Excerpted from MEAT PUPPETS, by Hannah Smart, via APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL PRESS. Available now.
Near-successes hurt worse than outright rejections. This was something nobody had bothered to tell Syd, who, when his phone rang at 10:36 PM the week after his callback, fumbled to answer it from bed in a nearly-sober trance with the servile tone of a person willing to jump any requested height.
“Is this Syd Morris?”
“Uh-huh.”
“This is Anna Harding from the Twelve Kids casting team. I’ve got your callback results.”
“Thanks. It’s not the kind of role I’d always dreamed of, but I accept.”
“Accept what?”
“The role.”
“You didn’t get the role.”
Syd straightened out. “What? Who did?”
“We can’t tell you that.”
“Was it that clown? Blake with the three names?”
“We can’t tell you.”
“Blake is my friend. I’m just going to call him and ask.”
“Please don’t harass him over it.”
“Knew it. Fucking hell, Blake.”
“Have a nice night, sir.”
The next morning, Syd began researching Blake Aaron Olsen and Krazy Klown Entertainment. It wasn’t difficult; Blake wore, as Syd suspected, his heart on his sleeve, and on his website, apparently—the homepage featured a colorful and eye-soreish list of upcoming birthday party tour dates, most of them residential addresses. This coming Saturday, Blake would be pimping himself out at 51 Greer Road, a location conveniently accessible via public transit. You’d have to be insanely rich to own real estate this close to downtown New York, Syd thought—rich enough to afford higher-class entertainment than a travelling circus clown, at least.
Syd had no intention of telling Mitch about his materializing scheme. Mitch, in his fatherly wisdom, would likely urge Syd not to crash some eight-year-old’s party and accost its resident clown. Plus, Syd had just duped Mitch into buying an overpriced piece of staple art and didn’t want to risk being unable to sucker him out of more money down the line. No, this would be a Syd solo endeavor.
October had brought higher winds and cooler temperatures and those annoying scattered blips of rain that passed as soon as they came and came again twenty minutes later. Syd often found himself leaving his house in a trench coat, which, despite the unfortunate Columbine associations, he believed he could still pull off, and today was no exception. But besides some strange and furtive looks on the subway, Syd’s coat didn’t elicit much reaction, which I get the sense vaguely disappointed him.
51 Greer Road was a cute little brick home on the outskirts of Brooklyn. Pink banners reading “HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAYLA” draped the property’s entire perimeter, but the real action was happening in the backyard—a fenced-in, shaded area with a slightly overgrown lawn. A Disneyfied, radio-friendly pop tune Syd identified as being in the key of D blared over a tinny speaker sitting on one of those webbed, outdoor metal tables and buzzing with friction every time the bass hit. Segregated clumps of parents and children populated the area. Most parent conversations seemed to revolve around their kids.
To Syd, having children seemed a bleak endeavor—a consignment to a lifetime of servitude. Once you had kids, you lost your individual identity and became a faceless projection of and mouthpiece for said kids. Every now and then, an identityless mom (because let’s be honest, the dads were few and far between and appeared storklike and out of place, as if they’d been randomly dropped here like RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 NPCs and were trying to get their bearings) pointed to a child—most of whom were batting around mouth-inflated balloons and/or sitting on multicolored chairs at a short, plastic table, molding Play-Doh, though a few of the grimier boys were digging a hole and pouring diet soda into it—to show the other moms that that one was hers, and she was sure proud of it. Of him or her. The whole situation was pretty sad, but Syd nonetheless longed to be pointed out in a crowd and identified as special or important. To be more than an afterthought.
With the exception of one occasion he was trying to block out, he’d never had a birthday party. When he was young, his then-stepdad Glen would sometimes bring home a cupcake from Pfeffer’s, the only bakery in Village of Walton, upstate NY, where he grew up. The cake was always smooshed and lopsided, and most of its frosting stuck to the folded-over tabs of the packaging and needed to be licked off, so Syd would take a lick followed by an immediate bite of the naked cupcake to simulate eating it in its intended form. His stepdad would sit next to him at the table, silently reading The Wall Street Journal on his iPad, until Syd finished. Then Glen would club him on the shoulder and say, “Happy birthday, kid,” and Syd would tiptoe wordlessly to his room, careful not to wake his unconscious mother, and cry himself to sleep.
