I turned my head quickly and glanced out the asylum window. The clown was out there again, smiling broadly by the autumn woods. My thoughts surfed on a weird feeling. He was watching me. He was up to something; I knew he was, but every time I looked, he was standing still, like a clown statue smiling  at the sun.

I returned to my work and then a shiver of fear crawled up my spine. I became tormented with the thought that I was someone who couldn't remember who he was. As a counter, I imagined myself at home in Atlantis. Tidal waves swept in and I was surfing on that weird feeling again. I glanced back at the clown. He wasn't moving; he was motionless; he was up to something I would never catch him at . . .

It was late afternoon; an antique sun glowed in the jet trails. Since it was autumn I was Tezcatlipoca once again, naked as the rustling leaves of lost times. Sunbeams filtered through the boughs and I wondered why there was a bright window in the forest, then I looked at a rainbow in the glass and remembered how I had once wished it was yesterday.

I fell out of my reverie and looked out the window. There he was; that clown and he was funhouse laughing and waving at me with his white-gloved hand. He juggled something round, carelessly stuffed it in his back pocket and ran off into the forest. I heard his echoing laughter.

I shook my head. I tried to think, but dripping water was the only thing that would come to mind. The door was locked so I broke through it, got out a side door, ran over the lawn and into the forest. Fallen leaves tore like dry parchment as I hurried after that clown.

Halting, I caught my breath and spotted him cart wheeling to and fro in the distance. I rushed toward him. He disappeared then. Looking around I spotted him; he’d crouched, trying to hide at the side of big oak tree.

“Torment me no more!” I shouted as I rushed toward him, but he vanished in a puff of silver dust and I ran right into the trunk of the tree.

Next thing I knew it was twilight and I was on my back in thick dead leaves and long grass. I looked to the heavens and the silver dust of that clown filled the sky.

The constellations appeared in bizarre silver calligraphy. Each star pulsed rays of letters. Comets trailed sentences as they swept across the sky. Meteors exploded in a silver kaleidoscope of short stories. The breeze riffled through the trees and filled my ears with the plot of novel. Psychic vibrations and rumbles delivered bone-aching narration. All of the creatures of the land and sea appeared before me as books. Atlantis, earthquakes and volcanoes exploded and showered me with falling pages.

Ashes drifted and suddenly I was looking out the asylum window again. The full moon was rising. The clown was strolling away in the faint light. He hadn't done anything I’d thought he’d done. He turned and smiled at the moon. A weird feeling made me wonder what had happened to me, and then I felt the way everyone felt yesterday and knew it was autumn again.

+++

The End