Object d'Arson

TW: violence against a minor

“Hey,” said Justin. “I’m sorry about the clown.”

Julia’s eyes flicked toward the mantlepiece. The clown was blown glass (Italian! her mother claimed) and the artist had chosen to stick cartoonish appendages onto a transparent sphere. The white glass face, with a neon red lipstick grin stuck in collagen horror beneath an eyeless void, was at just the right angle to provide a recurring jump scare every time Julia stepped out of her bedroom. “It’s not your fault. I’d’ve done the same if I were you.”

“Yeah, but at my place, it never left the box.” Justin flicked the trigger on his dragon-shaped lighter and his red-rimmed eyes lit up with twin flames. The clown had been gifted to him from old Aunt Beatrix when he graduated, and he passed it off to Julia’s mother as a wedding present, never imagining it outside of that shameful space for objects too awkward to look at or throw away. “I wasn’t trying to saddle you with a full tank of nightmare fuel.”

Smiling tightly, Julia shrugged. “I don’t even think Mom likes it, but Jerry looked up how much something like that is supposed to be worth. Art, apparently.”

“Completely unfair.” Justin snapped the lighter shut. “If I’d known, I’d be the king of eBay by now.” The smug glass prat grinned down on them from its place of prominence, holding silent, hilarious court amongst the decorative porcelain and semi-precious stone. “If you wanted, I could take it off your hands.”

Julia snickered and shook her head. “The minute she’s back from the honeymoon, Mom’s getting that thing professionally appraised. If I don’t get my license soon, it’s going to have more certificates than I do.”

The lighter flicked in Justin’s hand, throwing a yellow glow across his face. “I’m not saying you give it to me,” he said, eyes on the flame. “What I’m saying is, maybe there was an accident. Like, you were dusting, and you dropped it. Could happen to anybody. I’ll even help you clean it up.” He snapped the lighter shut. “And if I happen to make a sale later, you’d probably get a cut. That’s all it has to be.”

There was a photograph from the wedding right next to the balloon-bellied joker. Julia's mother, smiling with her eyes closed, clutched her husband's hand and ran through a glittering snowstorm of confetti. “No way,” Julia said. “Mom’d kill me.”

“Jules, I need the money.”

Julia bit her lip. Justin needing money was a big part of why Julia invited him to dinner, since her mother had left her a prepaid gift card while she was home alone, and Julia didn’t mind sharing. She noticed Justin didn’t get a job after graduating, and was swimming in clothes that smelled like mouthwash and patchouli. She loved her cousin, but not enough to steal from her mom.

That night, Julia dreamed that the clown was chasing her. The glass figure swelled, inflating to enormous size, and rolled after Julia while its bulbous glass fingers opened and shut. Running through a thick oatmeal swamp, Julia couldn’t get away fast enough, and a cold glass glove caught her in a shatterproof fist. Lifting the squirming girl up over its eyeless white head, the aggressively red grin stayed in place while a slot, like the top of a piggy bank, opened wide, and a screaming Julia tumbled in.

Falling into her own bed, Julia jumped bolt upright, drenched in sweat and battered by her frantic heart. Calming herself as she recognized her surroundings, Julia held her breath when a strange sound crept through the bedroom door.

Straining her ears, Julia wasn’t sure she’d heard anything. It was possible her brain was still clinging to that vivid dream. But then, she heard it. A sound like the flicking of a lighter.

Moving quietly, Julia’s bare feet crossed the distance to her bedroom door. She eased it open a crack, peering into the darkness, and her heart seized when her eyes caught onto the clown. Once she ignored the ornament, Julia saw a figure all in black, the same size and shape as her cousin. He had his back to her, eyes on the mantlepiece, as he snapped the lighter shut.

“Justin?” Julia called, stepping into the living room. “I didn’t hear you knock, is every—” Justin turned, grabbed hold of a ceramic Shisa dog, and slammed it into Julia’s head. The girl crumpled, black flowers blooming across her vision, the taste of blood on her tongue.

“You’re supposed to be asleep!” Justin hissed. He glanced out the window, then bent over Julia’s fallen body, ripping the fabric at the hem of her night dress.

“Maybe you got up in the middle of the night,” he said, screwing the top off some purloined alcohol. “Maybe you went to light a candle, and you tripped. Maybe you got into Mommy’s liquor cabinet, lord knows it’s genetic.” He stuffed the strip of cloth into the neck of the bottle, and flicked his lighter. “Maybe the clown just went missing. That’s all it has to be.”

The flames danced in Justin’s eyes as he held the cloth over the dragon. Julia blinked, trying to focus as a jackhammer rattled in her head, and the floor kept tilting away from her, rolling her insides, impossible to stand. The fire caught the cheap poly blend, and Justin snapped the lighter shut, turning with his torched time bomb to collect his blown glass prize.

Justin gasped, stumbling back from the mantle and tripping over his prone cousin, dropping the incendiary bottle to roll lazily toward the hearth. The dancing fuse illuminated the glassy sphere of tacked-on body parts, dancing amber light across the blank white face. Julia could see this from her puddle on the floor because the clown had nearly doubled in size, and was still growing, blowing up like an expensive Italian balloon.

The beachball-sized figurine rolled off the mantle, hurtling toward the bottle in what should have been glass on glass. Instead, the empty sphere closed over the Molotov cocktail, completely absorbing and extinguishing the flame, and then the clown bounced.

Blinking and swiping at his face in the sudden darkness, Justin fumbled for his lighter, snapping the dragon in time to light up the bright red smile inches from his face. With a shout, Justin scrabbled backward, pushing Julia between him and her nightmare.

The clown, as big as a tent, went sailing over Julia, the inflated form filling her vision, then vanishing from it, and the injured girl could not turn her head to see where it went. She did hear, over the pulse in her ears, the sound of her cousin screaming, his voice muffled as though beyond a pane of glass.

* * *

“Oh, welcome home, sweetheart!” Julia’s mother kissed her daughter on the cheek, giving her shoulders a squeeze while Jerry lingered awkwardly in the doorway. Julia, her head still bandaged, immediately looked toward the mantlepiece.

“Don’t worry,” Jerry said brightly. “The dog was insured. So was the cruise, so, no harm done. Just glad to have you home.”

Julia’s eyes lingered on the empty center space. “What happened to the clown?”

Jerry’s smile fell a little. “Oh, it’s fine, we just put it away. Turns out it’s a fake.”

“Somebody swindled old Aunt Botox,” Julia’s mother lamented. “They never made one with fiery eyes."