Quite possibly the last thing he expected to find at his door was a large, gray pachyderm named Winston. This confused Jeremy, of course. He had found through experience that when there was a knock at his door, and he opened said door (which was not necessarily a given), invariably there was a human on the other side.
"Good evening, sir," said the pachyderm, his breath smelling like fresh peanut butter and hot summer. "My name is Winston, and I was wondering if I could trouble you for the use of your phone? You see, I'm in a bit of a pickle at the moment," with that, and as if to illustrate his pickleness, he glanced behind him. Jeremy followed his gaze and felt his insides freeze up as they did when he found himself alone in a room with a large black spider dangling above his head.
About a half block down the street was the smallest car Jeremy had ever seen, painted like a tie-dyed t-shirt. Emerging from the car was clown after clown, an improbable number of clowns, whose faces were painted in grimaces of pain and anger. They carried with them large nets and poles with nasty looking barbed spikes at the end.
"Ah, crap," said Winston. "They found me."
[You're turn ... add to the story]
Well, this went over like a lead zeppelin. Perhaps my opening was a tad too strange. Too many Frankenshrooms will do that to you. Was hoping to start a daisy-chain story. I'm open to a different opening, something more normal. Or maybe this has been done here before and people are bored with it? Find it cheesy and moldy.
Oh wait, yeah I wasn't sure. So you wanted us to add to the story. Alright, give me a sec. This is neat.
"Why are you being chased by clowns?"
"I am a circus animal."
"Shit."
"Exactly." Winston said lighting a pipe.
The smoke drifted up, filling the air with aromatic scent.
"What are you going to do?"
"Not sure." The cherry embers of the pipe highlighting his nose. The clowns inched slowly ahead in a macabre wall of painted faces.
[next!]
"I would invite you in," said Jeremy, "but the door, you see, is far too narrow."
"Nonsense," replied Winston. "Didn't you see how many clowns fit in that car?"
Confronted with such unimpeachable logic, though that logic referred to the inexplicable, Jeremy stepped aside and Winston squeezed in past the jamb. Jeremy, having suspended his notions of physical reality in a moment of pure instinct and perception, kicked Winston in the ass, shut the door and moved forward to meet the clowns at the edge of his front yard.
[next]
"Jeremy!" It was his next-door neighbor, Daisy Machina.
"Hi, Daisy. Now's not a really good time." He risked looking away from the clowns for a moment as they leapfrogged one another and did other tumbles on his neighbor's lawn as they approached his house.
Daisy held up Jeremy's chainsaw. "I'm done with this and was just returning it." She wore a pink sheer teddy and house slippers with doggie ears on them. Jeremy could never tell if her penchant for wearing revealing clothing in his presence was a come on or if she just really liked to wear that stuff.
She stopped a few feet away, looking past Jeremy. "Is the circus in town?"
[Next]
The clowns were closer. Jeremy grabbed Daisy's sleeve, pulling her back into his house, over the threshold. The door closed with a reaffirming slam, the lock clicking shut.
"Are you alright?" Daisy asked.
Jeremy, somewhat taken aback by this recent turn of events, said nothing. He turned to follow Winston into the living room when a strange image caught his eye, a clown staring at him. Through the wall. Jeremy held up his hand, the clown followed with immediate precision. Apparently this was a mirror.
[Next]
The eyes, the nose, and -- fuck -- the hair. Jeremy was a clown. A freak. A showman. His hand suspended in a frozen wave for a moment, he then brought it to bear upon the plump red polyp. Wonka-wonka went his nose as Jeremy gingerly squeezed. He almost laughed.
Coming back into his wits, he look further into the mirror. In Winston's place there stood an oak tree. And in Daisy's ...
[next]
