We Made a Deal With the Clowns

Clowns indoctrinate a little girl, replacing her
brain with a paper chain.

It was a dark day in El Reno, the day the clowns came. At first, we attributed the rise in clown sightings on the circus, which had come through town the week before. You'd turn down an aisle in the grocery store and find yourself face to face with a clown - red ball nose, curly green hair, impossibly large shoes. The greasepaint on their faces would crack slightly when the smiled or yawned, and then you caught a glimpse of their fangs.
Family pets began to disappear, then the elderly. We didn't make the connection for weeks, and when we did, it was far too late.
   A clown moved into the apartment next to mine. Every night, as I returned home from work, the clown would stand in his open doorway, staring at me as I walked up the stairs. He never spoke (none of them did), but he would squeeze the bulb on his little horn and give me a honk as I went inside.
   People started attacking the clowns, trying to run them out of town. Turns out it's really hard to kill a clown. You can hit them, you can run them over with a car, you can fire them out of a cannon -- nothing. By the time we found out how to get rid of them, it was almost too late.
   As a reporter for the El Reno Daily Tribune, I covered the city government beat. I'll never forget the night I attended the City Council meeting and the Mayor was interrupted by the squeak-squeak-squeak of clowns marching into the council chambers. Someone told me later that he counted 20 clowns climbing out of a beat-up Ford Pinto that pulled up outside City Hall. They presented their list of demands to the mayor; it was written on a 200-foot long handkerchief that the Head Clown (who liked to be called Skeevy) pulled out of his pants pocket.

A little boy is transformed into a clown in front
of his horrified classmates.

   "We want your children," the list began. "Because no one will knowingly marry a clown, we must take children to replenish our numbers. We will select one girl, and one boy, from the elementary school once a week.
   "In return," the note concluded, "we will let you live." After the Mayor finished reading the demands, the clowns began honking their horns rapidly, in unison. All over town, the townspeople heard honking horns. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of clowns.
   We didn't know what else to do. So we made a deal with the clowns.
  Starting the next morning, clowns methodically examined all the children at the elementary school, and culled out two and took them away in front of their horrified classmates. Attendance plummeted.
   This went on for months. Eventually, clowns occupied 7 of the 9 city council seats, and they also took over the largest bank in town. A dull blanket of dread settled over El Reno, as clowns on unicycles raced back and forth on the streets at all hours.
   Our salvation came by accident. One afternoon a clown strode into the Texaco convenience store (squeak-squeak-squeak) to buy candy. They always bought lots of candy, paying with colorful pieces of paper that they insisted were as good as money. On this particular day, the clerk was playing a Michael Bolton CD. The clown cocked his head to one side, and his quizzical expression quickly transformed into a mask of pain. He opened his mouth and screamed silently, pink clown saliva glinting off his fangs. The clown pulled off his round red nose, and tried to stick it in his ear to silence the awful sound coming from the boom box on the counter. Where the nose had been, was now a gaping hole in the clown's face. Realizing too late what he had done, the clown tried to put his nose back. With a slight whooshing sound, his head caved in, and he fell to the floor, dead.
  Word spread fast. Michael Bolton CDs sold out at WalMart in 20 minutes, and soon the dreadful sound of his music was everywhere. Clowns died by the score.
   We managed to turn off the music before regular people started killing themselves. The horrible spell was broken, the town was saved. The clowns who weren't already dead quickly left town.
   Except for the clowns on the City Council. They served out the remainder of their terms.

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Postscript: This is clearly not true. No children were harmed. But admit it: clowns are scary as hell, aren't they?