“Fuck Deborah.”
“Fuck you! I trust her!”
Mary looked down at her sullen, bored looking son, “Or at least I did trust her...”
Max shrank back. “I was just saying maybe a more thorough search would have—”
“He came in the gates! They frisked him! He was allowed through! He got to work! He looked a little pale, but he’s got a ton of make-up on. How was I supposed to know he was inebriated before he arrived?” Mary glared at Max, daring him to continue with his accusations.
“Like I said...I was just saying…” Max mumbled.
“Then don’t!”
He reached to the table for his drink. Mary snatched it from his hand and tossed the golden liquid into the grass.
Son of a bitch!
“Just quit drinking and come join the party. You two assholes have five minutes to sober up and get down there!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dom acquiesced.
“Okay, okay. Jesus!” Max groaned. “We’ll be there shortly.”
With that, Mary spun on her Versace heels and stormed down the path toward the pavilion. Over her shoulder, he could just make out his boy, Paul, amidst the sea of screaming, hollering brats.
Was this what he worked his ass off for?
A bitch of a wife and a spoiled kid?
“Well...that was heavy,” Dom observed.
“Welcome to my world, buddy. Fancy swapping?”
Max reached behind his plush leather chair, grabbed the rapidly warming bottle of forty-year-old scotch, and poured himself a fresh drink.
Ten thousand dollars for a drunk clown...
***
“The clown sucks!” said Missy, one of Paul’s friends from school.
Paul had to agree with her.
The clown really did suck. “I know. He’s not even telling jokes, or anything!”
“I think he’s a little drunk,” she said. “When my dad is drunk, sometimes he gets really quiet, too. Mom says when he gets quiet, I should stay out of his way.”
“My mom says the same thing about mine.”
Paul was truly crestfallen.
He’d had high hopes for an amazing birthday party, with all his school friends in attendance, and some fun activities to make the day special. So much for that idea.
At least he had his friends by his side, even if it was a little embarrassing to have them over to his birthday party, expecting greatness and instead getting a lazy, bored looking clown.
This wasn’t supposed to happen to rich kids.
He’d told every one of his school buddies that it would be a party to remember, and while it had been sort of fun for a while, it wasn’t even midday yet and he was bored out of his skull.
The clown had blown up some balloons, and made some cool animals from the long air-filled tubes, but that was about the sum of it. He had a flower that squirted water on them, and that was fun for about five minutes, until the children realized that the clown wasn’t going to chase them or make any fun of it. The guy just stood in the one spot, and spun in a circle. Paul and his friends had ran around the clown for a while, trying to avoid the spray and making the best of it that they could, but it was pretty lame.
And he never said a word.
Not so much as a ‘howdy’ or a ‘hey kids’.
Paul looked over from the pavilion where he sat with Missy, towards the clown and the kids running around him.
At least some of them seemed to be enjoying it.
Still not good enough!
He was Paul Bishop! He should have spacemen and monsters and fireworks and video games and—
“This is bullshit!” he hissed.
“You should go annoy him…see if you can make him mad,” Missy said, grinning.
Paul mulled it over for all of two seconds, before finding he agreed with her.
He hopped off the chair with a newfound verve.
That would brighten up the party. If the clown wasn’t going to perform for them, then by god, Paul would make his life a misery.
And after all, the serfs were made for mocking.
That’s what Dad always said.
Paul strolled from the pavilion and across the grass, pushing through his easily amused schoolmates as he made his way toward the clown.
He stopped directly in front of the man in the clown outfit. The man was huge, at least twice Paul’s own height, but Paul wasn’t scared. He’d learned long ago that having money made you untouchable. All he had wanted to do today was show off to his friends, and instead, this sad, pathetic excuse for a man had ruined everything.
He knew that the man would need the money his mom and dad had paid him, and that he’d take each and every insult thrown his way
This could be fun.
“Hey, asshole... how about you actually do something to earn your shitty wage? My dad’s paying good money for you!”
There was a hush that fell over the other children.
It made Paul feel ten-foot-tall.
This was power.
This was what money could do.
Even the other parents that sat around the lawn supping their iced tea never said a word. Mouths hung open and intakes of breath filled the summer air.
Paul smiled.
The clown looked down at him with dead eyes.
His blank expression never changed, even for a second.
Drunk.
Paul seized the moment. “I realize you’re wasted, and that a loser like you probably needs to drink away the pain of your existence, but at least try to act like you want to be here. You’re stood before your betters, so how about you show some respect and do as I tell you!?”
The clown stared down at him, unfazed.
From the corner of his eye, Paul spotted his mom standing by the other mothers. She wore a smile on her face. She looked proud (a stark contrast to the other ladies, who all looked shocked and appalled).
To hell with them! What could they do? He was Paul Bishop.
It spurred him on.
“You should be grateful you’re even allowed on my family’s estate!” he laughed. “This is a holiday for you! Now give me a show or I’ll make a show of you, mister!”
Paul turned to his mom. She smiled at him.
