Tradition and Values

“I can’t understand the kids today. They have no respect for good old-fashioned perversion.”

Engelbert grunted towards his friend, Gerald. Engelbert was busy fucking a pig. It would be a while before he regained enough air to properly engage in conversation.

Mortimer’s was the men’s favorite hangout. It was an exclusive club that catered to the special needs of the well heeled. Gerald and Engelbert had been members ever since their wealth first topped fifty million. That had been many years ago, soon after they had graduated from college and gained access to their trust funds.

Gerald was not as fond of pigs as his friend Engelbert was. Management dressed the pigs up in lingerie and made them wear strings of pearls, but this was not sufficient to stir Gerald to partake. He preferred to take pleasure in watching other men fuck pigs. It satiated him in a way other forms of bestiality did not. It calmed him, this inelegant joining of man and pig. It showed the world in its proper balance, at least to him.

One of the reasons Gerald declined to fuck any of the pigs at Mortimer’s was the tendency of swine to bite. Pigs had to be kept securely muzzled. This eliminated the possibility of deep throating a ham. You could still lick a pig, but it would not have been the same as being able to do both.

After the pig squealed and Engelbert finished, the men hit the showers and steam room. There, they were able to talk freely in between other forms of activity.

“I tried to raise my children right, the old fashioned way, with plenty of beatings and time locked in the closet. I tried to instill in them the same values I was raised with. I failed miserably. Look at them now. My sons cringe if I so much as mention a feather or a vinyl body suit. Where did I go wrong?”

“Hah,” grunted Gerald. “My girls threw out my cat and nine tails when they got into high school. It was a family heirloom!”

“My boys, I hate to say, attend marches for social justice. They go around claiming to love the environment and wanting to save it, too.”

“I have the same problem with my daughters.”

After the steam room they rinsed off and hopped in the pool. Each swam a few laps before double teaming one of the help. The screams were delicious. Only at a place like Mortimer’s, the late lamented Epstein’s island, certain private mansions, and a few palaces could you get away with stuff like that in the present day.

After showering again, they dried off, dressed in suits and ties, and headed to the smoking room. They  found comfortable chairs upholstered in red leather next to each other and sat down. Each fired up a cigar. They relaxed and puffed away.

“I could blame the public schools,” Engelbert said, “But my offspring attended private schools, the same ones that I did.”

“Same here,” said Gerald. “If they had attended public school they’d have turned out much worse.”

The friends put their discussion on hold to watch the evening’s scheduled entertainment. There was a stage in the center of the smoking room. All the wood and red leather chairs faced in that direction. It was not always easy to see the stage through the haze of smoke from cigars, pipes, and hookahs. Exhaust fans went into high gear to improve visibility.

Mortimer’s always had the best and most innovative forms of entertainment. On this night Engelbert and Gerald were to be treated to two shows according to the printed program distributed by the wait staff. The first was the semi-weekly flogging of a random individual. Subjects were said to be lured into a car at a mall or on an out of the way street. The unlucky subject was then transported directly to the club and strapped onto the appropriate equipment before the sedatives wore off. The second item on the program was listed as “Something Special”. 

Engelbert and Gerald watched the flogging with some interest. As floggings went, it was not the best or most entertaining one they had ever seen. Still, it was a lot better than sitting at home watching Netflix.

Gerald found himself missing his cat and nine tails even more.

Gerald sighed.

“What’s the matter?” Asked Engelbert.

“It’s these times we live in. Everything is moving so fast, changing all the time. Too many good things from the past are being lost.”

“Yes,” Engelbert said while flicking an ash from his cigar. “It is getting harder to live the way we used to, the way our ancestors did. It has become so difficult to keep the old traditions alive.”

“Young people, especially young people of our class, don’t know what they are losing. Hell, what we had is almost completely lost for the most part.”

Engelbert reached over from his chair. He patted Gerald on the arm.

“There’s not much we can do about it. We can’t stop things from changing. Besides, not all change is for the worst. For example body modification. My family had a strong tradition of disfigurement, both self inflicted and inflicted on others, servants and employees and the like. We are not really supposed to do it anymore. Too many laws and lawsuits. On the bright side, regular people today pay to have modifications and unnecessary surgery.”

Gerald brushed away Engelbert’s hand which had lingered on his shoulder too long.

“I understand all of what you have said,” Gerald told him. “The old traditions, the old values, are going away in general. The loss of traditions and values held by our class is particular disturbing. I worry about the future of our kind.” He gestured to the room around him. “And the future of a club such as Mortimer’s. Personally, I want someone or something I can blame it all on. I need a scapegoat on which I can take out my anger and frustration. That sort of thing always seems to help. I sleep easier at night knowing I have punished some person, group, or institution for my angst and sense of loss. It does not matter if the chosen scapegoat had nothing to do with it. In some ways if feels better if they had nothing to do with any of the trends that annoy me. Random punishment can instill belief in a higher power. That is a social benefit.”

