B01M0OJOU7 EBOK Read online

  She passed me the paper. I read her words and nodded, feeling itchy a minute after taking the last of the 1234Boom!

  She grabbed the piece of paper and turned it over, grabbing the pen, she started to write. Already, she was starting to shake. The drug was wearing off of her too.

  I nodded slowly, reading her words. I knew what we had to do.

  ***

  The house felt like it was made from paper, and I saw the reflection of the dancing flames in the blood on her cheek bone. We had to move; we couldn’t stay there. The garage contained four limousines. It felt only right that we should go in style, I thought, the heat of the house behind me. It seemed to push me forward, like hands.

  She carried me the remainder of the way. Despite the strength of the suit, I was the weaker. Then she climbed over the seat, breathlessly jammed the key into the ignition, and started the engine. Seconds went by as we listened to our hearts beat faster, the mechanisms whirl and growl, like a waking giant. We drove away, the fire behind us, the house eating itself, falling in a heap on the dusty ground.

  After the emergency services had been and gone, when the ground cooled, I believe that she wrote our time together down, for it wasn’t long since her fingers started to crumble, in a few sheets of paper then buried them amongst the rubble. That’s what I believe anyway.

  ***

  Thunder filled the air, and lightning occasionally split the heavens in two, but the car swam like a black shark through the darkness nevertheless. Then came the rain. But that didn’t put a hold on the night or stop time.

  Neon raised its head and crawled up the walls, revealing what hid in the shadows. Then the high heeled shoes scraped and clacked across the rain-blackened concrete towards the waiting car. The window came down slowly, and a thick leather-gloved hand shakily passed her a piece of paper the driver had plucked from the darkness itself, it read:

  My name’s Nadine. How much?

  BUFFA: SWEETS AND SPECTRUMS

  Brian Barr

  Sandra Jigsaw would do anything for her beloved candy.

  Standing in front of that restroom mirror at the gas station, Sandy gave her makeup a final check-over. She made sure the orange jigsaw over the left eye was painted just perfectly, the smaller green jigsaw of a different shape over the right eye also well drawn. She checked her orange lips and made sure they didn’t bleed into the white, powdered foundation on her clown face. Her bright orange hair was nice and straight, the bangs of an equal, short length on her forehead. Neither her puzzle print decorated high-heeled boots nor her short yellow skirt with a bold tangerine top could hide the thinness of her slowly wasting away body.

  All she had to do was let that weird, raincoat wearing hobo clown slam the pie in her face. That was all. One simple slammed pastry to the noodle, and then she could have her candy. Oh, that candy, that delicious, delirious, luxurious treat. She would do anything for it, and she had almost done everything. From the crying Pierrot tat on her ass, to the secret scars she had cut on her arm, under the striped green and black sock she had made into a forearm ‘bracelet’, she wore the pain that candy had given her. The cravings, the needs, the wants and concerns all danced within her, and she couldn’t get the taste out of her mouth, the rush that moved through her blood.

  Beautiful, tired Sandra walked out of the restroom, rubbing her red ball of a nose that she had fitted on just right, just perfect. Mr. Raincoat liked his women well kempt, painted just perfectly, made just right. He didn’t like to be kept waiting, for he was a very punctual man. Candy checked the clock on the wall. Five minutes. Just perfect, the right amount of time she needed to meet the man here, in the precise location he had specified.

  This was a little more daring of a chosen spot than usual. The raincoat wearing hobo usually liked the dark, the alleyways on a foggy morning, hidden under the hustle and bustle of early traffic and clowns walking to work, not interested in the goings-on of dark, secluded passages. Then again, Sandy had more to lose from this more public stunt, waiting along the side of Funnyman Avenue, under an overpass, as many a clown car and tricycle whizzed by.

  Well, Sandy didn’t have that much to lose. She lost her job at Crackpot Co. many years ago, unable to balance her job against her addictive habit with candy. Though she had always told herself she could juggle the two worlds, keep each ball afloat, all of those spheres long tumbled beside the one, the sweet, tooth rotting ball, the round hellion that kept her spinning round in circles, like some Dantean layer.

