Dead Clown Barbecue (11 page)

[Suspenseful music.]

"This has been the longest thirty seconds of your life, hasn't it? In another two-and-a-half minutes you'll know if you can return to normalcy as if nothing ever happened, or if
everything will change
! Press the blue button if you're going to keep it. Press the pink button if you're going to give it up for adoption. If you choose to burn in eternal hellfire, no need to press a button."

[Beep.]

"You're going to keep it! Wow, the stakes are really high now, aren't they? Only two minutes until you know the results of one moment of indiscretion. Or maybe lots of indiscretions that finally caught up to you. Or just a malfunction, which never happens when you use Smith-White Studios birth control products, available now at your local pharmacy!"

[Catchy jingle.]

"You really should get in a nap before I reveal the results, since it's the last ninety consecutive seconds of sleep you're going to get for the next couple of years. Ha ha, that's an exaggeration, of course, but a baby really will significantly cut down on your ability to get a good night's sleep. I don't want to say that your life is going to suck, but we both know that parts of it are going to suck, at least."

[Suspenseful music.]

"Down to the last seventy-five seconds. Are you sweating? Does your stomach hurt? You could be defusing a bomb and it wouldn't be this intense. Remember going to movies? That was fun, wasn't it? Not anymore. Dining in restaurants without everybody glaring at you? Those days might be gone! And what if the child is born with some sort of defect? You could literally have no life outside of taking care of this kid."

[Horror film music.]

"One minute! In one minute you will know if your life will be ruined! Are you trembling? Are you ready to have a nervous breakdown? Oh, God, it's like somebody has a gun to your head, and you don't know if they're going to pull the trigger! What are you going to do if I deliver bad news? Fall to the floor and scream in anguish? Stare silently into the mirror for a few hours? How will your impregnator react? So much rides on my yes-or-no answer to the question of
are you pregnant
? Did you think you would ever be in this situation? That's for other girls, not you! Not you!"

[Music similar to the
Jeopardy
theme but altered just enough to avoid a lawsuit.]

"It's almost time. Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Feel like you're going to throw up? Three. Two . . ."

[Drumroll.]

"You . . ."

[Drumroll increases in volume.]

". . . are . . ."

[Music similar to the
Loser's Theme From The Price Is Right
.]

". . . pregnant. It's all over."

[Wacky music.]

"Juuuuuuust kidding! You are not pregnant!"

[Triumphant music.]

"Yes, you took the gamble, rolled the dice, and this time lady luck was on your side! There will be no consequences to your actions except the affordable cost of this pregnancy test! I can just feel the waves of relief shimmering off of you. Now get out there and celebrate, but not with unprotected intercourse, or you'll be right back here! In the future, we hope you'll consider Smith-White Studios birth control products, available now at your local pharmacy. Thank you and have a nice day!"

[Music swells.]

"Disclaimer: Test results not guaranteed. Please consult with your physician. Do not reuse test. Thank you."

MR. TWITCHER'S MIRACLE BABY-CHOPPING MACHINE

Mr. Twitcher's Miracle Baby-Chopping Machine was a wonder to behold. Why, that thing could lop an infant in half in the blink of an eye! It took some doing to reset and clean it up, but on a good day we could slice almost two hundred babies. Our record was two hundred and thirty-eight. That was quite a day.

I guess I'd worked for Mr. Twitcher for about six years before the moral implications of his whole empire started to bother me. When you're in the factory, you're so busy pulling levers, setting dials, and scrubbing surfaces that you don't have time for a lot of introspection. We'd just load the crying babies into the machine, chop them in two, properly dispose of the halves, and repeat the process. It didn't occur to me that I was doing anything wrong.

I'm really not sure what started my little quandary. It wasn't like we chopped a particularly charming baby or anything. But while I was scooping the lower half into a plastic bag, it suddenly hit me:
This was wrong
.

I kept working, of course, but I'd never been happier to hear the lunchtime whistle blow. My tuna fish sandwich didn't taste as good as it normally did, and my potato chips seemed stale even though the expiration date was months away.