“You mean a belief in a higher power such as us,” Engelbert smirked.

He grabbed a glass of expensive liquor from a tray born by a servant. Gerald took a glass as well.

“Vengeance is good for the soul,” Engelbert said. “I like the idea of a scapegoat. Especially if the target is selected with some degree of random.”

Gerald prodded, “Who or what should we blame for the decline of our civilization? What or who would be interesting to attack?”

“We discussed public education earlier. What else should be added to the list?”

“There are plenty of candidates in addition to public education to choose from,” said Gerald. “Shall we make a list? We could take turns offering suggestions.” 

“That will be fine,” Engelbert told his friend. “I will let you go first. “

“Drugs,” Gerald announced.

“I would only agree in part,” Engelbert told him. “I use quite a few myself. I wouldn’t want it to become more troublesome to obtain any of the products I have come to enjoy. I would offer up the music today as an alternative scapegoat.”

“Yes, definitely contemporary music,” Gerald agreed.. “Although it does make me sound like my parents and grandparents riling against the music I liked as teenager. I don’t think everything is bad about popular music nowadays. I do like some of the dancing that goes with it. Quite entertaining. I would put forth socialism instead.”

“Definitely,” Engelbert agreed. “Socialism has to be on the list. I would add to that taxes, especially taxes on inheritances and capital gains.”

“No argument there,” said Gerald. “I’ll add Democrats to the list.”

“And Rhinos. To hell with so called moderate Republicans.”

Gerald nodded in agreement. “Let’s put aging hippies on there.”

“Environmental laws.”

“Vegans.”

“Broccoli.”

Gerald sought clarification from his friend, “Why broccoli specifically? Why not all vegetables?”

“I would not go so far,” said Engelbert. “I particularly dislike broccoli, but I do have a fondness for carrots and cucumbers. They have multiple uses besides nibbling on.”

“Fair enough,” said Gerald. “Let’s continue this discussion later. The second show is about to start.”

“Fine by me.”

They sat in silence, puffing their cigars and downing drinks, as they watched the stage being set up for the second performance.

“Oh, look!” said Engelbert, pointing at the stage. “I think it is going to be a ritual killing!”

“Fabulous!” said Gerald. “It has been at least a year since I have seen one of those.”

Engelbert laughed and raised his glass. “To tradition!”

Gerald raised his own glass. He repeated the phrase, “To tradition.”

They clinked their glasses before draining them. Each signaled to the staff to bring another round.

Then both men leaned forward in their chairs to get a better view of the stage.

Murder at the Bakery

Maya trekked the city sidewalk at one o’clock in the morning, glancing at a bakery as she passed it by. Much to her surprise, the lights were on. Maya lived around the corner and visited Flour Power on a regular basis. Like many bakeries, it closed early, so the illuminated interior made her pause.  

Maybe Brian, the owner, was getting an early start to the day. Flour Power opened at six a.m., so it wasn’t out of the question. 

Sure enough, Maya spotted Brian walking to the front door. The sixty-something man pushed through the door with haste, his gray hair disheveled and his brown eyes going wide at the sight of Maya. 

“Maya,” he said. 

“Hey, Brian. Long night? Or just getting an early start?”   

“Uh,” he stuttered. 

“Help me,” a muffled voice cried out. 

Maya glimpsed the bakery, a soft thud against the storefront window causing her to flinch. Her eyes bulged. A cinnamon roll was stuck to the interior of the glass, leaving a trail of icing as it slid down the window. That’s when Maya noticed tiny arms and legs sprouting from the pastry. 

Perhaps a long night of drinking was causing her to hallucinate. Regardless, Maya couldn’t hold her tongue.   

“What the hell?” she said. 

A nervous chuckle escaped Brian’s lips. “Uh, yeah. I can explain that.”

Maya gawked at him. “Can you? Because this isn’t normal.”

Brian opened his mouth to reply, but Maya interrupted. 

“Are those two cookies fornicating?” she said, gradually approaching the window. 

“Damn it,” Brian said. “I told them to behave while I was gone.”

Maya shook her head in disbelief, and Brian sidled up to her. 

“You can’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” Brian pleaded. “I’m going to fix it.”

She turned to him. “Fix it?”

“Yeah. I just need some time.”

“What you need is an exorcist.”

“They’re a little rambunctious. Not evil.”

“Are you kidding? Baked goods have risen from the dead.” She eyed the bakery again, this time her mouth ajar. “That chocolate cake just beheaded two scones with a baguette.”

“It’s the flour,” Brian said. 

Maya pivoted and met Brian’s gaze. “What?”

