Knots of vines and arbour leaves had grown to smother the Convention Centre. The little glass left uncovered was murky with grime. Deflated balloons, faded flyers and party streamers laid trampled on the plaza ground. A large tattered banner depicting a cartoon character hung over the entrance, colours long since desaturated. It had a great puff of hair like a mushroom cloud, a fat bulbous nose, a frilly polka dotted suit, meaty hands squeezed into a pair of white gloves, and a too wide made-up smile with way too many teeth. It was posed with open arms, welcoming all those who came to the Convention Centre. The event that it presented read: Clown Con.

Haru wiped the sweat from her brow, half from nerves, half from the sweltering sun. Her lips felt sticky and dry. She licked to moisten them.

KD stared at the clown on the banner. “I do not understand.”

“Understand what?” Haru asked.

“This… caricature of a human being. It looks hardly threatening, nor the peak of battle prowess.”

“That’s because they weren’t meant to be threatening. At least not intentionally, anyway. But that was before the Folding. Now they’re seriously all bonked up and have a taste for human flesh. Let’s try to stay in the light when we’re in there, okay?”

“...”

“Okay?”

KD grunted.

A worn-out map was produced from her backpack. It depicted the layout of the Clown Con. Haru ran her finger down the legend on the map: Yamasawa’s Kitchen Kit, Booth #24, Exhibition Hall A. It was through the entrance, past the food court, the first set of doors to their right. A simple path except for one problem: the route was shrouded in shadows because of the overlying foliage.

“We should look for a back entrance, where there’s more light shining in to the—”

The sudden rush of motion whipped Haru’s head back as KD launched them through the entrance. Bits of glass, twisted metal, and plant matter exploded onto the gritty Convention floor. Sunlight spilled in, blotting out some of the dark. Haru freed her short sword from the sheath on her backpack, searching the dark frantically.

Loose papers.

Tables.Chairs.

Around the shafts of light that poked in through the atrium.

“Show yourselves, funny-looking caricatures!”

Haru slapped them on the head. “Shut up, KD!”

“Is there no one in here willing to challenge the great Kill Death, or will you cower in the shadows?”

For a moment, only silence… until something announced from the darkness, a guttural laugh. Then, a radioactive neon glow etched out figures from the shadows. Clad in raggidy jumpsuits, filth-caked wigs and impractically large shoes. Disgust tickled the back of Haru’s throat and she swallowed the vomit that crept up. It was the clowns, hideous beyond any of the rumours that could prepare her for. Some had bloated bodies like water-logged corpses, some crawled along the floor because of atrophied limbs, all disproportioned like badly stuffed toys. Whatever got Folded into the clowns was either too much or too little. Malevolent cackles echoed throughout the halls.

“Oh do we have some fun in store for you,” a giddy voiced, polka-dotted clown said. It had a pale wide face, a tumorous red nose, and a generally porcine physique. Drool dribbled from its lips, and Giddy wiped it away with a filthy white-gloved hand. “Lots o’ fun and games.”

KD scoffed. “Fun and games are for those still suckling on their mother’s teats!”

Haru whacked KD on their head again. “Focus, yo! Spatula, remember?”

“Ah yes, right. The instrument of morning cookery,” KD said.

“Oh ho ho ho! If it’s a spatula you want, then come right on in. Don’t be shy! We also have balloons.”

“A balloon? Is it something I can slay?”

Haru chuckled nervously. “Um, actually, the spatula is just fine and... um… I’m kinda allergic to the dark and… balloons too. So, yeah, we’ll just find another way if you don’t mind.”

Giddy smiled, wide as a shark. “But I do mind.”

With the swiftness of a guillotine, steel shutters fell over the entrance, plunging the Convention Center into a dim mausoleum. The monstrous clowns appeared to glow brighter in the extra darkness, feeding upon it almost, now finally in its element. More emerged from shadowy confines and encircled the duo like hyenas. The sickly, sweet stink of rot assaulted Haru with an olfactory brick to the nose, stirring nausea into the fear that already sat thick in her stomach. KD remained unflinching.

“I’m not certain if the big fellow can be eaten, never gotten our hands on a Void Entity before. But you though…” Giddy, a drooling mess, stared at Haru with a manic focus. “Oh ho ho ho! Shall it be a roast? A stew? Raw right off the bones? A little small in size, but meat is still meat.”

Any last guise of humanity was shed as the clowns contorted and swelled and shook, the body just a vessel that housed something worse. Writhing tentacles exploded out from its sides. A gaping mouth opened from the nave to chaps. The stink of a pile of dead animals wafted out from that pit of daggers and oblivion. A parade of them stood in their way. It should have rattled the nerves, sickened the stomach, then finally pumped out the vomit that Haru fought to hold down. Instead something combusted inside, the nausea and fear evaporating into smoke. The stuff that remained was crystalline, volatile, pure nitroglycerin. The encroaching clowns inspired nothing but a pointed hatred. She imagined a neck while strangling the handle of her short sword. Nobody called her small.

