The walls were splattered with blood. Streaks of red dribbled down the white paint, and had embedded itself into the popcorn ceiling. The carpet was nearly flooded with it, thick, red, fresh blood, pooling in spots and seeping through, staining the hardwood floor underneath.

Clear footprints followed the path of two very gory shoes; shoes that had seen more horror than any person ever should. The laces of the soft Airwalks were caked in old blood, and spotted with new. The footprints were still fresh because the owner was still pacing a circle around the body on the floor; the body with several gaping holes in its chest, neck and, of course, the missing face. That was the clincher, the one that would give the killer away. But they wanted to be found. They needed to be, or this would only continue. It would escalate until there was no saving their soul, if one was to be saved. This killing had begun so long ago there might not be anyway to stop it.

The killer paced back and forth, wearing a path in the damp carpet. There were flecks of skin, and pieces of brain mixed with fiery orange hair caught in the soles of the killer’s shoes. White makeup streaked lines in the warm, viscous liquid; more hair was tangled in the carpet weave, and a chopped up red ball nose lay in chunks around the room.

The killer stopped near the head, and she smiled as she looked down at the dead clown.

“I hate you,” she whispered into the empty room, feeling a light breeze whip her long, light brown hair around her face and into her eyes, “and I’ll kill you all if they don’t stop me.”

*  *  *

Eighteen years ago…

The girl walked along the sidewalk. A yellow ribbon dangled from her brown hair, tied back in a ponytail. She wore a frilly yellow dress with a tacky floral pattern on it.  Her little black shoes click-clacked on the pavement as she walked along. Her knees bore the scars of numerous trips and scrapes, wounds that she wore with pride. She reached the corner and stopped, looking in each direction for any traffic that might splatter her on the concrete and, seeing none, skipped across the street.

She continued to skip along the sidewalk until she reached the Harrison’s house about halfway along the block. She knew the Harrison’s because they lived a scant few blocks from her own home, where she was now headed. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have stopped but she felt she had to when she heard Mrs. Harrison scream at the top of her lungs.

She turned briefly towards the house and saw Mrs. H staring at her with her hands over her mouth, like she was trying to stuff the scream down her own throat. The girl looked down at herself to see what the problem was.

In one hand she carried a plastic bottle of coke and in the other, she carried a large, bloody knife. Thick drops of blood fell from the tip of the knife, splashing onto the sidewalk. As she looked behind her she could see a trail of these drops following her. Her yellow sundress was drenched in it, as were her shiny black shoes.

She pouted; her lip curling into a frown of consternation. Turning back to Mrs. H, she could see Mr. H had come out and was now standing with his wife. His expression was confused, but not frightened like his wife’s. He was moving, coming her way. She looked down at her feet suddenly, as if that would help.

“Umm,” he started to say as he got near, “sweety? Are you ok?”

She nodded her head very lightly. She could see his shadow on the ground but she still didn’t look up.

“Why do you have a knife?”

She shrugged nonchalantly.

“Where did you get it from?” He crouched a few feet away.

She shrugged again. She could now hear the sounds of others coming outside, alarmed at the sound of an ear-shattering scream.

“Is…is that blood sweety?”

She nodded very lightly.

“Whose blood is it?” His voice was quivering.

She shook her head. She had know this man for a few years now, probably longer than she could really remember, but she wasn’t about to talk to him now. Not after…that.

“Can you put the knife down for me?”

She shook her head.

He sighed heavily. She could sense he was afraid and frustrated, but she couldn’t help him now. Not after…that.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

She shook her head again. He sighed once more, as he became aware that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this.

She lifted her foot and made to step past him, but he reached out and put his hand on her arm to hold her, saying “I can’t let you go sweetie. Something bad has happened and I need to talk to you about it.”

But she wasn’t about to let him stop her. She lifted the knife and sunk it into his arm, pulling it back out right away so she would be able to keep hold of it and not have him wrench it away when he started flailing, which he did.

Mr. Harrison ripped his arm away and screamed in pain, and she started to walk passed him once again. This time he wasn’t so nice when he tried to stop her, instead wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her into the air. She reached around and sunk the blade into his neck and he let her go. She fell to the ground and turned around to see him fall to his knees while pulling the knife out of his neck. He tossed the blade on the ground and grabbed at the wound, which spat out blood horribly. His wife had screamed again, along with several others that were watching, but she ignored them, bending over and picking up the knife. She turned and started to walk away as Mr. H collapsed onto the ground.