“I used a new brand of flour. I got a good deal at Cost Nothing.” Brian offered a proud smile, but it quickly faded. “Anyway, that’s when all of this started.”

“Well, apparently you got a raw deal.”

“You have to help me.”

“By doing what?”

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure that out. I needed some fresh air to clear my head, though.

Maya took a moment to ponder. “Can you show me the bag of flour? Assuming we can make it through the minefield in there.”

“Yeah. It’s behind the counter.”

He walked to the door and pulled it open, Maya following on his heels. As they neared the counter, Maya felt something prick her ankle. 

“Christ,” she shouted, stopping in her tracks. When she looked down, a piece of apple pie had a fork in hand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What?” the pie said. 

“You stabbed my ankle. Put down the damn fork.”

“Or what?”

“I’ll squish you with my size ten shoe, you little—”

“Are you two done?” Brian interrupted. 

Maya raised her foot, briefly massaging her ankle. Then she hobbled toward the counter and stood next to Brian.  

“Here’s the flour,” he said. 

Maya arched an eyebrow as she inspected the bag. “Miracle Flour?”

“That’s the name of it.”

 “And you needed ten pounds of it?”

“I buy in bulk.”

“Have you ever considered going small when trying something new?”

“It’s the smallest size they had.”

Maya huffed and put a hand to the bag, spinning it around so she could read the back of it. “There’s a number you can call if you need assistance.”

Brian pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his pants and punched in the number. 

“Put it on speaker,” Maya said. “I want to hear this.”

Brian tapped the screen, and the phone rang a few times before someone answered. 

“Miracle Flour Hotline,” a woman said. “This is Karen. How can I assist you?”

“Yeah,” Brian said. “I bought some of your flour yesterday, and I have a problem.”

“What kind of problem, sir?”

“A big one.”

“Can you elaborate, sir?”

“Uh.” Brian swallowed. “I’m not sure how to say this.”

“Just spill it, sir.”

“You’re probably not going to believe me.”

“Try me.”

“All of my baked goods are—” Brian pursed his lips, searching for the right words. 

“Animated?” Karen said. 

Brian’s eyes narrowed. “Huh?”

“Are they alive, sir?”

“Yeah. How do you—” He paused. “Wait. You know about this?”

“Of course, sir. That’s why we put a warning on the back of the bag.”

“What warning?”

“Did you mix the flour with water?” Karen asked. 

“Of course.”

“There’s your problem.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You can’t mix it with water. Otherwise, you get some nasty treats.”

“That’s absurd,” Brian barked. “Just about every one of my recipes requires water. It’s a common ingredient in baked goods. What kind of flour doesn’t mix with water?”

“Miracle Flour.”

Brian let out a frustrated breath. 

“Are you still there, sir?” Karen said. 

“Yeah.” He mulled things over. “Will the effects wear off?”

“Yes.”

“How long does it take?”

“Usually the shelf life of the food.”

“You’re talking days. I can’t wait that long. I’ll lose business.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s not our problem. We have the warning on there for a reason. If you have any other issues, please think twice before calling again.”

Maya heard a click, and the call went dead. 

“Son of a—” Brian bit his tongue. 

“So, what now?” Maya asked. 

When Brian didn’t answer, a thought came to mind. 

“Why don’t we just stomp them into pieces?” Maya said. “We can dump them in the trash and be done with it.”

Brian shook his head. “I can’t kill them.”

“They’re going to die anyway.”

“We just want to be eaten and enjoyed,” a blueberry muffin said. It stared at Maya from a nearby display case. “It’s our purpose after all.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Brian said.

Maya circled the counter and walked to the front door. 

“You can join me,” Brian said. 

Maya stopped and looked over her shoulder. “No thanks. As tempting as it is, I don’t need one of these things bursting out of my chest like a damn Alien movie. Enjoy the feast, Brian.”

Possessed by Fake Nostalgia

I pad into the scene like a rumor with claws, tail flicking in the stale neon. Joe Oroborus snaps his fingers in Kandy Fontaine’s face — a cheap gesture, like a magician who’s forgotten the trick. She startles awake, eyes flickering with leftover static from whatever dimension she’d been wrestling.

“I dreamt I was possessed,” she says. “But they cannot possess me, no.”

I stretch, slow, deliberate. Humans always think possession is dramatic. They never consider the quiet ways something can own you.

Joe leans in. “By whom and what?”

Kandy lights a half‑smoked Camel. The flame reflects in her eyes like a memory trying to reboot.

“Time, memory, angst, a certain… sais quoi. I feel the sudden need for fake nostalgia. I wish I could have a sincere emotion, but they’ve all been hijacked and held for ransom by 90s irony.”

I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen everything before. Cats are archivists of the unspoken. Burroughs used to mutter that time was a virus; I used to curl on his lap and purr like a counter‑spell. Didn’t help. Nothing helps. Time always wins.