It gratified him to know that he’d always had his mom wrapped around his little finger.
Dad, too…although dad was rarely around.
Paul secretly suspected his dad was an asshole.
Turning back, he saw that the clown still wore that same blank expression. Dead eyes peered out from beneath the layers of jolly makeup.
Paul saw something else…
Just for the briefest of moments.
Something behind the clown’s eyes.
Something that looked like a flicker of luminous green light.
It was there one second, and then gone, the clown’s pupils black and vacant once more.
Must have been a trick of the light.
No big deal.
Paul turned to the group of kids, all now held in thrall of what he was getting away with. He felt like a god. He felt just as powerful as his dad must feel as he dictated to his underlings. He raised his arms to the group. “Everyone, grab a soda and launch them at the clown. He’s gonna be our target!”
Some of the kids’ eyes lit up, but as Paul watched, they turned to their mortified parents, seeking approval that was nowhere to be found, and then lowered their heads in disappointment.
Looked like he was on his own.
So be it.
Paul grabbed a glass of coke from the resplendent party table. He spun on the clown and volleyed the ice-cold drink at his face.
The cold liquid splashed across the clown’s visage, flattening the front of his fright-wig and running down his eyes. The stark white makeup ran a little, revealing the skin beneath to be every bit and pale and colorless as the thickly coated applications surrounding it.
The clown never flinched.
Paul wanted a react
ion.
Damn it!
From his left, his mom said, “Okay, Paul. That's enough now, honey.”
“But he’s mine, Mom!” he snarled. “I still have him for a few hours!”
Quick as that, with a wave of her arm, his mom let it go.
A fresh surge of malicious energy tore through Paul’s skinny frame. He turned back to the motionless drunken clown and reached up for his nose.
He pulled it, hard.
Nothing happened.
That's wasn’t right. His goddam nose should come off! And why was it so solid?
Embarrassed before the crowd, Paul pulled harder. Gasps filled the air and some parents reached for their children and pulled them away from the scene, no doubt scared the clown would react badly.
Of course he wouldn’t react, Paul understood.
He’d take exactly what was done to him without protest.
But still the damned nose wouldn’t come off.
Flushed with shame, feeling all eyes on him and sure everyone was thinking him a dweeb, Paul twisted the bulbous red nose with all his might. With a strange whir and a click, the big red nose came free in Paul’s hand. He yelped in satisfaction for a second, before realizing that the joke-nose was made of metal, and there was nothing underneath it, just a flat, shining, circular steel plate where the clown’s real, flesh-and-blood nose should be.
Paul looked down at the metal clown-nose in his hand, staring dumbly as it let out a whirring sound one more time.
The strange object beeped three times, shrill and high-pitched.
“What the fu—?”
The nose exploded in a flash of fire and light, eviscerating the entirety of Paul’s right hand in a burst of gristle, meat and bone.
Shards of Paul’s obliterated digits shot out at tremendous speed, piercing his cheeks and shredding the flesh to ribbons. A splinter of bone shot through his right eye socket, bursting his globe in a flower of jellied muck. Clawing at the ruination of his eye socket, Paul had no time to register the agony, nor pay any attention to the dumbstruck crowd or the stink coming from the clown’s now immolated wig. He could vaguely hear his mom screaming, but she sounded far, far away.
What he did register, through his one remaining eye, was that strange green light, once again infusing the clown’s gaze with electric, laser-driven finality.
He also registered the clown-thing’s impossible strength, as it grabbed a fistful of his soft brown hair, lifted him high above its head, and swung him around in a huge circle by his scalp. His howls of agony were cut mercifully short as his neck snapped like a wishbone.
One final thought followed Paul Bishop into the darkness: Why is the clown being mean to me, Mommy?
***
Dom was swinging on the back legs of his chair when the explosion broke the serene summer air in half. He tumbled to the ground with a high-pitched yelp, tossing his drink all over his chest.
Max spat the last of his scotch onto the paving of the patio, and stared down the hill to where the sound had come from. He barely noticed Dom on the ground as he pulled himself to his feet and peered through the small cloud of smoke surrounding his son and the clown (was its head on fire!?), trying to understand what the fuck had just happened.
Dom stood by his side. “What in fuck’s name was that!?”
Max was rooted to the spot, his feet seemingly cemented into the two-thousand-dollar-per-square-foot stone.
“I have no idea.”
He could see Mary now. The small lingering cloud had drifted apart like morning dew in the light of the sun, and she was stood with her hands to her mouth.
She was screaming.
He couldn’t really hear her (the explosion had fucked his ear drums up good and proper) but he knew she was screaming.
The smoke cleared. He saw Paul.
His son was holding something strange in his hand.
Something red and pulped.
Was it raw meat?
Why is my son holding a lump of raw meat?
The question lost much of its import when his only son and heir was yanked from his feet by the clown and swung around its head like a goddam tomahawk.
Dom gulped. “Is that....is that your kid?”
Max was dumbstruck.
