GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE FEARS OF A CLOWN

FEARS OF A CLOWN
Day One

It was hotter than hell the day I found it.

Danny and I were riding our bikes home from the Newsroom. We had just blown a bunch of quarters on the Popeye video game and snagged a bunch of root beer barrels, hot balls, and New York Seltzers. We crossed the street, and that’s when I noticed it.

The Dicker Shop — Come on in and dicker! A crudely written sign on a piece of white paper made me stop in my tracks.

We got off our bikes. We had to check out this hilariously named store. It was new in town, opened right next door to the Mohawk Village Market, which ironically had its own hand-painted sign that read, I never sausage a place — the best meat in the valley. Lots of dick jokes ensued as we walked in.

“Dicker? I don’t even know her,” Danny said under his breath.

That immediately drew a sharp, lingering stare from the woman behind the counter. She looked familiar, yet foreign as she puffed on her cigarette. Like a teacher, I had already or hadn’t had yet. It was a confusing moment.

She stood there in a cloud of cigarette smoke, dressed in black despite the heat, her black hair twisted into a tight bun. Her lipstick was a bloodless shade of mauve, cracked at the edges when she smiled, if you could even call it that.

It was hotter than hell inside too, the air thick with the stench of dust, mildew, and old clothes. Mounds of junk were stacked everywhere. We walked past camping equipment, orange and yellow Tupperware, boxes of old Avon catalogs—until the woman’s voice floated out behind us, asking what we were looking for. Before I could answer, she pointed a long, thin finger toward a section cluttered with toys, comics, baseball cards, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, and books.

We smiled at each other. This was our kind of treasure hunt.

I dug in—and went straight for the comics. Wedged between faded copies of Heavy Metal magazine, I found it. Something about the way the tin clown caught the sun through the dirty storefront window stopped me cold. The colors were still bold, like it had been painted yesterday: orange, aqua, yellow. It sat frozen mid-rock on its little tin horse, just grinning like it knew something. It was creepy but it was cool as hell.

I had to have it. It would look perfect next to my trick clown bank. I bought it for fifty cents. The owner, she told us to call her Miss Bee, placed it into a paper bag with slow, deliberate hands, brushing my fingers just a little too long when she handed it over. Her skin was cold, dry like paper.

“You take care of it,” she said, her voice low and strange, almost like a warning.

I tossed it in my backpack, and rode home with it rattling against my G.I. Joes and candy, ticking like a second heart.

Day Two

That morning, I woke up tired, swimming through a heavy fog that clung to my brain like wet sheets. I forgot we were supposed to go see The Lost Boys premiere until Danny called to remind me. I couldn’t even remember my bike lock combination. My mom’s work number—something I had known since I was little—was just gone. These memories weren’t just missing; they felt like they had been peeled away, like a scab you scratch off without realizing it.

I spent most of the afternoon sitting in my room, the fan rattling above me, staring at the clown. It didn’t move. It just sat there on the desk, frozen mid-rock. But every time I tried to read, to distract myself, my thoughts tangled up and drifted back to it.

I picked up The Island of Dr. Moreau, an old library book I had been trying to finish. Somewhere in the middle of a paragraph about the House of Pain, I looked down and realized I had been doodling. It wasn’t the normal clown face though. I had drawn it open-mouthed, its eyes rolled back, the paint dripping like blood. And beside it was a second figure—a boy kneeling, mouth sewn shut with what looked like barbed wire.

I stared at it for a long time. I didn’t remember drawing it.

We went to the movies that night, but I sat through The Lost Boys in a daze. The only thing that burned itself into my brain was that shirtless, oiled-up saxophone guy wailing at some kind of carnival. It made me think about clowns—and somehow about the Dicker Shop again. About Miss Blackburn’s cracked smile and her cold hand.

As the music pulsed through the speakers, my mind slipped away. I was underwater again, trapped, sinking fast. Above me was a burning white light I could never reach. I could feel the pressure collapsing my ribs, squeezing the air out of my lungs. And just before everything went dark, I heard whispering—harsh, guttural, and wrong—hissing at me through static. German, maybe. Or something older.

