The Telltale Honk

by Gena Radcliffe  —

We were late with the rent again.

Well, Garrett was late with the rent again. I always set aside my half before the beginning of the month, along with half of the electric, gas, and internet bills. I kept track of everything in a loose-leaf notebook marked SETH’S BILLS on the cover, the same way since my first job at Wendy’s when I was sixteen. Back then, it felt like a very adult thing to do, a symbol of drive and initiative. Now it was a source of chronic stomachaches.

When Garrett and I became roommates, we agreed that we’d pay the rent with checks written on my bank account, and Garrett’s contribution would be made through a monthly automatic transfer. That worked for about six months, until Garrett abruptly quit his IT job at a law office (which made considerably more money than I did) to pursue clowning.

I thought the clown thing was amusing at first. He collected anything related to clowns. His love for clowns wasn’t ironic either: inspired by his grandfather, who worked with a traveling circus as a boy, he treated clowning with grave regard. When a friend joked about clown pornography, Garrett insisted that it was like spitting on the Mona Lisa, an insult to the art. Bring up John Wayne Gacy, and you’d get a lecture about how he didn’t respect clowning, because he didn’t know not to make the ends of his mouth pointy when doing his makeup. “A sham, an impostor,” Garrett said with disgust, as if that was worse than murdering 33 people.  

My jaw clenched when he moved into the apartment and I saw how many boxes were marked with some variation on “clown”: clown books, clown dolls, clown figurines, clown art. Garrett kept it confined to his bedroom, though, save for a set of well-worn Ronald McDonald dishes in the kitchen, and a ceramic figurine of Emmett Kelly he insisted on displaying in the living room, because it was expensive and he wanted guests to admire it. We rarely had guests, however, and none of them admired (or even noticed) the figurine, which was Emmett Kelly wearing a filthy coat and torn pants, holding a piece of paper with the word LAWSUIT on it. I assumed there was a story behind it, but never asked.

I considered the clown thing to be an affectation, a quirk, not anything I needed to worry about. Sure, his phone’s ringtone was a clown horn, which was irritating, but would have been more so if anyone ever called or texted him. The TED Talks, those should have been worrying. At first, Garrett watched the usual inspiring bullshit: a guy who beat cancer twice before climbing Mount Everest, the first female ambassador to Bolivia, an 11-year-old jazz prodigy. Then he focused on talks about finding your purpose in life, whether it was working with the poor in Africa, or opening a sustainable vegan taco truck.

He watched dozens of these things, sometimes nodding and smiling like he was in the audience, but I never expected that he’d actually take their advice and quit his job (in this economy!) to follow his bliss. Despite the clown thing, he seemed like a sensible guy who’d work with the poor on the weekends.

And then, Garrett announced, with pride and a touch of smugness, that he quit his job to pursue clowning full-time.

“I…what?” I stammered.

“I know this may be startling,” Garrett said patiently. “But you have to understand, this has to happen now or it never will. I’ll be 35 next year. Frosty Little was 20 when he started clowning professionally and–”

“Fros…who?” I interrupted, but Garrett continued as if he didn’t hear me. “I’ve lost so much time already. I know what I want to do with my life, and it’s clowning.”

“Do you have a gig already? Like a circus or something?”
“No, circuses hire from clown colleges,” Garrett answered. “I’m self-taught, remember?”

“Are you going to do birthday parties then?”

He gave me a withering look. “I’m not a whore, Seth.”

He would be a street clown, “like the old masters in Paris,” standing on corners or in subway stations and delighting onlookers with his antics. Considering almost no one carried loose bills or change on them anymore, it was a bad time to start busking, but Garrett was convinced he’d be a hit. “Just give me three months, you’ll see. People want to see old-fashioned, wholesome entertainment. All paid for in cash, no taxes, it’ll be great.”

Garrett ran out of money within two months. Though he claimed to have known for a while that he wanted to be a street performer, he saved nothing from his actual job in preparation for it. Other than the pitiful amount he earned working 10 to 14 hours a day clowning, he had no source of income, and his parents were unwilling to help him chase his dream, no matter how many TED Talks he sent them.

Besides the fact that no one had spare cash for buskers anymore, Garrett was a lousy clown. His makeup was sloppy, giving him a seedy, rolled-in-the-gutter look. He couldn’t get the hang of juggling and only knew how to make one balloon animal: a penile dog that popped in his hands while tying it up. It was impossible to believe he wanted to be a clown his whole life. He looked like he had lost a bet.

Watching Garrett come home after competing in Times Square with multiple Elmos and SpongeBobs was like watching a French silent film. Horn hanging low on his chest, squirting flower drooping, trying not to trip over his big shoes, his painted-on grin fighting with his actual frown. I would have felt sorry for him if it hadn’t been the third month in a row that I had to scramble to make up his share of the rent and bills. Pity would have been possible if his phone didn’t honk-honk every few minutes when he was home, as either bill collectors nagged him or other street performers coordinated where they’d be working next.

