The Guild of Fallen Clowns (10 page)

“I think we’re trapped, T-Pot,” said one of
the boys to their leader.

T-Pot pounded his fist on one of the
mirrored panels. The other four joined in and started pounding
fists on the remaining panels in the closed space.

Their efforts were fruitless and the sound
became deafening.

“STOP! Fucking stop hitting the fucking
walls!” T-Pot yelled, his hands covering his ears.

The group finally stopped pounding and
returned their focus to their leader.

“What the fuck,” was the only thing T-Pot
could say. He continued to study the room. He bent down to the
floor and felt around the tracks, hoping to find a way to loosen a
panel. The other boys started mumbling to each other. With his head
close to the floor, the ringleader heard something. He raised his
hand and shushed the others in an attempt to make sense of the
sound. With his ear to the mirror he heard, “Ching ching.”

“Did you hear that?” he said.

The others looked at each other before
simultaneously shrugging and mumbling words like no, nope, and I
didn’t hear anything, T-Pot.

He shushed them again. “Ching Ching.” The
sound was a little louder this time.

“Did you hear it that time? You had to
fucking hear it that time.”

Again, the group turned to each other. In
unison, they nodded and agreed to hear the sound.

“Ching Ching,” the sound came again, louder
than before. The leader stood. His followers got excited as each
cheerfully yelled out that they definitely heard the bells.

“CHING CHING.” Now it sounded like the bells
were in the space with them. They all continued scanning the
mirrors for the source of the chinging bells. Then, from the back
of the corridor, a cartoonish voice called out, “Watch out,
boys!”

They all turned to look. In the mirrored
panel on the rear door they saw a funny-looking clown riding a
tricycle. It appeared to be getting closer. With a few more thumb
pulls on the bell attached to the handlebar, the clown hollered
out, “Coming through!” The image moved from the door mirror to the
left wall. It continued to rush from panel to panel through the
room. The boys all stepped back to the opposite wall as the clown
giggled his way past, chiming his bells the entire way.

At the front of the corridor, the image
slipped from the sidewall into the mirror blocking their path. The
sounds, along with the image of the tricycle-riding clown, faded
into the depth of the mirror.

“What the hell was that?” said one of the
boys.

“It was a fucking clown. I hate fucking
clowns!” T-Pot exclaimed.

This drew a snicker from one of the
adolescent boys.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?”

The boy tried to hide his amusement, but
whatever tickled his funny bone wouldn’t allow it. He covered his
grin with his hand and lowered his head.

T-Pot saw this as an opportunity to
strengthen his rank among his peers. He shoved the kid into the
wall and commanded him to tell him what was so funny.

As the boy still struggled to stop laughing,
T-Pot’s hand pushed harder into the boy’s chest, pinning him
against the wall. He tried to get free by telling T-Pot nothing was
making him laugh. This wasn’t good enough for his marionette
master, who snarled as he gripped tighter.

“You better fucking tell me what was so
funny or I’ll fucking kill you right here. Is that what you want?
Huh?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll tell you. But you have to
promise not to hit me.”

“I’m not promising anything. Tell me now or
I swear I’ll—”

“Okay!” the boy said as he raised his hands
in surrender. He chuckled again and said, “You said that you
hate—fucking—clowns.” Hearing it again out loud, he snorted in an
attempt to hold back his amusement.

“Yea, so, I do. I fucking hate clowns.”

“No, no. That’s not what you said,” the
pinned boy said. “You said you hate
fucking
clowns. Like you
hate to
fuck
clowns.”

Hearing this, the rest of the boys finally
caught on. It started with a low rumble of somewhat contained
sounds of amusement. Before long, the bunch was laughing
hysterically. Their leader let go of his grip and tried in vain to
stare the others into submission. Mixed in their laughter, the
parroted words “fucking clowns” whispered throughout the group. As
their laughter began to subside, the panel at the end of the room
opened.

“Are you fuckers done fucking around yet?”
T-Pot asked. He stood, blocking the opening with an open knife held
at his side, acting as a warning to all who dare defy him. The
sight of the knife instantly sobered the boys. Their laughter
halted and the group fell in line to blindly follow T-Pot.

