Mr. Insane Killer Clown by J.M. Barber - HTML preview

 

 

The Seven-Spot was the local hangout spot for Jeffrey Tombs and his good friend Steven Wright, and on a Saturday, right around the time that the clubs were due to send women and men unlucky in love home, these two men stood outside of this famous store, munching on nachos and hotdogs.

 

"I thought it was going to be colder tonight," Jeffrey said, and took a bite of his hotdog. "I really did. I must say I'm glad, because I really don't want to be home right now."

 

"Why not?" Steven had nacho cheese on his face. It seemed that whenever Steven ordered nachos (nachos for Steve consisted of an open bag of Doritos opened up and drenched with nacho cheese from the cheese dispenser) he always had cheese on his face.

 

"There are roaches the size of rats running around, right now."

 

"I don't see how you have such a big roach problem man. Colorado isn't even a big city for roaches. What you consider big for roaches is probably nothing down in the South."

 

Jeffrey shrugged. "Perhaps. Still, if I can help it I want to stay out until the sun shows up in the sky. At least until there's a little light. The roaches will practically attack me if I go home now." The thought of roaches alone made Jeffrey literally shudder, and this was something he had to resist doing in front of Steven so he wouldn't look like a punk.

 

"I have family that lives in the South," Steven said. "I've visited, and trust me when I say I've seen far worse out there than you'll ever see here."

 

"How do you know? You've never really gotten a chance to see the roach situation at my apartment."

 

Steven shook his head, munching away on his nachos. He swallowed. 'trust me, I can say with absolute certainty you've never seen the type of shit that I've seen in the roach infested homes. The fact that I've been in your place and each time can stay there for a couple hours or more without seeing a single roach tells me that you don't have a real issue." Steven shoved his hand in his bag of cheesy mess and pulled out another cheese soaked Dorito and shoved it into his mouth. "I have family out in Texas that have houses that are infested."

 

Jeffrey said nothing, and took another giant bite of his chili dog. The parking lot was empty, four solo pumps blanketed in a cool white glow from the standalone roof's recessed lights. Behind this small rectangle of light was nothing but a quiet street that ran parallel to the pumps and the station. Beyond that, darkness.

 

"Man, I'm going to end up taking a nasty shit tonight," Steven said.

 

"Yeah, good to know," Jeffrey replied, and took another giant bite of his hotdog.

 

"You know, we really should be at the club."

 

Jeffrey shook his head. "Nah, just a way for us to waste time and blow all our money. The clubs are going to be getting out soon and a lot of those girls are going to be headed here. So we'll get a chance to mack without all the loud music and the competition."

 

"Yeah, but still. Next week I say we hit up the club, take a week off from doing this. Think of what we're missing out on right now, dude."

 

"We've seen it. We're just blowing money to get rejected by girls, when we can get rejected by them for free."

 

Steven smiled. 'that's funny. It's starting to get cold out here though, man. I don't know if I really want to wait for the girls to co me tonight."

 

"So you're going to leave?"

 

"Not yet, but soon. As soon as I finish these chips." He continued to munch away, and for the next few minutes Jeffrey and Steven we re silent.

 

My bed, Jeffrey thought, finishing his chili dog. My bed won’t have roaches. But he’d still have to make it into his room.

 

"Look, just stay here for another twenty minutes," Jeffrey said. 'the girls are going to come soon. I want to get a few lines in, co me on."

 

"Well, if we pick up any girls we're going to your place, not mine. We did my place last time so they wouldn't see any bugs." Last time had been three months ago. Successful pickups didn't happen often with the two of the m.

 

"Yeah, well, we'd have to do that again. Obviously, the roach problem hasn't been solved yet. But, I'll put some Borax and sugar down, solve it by next week if we can use your place tonight."

 

Steven wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked at Jeffrey with one eyebrow raised.

 

"Really? That's the deal you're going to make with me? That you're going to solve your roach issue to use my place. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, man."

