A COCKFIGHT DEBT
Original Fiction by Stu Gats

Editor's note: Easy Midget has brought you original fiction that has nearly been made into a mini-series on the Oxygen Network, nearly released as a full-color insert with 4-packs of Charmin toilet paper, and nearly printed in the homeless periodical— Spare Change. This most recent work could set the standard for fiction to come...

I  woke up the other day to a clown standing silently in the corner of my bedroom.

He had one arm in my terrarium, stroking the head of my severely epileptic mouse Claudius.

I said, “Got a smoke?”

He reached into his pantaloons and pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims. He said, “Virginia Slims Menthol Ultra Lights 100's Soft Pack, bitch.”

He took one for himself and then threw the pack angrily in my direction. It landed at the foot of my bed.

As I dug out a smoke, the clown went rummaging through my girlfriend's edible underwear drawer. "Do you have my Portuguese Escudos or what?" said the clown.

He hastily chewed through pair after pair of panties in disgust.

"Your Portuguese what?” I asked.

"Escudos. From the cockfight."

"Cockfight?"

The clown got up on his unicycle. He spoke quietly but intently. "Don't play dumb with me. You are making me do something I don't want to do: ride my unicycle on carpet. It's very hard to balance. You're making me very angry. You owe me 232,000 Portuguese Escudos. That was the wager.”

“How many dollars does that come to?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Portuguese Escudos is the only currency I accept. Well, okay, I’ll take Thai Baht just this one time.”

I was in a tough spot. I had blown all my Baht as a New Kids On The Block groupie in the late ’80s. And I wasn’t about to give up my precious Escudos to a guy in an utterly conventional clown outfit. This was going to require a show of force.

Luckily I keep a vintage medieval crossbow (with fire-tipped arrows) under my mattress next to a well-read issue of The Weekly Standard. And with a flash…

FLASH!

…it was in my hands.

The wily clown, upon seeing my vintage medieval crossbow began unpacking a set of four metal trunks. After about twenty minutes he had put together a rather large catapult in the Late Roman style. "Excuse me," he said. “Might you have a glass of water? It really is a lot of work setting up this catapult.”

"Yeah, there are some brandy snifters in the cupboard above the dishwasher."

The clown walked into the kitchen. “Did you hear the joke about the gay midget?”

“No.”

“He came out of the cupboard.”

I got out of bed naked with the crossbow ready in my hands.

The old man across the alley, who spies on me through his telescope, began masturbating furiously.

The FBI agent who spies on the old man who spies on me began masturbating as well.

Coincidentally, the dying old man that I spy on pretended to masturbate.

The clown's cell phone rang. "Hit me," he said into the phone. After a long pause he smiled and said, "Just tie her up and put her in the Jell-O tub. I'll be over in a little while with my ping pong paddles."

The clown looked at me and saw that he was in my weapon’s crosshairs. His makeup had begun to run from his sweaty demeanor. Again he demanded his money.

That’s when I popped him through the liver with a flaming arrow. He went down hard. His costume and his orange afro went up in flames.

He reached for the lever on his catapult, but I stood over him now with another arrow readied. He saw there was no hope.

He said, “Do you remember a breath mint called Aides? I heard on the radio that it was the most popular brand in the Seventies before AIDS came along. But now they are out of business. I don't remember that mint.”

I couldn't tell if the clown was making a witty observation about our society or if he was subtly telling me that I needed a breath mint…

The fire engulfed him now and within a few minutes had left him a charred corpse.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: If you’re a clown collecting Portuguese Escudos for a cockfight debt, don’t use a catapult in the Late Roman style as your weapon of choice.