Joe watches her like he’s trying to decode a glitch in the film.

“Kandy,” he says, “nostalgia is a trapdoor. You fall through it and land in someone else’s memory.”

She exhales smoke that curls into shapes I recognize — half‑formed ghosts of abandoned feelings. I bat at one with my paw. It dissipates like a bad idea.

“I’m tired,” she says. “Not sleep‑tired. Ontologically tired.”

Joe nods. “That’s the only kind that counts.”

The alley shifts. I feel it first — whiskers twitching. The world re‑skins itself in cheap Godard colors: red, blue, white, but all slightly wrong, like a dream of France filmed in a warehouse in Burbank.

Suddenly they’re running. Not from danger — from meaning.

A mime eating a very small salad blocks their path. A woman carrying a typewriter like a wounded pet limps across the frame. A man reading a newspaper upside‑down shouts something about dialectics.

I trot behind them, amused. Humans panic so beautifully.

The city goes Gibsonian — neon that tastes like metal, puddles reflecting futures that haven’t been invented yet. I lick my paw. It tastes like ozone and regret.

Then we see it.

A motorcycle in the alley. Chrome. Mythic. The kind of machine that remembers every hand that ever touched it.

Kandy approaches like she’s greeting a ghost she used to date.

But the motorcycle begins to shift. Not melt. Not dissolve.

Just… change state.

Chrome → amber. Amber → translucence. Translucence → a honey‑colored solidity.

Joe stares. “Is that—”

“Yes,” Kandy whispers. “It’s turning into dab wax.”

I leap onto the warm surface. It yields slightly under my paws, like a dream that hasn’t decided what it wants to be.

Kathy Acker would’ve loved this. She understood metamorphosis. She understood that machines and bodies and texts all want the same thing: to escape their assigned form.

Kandy crouches beside me.

“Joe,” she says, “this is what happens when myth refuses to stay still.”

“And the small salads?” he asks.

She smiles, tired and luminous.

“They were always garnish.”

I curl up on the wax, purring. The alley hums with the soft electricity of a world glitching toward sincerity. Joe and Kandy stand there, silhouettes in a city that’s forgotten its own plot.

And me? I’m just the cat. I’ve seen it all. I’ll see it again.

Time is a loop. Memory is a trick. Angst is a toy.

Last Weekend

Lana is sucking my cock as if she were paid by the stroke of her tongue, and in fact she is. Four hundred euros for every client she makes come within three minutes. She looks me in the eyes while she works. She is a professional. She killed her husband with a wood axe in 2022, seven blows to the back of the skull while he slept. She told me ten minutes ago, smoking a cigarette on my lap. Now she is sucking my cock. On her right wrist she wears a white bracelet identical to mine.

There are seven of us in this room they call the premium suite. Four men, three women. All wearing the bracelet. All sentenced to death. Cigarette in mouth, cock out, cunt in the air, cocaine on the marble coffee table like powdered sugar on my grandmother’s fritters. The State – don’t ask which one; at that level they all start to look alike – has thought of everything. Four-hundred-dollar Japanese whisky. MDMA in little heart-shaped candies. Poppers in the bathroom dispensers as if they were hotel soap. Marcus, to my right, has just snorted two lines and now Aaliyah is jerking him off while he cries. He cries. She laughs. She is beautiful. Black, nearly two meters tall, with a knife scar under her right breast. She slit her boyfriend’s throat and his lover’s in a Memphis motel in 2023, five cuts each.

“How much do you think they’re paying us?” Marcus asks me, his teeth stained with coke.

“They’re not paying us. The people watching us? They’re paying like maniacs.”

“How much?”

“Manhattan-apartment money. Per head.”

Marcus nods. He was an auditor before he slit his wife’s throat over the toilet because she had discovered he had not been going to the gym for five years and had kept it from him so she would not humiliate him. Courtesy kills more than discourtesy, Marcus explained earlier. He did not take it well.

Lana pulls away, spits into the champagne glass beside her, drinks from another. Her eyes are red. Not from crying. From eight straight hours of coke.

“Not long now,” she whispers. “Room two at eleven.”

“What is room two?”

“The one where they kill you.”

She smiles. Starts sucking again.

“How do you know?”

She pulls away again. “I’ve been here a week. They tell you everything the first night. They want you to know. It helps the performance.” She turns toward one of the cameras in the cornice and makes a little heart with her hands. “You’re on, too, Mister Italian. Say hello.”

I say hello. The camera waves back, I imagine.

“When do you die?”

“Tonight, after you. I’m in the Premium Plus package. The clients bought the encore.”

“Fuck.”

“Whatever. Outside there was only a cell and an injection eight months from now. Here there’s cock, coke, and rich men paying fifty thousand euros to watch me come. I feel like Madonna.”

