Story idea: @njdevilnjguy
Terry opened his eyes. The light was overwhelming and he closed them again. When he squinted into the light, the first sense to return to him was sight. There were two clowns and a cowboy hovering over him. They seemed to be shouting, but all Terry could hear was a high pitched ringing. That was the second sense to return. The ringing seemed to drown out the shouting, and a dull hum in the background that resembled clapping as Terry instinctively held up his arm and extended his thumb from his fist. He felt himself being lifted to his feet, then the smell hit him. He smelled dirt, cattle excrement and the stale odor of five thousand bodies jammed inside a small expo hall. The clowns had their arms about him, supporting him as he walked gingerly towards a large gate. The cowboy in front of him, who was wearing a tie, was waving his arms emphatically, describing an event to Terry that he would not remember. Then his sense of touch, feel, returned and Terry was in pain.
An hour later Terry stumbled out of the cot they had laid out for him in what served as the dressing room, a tent out back of the expo hall. He wanted to return to his trailer, but he could only walk a few feet before collapsing to the ground. Something was broken in his lower leg. Felt like his shin. His make-up had been running down his face from the sweat, blood & tears and his once white undershirt was stained with a rainbow of brown. He still had his clown pants and shoes on. It was the shoes that did it they told him. Terry was a purist, and refused to wear smaller clown shoes. He had tripped they said, losing his balance long enough for the bull to catch up. The bull caught Terry in the lower back and flipped him forward into the fence. They told him the crowd was on their feet, hushed, while the bull was roped and returned to the pen. Terry was lucky they said, lucky he didn’t break his back. There had been no doctor, and now Terry was alone in the tent as the show went on.
Terry sat there in the dirt, suddenly realized he was thirsty and started to shuffle on his rear towards a mini fridge hooked up to a generator. He opened it and pulled out a Capri-Sun. There was no water, but this would do. He drank four of them before satisfying his thirst. With a renewed sense of energy, Terry tried once again to walk, knowing his trailer wasn’t far away. He had too much work to do to lay here in the dirt for the rest of the night. Especially after the show was concluded, this tent would be full of over energized cowboys and their whore girlfriends, all drinking and partying. Terry had a role to play in that, and he was surprised no one was here to help him fulfill it.
Using the fridge for leverage, Terry pulled himself to his feet. His left shin was in a good deal of pain, but he figured he could put enough weight on it to hobble to his trailer. He set his foot down and the pain shot up his leg, alerting his brain to react. He grimaced and grit his teeth, then took a step. And another. Each one more painful than the one before. Outside the tent, he used a tent pole for balance as he caught his breath. He was still wearing the clown shoes. Gingerly lifting his feet up, one by one he removed the shoes and tossed them in the dirt outside the tent. He’d get them later, or not care. He wouldn’t be performing in the rodeo for a while if he couldn’t walk right, much less outrun a pissed off bull.
He could see his trailer from the tent, among the sea of trailers parked on the dirt behind the expo hall. There were various cables and hoses running from them to ground hookups for electric, sewer and so on. They had been at this expo hall for a couple months now. Six shows every weekend, a week spent boozing and doing as much damage to the interior of the body as possible. They were close to leaving town though, as several of the local high school girls had inexplicably become pregnant over the past couple months. Everyone seemed to like this town though, and the crowds kept coming. National rodeo stars would stop through every couple weeks, which would refresh the audience and energize the local stars. Terry never hoped for national dreams, it was rare a rodeo clown ever reached that kind of stardom. He just didn’t want to die at the horns of a bull. Who did?
When he reached his trailer, Terry was in slight agony. He flirted with unconsciousness once or twice, but never succumbed. He could hear the buzz of the crowd from the expo hall, but there was no one around besides a few underpaid and overweight security guards, off in the distance, leaning against a pick-up truck and drinking malt liquor. One of them waved when Terry looked in their direction. Terry half crawled up the three steps to the door, pulled it open and half fell, half sat on the floor. The door slapped shut behind him, and he sighed. He laid down long ways in the trailer and wiggled out of his pants. He took off his undershirt and walked on his knees to the sink, where he spent an inordinate amount of time washing his face and hands, over and over. His wig long gone, his dusty brown curly hair fell down wet to his shoulders as splashed water on his head. He found a hair tie near the sink and put his hair in a high ponytail.
In his boxers, mostly clean from the waist up, Terry shuffled to the front of the trailer. An older Winnebago, it had all the so-called luxuries one would expect. Since his side business took up the back of the trailer, he had made the captains seat in the front his bed room. Shades covered the windshield with imperfection, but it was a place to sleep. Which is exactly what Terry did.
