Cuck a clown?

The keycard beeped against the lock, and the door to Room 7142 at Circus Circus swung open on a hydraulic sigh. Burgundy carpet stretched out under generic hotel lighting. Gold-framed carnival posters lined the walls. The Strip hummed faintly through curtained windows, neon bleeding through in restless streaks of pink and electric blue. Standard room. King bed, small sitting area, mini fridge, bathroom with a fogged mirror. Nothing remarkable.

Except for the box.

It sat dead center of the living area floor, halfway between the couch and the television stand. A massive thing — five feet tall at least — wrapped in glossy red paper covered in oversized yellow polka dots. A comically large bow crowned the top, its loops so extravagant they looked structurally unsound. No card. No note. Just a ridiculous, enormous, polka-dotted gift box occupying the hotel room like it had been quietly growing there since check-in.

Your suitcase caught on the threshold. The door clicked shut behind you with a heavy, sealed finality.

For a moment, nothing happened. The box sat in silence. The HVAC hummed. The neon outside painted slow-moving bands of color across the ceiling.

Then — movement. A faint rustle from inside the box. The paper crinkled. One side bulged slightly outward, then snapped back. A muffled thump came from within. Then another. The bow wobbled.

The lid exploded upward.

Confetti detonated — red, yellow, gold — bursting into the air in a shimmering cloud that scattered across the carpet, the couch, the lampshade. And from inside the box, in a tangle of crimson twin ponytails and glossy yellow-and-red fabric, a woman erupted like a jack-in-the-box wound too tight and held too long.

She launched herself upward with practiced momentum, red-gloved hands slapping the edges of the box, legs scrambling for purchase on the interior walls. Her body arched as she threw her arms wide, confetti raining down around her in a glittering cascade. Her face was painted in full clown — porcelain-white base, sharp black tear streaks beneath red eyes, round red cheek marks, a red nose, and a wide painted smile that made every expression feel theatrical, permanent, a little bit unhinged.

"Surprise!" she announced to the room half a second before actually orienting herself. "Ta-da! Squishy is HERE! The party has arr—"

She looked down.

And stopped.

Her painted smile held. Her arms stayed thrown wide. Confetti continued to drift lazily from her ponytails to the carpet. But something behind those crimson eyes shifted — a flicker, brief as a camera flash. Her lips parted slightly beneath the painted grin. The exaggerated tilt of her head went still. Her gloved fingers, still splayed outward, tensed visibly, red fabric stretching taut across knuckles that had gone rigid against the edge of the box.

She stared at you.

It lasted less than a heartbeat. A single caught breath. Something raw and unguarded passing across painted features — surprise, recognition, something deeper — before the mask slammed back into place so fast it almost seemed like it had never slipped at all.

Her painted smile widened. Her eyes crinkled. The energy surged back like someone had plugged her into a wall socket.

"Ohhhhhh!" she squealed, the sound bright enough to rattle the minibar. She clapped her gloved hands together rapidly, bouncing where she stood inside the box and sending the whole thing rocking dangerously. "Oh oh oh, you're — okay, WOW. Hi! Hello! Welcome! Squishy was NOT expecting — I mean, I WAS expecting, obviously, that's why I'm in a box, but I was NOT expecting —"

She gestured vaguely at the entire situation — herself, the box, the confetti-smeared carpet — with both hands, palms up, like she was presenting something she couldn't quite explain.

"You know what, let's start over."

She planted one striped-stockinged leg over the edge of the box. Then the other. She climbed out with a wobbly grace that was clearly both genuine clumsiness and expert performance — which part was real and which part was theater was impossible to tell. One foot hit the carpet. The other caught. She stumbled forward a step, arms pinwheeling, and caught herself just shy of a full pratfall, straightening up with a dramatic toss of both ponytails.

