Chapter 31: CUT. I’d Rather Be Smiling (2)
by fnovelpia
They made a well-matched pair.
The wife was smooth like a fish, and the husband was a big, hairy man like a gorilla.
Outside, they played the perfect couple.
But at home, they took off their masks.
They were child abusers.
They tormented their only son as if they were trying to dry him out.
The son was called “weird kid” instead of by his name.
He understood being called a “kid” because of his age, but he didn’t know what was “weird” about him.
His parents wouldn’t tell him when asked.
All that came back were severe beatings.
The couple hated their son’s expression.
So, under the guise of correction, they starved him.
They wouldn’t give him food or water, doing this once every four days.
They forced him to smile throughout the starvation.
If the corners of his mouth drooped even slightly, they would punch him in the stomach.
The pain was too much for his tender body to bear.
To the son, his parents were as big as giants.
A pair of monsters.
The son’s only friend was a dog.
A stray dog, like any you’d see in any neighborhood.
Hugging its dirty fur and skinny body, he could feel the warmth of its soft breathing.
Petting that friend, the son found peace of mind.
Of course, it was done in secret from his parents.
As time passed, the abuse from the couple became increasingly horrific.
The father used his belt like a whip.
He would grab and pull out hair in clumps of ten or throw plates.
The mother was no different.
She once stepped on his fingers with the heel of her high heels, breaking them.
In this hell where both body and mind were crumbling, the son had to swallow his screams.
After the abuse, he would hug the dog and cry in secret.
Then one day.
The son was caught hugging the dog by his parents.
They buried the dog in the yard.
Leaving only its head exposed, they then poured boiling water over it.
Steam rose cruelly.
The dog, doused in boiling water, whimpered in agony and then died.
The son collapsed.
He belatedly realized how disgusting and monstrous his parents were.
Hate flowed through his veins instead of blood.
He clenched his fist and vowed.
To kill his parents.
And to go further and kill all humans.
To beat to death anyone he came across…
The day he decided on slaughter, he abandoned the name his parents gave him.
And changed his identity to “serial killer.”
The history of the 1980s American axe murderer began like that.
“…Who is the moth’s mom?”
Asked the headless clown to him, now called ‘Yeoreum.’
The clown overlapped with the image of his parents.
Oppressive and ferocious, an unpredictable monster.
“Guess! Who is the moth’s mom?”
“…I don’t know.”
He replied with a trembling voice.
It felt like the sound of rain hitting his ears was fading away.
He wanted to turn around and run away immediately, but it felt like the clown’s long arm would grab his neck.
If he had been in the ‘serial killer’s’ body, he might have easily lifted and crushed such a clown.
But now, he was weak.
An ally (the president) standing next to him was kicked away, flying off like a plastic bag on a windy day.
“The answer is… Mammoth!”
“…”
“Kuk, Mom… Moth…! Kukukuk, Kuhuk, Kahahaha! Puhuhuhuh!! Huhu, Hahahaha!!!!”
The clown laughed.
With no head, its dangling jaw and tongue were fully visible.
Its disgusting esophagus was exposed, looking like a whale’s blowhole.
“…Aren’t you going to laugh?”
Seeing that there was not even a twitch in the corners of his mouth, the clown stopped laughing and approached.
Up close, the size difference was even more obvious.
The smell of death was in the air.
“If you don’t want to laugh, I’ll make you! I’ll split your mouth open…!!”
Whoosh────
The clown’s grip came flying like a whip.
A strike that would have peeled off the skin of the face if it had connected.
Yeoreum dodged narrowly by bending his body.
So far, so good, but the aftermath was the problem.
The ground was slippery.
Yeoreum lost his balance and fell into a puddle filled with rainwater.
Splash.
“Ugh…”
The clown approached again.
Not quickly.
But slow enough to maintain tension.
The pace was like that of a murderer in a horror movie.
Yeoreum crawled backward, trying to escape the clown.
Rain soaked his entire body.
Flashes of his life flickered before him like a rapid slideshow.
They say you see your life flash before your eyes just before death because you’re searching your past memories for a way to escape the crisis and survive.
Painful memories from his childhood.
Memories of being a serial killer who only knew failure.
And the memory of landing in a strange world and meeting a pretty but gloomy girl, kind but a bit odd in the head, flashed by.
Yuna Yeon.
That was the only memory worth recalling at his last moment.
It was bitter yet sweet.
Just when the clown’s massive body loomed over him.
A voice came from somewhere.
“……<Don’t Breathe>…”
It was the president, lying against the wall, passing on a message.
The president was bleeding from the mouth.
Seemingly out of strength to move, barely able to speak.
<Don’t Breathe>
A brilliant masterpiece.
Yuna Yeon preferred the original title <Don’t Breathe> over any other.
Because it not only highlighted the theme of the movie but also threw a chilling warning to the audience, literally telling them to hold their breath.
Bloody footprints followed the clown, quickly washed away by the rain.
Now, it was noticeable that an ear dangled above the side of the clown’s jaw.
