Harry Parrish took a break from the thunk-thunk-thunk of his singular game of mumblety peg to call out: “Cleavon Blackwell! As I live and breathe!”

“Please,” Cleavon said, approaching but not offering his hand to shake. “I don’t need anyone around here knowing my name.”

“Calling yourself ‘The Magician’ down here, though?” the first man replied, cocking a painted eyebrow. “A bit like being topside and calling yourself ‘The New Yorker.’”

“Should I stop calling you Black Clown?”

“Suppose I could call you by your title, you being under The Sorcerer –“

“Djerk gets to be ‘The Sorcerer?’”

“But nobody likes being called The Apprentice.”

“Just Blackwell, then,” the magician-in-training seethed. It made Harry Parrish smile – a strange thing, given the thick, black makeup that drooped his expression into a parody of sadness.

“Don’t suppose the old man knows you’re down here without his permission?” the sad clown continued to grin, once again thunking his knife inbetween his fingers splayed at his feet.

“I came for gossip, and you seem eager to trade,” Blackwell sniffed.

Thunk. “I need something juicy.”

“I suppose you heard what happened in the Lightning City.”

Thunk. “Even if I didn’t, I hate science.”

“Fine. You like names so much? How about the last survivors of the Bone City?”

The knife flew between Blackwell’s feet this time, but just like before, the hand that had thrown it landed, fingers splayed, just before the knife could. And just like before, Harry Parrish’s hand retrieved the knife and returned to his arm.

“Now we’re talking,” he said, twisting his black frown once again.

“You first.”

“The golden army will march soon,” Harry Parrish said.

“Where to?”

“Where else?” The knife flew toward Blackwell’s head, but the hand caught it. “The ink’s run out. The well’s running dry. Not many special places left.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Blackwell the Magician said, tossing a tube of green liquid to the man in the clown makeup. “The couple’s names are encoded into chemical bonds.”

“Blackwell!” Harry Parrish screamed, flinging his knife. The magician was already gone, of course, so the Black Clown had to send his hand to retrieve it. “I hate science.”

x

Year 4, Day 267

December 26, 2017

Prompt: Public domain characters

Harry Parrish / Black Clown created by Jack Binder. Horrible Hand created by Bob Hebberd. Blackwell the Magician created by Bert Bushell. Joe Djerk, The Apprentice, and The Sorcerer created by Unknown.

The Apprentice is one of the main characters of the overarching story told across Year 4. The Black Clown is not, but he appears more than once. Always the same. He is a figure of fairy tale, paid homage on his trading card by using an image of Joseph Grimaldi, the first stage clown to wear white makeup.

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Meanwhile On The Last Night Of The Old Life

“Long time no see, green face,” said a voice the Scorpion would’ve recognized even without its accompanying thunk-thunk-thunk.

“Wish I could say the same, black face,” the gangster croaked back.

“Oh, that just isn’t kosher anymore, old friend,” the Black Clown said, rising to spin around and follow. Unwanted.

“Yer confused thinking we’re friends, friend,” the Scorpion informed him, not breaking his stride. Not for someone like this.

“Oh, don’t be so unfamiliar, Louie. Or is it Louis?”

The Scorpion spun on his heel, hissing and clicking his mandibles. “Your tongue says that name again, and it’ll never make another sound again.”

The Black Clown might have said, “What, this tongue?” but it was hard to tell, because he had plucked the wriggling, pink thing free from his mouth, cackling while he did it. This place.

Free of his tail – the metaphorical one, anyway – the gangster took the twisting maze of alleyways that never quite looked the same but always led him to a little shack nestled among the buildings. He didn’t bother knocking.

“So much time gone already?” wondered the wizened, hoary man taking up most of the single room.

“I don’t have much on my two decades left, so less small talk,” the arachnid mobster wheezed. “If it’s all the same to you.”

“What have you to barter?” the big wizard chuckled. “Your soul was gone our first meeting. Then a hundred others the next.”

“You want a thousand?” the monster clicked. “I’m good fer it.”

“I need bodies,” the old man answered.

“I can do that, too.”

“I need living flesh. I need names that I might control it.”

“Names.” The Scorpion would’ve blinked if he could’ve.

“I will send you a list,” the ancient sorcerer intoned. “I will grant you a year to collect them.”

A year? That was no small potatoes anymore. The Scorpion stalked back out a different way, but that same black-and-white joker was waiting near his exit. His hand floated with a goodbye kiss until the gangster snapped down on it with his mandibles, folded down all the fingers but one, and said, “Thanks for the hand.”

Especially clever? No. But effective? Always.

x

Year 5, Day 272

December 31, 2017

Prompt: Public domain characters

The Scorpion created by Louis Cazeneuve.

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RE: Meanwhile Under Control

The man in the black clown suit had lived most of his life nowhere for long, then been briefly in a state where he was banned from being himself, and then he had passed through the last gauntlet of the Death Battalion to live nowhere once again. He could be found, by anyone who looked, through the looking glass in New York City. Some places and some people are just meant to be together. Jerry Steele, though, looked sick at the crooked alleys and the man they half-shadowed.

“You look like a man who could use a drink,” the Black Clown chuckled and wheezed as he threw a knife past his outstretched wrist. No, through his wrist, because he tilted his hand to open the space between like a dispenser at a soda fountain. No liquid of any kind came out, but he was still a jerk.

“I could use a point back toward Fifty-Sixth Street,” Jerry answered. Being captured by Nazis reassured him that he could handle being stuck anywhere and also that he didn’t want to be stuck anywhere ever again. “I don’t get to Hell’s Kitchen all that often, but I know this isn’t it.”

“Don’t let Dr. Know-It-All catch you stealing his gimmick,” the street performer warned, breaking off his forefingers and holding them in the remainders of his hands to pull down the corners of his mouth. Its grotesqueness perfectly fitting the street’s obtuse angles and shadows that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat all their own.

“I’m happy to get out of your hair,” Jerry said with a grimace that he hoped he masked as a smile. “Or out from under your cap, as it were.”

“Comedian, huh? Well, you might as well steal from the best,” the Black Clown growled. “Go back the way you came, and don’t let me catch you here again, either.”

“Thanks,” the hero of more civilized American streets said with a touch of his hat. He turned on his heel to leave, and he – unlike most people who visit – never returned to the dark side of the mirror. Some places and some people are just meant to stay apart.

x

Year 10, Day 166

September 13, 2023

Prompt: Use one or more characters from a previous story.

Jerry Steele created by Jay Foster and Ramona Patenaude.