After a moment, she started to skip again. When she got home she was going to have a big bowl of iced cream; Chocolate Chunk or maybe Rocky Road.

People were running around behind her and screaming. They weren’t coming close to her though; they were afraid. She was afraid too. She didn’t want to hurt any more people but she didn’t want to be touched. By anyone. Ever again. Just the feeling of Mr. Harrison’s hand on her arms made her feel ill, made her feel hurt again. She didn’t like it. If he had asked her nicely, she would have stopped. But he touched her.

He touched her.

Not after…that.

She skipped the rest of the way to her house, knowing that when she got there, she was going to be in big, big trouble. But that was ok. Everything would be ok. As long as her father didn’t touch her, or her mother.

When she turned the last corner towards her house she saw a police car outside her home. It had its top lights flashing circles that made her feel ill. There was a policeman standing outside the door talking to her parents who wore matching expressions of horror. Her father saw her and called out to her. Everyone looked at her.

Daddy came rushing towards leaving her mother behind. The man was certainly two people in one. There was ‘Her Father’ the man who was strict and enforced the rules; who told her what to do and when to do it; the one who inflicted punishments and made them stick. Then there was ‘Daddy’, the man who was rushing towards her right now. ‘Daddy’ was fun and played with her; he tried to make her feel better when she was sick; he was understanding and caring, and always knew the right thing to say to make her laugh. Daddy was the one who cried when she cried, and believed every word his little girl had to say. If ‘Her Father’ had been the one rushing at her now, she might have turned and run away, but since it was ‘Daddy’ she wasn’t afraid. He would understand.

“Stacey,” he said as he crouched low before her, taking a knee and reaching out to her, “what did you do baby?”

She stepped away from his outstretched hand, “Don’t touch me Daddy. I don’t want to be touched.”     

He slowly dropped his hand, “Ok sweety, I won’t touch you. Can you put down the knife for me?”

Daddy was very sweaty. It was kinda warm out, but even she knew that it was because he was afraid. Not afraid of her, he never had to be scared of her, but he was afraid of what she had done.

She looked over his shoulder at the policeman who was slowly walking up behind Daddy. “I don’t want to talk to that man Daddy. I just want to go have some ice cream.”

“Stacey,” he said as he shook his head, “do you know what you’ve done?” He was crying.

She nodded.

He looked at his feet and shook his head. “Stace, I need you to be a big girl and do me a really big favor. You remember what a favor is right?”

She nodded.

“I really need you to put down the knife and come inside. I promise nobody is going to hurt you, but you need to do this for me. Can you do me that favor?”

It hurt her to see Daddy so upset that he was crying, it made her start to cry too. “I don’t want to be touched right now.”

He nodded very gently. “I’ll do my best baby. Can you put the knife down so we can go inside and talk?”

She nodded. Crouching down to the ground she rested the bloody knife very delicately on the cement before standing back up and walking passed Daddy. He stood and followed right behind her and they walked passed the policeman, who went to retrieve the knife.

“We were at Hailey’s birthday party, you know, in her back yard where you knew it was, and there was…” she was trembling. Stacey couldn’t look anyone in the eye, least of all Daddy. She didn’t want him to be ashamed of her, or angry. “There was this clown…Kinko.”

She glanced up at the adult faces around her, and their eyes were wide with shock as they put the pieces together.

“And he…” her eyes began to flow with tears and she buried her face in her hands. She could feel Daddy put his arm around her shoulders but she cringed and leapt away from him, repulsed by his touch.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, “Don’t any of you touch me!” She turned and ran up to her room, slamming the door behind her.

*  *  *

Ten years ago…

She was at a festival for Buccaneer Day’s, a stupid little event held annually for a reason she didn’t know or care. It had been eight years since the incident with Kinko, and no matter how many therapy sessions she sat through, she could still remember his cool white gloves gently caressing her little girl’s body. She had avoided clowns ever since then, not going to the Ringling Brother’s circus when it came to down, not going to parties where a clown might show up, and avoiding anything and everything that had to do with clowns. Buccaneer Day’s was different, however, and in the many years that she had been going to the festival, first as a kid to enjoy the rides and games, now as a teen wanting to hang out with her friends, she had never encountered or even seen a clown.
Until now.

