so much that I wanted to run my fingers over the front of her shirt and feel the mystery through the fabric.  Little studs ran along the outside edge of her jeans and I wanted rub my face against them and smell her legs through the material. 

Psst.  Check her out, man.  Ask her to take off her top.  Eyeball the eye candy.  She won’t show you anything.  She’s using you like you were a loser. 

Melly kept staring at me, as though there wasn’t a voice, as though she didn’t hear it. 

I heard it.  I knew it was real.  And I knew that if I told her about the voice, she would really think that I was crazy.  There are lots of ways to be crazy, but one of the worst is when you hear voices.  I could hear my shrink now if I told him a stuffed clown doll was talking to me, especially if I told her that the clown-doll was nailed to a bedroom wall with its eyes taped shut and its white cotton little hands were wired together.  It wasn’t what she would say, because all that shrinks ever really say are things like “sure” or “how does that make you feel?” 

 “Then give me space” she said.  “I have to go.  I can’t be in the room when you take the nail out of him,” and here she pointed at the last clown, “or he’ll hurt me.” 

 “What about me, Melly?  Will he hurt me?  And if he’s so dangerous, how did you get him nailed to the wall?  Huh?  How’d you do that without getting hurt?” 

 “Quit pressuring me,” she said. 

She’s stalling, man.  When the nail comes out of me I’m going to kill her, and if you don’t hurry up and do it, I’m going to pull it out myself and kill both of you. 

 “Shut up,” I told the clown. 

 “What did you say?” 

 “I wasn’t talking to you,” I said before she could go off on me. 

 “Orin, we’re the only ones here.” 

 “I—” 

Before I could complete the sentence, she turned and looked at the last clown.  What she saw was a frilly wide round white collar, a red polka dotted hat ringed by tufts of Halloween orange hair, a white face highlighted by eye tracings and clown make-up, and a nose and mouth that were the color of thinned fresh blood. 

 “It talked to you?” she asked with looking at me. 

 “I hear voices sometimes.” 

 “It talked to you,” she said.  This time she wasn’t asking. 

I put my hand on her shoulder to turn her around, which, to my surprise, she did.  Her eyes were wide, as though she had seen too much to close them, and she was chewing on her lower lip.  I felt her shiver beneath my touch, and though the afternoon sunlight still filled the room, it suddenly felt as if someone had closed the shade and plunged us into darkness. 

 “Melly, is this for real?” 

She nodded, slowly at first and then twice more, quickly. 

I looked at the clown, and, as I took my eyes away to look back at Melly, I thought that I saw its head move forward just a bit, as though it were agreeing with her.  On the floor, the garbage bag filled with burnt clowns was like a bag of toys that the devil would bring if he were Santa Claus. 

 “This is crazy,” I said. 

 “But you’re crazy, Orin.  You’re perfect.  You’re the only person I know that—” 

 “That what?”  I asked.  “Are you saying that I’m the only crazy person that you know?” 

 “Well…well, you are,” she said, and moved up against me.  “I just take an antidepressant sometimes.  You’re really out of the loop.  Not that that’s all bad, you know?” 

My throat seemed to narrow, and my breathing got an edge to it.  Through the odor of singed clothing that even the fan could not completely remove, I smelled her skin.  The temptation to lick her neck and taste her was so strong that I had to bite the inside of my lip to keep from doing it. 

 “You’ll help me, Orin,” she whispered, “won’t you?” 

 “I’ll try,” I said. 

You’ll never get in her pants, cackled the clown. 

 “Stop it,” I said.  “Not you,” I added quickly to Melly. 

She wrapped her arms around me and said, “Orin, I’m so afraid.” 

Let me at her, said the clown. 

 “How did you do it?”  I asked her.  “If you’re so afraid, how did you nail them?  How did you keep them all under control?” 

 “They were different at first,” she said. 

 “Different how?” 

 “Weaker.” 

 “Look at me.” 

 “I can’t.” 

 “Look at me.” 

 “You’ll help me won’t you, Orin?  You’ll kill just that last one for me, won’t you?” 

 “I’ll try.” 

You’re a pussy, said the clown.  She’s going to put you on a leash. 

 “What’s going to happen when I pull the nail out?”  I asked. 

I’m going to eat her face off. 

 “Nothing.  I don’t know for sure.  Nothing. It’s only nine inches tall, Orin.  What could it do?  I’m just paranoid.  Collin was a witch.  He scared me.” 

 “A warlock?” 

 “Okay, he was a warlock.  Are you happy?  A witch, a warlock.  I don’t know.  They’re all evil.  They’re all the same thing.  And I was glad when Collin died.  I was so glad I cried.  He was evil.  He deserved to die.  Somebody should have opened up his coffin and pounded a stake through his heart before they buried him.” 

 “There’s no such thing as magic,” I told her.  “There’s only crazy and sane.  Like us.  We’re crazy.  We’re trying to electrocute a bunch of stuffed clowns in your bedroom while your mom is gone.  That’s crazy.  That’s why we’re crazy.” 

Melly backed off, and I didn’t like it. 

