This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Middle_Eye882 on 2025-07-17 03:03:38+00:00.

There is a man who clings to my ceiling and watches me as I sleep. His limbs are smooth and grey with an ash-like quality.  His skin reminds me of the wings of a moth. He has no mouth, nose, or ears. He only has eyes, twice as big as a normal human’s. They do not blink, but they shimmer like moons reflected in rain puddles.

I don’t know why he’s there. There must be some reason why he takes some interest in me. I wish I could understand it.

He’s not always stationary. Occasionally, he’ll sit on the edge of my bed while I take off my makeup. Once, he even cocked his head to the side, as if taking note of the curious ritual that is my nightly death.

I do indeed die every night when I take off my face. I am born again in the morning, though I think *born* is too small a word. It’s much more like a cruel reincarnation that I’m forced to go through every time the velours and silks fall off my body. My hat and nose are kept on my vanity like icons or patron saints, though I feel no comfort placing them there. It’s not where they belong. I wonder if the faceless man knows these are my thoughts.

I don’t know. I’ve never bothered asking. He never bothers asking me anything, and it’s my room, anyhow.

When I lie down in my cotton sheets and old down pillow, ready for burial under the cover of night, there is no one to place coins on my eyes for the ferryman. I am left to languish in a dreamless purgatory. No Hermes or Valkyrie leads me to death. No force pulls me from the Bardo. I am left to wait in the tomb with my visitor looking down on me. Perhaps his eyes are the only coins I’ll receive. Perhaps he’ll come down one day and place them upon my own.

I’ve decided to name him Gooby.

***

I do not like instant coffee. It’s disingenuous and tastes like burnt butter. That said, I drink it every morning. This is for several reasons, the least of which is that a singular mug appears on my end table daily, bearing the inscription “Clowning around.” The other reasons are personal and have to do with love languages, such as gift giving, and my general laziness in preparing anything else to drink.

I think Gooby prepares it for me. I don’t know.

I didn’t see him sitting on the edge of my bed that morning, so I imagine he’s off doing something. Maybe he crochets. I wonder if he’d make me a hat.

As I take my first sip of coffee and let its bitter warmth infest my veins, I stare at myself in the mirror and feel my blood run cold. This happens every morning without fail, and it never ceases to terrify me to my core. It is the kind of petrifying fear that you only get when noticing a figure at the corner of your vision. A stranger is watching me through the glass, drinking instant coffee out of a mug labeled “dnuorA gninwolC”. I don’t recognize his face.

I have a medical condition. Probably should have mentioned that, but better late than never. Doctors say it’s something similar to Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder, but it’s not quite that. You typically feel like you’re in a dreamlike state with DPDR, and everything is supposed to move more slowly. I don’t feel like I’m in a dream at all. Everything moves the same. Everything feels so vivid and focused that I sometimes almost vomit from motion sickness. No, I feel like I’m awake, aware, and painfully receptive to the horrible things of my reality. It’s just my face.

I never recognize my face. It’s never the same to me. I can’t tell if it switches forms or if my memory is simply that bad, but I am never at ease with it. My makeup is the only thing that calms me down.

I start my ritual the same every morning. First is the white makeup, the canvas, the blank slate from which I carve my visage. Then comes the black, void, deeper than night and shadow, festering like a ripe spawn of the depths. Then I draw a little shamrock on my cheek because I like green. Finally, I force on my red eyebrows and smile. I apply enough powder to last through a hurricane, and finally, I’m ready to go. I step out of my trailer and into the desert that I call home.

What I stated in the title is true. I reside in a permanent Carnival fixture that rests on the side of a near-endless stretch of highway in the middle of the desert. I have no idea what state I’m in, nor if I’m even in America. What I do know is that any mail I get is completely unmarked, save for my name, and it always appears at the doorstep of my trailer every week, anchored under a rock.  I’m fairly certain the boss reads my mail, which is why my name is always misspelled on the envelope, but I don’t care.  I cook for myself, clean up after myself, and live alone in a trailer that I’m almost certain used to be a drug den. I cleaned it up, got rid of all the stains in the carpet,  and now it is mine.  I do find the occasional needle or bone every once in a while, but no home is perfect, especially around here.

