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The balloons, where’d you get the balloons?

34thparallel.substack.com

The balloons, where’d you get the balloons?

34MAG
Sep 1, 2011
Share this post

The balloons, where’d you get the balloons?

34thparallel.substack.com

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…

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