Clown Show

Yo-yo stared at the wall in front of him, inspecting each speck of brick laid decades ago by some long-dead brick master. How proud must that guy have felt, finishing a wall with his bare hands, spinning concrete like it was art, smoothing every last glob with precision?

And now here Yo-yo was—hungover, wearing piss-soaked drawers, half-assed face paint melting in the heat, sitting in a beat-up 2005 Ford Taurus with a different-colored fender and a side mirror held on with Scotch tape.

He had a college degree. He could’ve been on the ground floor of computer science. So why was he here? Why did—

“Hey mister, are you gonna make me my alligator?” a seven-year-old blinked up at him, confused as to why the clown was locked in an existential stare-down with a brick wall.

Yo-yo snapped out of it. “Oh absolutely. Coming right up.”

“A fucking alligator?” he muttered under his breath, digging through his bag of latex balloons. He found green and yellow, sure, but physically and mentally, Yo-yo was not equipped to produce a balloon alligator today. What did he look like—a magician? A zookeeper?

He glanced at the kid. “Yo-yo here thinks an alligator doesn’t match your personality. How about a mouse instead?” He started twisting. “To reflect the little rat you are. Haha.”

The laugh barely cleared his throat.

“But I wanted an alligator.” The kid’s face began to crumple. Tears welled up in his big doe eyes.

Jesus. Why did Yo-yo ever agree to work at kids' parties?

He called an audible, fast. Started twisting a new balloon. “Look at this—WOAH! A SWORD!” He sliced the air dramatically, then dragged it across his own throat, tongue lolling out like a dead man. The kid gave a reluctant giggle.

“Take this sword and go stab your mom. Your friend. Go full Jeffrey Dahmer.” He handed it to the kid.

Still not happy.

Then the dad walked over.

“What’s going on over here, buddy? You like our pal Yo-yo?” Oh no. Oh no no no. The grandfather was Louie the Barber.

Louie the Barber—the neighborhood bookie Yo-yo owed thousands to, because he couldn't stop betting on the Cleveland Browns. No way they’d go 0-16. Until they did.

“I want an alligator, and he won’t make me one,” the kid pouted.

Then, like some cursed Greek tragedy, the kid took his balloon sword and stabbed his dad square in the beer gut.

Louie looked down, unfazed. Gave the old the fucks wrong with you eyes to the kid. Then he looked up at Yo-yo, like a man about to insert that balloon sword into a very different orifice.

“No?” Louie said, slowly. “He doesn’t want to make you an alligator?”

His voice was calm. His eyes were... not.

“What’s the matter with you? Make the kid a fucking alligator.”

Yo-yo stared back, forced a smile. His hands were already moving.

Time to make an alligator.

***

Yo-yo was shambling down the sidewalk after an all-night bender at Pat’s Pub. His clown face paint clung to his skin like a dying possum—just barely hanging on. His shirt was torn open from a brawl with the same barfly he’d fought five times before. They had a routine now. Punch, spill beer, apologize, repeat.

He was walking because, during the scuffle, his car keys had launched out of his pocket and straight into a sewer grate like they were ashamed of him.

The weather was nice, he told himself. Good day to walk off a hangover. Real good day to self-reflect. Real good day to—

A Lincoln rolled up beside him, smooth and slow, like a predator in loafers. Louie the Barber was behind the wheel.

“Harvey, get in the car. I gotta talk to you.”

Harvey. Only Louie and his mother called him that. Everyone else knew him as Yo-yo.

He kept walking, pretending the voice wasn't aimed at him. Maybe if he just didn’t acknowledge the danger, it wouldn’t exist.

“Hey. What are you, fucking deaf? Get in the car.”

Still walking. Eyes forward. Deep breath.

“What the fuck is the matter with—”

Yo-yo took off sprinting.

Well… sprinting might be generous. It was more like a lurchy power-walk with one dragging foot, like Frankenstein had entered a 5K.

His face contorted like he was pushing mile 12. In reality, he'd covered maybe 300 feet.

The chase was on, sort of.

He whipped into an alley and immediately regretted it. Dead end. Concrete, chain-link, and despair.

He turned just in time to see Louie’s Lincoln creeping up behind him—ten miles an hour, max. It was the slowest car chase in recorded history.

Yo-yo’s lungs were pleading for mercy. His knees were holding a union meeting to go on strike.

To his left: a fence. Salvation.

He lunged for it, grabbed for the top… and missed completely. His hands slapped uselessly against the metal. He ricocheted off the gate, bounced onto Louie’s hood, and slid onto the pavement like a clown pancake.

The pain was immediate. Radiating. Existential. It hurt worse than his hangover and his life choices combined.

Louie stepped out of the car, staring at him like he’d just witnessed a man try to wrestle gravity—and lose.

“Harvey, are you fucking crazy?”

“I’m eighty years old. I’ve got a bad back, I can’t even make it to the shitter half the time. Your debts are low on my list of people to get rid of.” Louie leaned against Lincoln, catching his breath from old age. “I’ve known you since you were up to my waist—God rest your father’s soul. Be real.”

