The women’s story

Read the women’s story here.

John looked nervously at his watch and waited for the door to open. With his heart beating in his ear, he consciously steadied his breath as his hand grazed the pistol at his side. As much as he had come to resent it over the past few months, the now-familiar weight of the weapon was an unexpected comfort. And surprisingly, it was going to be very easy to kill the man who had ruined his life. But then, he’d had a bad feeling from the beginning, from the moment when he’d first seen that ad in the newspaper.

The ad was simple, direct, yet mysterious: MAN SEEKS CLOWN FOR FRIENDSHIP, POSSIBLY MORE. He reached again for the comfort of his Sig, knowing that the person coming through that door was actually a woman, and she very well might force his hand.

“Eric, have you seen my red nose and fright wig?” Dolores warbled through the thin veneer door.

He took no comfort from this distraction as each tick of the seconds hand from the gold plated clock above his desk thumped through his body, vibrating to his very core. At last he heard the familiar thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP of limping footsteps and the key rasp in the lock. The door swung open. The sudden entry of light into the room blinded John for a moment. Without hesitation, he shot. When his vision returned he realised he had made a mistake.

Although the shot had blown the head off completely, it was immediately clear to him that this was not the person who had made him look like a fool by pretending to be a man and then publicly revealing ‘his’ non-existing male genitals. Instead were the remains of a young man in a parcel delivery uniform, his dead hands still holding an oddly-shaped packet. Alongside the label addressed to John were written the instructions: NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL MIDNIGHT TONIGHT.

Not to be fooled with such instructions, he immediately snatched the package and tore it open using considerable force and speed. Panicking he rummaged carefully through the mass of packaging, suddenly he saw it, dull, liifeless and heavy on the cheap nylon carpet. Inside was a plastic model of a portion of the male genitalia adorned with a clown nose, part 3 of a cassette course on learning Esperanto, and a piece of paper with writing all over it, folded in the shape of a warthog.

Another cryptic message from that sales assistant at the local sex shop who was trying to instill culture into him, he figured. Since he didn’t feel like playing along in that Da Vinci-code game, he tossed the contents of the parcel out the window. He bent over to examine the so-called delivery man more closely. At that moment John heard a faint ringing coming from somewhere in the delivery man’s jacket.

He reached in, grabbed the mobile phone, and read the number on the screen with horror – Mum Mob. Undeterred, he stuffed the phone into his pocket, and muttered ‘ciao bella’ to his victim as he kissed him on the lips.

Surveying the scene – packaging littering the floor; scarlet blood giving the cheap carpet and scuffed walls a morbid, ironic sort of vitality; the crumpled body of the hapless delivery man – he decided: it was time to go.

Suddenly registering the time displayed on the mobile phone, he decided that he had lingered way too long, and it was necessary to move on. He swiftly opened the brown back door, took a few steps outside onto the graveled drive before he looked up and halted, he felt his heart beat shudder the droplets of sweat on his chest.

As he scanned the scene to get a clear overview of the situation, the voice of Dolores reappeared in his mind, and made him turn around quickly – where did she go? Walking towards him was a clown, complete with green hair, large sad eyes and grotesque mouth.

Though both of them were there competing for the same position which would normally be a deal breaker, their few minutes of nervous small talk before she was called in to the interview shifted his attention toward how he could see her again, no matter what happened today. As quick as he could, he turned and ran down the drive towards the small grey shelter on the left of the exit.

He frantically swung the door open and suddenly realized he forgot his gun.

“Did you drop this?”, he heard a loud voice. There she was- a woman holding the contents of the parcel he had thrown out of the window. He realized his knees were shaking. She walked slowly towards him and handed him the note. “Now read it”.

Dave (for that was his name), thought to himself as he careered panic stricken towards the shelter, ‘If I can just flag down the first passing vehicle, I can escape this whole ridiculous mess and that Dolores Clown thing, whatever he/she is… and maybe the blame will be passed on to that sorry excuse for a man-clown instead’.

He had to calm down, he had forgotten his gun, Dolores had seen him, and his finger prints where all over the show. What was he to do now? He must call Alice for instructions, she always knew what to do…

A glance behind him confirmed his fear, the ominous figure was looming in his direction and he was unable to return for the weapon that could potentially free him from the situation he had initally desired to be in.

Hesitating, he took the note, glanced at the woman and said: ”What…read it out loud?!?”

He looked at her as she approached him, a strange and violent mixture of love, longing and hatred raging in his ravaged heart and he swung out blindly, hardly knowing what he was doing, knocking her off her feet and the note flying off in the chilly breeze.

“Dave as you are readig this i am…….” she hesitated…

She landed on her arm and it cracked loudly; the paper floated to a stop on a nearby bench.

An albatross, it’s wingspan so broad it cast a shadow over both of them, swooped down and clawed the note before gliding off. John waited a heart beat, wondering who was controlling this farce, because clearly someone was.

Alice leaned in and touched her fingers to his neck pulse, as she waved to distant, flashing lights that were getting closer – ‘Appears the hallucinations have kicked in… can you hear me? Maybe it’s not too late…’

Dave wondered who the hell this John person was. Dave awoke to the sound of a lullaby. He saw rainbows of colour swirling and twinkling…

“Hurrah,” he shouted to the world as he stood naked at the window, “it was only a dream!”

“The sort of dream that people have in novels, and the reader is convinced it’s real…but then they wake up, and find that the guns and clowns are simply features of an overactive imagination.”

Or was it?

It took him a minute to realize that the dancing colours were on the head of a woman with a familiar face; she hummed quietly with tears in her eyes.

THE END