Garrett slumped in a living room chair, looking mournfully at the Emmett Kelly statue as if he expected it to shame him.

“Hey, uh…I know this is a bad time, but I really need you to–” I began, but he waved me off. “I know, rent’s due. Just give me a couple more days, okay? I heard from a Hello Kitty that there’s a League of Catholic Voters convention coming to town, and they love clowns. I’ll get it to you for sure.”

But he didn’t get it to me, and Mr. Szymanski, our landlord who lived downstairs, informed me that he had a “three strikes and you’re out” rule for late rent. He gave us until the end of the week to get him the whole thing, plus late fees. No matter how many times I went over my SETH’S BILLS notebook, no additional money magically appeared. Moving back to my mother’s house in Hyattsville, Maryland, loomed on the horizon.

I was on my second dose of Pepto when Garrett came home, droopier than ever. Not even bothering to take his rainbow-striped jacket off, he once again slumped in the living room chair. Usually, I’d leave him to his moping, but this time I stood there, staring at him and all but tapping my foot with my arms folded like an angry housewife.

Eventually, he acknowledged me. “What?”

“How much money did you make tonight?”

Garrett let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Man, Seth, don’t–”

“No, I mean it,” I said. “How much money did you make?”

Staring back at me, he reached deep in the pocket of his baggy, patched pants and pulled out a wad of mostly $1 bills, shoving them into my hand. “There, happy?” he said. “Wanna pick me up by my ankles and shake me?”

“No, I’m not happy. We’re gonna get kicked out, you know that? Do you understand? I can’t–”

Honk honk. His phone chimed, and Garrett rooted around in his pocket.

“I can’t keep covering you,” I continued. “I understand this is your dream and all, but–”

Honk honk.

“Hey, can you maybe put that fucking thing on vibrate or something?” I snapped. “I’m tired of hearing it.”

Garrett looked at his phone and shoved it back in his pocket. “No, I need to know where the next gig is so I can make money and you can get off my ass about it.”

He sounded like a sullen teenager (albeit one dressed like a clown), and though it aggravated me, I took a breath and continued in a calmer voice. “Again, I understand this is your dream,” I said. “But my dream is being able to pay the rent on time. I’m sorry, but I really need you to go back to work.”

Garrett looked startled and even offended. “Who the hell are you?” he snapped. “This is work. I’m not selling car insurance or whatever it is you do, but at least I’m doing what I want to do. I’m an entertainer, and the money isn’t always–”

“An entertainer?” I repeated, my voice rising. “Who are you entertaining, the blind? You’re the worst clown I’ve ever seen. You can’t tell a joke. Your wig smells. You look like a child murderer. I wouldn’t invite you to perform at a prison.”

He stood up in shock, stumbling over his big yellow shoes, and I almost laughed. “I don’t have to take this!” he shouted.

“You do until you give me some money. Here,” I walked over to the TV cabinet and snatched up the Emmett Kelly figurine. “Why don’t you sell this thing? You said you paid a lot for it.”

“I did, six hundred dollars,” he said, with defiance.

“Yeah, well, six hundred dollars would help a lot right now.”
“I’m not selling it.”
“Then I guess you’d better see how much kidneys are going for these days.”

“I’m not selling it!” Garrett repeated. “That’s a rare Emmett Kelly, they only made one hun–”

“I don’t give a shit about Emmett Kelly!” I shouted. “Fuck Emmett Kelly!”

I threw the figurine at a wall, and it exploded like a grenade was hidden inside it. We were both silent for a moment, and though Garrett was still wearing his makeup, I could see dawning horror cross his face, as if I had just thrown an urn containing his mother’s ashes.

“Oh, shit,” I said, my voice softer. “I’m sorry, man, I’m just–”

Horror turned to rage, and Garrett pushed me, hard enough to send me stumbling backwards. “You dick!” he shouted. “I should beat your ass!”

I pushed back. “This is your fault! If you hadn’t quit your–”

He pushed me again. “Eat shit, you lousy office drone!”

His phone honk-honked again, and I pushed him a second time, bellowing and putting all my weight into it. Garrett stumbled and fell backwards, his head hitting the corner of the coffee table with a sickening crunch.

I considered calling my sister, who was obsessed with true crime and knew how to get rid of a body. Though she dreamed of being interviewed by Keith Morrison like Garrett dreamed of being a clown, I didn’t want to get anyone else involved, so I decided to wing it on my own.

There weren’t many sharp weapons in the apartment, other than a set of IKEA knives my aunt gave me as a housewarming gift a decade earlier. I knew hacksaws were popular for corpse disposal, but Home Depot was closed. A kitchen knife would have to do, along with an entire box of the cheapest, most opaque trash bags imaginable.

