this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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There were no words, no puns, only the cold stares of two men in the dark, surrouned by ancient chanting and dark magic that warps the very flesh of any who touch it. Then Bonzy pulls out a long balloon (which I mimicked, having practiced this for a week in advance).
“You know what I hate most about being a clown?” Bonzy asked after inflating the balloon.
“It's the assumption that I'm going to he happy, and smiling, and always ready with a joke. Everyone sees a clown and suddenly, they can't be unhappy. At least, not really unhappy. How can someone with a lifetime of jokes and puns ever be sad? Shouldn't they be smiling and laughing and carrying around rubber chickens all the time?”
Bonzy shows the balloon to the cultist, revealing a puppy. I offered the real one to my GM.
“But we can be sad. In fact, I think we HAVE to be sad. People want to be happy so much, they'll ignore everyone around them to keep their illusion of happiness. I accept that. After all, I'm Bonzy. My job is to be unhappy so everyone else can be happy, and smile, and laugh. That's what clowns do, we make people happy.”
Bonzy reaches into his sleeve, and pulls out the only picture on his persons. A little girl with a young, smiling Bonzy.
“I wanted Suzy to be happy.”
Bonzy reveals a grenade in his other hand, just underneath the balloon animal. As the cultist pulls away, he realizes he's too late to notice the grenade pin attached to the bottom loop on the feet of the balloon puppy. As it clings, the cultist drops the balloon and shouts for everyone to back up. Bonzy smiles as the rest of the team clears out the inner circle, leaving the leader and Bonzy near the center. As he's about to leave, Bonzy grabs the man's wrist and slides on a trick cuff.
The leader looks down at his wrist, and then back up to Bonzy, who is honest to god smiling as the eldritch monster begins to manifest in the mortal world. Bonzy picks up the animal, holds it up, and grins gently as the eldritch god begins to take form.
“That's all, folks.”
HONK
The rest of the group looked for hours through the bloody, mangled mess of the god and cultists for anything of Bonzy, but they found nothing. Were it not for Bonzy blowing up the heart of the monster as it arrived, the undead god would have fully formed and taken the world with plagues of undeath and decay, but now it lay broken and would need to reform over eons in the cold reaches of space.
The party did manage to find something of Bonzy, finding a lone, old photo of a smiling clown and a little girl.
They took the photo had a few words on the back, and the GM read them in a quiet voice.
“To Bonzy. Thank you for always making her happy. Suzy thanks you.”
They left the photo on a small gravemarker in the towns newer graveyard, and they decided to leave town. Before they left, one produced a rubber nose from his pocket and tied it to the grave.
And like that, they left Bonzy, not the sad clown.
The clown that was sad so everyone else could be happy.