Louie chuckled to himself as Yo-yo lay sprawled on the pavement, still trying to remember what part of his body hurt the most.

He wasn’t wrong. Yo-yo used to tag along with his dad to Louie’s barber shop. Back then, his old man was a sharper gambler—he’d leave with paper bags full of cash, sometimes slipping Yo-yo a twenty and telling him to go buy “something stupid.” Yo-yo was good at that.

Not quite the same luck in adulthood.

“But I am here about your debts,” Louie said, reaching down to help him up.

Yo-yo hesitated, then took his hand.

“I need you to work at my grandson's birthday party,” Louie continued. “I’ll pay you a hundred over your rate and take it off your tab.”

Yo-yo didn’t need to think about it long. This wasn’t a negotiation. This was a proposition wrapped in a threat, tucked neatly inside a velvet glove.

He nodded—but then, for some reason, an absolutely stupid thought wiggled its way into his brain and made itself comfortable.

No. No, he shouldn’t say it.

But he did anyway.

“…Can I get a tip?”

The words stumbled out like drunks at last call. He immediately regretted them.

Louie blinked. His sunglasses slid just far enough down his nose to reveal the full arch of his eyebrows nearly touching his hairline.

“You owe me thousands of dollars and you're asking for a fucking tip?”

Yo-yo’s whole body clenched in shame. He could feel the embarrassment in his arms, the heat climbing his neck, the self-loathing clawing at his throat. His brain begged him to end the conversation, but he couldn't figure out how. Not gracefully.

Finally, after what felt like years trapped in his own humiliation, he croaked out:

“I need to eat.”

Hard truth. Embarrassing. Full-on clown behavior.

Louie stared at him for a beat, then said, “Shut the fuck up.”

“I’ll shut the fuck up.”

“Fuck you. Saturday. Noon. You know the place.”

Yeah, Yo-yo knew the place. He’d been to Louie’s house before—worked a couple of the other grandkids’ parties. Probably still had balloon scraps in their bushes.

Time to get a new shirt.

***

Yo-yo found himself upstairs, in the part of the house he definitely wasn’t supposed to be in. He hadn’t meant to be there—it’s just that Aunt Susan had waddled into the downstairs bathroom right in front of him, and she looked like she’d be making a whole afternoon of it.

His stomach groaned, still revolting from last night’s binge and the humiliation of refusing to make Louie’s grandson the balloon he wanted. In Yo-yo’s defense, there were a lot of grandkids. You lose track.

Now he sat on a porcelain throne in some random upstairs guest bathroom, pants around his ankles, stomach making noises like jazz gone wrong. And then—he heard something.

A thud. A muffled cry. Then another.

“Don’t go,” he whispered to himself.

But his legs were already tensing. Shivers crawled up his spine like caffeine and guilt. What if he found something cool? What if someone needed help? What if it was nothing? What if it was hilarious and he could work it into the bit between balloon animals?

Anxiety staged a coup in his brain. His heart thumped like it had somewhere to be.

He pulled up his pants, didn’t flush. Didn’t want to give away his location. That was one of the thoughts talking. He stared at himself in the mirror.

Big red curly wig. Big red nose. Makeup smeared like war paint. A stretched-out blue clown shirt with a ketchup stain over his nipple.

This was either the look of a hero… or the look of the biggest piece of shit in America.

He crept down the hallway. A door halfway open. Voices—low, cruel. The kind that made your bones cold.

He peeked in.

Not Louie.

Worse.

Ralphie.

Wicked Ralphie.

Louie’s son. A legacy of crime, but way more ambitious. While Louie kept to small-town bookie business and the occasional leg-breaking, Ralphie expanded into loans, campaign donations, and—when the demand was there—the self medicine industry.

He was a piece of work. And a lot more violent than the old man.

Yo-yo had heard the stories. People disappeared. People got “taught lessons.” But Ralphie didn’t get his nickname from that.

No. He was called Wicked Ralphie because he went to UMass and threw legendary frat parties. That was it. That was the whole origin. Wicked keg stands, wicked blow, wicked Ralphie.

Now, here he was, in a home office with dark wood walls and a tarp on the floor, wailing on a guy. A bunch of goons circled him like wolves in knockoff Armani. The man on the ground was duct-taped, bloodied, pleading through a towel shoved in his mouth.

Yo-yo just… watched.

His brain tried to process it, to tell him to run, to scream, to do something—but another voice chimed in. That sick little voice.

“This is better than UFC.”

And worse: what if I got a lick in?

Yo-yo shook his head. What the hell is wrong with me?

He knew this wasn’t a healthy thought.

But it was the one he had.

Then Ralphie came back to the desk.

A letter opener in his hand.

And then he started stabbing. And stabbing. And stabbing.

Yo-yo couldn’t move. His hands shot up to his mouth like they had their own brains.

FUCK. This is some real shit, he thought.

The muffled screams clawed at his ears. The cries turned to whimpers. The whimpers turned to whispers.

Then—nothing.