  So, with that one ball, that one point dotted center in her life, Sandra could humiliate herself. She could play the stooge to a well-paying customer’s straight man. She could take that damn pie.

  But the trick was, she didn’t know which of those cars would bring her client, when he would show. She stood on the driver’s side of the street, pretty sure the client would be alone. Many a striped coup and polka-dotted wagon sped by, sometimes with a clown riding solo, most often with a packed mobile house of clowns, and there could be eight, nine, ten of those paint-faced horrors at the most. Kaleidoscopes on wheels, whitefaces and augustes, kops in paddy wagons, doofuses with dunce caps riding on scooters, honking horns, weaving in and out of the merging traffic.

  Sandy always wondered who her big paying customer was under that yellow raincoat, sad glob of mouth white, and painted five o’clock shadow. Chances were he wasn’t a real hobo clown in his mainstream life; the guy had too much money for that. Whoever he was, he was moderately loaded, loaded enough to secretly pay women to do the service of playing stooge to him under a radar. Was he some comfortable, eccentric millionaire in Clownopolis, sometimes in big need of cute faces to humor him? Was he some well-paid, six figure office worker, gaining some sense of dominance in these secret farces before and after starting a day of ass kissing, weak and feeble to some iron fist CEO or corporate boss? Whoever he was, the guy was a mystery, but Sandy didn’t see the reason why she should really care about his true identity. As long as he provided the Bubbas...

  And then a car came. What an impressive ride. Well-polished, smoothly painted, and shiny. The design was clownish but so complex, a compilation of multi-colored bubbles and streaming, opalescent lights that moved from the warmest colors of yellow and orange to violet. The front of the car wore chromed bars with the hood ornament of a laughing, big shoe wearing clown smiling and pointing mockingly ahead, as if making fun of everyone the damned thing came across.

  The raincoat wearing client unrolled the front driver’s window with his yellow gloved index finger pushing down one button. She could see him, his yellow hat, his comically melancholic face. Then, his other hand picked up the cherry cream pie in his passenger seat and launched the pie smack dab into Sandy’s face.

  That was that. So simple, so quick. The pie drooped down her face, immersed her, humiliated her. She could feel the client slip a huge wad of Bubbas in the front of her top, and then he sped off, careful not to be seen. So smooth, so slick, and yet Sandy wouldn’t have been surprised if he called her later that night, with another devious plan for something even riskier.

  How long had he held onto that fantasy, she wondered? Many a clown in her society was willing to do much for comedy, but public humiliation for the mere pleasure of one enigmatic individual? Not many, unless they were trying to get candy or get out of Clownopolis while avoiding those rumored circus trains that enslaved clowns in the rumored human world. Sandra couldn’t think of any other reasons to take a pie to the face from a rich bastard on an early work week morning, but she had the Bubbas now. Leafing through the many green clown-faced bills as crust and filling dripped from her face, she knew she could get tons of candy now.

  Sandy reached her slender gloved hands between her tits and pulled out the wad of bright yellow bills. There weren’t only proud Bubbas in her top, worth 20 in Clown Currency each, but Gonzos as well, each bill 100 CC. Bubba was a happy auguste, but clumsy looking, rustic, with his checkered jacket and doofish, joyish eyes as he laughed, sho
wcasing that idiotic tongue. Gonzo was a proud, debonairEuropean whiteface in a sparkling jacket and cone hat with black lines extending from his eyes, a stripe along his nose. Despite the contrasts, both figures in Sandy’s hands made her feel much wealthier than a few minutes ago.

  So she slipped under the overpass and walked deeper into the seedier side of that funny metropolis, past the watchful eyes of decent folk and into the winding city caves that could lead her to sweet, delicious madness.

  ***

  Walking along the winding backstreets of Clownopolis, Sandy could see the various, colorful scribblings of crude humor tagged along building walls. The honking of cars and taxis became more distant as, along the alley asphalt, she could see bozo junkies sprawling from trash cans and cardboard boxes. All of those dunces looked so lost, their eyes bloodshot, their makeup so sloppy and ruined, red noses dusty, floppy shoes broken, ripped, soles hanging. Their teeth were so rotten, black and crackled, many chompers flattened down to their dark, moldy gums. Sandy could see the wrinkles and tortured worn flesh worn under that sloppy makeup lacking powder, and she wondered just how old they were, knowing they had aged light years. Comediennes that were once laughing belles were now sully sallies, their mascara running, wigs damp and unclean. The place smelled foul and not funny at all.

