I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. Well, maybe more than one, if I was being completely honest with myself. I never should have agreed to the parameters of the heist job in the first place. Dress up as a clown, they said. It\u2019ll be an easy score, they said. Well, they can kiss my ass. I hate clowns, for one. Dressing up as one was hell. The face paint felt like shower grout and the wig itched worse than lice.<\/p>\n
All that aside, being dressed up as a clown put a giant target on my back for every little kid within a thousand miles. Do kids have clown sonar, or something? Two even followed me to the bathroom when I went to shuck my disguise and crawl through the vents to get to the heavily guarded room with all the jewels.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hid a bag of candy back at the party. Look for something red, and you\u2019ll find it.\u201d That made them leave me alone, thankfully. And no, I didn\u2019t feel bad, lying to kids. Not when I was about to rob the damn place.<\/p>\n
Ok. Maybe I felt a little bad. I decided to buy them a whole candy store once I robbed the place blind and fenced all the goods.<\/p>\n
Once I ditched the clown costume, I thought it\u2019d be smooth sailing. But the face paint wouldn\u2019t come off and the air vent was a tight fit. What else could possibly go wrong?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the emergency alert system. This estate is now on lock down.\u201d<\/p>\n
What the hell? I hadn\u2019t even stolen anything yet!<\/p>\n
\u201cThe planet Earth is under attack. Alien warships have been spotted approaching at full speed. Please proceed to the underground bomb shelter immediately. This is not a drill.\u201d<\/p>\n
I thunked my head on the bottom of the vent, leaving a smudge of clown makeup, as the message repeated itself. Now what? How had my life come to this? With a sigh, I scooted backward out of the vent. I never would have made it three rooms over, anyway. My ass apparently wasn\u2019t built for air vent navigation.<\/p>\n
Back in the bathroom, I eyed the clown costume distastefully. I wasn\u2019t sure what choice I had. I may be recognizable as a clown, but I\u2019d be a lot less suspicious. With a disgusted sigh, I became a clown again.<\/p>\n
The emergency alert system let me know that the attack was imminent. I followed the running lights that led to the shelter and stood at the top of the stairs. I could go down the stairs, hide out with the gathered families, and eventually they\u2019d discover what had happened to the real clown: an intergalactic sneak thief had stolen his costume and taken his place.<\/p>\n
Or I could try my luck with the aliens.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t see either scenario ending particularly well for me, but the idea of being trapped like a rat in a clown suit seemed like the greater of the two hells I could imagine.<\/p>\n
I turned on my heel and left the creepy stairs and the bunker full of kids behind me.<\/p>\n
As I made my way through the mansion, I found the room I\u2019d planned to rob completely unguarded. I looked up and down the hallway. Not a soul. Too bad about the cameras. Except that I was still dressed as the clown. I shrugged. What the hell.<\/p>\n
I turned the handle of the room. Locked, of course. I slipped the EMP device from my tool kit and activated it. The door clicked open. As an added bonus, the emergency alert system shut down, too. Blissful silence.<\/p>\n
I made quick work of the room. Jewels, credit chips, gold, and the diamond bracelet I\u2019d gone in for. I held it up to the light. Beautiful. It had been my mother\u2019s, once upon a time. I\u2019d spent decades tracking it down. And hey, I’d only admit it while drinking, but it might have had an influence on my career choice of thief.<\/p>\n
At any rate, at least if aliens killed us all now, I\u2019d have had it in my possession for at least a few minutes.<\/p>\n
I made my way through the mansion and took the most direct route outside: through the front door. When I stepped out onto the lawn, I stopped short. An alien warship was settling onto the grass.<\/p>\n
I sighed. Great. I was going to die wearing a clown suit. I put my hands in the air in surrender.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe come in peace! We\u2019ve been looking for you, Lord Ronald. Your empire is well-known across the galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I frowned. Did they think I was Ronald McDonald? I could work with that. It probably wouldn\u2019t end well, but hey, I could keep wearing the clown suit if it kept me alive for awhile longer. It could even be a fresh start. Intergalactic clown thief didn’t have a terrible ring to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery well, then. Take me to your leader,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. Well, maybe more than one, if I was being completely honest with myself. I never should have agreed to the parameters of the heist job in the first place. Dress up as a clown, they said. It\u2019ll be an easy score, they said. Well, they can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[422,748],"class_list":["post-10825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-flash-fiction","tag-new-beginnings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}