 

The hum of an engine rose in the distance and a few seconds later a nondescript black sedan pulled into the parking lot, its high beams on.

 

"All right," Jeffrey muttered. "Let's see what we got here. Steven, if they're white let me do the talking. White girls don't go for white dick any more."

 

"Haha. You're so funny I fake laughed right there to show you how fuckin" funny you are."

 

Jeffrey chuckled. They watched as the car pulled up to one of the gas pumps and the doors opened up. A white man wearing a blue, backwards -facing baseball cap, and three white girls in skirts stepped out of the car.

 

"You got the cheese off your face man," Jeffrey said quickly. "Make sure that you get the cheese off your face."

 

"Shut up, man. The cheese is off my face."

 

"All right, I'm going to handle all the talking."

 

Steven shoved him with one hand. "No, you're not man. Shut up."

 

"Co me on, you just need to trust me."

 

"Yeah, very funny. The red-head is mine. You can have the blondes."

 

"Yeah, but one of them is with the white dude, has got to be."

 

Steven tossed his nachos into the trash can and used the napkins he held to wipe his hands.

 

"All right," he said, tossing the napkins in the trash can as the group approached the entrance. "Let's do this."

 

The man was the first one to walk up to the entrance. Jeffrey and Steven watched him closely, to see if he did anything to indicate which girl he might be with, if any. There was no indication. He simply opened the door and walked inside, and two of the girls walked inside with him. Jeffrey and Steven failed to say anything to the first two girls that stepped into the store, Steven apparently losing his nerve right along with Jeffrey. The girl that didn't go in, however, happened to be the red-head. The skirt she wore was white, the shirt that went along with it, red. She stood a few feet to the right of them, swaying a little as she put a cigarette to her lips, pulled a lighter out of her little purse and lit it. Jeffrey and Steven stared. Jeffrey nudged Steven. Steven looked at him, then the girl, as indecisive as Jeffrey thought he might be. Jeffrey was the reason they had been able to take two girls to Steven's place three months ago — amazingly he had convinced the girls to drive them—and Jeffrey could re member it as if it were yesterday. His heart had been trying to ram out of his chest that night, just like it was doing now. From the looks of it Steven wasn't going to make a move, so either Jeffrey would have to or nothing would happen.

 

"All right," Jeffrey whispered into Steven's ear. "I'm going to say something to her. If she decides to do something with me you can't get pissed about it."

 

Steven whispered back, 'see, if you can get us both some action."

 

Jeffrey frowned. "seriously? You want to double-team her?"

 

Steven simply shrugged, said nothing else. Another car pulled into the parking lot then, this one a black SUV. The SUV pulled up to a parking slot in front of the door instead of a gas pump , and then the doors opened up, and out stepped two black men from the front seats, and four black women from the back. All of the girls we re pretty, all of them looked a few years older than Jeffrey and Steven, and they all walked in a way that seemed to suggest that men like Jeffrey and Steven, men who had no car, and who were one year below drinking age, could never have them.

 

"We could've talked to these girls in the club," Steven whispered in his ear. "We would've had a better chance."

 

"No, we wouldn't have. We can't get into the twenty-one and up places."

 

"For fifty bucks we could've gotten those fake ID's from my cousin and everything would be all good right now. But, no, you didn't want to do that."

 

"Hi," one of the black girls heading into the store suddenly said to the two of them. Jeffrey and Steven smiled.

 

"Hey," Jeffrey said, and the girl looked at her friends and giggled before stepping through the automatic sliding glass doors.

 

"she was fucking with us," Steven said.

 

"You think so?"

 

"Yeah, unquestionably fucking with us."

 

"Yep," the red-head girl suddenly chimed in, and took a drag of her cigarette. She breathed out a long plume of smoke and glanced over her shoulder at the girls. "Black bitches be like that."

 

Steven and Jeffrey exchanged a look. Jeffrey didn't know what to make of her comment, or whether she was the appropriate person to be ma king it.

 

"You like girls," Steven said suddenly.