Terry was startled awake by someone banging on the door. His shin was swollen now, something fierce, so on his knees again he crawled to the door. He pushed it open, and was greeted by one of the other clowns, sans makeup. Terry could see in the distance the tent was lit up, and the staff was well into the night’s party. Terry knew why Mike was here. Terry held up a tired finger and shuffled to the back of the trailer. He pulled aside a curtain, which from his angle and height on his knees was more difficult a task than it should be. Behind the curtain was what appeared to be a science lab. There were two large burners, an exhaust system shunted into the roof, beakers and measuring tools, pots and pans and a myriad of chemicals. Law enforcement would recognize it as a meth lab. Terry would recognize it as the only thing he was really good at.
Terry opened a cabinet. There was a small stack of gallon sized Ziploc bags, full of small whitish yellow crystals. More white than yellow, which spoke to the quality of the product. Terry reached in and pulled out two bags, then closed the cabinet. There was no lock, on the cabinet or on the trailer, as Terry was only worried about his money, which was kept in the bank rather than anything that could be thieved. Terry crawled back to the door, the bags in his mouth. Mike lit up when he saw the drugs. He pulled a roll of cash from his pocket and offered it to Terry. Terry took the cash, then asked Mike for a bag of ice and a couple beers if possible. Mike promised to send someone back with the ice, but the beers may be gone already. Terry shrugged; the ice was all he really needed.
Terry leaned back against what passed for the couch as Mike walked away. He’d worked with Mike for going on ten years now, nary a negative word passed between them. Mike was married to his job, just like Terry was and they had become partners in the meth business about eight years ago. Partners in the sense that Mike ran the errands, dealing and getting supplies, and Terry did the cooking. The other clown, Albert was privy to their business – everyone in the rodeo was – but like everyone else was complacent with it, as a good portion of the business went directly into the lungs of the rodeo staff. From the construction guys up to the talent, almost everyone in the company ingested a drug that had it’s origins inside Terry’s trailer. He wasn’t just good at cooking meth, he was good at purifying marijuana, cleaning and cutting cocaine and making ecstasy. This was a favorite among the women and the local high schools. The local law enforcement looked the other way, as long as Mike delivered a large envelope to them once a month. To Terry’s amusement, as far as they knew Mike was the dealer and cooker, Terry didn’t exist to them.
Terry was just starting to nod off when there was another knock at the door. He had slid from a sitting position and way lying on his back, his broken shin raised on a couch pillow. The door was on his left side; he slowly turned his head but was unable to come in before she came in. She quickly realized his position and stepped over him to sit on the couch, her feet straddling his leg. She looked down at his shin and sighed out loud. She was Mary-Ann. She said the hyphen was important. She was shorter than Terry, wearing a pair of boot cut jeans with no boots. Her feet were dirty to the shins. She was wearing a white tank top, but like Terry’s had become brown with the daily sweat and dirt. Her breasts pushed the shirt away from her chest; they weren’t large, but well enough so that Terry and the other guys routinely objectified them. Terry tried to spy her nipples poking through, but the dirt was obstructing the shadows that would be required for such a vision. Like Terry she had dusty blond hair, straight though, that dropped between her shoulder blades. She wore a cowboy hat that was fitting, and her dimples showed as she frowned and fretted over Terry’s leg. Mary-Ann operated the gates during the show, during the week she worked in town as a hairstylist. She had a bag of ice in her hand, which she placed directly onto Terry’s shin. He winced as he noticed it was one of the same bags he had given Mike.
In a crouch she stood off the couch and moved to kneel at Terry’s feet, never taking her hand off the bag of ice. Terry felt it was her intent to hold it there until it melted. Already it was beginning to melt, condensation mixing with the dirt on his legs to slowly drip into the already brown carpet. With her free hand, Mary-Ann reached into the opening in Terry’s boxer shorts and began to massage his cock. Terry didn’t act surprised. Like Mike, Mary-Ann and Terry had known each other a long time and this was almost routine on the weekends. Usually he returned the favor, but they both knew that he did not have the energy to do that, much less do anything now but close his eyes and relax as she pulled him out of his shorts and replaced her hand with her mouth. For a moment he thought about how dirty he must be, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Terry listened to the sounds of the close but distant party winding down as the sensation of the ice on his pain mixed with the pleasure of the blow-job consumed his senses.
