Who Shot Jaclyn Pierrot? Pt. 2 Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?
"Goodnight clown!"
Jaclyn moves on instinct. Her hand grabs hold of a bedside lamp which she swings blindly at the figure in the dark. The makeshift weapon connects, exploding on impact and recipient of the attack groans as he recoils towards the door.
The pissed off Pierrot pushes herself free of the coverings and vaults herself towards her would be attacker. She manages to catch a hold of his ankle as he flees causing him to tumble to the floor, the gun spilling from his hand.
Turning over his shoulder, he can see the amber eyes of Jaclyn Pierrot in the dark, burning with rage. Her mouth, less friendly and more reminiscent of a jungle ape bearing it's fangs aggressively, has a smile locked in place as the jester claws her way up his body.
He shifts himself so can use use his free leg to kick the clown-faced woman free but it only allows for a new opportunity to become available: she pulls herself forward and connects squarely between his legs with her knee.
bang.
Pain courses through his body and the next thing he sees is the strangely exotic jester grin inches from his face, the smell of cotton candy almost somehow pleasant.
"Knock, knock," she says taking hold of his collar. Pulling with that hand, she drives the opposite elbow into the bridge of his nose. After the intial impact, his head bounces off the thinly-carpeted concrete floor causing his conciousness to take a leave of absence.
'Who's there?'
There was a brief rap on the door which causes the room to stop. The group of Debators look up cautiously. Hardly anyone stopped by their room, and nobody ever bothered to knock when they did.
Violet Mist begins to move towards the door, turning to his team for support.
'Yeah!' shouts Macho Libre in encouragement. Just as his hand reaches for the handle, the door suddenly springs wide open, bumping him behind it, and a pair of black Timberland boots bounce into the room.
'Hiya!'
Hans stands, looming over the smaller Jacky as he responds gravely, 'In Mother Russia, people have a reason to....'
'Dr Winn sent me,' she says, strolling further into the circle of Debators, her joyous smile plastered across her mouth.
'How do you know Dr. Winn?' Violent asks cautiously as he steps from around the door, pushing it back towards the closed position. The group has formed a small semicircle around the tiny Jester.
'He hired me. Handed me this crisp twenty and told me you guys would be willing to help,' she pulls out one of the freshest twenties they've ever seen and waves it dramatically in front of them, 'As you can see, he's very serious: he said it's time to Winn again and the Debators would be the ones to have the final word.'
'EHEHEHEEEHEHE,' Garbage Fence says joyously as he looks up from the stolen janitors cart and it's precious bounty.
'Why would he call something like you?' questions Violet Mist, suspiciously.
'Yeah!'
‘I do have are a very particular set of skills,' she squeals, winking at Violent Mist, 'Skills I have acquired over a very long career.'
'Such as?' Violet says, clearly unimpressed.
Quick as a whip, Jaclyn pulls loose a .44 magnum with the word, 'Aristocrat' etched into the side and presses it up behind her into the face of Hans who has been slowly approaching the smaller clown.
'Let's just say I know how to go out with a bang,' she explains, her thumb pulling back the hammer. Hans swallows deeply, frozen.
'Yeah?'
'Yeah,' she guarantees. The group is deathly still.
A Mexican standoff. Violent Mist glaring at Jaclyn. Jaclyn's finger steady on the trigger. Han's eyes on said finger. Garbage Fence fidgets nervously with an empty Mars bar wrapper.
'Break it down for us man,' Johnny offers finally, two fingers up as a symbol of his efforts to keep the peace.
'Ask yourself one thing: Why did the chicken cross the road?' the group begins to grumble its complaints as Jaclyn pulls the bottom of her skirt up, only to be silenced once they notice bands of bills strapped to her thigh with a lace black garter.
5/16/2021
Virginia Beach, Virgina
Sometime around Midnight
To get to the ER on the other side of town, Jaclyn would need to borrow a car from someone. By borrow, of course...
'Get out of the fucking car!' the crazed jester stands in the middle of the road, her gun leveled in one hand and the corpse of Ed slung over her other shoulder. A burgundy Ford Fiesta has stopped and the driver leans heavily on the horn momentarily before they notice the pistol and respectfully becomes silent. Jaclyn sets the weapon on the roof, pulls the middle-aged man free from behind the steering wheel, and dumps Ed over onto the passenger seat.
A bullet, possibly intended for Jaclyn, had recently passed through his head and now his normally hallow face is much more hallow than usual. She retrieves her gun and whips the pistol backhanded across the poor man's mouth who had just built the nerve to begin to complain before pulling herself into the drivers seat.
Jaclyn speeds across town, her foot never touching the brakes; with the convention in town, this made navigating traffic a bit more touch and go. Specifically, the stolen Fiesta would touch any cars that got in it's path and would then go about it's merry way.
