Disclaimer: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and its characters are copyright Jhonen Vasquez. The Original Characters in this story are mine, not yours. Enjoi.
"And now, entering stage left, are the juggling Fire Brothers!" the ringmaster declared from his safe podium in center stage. From the his right entered a huge man on a unicycle juggling three smaller men, who in turn were juggling sticks of fire. The audience roared with appreciation, except for two. Sam was patiently calculating his moves while Yvonne was just plainly uninterested. Tom, however, was making a day of each act.
"HOLY SHIT!" Tom exclaimed. "That was amazing! Wasn't that amazing!?" he shouted into Yvonne's ear. She yanked him down by the belt and slammed him onto his chair.
"Focus, you Yankee cock-brain!" she growled through gritted teeth. Tom reeled his neck back and clamped his mouth shut. "We have to watch for our target! This is no time to be distracted." Tom quickly nodded and folded his hands in his seat. While Yvonne wasn't watching, he was able to slip his hand around the small of her back and grab her waist. Thankfully, she was to occupied with observing the entrances for movement.
Samuel was as generally neutral towards the events as his female competitor but even more analytical. His eyes were flitting under his tinted glasses and his hand was fixed steadily on his jumbo orange drink. He took occasional sips and glanced around for the fourth of their brigade, the giant black man with the occult attire. Where he was, Sam didn't know, and he intended to find out before mobilizing. A few acts later, the ringleader stepped down unexplained.
The audience gave out their own utterances of confusion and distress, until the entire house-lights went down. After a few seconds of darkness, several spotlights came on and started erratically circling around. Yvonne was clutched onto Tom's arm for a moment before snapping off and holding herself.
"Woah" Tom explained, "that's what I'm talking about."
"Shut it" Yvonne snapped back. "I'm afraid of blackouts, okay? That was incidental." Over their arguing, the booming voice of the ringleader from off-stage rang out through the tent.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen. This is it! The greatest moment of your lives! All the way from Europe, returning to us from his monumentally successful tour of hilarity and joy, we present our star!" The audience roared. People were standing up and squealing uncontrollably, like a whole legion of brainless devotees. Sam sank in his seat and withdrew out of disgust.
"Here! Is! SQUEEGEE THE CLOWN!!" After the roaring enthusiasm, the house lights went back up and a single, tiny car swerved its way out from stage right and into the center ring. Yvonne tensed herself and slowly stood up. Tom followed her lead in equal viciousness in his face. The tiny car came to a stop, and all was silent. Then, an explosion of colorful smoke from the ring! Out of the car emerged a fleet of bouncing clowns, one-by-one, each easily twice the size of the car they were in. Then, the spotlights led up to the trapeze, where a single clown stood upon the tightrope with a tiny, comical umbrella in hand. He honked his nose and raised a microphone to his mouth.
"Hi, everybody!" he said in a helium-produced voice. His very voice invoked the loudest of cheering, loud enough that it forced Yvonne back into her seat in agony, covering her ears. Tom, on the other hand, was used to loud noise in his ears, and thusly just stared with a cracking smile at one of the clowns; a huge, black clown wearing comical overalls that nearly didn't fit him. Tom started chuckling. Yvonne looked up and saw his laughing face, forcing her to anger. She kicked him and he sat back down as if cued.
"What the fuck's so funny?" Yvonne snarled. As Squeegee descended impossibly slowly through the air, Mort stood underneath ready to catch him should something go wrong. Tom pointed to the entirety of the entrance and Yvonne groaned. "Well, that's one way to get close to your enemy" she observed.
"HEY MORT!" Tom yelled. "YOU LOOK GOOD IN PURPLE!" Yvonne finally got tired of him and left without correcting his behavior. Mort had heard him and glanced in his direction with a shiftless face. As Yvonne strutted her way out of the main seating area and effectively out of the tent, two clowns pinned her by the arms and started dragging her to the center ring.
"LET ME GO!" Yvonne shouted as she struggled against the unusually strong freaks.
"No worries, ma'am" one clown whispered. "We'll compensate you for this if you just play along."
"I don't need compensation" she protested still "I need you to get off me!" Regardless to her protest, the audience cheered for her as she was worked into a bamboo cage that was locked behind her. Tom was becoming distressed at this point.
"Hey" he said quietly as he sank back into his seat. "Why'd they do that?" Panic started to set in, which meant Thomas' intestines were cramping rapidly. The noise started to slowly deafen, as if he had been submerged in a pool of thick pudding and his face flushed instantly with sweat. Mort watched him sprint off as he carried a large, gag saw over to Squeegee who was standing in front of the cage.
"For my first trick this evening, I shall saw this beautiful young girl into pieces!" he announced to his loyal fans. They went wild as their clown master-apparent measured the blade seriously and draped a large tarp over the cage itself. Yvonne started to shiver, as the confined space and darkness had triggered her phobic reaction of complete, catatonic breakdown. She sank down like a rag-doll and assumed a rocking fetal position, trying her hardest to concentrate on the single sliver of light from the ruffles of the tarp.
"Please try to keep in mind that this ground is just that: solid ground, and that girl is still in there!" Squeegee explained. The audience was sitting on the edges of their seats, with the exception of Satan, who was standing in the highest rafter where the light's were broken. "Also keep in mind that this is not a real saw!" At the press of a button, the saw started revving violently, becoming a chain-saw of extreme force. With a sadistic grin, Squeegee started ripping through the tarp and stalks as if they weren't there at all. Yvonne was still a terrified lump on the ground, and therefore dodged all the potential blows that would have otherwise landed and killed her.