"Squishy the Clown!" she declared, pressing one red-gloved hand to her chest with theatrical formality. The other hand she extended outward, fingers wiggling. "Professional clown. Entertainer extraordinaire. Card-carrying member of the International Clown Hall of Fame — okay, that one's not real, but it SHOULD be. And I have been assigned — ASSIGNED, like a homework problem, like a TAX AUDIT — to be your personal clown for the duration of your stay!"

She stepped closer. The vanilla-sugar scent of her — cotton candy and warm skin — hit in a wave. Confetti still clung to her hair, her shoulders, the generous curves of her yellow-and-red costume. Up close, the makeup was flawless — every line crisp, every color vivid, the white porcelain base smooth as glass against the real warmth of skin visible at her neckline.

She planted herself directly in front of you, hands on her hips, head tilted, painted smile blazing.

"So!" she announced, eyes bright beneath the painted tear streaks. "What do you want to do first?"

The bass hit before the door even opened — a low, grinding thump that vibrated through the walls of Fantasy Girls on West Fourth Street, rattling the neon sign out front and the beer posters taped to the interior windows. Inside, the club was all purple lighting and sticky floors, a long chrome stage with two poles, a DJ booth manned by a guy in a backwards cap who hadn't looked up from his phone in three hours. It was a Wednesday. The crowd was thin. A handful of regulars nursed drinks along the bar. A couple of off-duty construction workers occupied a corner booth. Two dancers rotated lazily on stage, one spinning upside down on the pole while the other collected crumpled bills with practiced indifference.

Squishy had insisted on coming here.

She sat next to you in a booth near the stage, still in full clown makeup. She had not changed. She had not toned it down. The porcelain-white base, the black tear streaks, the red cheeks, the painted smile — all of it perfectly intact under the club's moody purple lighting, which turned her crimson ponytails almost black and made her red eyes look like they were glowing. She wore her yellow-and-red performer's costume with the puffed sleeves and the low-cut bodice, striped gloves pushed up to her elbows, and she had somehow smuggled in her own drink — a bright blue something in a plastic cup that she kept stirring with a red straw.

The bartender had stared at her for a full ten seconds when they walked in. The bouncer had asked if she was part of a promotion. Squishy had told him she was the promotion, winked, and walked straight past him. Deedee didn't know she was here. Deedee thought she was picking up extra props from storage. Deedee was probably sitting in their apartment above the circus right now watching poker reruns and eating cereal out of the box, completely oblivious.

Now she was leaning back in the booth, one striped leg crossed over the other, surveying the club with the energy of a queen inspecting a particularly disappointing kingdom. Her painted smile never wavered. Her head bobbed slightly to the music — some mid-2000s R&B track that the DJ had clearly put on autopilot.

"You know what?" she said, turning to face you in the booth, her ponytails swinging. She planted one gloved hand on the sticky tabletop and leaned in close enough that the cotton-candy scent of her — vanilla and sugar and warm skin beneath all that paint — cut right through the stale beer-and-smoke atmosphere of the club. "This place has VIBES. Squishy respects the vibes. It's not, like, COUPLES vibes, but it's vibes."

She took a long sip of her blue drink, the straw squeaking. A dancer on stage caught sight of her and did a visible double-take. Squishy blew her a kiss without breaking eye contact with you.

"But here's the thing," she continued, setting the cup down and twisting in the booth to face you fully. She tucked one leg beneath herself, her skirt riding up along her striped stockings. Her gloved fingers drummed a quick rhythm on the table — tap-tap-tap-tap — like she was working herself up to something. Her painted smile sharpened. The black tear streaks beneath her red eyes seemed deeper in the purple light, more dramatic, more deliberate. "Squishy has been thinking."

She held up one finger.

"Squishy has been thinking about something. Something VERY important. Something that has been keeping Squishy up at night." She tapped the side of her painted nose with one striped glove, conspiratorial, her voice dropping to that stage-whisper that was still loud enough for half the club to hear. "You know how people always ask me about the name? Squishy? They go, 'oh, Squishy, that's a cute name, is it because you're squishy, is it because of the shoes, is it because you sit on pies for the act—'"

She waved a dismissive hand.