"Another day, another dollar," said my buddy Garry, plopping down at my table. Garry said this every day. Usually I would respond with "You know it!" but today I wasn't in the mood. Garry finished off half of his BLT before he realized that I wasn't being talkative.

"Hey, Joey, what's wrong?" he asked. Six of us worked for Mr. Twitcher, but I'd always felt my strongest bond with Garry.

"Do you ever feel like what we do is . . . you know, evil?"

"Evil? How so?"

"I dunno," I admitted. "Chopping babies in half all day; it just feels like some kind of ethical line has been crossed."

Garry shrugged and took another bite of his BLT. "Those babies need chopping."

"Why?"

"Mr. Twitcher says so."

"But how do we know he's right?"

"Do you really think Mr. Twitcher would go to all the effort and expense of running this baby-chopping factory if there was no reason for it? It took him nearly a decade to perfect his miracle machine. You think we should just use a hacksaw? You think that's humane?"

I shook my head. "That's not my point. I'm wondering if we should be killing babies at all."

"What would we kill then? Hamsters? Monkeys? The machine was specifically calibrated for a human infant. You put a monkey in there and it'll take hours to get the gears unstuck."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," I admitted. "For some reason I just had this weird feeling about the whole thing. The sobbing mothers never bothered me before today. Maybe I'm just tired."

"What time did you go to bed last night?"

"About ten."

"Aren't you usually a nine-thirty kind of guy?"

"Yeah, most nights."

"Well, there you go," said Garry. "The mind does funny things when it doesn't get enough rest."

"Come to think of it, I am feeling kind of lethargic today. That must be it. Thanks!"

Garry was always a fine source of wisdom, and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of my sandwich and chips. When the whistle blew again, I went right back to work. While Garry plucked the babies off the conveyer belt and strapped them to the iron slab, me and the other five guys got the machine ready to chop them in half. It was hot, tiring work, and before long I was covered with a thick sheen of perspiration and my hands were filthy with blood and grease.

The shower afterward felt great. Garry asked me if I wanted to join him for a couple of beers, so we pushed through the protestors outside, stopped at Vito's, and drank and laughed the evening away. I stumbled home, got undressed, climbed into bed, and fell asleep immediately.

I woke up out of a dream and glanced over at the alarm clock. 2:21 A.M.

I couldn't fall back asleep.

Killing babies all day was wrong.

No. No, it couldn't be. Mr. Twitcher was a decent man and one hell of an entrepreneur. Chopping those newborns in half with his machine was right and proper. Anybody who said otherwise was just trying to cause a ruckus.

You know that isn't true.
Those babies don't deserve to be severed like that, their corpses discarded like useless refuse. You've got baby blood on your hands, and someday you'll have to answer for it.

I put in an honest day's work.

You put in an honest day's baby murdering! Those babies could've been future doctors. They could've written classic works of literature, or brought the world laughter or fashion sense. But you had to go and chop 'em in half, you sadistic bastard.

"Stop it!" I screamed. "Stop it! Stop it! Leave me alone!"

I was suddenly glad that I lived alone, since that kept me from having to explain why I'd shouted, "Stop it!" at my own brain. I pulled the blanket over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, but sleep wouldn't return.

Six years of working for Mr. Twitcher.

Eight hours a day, five days a week, doing nothing but chopping babies with his miracle machine.

Was I a monster?

My stomach hurt.

I lay there, miserable, until the alarm went off at six-thirty.

The next day was almost unbearable. I watched Garry grab an infant off the conveyer belt and wondered if its mother was part of the picket line. I wondered if the poor thing was terrified out of its mind as Garry strapped it to the slab. I'd never really considered that the wails of the infants might be signs of terror — I figured babies just cried a lot — yet now I couldn't help but believe that the child was aware of its own mortality, its own violent demise.

Sammy, who we called Fat Sammy even though he was only moderately overweight, pulled the main lever back with both hands. I watched as the giant blade sliced the baby neatly in half through the belly button. Then I scooped the pieces into the bag, sealed it, and wiped up the blood, feeling almost as if I were hiding the evidence of a terrible crime.