  Was this the future Sandy was doomed to live? The very thought made Sandy shudder. She had gotten skinny, almost flesh and bones, the dark circles of her eyes hidden under her painted trademark jigsaw puzzle pieces. Still, she hadn’t wrinkled too badly, albeit a little crow’s feet that slightly showed through the makeup, and her teeth hadn’t rotted yet, though one of her molars had fallen out. Overall, the woman was still in reasonably good shape, slender but still possessing some curvature, her tits and ass still good enough to attract attention. Her legs were still nice and long, eye magnets, her beauty still lingering. Still, it was only a matter of time before her face ended up in some before and after photo gallery on kop databases throughout Clownopolis, showing the progression of candy’s effects on a once beautiful ex-corporate clownette, now streetwalker.

  Walking through the depths of the city’s most notorious drug spot hadn’t helped to make things better. Sandy only risked coming to this horrid, hidden backdrop of Clownopolis to meet the rumored Doctor Candyman of Clown Alley 5. She had heard such good reports about this particular dealer, and she had nowhere else to turn for her sugary sweets. Her first dealer’s hideaway exploded after years of operation in the boondocks, right outside of the city. Her second dealer was busted by the kops, publicly beaten and humiliated on the streets before being dragged away in a paddy wagon, never to be seen again.

  The kops were cracking down hard on candy- pure, crystallized drops of chemical goodness made with all sorts of flavorful household products as well as drugs usually available only through a doctor’s prescription. Some rumors said that many personnel in the medical field leaked out different substances for a good price from candymen that sold the smack on the streets. Others claimed that most of the products used in the really, really good shit came from the human world, where people didn’t dress as clowns or hide their faces in greasepaint. Either way, that candy was hooking into many a clown every day, clowns bored with the monotonous hiding of their true natures, the demanding workload of their professions, the need to fit some comical mood prescribed by them once they had left their orphanages and graduated clown school. They wanted out, a real breakthrough, and candy provided the real escape.

  But once that escape was taken, there was no going back. Sandy learned that ill-fated truth the hard way. She used to have quite a comfy position at Crackpot Co., clients up the wazoo. Now, the only clients she had were clowns looking for a quick way to get off. She was close enough to living on the streets, on her last few checks in a low rent apartment. She spent most of her time on candy binges, and could often be gone for three days straight without sleep, lost in euphoria and hallucinations. Then, she was back again, another alleyway, getting her face creamed, and getting paid.

  The clown in the yellow raincoat was the weirdest but the least explicit of her customers. Other clowns wanted to do things beyond the protocol of normal clowning in Clownopolis, and their requests were things that one would expect in seedy, underground dealings with a candy addict. Mr. Raincoat was an enigma, his interest in the most mundane and redundant slapstick act compulsive and quite freakish.

  But who cared about his strange, pedestrian interest? Sandy now held a stack of Gonzos and Bubbas in her hands, and she had finally reached the sweets shop in the middle of Clown Alley 5, hidden away from the world. Sandy had heard about this shop from many a random junkie chatter, but never had she thought that she would have to make a trip out here. But then, she reasoned that she would never be that desperate to get smack, but with resources as few as there were, she couldn’t afford to pass the opportunity now.

  The shop was anything but modest, a wired door with smeared, cracked glass sticking out on the graffitied alley building, Here, one of the most well reputable candymen in Clownopolis’s underground resided, and his product was rumored to be the most sweet.

  As Sandy approached the door, a strange clownette burst out of the shop, knocking Sandy over. With gloved hands gripping her shoulders like a harpy, the woman exploded with boisterous laughter, her green eyes filled to the brim with insanity. She looked too dainty to be a far gone addict, a sewage waste of the street, but she was well on her way. Slobbering and cackling maniacally, she hopped off of Sandy and ran off into maze of surrounding dark alleys, dementedly joyous.