 “No, you’re crazy,” she said.  “I’m not.  I heard them talk.  I’ve seen them move.” 

She had come right out and told me that I was crazy.  She must have thought it all along. 

She used me, too, said the clown.  How do you think that I ended up in this clown suit? Don’t let her trick you.  You’ll be next up here, Orin, I’m telling you.  She’s lying about everything.  She’s a bitchy little liar.  Close your eyes and think about it.  She’s trying to control you with her body. 

Was she lying or was she not?  Did she nail the clown dolls up while they were weak, or did she control them all along or was it just that the two of us were two certifiable lunatics?  How to tell, how to tell?  Or were they both lying? 

 “I’m afraid, Orin,” she said. 

She’s working you, man, said the clown. 

 “I’ll protect you,” I said.  “Close the door behind you.  I’ll open it when you can come in.” 

***** 

Collin the clown doll didn’t say a word when I opened up her dresser door and ran my hands over her clothes.  I found a sheer black bra in the top drawer and lifted it out, held it to my nose and inhaled the imagined fragrance of her breasts.  The fabric was as smooth as her skin and I moved my fingers over it slowly, closing my eyes and imagining the softness that it sometimes contained. 

I replaced the bra and closed the drawers slowly, quietly, in case she was listening outside her bedroom door.  Collin the clown doll was still captived on the shelf, the last of her collection of cotton terrors. 

“What’s happening in there?” she said through the door. 

“Go away,” I said. “I’ll come for you when I’m done.” 

Come and get me, said the Collin clown doll. 

“Be careful how you talk to someone that’s not all there,” I whispered. 

I patted the pocket where I kept my meds.  How many and exactly what had I taken?  When I was stressed, my memory would sometimes be there and sometimes not.  The back of my neck felt as though it were hardening and my gums felt fuzzy, the way that they did when I went to bed without brushing my teeth.  The pills would eventually flush out of my system, I knew, but for now I was at least not aggressive.  I was calm.  I had listened to a positive thinking hypnosis tape in the morning.  I was okay. 

Time for the hammer. 

The twin claw blades hooked under the nail as easily as if I were a carpenter, and I moved the hammer around until I had enough leverage to pry the stake from out of the clown doll’s chest.  The hammerhead blocked most of the clown’s red and white vest, so that if it bled, I wouldn’t see it immediately.  But that was crazy of course— stuffed clowns didn’t bleed.  Then again, they weren’t supposed to talk or move either. 

I decided right then that I would leave the tape over its eyes and keep its wrists wired. 

You’re a chicken-shit, said the clown doll, but I’ll choke that out of you. 

On Melly’s desk I saw a pair of scissors and I considered cutting the clown’s head off and then taking the nail out, but I didn’t.  Instead, I yanked back the hammer’s handle, and the nail pulled out the wall an inch. 

 “It must be nailed into a stud,” I said. 

I was a workman plying my trade, like thousands of others across America.  I was an executioner- a respected tradesman.  I was a clown executioner- a lunatic without a union card.  I decided to whistle. 

I’m going to eat you alive, snarled the clown. 

 “You interested in a deal?” I asked, put my foot against the wall, and yanked on the hammer’s handle again. 

This time it came out with a screech and a wail that sent my blood shooting through my veins panicked and looking for a way out.  The release sent me back and to the floor as though I had been thrown from a train, and my head hit her bedroom carpeting with a thud.  My vision rippled and a thick pain spread from the back of my head.  The clown dropped to the floor.  We were on the same level. 

A vision of the clown sticking a screwdriver in my eye made me try to get to one elbow to protect my face, but I fell back on my back with a sound like that of a body being dropped on soft earth. 

I turned my head slowly, afraid of the nausea that would overcome me if I tried to move quickly again.  The bedroom was as quiet as a dead man’s heart.  The clown lay where it had fallen on its back the way that I had.   

My pulse still jumped and jerked, but I was safe.  The clown lay still.  It was not stalking me with a weapon from the hardware store.  It shouldn’t have surprised me.  I heard voices most everywhere that I went, unless I was faithfully taking my medicine.  Today I had just heard a few more.   

My head was humming a low buzz, like a fluorescent light on a hot summer night, and I wondered if I had a concussion of sorts.  Since I had landed on soft carpeting, that didn’t seem right.  Sometimes when I took too many pills, I could hear that same sound, so that when I slowly sat up at about the same time that the clown did, I thought that I was hallucinating. 

Big mistake, said the clown, and it began to get to its feet, stiffly, awkwardly, the way that an angry bear might move after a winter in hibernation. 

I thrashed my arms to flip over, and then pulled myself across the carpeting until I was next to Melly’s bed.  When I grabbed the edge of her blanket to pull myself up, it came down and covered my head so that I couldn’t see.  My breathing came in jagged gasps.  I shoved the blanket away from my head and screamed.   

The clown was moving toward me, swaying from side to side as it did, its hands wired, its eyes taped, lurching forward as it came for me. 

I couldn’t figure out how it knew where I was.  It had tape over it’s eyes. 