 

A smile spread helplessly on Jeffrey's face and he made it disappear at once.

 

"Yes," she said, looking at them. "Love black bitches. Almost as much as I love niggas."

 

Steven twitched noticeably. "Okay, wait," Steven said, shaking his head. "I mean, co me on. That's not cool. You got my friend right here, and you're going to say that shit."

 

"Oh, don't worry," said the red-head, and her lipstick laden lips spread in a smile. "I'm not talking about him. I mean those hood niggas, big motherfuckers that don't take no shit."

 

'so, I just look weak to you, is that it?" Jeffrey said. "Gotta be more stereotypical, huh?"

 

"Honestly," said Steven. "I wouldn't get caught dead using that word when those girls come back out. I don't think that would end very good for you."

 

She chuckled. "Oh, stop. It's just a word. don't be so sensitive."

 

"What, do I have to be a dude that uses slang all the time and sags his pants to get your attention, is that it? You just want to be with the gangstas, huh? Motherfuckers that sell drugs."

 

The girl took another drag of her cigarette and breathed out more smoke. 'the re's not a problem with that, is there? I mean, don't you have a preference. You look like the kind of guy that likes a nice black bitch."

 

"You…you shouldn't say it like that," Steven said uneasily, watching the girls in the store. "Why don't you just call them girls?"

 

"Oh, please. You know how many black girls I've fucked, how many I've made co me. They don't like the talk but when I get them in my room and can make them co me so hard, almost to the point of tears, they have nothing to say."

 

"That's assuming you can get past the face dragged across the parking lot stage of the pickup," Steven said.

 

She chuckled. 'relax. I wouldn't say this shit in earshot of any unknowns. I know better."

 

"Good to know," Steven said. "Because it looks like everyone's coming out."

 

The two groups came outside, and the red-head followed her group to the car at the pumps. The black men and women re mained in front of the store, all of the m lighting up mini -cigars and cigarettes.

 

"Dude, we should've tried harder with that red-head," Steven said. 'such a disappointment. She sounds like a freak. A semi-racist too."

 

"I don't think simply using those words makes someone a racist," Jeffrey said. "And that's coming from a black man."

 

"Well, maybe you're not black." Steven chuckled.

 

"Oh, suck a dick."

 

"I'm just playing."

 

A few seconds passed in silence then Steven suddenly laughed out loud and Jeffrey wondered if he was still laughing at the comment he had made or of Jeffrey's reaction to it.

 

"Really," Jeffrey said. "It's that funny, huh?"

 

"No, it's clown. Across the street. Look!" He pointed. When he did Jeffrey wasn't the only one to look, the men and women standing in front of the store with them, smoking their cigars and cigarettes, looked as well. Steven laughed again, but Jeffrey found nothing funny about what he saw. A clown with puffy blue hair and a white uniform had stepped into the parking lot from the parallel street. His eyes were painted into a frown, not as friendly as Ronald McDonald's. In fact, it was reminiscent of the evil prank— playing clowns with viral videos on the internet. But unlike those clowns, this one had nothing in its hands, this one wasn't running at them with a chainsaw or making laughing sounds or anything. This one didn't even seem to notice them.

 

"Must've just got out of some party," Steven said, and chuckled again.

 

"What, this is entertaining to you," Jeffrey asked. "An evil looking clown at the gas station at two thirty?"

 

"Oh, look a clown!" the red-head shouted, looking out from the rear window of the black car.

 

The clown bypassed everyone and stepped into the store, the sound of his giant yellow pant legs heard swishing against each other. He was tall, easily six three. The top of his fluffy blue -hair skirted the top frame of the entrance on his way in.

 

"Let's go to McDonald's," one of the black girls standing outside said. "I don't know about the rest of you but I'm suddenly in the mood for a burger."

 

"That didn't look like the Ronald McDonald clown to me," one of the black men said. He had a black baseball cap on and wore a silver necklace over a black shirt.

