The man humours him but hurries off after taking a pamphlet. A man is approached by a fellow in the street who wants to talk to him about ‘Jebus’. Things have just gotten bizarre, and by this point, the carnival of darkness is beginning to take hold. The Church of the Divine Greasepaint by Michael Fisher is a tent you don’t want to stumble into. With a surprising and disturbing twist at the end, we are now taking a plunge into darker shadows. Nightmare Clowns by Jeff O’Brien tells the story of a man driven to the extreme when he is being followed and tormented by clowns everywhere he goes. The insanity is only just rolling out and the nightmare continues. The battle for dominance between the two personalities is played out in this story, as the more rational of the two… the clown, keeps loose cannon Jonas in line, but in who’s mind is that line drawn? Malafarina, you enter the psychotic mind of a killer clown as he goes about his business. As the fleeting, dizzying ride comes to a halt, you step off into the nightmare world of Jonas and his alter ego, Jonolo. A rolling, rhyming danse macabre, that flows along wildly like a possessed carousel. Every Nine and Twenty by Mary Genevieve Fortier brings the carnival to town with morbid style. One of only two poetry inclusions starts the festivities.

Giving a brief but detailed history of the clown and its origins, she succeeds in instilling the coulrophobia that lurks somewhere within most of us…

Eye will never look at clowns in any other way after reading this! To get the carnival underway, the book already scored a 5 star rating with me just by reading the introduction by Magan “Lovey” Rodriguez, herself, a professional clown. When you read this dark collection of tales, you may just be.

Johnson and John Ledgerįrightened of clowns? You should be.

Floppy Shoes Apocalypse by John Ledger