  Baffled yet intrigued with what must have been a short demonstration of the candy in those wretched parts, Sandy would soon test the rumors first-hand. She opened the door and stepped inside. When she was a dainty supervisor working for Crackpot, she would have been sick to see those beige, moldy walls under weak, flickering blue lights from swinging overhead lamps, highlighting eroded checker floors of black and white mixed with grime and decadent yellow.

  Now, Sandy cared for little.. She just wanted her fix.

  “Hello there, angel,” a voice said from the far darkness of that front room.

  Sandy turned to face a tall, jolly sized, happy-faced troubadour in a lab coat. He was bald and wore a lab coat stained in many florescent colors, from pink to green, and his once white gloves were heavily stained in a variety of hues as well. His bald head slightly shined in the weak lighting whenever it swung in his direction, and his eyes possessed some magnificent force, penetrating Sandy’s soul like a vulturous apparition.

  Behind the man were many jars, filled to the brim with his colorful fluids, and other jars containing rock forms of his creations, jagged crystals piled together, one after another, ranging in color and vibrancy. Candy.

  “I’m the doc ‘round these parts,” the candyman said with a smile, “and I can tell what ails you. You need a special treat.”

  “How much?” Sandy asked, wanting to cut to the chase. “I’ve been fiending for days. I heard your stuff is really good.”

  “Quality wise, yes. It’s the best. But it’s very strong. How long have you been using candy?”

  “Years. Started recreationally, just every now and then. Now, I need it. At least four times a week. And it’s been three days.”

  “I can fix you up,” the candyman assured her, turning to his stock behind him. “But you have many options to choose from. I’m sure your old suppliers just had the low grade, colorless candy, the type of sweet you can find anywhere. I have an art to the delicacies I package.”

  “I wanna get whacked. Like that lady I saw just jet out of here.”

  “Oh, her?” The candyman laughed. “Another satisfied customer, I’ll say. Now, about you. Where are you from, uptown? Near Clown Bay? Anywhere near Harlequin Drive, Custard Road? I used to be a doctor on Cherry Nose and Bullhorn, right before they took my license away-”

  “I’ve got lots of Bubbas, Gonzos too. I want your best sweets. How much?”

/>   The doctor mused, shifting from jar to jar. “Well, I do have one that looks up your clown alley. One that’ll really get your motor going...”

  “How much?”

  The doctor turned with his wide, bright smile, holding a jar of multicolored rocks. “I’ve been toying with a new concoction this week. Rainbow Swirl. My masterpiece. Guaranteed to send you to the moon. Five Gonzos.”

  “500 CC? That all? You’re kidding me...”

  “I sell well. No need to up prices for a new costumer. Complimentary. Mess with this, kid, and you’ll be messing with me for a long time.”

  Hesitant and distrusting, Sandy slowly approached the doctor with her wad. She licked a finger and leafed through the notes, then handed the exact price.

  The doctor put a cluster of rainbow rocks into Sandy’s hand in exchange. “Pleasure doing business. Sure we will again.”

  “We’ll see. Thanks.” Sandy turned to leave.

  “Wait a minute. I want to see you take it.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Just hate to see a pretty face leave my shop without a smile.”

  “Fair enough. Besides, why wait?”

  Why wait indeed? Sandy had been waiting for this, wanting it for so long. How distant she felt without her candy, without her delicious treat.

  She placed a rock into her mouth, sucking on it slowly as she stuffed the other clusters into her right glove, letting them hug against her palm.

  And under her tongue, she produced saliva at a wild rate as she suckled upon the rock, tasting its syrupy sweetness, its intricate collection of sparkling flavors.

  Her eyes glowed with new vibrancy.

  “Good, I wager?”

  Sandy almost didn’t hear the candyman. Her mind felt like it was taking off on a rocket. Her perception was changing immensely, as if a veil had been lifted from a magician’s stage. A rush of euphoria leaked from her brain. The room shifted and swayed for a moment, rippling, turning inside and out as she kept reaching higher states.