John Rasmussen woke up on his couch. Outside the window, he could see that the sky was still dark. Confused and scared he got up, but his body brought him back to the ground sprawling. He put the hand to the back of his head where a strange, stinging pain was nagging him. The wet sensation didn’t lie to him. When he looked at his fingers, they were drenched in blood. John sprung up from the surprise, but tumbled back down again. His slippers caught blood drops on the floor.
There was a clown. He remembered that much. A big, scary, deformed clown, the kind a coulrophobic would nightmare about. John looked at the wall clock, trying to put in order what had happened to him tonight. 12:44 AM. He had been out for a few minutes only. Ten minutes max. His last memories were situated in the kitchen, so John deducted that somebody must’ve brought him to his couch while he was out. He dashed to his computer chair, to the “Red Button” service again.
John shook the mouse to make his Windows screensaver disappear. He had wanted to get one of these fan made screensavers of “The Righteous” for a while, but according to “The Chosen”, this was a security breach for his situation. His Webcam software was opened and on camera was a dark room with a low ceiling. He thought he recognized the place, but before he could wrap his mind around the issue, the clown re-appeared, in front of the camera. At the bottom right of his screen, he could see that the icon of “Red Button” was gone. The desktop shortcut and the Start Menu link were also.
“Hello there” said the clown.
John noted his accent, but his tone was so forced and awkward he couldn’t tell if it came from Texas or Norway. There was something odd about the clown’s face too. He thought maybe that was the camera, or the different resolutions on their respective screens. “The Chosen” gave John Rasmussen a brand new desktop computer every year. This way, he would always stay on top of the technology and he would get an additional card to shuffle. Proxy servers and home-made firewalls were very efficient, but if the machine changed every year, they could annihilate months of work from a hacker that tried to get through the proxies and firewalls.
“Helloooo? Ya here me Johnny?” yelled the scary clown. “I can see you, but there’s no sound.”
“Who are you?” asked Rasmussen.
“I am SAPO THE CLOWN, and you, who are you?”
“I…I don’t know, what do you mean?”
John Rasmussen tried to slow the conversation down. He had relied on “The Chosen” to get him out of trouble whenever he was in it, he judged it was a question of time before they’d find that clown and make him disappear forever.
“YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, WHO ARE YOU JOHN RASMUSSEN?”
“You…you just said it.”
“YOU’RE A WRITER, THAT I KNOW. TELL ME MORE.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me John, do you believe in God?”
“What?”
“Do you believe in life after death?”
Rasmussen got up from his chair and started pacing nervously across the room. On screen, the clown dropped a calculated, sinister in-character laugh. There was nothing John Rasmussen found funny in that discussion, but the clown in make-up thought it was amusing.
“ANSWER ME JOHN RASMUSSEN”
“I DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER YOU ABOUT ANYTHING” screamed the writer, frantically.
The deformed clown’s smile inverted and he answered in a mocking tone: “Hoooou, you make Sapo reeaaallly sad.”
“TELL ME THEN, WHO ARE YOU?” continued Rasmussen.
“I told you, I am Sapo The Clown.”
That last sentence flipped a switch in John’s brain. The Japanese guy over the phone. Not only both occurrences were linked, but it was the same guy. He tried hard to modify his volume, his tone and even his accent on screen, but his eyes and the way he chopped his sentences gave him away.
“You’re that phone guy. You called me an hour ago.”
“CONGRATULATIONS SHERLOCK HOLMES.”
“What do you want from me? Why were you on my porch half an hour ago?”
“I want to be your friend Johnny. In fact, I AM your best friend and you don’t even know about it.”
“What do you mean? What can you do for me?”
“Aaaah I like that attitude John. A lot better. Ok…tell me…how do you feel?”
“A bit shitty, why?”
“Dry mouth? Do you feel a tingling sensation at the tip of your fingers?”
John looked at his hand and tapped the tip of his fingers together. When he did that, transparent flakes were shooting from his fingers, like small explosions every time. His eyes crossed and he found the energy to say: “What have you…d….done?”
“WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS JOHN, IT’S ONLY THE BEGINNING” yelled Sapo, ecstatic, before bursting into laughter all over again.
John Rasmussen started wobbling around and mumbling like he was drunk. He turned around and used his last energies to crash on the couch before passing out in a strange seizure. The last thing he heard before lights were out was: “Good night sweet Prince…”
John Rasmussen woke up on his couch, in the exact opposite position he did a few minutes before. The first thing he saw when he woke up, was a puddle of drool on the couch and on the floor below him. His head hurt and he remembered the terrible laugh of the clown on screen. He remembered the “Death Tunnel” when he was a kid. Sapo the clown looked exactly like the clown that grabbed him by the throat in the “Death Tunnel” at the amusement park.
This was a dream, it had to be. John remembered his readings of Freud about the inner logic of the subconscious during dreams. A dreamlike logic, especially during a nightmare was similar to reality. It’s just that all the elements are scramble. John got up, holding his head. He had a bad case of nausea. He shook the mouse to make the screen saver disappear and found the Webcam software opened. On screen, was held a paper with the drawing of a toad. He recognized the note holder, it came from his house.
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