There is a single ambulance parked outside of the hospital entrance. A few smokers standing much closer to the building than the sign stating 'No smoking within 50 feet' just behind them indicates.
Subsequently, they are narrowly able to get out of the way when the tiny brown car, now severely dinged up and on three tires, comes roaring 'round the roundabout, slamming into the wall where the group just stood.
The engine begins to exhude thick plumes of smoke and the jester bolts from within, dragging Ed behind her as they rush towards the ER entrance. She tosses the keys to the Fiesta to one of the still seated, startled smokers.
'Keep it running!'
Hang in there Ed.
Inside of the Emergency Department, it is surprisingly quiet at this time of night. A single nurse sits behind a desk absently flipping through a magazine and somewhere far in the distance a phone rings.
'I need a doctor!' Jaclyn screams as she bursts in to the waiting room, 'My friend had been shot!'
The words bring a scramble from the nurse as she moves around the desk, pulling the walkie talkie from her hip to her mouth. Despite her height, the shorter woman moves quickly as she rattles off a series of orders.
'Ma'am, I need you to remain calm, where was he shot?'
As she approaches Jacky, a man in a white coat bursts through the door, pushing a gurney. The nurse waves him over. Jaclyn spins the corpse from her shoulder to show the gaping hole that now controls the better part of his visage.
The nurse vomits.
She's seen a number of things in her life, but never has she seen a corpse, already in the process of decaying with a fresh gunshot wound. It wasn't the blood: that had dried up long ago.
It was the maggots.
The body was practically dripping with maggots. The man in the white coat stops, looking over to the sick woman and then back to Jaclyn.
'Is this a joke?'
Jaclyn turns to the doctor, thrusting the body out in front of herself for him to see.
'Do you find something funny about this?'
The jaw, which had been dangling loosely until now, chooses this moment to dislodge and land on the ground between them with a splat.
'I'm so confused,' the Doctor says as he puts an arm over the fleeing nurse shoulder.
'Fix him!!' Jaclyn screams angrily, her eyes locked in on the young doctors.
'He's dead!'
'He's not dead!' she screams. A security guard that had been, until this moment, napping behind the counter looks up, 'Ed has never given up on anything in his life and he's not going to give up now!'
'No,' the doctor says compassionately, moving away from the nurse and towards the jester, extending an arm out hopefully 'This man has been very dead for a very long time.'
He gets close enough to touch her arm and she looks down for a moment. Large tears have filled her eyes and her lip quivers.
'It's okay...' he offers soothingly as she struggles she sniffs back tears.
He stops.
She sniffs again, this time searching for a scent. Her expression is suddenly different, retrospective. Predatory.
Was that sandalwood?
Her gaze meets his and fear washes over him. Almost as if magic, there is the tip of a larger than average revolver pressed against his cheek.
'Fix him,' she hisses, pulling back the hammer of the gun.
'Hang on miss!' the security guard instantly regrets his decision to wake up and choose to get involved. The angry clown turns her attention, followed by her gun, in his direction.
'Code Purple, I repeat we have a code-' the nurse stops talking into the walkie talkie, her hands up as the gun now makes it's rounds towards her.
The doctor takes a chance and reaches for the pistol, but Jaclyn moves it just out of reach before bringing the butt of it down hard onto his skull. Full circle, he looks up and is once again greeted by her magnum.
'Fix him'
'He's dead.'
'Fix. Him'
The doctor looks to the nurse. The nurse looks to the guard. The guard looks at his paycheck and then towards the door.
'Fix him!' Jaclyn screams, her hand driving the side of the gun against his face. The force of the blow sends him sprawling backwards where he connects with the trash can. Jaclyn is in hot pursuit as he grasps at anything and everything he can in the trash can to attempt to defend himself. His hand grabs hold of the first solid thing he can find and he turns to put it between himself and the incoming assailant.
Jaclyn stops.
In his hand, he holds up a brown bag with a red face drawn onto it and the name Wendy's written along the top. She takes the bag from the surprised doctor and turns to set Ed down. She holds the bag in front of his face before pulling it down over his head. She steps back to consider it for a moment before pulling a sharpee from the desk, drawing an exaggerated smile over the cartoon girls mouth.
She tosses the sharpee aside and claps her hands with glee.
'You're a genius doc!' she pulls the now masked dead body into a hug 'Oh Ed, I knew you'd make it!'
She shifts him onto her shoulder before turning and casually bigjns to stroll back towards the exit as though nothing ever happpened. The three unexpected hostages staring in disbelief.
'You can't just leave,' challenges the doctor, looking to the security guard for assistance.
Jaclyn stops just before the door, barely turning back as she offers back to the room, 'Have you heard the one about the three holes in the ground?'
5/16/2021
Virginia Beach, Virgina
Jaclyn Pierrot's Hotel Room
'Well, well, well...'