“Shit,” Yo-yo whispered. “I just witnessed a murder.”

And that’s when Ralphie pointed—to the door. Right to the door.

More importantly—right at Yo-yo.

“Why the fuck is that door open?!”

Yo-yo didn’t think. He cartwheeled.

A silent, crouched, clown-sized cartwheel that looked more like a front-loaded tumbleweed.

Did he need to do a cartwheel? Absolutely not. Did he do it anyway? Hell yeah.

He didn’t even know his 260-pound ass could still do a cartwheel.

Down the stairs he went, heartbeat pounding in his teeth. All he could think about was the sound. The whimpers. God, the whimpers.

He stumbled into the kitchen. The videographer was there, filming cake or something meaningless. Yo-yo stared into the sink like it was a portal to hell.

The videographer tapped him on the shoulder. “You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” Yo-yo nodded like a malfunctioning bobblehead. “Still feeling it from last night.”

Classic excuse. Worked 90% of the time. The other 10% it worked better.

Then Yo-yo opened his mouth again—don’t say it, a voice in his head warned.

But it came out anyway.

“You ever seen a murder?”

The videographer blinked. “You just met me twenty seconds ago and you’re asking if I’ve seen a murder?”

Yo-yo was already regretting it. But now he had to double down.

“Just a question, man. Just a question.”

The videographer gave him a look. The kind of look you give someone on the subway who starts singing to themselves.

“No. Can’t say I have.”

He was already turning to leave the room. Trying to extract himself from the weird energy. But Yo-yo wasn’t done.

“You getting paid for this?”

Now the videographer just stood there, mouth slightly open.

“That’s your second question?” he asked, hands now planted on hips.

Yo-yo, still halfway in a dissociative haze, came back online just long enough to fire this off:

“Bro, we’re at a bookie’s grandson’s birthday party. I owe the guy money. The fact that you’re in here instead of filming tells me you’re not getting paid either. Probably blew your last check on a bad parlay and now you’re here trying to eat sheet cake and forget it.”

Boom. Hit right on the nose.

The videographer’s face went cold.

“Up yours, asshole.”

He turned to leave.

Yo-yo allowed himself one tiny moment of smug satisfaction—until the videographer paused in the doorway, turned back, and said:

“Aren’t clowns supposed to have a red nose?”

Yo-yo froze. His hand went to his face.

Where the fuck was his nose?

He checked his pockets. Checked his shirt. Checked his soul.

Then, from upstairs:

“HOOOO—who dropped a shit and didn’t flush?!”

Yo-yo’s stomach dropped through the floor.

Oh fuck. The nose is upstairs.

Louie popped into the kitchen. “Harvey, it’s time for your show. Where the fuck you been? Get out there.”

“Yeah, yeah, be right there.”

Yo-yo stepped into the living room. A sea of kids and parents stared back at him. His pupils were blown like he’d just dropped MDMA. His funeral was happening in the other room and here he was—center stage.

Only a matter of time before someone found his nose.

How many people are walking around with red clown noses?

He stood there. A few coughs. A hundred eyes locked on his dumbass face.

“Who wants a sword?” he offered.

No one answered.

“How about this.” He made a balloon sword… and stabbed himself with it, shooting off a puff of confetti that mimicked blood.

One mom chuckled—mostly at her wine.

The set was tanking.

The room spun, like a vodka night gone sideways. His face paint was melting off. Pits sweating through his oversized shirt. He started mumbling. Nothing had ever made him this nervous.

The tiny crowd in front of him stretched out like a mile-long judgment parade.

His brain was doing gymnastics: man dying, kids crying, me lying, me crying, me dying.

He was breathing heavy. Too heavy.

“Fuck, man, growing up’s hard. How old you turning?” he blurted.

Gasps from the moms.

“I’m turning seven,” Louie’s grandson said, clearly concerned.

“Seven! I’m gonna make a balloon.”

He twisted together a seven, fingers moving on muscle memory, while his mouth kept spiraling.

“You know when you turn seven, you're already seven percent through your life—if you make it to a hundred? And when you're fourteen, you're looking for a job. And when you’re twenty-eight, you’ll probably want to die. Then when you’re fifty-six—”

He was rambling. The seven was now a balloon pretzel.

He looked up—and saw Wicked Ralphie in the crowd.

Ralphie was holding his red nose.

“And when you turn 256,” Yo-yo continued, “you’re probably just worm meat and I... I... I…”

The room tilted.

That familiar feeling, just never in public.

The lights dimmed.

His knees buckled.

Vomit erupted, spraying into the tiny crowd in front of him. Kids screamed like a demon had entered the bouncy castle. The tree fell—Yo-yo collapsed, dead center—right onto the birthday boy.

There’s his seventh birthday memory: a washed-up 260-pound clown who ranted about mortality, puked on his audience, refused to make an alligator, and then collapsed on top of him. Don’t think he’s getting that off his tab.

Chaos. Screaming. A flurry of motion.

Ralphie and his boys rushed to the front.

“Get this guy upstairs. We’ll let him lay for a bit.”