“Shall we go get that spatula?” KD asked.

“And this whole ugly circus too.” Haru clasped tightly onto KD. “Straight down the hallway, then a sharp right into the first door.”

KD laid their hands on the floor, crouched low as they compressed their arms. “With pleasure.” Then launched them forward.

Pudgy hands grasped from below as they sailed over the hungry horde and into a protective shaft of light. They hopped from light to light until they entered the food court where the ceiling was all metal, no glass overhead. A clown, squat and fat like a toad, exploded into a rainbow-colored paste when KD and Haru landed on its head. A cavernous mouth lunged to steal a bite at them. KD caught the chomping clown by its jaws, pulled it apart with the ease of a wishbone, hurled the sodden halves into the colourful melee. Tentacles cracked like whips as Giddy lashed onto KD’s arm to reel the Void Entity into its mouth. Staying rooted though, KD grabbed the tentacles and turned the clown into an unwitting flail, smashing it into other monstrous clowns until the tentacles snapped. While engrossed in the exercise of slaughter, KD neglected to notice the wiry clown on the ceiling when it dropped. However, the absurd beast only met the shape edge of a short sword when Haru decapitated its head.

Together, Haru and KD tore, stomped, punched and stabbed a path through the crowd of clowns. From head to toe they were a canvas and every hue on the visible spectrum was spattered on. Judging from the loud splats it appeared that KD continued to punch with great accuracy. Meanwhile Haru was slashing blindly, her glasses was a wash of psychedelic gorey swirls. The clowns attacked nonstop, mostly going after her because small, fleshy and human made for an easier target. The only thing that stood in the way of her becoming clown food was KD. However, it would only take one clown for all of that to change. She quickly wiped her glasses with a sleeve. Through the murk, she was a chequered wall. Muted light diffused through the window panes coated in a thick layer of grime.

“KD, chuck some clowns at the wall to the left,” Haru commanded.

As commanded, KD plucked a clown from the crowd and lobbed it through a window pane. The glass shattered. A column of righteous light pierced through the dark. Any clowns that stood in its direct path combusted into multicoloured flames. As though a wall sprung up in the hallway, the mob of clowns stopped its assault. With a moment to breath, Haru took the time to better clean her glasses with a piece of cloth from the pocket of her hoodie.

“I could have taken them all on,” KD huffed.

“I wouldn’t doubt that.” Haru replaced her glasses. A set of double doors were to her right and above it was a sign: Exhibition Hall A. She pointed with her short sword. “In there.”

KD ripped the double doors off from its hinges. Threw them into the glass wall to widen the spill of light. It illuminated the Exhibition hall somewhat. Haru peered inside. Clown Con was a mildewy jungle of party streamers, confetti and sadly flat balloons. Most curiously though, aside from the odd clown paraphernalia, were the pink cocoon pods that resembled cotton candy. They walked in, leaving the clowns to groan and whine in the hallway.

They waded over to Booth #24, to Yamasawa’s Kitchen Kit. A fine display of cutlery, ladles and kitchen knives of various sizes still in the knife block sat on the foldable table. And there, the loot they came for: the metal spatula.

KD ogled at it. “Such heavenly craftsmanship.”

“I wouldn’t lower our guard just yet,” Haru grabbed the metal spatula and stuffed it into her backpack.

“Bah! Those clowns are as threatening as a wasp with no stinger.”

Haru looked around. “Wait, do you hear that?”

It sounded like the rumpling of metal.

“A wasp is completely useless without its stinger.”

The sound grew louder and echoed throughout the Exhibition Hall. Haru looked out, thinking it was the clowns in the hallway. However, grumbling from outside had stopped. That was when she looked up, having realised too late. The air ducts on the ceiling burst open like over-swollen pipes. Clowns came pouring into the Exhibition Hall, landing with a wet splat, then with a soft thump from the cushion of dead bodies. A particularly rotundus one squeezed out from an air duct and plopped onto the writhing pile.

“Oh ho ho! You’ve stumbled your way into our lair,” Giddy said.

KD shook their fist at Giddy. “We walked in, not stumbled, you halfwit dullard!”

“Walk, stumble, a hop and a skip! It appears that dinner has jumped out of the frying pan and onto our plate.”

“The only thing on your plate is a double decker knuckle sandwich with a side of short sword,” Haru said. “So back off! You’re not gonna stop us from getting our spatula and walking out of here, yo.”

“Are you positive about that?”

Giddy laid a fat hand on the face of a clown it sat on, where it slowly glomed together like one lump of dough mashed into another. A chain reaction started to happen. The whole pile started to squirm as the clowns assimilated like a heap of plastic toys melting together. Soon, a formless shape of laughing heads and limbs loomed tall as a giant in the Exhibition Hall. Giddy, fixed into the centre of this Gigaclown, cackled with the boom of a thunder clap as it raised a hand to smite Haru and KD.