By Philip Daniel Louro
I squirmed in my seat as Grandpa came to the end of his slideshow. How was I going to tell him that I didn’t want to invest? My eyes kept returning to the clown doll in the corner. It sat atop the television, red-nosed and watching over grandpa’s presentation with a sinister grin. I was sure this was the same talking doll whose henchmen attacked the Brooklyn Bridge in full clown regalia. How could someone I love trust something so cartoonishly evil?
“I tell you,” Grandpa said, “It’s an incredible business opportunity. This clown doll is going to build the world’s most powerful death ray on the moon, imagine that? He’ll make this world amazing again. And you’ll make your money back three times over. So how much can I put you down for?”
I cleared my throat and said, “I don’t see how building a death ray is a business opportunity. Grandpa, can we speak in private for a moment?”
“I don’t like his tone,” said the doll, scowling.
“Hold on, he’ll help us,” Grandpa scoffed, then to me, added. “Won’t you?”
I shook my head. “Look, I’m worried you’re becoming a henchman to that clown.”
“A henchman?” Grandpa said, stung at my words. “Me? What, to a supervillain? Gee, that’s some imagination you got.”
“You just made a big mistake,” the clown doll said, climbing back onto Grandpa’s shoulder, then whispered into the old man’s ear. “Let’s go. You don’t need him anymore.”
Together the pair dressed themselves into matching polka-dot jackets. As they made their way out the door, Grandpa turned and stabbed an accusatory finger at me, “You got some nerve, you know that? No one’s becoming a henchman here. Least of all me. I would never.”
The last I saw of him he was fastening a red rubber nose onto his face.
Philip Daniel Louro writes fiction in between being a public school educator, husband, and father of two. His nonfiction works have appeared in Theory in Action, Science and Society, The Journal of Social Justice, and New Politics. Over the years, he has turned towards writing speculative fiction, painting, sketching, and turning thrown away packaging into sci-fi props.
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