Syd had always been an afterthought, but now, with Mitch breathing down his neck so closely Syd could smell his morning coffee, he was at least one person’s reason for getting up in the morning. Sure, Mitch was a lamentable creature, but there was a certain degree of lamentability required to see Syd as a beacon of hope.
Still no sign of any clown nor even of Blake dressed in a normal outfit carrying what Syd imagined as one of those over-the-shoulder burlap sacks filled with laundered clown clothes. Syd had been surprised by the utter prototypicality of Blake’s outfit when he’d met him at the callback—a button-down shirt with pockets and some slacks—as well as struck by the disconcerting reality that clowns walked among us, disguised as normal people going about their daily business, blending seamlessly and sinisterly into the amorphous, ostensibly-clownless human social mass.
Syd took a seat at one of the adult tables, where he slumped forward and rested his chin on his palms. Kids frolicked in the field. A blonde girl with a pink cardboard birthday hat and overalls, who Syd assumed was Kayla, sat huddled with a couple other girls in a circle on the ground, the three of them ripping grass out of the dirt and sprinkling it on each other’s heads in some pseudo-religious ritual. The moms at Syd’s table bragged about how creative their kids were and took turns giving Syd suspicious glances of upper-class judgment.
“She’s always coming up with games like that,” one mom mused, referring to the grass ceremony. She was shorter and plumper than the other two and had an unnatural-looking brunette dye-job.
“Mine too; she has these tiny drawings she cuts out for us—for her father and me—and a little shop,” said another mom, who was tall and thin and blonde.
“Mine is always building things out of her brother’s Legos. Takes apart his sets and makes totally novel designs,” said a third mom, who looked like if you combined the first two moms via a free face-blender app, and who giggled falsely before adding, “He gets so mad about it, but the stuff she comes up with is sometimes better than what the instruction manuals teach you to make. Just last week, she built a Barbie Dreamhouse out of her brother’s Death Star.”
Syd noted with mild bemusement the passive-aggressive power-plays involved in loving motherhood. These moms weren’t just making conversation—they were one-upping. Each needed her kid to be the superior kid, because in the world of mom politics, that would somehow reflect back on her. After every comment, the mom who’d uttered it indiscreetly sized up the table as if hoping the other two would respond with, “Wow. I can’t top that. You win” instead of anecdotes of their own. The conversation exhausted even Syd, who was just a spectator, so he couldn’t imagine how these loving mothers felt.
“She charges anywhere from one to seven dollars for each, and she makes a killing from her dad and me,” the second mom continued, as if the third hadn’t spoken. The absurdity of the statement made Syd wonder whether he’d misheard.
“Some of the games mine makes up are really complicated. The grass game they’re playing right now is one of the simpler ones.”
“Her Lego creations are so well-designed. I always tell her she should submit one to Lego Ideas.”
So far, the Lego girl was winning, by Syd’s measure, assuming the third mother wasn’t grossly exaggerating her daughter’s abilities.
“She’s made about a hundred bucks total. She just leaves her earnings there in the closet next to her drawings. I’ll have to teach her about financial security someday if she’s going to run a business, but this is fine for now.”
“Sorry,” Syd cut in, having held his tongue so long it was beginning to lose metaphorical blood supply. “Did you just say you pay your daughter real USD for cut-out paper crap?”
All three mothers’ mouths expanded into lopsided O’s, as if each of their daughters had been personally insulted. Seconds ago embroiled in fierce competition, they now formed a united front.
In an instant, the second mom’s lips went from loosely agape to prudishly puckered. “Yes. Have a problem with that?”
“It’s just not realistic—you’re not doing anything with them. You’re only buying them to make her feel better. Why not just throw free money at her if you have all that lying around.”
“To encourage creativity,” the first mom put in.
“Excuse me, who are you?” the second mom added.
“Older brother,” Syd said quickly. After a lifetime of freelance lying, he’d learned to always divulge as little information as possible and let the lyees fill in the rest.
“Whose older brother?”
Syd pointed indistinctly toward a couple boys playing tag.
“Carlos’s?” the third mom cut in. “Or Brayden’s?”