Then Danny grabbed my arm. His voice snapped me back to the theater. The sound of Echo & the Bunnymen covering People Are Strange filled the space between us. I blinked, gasping, feeling like I had surfaced from somewhere very far away.

When I stood up, I stumbled over my backpack on the floor. It was wide open—and the clown gleamed inside it.

I didn’t remember bringing it. I didn’t even remember grabbing my backpack.

A cold panic gripped me. I grabbed the bag and bolted to the bathroom. I barely made it to the sink before I threw up nothing but bile.

Day Three

I didn’t dream that night. I remembered. Dreams and waking thoughts twisted together until I wasn’t sure which was which anymore.

I was at a playground—grimy, coal-smudged, the iron swings shrieking against their chains. Kids in tattered, moth-eaten clothes played tag through rusted monkey bars. A little girl stood by the broken see-saw, staring at me like she knew me.

She whispered something, something that sounded close to my name, but wrong. I looked down at myself—and I wasn’t me. I was wearing little white tights, a blue dress, my hands tiny and pale.

I stumbled back from the girl, from the awful knowing in her voice, and caught a glimpse of my reflection in a puddle. Staring back at me were terrified blue eyes and blonde hair clinging to a small, sweating forehead. I was her.

The children all pointed at me then, laughing without smiles, and the sound turned into the screech of the rocking clown.

I woke up gasping, clawing at my ears, certain that if I could just dig deep enough, I could tear the whispers out.

That evening, when the sun fell low and long shadows crept up my bedroom walls, I decided to try and destroy it. I loosened the panel under the horse with a screwdriver, expecting springs or gears—but there was nothing. No mechanism. Just thick paint, viscous and strangely soft to the touch, as if it had never fully dried after all these years.

I pressed my thumb into a brushstroke hidden under the clown’s collar.

The world around me tunneled, shrank, and for a sickening heartbeat, I wasn’t myself. I was kneeling in that same stone basement from my dream. I had hands that weren’t mine—burned, scarred, tattooed with faded numbers—and I was painting, dipping my brush into something that smelled like copper and old teeth.

I staggered back and threw the clown against the wall with everything I had. It bounced off without a scratch.

My nose started bleeding immediately, thick and hot. As I knelt there, trying to clean up the broken picture frame the clown had smashed, I vomited again—this time all over my hands and the carpet. And the clown just rocked, slowly and steadily, staring at me with painted, patient eyes that burrowed through my soul.

Day Four

Danny left a dozen messages on our answering machine, begging me to come to the pool, the movies, the mall—anywhere but where I was. I couldn’t leave. I barely left my room.

Every time I passed the clown, something happened. Lights flickered. The air shifted. Smells crept in—musty old cellars, rotting meat, burnt sugar. The temperature dropped so low that I could see my breath in the heart of a July afternoon.

In a moment of desperation, I stole one of my mom’s lavender candles, hoping to calm myself. But when I lit it, the wax ran down the sides in thick, black streams like oil.

That night, I sat on my bed, clutching my knees, as the clown rocked itself on the desk across the room. No draft. No breeze. No key. The rocking was slow, deliberate. Like breathing. In. Out. In. Out. With every creak of the metal horse, I heard faint sounds—snippets of lullabies, creaking floors, faraway screams muffled like they were underwater.

The smells worsened. Rotten wood. Wet fur. Bad breath. Shit. Stale cigarette smoke.

My eyes burned from staring, but I couldn’t look away. If I did, I knew it would be closer the next time I blinked. I rocked too. Not because I wanted to, but because my body seemed to need it—to match the rhythm, to keep myself anchored. All night I whispered my own name to myself like a prayer, terrified that if I stopped, I would forget it completely.

Day Five

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t even tell if I was awake anymore.

