There were clowns everywhere -dancing, serving drinks, guarding doors -all that was missing from the clown empire of clownish mayhem was laughing gas. I half-expected to see a miniature car pull up beside me from which twelve of them would exit honking each other’s noses. A man wearing an absurdly large purple afro-wig was riding a mechanical bull off in the corner, laughing his ass off as he was about to get tossed. Two scantily- clad, face-painted females stood on tall platforms positioned at each end of the bar hoisting a large spray-gun that they used to soak the dance floor with what looked like red soda-pop. The crowd that filled the general area all wore black and white clown faces. A pair of them walking by me hollered ‘Whoop! Whoop!’ and seemed perturbed when I did not return their enthusiasm for all things clown.

In being occupied by looking at them I quickly became wet from having been caught in the sudden downpour of sticky soda-pop sprayed out from a two-liter bottle that one of the maniacal clowns on stage was gleefully shaking about and dousing the crowd with. There were two of them up there rapping on about psychotic rages and grandmother beatings between shouting insults at the crowd who returned them with raised middle-fingers as though it were part of a ritual. A multitude of hands shot up then to catch the sprays of red as if it were a privilege.

I made my move and tore through a solid and at times seemingly endless crowd of people that were all trying to push me along with them towards the stage when suddenly a doorway appeared bathed in crimson light and so I entered thinking that this must have been what the depressed barkeep was referring to. I immediately felt out of place once I was in the room filled with cushions, couches and even beds strewn amongst small steel tables covered with drinks as all over the place couples were fondling each other, making out and having full intercourse in plain view.

This wasn’t what I was expecting but at least I didn’t want to kill my grandmother anymore. All that fucking clown shit was enough to make anybody funny.

EXCERPT FROM MY CURRENT NOVEL ‘THE DWELLER’ CHAPTER 13