Can't sleep Clowns will eat me

Can’t Sleep Clowns Will Eat Me

By Craig R Robertson

The percussion of death was soothing to the peoples of the imperial temple. Dispensed by the mouth of the cleansing weapon. For the spent musician’s filling in the melody the cleansing symphony was their salvation, their light, and their hope. They all would pray that tonight’s symphony would be enough to stop them. The laughing ones, the painted ones, the Clowns, the ones who ate naught laughter and mirth but blood and flesh, man blood and man flesh. They prayed for the divine Emperor, the Emperor of Man to come and deliver them from their misery and fear and smite their enemies.

Kruger crouched and leaned against the marble parapet. The stone was cool and refreshing compared to the night air that clung to your clothes and stuck in your throat. He was waiting for the clowns to come down on the north wind and into the courtyard bringing their dance of debauchery seducing the weak willed to their orgies of decadence and death. The moon began to wane and Kruger’s eyes felt the heavy sleep which was creeping in on him causing his mind to become fogy and listless.

An old ghost from Kruger’s past appeared in his mists of memory. The vision of his aged Grandmother hobbling along the corridors of the temple, ‘Wake up,” she would hiss, ‘you can’t sleep for the clowns are coming and they’ll snatch you up in your sleep and eat you. You can’t sleep the clowns will eat you’.

The seed of that old fear planted in him then as a child reared up in his memories it pushed the fog from his mind and the heaviness from his eyes he was awake now fully aware his ears could hear the lichen moving on the granite stones he could see a distance shadow black against the nigh sky.

The alarm bells came as no surprise when they rang out into the stillness. Kruger checked and rechecked his weapon and waited starring blankly at the blackness moving ever closer.

The Clowns moved like a mass of naked flesh and painted faces with writhing arms and legs like the tentacles of some hell-spawned beast. They hit the walls with their orgy of death and decadence. Not even pausing before the fury of the outer wall guards, they breached the walls in several places, the quivering flesh then spilled into the courtyard like water set free from a spillway and crashing into itself. The screams of the fallen guards were those of pure terror and unbridled delight. Kruger brought his weapon to bear, bracing himself against the parapet and dispensed the Emperor’s will into the crowd killing all that stood below him be they friend or foe. Every guardsmen knew that it’s better to die by the cleansing symphony and have the Emperor guard your soul than to lose it to the Clowns and be forever damned. The others followed suit and the scene below erupted like an over ripe pumpkin dropped from a farmers cart. The musicians of the symphony were tearing flesh from bone in a turret of gore, the bricks of the outer temples walls were soon covered in matted blood stained hair. But the wall of flesh and painted faces pressed on moving closer to the wrought iron gates of the temple itself. Like the hydra it would grow a new appendage for every one that the temple guards removed with the symphony.

Waves of panic swept through the ranks of the remaining guards. They prayed for the protection of the Emperor and in the same breath cursed the foul beings in front of them. It all seemed so surreal to Kruger the music, the Clowns, the eerie stillness, to it all it was like nothing was moving yet it still was. Slowly the clowns began to crawl up the walls. Kruger continued to release the cleansing into them releasing soul after soul in blood spattered fashion but the serpent continued to limb up the wall undaunted by the resistance of the temple guards. They spilled over the parapet, onto the rampart like water, running in every direction, in a blink they were upon him clutching and grabbing him. Terror filled him but also a new sensation he had never felt before, their touch, which at first was disgusting, was soothing and he was filled with a lust for the pleasures of the flesh. He felt like he was falling into a dream,

a dream,

a dream,

‘you can’t sleep the clowns will eat you,’

‘you can’t sleep the clowns will eat you,’

can’t sleep clowns will eat me.