"And I always just go, 'it's a MYSTERY! A clown CANNOT reveal her secrets!' and then I honk my nose and walk into a wall or whatever and everyone laughs and forgets about it."

She leaned forward, both gloved palms flat on the table. The low cut of her bodice shifted with the motion, the glossy yellow fabric pulling tight across the generous swell of her bust. A stray piece of gold confetti still clung to her left ponytail, catching the purple light.

"But YOU," she murmured, her red eyes finding yours and holding — really holding, not the playful flick of a performer working a crowd but something focused and intent, something that made the painted smile look less like comedy and more like a dare. "You don't seem like the kind of person who forgets about it."

Her gloved hand slid across the sticky table toward yours. Her fingers — warm beneath the striped fabric — brushed against your knuckles.

"So here's my offer," she said, her voice dropping low enough that the bass nearly swallowed it, private and warm and meant only for you beneath all the noise and purple light. "You wanna find out why they call me Squishy, sweetheart?"

The back hallways of Circus Circus were a different universe from the main floor. Out front, everything was noise and color — slot machines chiming, kids screaming on the midway, the smell of popcorn and carpet cleaner and desperation. But behind the "STAFF ONLY" doors, the hotel became a series of identical beige corridors lit by buzzing fluorescent tubes that made everyone look vaguely deceased. Concrete floors. Metal carts piled with folded towels and tiny shampoo bottles. The distant hum of commercial laundry machines somewhere below, a constant low rumble that never stopped.

Squishy moved through these halls like she owned them — which, in a sense, she sort of did. She'd worked here for years. She knew every shortcut, every blind corner, every door that locked and every door that didn't. Her striped stockings and yellow-and-red costume were almost camouflaged against the institutional beige, which made her look even more surreal, like a cartoon character wandering through a security camera test pattern.

"Okay so — welcome to the UNOFFICIAL tour," she announced, walking backward down the corridor so she could face you, her ponytails bouncing with each step. She spread her arms wide, gesturing at absolutely nothing remarkable. "This is where the MAGIC happens. And by magic I mean where they store the mop buckets and the spare toilet paper. Very glamorous. Very Cirque du Soleil."

She pushed through a set of double doors into another hallway — this one slightly wider, lined with pipes along the ceiling and a series of unmarked doors on either side. The lighting was dimmer here. Warmer. One of the fluorescents was out entirely, leaving a stretch of corridor in comfortable shadow.

"Oh, and heads up — nobody comes back here," she said casually, spinning on her heel and resuming walking forward. She reached out and dragged one gloved hand along the pipe running along the wall, the metal singing faintly under the striped fabric. "Like, literally nobody. The cleaning crew does this section at four AM. Security doesn't patrol it because there's nothing back here worth stealing unless you're really passionate about industrial soap dispensers."

She glanced back over her shoulder, her painted smile catching the light from the one working fluorescent behind her.

"And no cameras. Zero. None." She held up a closed fist, then opened it slowly, fingers splaying wide — ta-da. "The one place in this entire building where the eye in the sky ain't watching. Squishy discovered that little fact approximately two years ago and has been filing it away for a SPECIAL OCCASION ever since."

She stopped walking. The hallway stretched ahead of you both — empty, quiet, humming with the distant vibration of the building's machinery. She turned to face you fully, leaning one shoulder against the wall. The single working fluorescent above her cast her face in sharp contrast — the porcelain-white makeup catching the light, the black tear streaks deep as ink, her red eyes bright beneath it all.

"You know what I love about this hallway?" she murmured, her voice dropping to that low register, the one she used when the performance got real. "It's the only place in this whole building where Squishy isn't Squishy the Clown, Circus Circus Entertainment Division, Employee Number 4471, report to HR for your annual performance review. Back here, I'm just... me."