His eyes blink open. He had been drifting in and out of conciousness since that wild clown punched him in the face. Likely a concussion. He tries to focus on his surroundings, only to be hit full force with burst of liquid that burns his eyes and smelled suspiciously like gasoline.
'Where am I?' he asks, liquid sputtering from his lips. A firm hand grabs the hair of his goatee and pulls roughly upwards. He opens his eyes fully to find the jester mere inches from his face, her deep golden eyes staring cryptically into his.
'You're supposed to say, who's there?' she says cheerily before allowing his head to drop, turning away. Realization sinks in as he notices that his hands are bound to the chair with duct tape. He wriggles, but the bondage is secure. Jaclyn picks up a remote from the hotel counter.
'I have some questions,' Jaclyn absently fiddles with the remote.
'How are you alive?'
'You missed,' she says, matter-of-factly.
'I felt the gun touch your skull!' he exclaims. He wasn't the best shot, but believe it or not, it's hard to miss things point blank.
'You felt the gun touch his skull,' she corrects, indicating to a chair sitting in the corner. A human form wearing a dirty Wendy's bag on its head sits motionless, 'Don't worry, he's fine now.'
He looks intently at the figure as the clown continues to flip through television, drinking casually from a mason jar.
Was that a doll? No, it's too real, but it's too lifeless to be a person.
He then spots the maggots crawling along Ed's exposed arms.
'Jesus fucking Christ...' he begins to sob.
This was supposed to be easy. She's just a fucking clown!
With a brief celebratory, 'Aha' she locates what she's been looking for, clicks another button, and after a brief loading screen the music video for Stealers Wheels Stuck in the Middle with You begins to play quietly. Jaclyn's hips shimmy to the rhythm and she cranks the volume up, smiling coyly over to the bound intruder.
'As I said, I have some questions.'
She picks up a metallic object, tucking it behind her back with one hand, the other coming to her lips in a shushing motion. As she turns squarely towards him, her body moving to the beat, she begins to almost glide towards him. In a different circumstance, this could be considered seductive, but the lingering threat of whatever she had in her hand and the wild smiling gaze made the whole dance all the more sinister.
'Well I don't know why I came here tonight.
I've got the feeling that something ain't right.'
She sways wildly as she gets closer, her amber eyes locked to his, pupils fully dialated. She spins gracefully before finally plopping herself into his lap, sitting face to face with him. Jaclyn pulls the metal object out and brandishes it in his face.
'I'm afraid all they had was a spoon.'
"Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right"
'What's Black and White and Red All Over?' she whispers to him before booping him gently with the back of the utensil. His eyes widen - he tries to scream but the sound is muffled by Jaclyn's hand and the Stealer Wheelers and the cotton candy scented maniac's gleeful giggles.
5/16/2021
Baltimore, Maryland
Tagliata Italian Restaurant
A newspaper is slid across the table to a large, heavyset man with slicked back silver hair and an olive complexion. Big Al. He scoops up an oversized meatball onto his spoon before shoveling it into his mouth, setting the utensil aside.
'Chaos 110: Ragdoll vs Raab' it reads. Al sucks on his teeth.
'That fucking clown...'
'Maybe if the wrestling clown thing doesn't work out.'
He looks up from the paper only to see the Maniac clown herself suddenly seated across from him. He calms folds the newspaper up, setting it down neatly beside his plate.
'Jaclyn Pierrot. The Ragdoll. You got a lot of nerve showing up here.'
'Happy to see you too Al! ' she bats her eyes in his direction.
'You bet a lot of money on Catalina losing at Incursion,' he explains, prior to clarifying, 'You bet a lot of my money.'
Jaclyn shrugs her shoulder.
'I trusted in someone else to be able to take an opportunity.'
'Yeah?' he raises a small berreta, flicking the safety loose with his thumb, 'What stops me from taking this opportunity?'
'After I defeat Lord Raab, I'm going to put this on the line,' she dumps the Chaos belt on the table with a thud, 'Title vs title. Odds will be in her favor meaning we can make a lot of money,' she slides a stack of bills across the table. Big Al was known for helping the neighborhood with certain goods and services. The problem was, Jacky was already neck deep in debt to Big Al, but he also knew she could pay off big.
Or he could just shoot her.
'How do you know she'll accept?'
'I know.'
He looks down at the stack of cash and lazily thumbs through the money as he considers for a moment. His gaze matches hers again as he joins in her mirth.
'You got a deal, kid,' he extends his hand which she clasps in return. His thick, meaty palm squeezes down on hers and he pulls her towards him sharply, almost dragging her on top of the table, bringing his face in close. She can feel the heat of his breath as he provides her with the fine print.
'If you lose clown, I'm gonna kill you myself.'