Though I wasn’t sure the knife could cut through a tomato, it went through the shoulder joints with minimal sawing. What I couldn’t get through, I twisted off his body, like pulling a leg off a turkey. That’s how I thought of it, holding my breath and closing my eyes: it’s like a turkey like a turkey like a turkey. His legs were a different story. I had never looked at Garrett’s body, but, to my surprise, he had thick, meaty thighs that were so difficult to cut through that I had to stop halfway to rest. Once I got the legs off, I had to fold them in half like a beach chair to fit them inside the trash bag, throwing the big yellow shoes on top.

And his head. God, his head.

It wasn’t the bones in his neck so much as…the other stuff. Cords and muscles, all those veins and arteries, so much to cut through, and I had to look so I didn’t miss anything. I had to stare into his face, his open, shocked eyes, the bright red smile that went halfway up his cheeks. After what felt like an hour, I finally got it off, but when I picked up his head, it fell to the floor with a wet thud. I let out a strangled scream, thinking I had somehow scalped him, but it was just his bright blue wig I was holding, warm and damp and weirdly alive in my hand. I threw that in the bag too.

There was a cubby behind a sliding panel in the bathroom wall for toilet paper and other supplies, but we never used it. The four bags containing Garrett, a.k.a. Snickers the Clown, just fit inside, along with an air freshener and a generous sprinkling of baking soda. I had to do this because, in addition to being a crappy landlord and a generally unpleasant person, Mr. Szymanski was also a trash picker, who shamelessly went through his tenants’ garbage, looking for recyclables, copper wiring, prescription medication, discarded undergarments, whatever he could find. I didn’t intend to keep Garrett in there forever, just until I could get a suitcase or storage tub big enough to move him elsewhere.

Rent still needed to be paid. Even if I added everything I saved for utilities and only ate ramen, there still wouldn’t be enough. Though I knew it would be fruitless, I entered Garrett’s bedroom to see if I could find any money, and gasped at what I saw. It was a clown museum, dominated by a nearly six-foot-long painting of famous clowns (I recognized Bozo and The Joker) playing poker. Every surface was covered in something clown-related. Even his bedsheets looked like they were made out of Twister mats.

The only currency I could find was six dollars and a Just Salad punchcard. I also found a stash of magazines called Big Honkers, with topless girls in clown makeup on the cover. I felt a surge of triumph – so he was a hypocrite too! – until I remembered that Garrett was lying in several pieces in our bathroom.

While cleaning up the remains of the Emmett Kelly figurine, I checked its value online, deciding that if it really was worth $600, I’d go up to the roof and jump off. Googling “Emmett Kelly figurine” resulted in hundreds of hits, much to my surprise. People loved this shit, apparently. “Emmett Kelly lawsuit figurine” narrowed it down, and I found an average price. The current rate was $28.

For the first time that night, I laughed. I laughed and laughed, and then I cried.

I wrote Mr. Szymanski a post-dated check. By the time he could cash it, I’d have enough money to cover it, after calling my mother with a sob story about Garrett leaving without warning (which wasn’t a lie) and taking his half of the rent. She didn’t know about such things as PayPal or Venmo, however, nor was she willing to learn, so I’d have to wait a few days to receive a check in the mail.

Still, money was coming. More importantly, I had a plan. With the money leftover after paying the rent, I’d buy an extra-large storage tub, put Garrett in there, then rent a car and drop him off somewhere outside the city. My sister mentioned once that there were parts of Long Island that were very popular for dumping a dead body, and I trusted her expertise. Then I’d pack up his belongings and use the car to drop them off at various thrift stores around the city, because someone besides him had to like clown junk, right? Finally, I’d look for a new roommate, which I figured would take approximately six hours from posting an ad to their moving in. If anyone asked (and I was 75% certain no one would), I’d say that I came home from work and discovered that Garrett had moved out without telling me. We weren’t really friends, no one would think it was strange. That was life in the big city, baby.

It would work. It had to work. I just needed to wait for the money.

Relaxed for the first time in days, I easily fell asleep. Then, around 3:17 a.m., I was roused awake by the clipped bleat of a horn. I lay there for a moment, eyes adjusting to the darkness. Car horn? I thought, then almost immediately fell back asleep.

A couple of minutes later, two quick bleats: honk honk. This time I sat up. It wasn’t a car horn. It sounded more like a bicycle horn, the kind you squeeze with a rubber bulb, like…

Sweat broke out on my forehead. Like a clown.

When it happened again – honk honk – I was in the hallway, and it was louder. I thought for a moment that maybe it was Garrett’s phone, but remembered that I dropped it, along with his (surprisingly not clown-themed) wallet, in a dumpster while getting more trash bags.