I’m not completely devoid of supplies, of course. There is a gas station about a mile down the road run by an elderly couple who swear I’m not the strangest thing they’ve seen walking into their doors at night. I am apparently the friendliest, which is worrying in its own regard.

I use them to stock up on basic groceries and toiletries to get by, which is convenient considering that my pay is what many would consider abysmal. That said, in the instance that the boss sees this and decides to dock me for complaining,  I am joking. I don’t have much I need to buy anyway, and, scary as it may be, delivery services do still work out here.

But that is my existence, and one that I am stuck with. I have a gigantic orange tricycle that I ride when I don’t want to walk, and a comfy set of size 20 shoes that get me the rest of the way. All in all, it’s a steady job, but one I find taxing on the best days.

I’ll summarize it like this:  I am a clown who does not talk. I never talk. I’m half convinced I can’t, but even if I wanted to try, it wouldn’t be with the people around here. Most of my coworkers are fine people as they are, but sometimes the scarier things come in the form of the guests.

One of my talents is balloon animals. I can make almost anything proficiently.  Sometimes I’ll get the occasional person who wants to try and challenge me, and they’ll try to order off the menu I carry around with my balloon bag. Many times, they’re innocent enough.  Several children want their favorite cartoon characters, or Tommy guns, or ( insert exotic animal here), but on occasion, the requests can get a tad morbid.

Today, I remember one corpulent little boy stopping me on my way to clean out the petting zoo to make such a request.

“Can you make a spine?” he asked me.

I stared at him for a second before raising my question-mark sign.

“Y’know,” he repeated, “A spine? Like what’s in your back?”

The stare continued as a couple in matching Hawaiian shirts walked up behind him. They were assumed to be his parents, but they did not attempt to dissuade him.

“Carter,” said the woman in a distinctly shrill Minnesota accent, “Don’t be silly.”

“Carter, you know better,” said the man with an almost shriller accent, “you have to be more specific. What kind of spine?”

“Oh!” the boy said, with a wide smile. “Duh! Sorry, Mr. Clown. Can I have a human spine, please?

I kept the question-mark sign up.

“Oh, it doesn’t have to have a skull attached!” the man laughed, “Sorry for the confusion. Just the spine itself would be nice for the boy.”

“Oh, maybe a pelvis!” the woman added. “Good eatin’ on one of those. Could you do that, Mr. Clown?”

By this point, I had retrieved my whiteboard and expo marker to try and write out a more sophisticated response, but the woman cut me off.

“Y’know,” she said, reaching into her beach bag, “kinda like this?”

Out of the bag, she proceeded to pull out a yellow spine, at least a meter in length. It was old, though not dusty, and had several gnarled splinters coming off of its vertebrae. I was hesitant to ask where she’d gotten it, but the man spoke up next her her.

“Oh, would you look at that, hon?” he said, all sentimental, “That’s from our first road trip, innit? What was his name?”

“Jo?”

“No, wasn’t jo? Hank?”

“Dillion!” said the boy. “You told me about that one.”

The boy’s father ruffled his shaggy hair as he adjusted his sunglasses. “That’s it! Wow! Look at the kid on this brain, hon! So mindful!”

“He sure is!” the woman said. “That trip was before you were even born.”

“Ah, good memories. Good memories…” The father looked back at me with a smile. “So what d’ya say, Mr. Clown? Spine sound good?”

He held out a twenty, and if I were a prouder man, I would’ve been more apprehensive at taking it. But a twenty is a twenty. I made the best spine I could, using every shade of white and bone yellow I could think of, and in less than a minute, the boy was holding his latex prize and beaming like it was Christmas.

The parents thanked me and parted ways, and I can’t recall seeing them the rest of the day. I went about my normal route through the petting zoo, the ferris wheel, the hall of mirrors, etc., and it wasn’t until this evening that I heard of anything wrong.

A sheriff’s deputy was at the gates by six o’clock and was speaking sternly with the head manager. The manager, Bill, an older man who always wore a striped jacket and straw boater hat, was making every disarming gesture in the book as he conversed with the man. Eventually, the deputy left, …

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1m1wkjw/i_work_as_a_clown_for_a_carnival_in_the_middle_of/