It was as she and three girlfriends were walking along the waterfront that she saw him, a clown, dressed in a simple outfit of baggy red pants, rainbow suspenders with a white shirt and a puff of orange hair on the top of his head. He could hardly even have been called a clown. The happy character was riding a unicycle along the path that paralleled the water, and when Stacey saw him, she came to a halt, freezing in place.

Gabby turned to her, “Stace? You ok?”

She didn’t speak. She couldn’t even move.

Gabby followed her gaze and saw the clown, capering about like he was king of the world, and she frowned, walking in front of Stacey and blocking her view. She looked Stacey in the eyes and took her by the shoulders.

“Hey?” she said.

She was clearly going to say more, but Stacey didn’t give her the chance. The feeling of Gabby’s hands on her shoulders made her body revolt and shove her away. Then she started running.

There was no time for anyone to warn him, and as she charged in his direction she had no thought other than ‘Don’t you fucking touch me!’ and then she slammed into him and knocked him right into the polluted water.

She hadn’t killed him, hadn’t even hurt him really, but she knew then and there what she had to do.

*  *  *

Nine years ago…
           
Whoopsie had just finished up her set. The kids had liked her this time, and things had gone over well. She’d been able to incorporate the unicycle into the juggling without hurting herself, which was a good step.

She was packing up her things in the back of her civic with the colorful ‘Whoopsie The Clown’ logo on the front and sides, when she was slammed in the back and her throat smashed into the open hatchback, caving in her trachea and causing her to bite down on her tongue so hard she took a chunk of it off.

Her hair was grabbed from behind and with no strength or breath to fight back, she was dragged around to the side of her car and her head was smashed through the driver-side window, knocking her out.

When she awoke, she couldn’t see and her head was still ringing. Her throat and neck hurt so much she thought would scream. Inside her mouth, her tongue was so swollen she had to wonder how she hadn’t choked to death. Across her eyes she felt the tight pull of a blindfold, cinched over her orange wig. She knew the feeling of the wig, and knew, even though she’d taken it off and put it in her bag, that she was now wearing it once again, as well as the little red ball nose she wore as Whoopsie. In reality, she was Jasmine Hart, mother of two and wife of three years.

She wondered how long she’d been…wherever she was…but she didn’t wonder for long. The voice that spoke distracted her from her thoughts quickly.

“Whoopsie the Clown…” it whispered. The voice was clearly female, and angry, from the sound of it.

“Hello?” she said meekly, her aching throat and tongue making speech nearly impossible.

She struggled to move. Not only was she blindfolded, but also she was dangling from chains around her wrists, and something bound her legs together at the ankles. Her shoulders ached like murder from dangling for whatever amount of time, and she felt her bladder about to let go.

“Who’s there?”

She was struck across the face by a wet hand that stung her cheek miserably, but not dangerously. She was being toyed with and she knew it.

Clenching her teeth to the pain, she asked, “Why are you doing this?”

There was suddenly the sound of footsteps, heels to be exact, slowly walking around the room.  The tapping of the heels made her head ring more, the sound echoing through her brain until she thought she would scream.

“Whoopsie…” the girl whispered, and then there was a brutally sharp pain in Jasmine’s side as she was stabbed. She screamed then, with no restraint, and she felt another stab in her other side. She writhed against the pain and against the captivity. This event was surreal in her mind, and surely couldn’t actually be happening. She was sleeping…yeah, sleeping.

A hand grabbed her face roughly and she was slapped across the face over and over, swinging on the chains that bound her.

“So,” the girl said as Jasmine choked on her own screams, and she was definitely a girl, Jasmine could hear it in the timbre of the voice, “you think you’re funny Whoopsie?” The girl was so close Jasmine could feel her hot breath on her face, “why don’t you make me laugh?”

Jasmine’s tears were making the blindfold soggy, and she was trying to fight out words but couldn’t understand them herself, so she couldn’t expect her captor to.

“Hmm? What’s that?”

“Please,” she managed to get out, “I don’t know what you want from me but I’ll do anything. Please, I have 2 little kids at home…”

“Ohhh,” said the girl soothingly, or patronizingly, “That’s cute. I was a kid once too, and I knew this clown, his name was Kinko.” The girl paused, “Have you ever heard of Kinko?”

She thought, but her brain wasn’t working quite right, “I don’t know…maybe.”

Something hit her hard in the stomach and she felt her bladder let go, and the spurt of urine warmed her legs uncomfortably.