Honk honk. Louder outside the bathroom. Garrett had been wearing a horn around his neck when he went into the cubby. Maybe the…contents were shifting and pressing up against it? It made no sense, but was also the only reasonable explanation. I slid the panel covering the cubby aside and was greeted by Garrett, leering at me through the opaque trash bag, along with a rotting-fruit smell. The horn was wedged between the bag containing his torso and the cubby wall, and holding my breath, I reached in to pull it out. Before sliding the panel shut, I threw in another air freshener for good measure.

Risking that I’d run into Mr. Szymanski, who never seemed to sleep, I ran downstairs and walked a brisk five blocks before shoving the horn deep into a trash can outside a diner. “There,” I said, wiping the trash juice on my pants. “Now shut up.”

I got through the next day at work, not even thinking much about Garrett. Upon arriving home, I reheated some pizza and put on a TV show, getting so absorbed in it that I nearly jumped out of my seat when I heard it again.

Honk honk.

Another look in Garrett’s clown museum bedroom revealed nothing. His electronics were unplugged. When the horn beeped a second time (at a shorter interval than the night before), it was too far away to be coming from anything in there.

By the time I went to bed, they were coming precisely every minute and a half: honk honk. Even headphones didn’t cover the sound of them. Honk honk. Finally, after nearly two straight hours, I returned to the bathroom cubby and slid the panel open, Garrett grinning at me like he thought it was a great joke. Honk honk.

“Leave me alone,” I whispered. Just to show him I meant business, I nailed the panel shut, then pulled a flimsy shelf in front of it. The next honk honk sounded slightly muffled.

But there was no sleep that night.

The next night, they came every minute. Honk honk. Honk honk. Honk honk. Afraid to go into the bathroom, I pissed in the kitchen sink and tried not to think about what I’d have to do for anything else. I couldn’t think about anything, really, the horn was like a small steel hammer right between my eyes: honk honk. Honk honk. Honk honk.

I put my TV on as loud as it would go, but it only resulted in angry thumping from my downstairs neighbor. It didn’t help anyway: just under the sound of Reacher, the horn continued its steady beat: honk honk. Honk honk. Honk honk.

At around 9:30, there was a knock at my door. I peered out the peephole, expecting it to be Mr. Szymanski with a noise complaint, but instead, two police officers were standing there. In Law & Order extra mode, I put the chain on and opened it. “Yes?”

The first cop said, “Are you…” He stopped to look at a notebook in his hand. “Seth Anderson?”

“Yes, can I help you?”

“We’re looking for a Gary…” He looked at the notebook again. “Sorry, Garrett Henry. Is he your roommate?”

“Uh, yes,” I said, all the saliva evaporating in my mouth. “I..I mean, he…I haven’t–”

Honk honk.

I jumped. The cop looked at me curiously. “You okay, sir?”

“You didn’t hear that?”

“Hear what?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Anyway, Mr. Henry’s mother hasn’t heard from him in a few days, and she requested a wellness check. Do you mind if we come in for a few minutes?”

“I…I don’t–” Honk honk. “Can you come back later?” I blurted. “This isn’t a good time.”

“It’ll only take a minute.” His tone was friendly, but the look on his and his partner’s faces suggested otherwise.

My hands were shaking so hard I could barely get the chain off the door. Honk honk. They both stepped in. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Henry?” the first cop asked.

“Uh, a couple of days, I–” Honk honk.

“A couple of days? Have you heard from him at all?”

Honk honk. “I don’t–” Honk honk. “I think he–” Honk honk. “I–” Honk honk.

They were both staring at me. Finally, the first cop asked, “So is that a no?”

Honk honk. I just nodded.

“Can you show us his room?”

“I–” At that moment, it became as if someone was standing right next to me, holding a giant horn an inch from my ear.

HONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONK.


The first cop said something to me, but I could only see his lips move. I shook my head in a panic, begging him to understand that I couldn’t hear him over the shrieking, relentless horn.

HONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONK.


How could they not hear it? It was so loud I felt sick to my stomach. Jet engines weren’t this loud. Jackhammers weren’t this loud. It would crush my skull if I didn’t stop it.


I couldn’t hear the cop, but I could tell that he was asking if I needed help. I ran towards the bathroom, where, somehow, impossibly, it got louder.

HONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONK.

The cops followed, not concerned so much as interested. When I threw open the bathroom door, I thought my eyeballs would burst from the sound. It was bigger than the world. I grabbed the shelf and threw it across the room, narrowly missing the second cop, whose hand immediately went to his holster. Before they could come for me, though, I pried the cubby panel loose, slicing my hand open on a bent nail. Blood splashed on the wall next to me as I raised my arms in triumph. Soon, it would be quiet.

“Here!”, I screamed. “I did it! Here! It’s the honking of his hideous horn!”

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