Bobo the Divine Clown

He can’t take the makeup off.

Not that he hasn’t tried. But at a certain point, the face stops being something you wear and starts being something you are.

Bobo doesn’t mind anymore. There are worse things to be stuck as.

Like a banker. Or a realist.

DINER – AFTERNOON

The kind of place with cracked red booths and a waitress named Dottie who’s been there since the Eisenhower administration. Grease in the air. Jazz on the radio. And now, a clown.

BOBO waddles through the narrow aisle between tables, feet flopping like dead fish in size 28 shoes. He’s peeling a banana slowly, reverently, like he’s unlocking a sacred scroll. His gaze sinks into its pale crescent, lips parted as if it’s whispering something.

BOBO (softly):

“…Oh. Oh, you clever little moon.”

He tucks the banana into his coat like evidence, then spins suddenly on one heel and squirts a jet of water from his daisy lapel directly into a man’s face mid-bite of a tuna melt.

CUSTOMER (spitting):

“Jesus! What the hell, man?”

BOBO (giggling):

“Forgive me, my child. You had mayo in your aura.”

He continues his procession. Another squirt—pfffft!—into the eyes of a teenager on her phone. She yelps, phone flies, lands in a ketchup puddle.

TEENAGER:

“You psycho freak!”

BOBO (bowing deeply):

“Reality is but a soup, dear. I am merely the ladle.”

The manager storms out from behind the counter.

MANAGER:

“Okay, that’s it, Bobo. OUT. This is the third time this week—”

BOBO:

“Fourth. The third time I left of my own volition. This time, I must be cast out.”

(He throws glitter into the air like a smoke bomb. It immediately settles everywhere, useless and beautiful.)

NARRATOR :

Bobo was frequently labeled a “disturber of the peace.”

But Bobo never believed in peace.

To him, “peace” was just the name we gave to the quiet between screams. A fragile silence padded with small lies-

An Illusion.

He wasn’t disturbing peace. He was disturbing the dream. He was revealing the noise beneath it.

And dreams, after all, are meant to be woken from.

SUBURBAN STREET – DUSK

A soft drizzle slicks the pavement. A kid in a yellow poncho chases a paper boat down the gutter. It slips into a storm drain and vanishes.

He crouches. Peers in.

From the darkness:

a red balloon floats up.

And behind it, a painted face—white, grinning, eyes too still.

DRAIN CLOWN:

“Hi there. Want your boat back?”

The kid hesitates.

Then: SQUEEEAK—POP—TWIST.

A sudden noise behind them. The kid turns.

Bobo is there. Silhouetted in a halo of rain and streetlight. He’s making a balloon animal, fast, furious, showman-style. A dragon? A frog? A dragonfrog?

He kneels beside the child and whispers.

BOBO:

“His balloon only floats down. Mine takes you up.”

He hands the kid the balloon, who stares at it in awe, then walks away with Bobo—never looking back.

In the drain, the other clown glares.

Eyes wide. Face twitching. Balloon sinking.

DRAIN CLOWN:

“What the hell was that?”

Bobo stops. Kneels. Leans toward the storm drain. Quiet. Steady.

Narrator:

For the first time in all his centuries, the thing in the drain felt something it couldn’t name. It wasn’t anger. Wasn’t hunger. It was—

confusion.

And fear.

Bobo just smiles, wide and unblinking.

BOBO (softly):

“There’s a new clown in town, sweetheart.”

CITY PARK – LATE AFTERNOON

The park is half-forgotten. A patch of grass choked by weeds, ringed by pigeons and chain-link fence. A busted fountain wheezes rust-colored water into a cracked basin. Sunlight leaks through smog.

A handful of souls linger: a man sleeping on a bench, one shoe on and one tucked under his arm like a pet, a mother feeding her kid beige snacks, a teen scrolling aimlessly.

Then, like a glitch in the landscape—

BOBO appears.

Waddling from behind a porta-potty like he’d been conjured there. Poncho, speedo, and a monocle. Shoes that slap the pavement like wet towels. His face is painted, not joyfully—but like joy survived the war and came back with PTSD.

He drags a cracked milk crate behind him, flips it over, and steps up. No one looks, but the air shifts. The park becomes a stage no one agreed to enter.

Clears his throat.

Unrolls a balloon with the care of someone handling a raw nerve.

And then:

“Observe—Creation.”

(He lifts a long pink balloon to the sky like it’s sacred.)

“This one’s the serpent of longing. Or maybe a noodle. Hard to say this far from Eden.”

(Twists. Squeaks. He reveals a lopsided balloon poodle.)

“And now… Behold. Man. Misshapen, misguided, and convinced it’s all going according to plan.”

(He tosses the balloon animal at a teenager. The kid flinches.)

“Don’t get attached. He bites.”

“Here’s what the Bible left out, kids: On the eighth day, God didn’t rest. He put on suspenders, slipped on a banana peel, and wept at the sound of the laugh track in His head. You think I’m a clown? So was He. You think I’m crazy? He made platypuses. Get real.”

(He starts inflating another balloon—this one red and long like a tongue.)

“I am Bobo, Bringer of the Final Giggle. Prophet of the Divine Gag. I have seen the end. It’s not fire. Not ice. It’s a pie to the face and nobody claps."

As the sun sinks and a balloon poodle lies deflated at some kid’s feet, Bobo steps down from the milk crate. A breeze picks up. Glitter clings to the damp sidewalk like dandruff from a dream.

He walks off without ceremony, dragging the crate behind him. The park doesn’t notice he’s gone. But the quiet feels different now. Like something sacred got laughed at, and somehow that made it real.

As he leaves the park, he passes a shallow stream winding through the cracked sidewalk.

Something in it catches his eye—

tiny flecks of red, blue, white. Spinning slowly in the current. Like confetti trying to forget what it celebrated.

He crouches.

Watches them drift.

Reaches up.

Fingers graze his cheek.

Paint.

Flaking off in soft dust.

His lips twitch. A little seizure. A smile trying to rise but not yet trusted.

He lowers his hand into the stream.

Swirls the water. Watches the colors spread, then fade.

Then he does something strange.

He takes out the banana. The one from earlier. Peels it. Carefully.

And eats the whole thing in silence.

Even the peel.