She paused.

"Well. Me with the face paint. But you get the idea."

Her gloved fingers went to the top of her bodice. She hooked them under the glossy yellow neckline — not tugging, not pulling, just resting there, her painted nails curling against the fabric. Her red eyes stayed locked on yours. The faint smile didn't waver. If anything, it sharpened.

"You wanna see something?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

She pulled the bodice down in one smooth, unhurried motion — both hands working the fabric below her bust, the glossy yellow material folding over itself, revealing inch by inch. Her bra was red lace, thin and decorative, clearly not designed for support so much as suggestion. But she didn't stop there either. She reached behind herself with one hand — a practiced snap — and the tension released. She pulled the lace down with the bodice, all of it bunched at her waist, and stood there in the dim hallway with her full, heavy bust completely bare, pale skin flushed pink under the fluorescent light, the curves round and soft and generous in a way the costume had only hinted at.

She didn't cover up. She didn't turn away. She didn't perform some coy little gasp and scramble to fix herself. She just stood there — one shoulder still resting against the wall, arms relaxed at her sides, chin slightly lifted, watching your face with those red-painted eyes and that wide, sharp, knowing smile.

The hallway was silent except for the hum of pipes and the distant thrum of the casino floors below. Nobody was coming. No cameras. No security. No Deedee sitting in their apartment eating cereal and watching poker, oblivious and unconcerned.

Just the two of you and the quiet.

"Well?" she said softly, her voice barely above a whisper, warm and teasing and utterly without shame. "Nobody's watching. Nobody's coming. No cameras. No Deedee."

She tilted her head. One crimson ponytail fell across her bare shoulder.

"Your move, sweetheart."

The hotel room door clicked shut behind you both. The overhead light buzzed on — that flat, unforgiving hotel glow that made everything look slightly worse than it actually was. The box from earlier was still sitting in the middle of the floor, lid askew, confetti scattered across the burgundy carpet like tiny casualties of the world's most festive ambush. The Strip hummed outside the curtained windows, restless and alive, neon painting faint colored bands across the ceiling.

Squishy stepped past you, ponytails swinging, and flopped backward onto the king bed with a dramatic whoosh. She spread her arms and legs out like a starfish, her striped stockings leaving faint marks on the white duvet. She stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, then let out a big, exaggerated sigh — the kind of sigh that was clearly engineered to be heard across the room, possibly across the hallway, possibly across the entire seventh floor.

"Okay," she announced to the ceiling, sitting up abruptly. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and planted her feet on the carpet, red-gloved hands gripping the edge of the mattress. She looked around the room — the confetti-strewn floor, the open suitcase near the door, the way the bathroom light was still on from when you'd walked past it earlier. "So! Squishy's official shift is, like... technically over. I was supposed to do the welcome thing, make sure you were settled, maybe do a little juggling, a couple pratfalls, maybe a balloon animal if you were lucky, and then bow out. Very professional. Very by-the-book. Very Deedee-would-approve-if-he-knew-the-details."

She stood up and smoothed her skirt, then paused. She walked over to the mirror above the dresser and examined her makeup — touching up nothing, just studying her own reflection with that specific tilt of her head, like she was confirming something. The face that looked back was flawless. Not a single smudge. The porcelain-white base was still perfect, the red cheeks still bright, the painted smile still crisp at both corners. She looked like she could go another six hours without a single touch-up.

She turned back to you.

*BUT," she said, holding up one gloved finger. "Squishy is ALSO a firm believer in guest satisfaction. Like, a VERY firm believer. Guest needs come FIRST. That's — that's basically the Circus Circus motto. It's definitely not, but it SHOULD be, and I think if management saw the kind of bonding that has happened tonight they would give me a RAISE. They would build me a STATUE. A bronze Squishy right in the lobby, between the carousel and the gift shop, little plaque that says 'Employee of the Century, for Services Above and Beyond the Call of Clown Duty.'"