Jaclyns and he share a long toothy smile. She pulls herself free with a wink, grabs her belt, and slides out of the booth. A finger wave later and she skips her way towards the door. Big Al's smile drops and he jams his fork through a stray meatball, watching the peculiar woman walk away.
'I'm going to kill you anyway,' he mutters to himself.
Just as the door almost closes, a hand catches it and a man walks into the bar.
Pre-Show. The Masked Debators locker room. The group is scattered, mostly focused on their own things. Macho and Violet are currently enthralled in a game of Battleship. Johnny Love fiddles with a guitar in the corner. Garbage Fence is sorting through a bin that looks to have been drug in from the outdoors. The shower can be heard running, presumably with the Russian himself, Hans ladtnamsvich.
Jason, however, seems to have drawn the short straw and is currently being held hostage by Jaclyns endless ranting.
'All I'm saying is that insects are basically crustaceans.'
'But you are wrong.'
'How? Shrimp, crabs, krill: it all looks like bugs.'
Jason's stares down at his hands in frustration.
'Maybe hit pause?' Johnny says soothingly.
'Yeah!'
'Is that a cat joke? Cause I’m gonna be hitting Paws tonight.'
Johnny shakes his head and goes back to tuning his guitar.
Deja: ‘Jacky?’
Deja and a cameraman have walked into the Debators dressing room. Hans, who has just finished pulling on a pair of USA boxers scrambles back towards the bathroom, closing the door with a slam.
‘Heya Dej!’ Jacky waves her over cheerily, the glass of liquid in her hand sloshing about. Jason takes the opportunity to peel away from the clown as Jaclyn pats the seat next to her. Deja approaches, but opts to stand instead.
Deja: 'Jaclyn, you challenged Catalina Cortez two weeks ago and she accepted. It's your title vs her title, how do you feel?'
'Eh, semi-buzzed,' she admits, giving the glass a brief swirl.
Deja: 'Maybe you should slow down, this is serious.'
‘Fssshh!’ Jaclyn waves the back of her hand at Dejas as though she’s wiping something off.
Deja: ‘What?’
‘It’s like a fish with no eyes.’
'Ha!' Hans exclaims loudly and everyone turns to the door where he retreated. 'Sorry! In mother Russia, that is big time joke! Very funny clown'
Deja, ever the professional, tries to move forward with the interview.
Deja: 'Are you ever going to explain to us, or even to Catalina what this has been all about?'
'I know Catalina is big into gaming so it's like what Mario said when he broke up with Princess Peach: "It's not you, it's a-me!"'
'Ha! Marry-O Brothers!' Hans can be heard chuckling once again.
Deja: 'We've seen you take down some tough challengers. Lord Raab, Casanova. Catalina is another level though, Jaclyn... what's your edge?'
The camera seems to move backwards and Dejas eyes grow wide as she attempts to signal the operator to not move back. Their retreat causes those golden orbs to land directly on the person behind the camera, her pupils dilating and a smirk cracks the side of her lip. Deja subconsciously begins to hold her breath.
'This is where I pull out the gun and shoot you, right?' she says solemnly, directly to the operator. The other corner of her lips raises and the fixated grin begins to plaster itself across her painted face.
'How expectant. This one's cute,' she says as she shoots him a wink before turning her focus back to Deja.
'Whats the plan then?'
'I'm not going to shoot him,' she licks her lips. She doesn't say it, but it's obvious to everyone within ear shot what is left unsaid: 'Yet'
Deja: 'About Catalina.'
‘The plan is the same as it has been: stomp Catalina Cortez brains into the canvas,' she finishes the mason jar off with one final drag and tosses it towards the trashcan where Garbage Fence is crouched. He pulls the newfound treasure from the bin and raises it high into the air.
'Garbage!!' he yells, triumphantly.
'And when that doesn't work?'
Jaclyn shrugs, pushing herself up to her feet.
'I'll shoot her dead in the middle of the ring.'
Jaclyn casually slides past Deja and towards the cameraman. She starts whistling softly to herself what sounds like the Wheeler Stealers Stuck in the Middle with You only slower, almost hauntingly. The camera follows her as she passes near, her dialated eyes locked just past it. She bites her lip and winks towards him before bouncing up high enough to slap the top of the door with both hands, her high pitched thick accent now singing the words off key as she turns the corner and disappears out of sight down the hallway.
'I've got the feeling that something ain't right.'
'Wait, I have one!' Hans bursts from the bathroom proudly, 'In America, you break the law. In mother Russia...'
fin.
The Void
Waffles: Okay, I got it...
Ariel looks lazily over at Waffles. Tails. Heads. It's all the same. A flip of the coin. Chaos with the facade of order; the fiction of being fair.
Ariel: Let me guess...heads?
Waffles: No...
Ariel: Tails?
Waffles clears his throat and begins proudly.
Waffles: A talent agent was in his office when a family, a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter and the family dog walk into his office...
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