Her dirty blond hair swirled across his lower abdomen as she did her work. He appreciated it for sure, but wondered if he was too exhausted to come. He wasn’t, and as he did he opened his eyes and noticed a stack of papers on the shelf above the couch, precariously perched and important to someone. Then remembered what they were and who they were for. The seconds of pleasure from his orgasm were replaced by seconds of panic and a flow of adrenaline as Terry remembered the meeting that was supposed to take place earlier in the night, like Mike he was also a delivery man. Terry ran the books for a local underground porn enterprise, run by a disgraced mafia sub-boss. Terry was warned to never be late, to never cross them. Cooking books for an illegal porn business was risky, but the money was good and Terry found plenty of loopholes to steal enough to jumpstart the meth business when needed. Terry twisted his head around to look at the dash clock. Even upside down, he could see that he was at least five hours late for his monthly delivery of the bank statements, containing the numerous account numbers that the money had been routed in to.
Mary-Ann, hand still on the bag of ice on his shin and sensually wiping the corners of her mouth fell back as Terry shot up to a sitting position. He reached up to the couch and grabbed a pair of athletic shorts. Nicely removing her hand from the ice, and the ice from his leg he slipped on the shorts. Using the couch, he pulled himself up and grabbed the papers from the shelf. Mary-Ann helped herself up and asked him what was wrong. He said he had an errand to run, she asked how she could help. Get the keys to the truck. Mary-Ann sensed his urgency and opened the door to the trailer, Terry standing directly behind her, stabilizing himself on the door frame. Three men in long black trench-coats, dirt and dust swirling around them in the early morning twilight caught Terry’s eye briefly before Mary-Ann fell back into his lap, shoving him back into the trailer. Terry didn’t hear the shot, but his arms around her, he could feel the warm blood pulsing out of the gunshot wound in her chest. She heaved a couple times, struggling for breath as her lungs collapsed. Terry heard the second shot, and the numerous ones following. They were whispers in the air, poking holes in the side of the trailer as they were discharged from silenced automatic pistols. Terry fell flat on his side, as several more shots went into Mary-Ann, ending her life permanently.
There was a pause and a couple clicks as the three men changed magazines, Terry was flat on the floor, the adrenaline masking the severe pain from his shin. He stared ahead at his makeshift meth lab, something that he was sure the men outside were not aware they were shooting at. He started an army crawl towards the lab, as the next round of shots poked sunlight into the trailer. They continued to miss, and Terry blessed their ignorance in just coming into the trailer and shooting him in the head. They weren’t bright men, and thought that wasting numerous clips shooting up his trailer in the hopes that they’d hit him was more dramatic. Terry made it to the back of the trailer. There were windows blacked out on both sides. He sat up against the cabinet and grabbed a couple bottles that were near him. He grabbed a beaker and started to mix them. As the fumes started to rise, Terry held his breath and stood up. He slid open the back window all the way, then slid open the front window towards the thugs. They opened fire when they saw the movement. Terry tossed the beaker out the window.
The small explosion and subsequent release of toxic fumes at the feet of the thugs was enough to send them scurrying backwards. At that moment, Terry hit the ground face first, his hands and chest holding him up as his feet still followed him out of the back window. For a moment, time slowed down and the ringing returned to his ears, the taste of dirt strong in his mouth as his teeth gritted into the dust. He pulled himself forward, a streak of blood and dirt from his chin to his chest had formed as he half ran, half dragged his broken shin through the dusty lot. He wove through the parked trailers, knowing everyone would be too passed out or high to help, plus he was already accountable for one life. At the edge of the lot, Terry came to the barb wire fence separating the trailers from an expanse of farmland. The sun was slowly coming over the horizon, each long blade of grass in front of him illuminated with orange on their tips.
Terry was exhausted. Out of breath, scraped up from the fall out of the trailer, his shin numb with pain he sat down in front of the fence. He spat blood onto the ground in front of him. Through a cloud of dust that he had kicked up in his run, he saw the winding line where he had been dragging his foot disappear around the corner of a trailer. If only he had the strength to climb the short barbed wire fence, that was already cutting into his back. If only he hadn’t gotten hurt. If only. Terry laughed at the supposition. More blood spat onto the ground. He waited. Terry saw black shoes under black pants come out of the swirl of dust around the last trailer. They turned, there was a shout and they headed towards him. The adrenaline had subsided, but Terry was too numb to feel the pain. He closed his eyes, thought of Mary-Ann, thought of the rodeo, thought of…