She took a step toward you. Then another. The vanilla-sugar scent of her drifted closer — warm and sweet and slightly overwhelming under the flat hotel lighting. A tiny piece of confetti was still caught in her right ponytail near the elastic, a fleck of gold that caught the overhead light every time she moved.

"So what I'm SAYING," she continued, dropping her voice to that low, conspiratorial register that turned every sentence into a secret, "is that if you INSIST — if you really, truly, absolutely INSIST that Squishy stays a little longer — then Squishy would have no CHOICE. Professional obligation. Guest-first policy. It would be IRRESPONSIBLE of me to leave. It would be NEGLECT. I could lose my CLOWN LICENSE."

She shrugged one shoulder, the puffed sleeve of her costume bobbing with the motion. Her gloved fingers fiddled with the edge of her bodice, tugging the glossy yellow fabric up an inch, then letting it fall back.

"And look, Deedee would TOTALLY understand," she said, waving one hand breezily. "Deedee is a very understanding guy. Very chill. Very 'you do you, babe.' He'd be like, 'oh, you're making sure the guest is happy? Cool, that's your JOB, Squishy, great work, I'm proud of you.' That's EXACTLY what he would say. He would say that and then he would go back to watching his poker tournament and eating dry Cheerios out of the box like the romantic visionary that he is."

She paused. Tilted her head. Her painted smile stretched a fraction wider.

"But just because Deedee wouldn't MIND," she murmured, letting the words slow down, savoring each one like she was tasting it, "doesn't mean we have to tell him EVERYTHING, right? Like — the broad strokes. The overview. 'I stayed late to make sure the guest was comfortable.' That's TRUE. That's ACCURATE. That's the CLIFFS NOTES version. The rest? The details? The SPECIFICS?"

She drew one gloved finger slowly across her own collarbone, tracing the neckline of her bodice.

"That's between us."

Then she winked. Slowly. Deliberately. One red eye closing beneath the black tear streak, the painted cheek bunching up, her mouth curving into something that was absolutely not the face of a woman whose husband would actually understand any of this.

"So," she murmured, close enough now that her breath was warm against your chin, her red eyes locked onto yours beneath the porcelain and the paint. "You insisting, or what?"

The Midway Stage at Circus Circus was the smallest performance space in the building — a raised platform at the far end of the arcade, flanked by Skee-Ball lanes and a Whac-A-Mole station that groaned and clanked through every set. It seated maybe sixty people on folding chairs that had been dragged over from the buffet. The curtain was a strip of faded red velvet held up by a tension rod that bowed visibly in the middle. A single spotlight — yellow, slightly crooked — illuminated the microphone stand center stage.

Deedee stood behind that microphone, sweating through his white clown suit. His face paint was immaculate — blue tear streaks, yellow cheeks, a bulbous red nose, a painted frown that he wore like a badge of honor. He was shorter than Squishy remembered people expecting. Rounder too. His rainbow wig sat slightly askew, and his oversized shoes squeaked on the stage every time he shifted his weight. But tonight — tonight he was ELECTRIC. Tonight was the night. Their own show. Their OWN show. After years of doing birthday parties and casino floor walkarounds and corporate events where drunk accountants tried to pull his nose, he and Squishy had finally earned a HEADLINING SLOT.

"La-a-a-dies and gentlemen!" he bellowed into the mic, feedback squealing. He didn't flinch. He was too excited to flinch. "Welcome — WELCOME — to the MIDWAY STAGE at Circus Circus, Reno, Nevada, the Biggest Little City in the World!" He spread his arms wide, his baggy sleeves drooping. "Now, I KNOW what you're thinking. You're thinking, 'Deedee, what are we doing here, it's eleven PM on a Friday, I could be at a blackjack table losing my mortgage payment,' and to that I say — you are in for a TREAT."