I can smell you, Orin.  I can smell you and I’m coming for you. 

It was. 

It stopped, moved its hands up to the electrical tape and fumbled with it until it was able to yank it off.  When I saw its eyes, I knew why Melly had taped over them.  Its eyes were not clown eyes at all.  They were not shiny black buttons or hand painted pupils, but they were instead human eyes- tiny, yes, small, yes, but human. 

The clown blinked. 

 “It’s only nine inches tall, for God’s sake,” Melly had said.  “How could it hurt you?” 

I swear it blinked.  Little eyelids with tiny little so human like lashes closed and then opened.  This thing could hurt me, no question. 

 “Hey Melly,” I yelled.  “I might need a little help here,” I yelled. 

No answer. 

 “Melly,” I screamed. 

Just me and you, said the clown. 

 “Melly, open the door.  Let me out.” 

The clown was growing.  It was twice as tall.  It had a shadow. 

I pushed myself backward and up against the bed and made it to my feet and looked down.   

Collin the clown doll was over two feet tall. 

I kicked it in the head and sent it flying against the wall.   

There were scissors on Melly’s desk, the pointed shiny steel kind and I grabbed them up and threw myself at where the clown doll lay.  My left elbow and chest felt the burn of the rug as I slid, but I had my right hand up high and drove the point of the scissors into the clown’s neck.  Blood oozed from the puncture- real blood, I swear it, and I pulled them back and drove the point into the Collin clown’s stomach.  More blood and a dizzying feeling as I knew at that instant that reality meant staying on your own side of the looking glass. 

The clown doll was over three feet long and bleeding. 

I sat up and hooked a leg over its body, lifted both hands high in the air and was about to plunge the scissors straight down into its human little eye when it lifted its head. 

You’re crazy, Orin.  Stabbing a clown.  Stabbing a clown doll.  Man, that’s a capital offense. 

 “Melly,” I yelled.  “I’m on this thing, but it’s too big to fit in your electric chair.  But we can still burn it.  What do you want to do?  Give me a hand and we can put it in the bathtub and poor gasoline on it if your mom has one of those barbecue lighters.  Melly, are you there?” 

It was bigger.  I was sitting on it and I could feel it getting longer. 

 “I got to kill it, Melly,” I yelled. 

I bounced up a little and came down hard, but the Collin clown doll rolled its head to one side and I drove the blade straight down through the carpeting and stuck the point in the floor below.  The clown laughed then hissed and swung its head back and craned upward to bite my wrist with sharp little teeth.  It was quicker than a clown doll should be, but I pulled my hand back hard, freeing up the scissors. 

When his teeth snapped together I saw a foamy yellow spittle squeeze past the corner of his lips and a flicker in his eyes that looked like a snake darting across a dark lawn. 

Up to the top, both hands on the scissor handles and my legs wider to hold the clown still.  He was full size now and working hard to get free, as big as Collin was when he was alive.  I was running out of time. 

With a straight out scream, I pile-drove the scissors straight down and into its right eye, pressing my body weight behind it, hoping to push through to its brain.  There was blood, a lot of it.  The Collin clown doll screamed- I mean screamed- and God the blood sprayed.  But it quit struggling. 

I lay forward on it, the adrenaline pumping through my body with jerking heaves and I was feeling good.  I was feeling big time victorious and I lifted both fists above my head and screamed.  I did it.  I did it. I did it.  I was going to get a cape and call myself Medication Man. 

 “Melly, come on in.  It’s safe,” I yelled.  “Another clown,” I howled and got to my feet and started dancing around the Collin clown’s body, “another clown is down.  Yes, another clown is down.” 

Time slipped away as I waited for Melly, as I looked down at the Collin clown doll and was amazed at how quickly it had grown to full size and wondered at the way its clown clothes had changed to blue jeans and a light yellow shirt soaked with blood. 

I heard footsteps on the hallway. 

I wondered if Melly would be upset with me for ruining her carpet. 

The door handle turned with a metallic ratcheting sound, and the door swung open.  Melly stood in the doorway.  Her mother was behind her.  They were like a family portrait with the doorway as a frame.  They looked a lot alike, but, then, they were related. 

 “Oh my God, Orin.  What have you done?” cried Melly. 

***** 

They ask me to repeat the story every day, like they’re having a hard time understanding it.  Sometimes I wonder if Melly sends them, but mostly I think that they’re just trying to do their jobs.   

My parents quit coming to see me a long time ago, I think.  I’m not sure that I know what they look like anymore.  No one believes me about what happened.  They say my memory is wired badly, like the rest of my brain. 

I don’t accept packages, although no one ever sends me anything.  I can’t let my guard down. 

One day it will come, though. 

A box from Melly. 

Inside will be a stuffed clown. 

She’ll have done something to it. 

The others would let it through, maybe, just to see how I would react to a clown in my room.  Trapped in the room.  Just me and the clown.  There is no handle on my side of the door, so it really would be just me and the clown. 

It would be a fair fight if they would just untie my hands from behind my back and take off this coat.