CW: None.
I get up before dawn. Those pale-gray hours hold signs of unseen life: a trace of pungent spray, a flutter of wings, distant car doors slamming shut. Of course I attribute these to animals and early morning commuters. Sometimes I wonder if I’m wrong.
Evie knew the mantra: location, location, location. So while she’d paid more for the house than she’d hoped, she knew the neighborhood was worth it. Clown Town was a beautiful place to live, with pleasant homes and abundant wildlife—she often heard the honking of passing geese. But she’d rarely seen the town’s namesakes.
Occasionally she caught a glimpse of a clown or two standing by the side of the road as she drove to the grocery. Of course they weren’t real clowns, just people in costumes waving at traffic and spinning foam arrows that pointed the way to pizza parlors or thirty-minute oil changes. A quaint bit of local color, a remnant of the days when the city had been a winter resort for migrating circus folk. It wasn’t something she dwelt on. Until an early morning jog and a wrong turn led her into a strip mall parking lot.
She bounced from leg to leg as she glanced around, trying to get her bearings. The lot was deserted. No stores were open and no shoppers waited in their cars. The striped blacktop was bare apart from a few wind-strewn plastic grocery bags and a single discarded refrigerator box. Evie pulled her phone out of its armband holster and swiped to the GPS. Before the map could refresh, a scraping sounded behind her. Evie froze, finger still pressed to the screen, the warm flush of her morning sweat turning clammy on the small of her back. All she’d heard was a hurried scraping, but somehow, deep in her mind, she knew exactly what that sound had been.
The scuffling of over-sized shoes.
Evie whirled. A train of brightly-garbed figures streamed from the refrigerator box, one after the other. Before she could react, they had her surrounded.
Clowns aren’t dangerous, Evie told herself. Turning a slow circle, she took in the ring of painted smiles and cartoon tears. This is some kind of flash mob. Or performance art.
The lead clown, impossibly tall and dressed in a herringbone jacket over yellow suspenders, approached her with a Charlie Chaplin waddle. Drawing close, he bent down, shiny round red nose almost brushing hers. A curl from his wig fell loose, bright orange and bobbing in the morning breeze as he stared at her.
Unsure whether to make eye contact or look away, Evie focused on the curl and held her breath. Bits of half-remembered survival television shows danced through her head. Play dead if you meet a bear. If you run into a mountain lion, puff out your chest and swing your arms overhead. None of it useful here.
From the corner of her eye she saw the clown’s hand glide down, coming to rest on the bicycle horn mounted to his belt.
A belt and suspenders? she thought. That’s funny. The corner of Evie’s mouth lifted, the start of an unexpected, irrational smile. There was the briefest pause, just long enough for her smile to falter before a single, brassy honk broke the silence.
The pack responded, closing on her in a swirl of garish colors and greasepaint. Their chorus of answering honks filled the air, drowning out Evie’s screams.
Just like geese, she thought. They sound just like geese.