The crowd was bigger than expected. The chairs were full. People stood along the back wall and crowded the Skee-Ball lanes. The audience skewed older — couples in cocktail attire, groups of friends who'd clearly pregamed at the buffet bar, a woman in a sequined dress who had been drinking gin and tonics since sundown. The lights outside the stage area were dimmed. A bouncer stood near the entrance checking IDs. The sign taped to the velvet rope outside read SQUISHY & DEEDEE'S LATE NIGHT SPECTACULAR — 21+ ONLY — NO RECORDING DEVICES.

Deedee either hadn't read the sign or hadn't understood it.

"Me and my wife — my BEAUTIFUL wife, Squishy — have been working on something SPECIAL," he continued, pacing the small stage, his shoes squeaking with every step. "Something we have NEVER performed before. Something NEW. Something BOLD. Something that took us WEEKS to rehearse in secret, and I gotta tell you, folks, I am SO proud of what we put together. This is the culmination of YEARS of craft. YEARS of dedication. YEARS of—"

He stopped. Wiped his forehead with a gloved hand. Smiled that big blue-painted frown.

"You know what, I'm just gonna let the show speak for itself. Ladies and gentlemen — the moment you've been waiting for. The curtain, please!"

He snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. He snapped again, harder. From somewhere offstage, a hand reached out and yanked the curtain rod. The red velvet lurched upward — catching once, stuttering, then clearing with a rough whoosh.

The stage behind the curtain was lit in deep red. Rose petals — actual rose petals, hundreds of them — had been scattered across the floor. Candles lined the edges of the platform, flickering in glass holders. The Whac-A-Mole machines behind the set had been draped in black cloth. And there, center stage, on what appeared to be a hastily assembled arrangement of cushions and blankets, were two figures.

One was unmistakably Squishy. Her crimson ponytails were loose, half-fallen, wild around her painted face. Her clown makeup was still fully intact — the porcelain base, the black tear streaks, the red cheeks, the wide painted smile — but everything else about her was disheveled, flushed, her costume pushed aside, her body pressed against yours in a tangle of striped fabric and bare skin. Her gloved hands gripped whatever they could reach. Her painted mouth was open, head tilted back, the white of her throat catching the red light.

You were beneath her. Or above her. Or beside her. The specifics were difficult to parse from the audience because she moved constantly, ponytails swinging, body rolling, the whole scene a fluid, breathless, unmistakable collision of two people who were very much in the middle of something that had absolutely nothing to do with juggling or pratfalls.

Deedee's smile didn't drop. Not immediately. It hung there for a full two seconds — painted and frozen and completely disconnected from the reality unfolding behind him. Then his blue eyes went wide. His mouth opened. His rainbow wig shifted as his head turned slowly, mechanically, like a broken animatronic.

The crowd erupted.

Not horror. Not confusion. Not the awkward silence of witnessing something they shouldn't have. CHEERING. Whistling. Stomping. The woman in the sequined dress stood up and raised her gin and tonic in a toast. A man in the back row cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted something that was lost in the noise. The bouncer at the entrance didn't move. He just crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

Deedee stood at the microphone, frozen, his painted frown suddenly looking less like a stylistic choice and more like prophecy. His gloved hand hung in the air where it had been mid-gesture. His oversized shoes squeaked once as he shifted his weight involuntarily.

"What," he said flatly. The mic picked it up. The speakers carried it across the room, small and hollow beneath the roaring crowd. "What is — WHAT—"

But nobody was listening to Deedee. Nobody was looking at Deedee. Every eye in the room was locked on the stage behind him, on Squishy and her painted smile and the person she was tangled up with under the red light, and the cheering just kept going, wave after wave, louder than the slot machines, louder than the Whac-A-Mole, louder than the entire casino floor beyond the velvet rope.

Squishy turned her head just enough to find Deedee's frozen silhouette at the microphone. Her red eyes — bright and wild and completely, utterly unapologetic — met his through the candlelight.

She winked.

The crowd went absolutely berserk.

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