#5 The Class Clown

A Chapter by Firehorse

You killed me with every screech, every bow, every salute that flayed my sanity one gesture at a time.

The afternoon silence was broken by the sound of a man clucking like a chicken. We all knew that it was you and looked down at our desks to avoid eye contact. You think you’re a class clown, but I see a sad, creepy man whose head sags into his fat, fleshy body as if it were weighed down by unhappy thoughts. You said to me with a forlorn look in your face and crumbs in your mustache, you look like an annnnnngel.

When I met you I simply asked about cleaning a lab and you replied as if I was victimizing you. How do I know there are no dangerous chemicals in the lab? How can I clean this room, there could be sharps! Your voice crackled into a hysterical falsetto pitch after finding one razor blade and a few graphite pencil leads in a drawer. You’re the custodial super and oversee more than 70 people but I have a hard time believing you can be anyone’s boss.

A few months later you walked over to our side of the office past my coworker and screeched like a cat at the top of your lungs, “Ma-riiiiiii-ahhhhh!” Maria would keep her head down and continue to work. Every time you’d see me you’d bow. You said that you were showing your respect but you made me feel like I’m in high school targeted by the class reject. After many times of telling you not to do that I was surprised that you finally stopped. Then you started saluting me instead. I am in Hell.

Every day around 3pm you’d come to our side of the office to rant and pace in front of my cubicle. I’d put on my sound cancelling earphones but I still had a hard time tuning you out. Then one day you miraculously did not show up.

You had one friend, the director of puppetry who kept a studio in the basement of James Hall. To tell the truth, your friend was actually the puppet maker’s creation, the paper-mâché clown with a crooked smile that sat alone on the shelf.

Until one day, the puppet had moved. Just a little, just enough to suggest it had leaned forward. Its paper-mâché fingers curled slightly, as if forming a gesture mid-sentence.

Three days later a set of footprints appeared, large, dusty, flat-footed impressions on the stairwell that ended abruptly at the custodian’s closet behind the break room. The mop bucket had been disturbed. The sponge warped. A trail of white paste dotted the floor like molted skin.

You disappeared yet no one noticed that you were gone.

At 3:00pm on the dot, someone began pacing in front of my cubicle again. Heavy footfalls, slow and deliberate, as if dragging something unseen. I kept my noise-canceling headphones on, eyes down, pretending the rhythm wasn’t perfectly timed to the moments I once gritted my teeth through your rants.

But then came the whisper, not a voice exactly, it was more like the crinkle of paper and glue bending into syllables:

You look like an annnnnngel…

You killed me with every screech, every bow, every salute that flayed my sanity one gesture at a time. This final performance in silent puppet homage triggered me to jump across my cubicle partition and smash your crooked grin back into a pulp. Five minutes later Public Safety rushed into the office to restrain me.

The next morning, I woke up groggy from sedatives and unable to move from being tied up a straitjacket. Imagine my surprise when I spotted you in the next bed over.

Whenever I tell anyone the story about the clown, they say it’s all in my head.

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