“I thought so. Now, whoever wants to get out
of this hallway and follow me out of this fucking place has to
repeat after me.”

They eagerly listened to his words.

“I hate—no, I fucking hate clowns!” he
said

They looked to each other for someone to
lead their chant. All at once, they said it.

“I fucking hate clowns.”

“Good. Now that we’re all on the same page,
we can get the fuck out of here before that fucking clown shows up
again.”

T-Pot turned to lead them deeper. With their
psychopath leader out of range, one boy whispered to the two
closest to him, “He said it again. He said fucking clown.” All
three snickered as they followed T-Pot to the next room.

T-Pot turned the corner into a large round
room with a small wooden chair at the center. His gang followed one
by one to the center of the room. T-Pot stopped next to the chair;
each boy stopped one at a time beside him until all five were lined
up facing the curved wall of mirrored panels.

“Where are our reflections?” T-Pot said.

“Maybe the wall is just glass,” another
replied.

As they stared into the glass, T-Pot saw the
chair beside him reflected in the mirrors. He kicked the chair and
it tumbled to the side of the room; its reflection moved with
it.

“It’s not just glass!” T-Pot shouted.

The five boys stared at the mirrors for
several seconds before one offered an explanation. “Maybe we’re
vampires.” His suggestion prompted another boy to feel the sides of
his own neck for bites. The others followed his lead as they felt
their own necks and examined each other for telltale evidence of
vampire feed marks.

T-Pot remained focused on the
reflection-less mirrors when the boy beside him leaned in like a
grooming monkey friend to examine his neck.

“Get the fuck off me, you ape!” he yelled,
putting an abrupt end to the group’s search for fang marks.

T-Pot returned his focus to the mirrors. His
posse did the same. As they stared into the emptiness, circus music
started playing and images began to appear. The images started as
swirling clouds of white smoke growing from the floor. Human shapes
grew from the smoke, one in front of each boy. The forms continued
to sharpen and within seconds, the smoke dissipated, leaving five
peculiar-looking clowns standing before them. Upon closer
examination, the figures appeared to be creepy clown caricatures of
each boy in the room. T-Pot’s clown was a midget with a Hitler
mustache, wearing a bicorn hat.

“Aw fuck! More clowns. I thought this was
supposed to be a haunted fucking labyrinth. Clowns aren’t scary and
this is just a big room of fucking mirrors. Where’s the fucking
labyrinth? And what the fuck are you?” T-Pot said as he pointed
down at his clown doppelganger.

The clown across from him matched his
movements and pointed back at T-Pot.

T-Pot pulled back his finger. His clown also
withdrew. Upon seeing this, the other boys started testing their
own clown reflections. They started slow by moving their hands and
arms. Their clowns did the same. With each motion accurately
mimicked, they tried harder to stump the clowns. They moved faster.
They jumped, twisted in circles, and made funny faces. One boy
tried hiding behind another. When he peeked around him to see if it
worked, he saw his creepy clown reflection peeking back from behind
the clown version of his buddy. It laughed at the boy’s curious
attempt at deception. The clown’s laugh broke the copycat behavior
for all but T-Pot’s pint-sized dictatorial clown. While the five
boys stood still, their clowns scattered to other mirrors around
the room, leaving unaltered reflections of the boys in their
place.

Five equidistant and unique doors appeared,
one beside each clown. One was bright yellow with a puffy purple
trim. It spanned to the ceiling and had a tiny window at the top,
too high for a person of normal height to peer through.

Another was shaped as an outline of a rotund
clown. Multicolored polka dots randomly floated across its
surface.

The third door wasn’t a door at all. It was
just an oversized doorknob in the mirror with a disturbingly happy,
animated clown face smiling and winking back at them.

The fourth door was unusual in comparison to
the others because it wasn’t brightly colored or oddly shaped. It
looked like a door you’d find on a typical house. What made it
different was the fact that it hung upside down from the ceiling.
In order to walk through it, the room would have to be flipped.

