The Clownmaid's Tale

Crustbuk the Clown slammed his tumbler of Scotch onto the table.

“Bring me my rust wig,” he growled.

Ofcrust the Clownmaid obediently started to search through the giant walk-in closet full of well-used clown paraphernalia. As a High Clown of the Clownsortium, Crustbuk had a massive collection of the highest quality wigs, floppy shoes, and vividly colored plastic noses all heaped up along with the other required accouterments of a well-rounded clown in his expansive closet.

“What’s taking you so long?” Crustbuk barked.

He always grew impatient and testy after his third or fourth drink of the evening, irritated with thoughts of all the clowning demands placed on him by the Commander.

Ofcrust grabbed several massive wigs with curling tangles of copper, vermillion, and maroon fake hair and tossed them onto another shelf as she desperately searched for the rust wig. She fretted that Crustbuk would lash out at her if he found his accessories in disarray, but the shelves were piled so deep with grotesquely shaded, intertwined wigs that she was growing frantic to find the right one.

“If your dawdling drags on any longer, I’ll show you a paddling like no other!” yelled Crustbuk. He threw his near-empty tumbler at a ceramic circus elephant, cracking the fragile collector’s item and sending it crashing to the floor.

Ofcrust shivered at the thought of what would happen later if Crustbuk’s fit of anger grew worse. As a Clownmaid, she was at the mercy of all his whims, bound to the High Clown for the purpose of continuing his great ancestral Clowning Line. Crustbuk took every advantage of his Clownmaid, mercilessly forcing her to watch him perform humorless balloon animal routines, make broad, graceless pratfalls on his spiral ballroom staircase and fold himself into his super-tiny yellow clown car and drive loops on his private three-ring course. She had to force her best hearty laughs at all these strained antics or risk a public paddling with his wiffle ball bat.

In his more vigorous moods, Crustbuk forced her to partner with him in ridiculous, protracted seltzer water fights and elaborate, would-be comical two-person juggling routines. Ofcrust winced at the memory of the pulpy grapefruits and rubber balls that would bonk her painfully on the forehead or ear when she missed a maneuver in these routines. Crustbuk was never content to juggle with her at a moderate rate, but always ramped up the speed mercilessly, shouting “Faster, Clownmaid, faster!” at the top of his lungs as his eyes grew livid and large beads of sweat rolled down the white make-up plastered on his face.

“What are you doing with those wigs, you wretched wench!” The brusque scream startled Ofcfrust into motionlessness.

She froze, seeing that Crustbuk had staggered to the center of the bedchamber, where he stood, white-gloved hands on hips, his vivid artificially-colored bright green eyes boring into her.

Ofcrust tried to stammer out a response, but the sight of the raging, sputtering High Clown stunned her into silence.

Crustbuk staggered toward the massive closet. He must’ve had more to drink than Ofcrust thought. He was a heavy-drinking clown, and it took more than few Scotch-and-sodas to make him lurch and lunge as he was now.

“Do you have any idea how rare those wigs are! That dark chartreuse one was presented to me by the Clown Commander!”

Crustbuk pointed with a quivering white finger at a hideous, sprawling wig that Ofcrust saw, to her horror, that she’d accidentally dropped on the floor, its undersea-shaded tendrils spreading across the tiles like the limbs of a frazzled squid.

“How can one so stupid have been assigned Clownmaid to a High Clown! You’ll bear me a Clown Moron, a Frown Clown!” he yelled, using a politically incorrect derogatory term for an especially untalented member of the Clownsortium.

Ofcrust whimpered and swayed in her mandated attire, an oversized red-and-white polka-dotted cape and attached hood. “Pardon me…”

Crustbuk leered, disturbingly aroused by any sign of fear in his underlings. “Smear that freakin’ red lipstick on your lips!”

Ofcrust obeyed, taking an oversized copper tube from her cape’s huge pouch and slathering the fluorescent red lipstick over her mouth, chin, and cheeks, knowing Crustbuk lusted after such garish displays.

“Get into my Clownbed,” barked Crustbuk. He pointed to the gigantic bed, covered with a lavishly plump polka dot bedspread. “Tonight we’re playing a sweet little game of pin the red nose on the Clownmaid!”

He chucked a nasty, rasping chuckle as Ofcrust closed her eyes and tried to forget all about brightly clothed clowns, striped circus tents and all the other distasteful, candy-colored accessories of the Clownworld and imagined herself back in the quiet farming town of her youth, even as Crustbuk cackled again and honked the giant horn on his bedside table, the signal for yet another round of Scotch. Ofcrust sighed. It was going to be a long night.