Good evening. I am Gelliant Gutfright, and tonight's tale could easily be called "The Tears of a Clown." So easily that it is, in fact. But could it also be called "A Fair Warning?"
No... it couldn't...
The tale is the story of the last, gasping moments of a bane of human existence, the final squirt of fearful urine from the urethra of an unmitigated bore, the heralding of clear trumpets as a scourge of humanity realizes his mistakes and begs for death before the end. In fact, the tale could be called "I Can't Plead." Couldn't it?
Couldn't it...?
Or could it...?
Or couldn't it...?
The first thing he noticed was the smell of the grease paint. That slick, chemical smell that was so often mingled with sweat, cheap soda, and whatever street drugs he could score before the shows. He thought he couldn't open his eyes, but realized that they were taped shut...
Taped shut!
He tried to let out a scream, but his mouth was taped as well. A sharp knock against the side of his head sent his mind blurring, and even though his eyes were shut, he still saw a flash of light.
"Shut up. It's no use screaming," a voice whispered in his right ear. That voice... he knew it... he searched his mind, trying to find a face to the voice, and all of a sudden it hit him, like a dam being released full force at his mind. The night before, at the bar. Someone had been buying him shots... that woman! She wore a loose, baggy shirt, black dyed hair, black makeup, and was swearing like a sailor. He remembered she wasn't wearing any pants, just a thong with a clown on it. Thinking of all the alcohol the night before made him queasy, and his nerves got the best of him. He gagged three times before he vomited, sending great rivulets of puke out his nostrils. In his panic he heard a different voice... English, somewhat light but serious...
"No. Keep the tape on for a bit. Let him get scared..."
Just before he thought he would pass out and choke on the used tequila and boneless buffalo wings, the tape was violently ripped off of his mouth. He tried to lean over but was taped to an office chair, his hands taped to the arms of the chair, his upper body taped to the back, and his feet taped to the wheels, keeping him from moving himself. He emptied the contents of his stomach onto himself in great, blubbering heaves.
"What the fuck have you done with me?!" he screamed, and immediately got a hard shot with what felt like a bat against his throat.
"With any luck, Mr. Utsler, we just crushed your plural larynges, leaving you to never perform again. We consider this a definite boon to humanity," the British voice said quietly. "Now that we can talk, we must explain certain things to you... things that we don't think you want to hear."
"... take the... tape off my eyes... please..." he gasped
"In a moment, surely. You must be aware, Mr. Utsler..."
"That's not my name! It's..." Whack! What felt like a bat to the ribcage and the pain of a surely broken rib shooting through his body made him tear up. He was glad the tape was on his eyes, so nobody could see his fear and pain.
"We are very aware of your stage name, Mr. Utsler, and we are not impressed. Keep in mind that you have just broken at least one rib, and any further outburst will be directed at your genitals. You do have the sense to appreciate how much a burst testicle would hurt, don't you?"
He nodded resignedly.
"Good, so no further interruptions will be experienced?"
A gentle prodding with the bat at his scrotum turned his shamed head shake into a very vigorous one.
"Good. To continue, Mr. Utsler, you must be aware that you are being held captive, but not by whom. We sent one of our operatives out to find you last night. It was remarkably easy."
The woman's voice came from his left ear this time. "I had to take three showers just to get your awful stink off my body, you putrid sack of..."
"That's enough, Donna."
He heard her leave his ear and give it a quick slap, which hurt more than he cared to admit, and he lost his temper.
"You fuckin' bitch, when I get outta here I will fuckin'-" and the pain was great. His eyes watered, his whole body convulsed and he almost fainted but for an injection delivered directly to his heart which pulled him back from darkness, whether death or unconsciousness he didn't know or care.
"We warned you, Mr. Utsler. To continue, we found you, drugged you, and brought you here to show and tell. You remember show and tell, don't you? It's something they do in schools. And this is very much school, I assure you."
The tape was violently ripped off his face. Before him was a small man, silver haired and somewhat old, with glasses and a remote control in his hand. He was standing in front of a white glowing screen, and smiling slightly.
"Mr. Utsler, you can call me Professor Dawkins."
Fear welled up into his heart, though he didn't know why.
"I'm here to teach you a few things. I tried to teach these things to your associate, but his lessons were, shall we say, unproductive."
The small British man almost imperceptibly pressed a button on the remote control, and a quick, repeating image of his friend's blubbery head, covered in tears, grease paint, and vomit, and being shot with a shot gun filled the screen behind Professor Dawkins. Over and over the mans head was blown up in a pink and red splatter.
"He pleaded to us to stop before the end. He soiled himself almost immediately when he realized we wouldn't be letting him go. Just like you."
"P... Please... I'll do anything... Please, I want to see my son again..."
"I'm sorry, but that is not possible. The next time your son sees you you will have changed too drastically. So, shall we continue with the lessons?"
"No... please stop..."
"I'm afraid I can't do that. First," the small man pressed a button and the screen changed again, from the death of his best friend to a simple picture of a bar of metal with N on one end and S on the other, and current markings around it. "Magnets. They fucking work because unpaired electrons spinning in the same directions create magnetic domains. This, usually called electromagnetism, as electricity and magnetism share several similar properties, is a subset of the four forces, the others being strong interaction, weak interaction, and gravitation."
Confusion. Utter confusion. He was being kidnapped for this? For a... a song?
"Also, everything in that awful song that is actually real is explainable, if only you were intellectually curious." The screen changed again to a biological tree of life. "This, and I use the term very loosely, song, is what is wrong with our society. You care nothing about what we know and revel in ignorance. Giraffes are long-necked beasts for several reasons, the moon was formed from earth about four and a half billion years ago. UFOs? Seriously? The term is unidentified. That means it can be identified. That means we just need to learn."
Professor Dawkins pressed the button again. It showed a repeating video of a tube projecting jets of fire, each jet changing size as a person to the left of the tube pressed a note on a keyboard. "You are seeing music right now, Mr. Utsler. The wavelength of specific sounds creates this effect on the fire. It's called the resonant standing waves experiment. Do you see? Just because you don't know the answers and don't care enough to look them up does not mean that there are no answers. All the things you sing about are explainable or not real." The screen changed again, this time with a natural scene depicting a beach. The calm atmosphere the picture portrayed was in stark contrast to the words coming out of Professor Dawkins's mouth. "There are no such things as miracles, Mr. Utsler. Only things we can't explain yet. You talk so much of appreciating the world around you, do you not see that knowing is more satisfying? You are an idiot. A moron. And the world is not made better by your calling your lack of understanding a good thing."
Professor Dawkins's voice had grown deeper. "Your lyric, let me see if I can remember it correctly, '... and I don't wanna talk to no scientist, y'all just lyin' and gettin' me pissed' has made us mad. And you don't want to make scientists mad, do you Mr. Utsler?"
The vomit caked grease paint was mixing with tears as he realized he wouldn't be let out of this room alive. He had pissed off the wrong people...
He had pissed off the scientists.
"You've made us mad... Donna, please bring them out."
A door opened and two men stood in the hall adjacent to the room. They were both wearing ridiculous grease paint, one being short and squat, the other taller and thin.
"Say hello to the new Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, Mr. Utsler," Professor Dawkins said. "They are our associates, and they will be taking your place. We will use your minimal popularity to bring rational thought back to the ones that need it most... the, as you call them, Juggalos."
As he felt the life drain from his body after the surprisingly painless knife stabbed into his chest, he heard from the back of the room someone say "Good riddance, I never liked the bastards anyway..." His last thought was "That sounded a whole lot like my eighth grade science teacher..."
Good night, little ones... if you can...
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