by Mike McCarty
The Ten Klown-Mandments
Klowny wasn’t always a kult klown.
He started out as a healthy, perfectly kute baby. His mommy even stopped drinking and whoring long enough to karry and deliver him. But a kouple weeks after he squirmed his way out of her, mommy went out boozing with some of the other strippers from the bar where she worked. She didn’t want to spring for a babysitter, so she plunked little Karl Lawrence Downy–that was his name back then–into the big kitchen wastebasket. That way if he took a poop, she’d only have to rinse him off. When she got back around two a.m., Karl was screaming his lungs out just because a rat was nibbling on his face. What a krybaby!
Mommy took one look at Karl’s chewed-up face and decided that motherhood wasn’t in the kards for her. So she popped the kid into a jumbo fried-chicken bucket, tossed in a baby picture taken by one of the hospital volunteers–no sense having an unpleasant reminder like that lying around–and threw him out the window.
Luck was on Karl’s side. Fifteen minutes earlier, a psychopath had tossed the kut-up chunks of a hooker down a manhole, and he’d neglected to shut the lid behind her. The chicken bucket flew down the hole, right into the sewer.
The bucket flowed through the soupy darkness, down a forgotten passageway of shit and despair. And the hooker’s head floated right beside it. Eventually the sewer led out to the river, and Karl blinked sleepily in the moonlight. He looked over the edge of the bucket and saw the deadhead–she looked so nice with her lavender eyeshadow and pink blush and kandy-red lipstick. So pretty!
Suddenly a big cheery voice sang out, “What do we have here?” A bamboo kane snagged the bucket and drew it to the edge of the river. Then white-gloved hands picked up the baby.
Mazey-Belle, Kween of the Big-Top, took a long look at Karl and pouted. “You poor bastard,” she whispered. She pulled a stream of knotted, multi-kolored hankies out of her sleeve. She wiped the blood and filth off him with the first one, and then wrapped the rest of the hankies around him like a blanket.
She took him to her tent in the circus kamp. Her husband, King Komedy, gasped when he saw what she was karrying. “Where’d you find that sad little kritter?”
Mazey-Belle flashed him a gap-toothed smile. “The Lord gave him to me. It’s a miracle. After all these long years, a miracle.”
“He’s sure torn-up,” King said.
“Then it’s a good thing the Lord gave us make-up.” She studied her new son’s ravaged face. “And rubber noses and wigs. Don’t you see? He was meant to be a klown.”
“Hey, what’s this stuck to his ass?” Her husband peeled the soggy baby picture off the kid’s bottom. He squinted at the name printed in kapital letters on the back. Initials and a last name: the ink was smeared, so the first two letters of the last name had run together. “K...L...OWNY...? Mazey-Belle, it really is a miracle! His name is KLOWNY! Why, that’s perfect! He’ll be our little Prince of Klowns! He won’t ever want to be no doctor or lawyer if he knows he was born to wear greasepaint.” He looked at the little face and shuddered. “Besides, nobody in their right mind would want a doctor with a kisser like that.”
Klowny joined the act as soon as he learned to walk. By age five, he’d learned to juggle, walk the tightrope, and even swallow little swords. Mazey-Belle did his make-up when he woke up in the morning, refreshed it during the day, and washed it off with his evening bath, just before he went to bed. He grew up thinking of the make-up as his real face, and didn’t even realize that he might look a little different without it.
But eventually there kame a morning when Klowny wanted to put on his make-up by himself.
“Oh, but I have so much fun doing it,” Mazey-Belle said.
“Now, honey,” King said. “The boy will have to put on his own make-up eventually.” He opened a drawer in his nightstand and pulled out a mirror. “Looky here, boy. What do you see?”
Klowny took the mirror and gazed at his reflection. “Oh.” For a full minute he was silent. Then he said, “What are all those funny lines? Other people don’t got ‘em.”
“Those are kalled scars, son,” King said. “You know you’ve got enough make-up on when you kan’t see them any more.”
“And how kome some of my nose is missing?”
“That’s so your nice red-rubber one will fit more snugly over it,” The old man stated, smiling.
