took her eyes off of him, even as she had a sip off of her Manhattan.
“Why do you need fictitious tales of aliens?” Soapie expected a lie or for him to dodge the question.
Taylor just smiled. “Because if we fill the public up with paranoid fiction then they’ll be less likely to notice the truth,” he said.
“Which is what?”
“Oh, come now, Soapie. Surely you realize that I can't tell you that?”
There was a small bit of silence before Soapie asked what she would get in return.
“You get a new job, writing exclusively for the military, by way of freelance for a variety of newspapers, magazines and Internet sites. You’d have to change your name, of course, since leaks of extraterrestrial contact wouldn’t seem quite as natural coming from ‘Dirty Soapie’. You’ll get a new place to live in a new city, a new vehicle and half a million dollars a year.”
That last part made Soapie pause. She stared back at Taylor, again trying to find any hint of deception. She then killed the rest of her drink. Taylor offered to get her another. Soapie nodded as she coughed from the strength of the cocktail. Once she was handed a second she took another large gulp.
She sat there breathing heavily for a moment.
“What kind of stories would I be writing exactly?” she asked.
“That’s up to you. You can say that the aliens are here and that they work on Broadway for all we care. You just keep the misinformation coming.”
Taylor got up from the booth and started to leave. Soapie stopped him.
“Wait,” she exclaimed. “Just give me one thing, one element of truth, something about alien contact and you have a deal.”
Taylor smiled. He leaned down to whisper in her ear.
“You know that clown on the old fast food commercials? Well, let’s just say that he and his friends aren’t actually wearing any make up.”
Taylor left.
Soapie sat there simply blinking for a bit, few thoughts beyond money on her mind. She finished her drink and then opted to finish her Emma Watson story as well. Once she’d saved it into her documents she collected her things and left.
Money.
Lies.
Clowns.
As she walked home Soapie contemplated all the possibilities of her new career. She’d have to leave behind her minor, ill-gotten fame, but it was often more trouble than it was worth. A little anonymity could be a good thing, especially if it was accompanied by half a million dollars annually. She could easily stand to leave her readers and her web site behind and all she had to do was spread paranoid conspiracy theories among the already psychologically damaged public.
Soapie began to casually brainstorm about the possible scenarios that aliens could be indulging in on planet Earth. Perhaps they were running secret experiments on humans that involved daily entrapment in cross town traffic jams. Or maybe they were planting hidden messages in popular music. Maybe they were the ones who had been enslaved and were currently working in Guatemala making low priced hand bags and unrecognizably scented candles. As she pondered, Soapie realized that she might actually be able to use her lies for good for a change, proclaiming that the aliens were responsible for things that the public really should fear like cigarettes, radical hate organizations or reality TV. So many possibilities.
Still lost in her own twisted imagination, Soapie wandered down Fifth Avenue and past the city park. As she passed a series of bushes and benches she came to an open area near the playground. The chaotic squeals and laughter of children broke her from her conjuring and pulled her attention back to reality, where she looked up to a disturbing sight. There among the swing sets and teeter-totters was a throng of giddy children being entertained by a tall, ghost-faced clown. It’s baggy, plaid pants were grotesquely over-sized and held in place by wide, neon suspenders. Its hair was bushy and orange and erupted from its round head in a series of teased wisps. Its feet were covered by monstrously large shoes and it spoke in an unsettling series of nonsensical, hoots, clucks and squeaks.
Soapie froze in her tracks and a chill ran through her. It was the first time she remembered feeling anything in years, a fact that scared her even more than the clown. The absurd looking creature suddenly took notice of her, almost as if it could sense her fear and it waddled over to her, a wide, misshapen grin on its multi-colored face. As it reached her, the clown made a dreadful, wacky expression and muttered an unintelligible, guttural noise at her.
“Uh-huhl.”
Soapie saw the next part coming, but was too immobilized to take action. As she watched in horror, the clown produced a cream pie from inside its baggy britches and reared back. Time seemed to slow down, mere seconds multiplying into almost half a minute, as the clown brought the large, foreboding desert toward her face and smashed it in. Soapie gasped and spit, shaking her head and rubbing whipped cream from her face. Once her eyes were sufficiently cleared, she looked back up at the clown who had just pied her.
