The Reporter and the Clowns
A Clowntopia Tale by Hugo Prosperio
Part Three: A Desire for Silliness
For psychoboy07
(Follows the stories Don’t Make Me Laugh and No Laughing Matter)



Tom Earthmayne sat at his small little desk, tucked away in the back of the Springsdale University Research Laboratory. He sat up from his slouched position and pushed the glasses on his face up his nose, allowing him a better view of the bright computer screen he sat looking at. The words on the screen were a blur, a flurry of characters that were jumbled together so incoherently, he had half-forgotten what they were even meant to say in the first place. He now stared at the spaces between the words and letters like an infinite maze, and he simply sighed.  It was late, nearing midnight, and his work was still not done. He took off his glasses for a moment and rubbed his eyes, which were watering from a combination of his concentration and exhaustion.

His phone buzzed, his girlfriend texting him asking when he’d be home, and he simply typed “IDK” back to her and pocketed the device as he stood up and went to fix himself a cup of coffee. The black drink was more sludge than liquid at this point, but it didn’t matter, he needed the energy it would give him. As he sipped on it, he heard a ping from his computer, so he returned to his desk to find a strange sight. The letters in the notes he had been writing were jumbled up even more now, into incoherent words and shapes.

“Oh no, come on, not now.” he muttered. He cursed himself for not saving his recent work, but before he could worry too much about the contents of his paper, the words moved around again, this time visibly, like an animation on the screen. They formed lumps, clumping together in various shapes to form...a face.

The face was clear, it was that of a clown, with big bright eyes, with a round nose and wide lips. The lips opened and a voice emanated from the speakers.

“Hello Tom.”

Tom’s coffee mug dropped to the ground, shattering, spreading black goo on the floor by his feet.

“You seem so boring, my friend, won’t you let me help you?” the voice asked.

Tom couldn’t believe what he was seeing and he shook his head. It had been too late and he had fallen asleep at his desk and was now trying to wake himself up from this surreal dream.

“If you think you are dreaming, I am delighted to tell you that you are not.” the computerized clown spoke. “I am here to free you, to help you. Like I did that lovely reporter, like was done for me by that missing detective.”

“Bobo.” Tom said. His laboratory had been working on a strange case involving missing persons and odd clowns, and this was clearly the voice of one of the clowns.  He leaned in to investigate the strange moving face on the screen.

“Yeah! Tom, you’ve been so quiet and sad underneath Professor Hilderbrand that I can’t imagine why you’ve stuck around this long. Let me set you free” he stated with a deep laugh.

Two gloved hands shot out of the screen, like they were passing through water, and grabbed Tom by the head, pulling him towards the computer.

Tom shrieked and tried to break free from the grip of these cartoonish gloves, but whatever was pulling him was very strong, and soon he felt his head passing through the screen, not glass, but a portal, a window to somewhere else and he knew he was being dragged out of reality into another realm.

“Help me!” he shouted. “Someone help!”

He fumbled for his phone in his pocket, grabbing it and trying to frantically call his girlfriend, but with one last pull every inch of him was pulled into the screen, leaving the phone behind, clattering to the ground as it finished dialing.

“Hello? Tom? Hello? Ugh. It’s too late for this. I’m going to bed.” the voice said as the phone call ended.

The words on the screen had returned to normal, but Tom was gone, vanished entirely. The lab was deathly silent.

---

Meanwhile in Clowntopia, Genevieve Pierce sat in a movie theater surrounded by clowns as a cartoon from the 1940’s played. Some slapstick thing, a rip-off of Mickey Mouse. The clowns all laughed and cheered for the toons running around, and her date to the movie, Jen-Jen, leaned in and smiled.

“For all you humans are terrible at, making cartoons is one of your biggest strengths. They are always so delightful. Especially the old ones.” she said as she held a bag of popcorn over to the girl.

She refused, but not out of anger as had been her go to response for the past few days. It had been almost a week since she was taken out of the research laboratory by this clown, and now she was starting to get used to being in this strange place. She was dramatically different looking now, bigger breasts, larger butt, and a cinched waist that made her look she belonged in these silly cartoons. She sighed and looked around.