He stared, mouth agape, as the clown let go of his boy. Little Paul soared through the air for a few seconds before crashing into the pavilion in a broken heap.
Max ran for the lawn, no idea in his mind what he planned to do. There was no time to consider such matters when a drugged-up clown had just used one’s son as a projected missile.
His ears cleared slightly as he stumbled down the hillside as fast as his liquor and coke-addled equilibrium would allow. He could hear Mary screaming out for Paul now. He saw the clown approach her, had himself a real good look at the bastard who had just killed his son.
Max stopped in his tracks.
Self-preservation overriding all nobility, he took in the clown, in all its strange glory. It wasn’t enough that its head was on fire, or that the clown seemed not to notice or care that the flesh on his face was blackening and melting from his skull like fetid wax.
Weirder shit was afoot...
The clown’s partially exposed skull appeared to be made of some sort of metal, and the fucker’s eyes were glowing like laser-beams.
Was that a fucking robot!?
Dom, who had remained both on his ass and on the porch, had also spotted the strange clown. “That’s a fucking robot!” he shouted.
“Yeah...” Max muttered, awestruck. “That’s a fucking robot.”
The freak-show in the clown-getup had reached Mary now. As she stood there screaming, it peered down towards her with those crazy, green, laser-beam eyes. It opened its mouth.
Instead of teeth and a tongue, there was a black hole.
Then something tubular slid forth from within.
It looked like some kind of gun barrel.
Max pissed himself.
Mary’s screams were cut short. The day filled with the sound of gunfire as a barrage of bullets tore through her head like it was made of wet paper. Red rain flowered from the rear of her skull, soaking the shocked and terrified party guests who stood to her rear. A single blast, louder than the others, and her entire head exploded like a meat-filled balloon, painting the entire guest-list in brain, blood, and splintered skull.
Some of the kids were throwing up. Some had shit themselves. The lawn had taken on the dimensions of a scatological snuff film. Screams fought for dominance with the retching of expelling stomachs.
Mary’s headless body dropped to the grass on its knees, where it remained upright as though in worship to its robot god.
The shock broke, and the gore-covered guests began to flee, most of them running in wild circles and getting absolutely nowhere as the laser-beams scanned their terrified puke and brain-slimed faces. Kids huddled under their parents’ arms as the clown made its way through the throng.
“It’s looking for someone,” Dom observed from a million miles away.
Shit.
Realization penetrated Max’s tumbling mind.
The pinpoints of light from the scanning robot connected with his line of sight, burning into his retinas, all but blinding him for a second.
Mother of shit!
It lifted up its right arm. The oversized, multi-colored glove tore free as the thing’s hand shifted and transformed like a sentient puzzle solving its own existence. Max fought to find his feet while the hand rebuilt itself with terrible purpose into a new, deadly configuration.
He was looking at some sort of metallic drill.
It began to spin, slowly at first, and then faster, powered by some internal, ferocious engine.
Then the clown was running in his direction.
Not walking, not lurching along like some futuristic Frankenstein’s creation...
Running.
It would be on him in seconds.
A screaming woman and her child ran b
y Max, just as he found his mobility. Without thinking, he grabbed onto the woman and kicked her young daughter aside. Ignoring the kid’s cries, he pushed the flailing, crying woman towards the oncoming clown. Its whirring drill-arm punched through her stomach and seared through her spine, emerging from her back in a geyser of bone marrow and intestinal meat. She held there for a moment, spinning wildly on the clown’s deadly appendage like the world’s most fucked up tilt-a-whirl, before sliding off the sharp drill and onto the lawn, leaving a hole in her mid-riff the circumference of a beach-ball.
The nightmare clown never missed a beat.
It locked its green, glowing eyes on Max.
That got him moving again.
He ran up the hill on legs made of sand, terrified to look over his shoulder, sensing the clown’s proximity as he made for his mansion. He screamed at Dom to get the fuck in the house, grab his shotgun, a knife, anything!
Turned out there was no need.
Dom had been busy.
His friend must have moved inside, grabbing the gun while Paul’s birthday party turned into a killing field. He was stood there with Max’s gun in his hands and a look on his face that said he meant business.
“Shoot that fucking thing!” Max screamed, his ears filling with the sound of the whirring drill, hot on his ass.
Dom raised the gun.
Thank sweet fucking Jesus and his angels and all the heavenly goddam choirs and—
He felt his stomach flip over on itself, as Dom raised his own damn shotgun to his face (a family heirloom, no less), and blew Max’s multi-billion dollar brains all over his ever-so-splendid patio.
***
The clown-thing loomed over Dom, millionaire philanthropist and recently registered member of the self-soiling association.
Max’s one remaining eye stared up at him from the ground in lifeless accusation, but all Dom’s attention was on the clown. Its lasers ran over his features, scanning him.
Dom smiled his best, most charming smile.
He figured it was worth a shot.
It wasn’t easy being charming when you had fresh shit running down your khakis, but it was worth a shot.
And hadn’t he just killed this thing’s target?
Consumed- The Complete Works Page 23