“Uh-huhl.”
It waddled back to the children, leaving Soapie to dig for a handkerchief in her purse and to clean herself up. As she wiped large clumps of pie off of her face, she slowly backed away from the scene. A few steps back she bumped into a little girl who was also watching the events in terror.
“That man is scary,” the little girl said.
“Yes,” Soapie replied. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”
“My mommy says it’s just a man in a suit and that he’s harmless,” the girl whimpered, “but, I still don’t like him.”
Suddenly, something in Soapie changed. It was one thing to report gratuitous lies about entertainers’ and politicians’ sexual depravity and gas huffing habits. Hell, to some extent, she reasoned, they deserved it. After all, they often got away with murder. Irresponsible car crashes, sleazy affairs, drug abuse, violent assaults on photographers who were hiding in trees, simply trying to obtain a picture of them through their bedroom window were all minor setbacks for these people which rarely resulted in more than a stint in rehab or a large, yet easily paid, fine. If their celebrity afforded them the kind of freedom to be above the law, then it could also open them up to public scrutiny, no matter how baseless. They were really no different than the cheerleaders and other popular kids from high school that had made her formative years so miserable.
The new situation which had presented itself was different however, and extravagant paycheck or not, Soapie couldn’t simply put the implications out of mind. She wasn’t just being asked to embarrass Maggie Gyllenhaal or open Ron Howard up to a D.E.A. investigation. She was being asked to deceive the entire world concerning a matter of international crisis. This was no movie star whose lawyers could easily crush an accusation of adultery or treason. This was a lie which could potentially cost the whole planet its freedom, endanger billions of lives and ruin countless birthday parties. How could Soapie spend her days spreading dangerous propaganda while armies of pin-juggling, cartwheel-turning extraterrestrials roamed the earth, waiting for the perfect moment to enslave humanity?
Soapie began to feel sick. She rushed home, leaving a trail of desperation and whipped cream behind her. She climbed the echoey staircase to her ratty apartment building, pulled out her jangling keys with her shaking hands and unlocked her door. Once inside, Soapie slammed it shut and just leaned there against the door, breathing hard and sweating even harder. After much thought, reckless as it may have been, she went to her desk, booted up her laptop, opened up a new document and began writing a different story. According to the new piece, clowns all over the world were actually extraterrestrials. Circuses, television shows, theme parks, parades, cereal boxes…they were all invasion points for aliens. The government knew and they had tried to hire her to help cover it up.
Soapie finished the article, emailed it directly to her editor, opened a bottle of whisky, and prepared to get drunk off of her ass.
Something strange began to happen, however. Soapie heard bells.
They weren’t church bel
ls or alarms of some sort. They were a dissonant melody of high pitched dings. Soapie rushed to her window and looked out. Her blood froze in her veins as she peered out onto the street below to see the Happy Time Circus ice cream truck. More specifically, it was the driver who caught her attention, a menacingly wacky clown who returned her gaze through wide, maniacal eyes.
The door to the truck opened and out poured a wild parade of clowns. Happy clowns, sad clowns, fat clowns, skinny clowns, tall clowns, tiny clowns, wacky clowns, court jesters, hobos and mimes poured out, one after the other, defying the laws of physics as they just kept emerging from the small vehicle in droves.
Soapie closed the curtain and swallowed hard. Her heart began to pound. She began frantically searching the apartment for any means of self defense, settling on a large cast iron skillet. She hurried to the door and pressed her back to the wall. She heard all kinds of commotion outside in the hallway, the clomp and clamor of feet, the honk of horns and all manner of other weird nonsense.
Then…there was a sudden silence.
Tentatively, Soapie leaned over to the peep hole. Looking through it she was met with the jovial face of a large nosed, hilarious buffoon.
“Uh-huhl.”
Suddenly, the door flew open, knocking Soapie back several feet. The swarm of lunacy poured into her apartment and came straight for her. Soapie leapt to her