The bell rings at exactly eleven. It does not growl. It does not scream. Ding ding. Five-star hotel concierge.

A door opens in the wall that had looked blind until then. A man in a gray suit comes out. Fifty or so. He smiles like a dentist. Hands folded.

“Ladies. Gentlemen. The second part of your experience awaits.”

Marcus grabs my wrist. Hard. Says nothing. Aaliyah is still laughing, but it is a different laugh now, the laugh of someone who has started seeing the walls breathe. Lana walks in front of everyone, naked, like a hostess closing a flight.

Room two.

White.

Seven luxury dental recliners. Seven IV bags already waiting. Seven nurses smiling like Lana. The chairs are angled toward a wall of smoked glass. Behind the glass, in the half-dark, silhouettes of seated people. Drinks in hand. A soft round of applause. Not enthusiasm. Purchase confirmation.

I sit down. The nurse strokes my arm. The needle goes in. Lana was right. It does not hurt.

The last thing I see before I go is the reflection of my cock, still half-hard, superimposed on the smoked glass over the face of an old man on the other side, calmly touching himself under the jacket of his five-thousand-euro suit.

***

I wake up.

The package did not include death.

They drug you to the marrow, carry you to room three, open you up – kidneys to Riyadh, liver to Istanbul, heart to an industrialist in Milan who does not want to know the donor’s name – and then they put you back together. Yes. It costs three times as much. The Resurrection package, clients call it, laughing among themselves. Seventy-two hours of presumed death, partial harvesting, organs replaced with gene-edited pig tissue grown in the Netherlands, and then they return you to prison with your white bracelet. All legal. All consensual. You signed, remember?

And now, for the eight months you have left before the real injection, you have to live with a liver that is not yours, two pig kidneys, and a heart that stopped beating the day before it began beating for you.

The first beat of a new heart is not something you forget.

The second is when you understand that even the first one was never really yours.

In my cell, they left me the souvenir. On the nightstand. A little blue velvet box with a white card printed inside: Thank you from the client. Enjoy the rest of your stay. Inside, preserved in formaldehyde, was the little finger of my left hand. I checked it under the neon bulb in the cell. It is mine. The cat scar from 1997 is still there.

The client had paid for it as a trophy. Then he changed his mind.

They returned it to me because he did not want it anymore.

On the back of the card, a QR code. Rate your Concierge experience. Your opinion matters.

I scanned it with the disposable phone they had left me for the eight months I still have.

Three stars out of five.

The pinkie had arrived cold.

Salvation Lies in Baraboo

Chester Chuckles’ size 37 shoes, once shiny and red, were covered in fallout dust as he waddled across the post-apocalyptic wasteland. He finally emerged from his car weeks ago and had been walking ever since. A clown car is a pleasant place to pass an apocalypse if you are well-provisioned. Also, if your car seats 21 clowns, as Chester’s did, it offers ample room to stretch out if you are alone, as Chester was. When finally, he emerged from the lowest depths of the car’s labyrinthine interior to the outside world, all had changed. He found himself alone in a post-apocalyptic hellscape that had once been the beautiful palm tree-lined campus of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Sarasota, Florida.

Also, the paint on his car was scratched.

At first Chester did not know what to do or where to go, but after he sat and thought for a moment, he knew that if there was hope anywhere for a lone clown like him, it lay in Wisconsin. For, tucked away in the quartzite hills of the ancient Baraboo Range from which the great Ringling Brothers sprung to spread the gospel of Circus to the all people, were the Circus World Museum and International Clown Hall of Fame. Surely salvation lay in Baraboo!

Now hundreds of miles into his journey, Chester shuffled through the red-gray dirt and thought about how it had all come to this. In the years before the end (though at the time no one anticipated a real end) there was a something in the air that could not be measured by any barometer or Sunday morning news shows. It was not something simple and nameable like political unrest or climate change, nor anything in the usual catalog of historical forebodings long compiled by historians reviled by those making the history. It was something subtler: a pervasive trembling beneath the irritated skin of ordinary life. Shelves were stocked, the airplanes arrived on time, screens glowed with appetite-inducing advertisements. And the good people of earth moved through their routines as if performing them for an audience they could not see. But though they could not see it for themselves, humanity at large was seized by a quiet dread: they required some proclamation of worth, some signal that their lives were anchored in something sturdier than awards shows and bull markets. Being no longer felt self-evident. It felt provisional, contingent, as though the veneer of the inevitability of experience was peeled back and, to everyone’s horror, there was nothing underneath. The horizon seemed suddenly closer, far too close. A few people gradually sensed that history had begun to slope, that time was leaning forward, that everything was about to tip under its own terrible inertia. But most people simply turned the other way, or at least looked down at their phones. 

