No Sense of Humor
A taxi ambled down the rain-laden asphalt, past a certain Mr. Nigel Hathaway, who was returning to his flat from an undisclosed location. It was early spring and London’s signature haze was beginning its daily formation, enveloping old brick closes and the chimneys that rose like minarets above them.
The sky was turning that dreadful shade of blue that signaled morning’s quick approach. Nigel always hated that color. It reminded him of the sky that peered into his windows on weekday mornings at the asylum. That ghastly azure told him that it was time to rise and feel his sickness.
His sickness… He remembered it without a shred of fondness. He remembered the way the walls looked, white and sterile. Nigel saw them as putrid and disgusting: white greasepaint on the face of a clown, a clown that laughed at the illness.
As Nigel would sit before a panel of doctors, incoherently fumbling for a way to describe his current feelings, the clown would be there. It would sit in the supposedly empty chair against the wall, eyeing the handsome young Englishman in his bedclothes, stuttering and making a fool of himself. The doctors would just look at each other, nod, then write something on one of those awful little clipboards, the ones that held each patient’s life. One doctor would speak up. Something condescending and disbelieving. Nigel would rebut with a shout. The clown would laugh. Nigel would stare toward the clown, feeling the hearty guffaws reverberate throughout him.
“That’s very nice, Nigel.”
“Don’t you see it?”
Hahaha.
“It’s there!”
Hahaha.
Even before the asylum, the clown would accompany him about, laughing and making fun of Nigel’s daily tasks. Nigel would get a newspaper and the clown would giggle. He’d retrieve a cup of tea and the clown would chuckle. He’d sit down with his tea and newspaper and the clown would go into fits of laughter that looked akin to a seizure. It was when Nigel told the police of his painted-faced stalker that he was put away. If only he had kept silent.
But Nigel was a new man. He ignored the clown and took his medications like a good boy. He was released from the asylum and found a job clicking typewriter keys in the patent-office. He had been worry-free for three years, now. Nigel was now a normal man with a normal job and a normal life. He could put all of the past events behind him. As Nigel neared his flat, he noticed a man standing out front. Most likely Mr. Gardens from upstairs waiting for his bus. Nigel neared Mr. Gardens and offered him a cheerful “Morning!” The figure turned about and returned the greeting with a loud, boisterous, sickeningly familiar… laugh.