 

"Oh, what do you know," Steven said to Jeffrey. "It looks like Ms. Racist and crew are having car trouble. I can hear them trying to start the engine.

 

"Well, damn," Jeffrey said. 'that has to suck."

 

But he didn't care very much about the black car not being able to start, he was concerned about the clown that had just strolled past them. He didn't know if it was something that warranted being worried about, but he found it odd that a clown would walk so casually into the gas station at this time . The most obvious question: where had he come from?

 

A party,  his mind spoke up. Where the hell do you think he came from?

 

The white man that had been driving the girls popped the hood, stepped back out of the car, and walked around to the front of the vehicle. He lifted the hood and began to scan the engine, his brow furrowed as if it was something he could figure out. Maybe he could, but Jeffrey had his doubts.

 

"Well, at least he has some girls to spend his time with," Steven said.

 

"Yeah, those girls aren't going to want to spend time with him for long if h is car doesn't even work," Jeffrey said.

 

"It's probably something minor."

 

One of the black girls bent down and put out the cigar she held and then placed what remained of it inside her purse.

 

"I'm ready to go," she said looking at the man with the black shirt.

 

The man in the black shirt looked to the man standing to the other side of him. This man wore a red V-neck shirt with no chain. The man in the black shirt muttered something to him. The one in the red shirt nodded and tossed what remained of his cigar into the parking lot.

 

"Okay," the man in the red shirt said. "Let's go."

 

The glass doors to the gas station slid open and out stepped the mysterious clown. Suddenly, he looked more alert, seeming to notice everyone outside the gas station for the first time. First his eyes touched on Steven and Jeffrey, then the individuals from the SUV, and lastly, the few out by the pumps, at the black car. Steven and Jeffrey watched him, Steven with the same a mused smile on his face. Jeffrey, however, didn't smile. Something told him that smiling was the last thing that he should do. The clown strolled over to the black SUV, bent down by the front driver's side wheel, and did something just out of view of Steven and Jeffrey. It only took a second for Jeffrey to figure out what it was. Once he heard the hiss of the tire he knew some type of wicked hell was about to break loose.

 

"What the fuck you doing, motherfucker!" the man in the red shirt shouted, and he and the man in the black shirt advanced on the clown.  What happened next sent chill cold enough to turn water into ice up Jeffrey's spine. In a childlike, mocking voice, the clown answered,

 

"Beebo just wants to play with you. Beebo just wants to—"

 

The black man in the red shirt abruptly threw a punch at the clown and with a movement that was swift and unnaturally adept, the clown brought the knife that he had been holding upward in an arch. There was a scream, and the hand the man had used to try to punch the clown flew up in the air, detached, twirling, and sending streamers of blood everywhere.

 

"Shit!" one of the black girls screamed.

 

The white man that had been looking at his engine ran over at once, and this amazed Jeffrey, because running toward the clown had been the last thing he intended to do. The man in the red shirt stumbled back, away from the clown, screaming. The man in the black shirt pulled him back toward the sidewalk.

 

"Nothing wrong with Beebo wanting to play, hoo-hoo! Nothing—"

 

The clown, who had been approaching the man he had just cut, was kicked from behind then by the white man and fell onto a knee. He mumbled something then turned swift ly, swinging the knife at the white man's chest in a sideways arc. Blood splashed. One of the girls inside the black car screamed,

 

"Nooooo! Charlie!"

 

As the black group rushed into the gas station with their injured friend, Charlie stumbled back toward the center of the parking lot, his chest open and bleeding onto the white shirt he wore . He had two hands pressed to his chest, as if suffering a heart attack. His face was red, his eyes bulged, and his lips trembled as if a live current ran through them.

 

"Hoo-hoo!" the clown chortled, brought the knife back like a man about to throw an uppercut, and lunged forward. The white man was lifted briefly from the ground with the force. Charlie grunted, blinked, then lifted his head skyward and screamed, his mouth full of blood, and when the clown yanked the knife out of him—apparently a kitchen knife from the looks of it—Charlie went to his knees. Jeffrey began to back up toward the glass doors to the store, his bladder feeling oddly full right now.