The world had become a dark and impenetrable obstacle to the transparent and ephemeral souls that inhabited it. Those afflicted with ontological clarity suffered most acutely. They were not superior in intellect, nor purer in motive, but they were constitutionally unable to perform in the play in which everyone else had memorized their lines. To pause, to ask foundational questions, was to risk exile. They were accused, subtly or overtly, of ingratitude. Depth was recast as morbidity, introspection as self-indulgence. The ultimate accusation was wickedness: that by declining to participate in the communal theater, they endangered the fragile coherence of the whole wide world. 

The machinery of distraction hummed with increasing efficiency, insulating the populace from silence, but the signs of an approaching threshold intensified. The markets fluctuated, the climate destabilized, alliances shifted, but these were symptoms, not causes. Beneath them lay a metaphysical unease: a suspicion that the current being was unsustainable. Still, children were born, couples married, people commuted to work. Continuity was the order of the day. Yet in private journals and late-night conversations, people confessed to a peculiar anticipation. It was not despair, it was the intuition that the present form of things could not endure indefinitely. Toward what end were they marching, moving, slouching, creeping? No one could say what would come. But many felt deep in their marrow, that something fundamental was drawing near—not a spectacle, but a revelation. But it was not revelation. It was rupture more than anything. 

Chester was suddenly torn from his philosophizing by a chortle that ran down his funny bone like ice water. He had been so absorbed in his own thoughts and narrative exposition that he didn’t realize he had nearly run right into another clown. Ordinarily Chester would have been overjoyed to have stumbled upon a fellow clown, but at the appearance of this strange clown he could offer only a hesitant ‘how-do-you-do’ wave. 

The new clown’s greasepaint smile was carved too wide—much too wide—splitting his face into a permanent rictus that showed far too many small, needle-like teeth. His white makeup was cracked over sallow skin, and his eyes, ringed in smeared black, glinted with predatory amusement. A faded patchwork suit, once obviously bright but now stained and frayed, the ruffles stiff with grime, hung from his large but emaciated frame. Blood dripped from his red nose and lips. 

Chester held out his hanky. “You seem to have a nosebleed.”

“What’s your name, pal?” asked the stranger.

“Chester. Chester Chuckles. And to whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“They call me Gristle Splitgrin.”

“I see. What kind of clown are you?”

“The evil kind.”

Chester Chuckles’ face took on a dour look. “I thought that kind of clown only existed in the movies.”

Gristle shrugged and held out his hands as if to say, ‘And yet here I am.’ “And yet here I am,” he said. “What kind of clown are you?”

“Mostly a happy clown. A grotesque whiteface carpet clown, I suppose, if you were to be being taxonomical about it. What’s your bit?”

“Destruction,” growled Gristle most malevolently.

“You wanna see one of my gags?” asked Chester Chuckles. “It’s a pretty good one.” Gristle didn’t say no, so Chester stretched his arms as high as they would go, then plunged them deep into his suspendered wide hoop pants. There was a loud clanging noise as if a whole workbench of tools came crashing down. Then, his eyes lighting up, Chester exclaimed “I got it!” Gristle leaned in closer and Chester triumphantly yanked a machete from his hoop pants and thrust it into the air where the sunlight glinted on the razor-sharp edge. “Snicker-snack!” he halooed as he swung it wildly before him, slicing one of Gristle’s suspenders on a forehand and the other on the accompanying backhand. Gristle’s pants fell to his ankles. “Shall I tickle your entrails with Johnny Corkscrew?” Chester turned the blade in a deadly imitation of twisting it in a wound that he had planned for the middle of Gristle’s belly. Gristle pulled up his pants and ran for the hills. 

“See ya, friend!” shouted Chester after him. Chuckling merrily, he continued down the path.

***

On a forest path, Chester stumbled upon a mime. 

“Hello, there,” Chester chuckled.

 “Hi!” the mime mimed.

“What’s your name?” asked Chester.

The mime mimed a look of barely hidden judgement of Chester’s powers of intellect.

“How silly of me,” replied Chester, barely registering the insult. “Let me guess.”

The mime mimed a greatly exaggerated rolling of the eyes.

“Let’s see… Is your name Arlec?” 

The mime mimed shaking his head, meaning that his name was not Arlec.

“Is it Aurelio?”

It was not.

“Bellrose? Corvin? Lucern? Lune? Malvo? Marceau? Orrick? Pierre? Theophile? Valentin? Vespertine? Virelai?”

In addition to not being Arlec or Aurelio, the mime’s name was not Bellrose, Corvin, Lucern, Lune, Malvo, Marceau, Orrick, Pierre, Theophile, Valentin, Vespertine, nor was it Virelai.

Chester lifted his cap, then another smaller cap underneath the first cap, and scratched his head. “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…” he pondered. “I supposed I will just have to call you ‘Mr. Quiet’.”

