Free ClownFellas by Iii Carlton Mellick Page B

I’m going to be your chief caretaker, then things are going to have to be brought up to my standards. It might not be cheap. It might not be easy. But when it comes to the health and well-being of those animals, you’re going to have to answer to me. And if you don’t like it then you might as well kill me right now, because I won’t do a half-assed job.”
    The boss stared at him for a moment. Earl thought he was about to be strangled to death for speaking to the big man like that. He shrank into his hospital bed, but he didn’t break eye contact.
    “Very well, Doc. You got yourself a deal.”
    Then Don Bozo laughed so loud his belly shook the hospital bed and sent waves of pain through Earl’s shattered arm.

Chapter 29
    It was two weeks of living and working in Little Bigtop and Earl still hadn’t gotten used to being surrounded by clowns. His job was fine. He loved working with animals. He always did. It filled him with pride knowing that he was able to do good by them, give them better habitats to live in than cages in an old warehouse.
    His home life, on the other hand, was a mess. Vicky hadn’t said more than three words since the incident. Sarah wasn’t adjusting well to her new school—it wasn’t easy being the only non-clown girl at Little Bigtop High School. And Mandy, though happy and excited as ever, had already given up hope of ever seeing her mother again. It was depressing. Earl felt like he’d destroyed his family, destroyed his daughters’ happiness. The only thing that would make things right is if their mother were to come back to them. But even then, Earl was worried she would come back changed. He knew it was possible she could come back psychologically damaged or addicted to laughy-gas. The road to recovery would be long and arduous, and that was if she didn’t leave him and take the kids away.
    At the end of a long day, Don Bozo came up to Earl with a disturbed look on his face. At that moment, Earl knew it. His fears had come true. His wife was dead.
    “I’m sorry, Doc,” the boss said, putting his hand on the vet’s shoulder.
    Tears pooled in Earl’s eyes. “You found her?”
    The boss nodded and looked down. “Yeah, we found her.”
    Earl didn’t want to believe it. He thought for sure she would have been alive. Even if they never found her, he thought she still would’ve been alive somewhere, even if she was living in misery.
    “So, she’s dead…,” Earl said.
    The boss shook his head. “No, I didn’t say that. She’s here.”
    “What?”
    “She’s just not the same…”
    “What do you mean not the same?”
    Earl wondered what they’d done to her. His worst fears went through his head: She could be a crazed addict, she could be beaten or scarred, she could be diseased or left in a horribly malnourished state.
    The boss led him out of the animal shelter toward the offices where she was being held.
    “You see, the men who purchased your wife had specific tastes,” said Don Bozo. “They had no need for any human women.”
    “What does that mean?”
    When Don Bozo opened the door to one of his accountants’ offices, Earl saw a clown sitting in the chair behind the desk.
    “Who’s this?” Earl asked.
    “They shot her up with Happy Juice. It changed her genetic makeup.”
    Earl stepped into the office and got a closer look at the clown sitting there. She had frizzy red hair and neon-green horn-rimmed glasses.
    Earl’s heart stopped. “Laurie?”
    He hardly recognized her with that big round nose and paper-white skin. Her dark-blue eyes seemed to twirl at him.
    “Hi, baby,” she said in a high-pitched, bloodcurdling clown voice. “Want to go home and blow some bubbles?”
    She pulled out a bubble kit and blew bubbles at him. Then her bright-red lips curled into a deranged smile. She wasn’t just a clown; she was the most frightening clown Earl had ever seen, even more horrifying than Captain Spotty. And he was married to her.
    “I think it’s a pretty