 

The white girls had gotten out of the car, one of them with a baseball bat and another with a cell phone to her ear. They wanted to approach their soon to be dead friend, but were afraid, and Jeffrey couldn't blame them.

 

"Yeah," Steven said. 'this might be an appropriate time for me to go ho me." He turned and headed toward the parallel street, not even bothering to ask what Jeffrey planned to do. The clown's head cocked suddenly in Steven's direction, his hearing apparently as keen as his ability with the knife.

 

"WHY THE FUCK DON’T YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH BEEBO!"  the clown suddenly roared, the soft, playful sound of his voice as horribly altered as a kitten tossed in a microwave for thirty seconds. He charged at Steven then, who was slightly overweight and every bit as slow as one would expect him to be. Jeffrey ran after his friend, for the moment forgetting his own safety, but by the time he managed to even make it a few feet, Beebo the clown had cleared four times the distance. He grabbed a lock of Steven's hair, yanked him back hard into a sitting position, and slid the glimmering steel of his blade across Steven's throat. The flow of blood was immediate and messy, but he didn't stop there. Beebo the clown continued to cut as Steven gasped and gurgled. Then with one strong pull and an audible rip, the clown tore off his head off and launched it at Jeffrey. It hit Jeffrey in the chest, ironically knocking him back into a sitting position as well. Amazingly, the freshly reduced Steven was still in a seated position, his decapitated body yet to fall back to the ground. Blood flowed from his open neck like a fountain, and his head lay off three feet away, staring at Jeffrey as if amazed that Jeffrey wouldn't just play with Beebo.

 

"YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" Jeffrey screamed, his fear temporarily replaced with rage. That rage, however, was short lived. When Beebo looked up at him, his painted lids perpetually fixed into a frown, this emotion turned into terror. Beebo charged at him, brandishing his trusty blade, and Jeffrey scrambled to his feet and turned and ran toward the glass doors, bellowing. The clown suddenly changed course and moved back to where he had killed Charlie. The girls we re knee ling over his body, crying, one of them screaming into her cellphone, apparently at the police. Standing behind the glass doors now, his heart beating a million times a second, Jeffrey realized that the girl with the cellphone was the same red-head that he and Steven had spoken to earlier.

 

"Get back into your fucking car!" he screamed through the doors and slammed on them with his fists. "What are you doing!"

 

"No, get them in here so I can lock the doors!" a male voice shouted.

 

"I'm not going anywhere," Jeffrey told the man without even turning to look at him.

 

The girls kneeling over Charlie noticed the clown (fucking idiots, Jeffrey thought) and leapt up and tried to run the other way. The clown cocked his arm back and threw the kitchen knife at the girl in the center, connecting with the center of her back and knocking her to the ground. He strolled slowly over to her, as her friends ran toward the parallel street. Beebo began to do a little dance. This little dance turned into a full on tap number and he turned and faced the glass doors of the gas station, as if looking directly at Jeffrey. When he finished the number with two last definitive taps, he extended his arms, with a broad smile on his face, as if to say, " tadaaa!’. At that point, Jeffrey knew there was no question: Beebo the clown was looking directly at him.

 

"I have to bolt the door," the same voice from earlier said, and Jeffrey looked over his shoulder. A skinny white man with a beard and glasses had been helping the group tend to the man that had just lost his hand. The handless man lay on the floor, with napkins over the wound. "Just turning them off isn't going to be good enough." Jeffrey noticed that the tag on the man's shirt read Billy. Billy ran over to the door, extending the keys from the banana clip on his pants and using a silver one to latch the double -doors. That's when Jeffrey noticed how much he had missed in the short time that he had been watching Billy move around. The girl that the clown had managed to hit in the back with the knife, now lay motionless in the center of the parking lot, what looked like a number of red spots —apparently more stab wounds —visible on the back of her shirt.