I opened the lid of the disposal unit. The final step of my job was to toss the infant into the unit, bag and all. The remains would be thoroughly ground up, and then the semi-liquid substance would be sucked through a tube into the crematorium, where it would be burned to ashes in batches of ten. The ashes were then scattered to the wind. All in all, it was a very efficient process.

The next baby squirmed so much that Garry could barely hold it. Fortunately, he got it onto the slab without incident — Mr. Twitcher didn't like Droppers.

That unfortunate, innocent creature. It will never get a chance to grow up, to laugh, to lose its first tooth, to even
grow
its first tooth, to have a birthday. Chopped in half as its mother lies on her bed at home, weeping, asking God how He could let this happen . . .

I realized that my eyes were beginning to moisten. I frantically blinked the tears away, hoping nobody saw.

What was happening to me?

My world, once as comfortable as a pair of well-worn socks, was a spiral of confusion. I didn't know right from wrong. Good from evil. Heaven from Hell.

The enormous blade slammed down, halving the infant with a splatter of crimson, ceasing its cries forever.

And I gasped.

My fingers trembled as I stared into its dead eyes, its lifeless gaze. I hurriedly put it in the bag, facedown. I took hold of its left foot, which wore a little pink bootie.

No, not
its
left foot.
Her
left foot.

What was her name? Charlotte? Vanessa? Tina?

I bet it was Tina. She looked like a Tina.

Some drops of blood hit the cement floor as I tried to get Tina's lower half into the bag. "What the hell are you doing, Joey?" Garry called out. "Be careful!"

I mumbled an apology and got the rest of the baby in the bag. I sealed it and shoved the whole thing into the disposal unit, feeling amazingly queasy.

I knew then what had to be done. I had to talk to Mr. Twitcher. I had to find out why.

Though he was a stern man, Mr. Twitcher always had an open-door policy for his employees. Few ever took him up on it, because he wasn't the kind of person you would invite to dinner or chat about last night's television programs with, but his office door was indeed ajar as I approached it after the lunch whistle blew. I knocked.

"Come right in," he said.

I pushed the door open all the way and walked inside. Mr. Twitcher sat behind his desk, peering at me through his spectacles. He was an elderly man, nearly bald, with a crooked nose and thin mustache. He pushed some papers aside and folded his hands on his desk. "Welcome to my office," he said. "Please have a seat."

I nodded and closed the door behind me.

"I'd prefer you left the door open," said Mr. Twitcher. "I can't very well purport to have an open-door policy for all employees if the aforementioned door is closed, now can I?"

"Of course not. Sorry, sir," I said, opening the door just a crack. I sat down on a chair in front of his desk, hoping that nobody would walk past the office as we spoke.

"So what's on your mind?"

I wasn't quite sure how to tactfully bring up the subject, and so I blurted it out: "Why do we kill babies?"

Mr. Twitcher seemed nonplussed by my query. "Ah, the real question is, why
wouldn't
we kill babies?"

I waited for him to elaborate. He did not.

"It's just that . . . I like my job, of course, but I can't help but think that we ought not to chop up infants."

Mr. Twitcher frowned. "Why would you say such a thing?"

"Well, they're innocent babies."

"Innocent? Since when does innocence provide value? That's nonsense, hogwash, and poppycock. Tell me, what has a baby done for you recently?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Of course nothing! Have you ever changed a diaper?"

"No, sir."

"Well, I have, and let me tell you, it's an unpleasant process. Babies do nothing but cry, soil diapers, and spit up. I defy you to name one other thing that a baby does."

I considered his challenge for a moment. "They coo."

"Coo? You think that cooing is a benefit? If I wanted to hear something coo, there are plenty of better sources than a baby, trust me on that." For a moment I thought that he was going to banish me from his office, but to my surprise, Mr. Twitcher smiled. "You're not the first person to bring these concerns to me."

"I'm not?"

"Oh, no. Far from it. There are plenty of individuals who feel that my baby-chopping operation is questionable at best. You'd be amazed at some of the names I've been called."