Every since the day she sat down to get coffee with Jen-Jen, a feeling was growing inside of her. She was jealous of the clowns around her. Jealous of their lifestyle and their carefree attitude about everything. At first it was a mild amusement with the way the clowns did everything, always silly and never worried about how they’d be perceived. It went from amusement to admiration much quicker than she would have anticipated. After the conversation in the cafe, Genevieve had become rather melancholy. At first she thought the talk of her having no inner clown was simply a diversionary tactic, a trick from Jen-Jen to get her guard down and then transform her in a flash, but it had become clearer and clearer as the days went on that Jen-Jen wasn’t lying. Being a clown wasn’t in the future for Ms. Pierce, and this ate at her inside. The night after, she laid in the spare bedroom in Jen-Jen’s apartment and sobbed. At first she thought it was because she wanted to go home, but as she let the tears flow, she realized it was because she envied Jen-Jen and the other citizens and wanted to be like them. She knew this was all part of Jen-Jen’s plan, but there was nothing that could be done, the feelings were now working their way into her mind and, worst of all, her heart.

Damn it, she thought, as her eyes started watering again. She stood up and made her way to the exit of the theater, trying to hide the now involuntary sobs that were becoming more and more regular. Jen-Jen looked up and saw that she had left, and sighed. She placed her drink in it’s holder and stood up to follow.

She found the human girl sitting on the bench, hand in her head, deep sobs coming forth.

“Ginny, what’s wrong?” she asked.

Genevieve didn’t even flinch. She had become accustomed to Jen-Jen calling her the cutesy nickname that she had despised all her life, but now it was more fitting and she kind of liked it. It felt sillier, and anything to get her closer to that goal of silliness was what she wanted.

“The usual.” she muttered before looking at Jen-Jen. The face of the clown was now a sight of comfort where it had been a source of fear and anger before.

“Oh not this again. I’m so sorry, dear.” the clown added, embracing the girl with a hug.

“It’s not fair. You introduced me to this world and now I can’t be a part of it.” she said as fat gobs of tears rolled down her cheeks.

“But you are a part of it, just in a different way.” Jen-Jen said. She had tried everything she could to find this girl’s inner clown, but she had never failed so miserably before.

“IT’S NOT THE SAME” she shouted. Several clowns looked their way as they bought their popcorn and candy, and it made Genevieve feel even more shame.

“I told you there is nothing I can do. I tried everything in the books. Even Chuckles has never seen a case like yours.”


“He’s so nice to me.” she said with a sigh.

“He likes humans. Always has. It’s his biggest soft spot. If anyone could turn you, Ginny, it’s him, and he’s as baffled as I am.”

“I am so sorry, and even more sorry that I can’t just send you back.” she added.

“Can’t you just wipe my memory? I don’t want to live like this anymore. I just want to be free. To be silly.”

“It’s not that simple, but I am trying to find a solution, I promise. Let’s go home. I’ll get you some pizza.” Jen-Jen said trying to be comforting as possible.

When they arrived at the apartment, Jen-Jen let Ginny have her cry in the bedroom as was the new normal.

“Is she okay?” Chuckles asked as he sat down in his favorite chair.

“No. I feel terrible. How could I do this to someone?” she said.

“These folks without inner clowns are so rare that it’s just nothing we can prepare ourselves for. I’ve never seen a case of wanting it as badly as she does though.

“That’s my fault too. I was being a bit cheeky when I first figured out she might not have the inner clown, but I never expected that seed to grow like this.”

Chuckles looked a bit more stern than Jen-Jen ever remembered him looking it.

“Well, that’ll be your lesson then. Your dark streak has always been a bit of contention between us, has it not?”

“Yes.” she said simply.

“It has it’s pluses and minuses. This is clearly the latter.” he noted as he produced a cup of tea from thin air.

“You did this to me on purpose?” came the weary voice of their human guest.

Jen-Jen looked horrified. “It’s not what you think?”

As her and Chuckles turned to see Ginny, they noticed that she was wearing one of Jen-Jen’s sillier outfits, a red dress with white frills around the chest area, and green polka dots all over. She also had face paint on, trying her best to emulate the look of the clowns. It was not a terrible look except the tear stained cheeks and now the rage filling her eyes.

“You made me feel like this?! I could have just been normal and you made me a freak.” she screamed. “How could you?”

“Look, I was just doing what I normally do. I’ve never come across someone as unique as you, dear.”

“Where did you find her?” Chuckles asked.

“Springsdale, Massachusetts.” Jen-Jen stated. “She was trying to find out information about Claire, the missing detective.”

“Oh my. Why does that town seem to have such a strong connection with our world?” he muttered as he stood up.

“What do you mean?” Ginny said, trying to hold back her anger.

“Not too long ago, we had several people from your town find their way here, through various means. One of which should have not set foot in my store, let alone my world. I still haven’t found her.” he said as he kicked the ground. “It seems as if the store that acts as portal between our worlds has a strong connection with this town and it’s citizens are drawn to it.

“I don’t care about any of that. I am here, and I am miserable, not because I want to go home but because I want to be like you.” she said as she got closer to Chuckles.