Mr. Quiet mimed sticking his tongue out with disgust. 

“Tell me, Mr. Quiet, how did you get here?”

Mr. Quiet mimed a thermonuclear explosion, hiding in a basement for three weeks, digging himself out from the rubble, being set upon by a pair of radiation-mutated looters, killing one with his bare hands and ripping out the throat of another with his own teeth, then stumbling, terrified, cold, and hungry through the woods in which they now stood.

“I see,” said Chester Chuckes, nodding, smiling, laughing, and crying all at the same time. “Will you come with me Mr. Quiet?”

Mr. Quiet mimed shaking his head again. He mimed the glorious Land of the Mimes, where it was always sunny and everymime had their own invisible box to lie down in.

“That sounds nice,” said Chester Chuckles. “Well, it was nice meeting you.” He put out his hand.

Mr. Quiet clasped Chester’s hand to shake it and jumped as the hand buzzer Chester had concealed in his palm buzzed him.

“Hyuck! Hyuck!” chuckled Chester Chuckles.

Mr. Quiet mimed giving Chester the finger and stomped away toward the Land of Mimes.

***

Chester Chuckles stood on the bank of a great river, wondering how to get across. With great joy, he spotted a rowboat with two oars tied to a tree and made his way down to untie it.

“Hold it clown,” said a familiar voice. “That’s our boat.”

Chester looked up toward the source of the voice and was unsurprised to see Gristle Splitgrin emerging from behind a tree. “Oh – hi, Gristle,” said Chester.

Standing at Gristle’s shoulder was the most physically ravishing female clown Chester Chuckles had ever seen. Her hair was cardinal red, at least three feet across, and bouncy—nearly as bouncy as her breasts, which were stuffed quite precariously into a harlequin-patterned latex bralette. She wore a multicolored rainbow tutu, thigh-high black-and-white striped socks, and ruby stilettos. A very beautiful Gerber Daisy was pinned to her top. Chester leaned in close for a sniff and a surreptitious peek at the soft flesh upon which it was perched it when it squirted right in his eye.

“BWAH-HA-HA-HA!” laughed Gristle.

“Who’s the girl?” asked Chester, wiping his face.

“This is my gun moll, Slaughterbell.”

“What kind of clown is she?”

“The sexy kind.”

“I can see that,” said Chester. He reached into his pants and rummaged around for some time (actually, quite some time—perhaps too long—and even Slaughterbell’s confidently sexy, smug, heavily-painted face began to waiver at how deep and actively Chester’s two clown hands were working inside his oversized pants; she felt suddenly cheapened by the vigorous, drawn out motions of his hands in his pants) and finally pulled out an old-fashioned klaxon horn. “Hold on a second,” he mumble-chuckled as he shook the bouncy balls out of it. “There,” he said, satisfied, and began cranking the klaxon as fast as he could.

“Aaaaahhhooooooooooooooooogggaaaaaaaahhh!” said the horn.

“Enough!” shouted Gristle

Chester sadly let the klaxon wind down. “…oooooogaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh…” it moaned.

“What should I do to him, sweetie?” purred Slaughterbell. 

“Kill him,” growled Gristle. “But in a fun way,” he added.

Slaughterbell slipped two fingers exquisitely manicured in a domino pattern into her cleavage and pulled out an unreasonably large and (presumably) heavy 69-cc chainsaw. With one practiced pull, it roared to life.

“I wonder where she found the gas for that,” wondered Chester to himself. “It’s probably a two-stroke,” he reasoned, “and can run on degraded gas.” Then, aloud: “Wait!”

Slaughterbell paused just long enough for Chester to dive back into his pants and bring out a sawed-off shotgun. “Boom!” he shouted each time he pulled the trigger and sprayed buckshot everywhere. “Boom! Boom! Boom!” 

Gristle and Slaughterbell ran screaming along the riverbank while Chester stepped lightly into the rowboat and began pulling swiftly for the opposite shore.

***

Deep in a wood, Chester Chuckles heard a beautiful sound, like angels singing. He stopped to listen, then followed the sound. It grew louder. He was getting closer, and he ran faster. Turning a corner around a large boulder, he came to a natural amphitheater worn by mother nature into a rock hillside and, arranged within, a boys’ choir. 

“Beat it, clown,” sang the boys. 

“I’m just trying to get to get to Circus World,” explained Chester.

“Sing, damn it!” sang the boys beautifully. “Or this will be your end.” They started into the “Kyrie” from Hayden’s St. Cecilia Mass and drew switchblades from under their brilliant white choir robes.

Chester chuckled nervously and loosened his collar. He pulled a white hanky from his sleeve, then another hanky (red), and another (blue) and another (yellow) and another (green) until he finally wiped his brow with the last one, which was purple. The castratos’ angelic voices soared as they sang a terrifyingly gorgeous descant over the melody and fitted brass knuckles to their small, white, feminine hands.