Fate has conspired against you Mort thought in Yvonne's respect as he stared on at the horror. I can only assume your death was swift and painless...and bloodless? Mort noticed that each nasty rip produced no blood. Squeegee stopped in time to hear the last cries of concern from the stands and waited for the dust to clear. His plan was to kill her for real, but he failed.
Once the light was visible again, Yvonne recomposed herself and shot upright from the ground with arms stretched out to the sky and a beaming smile. The crowd roared again as the buxom girl bowed deeply in all directions. While Squeegee slowly backed away with a nefarious glare under his bright painted smile, Yvonne gave an evil smirk to Mort as she once again bowed in that direction. Mort nodded, strode over to his current boss and raised his arm up, stopping him from proceeding.
"You've seen it here, folks!" Mort shouted out with his booming voice. "Mr. Squeegee the Clown has allowed this fine young woman to effectively defy death! The Harbinger of Joy has struck yet again!" Although the high-grade vernacular of the speech only completely reached a few ears, the audience cheered anyway and started chanting their current obsession's name.
'Squeegee! Squeegee! Squeegee!' Though not a rare occurrence for the professional fool, he still jerked away his hand and waved on in all his goofy modesty.
"Thanks for the save" Squeegee whispered up to his mammoth helper.
"No problem, sir" Mort lowed back with a smile that warped his painted frown. Mort was smiling in a much more dastardly way within his heart, as he watched several clowns carry Yvonne back into the stands. Mort also saw, from the corner of his eye, a huge, hooded figure melding into the fabric of the tent beside an unusual gentleman in the highest stands. It was gone as soon as he looked, much like the previous illusion, but his gaze was now fixed on the other demonic figure, with huge ram horns and glowing eyes on an emaciated face.
Samuel was saying a quick, personal mantra before loading his gun and straightening his tie. He was now back in his formal wear and ready to stain it with blood from the bathroom when he heard a loud groaning in the stall next to him.
"Sick already, Thomas?" Sam chided. Tom gripped the bars of the handicap stall and relaxed his face to breath.
"Pressure, dude" he explained. "This happens to me all the time. I just take a huge shit and it all goes away."
"How symbolic" Sam said sarcastically as he left his stall. The large, plastic restroom was empty without the two killers, an oddity in Sam's eyes as the circus hadn't given anyone a chance to do their business for the past few hours. After a flush, distressing gargle, and half-flush later, Tom exited his stall in ridiculous ninja gear. A martial-arts Gi with torn off sleeves to reveal his oddly defined arms. His hands were wrapped in athletic tape and he had at least four swords of varying lengths and types on his person. Sam also noticed what looked like an Uzi at his hip.
"It's not Halloween" Sam chided. Tom scoffed and splashed his face with water, pushing his hair back and letting it spike up.
"No" Tom said, trying to sound tough as he raised the flexible ninja-suit over his mouth. "It's killing time!" He moved like quicksilver out of the bathroom, leaving Sam to chuckle to himself and dry off his hands.
"He'll definitely die tonight." Sam decided jokingly.
Squeegee had made his way comically to the opposite side of the ring and started climbing up the ladder to the trapeze. "You've all been such a nice audience tonight that I want to make it up to you!" he said. A wave of cooing and sympathy washed over the crowd, forcing Yvonne away from apparent sickness of the place. She marched on back to where Tom had gone and disappeared in the darkness. "So now, I'll leave you all with one last trick that will make not only your days, but your entire years! You will speak of it for decades, even!" He posed triumphantly at the top of the wire as his clowny minions entertained below. Mort sniffed in the air and picked up on some imperceptive illness about the place.
"Feast your eyes on the center ring!" Squeegee commanded. At his signal, the lights again dimmed and the spotlights shone down as the clowns hastily retreated from the radius. Squeegee threw down a small ball which exploded into a colorful palette of smoke and noise when it hit the ground. At that time, Mort was already half-way up the ladder to the pillar across from the nefarious grinning clown master. Squeegee, unseen by the distracted crowd, withdrew his hand into his puffy sleeve and pulled out a remote. He pressed a button with a skull, and the myriad of vents hissed out a violent, green gas onto every seat in the tent.
Mort watched through the noxious smoke as bodies started grinning to the points where their gums were stretched and their lips tore open. Eyes were rolling backwards and mout started overflowing with blood.
Biochemical weapons! Mort quickly realized. He took a sweaty arm to his face and wiped away all the makeup with a snarl. The clowns were quickly retreating away from the gas as it spilled over into the ringed floors. Squeegee's complexion went from fake and scary to just plain scary as his makeup started cracking and flaking off like a shell. Under that shell was a monster of black and green, with a spiked nose and vicious, yellow rows of fangs streaked across a blood-red smile. His eyes, horrible as they were before, became yellow and his pupils dilated to show a double-ringed iris with a golden haze.
Mort was able to see the full carnal shift from atop the post and he smiled. Then he frowned. "Oh, shit. All my stuff's in the back room...dammit!" His curse provoked the attention of the heretic clown, as Squeegee turned his hideous, nightmarish face slowly to his left and stare down the giant man. "...Shit" Mort repeated.
"You okay in there?" Tom yelled into the ladies room where Yvonne was changing.
"Yes!" She screeched back. "Just don't talk to me, worm!" Tom sighed and took a step back.
"Women, eh?" he said to Sam. Sam just stared ahead at the crawling cloud of green that came down the hall.
"Oh, I'd imagine so" Sam replied randomly as he and Tom started to back away. From the ladies restroom, Yvonne cried out to them as they left sprinting out the tent.
"Can one of you come in here and tighten my corset?"
They were long gone...