A Painting Of A Clown

The clown painting wasn't there when I'd chosen the apartment. In fact, the place had been completely unfurnished and the walls were peeling.

The place was a dump, to be honest. Still, few options were available to me at the time. The girlfriend wanted me out of our basement love nest in her Mom's house, and there was little I could do about it by that point.

Anyway, yes, the clown painting.

I couldn't tell if the subject was supposed to be sad or malevolent. Its sloppy, down-turned mouth could have been intended to reflect either. Or neither. The thing looked haphazardly painted, as if the artist hadn't even intended to paint anything at all.

When I first saw the painting, I mistook it for a skull. The white greasepaint, dabbed in in thick, unthinking blotches, gave that sort of effect. The simple black circles in place of eyes didn't help.

Only when I noticed the little conical hat and puffy red hair did I realize this was intended to be a living figure. A clown. Its frilled red collar and yellow polka-dotted suit further solidified the artist's clumsy intention.

"Jesus Christ!" my Girlfriend, Miranda, shouted, "Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?"

She stood halfway through the front door, carrying a box labeled "Comics". She didn't want to help me move, but it was the only way I agreed to leave without causing any drama.

"That's not mine." I scoffed, immediately feeling more embarrassed by the picture than I was confused about its origins.

"Whatever. Just another creepy fucking thing for you to value more than people." she snapped.

I studied the clown painting in closer detail as Miranda continued to haul in boxes. It was her car, so there was more reason for her to get the job done than there was for me.

"It's signed." I commented during one of her mumbling, seething trips into the apartment.

"Great," she replied, "Bring it on Circus-Freaks Roadshow."

I could tell she'd been working on the horrible pun outside.

"Euczec…" I read aloud, entirely sure I was mispronouncing the artist's name, "Benden Euczec… You-check?"

"Euczec, Makes-Me-Sick, whatever. Help me with the boxes or I'm leaving them on the fucking curb, you lazy piece of shit."

With a sigh, I joined the 5"6' pack mule in purging me from her existence. Each time I entered the apartment, however, I couldn't help by stare at the clown once more.

What at first seemed interesting soon became disturbing. After two or three viewings, I seriously considered burning the thing. Around six trips, I got the distinct idea that the feeling between us was mutual.

The clown's eyes weren't just black circles. They were voids of terror.

His collar was blood red, and it was innocent blood. His suit wasn't just yellow, it was the color of a child's pants that had been pissed in terror. His conical cap, whimsical and undersized, hid the single horn of a subhuman THING.

The more I looked at the clown painting, the more I hated it.

The more the clown painting looked back, the more it hated me.

I could feel it. Someone had placed this image on the wall directly facing the front door, and it had been done for the sole purpose of intimidating me. It hung perfectly, at the exact center of the wall, at face height. The height of MY face.

"That's it," Miranda snorted, letting a stack of papers fall to the floor, "Goodbye!"

"Well, one more thing actually."

She stopped, let out a deep, angry breath, and turned on her heels. She stared at me, hard.

"What."

"Take the painting on your way out." I gestured absently and folded my arms like a spoiled child.

"You're fucking kidding me."

"You probably put it here to screw with me, so you can take it back out."

"It's like I said before, you're a paranoid lunatic."

I raised my eyebrows a bit and pursed my lips. She knew I could, at any time, simply take back all the agreements I'd made with her. She was nearly free of my influence, and that was only because I'd allowed it.

"FINE."

Miranda stormed over to the clown painting, grasped the frame on either side, and roughly yanked it from the stark, white wall.

The image remained.

Miranda studied the frame in her hands, as did I. It was empty.

We both looked to the wall, to the perfectly square recess within, and to the smeared, crude clown. His face appeared half-melted, like a cereal mascot designed by Salvador Dali.

Two cartoonishly oversized hands reached from the opening and grasped Miranda in the same way she'd taken the frame. Supported by thin, yellow-clad arms that bent in very wrong directions, the hands quickly lifted the shrieking girl off of her feet.

Its expression never changed.

I looked away for only a moment, covering my ears to the blood-curdling scream.

When my eyes returned to the source of my abject terror, the wall was whole once more. Lying on the bare wooden floor was the frame… clown painting now contained within its borders.

So, yeah.

I threw the painting in the dumpster and never spent a single night in that apartment.

Miranda's Mom never stopped looking for her. Naturally, the bitch thought I'd killed her. It was a messy break-up as I'm sure you gathered, and… she heard a lot of late-night arguing.

She was convinced that I took her "baby" away from her, and I guess I can't blame her for making that mistake. I never told anyone the real story until now. What other reasonable explanation could there be?

I hope you understand, now that I've told you all of this. You have to be reasonable, here, because I haven't been half as difficult as I could be regarding the issue. Just… as I say, be reasonable, and give a condemned man his last wish…

You have to take that damned clown painting out of my cell.

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