While those four doors were bizarre, to say
the least, it was the fifth door that captured T-Pot’s attention.
It was a loose, mirrored panel in the room. With a flick from the
clown’s hand, the panel spun on its pivot. Reflected images from
inside the room alternated with flickering reflections of people
standing in line outside the Labyrinth. It was their way out.

“Hey, guys,” T-Pot said. The boys looked at
him and followed his raised eyebrow and tilted head toward the
exit.

“On three, we get the fuck outta here,” he
said.

“But this is just starting to get fun,
T-Pot. Can’t we stay a little longer?” a boy pleaded. The others
nodded in agreement. Their combined resistance to his command
triggered the timer of an inevitable T-Pot explosion. Veins in his
neck and forehead throbbed, flushing his head and ears red with
blood. His midget clown moved to replace his reflection. Its face
also turned bright red as the pressure intensified to the point
where steam hissed from the mocking clown’s ears.

“Do you fuckheads remember what you said
before we came into this room?” T-Pot barked through gritted teeth.
“You all said you hate fucking clowns. Did you forget already?
Huh?” He moved into his drill sergeant position in front of the
line of lemmings, facing away from the clown mimicking his every
move from behind.

“But you told us to say that, Bobby—uh,
T-Pot.”

“I don’t fucking care what I told you to
say. You said it, and now we all hate these
fucking
clowns
.”

In the mirrors, T-Pot’s Hitler clown bent
over as another clown hobbled up behind and started humping him.
With each hump, the midget Hitler clown would raise his hand in a
heil Hitler salute.

Like a Mentos in a soda bottle, all four
boys exploded in laughter. The two clowns quickly returned to their
positions before T-Pot could discover what amused them. He spun to
look behind him. His clown was looking behind his own back. T-Pot
faced the boys again and demanded to know what they were laughing
about. The two clowns got together again. This time, they faced
T-Pot’s back, unzipped their clown pants, and pulled out three-foot
long balloons. The balloons flowed through the mirrors and the
clowns started thrusting them to within inches of T-Pot’s ass.

Two of the boys fell to the floor with
sidesplitting laughter while the others desperately tried to
contain their own amusement by covering their mouths and looking
away from the display.

T-Pot was infuriated. He clenched his fists
and grunted; his head snapped upward. From the perspective of his
crew, it appeared that he just climaxed from the double doggy style
clown shagging. That sent the two standing boys to the floor with
the other two where they rolled into each other in hysterics as
they wiped tears from their eyes.

T-Pot pulled the knife from his pocket and
went from kid to kid, waving it inches from their tear-soaked faces
and threatening to cut each of them. The boys did their best to
stop laughing, but their frenzy was too powerful. The best they
could manage was to shield their eyes from the clowns in an attempt
to remove the source of their hysterical high. It helped, but they
quickly discovered that the clowns were only half the problem. They
couldn’t look at T-Pot without seeing the image of the clowns
reaming him from behind with balloon stiffies.

“C’mon guys.” His threats didn’t work, so
T-Pot resorted to pleading. “Let’s get out of here. I promise not
to do anything if we leave now.”

The clowns in the mirrors refrained from
further provocation, allowing the boys to regain their composure.
One by one, they shook off lingering effects of the clowning as
they stood in line and avoided looking at each other.

“Okay, good, now let’s get the fuck outta
here,” T-Pot said as he led his friends toward the spinning door.
Five steps later, T-Pot stood in front of the door and the clown
stepped aside.

T-Pot reached to stop the spinning panel.
His hand touched the mirror but the spinning continued. The
spinning and view of the crowd outside were an illusion—a
projection inside the motionless mirror. The clown laughed and
jumped into the spinning projection. His image flickered with the
crowd, appearing as though he were standing outside amongst them.
With his arm over the shoulder of a waiting guest, he waved back at
T-Pot.

“This is wack!” T-Pot said.

The volume of the circus music lowered and a
voice came over the speakers.

“Welcome to the Haunted Labyrinth of
Mirrors, home of—
The Guild of Fallen Clowns
.”