Chester mumbled “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite,” but the boys hit back hard with “Carol of the Birds.” Chester tried “Entry of the Gladiators” and the choir countered, seemingly without effort, with “A Birch Tree in the Field Did Stand.” Chester changed tactics and hit them with “Baby Elephant Walk,” but the choir boys were too quick. They executed an adroit key change to G major and launched into the “Benedictus” from Mozart’s Pastoral Mass. Chester could feel the press of their beautiful harmony and sought through his own admittedly small musical catalogue for his big guns. He landed on “Merry Go Round Broken Down” and quickly launched into a rollicking rendition, but the clever boys brought him down with “The Prayer of Francois Villon.” Desperate, Chester tied “Hungarian Rhapsody,” his last best hope, but the boys were ready and the choir struck out at him viciously with Monteverdi’s “Tancredi and Clorinda” madrigal. 

Chester knew he was beaten, but there was one hope. He began humming “The Major General’s Song” as he danced a little two-step and tossed two Mk 2 pineapple grenades into the choir, one for the trebles and one for the altos. Before they could react, he opened his umbrella and huddled under it as the blood and gore rained down upon him. When the bloody shower stopped, Chester peaked out from under the umbrella at the 24 left feet and 24 right feet standing alone where the choir had once threatened him. He chuckled and shook his umbrella and went on his way.

***

About seven miles south of Baraboo, Chester Chuckles picked his way carefully through the Badger Army Ammunition Plant. “How ironic that the last stretch of my journey through this post-apocalyptic world is through an ordinance works where the instruments of our own destruction were created by our own hands,” he said to himself. “I wonder if there’s a thematic reason for that?”

“There isn’t,” sneered a voice with a sneer.

Chester stopped and rolled his eyes. He knew already to whom that sneer belonged.

“Happy to see me?” asked Gristle Splitgrin.

“No,” said Chester, who was always honest, sometimes to a fault. “Not particularly.”

“Well then why are you smiling?”

“I’m always smiling, you assclown. It’s painted on. I’m a happy clown!”

“I don’t particularly care for your tone,” said Gristle. “Boys!” he called. “Let’s teach Chester Chuckles some manners.”

From behind Gristle’s tall but not particularly wide frame fanned a half dozen clown lackeys: two whitefaces, two Augustes, a rodeo clown, and a Pierrot.

“You there,” said Chester, pointing at the Pierrot. “What are you doing here? You’re better than this.”

The Pierrot just shrugged his shoulders. “Le travail est difficile à trouver.”

“Hmm,” replied Chester. “I don’t know what you just said.”

“Lucky for you, you won’t need to speak French in Hell,” laughed Gristle.

“Wouldn’t it be more fitting if they only spoke French in Hell?”

“Shut up!” roared Gristle. “Get him, boys!”

Once again, the clown hands at the end of Chester’s clown arms plunged deeply into Chester’s oversized clown pants. He grunted as he bent down to get a better grip, reaching so deeply that he disappeared into the wide waist of his pants and it appeared now to the savage clownish horde that there was but the lower half of clown left standing before them. 

“Hey!” shouted Gristle. “Come back up here! Stop clowning around down there!”

Chester’s head popped up above his waistband and he smiled. “Just one second, buddy.” He looked at the advancing sextet of murderous clown lackeys: “Can you all hold on for just one more second?”

Chester dove down again, completely disappearing once more into his pants. Then, with triumphant music swelling in the background, a high-explosive anti-tank rocket emerged, followed by the muzzle of an M20 Super Bazooka, then the rest of the bazooka, then Chester’s huge, ecstatic smile, and finally, the rest of Chester. 

“Sorry, boys,” said Chester, taking aim. “At first I thought we clowns were an endangered species—you know, with the apocalypse and everything—but now I see there are just too many bad clowns. Well, goodbye!”

Gristle Splitgrin and his six accomplices blew up in a spectacular display of high-explosive anti-tank technology. Chester Chuckles tossed the bazooka on a pile of unexploded ordinance and walked off to the north on the homestretch.

***

Huffing and puffing, Chester Chuckles pulled himself to the summit of the Devil’s Lake West Bluff and stood, letting his vision sweep the Baraboo Valley that stretched out before him. 

“Shit,” he said.

Directly north, right where Baraboo should have been, right where it had been the last two hundred years, was a huge Baraboo-sized crater. Around its edge, a few buildings and trees that survived the initial blast smoldered. Nowhere to be seen was even the slightest hint of a circus: not a single big-top tent, no circus trains, no elephants, and certainly no clowns.

“Shit,” he said again. Chester sat down to think. “Maybe I could try miming.” That sounded nice.