“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, and children of all ages! Welcome to The Merriweather Extravaganza!” The ringmaster was greeted by the anticipated roar of the crowd, giddy with excitement.
Waiting for his cue, The Professor eyed the rabble with distain. The contempt he felt for these simpletons in the audience would remain hidden throughout his performance. Being a consummate professional, he would give them the show they paid for. Besides, the white make-up covering his face and the idiotic smile painted thereon would hide any real emotions were he to give in to the facial distortions of his negative emotions.
The sudden blaring of horns was his cue. The Professor left the darkness of the stage wings and waddled out into the glaring lights of the center ring, his toes pointed out, his long white coat flaring away from his black and red striped silk pantaloons. The auguste clowns, those of lesser rank and identified by their lack of white face paint, tumbled and rolled after him. They were there to do his bidding. Clown history, dating back to a time before Christianity, dictated the rank and role of each jester by the color of his face and his costume.
The act was for him to be the stern teacher, these pranksters his pupils. His failure to control them, and his own gaffes made the audience howl. The crowd loved the practical jokes they played on their teacher. He became as hilarious as they when he tried and failed to bring about order.
The Professor appeared once more during the course of the show. This time he was in a laboratory, his objective being to transform Bloopy the Clown into a dog. As Bloopy stood inside a fixture that pulsed with colored lights, The Professor pushed a button, causing a massive amount of smoke to billow out of the fixture, allowing the clown to escape through a trap door in the floor, replacing himself on the platform with a dog. As the smoke dissipated, The Professor proclaimed his experiment a success with wild and exaggerated gestures.
The Professor had memorized the eight clown commandments and the clown code of ethics. His new profession demanded he behave in good taste, never embarrass anyone, and provide good clean clown comedy entertainment. He also knew that, while in costume, he could not do anything that would jeopardize the profession of clowning.
Long after the crowds were gone and the circus performers had retired for their well-deserved rest, The Professor sat at his make-up table, slowly removing the last vestiges of his alter ego, exposing the face of his true identity—Gregory Sinclair.
When he had entered clown college was unclear. There were gaps in his memory, beginning with the morning his well-ordered life had ceased to exist. It was immaterial: what mattered was the driving force that had sent him into this nightmare world of clowning.
Gregory wore a key on a chain around his neck. It opened a storage unit that housed the detritus of his past, what remained of the man he used to be. There were racks of suits costing thousands of dollars each, and long white coats of the finest organic bamboo cotton. Cartons, lining two walls, held equipment from his former profession as an organic chemist: a Meiji MT6000 Epi-fluorescent microscope, a Buchi SpeedExtractor E-916, and several dozen boxes containing centrifuges, analytical balances, calibrating baths, and an assortment of stirrers, beakers, shakers, and mixers.
He had closed the storage unit, leaving everything behind. Some day he hoped to claim this former life and the place in society he had cultivated and earned. However, at this moment in time, he had a mission to accomplish that required total freedom of movement and anonymity. What better than a circus that traveled approximately ten thousand miles a year in fifty-five railroad cars, with an average staff of three hundred people? A place where he could hide behind a painted face and a fabricated past that no one questioned.
Why he had become a clown was obvious. The details of his suffering were clear and constant. As he sat before the mirror, the paint of his clown’s mask gone, he stared into eyes that used to be filled with power and joy.
Each second of his pain suddenly became alive in crisp, concise details that never wavered, never varied. And he lived the torment again.