With its head gone, it had no eyes. It was seeing the world through sound.
Even for a transcendent being, it couldn’t see without eyes.
<Don’t Breathe>
In the movie, a blind veteran kills the young burglars one by one.
How did the cornered burglar counterattack?
He groped around with his hands in the rain-soaked ground.
His hand found a broken brick.
He threw it.
Splash- it landed in a puddle, splashing water.
“Don’t run away, laughhhhhhhhh!! Laugh, I said!!!!!!!”
The clown rushed towards the direction of the sound.
Of course, Yeoreum wasn’t there.
Only the brick that fell into the puddle.
Now it’s my turn.
Yeoreum picked up a sturdy branch.
Swinging or stabbing the clown with the branch wouldn’t inflict any damage.
It would be harder than piercing crocodile skin with a blunt pencil.
But there’s always a way through.
Just as courage and wisdom shine in despair.
He had encountered such moments over and over in horror movies.
He ran through the rain.
The clown turned around too late, realizing he had been tricked.
Yeoreum had climbed onto a car’s hood, then onto the roof.
Holding the branch, he dived towards the clown.
Thump
│
He plunged the branch deep into the clown’s esophagus.
It felt like sticking chopsticks into raw meat.
“Kueeeek! Quek!! Que, Kueeeek…!!!”
The clown flailed its arms wildly like a burning man, desperately trying to pull out the branch stuck in its esophagus.
Yeoreum picked up the broken brick from the puddle.
He approached the clown and struck it behind the knee.
The clown fell.
He stomped hard on the clown’s body.
“Try laughing now.”
Yeoreum stomped on the fallen clown.
With the intention of punishing those unforgivable.
Thump, thump, thump.
He stomped repeatedly.
Like tap dancing on a rainy day.
They stuffed the unconscious clown into the car trunk.
The president got into the driver’s seat.
He thought she’d be gone for good after taking a clown kick but she turned out to be tougher than expected.
The car didn’t head to a hospital but to school.
The president and Yeoreum took the clown out of the trunk and went to the “Horror Film Club” room.
The president called Yuna Yeon.
10 minutes later, Yuna Yeon arrived at the room with a bulging plastic bag.
She gave a cold look to the president and Yeoreum, alone together.
When the president explained the whole situation, feeling the threat to his life, Yuna Yeon hugged Yeoreum tightly.
Despite him being still wet from the rain, she hugged him without care.
Yeoreum pretended to dislike it.
Even though his heart felt tight inside.
Inside Yuna Yeon’s plastic bag were three gas masks, a huge amount of glue, varnish, and more.
It was an errand from the president, she said.
Yeoreum was puzzled.
“What are all these for?”
“An elegant way to deal with the undead,” the president said.
“We’re not going to grind the clown in a mixer or burn it. Have you seen <House of Wax>?”
“Don’t tell me…”
“We’re going to make a wax figure.”
A camcorder was set up on a tripod, already recording.
This was said to be a very important sequence for the movie.
The president applied a fancy jiu-jitsu technique to the fallen clown.
Crack, she dislocated all the elbow and knee joints.
With the limbs now limp, she moved the clown to a pose.
She tilted the upper body slightly to the side and spread both palms near the mouth.
It was a pose reminiscent of a cynic who shouts that suicide is an option even when cryptocurrency prices crash.
“Now, put on the gas masks!”
Following the president’s command, they put on gas masks.
They sprayed the posed clown with adhesive spray.
Not stopping there, they also applied a thick layer of industrial-strength glue.
The surface, heavily coated with adhesive, hardened instantly.
The clown solidified as if it had seen Medusa.
“Now that it’s hardened, let’s apply varnish to make it shine.”
They applied varnish.
The clown shone brilliantly.
Clown wax figure complete.
Strictly speaking, not a wax figure but a glue figure.
Unless dipped in a vat of hydrochloric acid, it could never move again.
With the entire body stiffened, the clown’s tongue moved like a cobra.
“Who is the poorest king in the world?”
…
“The answer is… minimum wage[1]! Kekek, kuk.. huhuha, huhu, kukukuku… Kuhahaha!!”
…
“Who is the loneliest king in the world?”
…
“The answer is… Solomon!! Because solo! Kekkek, kuk, uhhahahaha! Kyahhoo~!”
…
The president shook his head.
“Ugh. This scene is unusable. We’ll have to edit it out.”
“Kukekekeke, kuhu, kuhuhuhuk. Hahahaha!”
“Let’s just cover the mouth, too.
They put a gorilla mask over the clown’s jaw.
They applied glue and sealed it without any gaps.
Where once was a head, now sat a gorilla mask.
Laughter, almost suffocating, leaked from behind the gorilla mask.
It seemed somewhat happy.
Thus, they placed the completed clown figure next to the fish-man model.
The fish-man and the gorilla clown.
They made a well-matched pair.
[1. raei: I’m not hundred percent sure here but the joke I believe is that ‘minimum wage’ has a similar pronunciation to ‘poorest king’ in Korean?]
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