“You must have heard of Kinko,” the girl said, “he was very popular several years ago, at least…until he died. Do you know how he died?”

Suddenly something was coming to her, Kinko had been killed at a kids party he was performing at, but that’s all that she knew.

“I killed him,” the girl said. “When I was six I went to a party he was performing at and he molested me. After it happened I went into the house, grabbed up a big knife and waited for him to leave, at which point I cut off his face.”

“Oh god,” she whispered, “Please don’t kill me.”

The heels started pacing around her again, “Oh, but I have to. I’m going to kill you all, because you’re not funny.” Another pause as Jasmine felt cold steel against her throat, which was swollen and purple, “You don’t make me laugh…not until your guts are all over the floor.”

As she screamed the blade snapped across her throat and the cold, blinding shock of it silenced her, causing only gurgled spurting noises as she choked up blood, and then went limp.
           
As the dead clown dangled before her, Stacey shook with awe and delight. Even dead the clown terrified her, and stirred up the image of Kinko sliding his gloved hand up her yellow dress. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face with her free hand. The other was still wielding the large knife, which dripped spots of blood onto the floor.

Opening her eyes, she no longer saw the face of Whoopsie the clown, devoid of life and hanging limply, she saw the vibrant and evil face of Kinko the clown, his orange hair a puff on the top of his head, the white makeup not a mask at all, but his true self.

“I hate you,” she whispered, “and I’m gonna make you pay.” She walked over, raised the knife and cut off Kinko’s face.

*  *  *

Present day…

With Dimples blood covering her from nearly head to toe and soaking through her shoes, Stacey prepared to leave the scene. She had the clowns face safely protected in a zip-lock baggie, which she now picked up off the floor, and would take home to hang on the wall with the rest. She had them all…all except the real Kinko, that would have been her prized possession. But his face had been cast aside, only to be collected by the police.
The others, the rotted face of Whoopsie; the sliced and stitched face of Bingo; the half face of Knickknack, and the dozens of others, all they did was help to ease her fear and rage. Seeing them at their weakest, before she carved them up and stole their masks…that was the therapy that really helped.

Stacey tucked the bag gently under her armpit and prepared to leave the property as quickly as she could. Now that Dimples was dead, she wanted no part of his corpse, just his face, so she went towards the front door frame.

This house was still under construction, so it proved to be a good location to get messy. There was lots of plastic and no people around. Even though it made a hell of an echo, the area was fairly unoccupied; which made it even more startling when she stepped into the doorframe and saw the dozen police vehicles surrounding her, the cops braced on the doorframes aiming their pistols and rifles at her.

“Step out of the house very slowly and lay face down on the ground!” someone shouted.

Stacey took a deep breath and thought about what she should do. She knew that this was the end, one way or another, but she couldn’t go to jail, because that wouldn’t help anything, it wouldn’t make anything better. Like always, she knew what she had to do.
With all the speed she could muster, she darted back into the darkness of the house and slipped the small handgun out of her jacket pocket. It only had three bullets, and she would make them all count. In the relative safety of the soon-to-be bathroom, she opened the zip-lock baggie, slid out the face and tossed the baggie on the floor. Then, she slid the face over her own, sliding her ears through the ripped flesh to hold it on, and then she went out to meet her maker.
           
As the clown killer stepped back into view, and started firing shots at the police, they, in turn, opened fire. The woman was brought down right away, first getting struck in the right shoulder, then the stomach, and finally the chest. She fell to her knees, her smoking gun slipping from her fingers and clanking on the pavement. After what seemed like an eternity of the scarred and bloodied clown skin covering the woman’s face staring down at the new holes in her body, she toppled over and died.

It was too late for them to save Dimples though, and when they went inside the house, with its freshly laid carpeting, they would find most of him scattered about the room. His face, currently slammed into the pavement, would be removed from the dead woman and taken away with the rest of them.

In the past hour they had raided Stacey’s house, finding forty-seven different carved up clown faces in various states of decay, some still dripping fresh blood, others moldy and barely recognizable as faces at all. There were boxes of bloody chunks of wig hair, several floppy red shoes, some with toes and feet still inside. Among the gruesome remains were swatches of clown clothing, remnants of each kill, along with the wall of faces.

The final thing among the remains was a little yellow dress, with a tacky floral pattern and a spattering of blood on it. But it would be quite some time before the police would understand the relation between this dress and the mass murder spree that Stacey Wellington had gone on.