by Bobbi A. Chukran
Here is another Spooky short story for the Halloween season. You can find all of our Halloween/Spooky stories for this year in our Terrific Tales Section. This story has never before been published.
The woman on the park bench was reading a novel, sipping a cup of coffee, and enjoying the spring day.
Suddenly a clown bopped by, stopped then plopped down beside her. He had orange hair, giant red shoes, a big red honker, and a pointy hat with a bobble.
He rummaged and produced a clipboard and a pencil out of a pocket then licked the pencil and poised to write.
“Excuse me, madame,” he said. “Could you tell me why people are afraid of clowns?”
>She looked up, startled, jumped, dropped her book and spilled her coffee. “Now look what you made me do!”
“Leave me alone!” she shrieked. “What are you doing?”
“Like I said, I’m taking a survey,” he explained, stuffing the hanky down into the front of his pants.
She sat back down and stared at the creature.
“I need to know, why are people afraid of clowns? Did you know there’s even a name for the affliction—coulrophobia. There are even books about curing clown phobias! Can you imagine? It’s very prejudicial. I want to get to the bottom of this, so I’m taking a survey.”
The woman frowned. “Really? There’s actually a name for it?” She shrugged. “I’ve never thought about it much before. She looked him up and down. “Maybe it’s your nose? Or, maybe it’s that hair.”
He patted his head. “Granted, my hair is a mess; it’s windy out today. What about my nose? I happen to love my nose,” he said.
“It’s big, red, and probably makes weird noises. Nose noises are scary sometimes.”
“Oh, like this?” he asked, and honked his nose loudly.
The woman cringed. “Yes! That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Just stop it!”
The clown nodded, licked his giant pencil and scribbled on his clipboard.
The woman frowned, then pointed at his shoes. “Or maybe it’s those feet. They are hideous! I have never seen such horrible feet in my life!”
“What about my feet? What’s wrong with them?” he asked.
“Well, they’re ginormous. Face it, clown, you got amazingly BIG feet! Clowns have big feet! You almost never see a clown with tiny feet, do you? I have to say, giant feet are not attractive on anyone.”
The clown poked out his hideous red bottom lip and mumbled. “I can’t help it. I was born this way.”
“Don’t tell me that your FEET are actually that big and that you have to wear giant shoes.”
He nodded. “Well, yeah. I was born with slightly large feet.” He turned them one way, then another, admiring his shoes. “Should I remove them to show you?”
“Oh god, no! Please don’t,” she said. “Sorry. I just assumed it was part of your costume.”
The clown frowned. “Costume? You think this is a costume?” He made a note on his clipboard. “Moving along. What else makes people afraid of clowns?”
“Well,” she said, “I didn’t want to say anything, but isn’t it pretty obvious? Just look at you! Your nose is huge, your feet are huge, your hair is ORANGE, for god’s sake, and your clothing looks like a reject from some rag bag, and your skin looks all pasty and…OOGIE.” She nodded. “There’s really no other word to describe it.” She took a breath. “Oh, and bottom line—clowns are evil. Everyone says so. Wasn’t there a novel about a bad clown? Ring any bells? Not to mention all those killer clown movies.”
“Oh, THOSE,” the clown said, flapping his wrist. “That’s fiction.”
“Well, I’m sure some of it’s based on facts,” she said.
He laughed. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? That makes perfect sense! Now I know,” he said, flinging his hands out. “News flash! A few evil clowns show up in popular culture, so we’re all evil, right? You could have saved me a lot of silly question-asking if you’d only said CLOWNS ARE EVIL from the get-go!”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry, but if you must know, it all stems from my childhood.”
He wagged his eyebrows up and down. “So! Do tell!”
“My parents told me if I wasn’t good, a scary clown would come into my bedroom and snatch me away, take me to a cave where devils would pull my eyebrows out one-by-one and do other unmentionable things.”
“Ouch!” the clown said. “That would hurt!” He made a note on his clipboard. “Devils you say? Diabolical!”
“THEN,” she continued, “weevils would crawl into my ears and mutant clowns in big ruffled collars would tickle me until I went insane.”
The clown was quite taken aback. “For cryin’ out loud, that would scare anybody!”
“I know, right?” she said. “So I’m sure you can see why I’m a tad disdainful of clowns. It’s a learned belief from my childhood.”
“No kidding! That’s just not right. Talk about evil! Wow. But you gotta believe me; there is no cave with devils. You do believe me, right, my dear?”
The woman looked into his face, relaxed and smiled. “Sure. Just a silly story. It’s obvious all those things are myths made up by overly strict parents. Shame on them!”
The clown glanced around the park, turned and leered at the woman. He scooted in closer, hunching over her. “Some of it’s just a silly story. For example, that bit about the weevils,” he growled. “The rest of it? You should have listened to your parents, dearie.”
Then his mouth opened impossibly wide until every one of his dripping, black needle-like teeth were exposed and some long scaly slick tentacled thing with horrible red suckers snaked out and the woman began to scream.
Until she couldn’t.
Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Also listen to our new mystery podcast where mystery short stories and first chapters are read by actors! They are also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.
Thank you again, Lorie! I wrote this story years ago but recently revamped it. Glad you gave it a home.