My Funny Stalker

It was a long day full of typical Sunday errands. It is always so stressful driving around in city traffic, from one place to another. On top of that, it was a relentless humid and steamy summer day in July. By the time I got home, sticky with sweat and tired from heat exhaustion, I just wanted to plop on the couch with my feet up. First I needed to take a cold and refreshing shower, slip on a thin t-shirt (no bra of course), along with a a simple pair of boyshorts underwear. Even though I didn’t have air conditioning in my unit, I brewed my sleepy time tea, and settled into the sofa with the latest book I was borrowing from the library. It was a summer beach read - something light-hearted, and requiring not much thought. I don’t think I had enough in me to exhaust anymore brain power anyways. The warmth of the tea and the stillness of the room was soon causing me to doze off. I rose from my comfortable arrangements and started to get ready for bed. Once I was in, I sunk into sleep immediately.

It was in the middle of the night when I started receiving a bunch of phone notifications. I fumbled over for it, and still adjusting my eyes, saw that I had missed many calls from my Mom. I also noticed there were texts, and swiped down on my phone to glance at their previews:

Mom: "Call me Kayla!"
Roger: "What do you mean he was in the backse...."

Still not fully awake, my first thoughts were not of concern but of irritation. Why were they trying to reach out to me at this hour? I was still so exhausted from earlier in the day and couldn’t wrap my head around it. I just wanted to go back to bed. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and set it face down on the nightstand. That is when I heard the floors creak outside my bedroom.

The missed calls and texts came flooding back to me all at once, and memories of earlier in the day as I was in and out of my car. I knew then that someone had snuck into the backseat and followed me home.

As soon as I realized this horrific circumstance I was now in, I somehow had the courage to look up. Across the bedroom, I saw that the door was cracked open about 8 inches, but it was enough to see the person staring back at me.

It was a short, fat clown. I could tell he wasn’t even a “real” clown - he was just an obese, short man that painted his face with makeup from Party City and tried to fashion a clown suit out of whatever he could find in his closet. For some reason, this fact made him much more terrifying. He looked back at me, with a tilted head, through the crack in my door. Because it was so humid, and probably because he was stuffed behind my car seat most of the day, his makeup was starting to melt off of his face with his sweat. It slid off into the cracks of his red lips - lips that were smiling at me.

This terrible and gruesome vision was so alarming, that it scared me awake. It was just a dream. Nonetheless, I lied in bed staring through the crack in my door for who knows how long. I kept expecting the clown to step back into view. I clung tightly onto my pillow, so tense and ready to jump from bed. Even though the heat was unbearable and my sweat was soaking through the sheets, I let myself be devoured by the blankets. I needed the heat of the summer night to distract me from the horror of that dream.