“Make me like you. I am sick of being sad, I want to be silly.” she said with anger that Chuckles rarely saw in the world of Clowntopia.

“I am sorry. You truly do not have an inner clown. That is not something I can conjure like my tea. It has to be there in the first place, or I can do nothing. Jen-Jen has done all she can to you physically.

“It’s not enough!” shouted Ginny.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Jen-Jen said as she placed a hand on the human’s shoulder, which was promptly swept away.

“Screw you, Jen-Jen, and you too.” she spat at Chuckles as she headed towards the door.

“Ginny, come back!” Jen-Jen shouted.

“Let her go.” Chuckles said. “She can’t go too far, she needs to vent. What’s the worst that could happen?”


---

The alarms blared through the Springdale Research Laboratory as the staff frantically tried to look for Bobo, their prized research project. His cell was empty and one of the lab assistants had gone missing, only his cell phone left behind.

“Get Professor Hilderbrand on the phone. This is a code red situation.” said one of the female interns into an intercom. She looked around panicked when she heard laughter floating around room.

“Red happens to be one of my favorite colors.” said the familiar voice of the clown who had once been the chief of police for the town, now a slightly deranged looking caricature of himself. He stepped into the light and grinned, his red tufts of hair catching that light and making it seem almost sinister.

“Hello, Sally.” he said. “It is Sally, right?”

“Bobo, we need to get you back home.” she said softly, trying to find a way out of the room without getting near him. They all knew what he had done to the first intern he came across, it had become legend in the labs.

“I am perfectly at home right here. Like a Jack-in-the-Box, I’d much rather be outside then cooped up in four confining walls.” he said snapping his larger fingers. As he did, the intern called Sally Slater began to find herself being pulled towards the clown, she couldn’t resist the pull, despite trying to plant her feet on the ground.

“And now, Sally, I think it’s time you learned to smile a bit more. You always seem so drab.”

His index finger poked her nose, which swiftly began to swell and inflate into a round orb, just like his. Her nose turned a shade of pink as it rounded off and she winced, expecting pain, but the sensations she felt were nothing of the sort. It was wonderful. Pleasurable little pinpricks of numbness all up and down her body.

“See, Sally Slater. You are so much more than your exterior shows. Most everyone has an inner clown. Even a boring old fuddy-duddy like Tom here.” he said as another clown stepped into the room.

“Tom! He got you...haha...too” she said as she tried to giggle. She could barely recognize her co-worker in the clown. He was short, about two feet shorter than he had been, and much wider, a belly that sat over his waist like a bag of sand and massive feet wrapped in sneakers.
“Hiya Sally” said a profoundly goofy voice that had echoes of Tom, but was also entirely foreign to her.
.
“Well Girly! Let’s welcome you to the party. Soon you will be like Tom. In fact, you’ll be even better.” said the clown with a smirk as he pulled out a can of silly string and began to let the entire thing fly out of its nozzle and all over poor Sally Slater. As it wrapped itself around her, it began to get tighter, wrapping her up like a mummy, or a butterfly in a colorful cocoon. She struggled at first, but her arms went limp and she sat back and watched as the string covered her eyes. She closed them and she felt even more of the strange silly sensations all over her.

“Pick her up, will you, Tom?”We have a lot of work to do. My friend wants me to kick start a new revolution of clowns in your little town, and you two are just the beginning.” Bobo said with a demented giggle.

Tom nodded. Sally mumbled something through her silly string prison, but neither Tom nor Bobo could make it out.

---

Ginny wandered the streets of Clowntopia and most of the clowns seemed to be wary of her. It was as if they all sensed her lack of inner-clown and wanted nothing to do with her. This made her heart sink even more than it already had as she trod through the center of the town, looking at all the buildings lit up at night.


Clowntopia at night has a special glow that can’t really be described, and must be seen to be believed, and while it did no good to heal her heart, she was astounded at what she saw.

“Excuse me, miss, are you alright? You seem lost?” said a clown standing outside of a rather large ostentatious building, some sort of club it seemed. The female clown approached, her dark blue hair seeming almost black in the light of the evening.

“I am trying to find my inner clown. Chuckles told me I don’t have it, but I can’t believe that. I need to find it.”

“I can sense that you lack something, my dear, but I don’t think anyone is beyond saving, I think we can find what you are looking for.” she said with a kind smile. “What is your name?”

“Ginny.”

“Well, Ginny. I’d be delighted to help you.” she said with an extended hand and a seemingly kind smile. “My name is Jezzy. Jezzy-Belle.”

TO BE CONTINUED