Last Laugh

Nothing we do ends well. It’s not a lie, but sometimes it’s close enough to the irony that seems to run the universe that the differences aren’t all that apparent. Like most things, it holds together if we don’t put it under too harsh a light.
          This isn’t a diary. I expect it to be found after I die. Nor is it a confession, since there’s always things we leave out of that. There are things about me I’d be happier if even God didn’t know. I imagine it’s the same for whoever reads this.
          I don’t know what is going happen, not yet. There might not even be a body left. I can feel the trap, the future, the story, all closing around me with a chill finality. Maybe it’s a mother, or a police officer; I don’t know which. Someone is going to come after me, like in the movies. I think they’ll want explanations, to know why I did it, what kind of monster I am.
          I have no idea what to tell them.
          
I blame Stephen King. Him and ‘It’. I always wanted to be a clown, to make people laugh. Not the kind of humour that’s born from sorrow, but the kind that is taking joy, sharing it on, making the world a better place. If you can make people laugh and not hurt someone in doing so, you’ve done something beautiful.
          It’s all I ever wanted. But somewhere along the way it just fell apart. The kids were always scared of me. No matter what I did, or the jokes I said, they were always afraid. Sometimes they even hated me. Understand: I didn’t learn how to be a clown, didn’t become one, as a means of strength. Too many people use humour as a weapon, a defence -- I just wanted to use it for its own sake, without the meanness of stand-up comics, without the bile of tv comedians.
          I guess it just wasn’t possible. But it was my dream. I started seeing a psychiatrist a few months ago, because I was getting angry with the kids, for crying, or laughing at me in a way that was all mean and hurting themselves. He said that if my dreams had been true, they would never have been dreams at all. I think he’s just angry that he never got a tv show like Dr. Phil.
          Becomes sometimes dreams do come true. The problem is trying to tell dreams from nightmares, at that point. I tried everything, to keep the dream pure and bright, but it never mattered. I tried religion, modern religion (my shrink), new age psychobabble -- none of it helped. Children don’t lie like adults do, and in their eyes there was a harshness adults hide, a light judging clowns and humour and laughter.
          They couldn’t see it for what I could. I’m not sure anyone can. Even children have lost that kind of wonder.

I could have done something else, been anything else, but I’d put too much of myself into being a clown. Too much of my identity, of my longings, of the who and how and why and what of me was in being a clown, and I didn’t have any other me to be.
          It would have helped, I think, if I’d ever actually got around to going past first base with Maria.
          
The first child looked like her. And she laughed, and made jokes. But the party was at her place, and it was horribly easy to get back, to enter, and take her home. I never called it a ‘fun house’. The media did that. It’s a damn trailer, double-wide. There’s nothing ‘fun’ in trailer parks. The only mythologizing done there is the idea that no one is brewing meth.
          It made it easier to hide them, to hide the monster growing under my skin. I even got more work, by scaring the children, letting them see under into the new me, the one they wanted. They’d all seen horror movies, all seen ‘It’: to them it was just acting, just another kind of joke. To them I was just a clown, playing up the darker parts of the archetype.
          Well. No. They never thought it like that. No one really does, I think. But if you pretend to be something, you become what you pretend if you do it long enough. The darkness grew, though I was never dumb enough to dare give it a name. Or pretend it was real: I tried not to give it power, but --
          but you can’t be laughed at, like I was. Hated, like that, by those I had tried to help. You can’t have all that, and not internalize some of it. The darkness grew, and there were always more children who reminded me of Maria. Or other people. Or myself. Eventually, it just didn’t matter. There was a lesson, and they needed to to learn it, that the real monsters are human. Gloriously, terribly, human.
          And that under the mask, I was just like them. And they were all just like me.

But nothing lasts forever. People make patterns, find out clues, follow hunches. For a while, it was as if the universe was on my side: nothing I did went wrong. I don’t know who is after me, but someone is. There’s always a hero, come to destroy the monster. And I am one, now. I stopped lying about that, and things began going wrong.
          Maybe I wanted to fail. Maybe I have to fail.
          Maybe it’s because, no matter how hard I try now, I can’t bring up the kind of humour I used to have, the kind without pain, or hate, or rage, or fear. There’s nothing noble to me now, only a darkness I keep on feeding, and I’m trying to save the children from it now. I am being. And becoming.
          I hope the darkness can die. Every time I look in the mirror, I don’t see any shadows on me. It’s gone deep, and something is growing in my soul. These aren’t the words, but I don’t have words. Judgement is coming. I hope someone stops me.

There is crying, from the spare bedroom. I could make my nose red again, with her blood, before judgement comes. I can hear sirens. I can feel thunder, even though there is no storm.
          The girl is crying, and she reminds me more of Maria than Maria did.
          I just want this to end.
          And I hope they hurry, before she stops crying. Before my nose needs to be red again. Before I smile, and tell her jokes, and laugh.
          It is getting to hard to think, to write. Whoever comes, save me. From the Clown, please save me.