 

"There's a special place in hell for a clown like that," Billy said, turning away from the door.

 

"No different than the hell there would be for a man like that," Jeffrey said.

 

Jeffrey could only stare. Apparently the other girls had gotten away. They were nowhere in sight. For that matter, neither was Beebo the clown. Three dead bodies and a hand lay in the parking lot, but the girls were gone. from where Jeffrey stood he could see that they hadn't gone back into their car, which he thought had been a dumb decision.

 

"Do you see the clown," one of the black girls asked. Jeffrey looked over his shoulder, noticed that she was right behind him, several napkins in her hands.

 

Jeffrey shook his head. "No. He's gone. At least for now. I don't see those girls though. I think he's going after them."

 

"I'm shaking," she said, holding her hands up for him to see. She was right, her hands were, in fact, shaking. "I…I don't even know…that's just…the shit's just crazy, right?"

 

"If it makes you feel any better at least you still have your friend. If you look outside you could see my friend sitting out there with his head missing." He sighed, looked back toward the window.

 

"Fuck, dude," she said. She walked up beside him.

 

"Have you guys called the cops?"

 

The girl nodded. "Yeah, we called the cops. I don't know how long it's going to take them to get here. You would think that talk of a murderous clown would send them running."

 

Jeffrey nodded, rubbed his hands together. "Yeah, they'll be here soon. I'm sure they will. We just need to give it a little time. What's your name?"

 

"Ava." She was the same girl that had put the unfinished cigar back into her purse earlier.

 

"I'm Jeffrey." He extended his hand to her and she reached out with the hand not holding the napkins to shake it. She smelled so good and under ordinary circumstances in a one -on-one situation like this he might've asked for her number. But right now he could've cared less. Asking for this girl's name had be something he'd done unconsciously.

 

"How's your friend doing," Jeffrey said, looking over his shoulder. He could make out the man's legs, but the rest of him was blocked by the girls and the clerk that knelt by him.

 

"He passed out," Ava said. "He's breathing though." She looked at Jeffrey and surprised him with a smalls mile. "Probably better to be passed out, don't you think?"

 

"Yeah. I wonder if anyone in here has a gun."

 

"I don't think it matters. Soon enough we'll have a bunch of people in here with guns." Then she muttered, folding her arms: "Whenever the fuck they get here, that is."

 

Ava was wearing lip-gloss and she had a letterman jacket on. She wasn't in high school though, Jeffrey guessed, and with a closer look Jeffrey could tell that the letterman jacket she wore was custom. He could see her name in bold white lettering on the back, these letters bordered with a sparkling pink. She had style. Her hair was dark and shoulder length, with light brown streaks running through it.

 

Are you kidding,  Jeffrey thought. Right now out of all times, you’re going to think about sex?  Seriously?

 

It was nice to have a girl as pretty as Ava standing next to him though. It made it easier to bear the fact that his friend was sitting headless out in the cold, dark, parking lot.

 

"I hate clowns," Ava said, and gave a nervous little giggle. "I've always hated clowns, since I was very little . And what do you know, I end up at the one gas station that happens to have a murderous clown come to visit."

 

"Yeah, clowns suck. Who's idea was the "clown" anyway?"

 

"Well, it has to be popular some places, or you wouldn't see them every where."

 

"If you ask me, I think it was Stephen King's IT that messed it up for everybody. I read that book a few years back, and ever since, I've never been the same."

 

Ava smiled. "I read that book a decade ago. Wow, you remind me of how old I'm getting."

 

"Where the fuck are you guys!" one of Ava's female friends yelled and Jeffrey looked over his shoulder to notice her on a pink cell phone, evidently talking to the police. "We’ve been waiting here for close to twenty minutes!"

 

"I think the nigga's gone," the man in the black shirt said. "I say we get in the car and get the fuck out of here. We can drive it on the flat for a few blocks." He was looking toward the window with an expression of yearning.

 

"Yeah, and where's a few blocks going to get us,"