“Mmhm.”
“I’ve never heard Brayden’s mom talk about having another kid.”
“And Carlos is an only child—his mom and I play bridge together.”
“I thought Brayden was too.”
“I’m on break from college,” Syd added. “Gonna go grab some refreshments.”
The refreshments were depressingly non-alcoholic. He fingered the CNO-filled baggie in his trench coat pocket, debating the ethics of doing a line in the presence of second graders. It’s not like they’d know what he was doing, but it still seemed inexplicably depraved.
So Syd stood on the sidelines, sipping a Capri-Sun juice box, wondering where the fuck Blake was and what the fuck he (Syd) was even doing here. He’d somehow planned out every minute of the trip without giving himself any real objective.
One of the out-of-place dads tottered Roller-Coaster-Tycoon-2ishly over to him. He had graying hair and a pointed nose and the physique of someone who works out about twice a month. “Which one’s yours?” he asked.
Syd searched the field for the two kids he’d pointed to earlier but couldn’t find them, nor could he remember what they even looked like. He was terribly face blind, especially when it came to kids, who looked like if you pasted custom hairstyles onto about three or four different available default templates. “I’m an older brother.”
“I assumed. Which is yours?”
Syd picked a little boy at random, praying that it wasn’t the man’s son.
“That one’s mine.”
“I meant that other one,” Syd amended, pointing to an adjacent kid, who had just put the first kid in a headlock and was now noogieing him while the first kid stumbled around blindly, trying to free himself.
“Nah, I’m just messing with you. That’s not my kid. Should’ve seen the look on your face though.”
Which told Syd the man knew Syd didn’t belong here, but the man didn’t appear particularly bothered by his not belonging here—seemed to believe tourism of random children’s birthday parties was a common pastime for early-twenties drug addicts.
“I’m Peter.” The man outstretched his hand. What Syd didn’t know, while he took it cautiously, half-expecting a whoopee-cushion-like prank or something even more nefarious, was that this was Peter Rankin, the indie film director.
“Syd.”
Suddenly, the yard erupted in a collective high-pitched cheer, and Syd turned to see the First Mom from earlier escorting a clown through the house’s back door, the clown walking with the familiar, demeaning waddle of clowns everywhere, a few long, uninflated, twistable balloons hanging out of the pockets of his ridiculous outfit. Syd slouched behind Peter and covered his face, though the trench coat made him more conspicuous than he would have liked.
He felt depressingly sober. He was soberer than he ever wanted to be again.
“You all right, kid?” Peter asked him.
“Shhh.”
“I’m a Krazy Klown, and I’m here to entertain you!” Blake exclaimed, wiggling his arms as if they were made of jelly.
The kids cheered again.
“Afraid of clowns?” Peter asked now. Syd couldn’t decide whether he wanted to deck the clown or Peter first.
“Where’s our Kayla, huh?”
The blonde, birthday-hatted girl’s hand shot immediately skyward. More cheers.
“You’re a special girl, Kayla. Your name starts with the same letter as klown. Did you know that?”
“There’s a word for that fear,” Peter went on, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, his head half-turned. “They call it coulrophobia. Did you know that?”
Syd nodded in a bare-minimum acknowledgement of Peter’s existence.
“For Kayla, we have a special surprise today, but first—”
The klown’s heavily made-up eyes met Syd’s. For as long as Syd could stand to look at Blake’s garish visage, he detected excitement, then realization, then suspicion, then fear, then murderous intent or possibly some rare combination of all five.
“Is that Syd Morris I spy?” Pointed to Syd.
Syd felt his body melting into the floor. He considered it a miracle he wasn’t an embarrassed puddle of corporeal glue.
“Who wants to hear a funny story about Syd?”
Cheers.
“Once upon a time, Syd and I were trying out to be in a TV show. Who here likes TV shows?”
Most of the kids raised their hands, captivated. A couple of the more attention-challenged ones fiddled with grass, as if the klown’s presence or lack thereof were a matter of utter indifference to them.
“I’m not kidding. We both wanted to be on TV. Isn’t that right, Syd? Wanna come finish the story for me, Syd?”
For someone who thought he was about to be attacked, Blake’s provocations were unusually forward.