My parents were worried enough that they sent me to my grandmother’s for the day, hoping a change of scenery would snap me out of whatever was wrong. I faked eating breakfast—dumped the bowl of Mr. T cereal she bought especially for me straight into the trash the second she left the room.

I sat on the porch with a pen and a sheet of looseleaf, the cicadas screaming in the trees around me. I wrote a letter to my future self—nothing complicated. Just my name, my birthday, my address, my mom’s name. Things I was afraid were already slipping away.

When I got home that night, I sealed the letter and shoved it under my mattress like it might somehow tether me to myself. But it was too late. That night was the worst it had ever been. I was hollowed out. My head pounded with a pressure so deep I thought my skull might crack. My hands shook violently. I curled up on the floor, head tucked between my knees, and sobbed until my ribs hurt.

Somewhere in that pit of despair, exhaustion dragged me under. And I dreamed, but it wasn’t just a dream—it was acceptance.

I was the clown now. Rocking forever on a horse that wasn't wood or metal but something living, something breathing. I watched myself paint, dipping my brush into something thick, red, and still warm. I was painting a face—but the closer I looked, the more I realized it was mine. A cracked mirror of who I used to be.

When I woke up, I felt raw. My forearm burned. I rolled up my sleeve and found a perfect ring burned into my skin—like the bottom of a teacup seared through the flesh. 

Day Six

I had to end it. There was no choice anymore. It was either me or it.

I shoved the clown into my backpack with shaking hands, hopped onto my bike, and pedaled with every ounce of strength I had left. For motivation, I imagined burning down the Dicker Shop and that woman, familiar yet foreign, screaming like a witch as she burned alive for doing this to me. I barely made it down to the BMX trails by the canal before my legs gave out.

I stood there at the edge of the water, the black current churning below me. I held the clown over the railing, ready to drop it.

But as I loosened my grip, something pulled back. Not physically. Not in any way I could see. It hooked into my spine, into my memories, into whatever thin thread of myself was still left.

It wasn’t just the clown. It was me now. If I let it go, it would take something real with it—something I couldn’t name.

So I brought it back. I didn’t have the strength to resist.

At home, I set it dead center on my desk. The last stand. The final surrender. I looked it straight in the eyes and said it aloud, my voice barely more than a cracked whisper:

“You win.”

And that’s when it smiled. It shouldn’t have been able to. But it did. I swear to God, it did. And that face was mine. The painted lips stretched wider, splitting along a hairline crack in the enamel, revealing something beneath. Not teeth, or a mouth but a deep blackness that seemed to pulse, almost like it was breathing.

Now — Present Day

"Emily?"

The voice is sharp, cutting through the daydream like a blade.

I blink, heart hammering against my ribs like a drum. My fingers are clenched around something cold and metallic.

"Emily," the teacher says again, gentler now. "Please bring up your project to present?"

The classroom slowly comes into focus. Rows of fourth graders stare at me, pencils tapping, sneakers scuffing against the tile. Bright bulletin boards. The drone of a rattling air conditioner.

Sunlight slices through the blinds, a hot white beam that stings my eyes.

I glance down. In my hand is the toy.

The clown, on the horse. The colors—orange, aqua, yellow—are too bright, almost vibrating against my skin.

For a second, I swear I can still feel the boy—his terror, his confusion, his fading name trapped somewhere deep inside me, trying to claw free.

I look around the room. I can’t tell if anyone else notices that I’m trembling.

I walk to the front of the class, every step pulling me deeper into a place I don't want to go.

I put the toy down on the presentation table with a hollow clunk.

"This... this was a toy made in Ja-Germany," I stammer, barely able to force the words out.

The teacher smiles and nods encouragingly. I step back. And in the heavy silence, only I see it: The clown rocks once on its own. Slowly, deliberately, like it’s breathing. 

Nobody notices.

I tremble again and shrink with fear as the eyes of my fourth grade class stare at me, judging me. My legs give out and my mind gives into darkness.

Art, Video and story by Hal Hefner 
Produced by Catmonkey Studio