The balloons, where’d you get the balloons?

Funny story. Got them from this guy on the way here. He gave them to me. I offered to pay, but he handed them to me and walked away. Man, there sure are some freaks in this town.

CLOWN OF DEATH BY WILLIAM E BURLESON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 16

The man stands on the corner, against the red brick wall of the once-department store. As I leave my job at Foot Locker, it’s hard not to notice him, his body reminiscent of a Charles Addams cartoon, hunched, and porcine, cloaked in a black wool, ankle-length coat with a fur collar; his round face, high cheekbones, bug eyes, he is a spitting image of Peter Lorre—uncanny, really.

He wears a classic cloth cap, making his face all the rounder. All of which is good enough to draw one’s attention on a downtown street, but that’s not the main thing. His left hand in his pocket, he holds balloons in his right. Latex, apparently filled with helium, at the end of a normal length of string, a standard bunch of balloons. Easily twenty or more. Under the s…