“You were meant to be a klown! The best ever!” Mazey-Belle brought out all the tubes and jars and kans of make-up. “Always remember, son! For a klown, every day is showtime!”
In the years that followed, ticket sales for the circus began to drop. People were too interested in the internet to bother leaving their homes for entertainment. The world seemed to be turning into one big office. Eventually the circus fired the klown family.
They took their savings and rented a little apartment in a big metro area. They began looking for work. To make ends meet, they entertained at kids’ birthday parties every now and then.
One day King kame home with some news. “I’ve found steady work for all of us!” he said. “From now on, we’re going to be korporate klowns!”
“I don’t even know what that means!” Mazey-Belle said.
“For PharaohPlex!” He held out a sheet of letterhead with a golden pyramid logo. “It’s a multinational konglomerate, run by billionaire Lazlo Goldencalf. PharaohPlex has hundreds of thousands of busy workers, and we’re going to join their stress-relief program, klowning around at all their offices to keep the troops entertained.”
“That sounds terrific,” the klown-kween said.
“Troops? You mean slaves!” Klowny said. “Sorry, mom and dad, but you’re going to have to do it without me!”
The parents were shocked. “But why?” King asked.
“Because korporations are no fun!” the son said. “Office-slaves may need entertaining, but I’m not the klown for the job.” So saying, he rushed off to his room. Ten minutes later he kame back out with a bandanna-wrapped bundle on the end of a big stick. “It’s time for me to hit the road. There’s a world of fun out there, and I’m gonna get me a slice!” A moment later a door slam echoed through the apartment.
Klowny tried his best to get a good old-fashioned klown job, but there just weren’t any left.
He made balloon animals for the kids in restaurants and did a few kommercials for small-town TV stations, but that wasn’t enough to make a living.
A klown has to eat, so eventually he was reduced to doing klown-porn. He told himself it was just a giggle, all in fun. He started out with a bit-part in Honk If You’re Horny. Within just three months, he had starring roles in Rubber Chicken Mama and Face In Your Pie. Pretty soon he got kaught up in the lifestyle: nonstop parties, orgies, and eventually, designer klown drugs–Jollies and Fi-Fi’s and Happy Dust. And Happy Dust made Klowny very happy indeed.
The problem was, too much Dust kan take the bounce out of a klown’s pogo stick. And the stuff was expensive. With no work in sight, Klowny decided to relieve PharaohPlex of some of its kash–surely a multinational konglomerate wouldn’t miss a few bucks!
PharaohPlex owned a chain of shopping centers kalled Red C Superstores. Klowny recruited a dozen tough kids from an inner-city playground and led them into the store, laughing and playing. The klerks gave him strange looks, but what kould they do? Who kan protest a klown showing a bunch of poor kids a good time? Soon all the shoppers were laughing at Klowny’s antics. Even the security guards were kracking up–until the kids took the bricks from their backpacks and kracked up the jewelry displays.
Klowny tossed smoke bombs at the guards and then snatched up the shiniest goodies in the broken displays. The kids did some snatching, too, and soon the klown and his kohorts were scurrying out the front doors, still laughing their asses off.
In time, the kids grew older and Klowny’s krimes grew bolder.
And always, they were aimed at the PharaohPlex family of stores, factories, research labs and kredit unions.
Along the way, a few guards here and there had to die. Some police officers, too. But Klowny had developed a philosophy: if you’re not making the world a fun place, then you deserve to die. Or, to put it simply–kill the killjoys!
His posse eventually decided to wear klown klothes just like their leader, and each took on a new komic persona. His most dedicated followers were Rat-Butt, who wore whiskers and a scaly tail in addition to his tramp-klown klothes, and Kitty-Boo, who looked like a kross between a tabby and a harlequin. The two of them had the kraziest fights! Klowny was proud of his new family of kartoon kut-ups, so he introduced them to the delicious mysteries of Happy Dust.
Klowny found he had a flair for inventing. So, he developed a deadly arsenal of klown krime weapons and krazy kontraptions: exploding balloon animals...kream pies made with flesh-eating bacteria...even pogo sticks with flame-throwers and machine guns mounted on the handles.
