The Last Laugh

The balloon squealed under the twist of latex.

“Look, it’s a dog!” said the clown, red lips stretched wide, eyes fixed on the boy with the tiger-painted face. The kid squealed and bounced in place.

Chuckles the Clown—real name: Leon Greaves—handed the balloon animal over with a practiced flourish. It squeaked in the boy’s grip.

Around him, the Saturday afternoon buzzed with cheap jazz and the light chatter of distracted parents sipping fizzy cocktails. One leaned over her phone, another filmed a shaky video while chewing a chicken skewer.

Nobody ever really watched the clown.

Which was the point.

Leon’s eyes moved constantly beneath the face paint and oversized false lashes. He noted rings on fingers, a wallet left under a lawn chair, a purse unzipped. He spotted the back door’s latch—loose. The motion light didn’t trigger when the caterer passed through.

He’d clocked it all in the first ten minutes.

The party was in a suburban sprawl outside the city, in a gated community with too much money and not enough sense. The mother who booked him—Samantha? Sandra?—hadn't even checked his credentials. She’d just handed over a deposit through an app and said she wanted “balloons, magic, and maybe a little juggling.”

“Nothing scary,” she’d said. “The kids are sensitive.”

Leon gave her the big clown nod, eyes crinkling like paper.

Scary? he’d thought. Lady, if you knew what I was hiding behind this bow tie…

After the performance, while kids were preoccupied with cake and sugar crashes, Leon slipped away and wandered down the hallway like he was looking for the bathroom.

Three doors. One cracked open. The guest bedroom. Jewelry box on the dresser. No camera in sight. He pushed the door wider, slow, calculated.

Inside: quiet. Just an untouched bed and a faint vanilla scent.

He slid his gloved hand across the top drawer and slipped out two gold chains. Tucked them into a pouch sewn into his jumpsuit lining. He moved like a magician mid-act—deliberate, silent, clean.

He was back in the hallway within thirty seconds.

By the time Sandra/Samantha remembered to tip him, Leon was already halfway down the sidewalk, waving like an idiot.

The gate buzzed open for him. No one even looked twice.

His van was plain white. No decals. Nothing to suggest a clown lived in it, let alone used it to plan theft and murder.

Inside, the cab was immaculate. His gear was in labeled boxes. One case was bolted down and locked: it contained weapons he never technically used—just “enhanced” clown props. A bouquet of spring-loaded flowers, but with steel tips. A rubber chicken filled with lead shot. His favorite was the hand buzzer, which had killed a man by accident—or what he’d told himself was an accident.

Now, he didn’t even blink.

There were five. He kept track—not out of guilt, but precision.

The second one had begged. A drunk father at a holiday store event who cornered Leon behind the display racks.

“You’re a freak, you know that?”

Leon had smiled. He always smiled. Even when he wrapped a streamer around the man’s throat. The guy’s last words were “What the fu—”

Now, Leon watched the news every week. Just in case.

He didn’t kill out of hate or anger. It was about control. The moment before the scream, when time felt like it belonged to him alone. It was a kind of art. And art demanded an audience.

Lately, something had changed.

He noticed her first at a weekday party in the city—Detective Mariela Reyes. Undercover, clearly. She mingled like a civilian, but her eyes never stopped moving. She clocked exits, took mental notes, didn’t drink.

Leon recognized a hunter when he saw one.

Later that week, he spotted her again. This time across the street from a pharmacy gig, pretending to tie her shoe while her partner lingered by the bus stop.

They were circling.

The thought thrilled him more than it scared him.

A worthy audience, finally.

That’s when he planned the big one.

The Simmons birthday party was in a downtown condo with windows big enough to give a man vertigo. Floor 23. White marble floors. Designer everything. The birthday girl wore a tiara. The cake was imported.

And the guests? Clueless.

Leon showed up early. He wore a new version of the costume. Cleaner, brighter. More polished. If this was his last gig, he wanted to go out with flair.

He smiled, handed out balloon swords, and started scanning.

Elevator access: keycard only. But the caterers used a service corridor—unlocked. No cams.

He checked the hallway. Four doors. Bedrooms. Office. Bathroom.

Then he saw her.

