I turned my
head quickly and shot a glance through the window. There he was;
that mad clown, smiling broadly in the autumn woods. My thoughts
felt like they were surfing on a weird feeling. He was up to
something; I knew he was, but every time I looked he was standing
still, like a clown statue, beaming smiles at the sun.
I returned to my
work for a while, then a shiver of fear crawled up my spine. I
became tormented with the thought that I was someone who couldn't
remember who he was. As a counter I imagined myself at home in
Atlantis. Tidal waves swept in and I was surfing on that weird
feeling again. I glanced back at the clown. He wasn't moving; he was
motionless; he was up to something I couldn't catch him at . . .
It was late
afternoon; an antique sun glowed in the jet trails. Since it was
autumn I was Tezcatlipoca once again, naked as the rustling leaves
of lost times. Sunbeams filtered through the boughs and I wondered
why there was a bright window in the forest, then I looked at a
rainbow in the glass and remembered how I had once wished it was
yesterday.
I fell out of my
reverie and shot a glance out the window. There he was; that mad
clown. It was unbelievable; he was laughing like an escapee from the
funhouse and waving my reputation at me with his white-gloved hand.
He carelessly stuffed it in his back pocket and ran off in the
forest, leaving a trail of echoing laughter.
I lost control of
my eyes and lungs and I tried to think, but dripping water was the
only thing that would come to mind. The door was locked so I knocked
it down and crashed into the forest in hot pursuit, running so fast
that I passed bounding hares as though they were standing still. The
leaves tore like parchment as I tore madly onward.
While catching my
breath, I saw him cart wheeling to and
fro in the distance. I rushed toward him. He disappeared then.
Looking around I spotted him; he’d disguised himself as a grinning
buzzard and was perched on the highest limb of a dead lynch-mob's
oak.
Approaching him I
yelled, "Return my reputation you clown thief! or I'll take it by
force!" His eyes blazed with lies. I grabbed the bole of the tree
and rocked it, trying to shake him down, but it was like he was
glued there.
I climbed the
tree in descending twilight, slowly moving upward toward him, but it
grew dark and I lost him in the branches. Carefully moving through
thick screens of dead leaves I finally caught him. Keeping a
stranglehold on him I looked for my reputation; it fluttered from
under his wing and ballooned up into the night sky. Furious, I
flogged some branches with him and tossed him over my shoulder for
luck, then I looked for my reputation and found it in the heavens.
The
constellations spelled reputation in bizarre calligraphy. Each
star pulsed rays of reputation. Comets of reputation swept across
the sky. Meteors, dwarf stars, black holes, entire galaxies and
nebulae exploded in a kaleidoscope of colored reputation. The breeze
riffled through the trees and filled my ears with a whisper of
reputation. Psychic vibrations and rumbles of reputation from the
fault lines caused my bones to ache. All of the creatures of the
land and sea appeared before me as reputations. Atlantis,
earthquakes and volcanoes burst and showered me with magma of
reputation.
Ashes drifted.
I was staring out the window;
that mad clown was strolling away. He hadn't done anything I thought
he would and he kept beaming those smiles at the sun. A weird
feeling kept making me wonder what he'd done to me, then I felt the
way you used to feel and knew I would dress up as you once again.