Syd now felt not two but about thirty eyes on him, including those of Peter, who looked to be in the process of deciding whether amusement was too inappropriate a reaction to the fracas.
Syd cleared his throat. “Sure.” The word came out raspy.
“Come on; come up in front of the class,” Blake invited, motioning with a white-gloved hand.
Syd approached slowly.
“It looks like Syd and I are both dressed silly today!” Blake spoke to his audience in the patronizing voice intellectually insecure adults reserve for children. Syd remembered being spoken to like that as a child and hating it. He wondered whether any kid enjoyed it—perhaps they just weren’t game enough to speak up.
The kids all laughed.
“We tried out for a lame TV show for sellouts,” Syd told the crowd flatly.
“He’s a bit of a sad klown,” Blake added, holding his fists to his eyes and twisting them back and forth in a mock gesture of krying.
“This guy,” Syd went on, nudging Blake’s ribcage with a force he hoped was gentle enough to look playful but aggressive enough to actually hurt, “came in there looking totally wigged out, like…on drugs or something.”
A few confused-looking parents sprang from their seats to object and then sat halfway back down, hovering in liminal squats.
“Syd’s klownsults have gotten a bit squeaky. He might need to go back to Klown Kollege.” More laughs. Syd was losing this fight—he could tell, much like he could tell which moms were losing the kid-off earlier. Despite his deprecatory prolificity at the callbacks, he now felt surprisingly unequipped to deliver damaging blows. Blake had become a completely different person when he’d put the clown costume on. Now he was in on the joke, and Syd was the outsider.
“Do you kids want to hear why Klown Syd is so sad?” Syd asked, referring to himself in the third person as was klown kustom.
The kids cheered.
“Birthday parties make Klown Syd sad because Klown Syd’s daddy was killed during one. Do you kids know what killed means?”
They nodded, noticeably subdued.
“Whose daddies are here today?” Syd went on.
A few tiny hands went up.
“This klown over here—” He nudged Blake again. “—told me he’s going to kill one of them today. He said it’s because the word kill starts with the same letter as klown. He’s not a very nice klown, is he?”
Some of the more mentally deranged kids whooped, while others began sobbing, and the rest just looked mortified. The parents exchanged affronted expressions that wordlessly asked whether the others were going to do something about this or what.
“Okay, okay,” Blake said, his klown persona faltering. Then to Syd, mouthed through gritted teeth, What the fuck, man?
“Klown Blake said a bad word,” Syd proclaimed loudly. “Say it again, so they can hear you better.”
“Okay, dude, what’s your deal, huh?”
Syd barely heard him through the sound of his own brain’s static. His earlier aimlessness had transmuted into a singular, visceral purpose: impair the klown in some mental or physical way. It took active, concerted effort not to further damage the reputation of trench coats.
“He said fuck,” Syd informed them. “Who’s an angry klown?”
At that, a few parents stood up. “Where’d you find these guys?” one of the dads yelled across the field to Kayla’s mom.
“Yo, do you wanna go?” Blake shoved Syd’s left shoulder. After not even a moment’s pause, Syd roundhoused him in the stomach, and he crumpled. A few kids cheered and klapped. Nobody seemed totally sure what was part of the fictional klown performance and what was real.
Syd lifted his arms into the air like a terrorist giving himself up for arrest. “I’m done. But let’s vote: who thinks Klown Blake won that klown kompetition?”
A few scattered affirmations from the kids, with an undercurrent of worried, buzzing chatter from the parents, one of whom (a dad) had Syd by the wrists and was pulling his arms behind his back as if to handcuff him.
“Who thinks Klown Syd won?”
Whoops and applause. Syd wished he didn’t derive satisfaction from such a paltry state of affairs.
And the last image Syd saw of the party before he was strongarmed off the premises was of Blake squirming around on his ass, trying to get to his knees, resembling a spun coin on its final few rotations.
— Hannah Smart’s short stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, West Branch, The Boston Globe, SmokeLong Quarterly, Berkeley Fiction Review, and Cleaver, among other outlets. Her work has been shortlisted in The Masters Review Chapbook Open, nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net anthology, and discussed in The New Yorker. She is the founder and editor in chief of experimental journal The Militant Grammarian. Meat Puppets is her first novel.