Only Fun n Games

This marks the first time I have confided an event I hold as dear to me as one would stitch the darkest sins to their very soul, and carry with them to their death lest be judged by mortals lesser than the Divine.

Look at me, sounding like some fifteenth-century scribe; news flash: the world ain’t flat! Heh-heh... Can’t believe I typed that...

My psychiatrist, Doc (that’s as far as I get to call him because he has one of those odd-sounding names that feels like earwax to the mouth when spoken), enlightened guru of everything on the left-side of crazy (must be at two-hundred bucks an hour!), wanted to try “something new” with these sessions. Apparently a little Q-and-A turnabout exchange with TLC is a-little-too-much for the ol’ Doc to handle. He wants me in my “free time” (yeah, right…) to do freestyle writing on the precept of unleashing, and I quote “slumbering demons within me that need to be released” (and who’s the screwball?). Well, he already got twelve-hundred out of me with about as much results as talking to a brick wall. If this don’t work, I think just maybe I might search other options out in the market. For now, I will do his homework assignment. I was never a fan of homework, so in tribute to the rebellious teenager I once was before life had a different plan for me, I will not write of myself, but of another person…

The day was hot, and I don’t mean the type of heat that makes your hair drench, and bands of sweat roll down your face; it was, instead, the type of heat that sponged every ounce of water out of you, made your throat feel as if it had swallowed a cactus; so hot you could feel it in your crotch. It was the type of heat that would make one drop dead in a heartbeat from stroke, and make even ants find shelter. That day, the radio broadcasted it was the third hottest day in the past two-hundred years, a whopping one-hundred-and-twelve degrees, 2nd place was one-hundred-and-eighteen-degrees back in 1891, and Numero Uno was a painful one-hundred-and-twenty-nine degrees back in 1797 (where they got the numbers is beyond me!).

It was that day, in the dead of the summer, when some genius in an air-conditioned room, decided to hold the State Fair in my town. Landis was nothing more than a crumb of a town (maybe more a morsel) that housed a population of a little over twelve-hundred residents. It was a two-hour drive to each of three cities surrounding, and nothing but woods and farms far as the eye could see. Those who had money did not work in Landis, much less contribute to outside of property taxes, and the locals were so removed from the life of middle-class that even they found it hard to imagine what sort of life was entailed. In short, the town was not ready for a spontaneous event that would garner thousands of visitors. Two old sayings come to mind: “everything comes with their little consequences” and “don’t bite off more than you can chew”. There was never a truer testament than what could be applied to the experience of the conglomeration of outsiders who invaded our town. Imagine shoving a one-ton bull through a two-foot meat grinder: not a pretty picture, and that pretty much summed up the whole experience.

A plethora of havoc ensued from bumper-to-bumper traffic, rioting, and even arson. By the end of the day, Landis was at a state of demolition that took eight months to recover. Just in opening day there was a reported fifteen robberies, ten assaults, eight carjackings, six murders, two rapes (and a partridge in a FUCKING pear tree…). In a town where the worst crime committed was spray-painting the Miller’s barn, such numbers were too much for the police department to handle, that they had to call for assistance from two other towns, some fifteen miles away in both directions.

Here I go, rambling again like some drunken down-on-his-luck cowboy who missed his one chance to stardom and got his dame knocked up before the height of his music career… That’s the Achilles Heel of freestyle. So, Doc, let me spare your eyes, your nerves, and your mental health by stepping forward on the happenance (is that a word?) that transpired eight hours before the riots.

It was a little past early dawn when the fair opened up. It was actually pretty nice to begin with; before the cavalry of outsiders was to charge through two-hours later. The fairgrounds consisted only a couple of dozen locals; some lined up at gaming like hogs to a trough, cashing in their week’s pay to win trinkets that cost less than a dollar made in some sweatshop in another country, while others rode rides and stuffed their faces.

It was me, my girl Candace, and our friends Jewel, Hank, Sylvie, and Lewis. We were doing what normal teenage deviants do, smoking cigarettes and watching everyone else have fun. What else was there to do in a one-horse-town? None of us could find a job, anyway.

Jewel and Hank were eating each others’ faces beside a post, so nobody paid any attention to them anyways. Sylvie and Lewis, not an item by any means, were complaining about the lackluster carnival: how much a bore it looked, why anyone would blow money on it was beyond their own cognizance, and other complaints of the common variety that were more excuses generated from denial over the fact that they were actually jealous to be left out.

Candace has been aloof all morning. She rubbed her shoulders constantly, never really making eye contact with anyone. It was weird, because she was normally Miss-social-butterfly-queen-extrovert-and-all-that-other-jazz. I mean she could pull anybody into a conversation that would last for hours if she so wished to do so, and wore no restricted visors toward anyone of any class, race, you name it. She wasn’t popular by her own volition, a wiser person that her tender years dictated, as she was able to read people like a book by a glance. That didn’t stop her from at least treating everyone like humans, something most of society had a trouble grasping.

