We stood at the intersection looking down on the body – hit by a bus…how ridiculous!  After all the times I’d stopped people on their stupid phone gadgets from walking into traffic…now this?  I must have been daydreaming…what an idiot!

Cars were still swishing through the scene while a small crowd of cynical bystanders gathered to make snarky comments in hushed voices (as if they might offend me).  The police arrived to push the crowd away and redirect traffic.  One of them walked right through me…uugh!  Weird!!  I shuddered. My companion just grinned.

I felt some regret.  It was a good body for a middle aged clown.  I’d kept it fit and healthy – not too bad looking, either…but now it was broken and mangled.  There were scattered bits of gristle and a thick dark liquid splashed across the asphalt.  One of my eyes hung by a thread down my cheek and my skull was split wide open like a busted watermelon – but hey,  I always wondered what my own brains looked like….Eeeeew!!!…(Cool!)

My companion stepped over to me with a ‘we should go soon’ attitude.  I must say, for a scythe wielding hippy weirdo in a medieval bathrobe, he seemed like a decent chap.  He was good enough to give me time to adjust.  Finally, with a friendly clap on the shoulder he whispered, “Come along, son.  You can’t take it with you…”  We turned away and began walking off into the ether.

“Hey Grim!” I said, “You think I’ll come back as a sea slug or a tapeworm?  I hope not…maybe I could be a hockey puck!  Yeah!…That’s where all the action is…”  He shook his head and rolled his eye sockets.  “Hey, can you introduce me to Jesus?  No…ELVIS!!!…..Yeaaaah!”

***My little fiction aside, Liam the Clown did his best work squashed like a bug.  Not much of a song-and-dance guy, Liam’s twitchings had an artsy aesthetic.  Anybody who knows anything about Clowns, knows they’re incredibly hard to kill, so Liam never met Jesus – or Elvis but he and Grim became pretty close.  -Marsha