Of kourse, all those inventions took a back seat to the greatest wonder of them all. Once, after a few fine hits of Happy Dust, Klowny prayed to the oldest Klown of all, whose nose was as red as the pit of Hell. The Great Klown was pleased with His disciple’s progress, so He granted Klowny a vision, showing him how to tweak a few scientific principles here and there.
That was the day Klowny and his kohorts kombined three komputers, a microwave oven, some quartz krystals and a shrimpy little kar to kreate a scientific marvel–the Klownmobile.
The doors of this rainbow-striped kompact opened into a larger, self-kontained pocket of the space/time kontinuum, so it seated thirteen klowns easily. Once everyone was inside, Klowny would hit the IMPLODE button to make the outside of the Klownmobile become as wee as a toy-kar, while the inside stayed the same komfortable size.
“Klowny, this kar is the tom-kat’s testicles,” said Kitty-Boo. “So what are we gonna steal first with it? The Mona Lisa? Gold from Fort Knox? The treasures of the Vatican?”
“Let’s steal cheese!” Rat-Butt said. “We’re fresh out! I just finished off the last of the Limburger!”
Irritated, the kat klown gave Rat-Butt a scratch across his long bent nose. The rodent retaliated by firing a fetid belch at the feline felon, kausing him to faint.
“My friends,” Klowny said, “believe it or not, we are going to steal kriminals!”
From that point on, Klowny would allow himself to be arrested and incarcerated every few months. Kriminals, after all, were just happy folks who had too much fun for other people’s liking. With each visit to the pen, Klowny would build a power base of devoted followers. Then, Rat-Butt or Kitty-Boo would drive the shrunken Klownmobile into the prison yard–enlarge it just long enough to let Klowny hop in, along with whatever kriminals he’d taken a liking to–and then shrink back down and drive off.
Klowny was kollecting the best of the worst–master thieves, exotic perverts, serial killers and a wild assortment of lunatics and human oddities. The growing posse took over a forgotten trailer kourt in a valley a few miles from a mountain range. There they began building lopsided, gaudy homes. In their new kommunity, they worshipped the power and glory that was the Great Klown. That was the beginning of KlownTown and the Church of the Red Rubber Nose.
Growing in rural seclusion, KlownTown eventually became more like a city. The enormous Church of the Red Rubber Nose towered over all of the town’s multi-kolored, ramshackle buildings. The krazy kathedral was made of dozens of trailers piled and welded together into a mass roughly shaped like the human figure. This the builders had painted black; they’d then draped the figure in sheets of tin, bent, kurled and painted to resemble a frilly-kollared shirt and baggy pants.
The pleasure-seeking excesses of the Townies rivalled those of Kaligula and De Sade. Their favorite diversion was abducting substitute teachers–killjoys like that would not be missed. The Townies built huge mazes out of boards studded with rusty nails and barbed wire. They would then throw the teachers into the mazes and release the robotic rubber chickens, which had razorblade beaks and klaws.
The Townies folowed that by throwing an all-afternoon barbecue, roasting the chunks and shreds left by the robo-chickens.
It took the authorities years to locate KlownTown. Once they found it, what did they do to dismantle the krime kommunity…?
Nothing.
Kounty government kowered in the shadows.
State government pocketed bribes and looked the other way.
National government mired the issue in red tape. The town was also inhabited by klown strippers and hookers, many of whom had children. They kouldn’t just storm in with bazookas and army tanks. Especially since the klowns also had bazookas and army tanks.
Only one force on Earth was big enough to deal with KlownTown.
That force was PharaohPlex.
Klowny looked up at a pair of golden PharaohPlex helicopters whirling above KlownTown.
“Well, well, well,” Klowny said. “Mosquito season already! Get out the swatters, boys!”
Ratt-Butt and Kitty-Boo loaded two huge kannons and fired. Thick signposts with flags that said BANG!!! poked out of the cylinders. Then the klowns pressed little red buttons on the kannons and the signposts shot like rockets into the air, each spearing a helicopter and exploding–for the hollow posts were filled with nitroglycerin.