I took it upon myself to step in. “You okay, Candace? You ain’t been right since last night.”

Her eyes teared with withdrawn sadness. “You know what, Max, I’m not. I can’t believe you insisted me on watching that horrible movie.”

I grew irritated more at my own stupidity than at her, but I passed it on as pure banality on her part. “Oh come on! You really think I asked you over just to watch a stupid movie!? My parents gone… Lights out… I had better things in mind…”

“Yes, well…” She sniffled, “You know how I feel about clowns… And what that clown did to those poor kids…”

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that scary! It was a made-for-tv movie on a family-friendly channel.” I tried everything to grasp at the smallest shred of sensibility out of the situation, “Besides, the book was like ten times scarier, the creature took more forms, there was more violence, and was downright more disturbing too.”

Lewis, master of inappropriate things to say at the wrong moment, shouted out, “Yeah, didn’t the kids like screw each other in some sewer? The writer is some sick Fuck!” I never did get the chance to thank Lewis for those choice words.

All Candace did was give me the look that I crossed some invisible line I was supposed to know about, as if I was some great mind-reader, and that I was going to pay.

And I did.

She stormed off.

I tried running after her.

Everything went down shit’s creek.

In a rage, Candace, not seeing where she was running, slammed into none other than a clown.

Balloons flew up in the air… they all float… Still makes me shudder…

She fell back. The clown frantically went on top of her, trying to help her up.

Candace kicked him in the nether region and then lost herself in the crowd.

There was only the clown in my sight; thick purple puffy hair, bulbous red nose, oversized shoes that would make Michael Jordan blush, and a dementedly happy smiley face painted on his otherwise bemused face. He reached down to collect something off the ground, and chased after Candace.

I won’t lie. Instinct told me it was a weapon, like a knife. It did sparkle in the sunlight.

I followed the clown who chased Candace into, of all places, a Fun House (almost as cliche as an ax-murderer chasing a damsel into woods from an open road).

The Fun House was a creepy, otherworldly place of neon lights, deranged puppetry, and other things from children’s worst nightmares were born.

After some time I lost the clown and, believably, Candace as well.

It was until I grazed around a bend that I saw a light slanting from a corner, and rising up a wall; upon it the silhouette of a gaunt figure with grasshopper-thin arms, wielding a blunt object, hammering something down with extreme force.

WHACK-CRACK! WHACK-CRACK! splash WHACK-CRACK!

I tell ya my heart dropped. I thought Candace was done for.

I followed the light and came to an even more harrowing scene than my mind had ever perceived.

On the ground was a corpse, faced down, mushed and bloodied brains exposed from a crushed in crater. The steel end of a an electric box crushes the skull deeper to the earth, blood and brain matter fly again in pulps of red and purple.

Purple...

About the room, purple hair was spread in patches. I took another glance at the corpse, and the red-and-white striped pants it wore, and my heart sank deeper.

One look of Candace standing before me, and I was about near ready to die. Her body, from shoulder-length brown hair down to white sneakers, was doused red.

Blood was everywhere, on machinery, on the walls, even on the ceiling. I called out to her, and she turned. Eyes were round as coins; whole body was shaking; whoever lived in Candace was long gone and all was left was an empty shell.

I called her name repeatedly. She walked toward me, staring beyond me, and walked past me into the doorway from where I entered. That was the last time I ever saw her. I combed the entire Fun House, and as the weeks and months of searching for Candace Wagman, nobody has ever found her.

But back there, in that room where Candace made her transformation, I did something criminal. Probably the only felonious act I ever committed in my life. You have to understand I loved Candace more than I had anyone else, and for that I felt the obligation to protect her by all means.

I hefted the clown with every ounce might I could muster (he must’ve weighed over two-fifty, at least), and dragged him to a machine full of gears, cranks and whatnots that operated the mini-train. Figuring I would stage an accident, I threw him into the mechanisms. The gears grinded, crunched, and screeched. Then there was this great explosion! From out of nowhere, a sea of flames scorched the place like dragon’s breath. I ran as fast as I could. The last thing I saw, when looking back, was one of the clown’s hand arched up from between the gears as the legs of some upside-down dead spider.

I ran clear to the fairground, the Fun House a quick inferno. Everyone gathered in terror. Beneath the raging fire that broke from the Fun House, we could hear the muffled screams of children and adults alike.

That was when the riots ensued, the havoc, the carnage…

In all the trauma surrounding, only one thing plagued my mind: Where had Candace gone?

As I type these words, I realize that I have divulged more than what I had intended; and that, while the freestyle session did work in unearthing the great sins I have hidden deep within the mausoleum of my soul, these words should not be shared with others. So, Doc, I apologize beforehand with the confession that I am going to burn this document so that only I hold the truth of what had happened that one fateful day at the state fair.

~~ Max Roderick