The Masque Of the Red Nose

By Mike Mayak

I thought clowns were creepy long before I saw that Stephen King movie. Last thing I wanted to do was sit through some clown movie. But I was on the Library Board and so was Dwight and the whole idea was to get kids involved in reading, so the downtown Library had a circus theme that weekend.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor and looked down. Yeah, a clown, a ringmaster, even a juggler. Plenty of kids books and plenty of screaming kids. Well, it won’t be so bad in the third floor auditorium with the doors shut, I thought.

But the Board members were all coming dressed as clowns.

My costume was improvised; a silly little hat, a ragged jacket and a red nose left over from that other charity thing from a few years back.

I was right, you couldn’t hear the screaming kids from this part of the top floor. I breathed a sigh of relief and walked down the hall to the auditorium, opened the door and went in.

It wasn’t dark yet and one of the librarians was making a speech, some kind of intro. I saw where Dwight was, in not full costume; long coat, floppy hat and red nose. Kind of like Doctor Who on Red Nose Day. I edged past a couple of people and sat down next to Dwight.

“Glad you could make it,” he whispered. “Know what day this is?”

“Huh?” I whispered back.

“Anniversary of our first date eight years ago?” Dwight said with another grin.

It was…It had been his late Grandmother’s birthday so he always remembered the date.

“You remember we wanted to see a movie but couldn’t find one open?” Dwight whispered. “Well here’s our movie.”

The movie was actually a collection of shorts with Charlie Chaplain and then the Three Stooges. No clowns in makeup, but maybe they counted.

Dwight and I sat there, held hands and laughed.

—end—

NOTE: The draws for the December 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were a Romance, set in a Library involving a Clown Costume.

Hope you liked it. ——mike