A tiny serial killer named Gned the Gnat ran up to Klowny. “Boss!” he kried, “some PharaohPlex bulldozers are heading this way!”
“Oh, we’ve got enough dynamite to take kare of a few measly bulldozers,” the top klown said.
“Would you kall two-hundred ‘a few’?” Gned said.
“Great sizzling sausages!” Klowny kried. “Time to break out the Klown Kurses!”
“Not the Klown Kurses…” Gned whispered in awe.
“You bet your boner! It’s time to open a jumbo-sized kan of whoop-tooshy on those korporate kreeps!” Klowny gestured for Rat-Butt and Kitty-Boo to follow him, and the three key klowns headed for the kathedral.
Around the sides of the Church of the Red Rubber Nose stood ten black storage sheds. Klowny took a big black key out of his vest pocket and opened the padlock on one of the doors.
Venomous South American tree-frogs, purple and yellow and orange and red, kame hopping out of the first shed. Klowny pointed in the direction of the bulldozers. “Go get ‘em, my pretties!” he screamed, and the kritters went hopping off. As he opened the rest of the sheds, he sang a little song:
“Froggies hop and batsies fly–dozer drivers soon will die!
Boils from wasps and bites from rats,
scratches from some beastly kats!
Monkeys shooting squirt-guns filled
with blood from stiffs a plague has killed!
On my foes shall locusts gnaw!
Klowny starts to laugh–guffaw!
Here a robot that shows scorn
to any driver who’s first-born:
those poor jerks will find their butts
sliced up into some fresh kold-kuts.
Ravens love to peck out eyes–so try some darkness on for size!”
Klowny was so happy, he skipped behind the kathedral to his private shit-shed, a bright-orange outhouse, to take a kongratulatory dump. Then he and his two klown korporals klimbed the stairs to the top of the kathedral and watched from a high window as the Klown Kurses descended upon the bulldozers. The other citizens of KlownTown klimbed on top of their dwellings to observe the karnage, too.
Gned the Gnat joined Klowny on the kathedral observation deck. “We’ve kaptured one of the drivers. He said that PharaohPlex is building a new city–along with a factory and a shopping center–at the base of Mt. Rumba, about thirty miles from here.”
Klowny nodded. “Fetch the pogo-umbr
ellas, the seltzer bottles and some explosives. It’s klear we’ve won this battle–those drivers don’t stand a chance. Now it’s time for some of us to pay a little visit to their konstruction site.”
A few minutes later, Klowny and his original dirty dozen were gathered by the enormous kannons. The klowns were loaded into the big guns and fired toward the konstruction area. Once they were airborne, they pulled out the seltzer bottles and started spritzing. The seltzer was a special high-power mix, and it sent them flying on for miles. When they were over the building site, they dropped their bottles and opened the pogo-umbrellas. They all settled gently to the ground, right in front of a brand-new Red C Superstore.
Klowny smiled. “Okay, let’s plant the explosives,” he said, klosing his umbrella. The others also klosed theirs. He happened to glance up toward Mt. Rumba. Then something kaught his eye. “Hey, what’s that burning way up there…?”
“First things first, Boss!” Rat-Butt said. “Look over by that factory–security guards are heading this way!”
Klowny ignored him and stared up at the swirl of flames high up on the mountain. So red–as red as his Master’s nose...“We’re gonna check out that fire, boys–but this krappy store is in the way!” He raised his pogo-umbrella. “By the Power of the Great Klown, I kommand this Red C to part and allow us passage!”
The Earth shook and thundered, toppling klowns and security guards alike. Only Klowny remained standing, holding his arms out wide. With a resounding krack! the huge building split down the middle, and the two halves each slid to the side. “On your sticks, boys! It’s time to roll!”
The klowns quickly unfolded the handles and footpedals of their pogo-umbrellas. They then began to hop along on their klown kontraptions right through the split Red C toward Mt. Rumba.
A moment later, the security guards were back on their feet, chasing them. By that time, Klowny and his posse were on the other side of the broken building.