The Clown: The Deadly Grins
- Ian Chapman
- Jul 31
- 5 min read
With the huge success of my first novel "The Lone Dining Society: A three volume shovel", I was inspired to already start work on the next book. And I thought as a special treat to myself I would read the first part to you. So I made a little video.
Still, it is quite possible that you don't understand my English with it's tinges of Black Country and bad pronunciation hindering comprehension. So I've, at great pleasure to myself, typed out my handwritten scrawls for you to read.
I wrote the last book in around four months (but I was really writing like a man possessed), so, perhaps we may be looking at six months for this one? let's see.
The Clown: The Deadly Grins
Chapter One
Franz and The Clown sat on a small bench on a quiet street lined with trees. The leaves rustled gently in the breeze. A breeze that the pair were grateful for. In some ways they were also grateful that they drank from bottles and not glasses, where the larger opening would have invited drops of beaded sweat to fall and give an uninvited flavour to their cold and well deserved beers.
They watched the slow traffic of pedestrians flow along the pavement. A wasp arrived to irritate the pair and after The Clown irritably batted away their uninvited guest, he happened to look up just in time to see the most beautiful woman he had ever seen outside of the freak show acts at his current circus home. She wore a thin silk-like dress that hugged in all the best places. Unfortunately a male of the species accompanied and he didn’t look like a platonic relation.
The woman glanced at The Clown, who automatically smiled, his exaggerated and hideous lipstick make-up accentuating his, not quite ugly, but definitely not pretty or handsome smile.
The girl, being of a kind and generous disposition returned the smile, but there was a hint of pity woven into it, not in a cruel way, just perhaps more of an, 'Oh, poor thing!' or the way one might smile at a small chocolate smeared child, or at a pathetic looking wolf, bastardised out of all recognition from its ancestors into a small, almost hairless, thin, shivering, pug nosed entity.
'She's out of your league.' rasped Franz. The Clown said nothing. More time passed and a few sips were taken of their perspiration free beer, that had been cold, but was slowly warming.
'You did good today kid.' Franz continued, in a tone that retained a coolness and
distance. He took another swig and ah'd in pleasured relief, before following up with, 'There's another job.'
There was a pause for an extended while: Franz waited, because he had learnt to give The Clown space and not rush, not pressure. He knew The Clown was a diamond in the rough, that if played well, like one did as one played the opponent across the table in an unpredictable poker match, great things could be achieved. He knew he couldn't intimidate this unusual boy into submitting to his commanding will, as he often did with his other "employees". He couldn't intimidate, threaten or indeed beat seven shades of bruises out of this boy to achieve his desires; it just didn't work like with the others.
No, The Clown was special and needed to be treated accordingly.
The Clown paused because that was his way. He knew no other. He never rushed into anything, especially acknowledgements. He'd long ago learned his lesson on that score.
Franz had also learnt his lesson in his early interactions with the boy sitting very still beside him, in his bright, highly patterned, loose fitting clothes that had a touch of the pyjama about them, his abnormally long red leather shoes, still as the dead, and it was not a wig on his head, even if it looked the part, a mass of unruly dark curls that followed no rules of barberly conduct. He'd made the mistake in his first interaction of not being patient in waiting for an answer from the boy and had taken it as insolence and
had accordingly taken the liberty of delivering a hard clip to the boy's mop head. He inwardly winced at the memory of the pain he had endured after The Clown had reacted, Franz rolling around on the floor in agony, begging his assailant to stop. No, he'd learnt his lesson: he would wait.
Eventually as all that remained in Franz's dark brown glass bottle were the dregs of warm beer, The Clown slowly nodded his head.
'Great.' Franz said, 'I'll send you the details later. Right, I gotta get going. See you soon kid.' and Franz stood, patting the boy on the shoulder. The Clown looked up at Franz with an almost neutral expression, tinted with a hint of sadness, as always; it was his default facial pose.
Franz regarded The Clown's face, paled with make-up and scarred across the mouth with red lipstick, the only thing missing was a round red nose. Then he turned and left, stalking down the street inconspicuously.
The Clown watched him go before turning his head forward again to look at nothing in particular.
He was known to everyone as The Clown, or simply "boy", but he did indeed have a name, a name that nobody ever used. It was Reginald Oswald Ducksworth II, though he had very quickly self-shortened it to "Reg": pronounced "Redge".
He thought briefly about his father and then thought better of it and turned his imagination over to a small robin red breast, bleeding crimson drops onto virginal, diamanted, freshly fallen snow; his mouth ends curled slightly at the image.
He finished his warm beer and studied the label on the bottle: it had images of barley and a blocky graphic of a medieval knight, along with some printed writing.
Picking up the second bottle, he made his way down the street, pausing to stand the bottles next to a refuse bin; to be cashed in by some homeless collector.
As Reg continued, he came across a small bawling child, his mother, back to Reg, was trying to console her son. The child looked to him as he approached, and Reg made a face, just for a moment as he passed by.
The small child's tears evaporated instantly in the Summer heat and he fell to giggling which then exploded into laughter, completely bewildering his mother, who looked up at The Clown diminishing down the street.
Luckily for the small child, Reg had only used a tiny fraction of his talent, just to make the boy feel better. Reg had learned at an early age, and at great cost, that his "super-power" had to be controlled. After all, he wasn't a monster.
But in contrast to his distant past, here he had done a good turn and he smiled pleasantly all the way home to his circus.
Comments