Detective Reyes.

This time in a sleek navy suit, holding a glass of soda and pretending to laugh at a dad joke.

She was five feet away. Closer than ever before.

Leon felt a pulse at the base of his throat.

He moved away casually, whistling a tune as he passed a girl with a glitter unicorn face.

In the guest bathroom, he clicked the door shut and locked it.

From inside his makeup kit, under the mirror tray, he pulled out a red canister. Homemade. A smoke bomb—thick enough to block vision for several minutes.

He rolled up his sleeve. The emergency breather was Velcroed to his forearm under the costume.

He stuck on the filtered nose—identical to his usual one.

Thirty seconds.

Time for the finale.

Back in the living room, Leon raised both arms. “Who wants a magic trick before cake?”

The kids cheered.

Parents looked up from their phones.

Reyes was already moving.

Leon threw the canister behind him.

FWUMP.

Thick, choking red smoke exploded across the carpet and rolled outward in a dense wall. Children screamed. Parents shouted names.

“Stay calm!” Reyes shouted. “Everyone, get low and move to the exits!”

Leon dropped flat and crawled.

Past the kitchen. Into the hallway. Through the smoke.

His route was memorized. Straight through the pantry, into the caterer’s service corridor. From there, the freight elevator.

But even that was too obvious. He’d prepped a backup: a narrow maintenance shaft in the corridor, hidden behind a mop rack. The latch was old. He’d oiled it yesterday, posing as a janitor.

Voices. Commands. Boots on marble.

“Hands up!”

He froze. A silhouette cut through the smoke—a figure moving fast.

Reyes?

No. Too broad. Another officer.

He ducked left, turning sharply and sliding into a side room just as the officer lunged—fingers grazing his jumpsuit, but not holding on.

Too close.

The office.

Too late to escape now.

The smoke was thinner here. Sirens wailed faintly below.

He turned slowly. On the desk sat a photo of the Simmons family—smiling, innocent, blind.

Leon picked up a paperweight. Crystal. Heavy.

He weighed his options.

Then a voice.

Firm. Female.

“Leon Greaves.”

He turned.

Reyes stood in the doorway, hand on her holster, but not drawn.

“I don’t want to do this in front of children,” she said. “Let’s keep it quiet.”

Leon smiled. “You're good. Better than I thought.”

“I’ve been following you for four weeks.”

She took a step forward, eyes sharp.

“Five disappearances. Four confirmed. But I know the fifth one was you.”

Her voice cracked slightly, then hardened. “One of them was my sister’s neighbor. She left behind twins.”

Leon’s smile faded for a breath. “That… makes this personal.”

“It always was.”

He shrugged. “Or maybe I wanted you to follow.”

Reyes took one step forward. “Don't reach for anything. No more tricks.”

Leon bowed slightly. “But I'm a clown.”

And with that, he yanked the drawer open and threw its contents—paper, pens, cables—into the air.

Reyes flinched, instinctively shielding her face.

Leon dove. Rolled behind the couch.

A second smoke charge detonated.

Screams.

Gun drawn now.

“Leon!” she shouted. “Don’t make me shoot!”

But there was no answer.

Only laughter—distant, echoing.

An hour later, they cleared the smoke.

No sign of him.

Just a single rubber chicken, lying on the fire escape.

And a red balloon tied to the railing, bobbing in the wind.

No body. No footprints. No clown.

The parents gave interviews. The kids were soothed. Detectives scoured every apartment, the freight lift, the garage.

They found a stash of stolen jewelry tucked inside a ceiling tile.

The fifth body—confirmed.

No doubt now.

But no arrest.

Reyes stood by the window, eyes scanning the city as the balloon drifted higher.

“We had him,” she muttered. “And he slipped through a puff of smoke.”

Leon Greaves, aka Chuckles the Clown, was officially listed as “at large.”

Six months later, a child in Tulsa claimed she saw a clown in the mirror at a party.

In Chicago, a jewelry store reported a break-in. The only clue? A single squeaky red nose left on the counter.

In Boston, a man swore he saw a white van parked outside a daycare. The driver waved. His gloves had polka dots.

No proof. No trace.

Just whispers.

And laughter.