A Collection Of Short Stories

Sidney The Clown

My brother had an urgent need to see Sidney the Clown.

This would have been fine if I wasn't then forced by my parents to take my brother, Christopher to see that clown. I protested and argued until my throat was dry but they just wouldn't reconsider, so here I was taking my fourteen year old brother, who shouldn't need any supervision at a children's carnival to see a stupid clown.

I hated having a sibling.

In anger, I stormed outside and into my car, proceeding to bang my head violently against the steering wheel when I heard someone open the door to the backseat. I looked in the front view and wasn't surprised to see Christopher smirking in the back. I noticed he was wearing my blue button up shirt. I opened my mouth to shout at him to go change immediately but remember my mom was the one who told him that he could go wear my shirt.

I hated how much pampering he got! Chris was a teenager for crying out loud! If he was old enough to take the bus to school by himself, he was surely old enough to pick out his own clothes without any prompt and go to this pathetic carnival alone.

"Grant..." Christopher called from the backseat of my black jeep. Instead of answering, I huffed, muttering curses to myself, "I said, Grant!"

"What?" I shouted turning around to face the little monster who continued to smirk. How could someone who looked just like me be the main reason for my pain and anger? We both had jet black hair and stormy grey eyes, people used to call Chris my carbon copy which really bugged him and gave me lots of enjoyment.

It was hard to get under his skin; he found a way to see everything in an amusing way. You could tell him your mother died and he would somehow turn that into something happy and humour. It was actually pretty disturbing at times, like in fifth grade when his music teacher had a mental breakdown after she attended her grandma's funeral where they let her ashes flow freely through the air as a sign of freedom. Instead of being sympathetic like Chris knew he should have been, he said and I quote, "Good thing you guys decided to cremate her or right now, grandma's wrinkly, stinky old body would be slowly decaying under six feet of dirt."

Let's just say, Christopher transferred schools after that.

"I'm sensing a little hostility here," He chuckled and pouted, "Does someone not want to go to the carnival because they're afraid of the big scary clown?"

"No!" I snapped back but then I thought about it, "Okay fine but that's not the only reason I don't want to go," I lied, the truth was a group of my friends invited me to go to carnivals plenty of times, the only reason I hadn't been to one was because of my serious coulrophobia.

I started the car and began driving through the carnival while Chris snickered in the back, he was so lucky murder was illegal.

Coulrophobia is commonly known as an abnormal fear of clowns but I wouldn't call it fear, I would call it dread because it's way bigger than a silly fear.

For my tenth birthday, my parents finally agreed to throw me a party, on one condition. I could have the party if they were allowed to throw me it as a surprise though I guess it wasn't really a surprise considering they told me what day it was on and what time it was. The events taken place at this extravaganza were the only thing unknown to me.

Being the naive child I was, I complied thinking, a party was party, whether I got to plan it on my own shouldn't matter as long as I got to invite the guests which I did.

My parents were excited that I was finally stepping up, making memories before I entered middle school but the truth was, I didn't even want that party.

I just needed an excuse to invite Ruby Manson over to my house.

Ruby was the coolest girl in fifth grade or at least I thought so. She was the type of girl, who preferred skateboards over dolls, would rather pig out on French fries than eat a freshly cut Caesar salad, rather participate in a rugby game than go shopping and this next part, might sound really shallow, typical and cliché but she was the prettiest girl I've ever seen.